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Bamako to Ouagadougou (part 3) - Escape from Timbuktu
I had heard that leaving Timbuktu can be a time-consuming challenge. So when I was in Kourioume, still 10km prior to arriving, I was searching out ways to leave. The day was Wednesday. We could leave on Friday. By public pinasse. A pinasse is like a large, motorized pirogue. A pirogue is a small wooden [...]
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 [...]
In Search Of Beer – from the Sahara to Senegal
Since my last update in Nouakchott, where I signed off at the point of disembarkation of the iron-ore train with decision to take a bush-taxi to Atar in the depths of the Mauritanian desert rather than cycle the 120km piste, so much has happened I don’t quite know where to begin or what to write [...]
Photos from Mauritania and into Senegal
In search of a beer - Photos from Nouadhibou, Mauritania to St. Louis in Senegal…
The Great Mauritanian Train Ride
This is Africa
After spending the best part of a week travelling through the desolate desert, arriving in Nouadhibou was an assault on the senses…. it felt like we had finally arrived in Africa: battered cars weaving down the dusty roads, swerving now and then to avoid an overloaded, donkey-pulled, rickety, wooden cart; the drivers beeping [...]
A Whole Lotta Sand
Day 1 – Slow start
Not even half a day in reality. By the time we’d had breakfast, packed our panniers, checked emails and then carried the bikes down the narrow stairs of the hotel it was nearing the end of the morning. We had decided to cycle the twenty-or-so kilometres to El Marsa port where [...]
Photos from the Western Sahara
Made it into Nouadhibou in Mauritania, having crossed the Western Sahara in little more than six days. It was good, but time for a break…. There’s more desert where I’m headed!
Trans-Saharan Crossing Begins
Gateway to the Sahara
Guelmim, the ‘gateway to the Sahara’ as it is known, which hints at it’s former importance as a trading post on the caravan routes of old, had few distractions for a solo cyclist like myself. I spent little more than 24 hours in town and fairly evenly divided this time between sleeping, [...]
Photos from the Sahara, Morocco and Western Sahara
Photos from the last few days. Cycling from Guelmim, the gateway to the Sahara; to Laayoune, the first major town in the disputed Western Sahara which has been well and truly claimed by Morocco.
Having a second rest day before cycling again tomorrow. There’ll be no more breaks for the next 800km to Nouadhibou in Mauritania. And [...]
Photos from the Atlas and Desert, Morocco
Latest photos from my journey through Morocco…
