back from Mali, but ...

after 20 days travelling through Senegal and, mainly, Mali I think is useful and interesting to report briefly my experience in this newsgroup, where I' ve found many helpful people. A travel is anyway a great experience and I NEVER REGRET IT, but sometimes what you've expected is not what you've got and I think it's important to have a reasonably critic point of view for a future traveller, othervise everything is nice, everything is beauty just cause it's far far home and looks exotic. This is what has happened to me: MY FOCUS WAS MAINLY TO MEET PEOPLE, to experience the hospitality of the people and that's why I wanted to travel using the pubblic means of transport. I travelled from Dakar to Dogon area by taxi de brouse, minibus and (god blesses it) train. That has been really great, interesting, hard, funny,but... I've been really disappointed by the behavior of the people, I mean of the 99% of the people I've met. Indeed the poverty induces everybody to try to get money from every white, but I've not found a single really helpful person when I was in trouble, when I was cheated from all the people around me, when I needed any kind of trivial information about a street a place to sleep an advise or just to speak with somebody about the life in his country.. Is understandable that people think only to swindle you due to the poverty, but when they cannot do it they simply seems to ignore you. I'm NOT DESCRIBING EVERY MALIAN AND SENEGALISE, I'M JUST TELLING MY EXPERIENCE, MAYBE I'VE BEEN UNLUCKY, MAYBE THE COUNTRY I'VE VISITED BEFORE, LIKE IRAN, WERE AN EXPCEPTION. I'm not advising you to skipp Mali and Senegal , but if you go, don't really count on the people whatever it's: a schedule, price, itinerary of a mean of transport. I'm not angry , on the opposite I've been charmed by the beauty of a lot of places but a country is overall the people living in.

I think that this kind of experience is impossible in Asia, even in touristic places. What other think about?

Phil