The Fouta Djallon

The Fouta Djallon is the green roof of West Africa: a highland of sandstone and laterite at a thousand to fifteen hundred metres in the middle of Guinea, cut by canyons and hung with waterfalls, where the Gambia and the Senegal are born and the streams that feed the Niger run off the other side — which is why the region is called the water tower of the west — and where the Fula, the Peul, herders and scholars, built an Islamic state in the eighteenth century whose capital, Labé, is still the region's heart. The traveller's Fouta is a string of stops along one road: Dalaba, the French hill station of 1930s villas and a botanical garden at twelve hundred metres; Pita and its falls, Kinkon and Kambadaga, dropping off the plateau's edge; Doucki, a village on the rim of a canyon where a man named Hassan Bah has walked visitors along ledges and through gorges for twenty years; Labé's markets of indigo and wax; and, in the far north, Mali-ville under the cliff of Mount Loura, the Lady of Mali, at fifteen hundred and fifteen metres the highest point of the plateau.

The traveller comes up from Conakry — a long day by shared taxi, over Mamou — and takes the plateau slowly, north: two nights in Dalaba for the cool, the garden and the villa where the first president rested; a day at Pita for the two falls, with a motorbike and a guide; three nights at Doucki, sleeping in a hut and walking with Hassan Bah — the canyon, the ledges the villagers call the Indiana Jones trail, the pools — which is the reason most people come; Labé for a bed with hot water and the market; and, with time and a good vehicle, the road on to Mali-ville and the climb to the Lady's cliff for the whole plateau at his feet.

The Guide's honesty: Guinea is one of the least visited countries in Africa and the Fouta shows why and why not — the roads are slow and broken, the shared taxis are full and the fuel is scarce some weeks; the country's politics have been unsettled since 2021 and the traveller should read the advisories and travel with a local guide who knows the week's news; the plateau itself is peaceful, cool and hospitable, and the Peul villages welcome walkers with a bowl of milk and no fuss; the falls are at their best in the rains, when the roads are at their worst — the trade-off is real; the nights are cold, the water is what the village has, and the mobile network is patchy; and Doucki with Hassan Bah is one of the finest walks in West Africa, for the traveller who arrives with patience, boots and a headtorch.