Take On Africa

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This is the long awaited update of my last days in Ghana before I returned to England for a holiday and to get a new passport. Hopefully you won’t have to wait so long for my take on Ghana part 2. Road to Larabanga Yet more corrugated roads. It is impossible to describe the effect [...]

Entry into Ghana was overshadowed by leaving Burkina Faso, which I was a little sad to be leaving. But the immigration officials were friendly enough. While one slowly and meticulously filled out my immigration form (I could have completed it in a fraction of the time, but time is no matter here), I watched cartoons [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 while), but [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

And finally….the final part of the journey, from No Man’s Land to Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown. Noises in the Night Camped in No Man’s Land, I woke numerous times in the night to a rattling sound coming from underneath the tent, which seemed to come from the left of my head one moment and then [...]

I’m hoping to do a podcast interview with Brian in the coming months, but for now the internet connections in this part of West Africa are too slow. So, for now, I’ve answered a few of his questions here over at his Korean World blog. Below is a copy of the interview…. 1. What is [...]