The mosque at Kaouara looks as though it has grown from the earth, and in a sense it has. It is one of a group of Sudanese-style mosques in northern Côte d'Ivoire, built of mud brick over timber frames, with tapering buttresses and wooden beams that stick out of the walls like quills. These beams serve as permanent scaffolding, which allows the community to climb up each year and replaster the surface with fresh mud. UNESCO added the group to the World Heritage list in 2021, recognising a building tradition that came down the trade routes from the old Mali Empire.
The mosques here date from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries and were built by Muslim traders and scholars who travelled along the caravan roads between the savanna and the forest. The style is spare, with solid walls, narrow openings, and a pair of conical towers topped with clay pots or ostrich eggs. Inside it is dark, cool and quiet. Visitors should dress modestly, ask permission, and remember that these are active places of worship, not museums.
The landscape is the Sudanese savanna: open woodland, tall grass, shea trees and baobabs, with red laterite soil and villages of round or square mud houses. Riding here means laterite tracks and patchy tarmac, with long stretches of dust in the dry season. The harmattan, a dry wind from the Sahara, brings a haze between December and February, and from May to October heavy rains turn tracks into mud and can make some routes impassable. Mornings are the best time for riding, before the heat becomes strong.
The larger centres of the north, such as Korhogo and Ferkessédougou, are the sensible places to refuel and to find rooms. Carry spare fuel, plenty of water and cash in West African francs. Greet villagers properly, accept the offer of shade if it comes, and let a local guide show you where to find the keeper of the mosque.