“Caution is the mother of the porcelain box”
– German saying
The Gambian border was the most casual of this trip so far. It was so casual, we almost drove past it. In fact, no-one would have stopped us. We quickly managed to get our passports stamped and also the Carnets de Passages (a holy document issued by the ADAC that enables temporary import of vehicles) – and then we were in Senegal again, just like that.
We rode towards Velingara and then stayed on the road close to the Gambian border.
After a day’s ride, we made it to Tambacounda. At our hostel we bumped into one of the three French couples we had met at the border from Mauritania to Senegal. The other two couples had headed home already: one due to lack of time, the other because of a mechanical failure.
From Tambacounda we headed towards Kedougou, our last stop in Senegal. The road led through the Parc National du Niokolo-Koba.
The landscape was beautiful, large parts of the ground we’re burnt by wildfires though. Or slash-and-burn? We couldn’t tell.
The temperatures were around 38 degrees, the wind didn’t provide any cooling anymore. We were happy to see some mountains in the distance, they felt like a promise of cooler days ahead.
The road was good. To our delight, there were dirt road deviations here and there so we could leave the tarmac for a little while.
In Kedougou, we found a nice hotel. We planned to stay there for a few nights to prepare for Guinea, read a little, maybe explore the town, maybe write a little blog post or two.
Our hotel in Kedougou.
The road was dusty that day, my friends.
Those plans changed the next morning when we saw the news. The night before, Senegal’s president Macky Sall had indefinitely postponed the presidential election that was scheduled to take place on February 25th. First protests started immediately, #freesenegal was trending in social networks.
Curfews and closed borders seemed like possible outcomes in case of an escalation of the conflict – so we decided not to chill, but to leave the country on the same day.
There were two things we still had to do in Kedougou: get our Carnets de Passages stamped at the local Douane office – and get some fuel. Neighboring country Guinea found itself in a fuel crisis since its central fuel depot blew up in December and it was tough to find good information on the situation, so we were looking to fill two canisters and a fuel bladder with an extra 21 liters of petrol.
By midday, we had the stamps and fuel and headed towards the border. Directly after Kedougou, the tarmac stopped – we were now on a red dirt road that was nice to ride. The landscape was pretty lonely, we hardly saw other people.
Thankfully, we didn’t see many animals either.
After approx. 35 kilometers we reached the very small border post. We quickly got stamped out of Senegal and left towards Guinea.
Before leaving Kedougou, our navigation app had told us we’d need more than 7 hours for the 200 kilometers to the city Labé in Guinea, but we didn’t really believe it. We were just happy to having left Senegal before a possible escalation of the constitutional crisis – and to keep riding on these red dirt roads.