Rhumsiki

We got to Rhumsiki after a long, dusty ride up from Maroua, and I remember Lia grabbing my arm the moment Kapsiki Peak came into view. It just shoots up out of the plain, this dark volcanic plug with nothing around it to soften the shock of it, and around it dozens of smaller spires do the same thing, like the ground itself cracked open and forgot to stop. I’d seen photos before we came, the ones travel writers use to describe the Mandara Mountains as “lunar,” and I always assumed that was the kind of exaggeration people reach for when they run out of better words. It isn’t. Standing at the edge of the village at sunset, watching the dykes go copper then grey then black, I understood that millions of years of erosion had built something no metaphor really covers.

We stayed two nights in a small guesthouse run by a Kapsiki family, and on the second morning our host asked if we wanted to see a diviner before we set off on our trek. I’ll admit I went in half-skeptical, half-nervous, not really knowing what to expect. The diviner set a pot down, placed a crab inside with a scattering of small carved sticks and leaves around the rim, and explained that the crab’s movements among those objects, as it shifts and rearranges them, would answer whatever question we brought. Lia asked something about our trip ahead; I kept mine to myself. Watching this man read the crab’s path with total seriousness, no performance in it at all, made it clear this wasn’t a show staged for us. It’s just how questions get asked here.

The trek itself is what stays with me most, though. We hired a local guide and spent a full day on foot weaving between the traditional Kapsiki compounds, their round mud-and-thatch huts clustered like small fortresses, then out into the open dyke fields where the trail disappears and you’re just picking your way between spires. Some travelers do it on horseback, and I could see the appeal on the steeper stretches, but walking let us stop constantly, which we did, mostly to just stand there and stare. Lia kept saying it looked like Mars, and I kept agreeing, and neither of us could really explain why that comparison never got old over the course of the day.

By the time we left, I understood why Rhumsiki has functioned as a trekking base for so long. There’s more of the Mandara range beyond it, ridges and villages we didn’t have time for, and I left already plotting a return trip with more days built in.

When to go: Aim for the dry season between November and February. Temperatures stay manageable, the skies clear right up, and the long views across the dykes, the whole reason you come, are at their sharpest.