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Tour de Burkina Faso – My Way
Ouagadougou – Bobo – Banfora – Bobo
Any Which Way
Leaving is always hard. It’s not that I fear the open road. I don’t fear the unknown. On the contrary. That’s why I travel. That’s why I travel by bike. But no matter how much I know I will love the freedom and the new experiences, leaving [...]
Bamako to Ouagadougou (part 4) – And into Burkina Faso
Leaving Mali
Leaving Mali was tougher than I thought. Not due to any particular attachment, although I did enjoy my time there. It was the wind and the rough, corrugated, roads. Mostly the wind though. It tried it’s hardest to blow me right back into Mali, even after I’d got the Burkina Faso entry stamped permanently [...]
Bamako to Ouagadougou (part 2) - A Detour to Timbuktu
Djenne
Djenne is a sleepy place. Except for Mondays. Monday is market day. Market day means hundreds of people arrive in town, congregate, congest the streets. They usher in goats and sheep, set up shop on the street floor to sell anything (everything afterall has a price and if it has a price it can be [...]
Bamako to Ouagadougou (part 1) - The Harmattan and Hungry
It’s been so long since the last proper update I hardly know what to write about. I guess the simplest thing is to start from where I left off…. and that was in Bamako having recovered from the previous weeks’ exertions paddling down the Niger river. That was over six weeks ago.
Bike Ride from Bamako [...]
A Change Can Do You Good
A month’s break from the bike seems to have been the perfect medicine for re-igniting my interest in my travels in West Africa and Mali specifically.
It’s been a fascinating month and I’ve seen so much. I hope to get chance to write an update about the last few weeks (it’s been a [...]
Photos of Djenne’s Mud Mosque and Monday Market
A small selection of photos of Djenne’s, in Mali, mud mosque and scenes from the Monday market.
The mosque, the largest of it’s kind in Mali, was built in 1907 and the outer walls, which wash away with every rainy season, are re-rendered each year in a huge event in which the whole village takes part.
The [...]
Photos from Guinea and Mali - the route northeast
A few photos from the cycle from Kouroussa in Guinea, where we ended the boat trip, heading northeast into Mali for Bamako and then on to Djenne.
The Travel Blues in Mali
Mali is famous for it’s music but I haven’t heard much and haven’t tried to find it. I’ve been singing my own song and I’d have to say it’not very soulful.
Having had a bout of literary diarrhoea after two weeks of paddling a pirogue down rapids and through shallow waters, I am now suffering, in [...]
Equipment List - updated
Below are three photographs showing all the gear and equipment I arrived in Africa with on my bike.
I have since got rid of the MSR stove and fuel bottle as I had problems with this and I forgot the bike helmet in Bissau (although I never actually strapped it on my head before then anyway).
Regarding [...]
Freetown to Faranah - Bangs, Bees and a Boat
Leaving Freetown
We had arrived in Freetown on the bustling streets of Kissy Road in the East End lined with stalls selling everything from second-hand shoes to fake Sony radios; and had navigated our way through the commercial district centred around the towering cotton tree, down along Congo Road and across the poor shanty district of [...]
