Many people decide between visiting Gao and Timbuktu. While Timbuktu is a town immortalized in legends. Everybody wants to visit Timbuktu, but Gao is a very worth alternative. In Gao you can take a wooden boat down the Niger while children line the shore and wave. Then you can watch the sunset from dramatically beautiful sand dunes. Depending on the season, the town may be filled with the makeshift nomadic homes of Tauregs. The Tauregs come in from the Sahara every year to trade and wait out the weather. Gao doesn't have the fame of Timbuktu, but it actually has so much more. It's a very long, uncomfortable, overnight bus ride from Mopti, but it's a once in a lifetime experience to see what life is really like in a town in the Sahara.