Taoudénit

Taoudénit Region is Mali's northernmost administrative region, covering the country's Saharan interior. It was legislatively created in 2012 from the northern part of Timbuktu Cercle, though implementation was delayed by the Mali War until 2016, when the region was formally established with its own governor. It covers more than 323,000 km² — about a quarter of Mali's national territory — but had an estimated population of only around 18,000 in 2009, a density of well under one person per km². It is divided into six cercles: Achouratt, Al-Ourche, Araouane, Boudje-Béha, Foum-Alba, and Taoudénit. The region is best known for the historic Taoudenni salt mines, worked for over seven centuries and once a major source of salt traded across the Sahel, and for the Azalai, the traditional camel caravan route linking the mines to Timbuktu via the oasis of Araouane.

Taoudénit has an extreme Saharan desert climate: a cool season from roughly November to February with the most tolerable temperatures, and increasingly severe heat from March onward, peaking in the summer months when travel becomes genuinely difficult. The region receives almost no rainfall.

• Taoudenni — the historic salt-mining town
• Araouane — the caravan-route oasis between Taoudenni and Timbuktu