There is a day in the not too distant future where a group of TDA cyclists will roll out of town at the start of a tour with the sounds of shoes clipping into pedals, chains moving along gears, and anticipation giving way to adventure. The cyclists will be a motley group of strangers in bright clothing that already have a lot in common – most notably their shared goal of completing a long distance bike odyssey.

Decisions, decisions

We made more difficult decisions on Monday – postponing the Trans-Oceania to 2021 and cancelling the final two sections of the  West Africa en Vélo. For the time being, in 2020 we are only offering the shortened West Africa en Vélo and our Patagonia Adventure. None of these decisions are easy, and with every postponement there is another reset required… the goalposts move again. But we have so much to be hopeful for and we know that cycle touring will return, it’s just a matter of when.

As the company founder said in his latest blog post “The media and the Internet are full of information that makes all sorts of statements, predictions, likely scenarios, conspiracies, accusations and truisms but no guarantees or clarity…What there is, is the realization that life goes on and we all need to find a way to move forward.”

A Hopeful (and Cautious) Restart

Will our first pedal strokes be in Patagonia, Canada, Africa or Italy? It’s still hard to say but we are busy working on ideas for pop-up tours in Canada or Central Europe. We have also been watching very closely the announcement that Italy will soon open up to international tourism and have discussed whether our Viva Italia trip could be an option this year. We are are also still hard at work researching possible new future tours in Morocco, Scandinavia and Namibia.

TDA is known as an organization that overcomes adversity and logistical challenges, and we are using our skills right now to assess, reassess and come up with sound and well thought out decisions – always with safety and the on-the-ground reality as our guideposts.

We are being perhaps more cautious than other bike tour operators as we know that some of the countries now opening up may need to backpedal (pun intended) if  their Covid-19 cases increase. This could mean a rapid return to social restrictions and closed borders.

We want to be very clear that it is our intention to run all the tours listed on our website but only if and when it is safe to do so. Travelling in the virus era before a vaccine will be something a little different and an option for those with a healthy amount of flexibility, patience and understanding. The normal TDA daily routines will undergo some necessary modifications.

What To Do Right Now

Our calendar continues to be updated so please keep checking it for the latest news on available tours. Registration is, of course, open for all the tours you find there and you can be assured that you can sign up without any financial risk during these challenging times. You should also feel confident that we will be implementing new safety and hygiene protocols for all our tours. Read more about this on our Covid-19: What You Need to Know page.

While there are no tours currently running, we encourage you to get involved in everything else we have going on. Participate in the TDA Community News initiative by submitting your photos or videos using the hashtag #tdacommunitynews.

Or join us on our virtual fundraiser ride, designed to assist some deserving organizations in East Africa. While we all worry about our own situations, sometimes it is good to be reminded of those people and organizations in much more dire situations than our own. Our partners, One Bike Tanzania and the Africa Impact Foundation, have both reported sudden and drastic funding shortfalls due to the pandemic. Supporting their work means helping some of the most vulnerable people in East Africa in a time of great need. All funds raised in our campaign will go directly to these two organizations.

We are ready to return to cycle touring when the moment is right. Will we be running cycling tours in 2020? We sure hope so and we are working towards that end. But if it doesn’t happen, and if we need to wait longer, that is exactly what we will do.

See you at the next coke stop.

It was about a year and a half ago that we announced the winner of our Best. Video Internship. Ever. campaign. Esen Küçüktütüncü, from Turkey, was selected as the best of the best and went on to film the participants of our inaugural 2018 West Africa en Vélo cycling expedition.

When we first revealed the video internship campaign, we stated that “The intern can expect lots of scenic beauty, emotional ups and downs, and daily surprises to keep him/her, the tour support staff, and the cyclists on their toes. With adversity comes great stories and great video content, right?” Was this the case? Join us for our Facebook Watch Party and decide for yourself!

Watch Party on Facebook

We are hosting a live screening on Facebook this Friday, April 24th at 12:00 EDT (17:00 in London, 18:00 in Amsterdam). Esen, along with other TDA staff, will be online and ready at their keyboards to answer any questions you might have.

We hope you will join us.

Click here for more details

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“Look into the unknown to find something new.”

We are very excited to share with you the concluding episode of our four part video series – Cycling West Africa. Following the participants of the inaugural West Africa en Vélo cycling expedition in 2018, videography intern Esen Küçüktütüncü put together this collection – filming throughout the expedition and then spending months putting the finishing touches on this exciting project.

In this last installment the riders plunge deeper into West Africa, cycling from Freetown, Sierra Leone through Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire before ending this epic cycling journey in Cape Coast, Ghana.

Sierra Leone has a history rich with unique cultural traditions, pounding with drum beats and incredible stories of humanity from the civil war. The riders then enter Guinea for a short section of familiar jungle tracks with waterfalls and wild elephants, before traveling into Cote d’Ivoire. The final rest day is in the quirky capital city of Yamoussoukro which features the world’s largest basilica and a Presidential palace surrounded by man-eating crocodiles!

Then it is back to the coast. The last of many unique border crossings will take riders down a beach track lined with coconut palms and crisscrossed with gigantic fishing nets before leading them into the final country: Ghana.

>>Registration is now open for the Coconut Coast and all four sections of the 2020 West Africa en Vélo

>>Watch the full series here

A big thanks to our young filmmaker Esen Küçüktütüncü who spent three months in West Africa filming for this project. Esen can be reached through her website: esenka.co

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“An incredible experience: challenging riding, fascinating cultures, tough conditions, brutal heat and humidity, and great company! I’m a fairly intrepid traveller, but I would never have tackled West Africa on my own, and the staff and fellow riders made it so enjoyable.” – Joseph Lee (Canada)

“I loved this tour very, very much. I was the oldest woman of the group as well as the weakest cyclist – I was aware of this before I left and it made me somewhat uneasy. But I never once got the feeling that I was a burden to the staff.” – Huberte Langteine (Canada)

“Phenomenal trip, the memories will last a lifetime. There were some tough moments but most days it felt like a real privilege to be there on my bike.” – Kevin McAleer (Canada)

“Experiencing the countryside and culture of West Africa was everything I’d hoped it would be, and the Tour gave us the freedom to do so in our own way, while providing excellent support and logistics. Most of all, being part of an extraordinary group of people facing extraordinary challenges was an experience that we have too rarely in life. Very glad I did this ride.” – Mateo Burtch (USA)

“Far out!” – Bob Whitehead (Hong Kong)

“It’s an amazing adventure, from the changing landscapes to the variety of cultures and wildly varied road conditions. The staff are great and camaraderie of riders keep everything interesting. The days are challenging enough that you always feel like you’ve earned the experiences.” – Dan Johnson (USA)

“Overall a great experience made possible by the hard work and dedication of a fantastic crew, and an amazing group of riders.” – Steve Winter (UK)

“Challenging and rewarding. Great support by all staff.” – Joost Kramer (Netherlands)

“Incredibly well organized by a hard working team, all I had to do was wake up and cycle.” – Craig George (Australia)

“An incredible experience that I am still trying to describe. I look at the photos and I am in awe of what we have experienced.” – David Jones (Canada)

“It was good contrast, you know, earning it through the sandy deserts and that.. now getting into this lush jungle”

In this third installment, the West Africa en Vélo cycling expedition turns inland and a drastic shift occurs – the cool temperatures in the Atlas Mountains are far behind and the arid desert coast fades as cyclists head into the jungle. The section name, Fouta Djalon, is the name of the highland region of central Guinea that the riders traverse after leaving Senegal. The roads are a bit rougher, infrastructure a bit more basic while the scenery becomes increasingly verdant and climate is humid and hot.

In this video riders cycle past ancient baobabs. They camp under waterfalls and bounce along rough tracks – ending with a ferry ride into Freetown, Sierra Leone.

>>Registration is now open for the Fouta Djalon and all four sections of the 2020 West Africa en Vélo

A big thanks to our young filmmaker Esen Küçüktütüncü who spent three months in West Africa filming for this project – from the backs of trucks and the seat of a bicycle – and several weeks editing this web series.

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In this second video from our web series, you will see the riders continue south towards the border of Mauritania – one of the world’s least visited countries. While the ocean may disappear for a few hundred kilometres, the arid desert is speckled with colourful Berber huts, protecting people and livestock from the strong winds.  You will witness fisherman from all over West Africa coming together to haul boats out of the water, weave intricate fishing nets, and clean fish of a hundred varieties. The video will show the riders cycling on the beach, weaving in and out of coconut palms, dodging fishing nets, and swimming in the Atlantic Ocean before they arrive in vibrant Dakar, the capital of Senegal.

Registration is now open for the Desert Coast and all four sections of the 2020 West Africa en Vélo.

A big thanks to our young filmmaker Esen Küçüktütüncü who spent three months in West Africa filming for this project – from the back of trucks and the seat of a bicycle – and the last several weeks editing this web series.

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For many, many years our alumni would eagerly ask us, “When will you announce a West African Cycling Expedition?” And for many, many years, while adding new tours in Europe, Asia, North & South America and Oceania, we always had in the back of our minds the dream of cycling West Africa. Finally, in February of 2017, we were able to fulfill both our dream and those of our loyal alumni, revealing the West Africa en Vélo. The response was overwhelming and the tour sold out quickly.

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Fast forward to December, 2018. Over 40 tired but happy cyclists roll into Cape Coast, Ghana bringing the first West Africa en Vélo to a successful conclusion. Here is what some of them said about their experience:

“Experiencing the countryside and culture of West Africa was everything I’d hoped it would be, and the Tour gave us the freedom to do so in our own way, while providing excellent support and logistics. Most of all, being part of an extraordinary group of people facing extraordinary challenges was an experience that we have too rarely in life. Very glad I did this ride.” – Mateo Burtch (USA)

“Overall a great experience made possible by the hard work and dedication of a fantastic crew, and an amazing group of riders.” – Steve Winter (UK)

“An incredible experience that I am still trying to describe. I look at the photos and I am in awe of what we have experienced.” – David Jones (Canada)

>>Read the New York Times Article on the 2018 West Africa en Vélo

What’s New For The 2020 West Africa en Vélo

1. 14 More Hotel Nights
2. Refined Route
3. Deeper Local Connections
4.  Earlier Finish Date/Home In Time For The Holidays

Now is your chance to take part in this fascinating, one-of-a-kind, cycling experience. Registration for the 2020 West Africa en Vélo is now open and prices and dates are now online.

Click below to get an idea of what to expect on this amazing ride.

When people think of cycling in Morocco they might immediately envision roads winding up and over the Atlas Mountains and down into valleys below. But starting in Casablanca and finishing in the disputed Western Sahara, this is no typical cycle tour of Morocco – in fact Morocco is just the start of this three month journey through West Africa.

In this first video from our web series, you will see that Morocco (and Western Sahara) are not all mountains – the Atlantic Coast and the Sahara are also a big part of the cycling experience. So too are the villages the cyclists pass through and the people they meet. Through the video you also get a glimpse into the lifestyle of the cyclists who undertake these expeditions – peanut butter sandwiches on the roadside, and coastal sunsets at the end of a long day. As Erwin says in the video “I think cycling is the best way for travelling.”

Registration is now open for the Atlas Mountains and all four sections of the 2020 West Africa en Vélo.

A big thanks to our young filmmaker Esen Küçüktütüncü who spent three months in West Africa filming for this project – from the back of trucks and the seat of a bicycle – and the last several weeks editing this web series.

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For the uninitiated, using terms like freedom, or describing cycling (and cycle touring) as an art form might induce some eye rolling. Oh please, you might say. Freedom? Really?

We have been so fortunate to have the opportunity to work with three talented young filmmakers who have captured some very thoughtful commentary on cycle touring, and what it is all about beyond pedal strokes and sips from a water bottle.

What you will see in the videos below and what makes cycle touring so addictive, so transformative for some, is the fact that it can really make you feel free. In our first video below Tom Perlmutter and Peter Cox talk about how cycle touring allows them to live in the moment and how it allows them the selfish satisfaction of not worrying about the past or the future.

Give these videos a moment and decide for yourself whether it’s all hyperbole or if there are grains of truth in what they are saying.

1. I’ve Lost All Concept of Time

“If you ask me what day of the week it was today I wouldn’t be able to tell you…. we live  very much in the moment of now.”

2. Entering a Meditative State

“I think it’s a meditative state that I sort of get into and the miles just sort of fly by… I’ve been trying to do 20 minutes of meditation everyday at home. I find it very hard to fit that into my schedule and here I can do it all day long on the bike and I can still want more of it.”

3. I’m Happy Everyday

“I’m not doing dangerous things, but I always like to do adventures. To take in the feeling of how the country is. If you go by car… you don’t have this close feeling of how it is.”

4. Where the Cycling Takes Me

“Going in this really remote place where I would’ve never been otherwise. So far away from what we have at home. It’s another world.”

5. What I think about while cycling

“The riding a bike is an art in itself. Cause your on a bike you got plenty of time to yourself and it’s free time to think about what you like.”

6. That’s Freedom

“You can’t see it in a car, you can’t see it in a place… the pace of the cycling is the perfect way to see the transition from north to south. You get on your bike and everything goes away.”

After the Cycle Tour Ends

It is sustainable? Can you live like this after a cycle tour ends? After the adventure recedes and life and responsibilities return? Probably not. But did the experience have value? Did you grow as a person? Will it make you a better person? That’s up to each individual I guess. (cue the eye rolling now)

It has been three days since the inaugural 6,500km bicycle ride from Casablanca, Morocco to Elmina Castle in Cape Coast, Ghana ended, and ‘di body fine’. In case you are wondering what I am talking about one of the seven countries through which we cycled is Sierra Leone and the most popular greeting in Sierra Leone is ‘aw di body’ or how’s the body. And every time I shouted it as I cycled through one village after another it never failed to get a smile and a warm response.

‘Di body’ is good but I am not so sure about the rest of me. ‘Di body’ has been working hard over the last two and a half months, producing immense amounts of endorphins, serotonin and dopamine, which as science tells us makes us feel good. At the same time the daily long distance cycling combined with the heat and humidity does wear us down so getting three days of rest definitely makes ‘di body good man’.

Back to the rest of me; over the years of running long distance bicycle tours we at the office have heard several times from participants that we do an excellent job of preparing individuals for the tour but apparently we do a poor job of preparing them for ‘after the tour’.

Those of you who have done our long cycling tours know what I am talking about. After cycling two, three, four or even five months living in a state similar to hunters/gatherers and thus reconnecting with our primordial brains – which in the old days these primordial brains simply worried about food, water, security and one’s immediate clan  – one reenters the modern world of Brexit, Putinisim, Trumpism, ISIS extremism, markets crashes, trade wars, advertising bombardment for a million useless products that one does not need. It is no wonder that once we get off the plane we start feeling perplexed, sad, abandoned and a myriad of other emotions.

At the same time, now that we are no longer putting in 100km or more of cycling per day, the brain has to deal with sudden drop of natural endorphins, dopamine and serotonin it got so used to. It is no wonder that our dear ones look at us with confusion and are wondering what happened to us. Worse we ourselves are wondering what is happening to us. We spent three months with all our senses being stimulated – whether we wanted it or not – by the new surrounding we faced each day as we moved from one place to another, consciously or unconsciously taking it all in. Now we are back to the same old grind; immoral politicians, lying advertisers, never ending social media and misinformation.

I do not have an answer; ‘di body is good’ but the brain needs time to readjust. The brain spent a lot of time absorbing new places, new cultures, new friends, new surroundings and it now needs time to process it. It will take time but in the long run it will do what is necessary for us to reenter our normal lives whatever that may be. In the meantime whenever you feel confused or in danger of imminent vertigo, look around you and simply ask the people near to you ‘aw di body’. They will look puzzled, wonder what you said, and ask you to repeat it. You can then smile, that Zen-like smile and repeat ‘aw di body’ and you will right away feel much better.

The first-ever West Africa en Vélo will arrive to Cape Coast tomorrow with many people jetting home in time for holiday festivities with family. Our tour story teller Sophie shares a final look back on their adventure.

Not all souvenirs are ones we buy in local currencies. Some are earned, through blood, sweat, or tears. On TDA West Africa, the best souvenirs we will bring home cannot be purchased in a market or at a roadside stall. They come from long days on the road, earned between moments of perfect clarity and intense struggle – keepsakes that will remind us of a time when adventure was a way of life.

One of my favorite souvenirs comes from opening your bag of tent stakes. Every night, you dig your tent stakes deep into the dirt, clay, or gravel – whatever form the earth may take. And every morning, you pull out each stake, hurrying to pack before coffee is served. After weeks on the road, tipping the bag of tent stakes upside down will result in week’s worth of dirt. Customs might not love the dead bugs that have smuggled themselves home with you, but it is a nice reminder of how far you’ve come. Our campsites took us high into the Atlas Mountains at the foot of the Tinmel Mosque, built in the 13^th c. We fell asleep to the rushing sound of water at the foot of a waterfall and along countless rivers in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Ivory Coast. Pitching our tents in the middle of soccer fields or on school grounds often meant eating dinner while enjoying the local soccer match. No matter where it was, it was home for the night.

We have collected scars from bundu bashing (bush whacking) down jungle tracks in Guinea, tumbling over the handlebars onto a gravel shoulder, and encountering vicious vines on our way to a rendezvous with the shovel. These are the physical evidence that these countries have touched us. Not only in the interactions we have everyday with those we bike past, but the land that our tires roll over or the rocks that cushion our fall as we spill gracefully from our bikes. These physical markings are constant reminders of the time we spent in turmoil, rolling over mountains and dirt roads, fighting towards the next moment of adventure.

And lastly, the tan lines that will last only for a few months. These are the golden, intense reminders of the hours spent in the saddle, pedaling thousands of kilometers through dust, dirt, and sand with the sun shining down. As the environment changed, the UV rays did not. Kilometers spent battling headwinds in Western Sahara or soft sand in Senegal was still time spent pedaling under the same sun. Though wearing anything but a cycling kit may entice some odd looks or pointed remarks, we know that these marks don’t come from a relaxing day at the beach.

Though most riders picked up gifts along the way, there are souvenirs that you can’t choose to buy. You don’t intend for them to hang on the wall, showcasing to your friends where you’ve been. They belong to you, and you alone. They are a part of your story and a part of what goes home with you.

After two months of cycling we have arrived in Songon, a few kilometers outside Côte d’Ivoire’s metropolis, Abidjan. We are now in the final stretch of our inaugural West Africa cycling expedition and, by the time you read this, we will have passed through a place called Axim; 64 km west of the city of Takoradi in Western Ghana.

Until a few months ago I had no idea there was a place called Axim. Now I am intending to stop there for a few minutes and ponder a man called Anton Wilhelm Amo, without a doubt one of the few persons I would wish to meet in my afterlife and the most famous person that comes from this town. At this point you may scratch your head and ask who is this Anton Wilhelm Amo.

In a recently published book called The Lies That Bind, the author Kwame Anthony Apiah tells a story of a five-year-old boy who was kidnapped from Old Axim in 1707, and given as a ‘gift’ to Anton Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick –Wolfenbuttel. The boy, Anton Wilhelm Amo, then went on to become a philosopher and a lecturer at Halle and Jena universities in Germany. He mastered several languages including French, German, English, Latin, Greek, Dutch and possibly even Hebrew. He also studied medicine and astronomy and, after all this learning, he decided in his middle age that renaissance Europe is an interesting or perhaps not so interesting place and he went back home to Axim where he became known as a ‘Great Sage’.

Anton Wilhelm Amo Statue (public domain photo)

When cycling off the beaten path in Africa, we encounter literally thousands of children who can work themselves into a frenzy over the apparition of a white cyclist passing through their villages. My typical response is to wave at these children and wonder what kind of talents they would have – if they were given the opportunity to discover and use them.

I have no doubt that the Great Sage and soothsayer would have been worthy of listening to and providing me with enlightened advice. Perhaps by standing in Axim or in Shama (another 80 km further on our journey where he is buried), I will be able to gain some insights and make sense of the world as it is today.

In some curious way it is fitting that I want to stand still and hopefully gain some wisdom at the places where Anton Wilhelm Amo came from and passed away. I actually began this tour in Morocco by trying to find the burial place of another great sage that the western world knows next to nothing about. According to Wikipedia Ibn Tufail was “an Arab polymath, a writer, novelist, philosopher, theologian, physician, an astronomer…who is most famous for writing the first philosophical novel called Hayy ibn Yaqdhan“. I came across Ibn Tufail on a wonderful CBC Ideas radio program, which discussed his leading role in creating the Enlightenment. (You might recall I have written on the African Enlightenment before.)

pictured above, Ibn Tufail (public domain photo)

According to CBC and Wikipedia this work became “one of the most important books that heralded the Scientific Revolution“ and European Enlightenment, and the thoughts expressed in the novel can be found “in different variations and to different degrees in the books of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Immanuel Kant.”

Wikipedia goes on; “The novel also inspired the concept of ‘tabula rasa’ developed in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) by John Locke, who was a student of Pococke.[13] His Essay went on to become one of the principal sources of empiricism in modern Western philosophy, and influenced many enlightenment philosophers, such as David Hume and George Berkeley. Hayy’s ideas on materialism in the novel also have some similarities to Karl Marx’s historical materialism”.

Cycling from Casablanca to Cape Coast has been a great journey, an opportunity for learning, a physical and mental challenge, a stimulating and often exhilarating experience of wonderful human interactions and of the little joys of day-to-day living and sight seeing. It is also a route that exposes one to all the problems of modern life on the planet, from poverty to pollution, from mismanagement to poor governance, from corruption to greed, from overpopulation to climate change, of exploitation and survival. For myself at least, it has proven to be a route where one is faced with many philosophical questions that men such as Ibn Tufail and Anton Amo could point the way towards understanding. In short a journey where one will often be out of his/her comfort zone and will confront the world as it is and his/her own reactions thereto for better or worse.

“In order to understand West Africa you need to feel it.” – Man in a bar to Robert Gex ,West Africa en Velo rider

Guinea was a surprise, perhaps because we all had no idea what to expect or maybe because Guinea is just such a unique place on our route. A country of 13 million people, it is considered one of the poorest countries in the world and sees few visitors. It is because of this and the route, which we took, that our Zimbabwean staff member Noah would often mutter, “we are in deep Africa now”.

Deep, indeed. Luscious green, a country of great natural beauty and many rivers. It is rich in minerals, culture and history. Deep also are its problems from having to deal with refuges from the troubled past of neighbouring countries, from a failed experiment with socialism, from two years of military rule and from its ethnic divisions. Yet this country now has an elected civilian government and one can feel just from seeing the roads being build that efforts are being made to improve the lot of its people.

If there is one thing we end up doing a lot on a trip through West Africa on a bike is ‘feel’ West Africa. Robert, an American cyclist living in Thailand, stopped for a drink in a local bar in Sierra Leone while waiting for a ferry that would bring him to Freetown. When a man asked him what he was doing here, Robert responded that he was part of a group are cycling from Morocco to Ghana. The man responded that in order to understand West Africa, you need to feel it and that there is no better way of doing this than by bicycle.

One night in Guinea, just before we were to cross the border into Sierra Leone we were staying in a village typical of many that we had seen on the trip. It was situated close to a small river where I went to wash myself after cycling in the hot and humid conditions. Refreshed and clean, I went back to our campsite which was located on the village soccer field.  Our staff was busy preparing dinner and a short distance from them was a group of local elders, sitting and watching the ‘goings ons’ of a group of foreigners – cooking, setting up camp, washing themselves and their clothes. In front of them there was table filled with local produce – bananas, coconuts, oranges, cucumbers – a welcoming offering to the guests in the village. The coconuts were particularly popular.

After I set up my tent I walked over to the elders with our local fixer and sat down to chat. We exchanged pleasantries, than chatted about their lives, how they make their living, what we are doing here and so on until our scheduled daily rider’s meeting. I asked them if one of them would like to say something to our riders. They picked a young man, who spoke to us about their lives in the village and explained their problem with fresh clean water and their need for a village well.

After the meeting, Michael Howard, one of the riders and a successful businessman came over and started talking to the elders. By the end of the evening, Michael had committed himself to funding a well project for the village and another well project for the village of our local fixer. Michael later explained that he felt touched by the needs of the villagers but was also motivated by the need for actions and for others who, like him, could afford to make contribution, to be an example and to contribute to the lives of those whose current circumstances were not as favourable.

Michael’s words reverberated in my mind because one of the goals for setting up the original Tour d’Afrique was to provide an alternative way for people to visit Africa, something other than the usual safari or holiday on the beach. So on behalf of the villagers, I want to thank Michael and the many others over the years who went beyond the cycling and made valuable contributions, either through the TDA Foundation or through projects of their own. Examples include Tim Padmore and Ronda Green who set up ceramic workshop on Zanzibar and Jason Becker who supported the college education of a young man he had met cycling through Kenya. There are many, many others – too many to name – but in the end, it is people like them, like you, who we at TDA take a particular delight in introducing to Africa.

Wherever you were to meet Hanne, you would immediately notice her wide smile and entrenched laugh lines. She speaks eloquently, even when exhausted, with a thick Norwegian accent. In any conversation about her personal life, she will quickly bring up her children and grandchildren, proud to be their role model.

So, what is she doing here, cycling the backroads of West Africa? Hanne says that she is in her third life – and we’re not talking reincarnation. Hanne sees her life as being lived in three different parts. The first was her childhood, raised in a fishing village in Norway. The second, her family life – becoming a mother and raising two sons and a daughter. The third, the one she lives today, is one she gets to live for herself. She can choose whatever she wants. This means doing psychology work all over the world, running an education project in Tanzania that was founded by her late father, and doing the Tour d’Afrique in 2017. All of these choices led her to TDA West Africa.

There were a few things that made Hanne want to join this tour. The most prominent was her desire to return to Sierra Leone after working with MSF there in 2007/2008. After the civil war, there were many victims who survived the war with unseen wounds. She worked with a local team for 8 months, training them in counselling and therapy. After 10 years, she looked forward to the prospect of coming back. Hanne was also intrigued to see the similarities and differences of the surrounding countries. From her own time in West Africa, she had heard about how much the countries and the people have in common, and how they depend on each other for trade, employment, and shared knowledge.

Hanne is drawn to the simple life – One that she experienced on her self-supported kayak trip around the Island of Senja in Norway, the 2017 Tour d’Afrique, and her solo bike tour of Tanzania, post-TDA. She enjoys expeditions that push her to her limits, helping her discover what those are. More than that though, she enjoys a life where time just goes beside you, instead of having to chase after it. As we sat under the shade of a tree in a bush camp in Sierra Leone, she shared a proverb of the Norwegian Sami people that gave me chills: “Time is not going, it is coming.” This is how Hanne wants to live this third life of hers, and TDA is a place where she can realize that lifestyle.

If you want to check out Hanne’s project in Tanzania, you can find the website here and their Facebook page here.

It all started rather innocently. I was having breakfast listening vaguely to a conversation behind me about projects and donations when Mateo, our cartoonist extraordinaire, showed me a cartoon of a mosquito asking for a blood donation. “Just one little drop can save a life”. It made me laugh.

I turned to the gentleman behind me and said that he might also appreciate the cartoon. He turned out to be Peter Penfold, the former British High Commissioner to Sierra Leone during its fairly recent tragic past.  As a person who played a key role in restoring democracy in the country, the High Commissioner had written a book about the time – Atrocities, Diamonds and Diplomacy.

I was so fascinated by his stories that I asked if he would be open to giving a talk the same evening to our cycling group in order to give them a context to the country, the people and the culture they were experiencing from the seat of the bicycle. The Commissioner, to my delight, agreed.

Inspired by the talk, I decided to wander the streets, the places he mentioned, to make his words come alive with images. Looking at the Google map of the city, I noticed a nearby destination, the Peace Museum, that I thought would be a good place to start. I set off in a straight line towards my target, crossing one shantytown after another. Here, as in the other ‘Lonely Places’ that I have written about, places where foreigners tend not wander, no one bothered me, in fact quite the opposite. If I was paid any attention at all, it was a smile or a friendly greeting. The places themselves seemed liked scenes from a Hollywood blockbuster disaster movie.  Unfortunately, in reality, the civil war and the Ebola epidemic were calamities that had helped create the present reality and there were no gofers around to provide a large latte to the technical crew behind the scenes.

The Peace Museum was not obviously marked in any way so I walked into the UN compound to ask where it was. Several more ‘asks’ led me to a small building which, upon entering, I found empty. One room seemed to have previously contained abandoned archives, another some covered exhibition tables, yet another some exposed displays. As I wandered around a man approached me, pointed to a chair and explained that this was the former rebel leader’s favourite seat. Next he pointed to some amulets the rebels wore that they believed protected them from bullets. It was not long however before another man saw me, started yelling that the museum is going through renovations and shuffled me out of the building.

Once outside I noticed a modern building a couple of hundreds meters from me that turned out to be the ‘Special Court for Sierra Leone’. This court, set up to try war criminals, was mentioned by the Commissioner in his book as something that he thought was a mistake and ended up costing in the vicinity of a quarter billion dollars. The court, before it shut down, convicted nine men, so about $26 million dollars per prisoner: ‘not something that a poor country should be spending money on, especially as the criminals were not high ranking individuals’. Upon closer examination I found out that the building was handed over to the government in 2013 and now sits empty, beginning to fall apart. Seems like the High Commissioner may have been right. From the High Court, I headed to the place where Freetown was established, the famous cotton tree where returning former slaves sat down and contemplated their new freedom.

If the side streets did not look as carefree (and car free) in Freetown Christiania, Copenhagen (where I happened to be walking in July after the end of the inaugural Pub Ride), the Freetown streets leading to the core of the city were a raucous mix of traffic, blaring horns, and the miscellaneous noise of people working and trading – doing what they do every day. We had a pleasure of riding this way on the way from the port to the other side of town upon our arrival in Freetown and for me, having cycled in India on our Hippie Trail, the only thing that was missing were the sacred cows. The resulting chaos is not without its charms and though scary at first, in many ways it is safer than cycling the main streets of Toronto where cars are able to speed at over 60km an hour and blasting away at the few daring cyclists.

I found the cotton tree, proudly standing and recording everything that it sees. One day human beings will likely invent an app that will be able to hook up to the tree and tell one very long human saga, of hope, wars, disasters, reconciliations, rebuilding and more hope. I say more hope because if you look at enormity of the rebuilding challenge of Sierra Leone, without hope there is no future. And the people of Sierra Leone believe in the future.

Arriving in Sierra Leone just two days ago, we met Abdulai, our local guide, in the ferry terminal on our route to Freetown. Amongst the hectic nature of the terminal, he kept his calm and helped riders navigate the crowded beach to get onto the boats into Freetown. A situation that would stress out most people was made easier by having someone who could help us navigate the back alleys, translate the many people screaming, and suggest which local sweet to choose.

As many may know, Sierra Leone has faced many hardships in the last few decades. Between a civil war that tore apart the country and the Ebola outbreak that reminded everyone again how fragile life can be, the country lovingly nicknamed ‘Salone’ by locals is making huge leaps forward. One thing they are focusing on is allowing tourism to thrive again. Amongst the beautiful beaches and rolling hills, there are people and places that are alive with drum beats and colourful cloths. Abdulai is a part of that movement here in Salone. He experienced both atrocities first hand, but still finds immense beauty in his country – one that he would trade for no other. Anyone can read about a country in Lonely Planet or on Wikipedia and learn the facts, but staying up after dinner over a cup of tea with someone who is willing to answer questions and share their stories is an opportunity to learn in a way you never could from the seat of your couch.

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In each country we ride through we hire local guides to help us navigate not only unseen road blocks and police checkpoints, but important cultural norms and language barriers. As I suppose those who work in tourism often are, they are colourful people with many stories to tell. On West Africa en Vélo alone we have already had six local support guides. They are a vital part of the staff team and provide a wonderfully unique and personal window into their home countries.

Though Radouan, our Moroccan guide didn’t speak English, only French and Arabic, his smile made us all feel welcome. The language barrier never stopped him from educating us on what we saw or heard, even if some of it was lost in translation. Through Southern Morocco, Hamdi shared his Berber heritage through glasses of sweet tea, boiled straight over hot coals. Mohammed’s loud personality clashed against the sepia deserts of Mauritania. Colourful enough to keep us all entertained on desert nights with wild stories of camel caravans and more of that never-ending tea.

Phillipe, our Senegalese guide, became a crowd favourite when he arranged for cold beer to be brought to our first camp in Senegal. It arrived to our bush camp on the back of a motorbike from 30 kilometres away and was received with applause.

Hassan, who between headstands would find us local Guinea dishes along our cycling route. As unique as the country’s they represent, they leave individual marks on the tour. Not only are we lucky enough to have memories of road conditions or chance meetings on the side of the road across 7 different countries on this trip, but we are given the chance to get to know someone who will answer the questions you might be afraid to ask, nudge us when we cross cultural norms, and offer sound advice on how to say hello or where best to spend a rest day.

After seven days and almost 1000 km of cycling from Dakar we have arrived in Labé, the main city and administrative capital of the Fouta Djalon region of Guinea, where we are having a rest day. Even though Labé is a city at a crossroads for commercial traffic and trading between Senegal, Mali, Sierra Leone and Liberia and onwards to Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana, I personally have never heard of it. However, I had also never heard of the beautiful high plateau region of Fouta Djalon, parts of it we had the opportunity to cycle through over the last couple of days.

There is a reason that even well travelled people like myself have never heard of this place and that is that, similar to the rest day in Boujdour in Morocco over a month ago, Labé is a ‘lonely place’. Don’t get me wrong, people are not lonely, it is just that tourists and travellers are not interested in places where hundreds of thousands of people struggle day after day, trying to put food on their tables. The central market which I strolled through must have had, and I am not exaggerating, thousands of stalls and small shops, each selling something.

In a way, it is a pity that tourists do not come here because if they did they would discover what is it like to live in a place that doesn’t even have a dry food store the size of small 7-11 in New York City, never mind a super market. They would discover what is it to live in a place that not only has no Starbucks but in fact no Internet cafe of any kind. If they are running a cycling tour, they would discover what an effort it takes to shop for 50 hungry people, going from stall to stall to stall to buy supplies for a few days.

Of course, being a ‘lonely city’ doesn’t mean that nothing happens here. In fact, to our surprise, this morning when we were on our way to the city centre we found the road was being cleared for a Tour de Guinea stage that was about to end in Labé. The organizers were so excited that three of our own cyclists found themselves being led by a car with flashing lights. Now that is what I call VIP treatment. It was a great pleasure to observe the racers zooming by, in particular when bunch of goats and one cow decided that they too would like to take a closer look. The racers did not know whether they should worry about the pot holes in the road or the animals in their way.

There was also the university students’ strike, though I am not sure what their grievances were. While this all was going on our staff, who needed to buy food for the next few days and get the vehicles fixed after some rough terrain had no choice but sit, stuck in the cars waiting for the end of all the excitement in the city.

If you do not own a car in Labé, you will need to use motorcycle taxis, of which there are thousands roaming the city. The owner/driver usually wears an orange west and you simply tell them your destination, climb on the back of the motorcycle and off you go. That is unless you are Lezinda, our incomparable lunch maker, driver and barbecue chef extraordinaire. On the way back from our last night’s dinner she walked over to a motorcycle taxi driver, negotiated a rate to take her to our hotel, then asked the driver to move to passenger seat so she could drive while the rest of us looked on with a mix of laughter, disbelief and apprehension. And so it goes – another day on the West Africa en Vélo.

Riding a bicycle through West Africa isn’t all rainbows and butterflies, especially without rearview mirrors, tinted windows or air conditioning. As we leave the desert and begin to make our way into the jungle, everything is changing. Crossing from Mauritania into Senegal revealed not just a cultural border, but an environmental one. The humidity is as thick as the sand under our tires. The vast horizon lines of the Sahara to our East and the Atlantic to our West are increasingly becoming speckled with baobabs, rice fields and people in colourful attire moving at a rapid pace through a village market. These changes make cycling more difficult, but they are also the reasons we are here.

Imagine cycling early one morning through the Senegalese foothills – rolling hills with Acacia trees lining the shoulder, their thorns just aching to get stuck in your tire. A quiet morning, you are not surprised to see a young boy herding goats towards you down the middle of the road. Attempting to repeat the local greeting in Wolof, you are cut off by the surprise of a machete waving through the air as you roll past him. There are many ways that you could respond – shock, fear, anger. Yet in this moment it is important to realize that you are currently cycling through a culture where a work commute can mean a 9-year-old boy herding cattle down the road with a machete in one hand and a stick in the other. With no free hands, he waves the shorter of the two utensils in greeting. The same surprise might come from a grown man running at you with a spear attached to the end of a long stick. Despite his age, he shares the same enthusiasm as the boy for a lycra wearing circus-act riding through his home town. His own safety is less of a concern than getting to fist bump every rider coming through town.

These moments can be terrifying, but they also define the experience you have in your travels, along with the experience that the locals have with you. As a tourist traveling in a privately hired car, you are physically caging yourself off from the outside world. You become a spectator looking out of a window, enjoying the view but closing yourself off from the landscape and people you have come all this way to see.

On a bicycle, the experience is inherently different. You have less control over the narrative of your travel, unable to roll the windows up to ignore a vendor or curious child. If you came to a place to experience it, why not do so fully? Just as you want to ooh and aah at what you are seeing, taking pictures along the way, the people you are passing are doing the same. They might giggle at your clothes or peel with laughter at your attempts to speak their language, but at least you are giving them a chance to interact with you, not armoured in a way that restricts nearly all interaction. Yes, you may have your arms or legs touched as you pass by or even have rock thrown at you from a child. However much more often you will be applauded by crowds, offered shade in a vendor’s hut, or receive a friendly push up a seemingly endless hill. Making ourselves vulnerable to people, climate, and culture can seem like a big step out of a tourist car, but its rewards are greater than its risk.

Too often tourism is a one-sided affair. A bicycle is a fantastic mechanism to shift the power dynamic between the tourist and the local. Literally removing yourself from a spectator’s box makes you more approachable and evens the playing field in which interactions take place. The people you meet, the places you see are not just closer than your mirror suggests, they are a part of your everyday experience. On TDA, we will always choose the bicycle.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that our little company announced a new tour, Viva Italia, inspired by the idea that ‘all roads lead to Rome’. Strangely enough, I am now sitting in a coffee shop in Dakar where, according to Lonely Planet, ‘all roads in Senegal truly lead to Dakar’.

150 years ago Dakar had 300 residents. Now it is home to over 3 million people. It is a place that in my mind – and I assume many others of my generation – is associated with the, now defunct, Paris-Dakar off-road car rally.

Now that I have spent three days cycling, walking and traversing this big, cosmopolitan city, I ask myself, how is it that a city of this size, stature and history was for years in my mind simply an exotic place. A place where a crazy car rally, that tested man’s ability to built fast, durable, monstrous cars and motorcycles, traversed the Sahara desert, destroying sand dunes and spitting vast amounts carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Ironically this rally, simply called ‘Dakar’, continues to run in South America.

Dakar is situated on a small peninsula on the westernmost edge of this huge and marvelous continent. No matter where you are standing, sleeping, walking or driving, you are at most 3 km from the coast where you can enjoy all the enjoyment that the ocean provides, from wonderful cooling winds, to beaches, to football games on the sand, to surfing or simply dining or sipping your drinks and watching the world go by.

It is also a city where commerce of every sort and kind is encountered no matter where you are. Hawkers, hustlers, street vendors and assorted other characters can spring up at any moment particularly in areas where there are tourists. Interestingly, two days ago I took a 15 km walk across the middle of the peninsula from north to south and I was not accosted even once. For that matter, on my walk I did not encounter any expats or tourists.

Some of my friends and readers will now probably think that I am being reckless and endangering my life by walking alone in an unknown city, full of who knows what kind of shady characters. Fortunately for me, when we arrived in our hotel on the first day my hotel room was not ready. It gave me time to sit down in the lobby read some of the local press. One of the newspapers had a big screaming headline; ‘50 murders in Senegal in 2018!’ This headline was of interest to me because I live in Toronto with a population of around 3 million people. The number of homicides in my hometown so far in 2018 is around 90. So Senegal, with a population of over 16 million has less murders than Toronto. Quite a surprise.

The truth is that I, for one, should not have been surprised. Ever since I started this company I have been asked over and over, again and again, is it safe to cross Africa on a bike? Most of the time I have answered the question simply by saying that the most dangerous part of cycling in Africa is the same all over the world and that is dangerous drivers. I have written blogs such as ‘I Have More Fear of Cycling in Toronto Then Anywhere Else in the World‘ and I have talked about this to the media. Yet even I was surprised that the rate of homicides and dangerous crime in a poor country such as Senegal is significantly lower than in a place I call home.

What is one to make of this? Yesterday, I took a boat to Ile de Goree, a place where thousands of Africans were held awaiting their transportation and enslavement – that is if they survived their horrific conditions and passage to the new world. When one walks on the cobblestones among the old buildings in this now very tranquil place one wonders how any mind can perceive that it is ok to enslave another human being, not to mention a child. Even the slave traders all knew that enslaving human beings for profit was not acceptable to any religion.

What I realize from my days here in Dakar is that what we all need to do, and do continuously, is to expose ourselves to a different world than the one we already know so that we can see the world differently, so that what we see forces us to see the world from another perspective. Dakar from now on you are no longer the place where the Paris-Dakar rally ended. From now on, in my mind, you are a lively place with millions of people going on with their daily struggle and on Sundays, having fun exercising on one of its many beaches.

“The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind” – Bob Dylan

Dylan, as often was the case, got it right. While cycling the west coast of Africa from Morocco to Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, the answer is indeed ‘in the wind’. If anything, besides the fact that one is cycling in the spectacular grand Sahara, it is the wind that will make the day either pure joy or pure hell. Well, I may be exaggerating a bit, but ask any of the participants on the West Africa en Vélo, how one day they can easily reach the point of breaking down and start crying, only to feel an immense exhilaration 24 hours later.

Of course, this could also be because the desert has a way of heightening one’s own senses, allowing them to wander in every which direction. In my opinion, it is no coincidence that all the monotheistic religions have origins in the desert and those deserts have played such a key role in their evolution. The silence of the desert can bring out the best and the worst in us.

Perhaps it is the sand that does that. The sand can just lie there and look romantic and be a perfect backdrop for another majestic sunrise or sunset. One can luxuriously walk barefoot through it, feeling the sand sensually caressing one’s soles. However, when it joins forces with the wind, the sand will torture you, penetrating every pore of your skin. If that were not enough,  combined with the velocity of an oncoming truck, it will sandblast you with such force that you will feel like your skin is peeling off.

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So, are these elements the reason the desert attracts some of us while others find it repellent? Or is it because, in the desert, one can look at the night sky and wonder about Little Princes on other planets? Perhaps it is simply because in the desert we can test whether we are the rare individuals, who like the bushman of the Kalahari, have the ability to listen to the stars singing.

When Laurens van der Post one night
In the Kalihari Desert told the Bushmen
He couldn’t hear the stars
Singing, they didn’t believe him.
They looked at him,
Half-smiling. They examined his face
To see whether he was joking
Or deceiving them. Then two of those small men
Who plant nothing, who have almost
Nothing to hunt, who live
On almost nothing, and with no one
But themselves, led him away
From the crackling thorn-scrub fire
And stood with him under the night sky
And listened. One of them whispered,
Do you not hear them now?
And van der Post listened, not wanting
To disbelieve, but had to answer,
No. They walked him slowly
Like a sick man to the small dim
Circle of firelight and told him
They were terribly sorry,
And he felt even sorrier
For himself and blamed his ancestors
For their strange loss of hearing,
Which was his loss now…

David Wagoner wrote this poem about the desert and the man who authored such books as the ‘Lost world of the Kalahari’. Like van der Post, I, no matter how hard I try, know that I can not hear the stars singing. On the other hand, I do have 13 reasons why you should pick a desert and cycle across it.

In the last 15 years I have biked through the Sahara a couple of times, the Atacama desert, the Stuart Highway’s deserts, the Turkmenistan desert, the Gobi desert and many others. As long as I can keep cycling, I will look for more deserts to pedal across, always listening for those elusive singing stars.

No, I don’t mean with our loved ones back home. I am talking about the most important relationship on any TDA tour – the one between you and your bike. Much like choosing a partner, choosing to travel by bicycle is a choice that is meant to enhance your life. As you may know, being in a long-distance relationship is never an easy thing. Yet, when done right, it can be one of the most rewarding experiences. West Africa en Vélo is no cake walk. Rather, it is the opportunity to experience the world around us uninhibited and on our own terms. Riders have already traversed 1,761 kilometres. They have rolled high up into the Atlas Mountains, climbing up to 2100m. They have biked past goats, climbing tree branches in search of that sweet Argan Fruit.

The first step to a successful relationship begins with choosing the right partner. On a TDA expedition, there is no more important companion than your bicycle. On West Africa en Vélo, some stayed with their loyal travel partners, while others decided to try something new. Erwin, from Germany, has had his trusted steed for 28 years. He and his bike have been on 5 TDA tours, exploring thousands of kilometers. Other riders shopped exclusively for a bike that could take them from Casablanca to Ghana. Joseph, a rider from Canada, has done 4 TDA tours. He has used a different bike for each one. His allegiance to these bicycles has not faltered, but he certainly isn’t after “the one.” Each tour had different needs that different bikes fulfilled. His 7 bikes at home in Toronto prove that he is nothing but dedicated to travel by bicycle.

Like any healthy relationship, our bicycles help us become a better version of ourselves. Choosing to travel by bicycle is a dedication, not only to a hunk of metal, but to a way of travel and a way of life. It gives us the opportunity to stop every few kilometers and meet a local fisherman or sip a sweet tea with a shop owner. Riding the bicycle gives you the opportunity to not only enjoy the sights along the way, but to engross yourself in them. Being on a bicycle means you are exposed to the elements, the smells, the sights (for better or for worse). While it may mean getting soaked to the bone in a thunderstorm or getting to know the locally loved potholes, you are rewarded with the opportunity to see and go where few other tourists ever have. While it can seem scary, giving yourself over to so many unknown variables, there is no doubt in a TDA rider’s mind that there is no other option. And to state the most obvious benefit, riding over 100 kilometres a day will get you into some of the best shape of your life. These are all things that travel by train, plane, or car could never give you.

So, what happens when the relationship starts to deteriorate? Your chain begins to whine. Your spokes start to snap, one by one. Your frame cracks. Your rim crumbles. These are realities on the West Africa en Vélo and they require each rider to lovingly take care of their companion. Chains are delicately scrubbed and oiled. Owners watch carefully as the bike mechanic repairs the shimmering spokes. They trudge through small mountain villages until a local welder can be found to repair the body of their loved one. They will even book flights to far away continents just to get their hands on a single piece to return their partner to their whole form again. The big and little ways that TDA riders are dedicated to their bicycles is a true act of love.

Despite the difficulty of a long-distance relationship, it isn’t hard to argue that bonds built over thousands of kilometres are some of the best. Be it with the bicycle you choose, or the peloton partners you come to know, you can gain so much more than elevation on your Garmin.

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. What makes the desert beautiful,’ said the little prince, ‘is that somewhere it hides a well… And that was true. I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams.”  – Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

The Marrakesh Express better known to us as West Africa on Vélo from Casablanca, Morocco to Accra, Ghana has reached Boujdour, somewhere I assume the popular travel writer Pico Iyer would call a ‘Lonely Place’.  Many years ago he wrote a book called Falling Off The Map: Some Lonely Places Of The World.  I personally have developed an attraction to such places and Boujdour is one such town. What makes a place a ‘Lonely Place’?

I will give you an example. Yesterday, after two long days of cycling into strong head and side winds, our 140km day turned out to be relatively easy because, of course, we had a tail wind. So when I arrived in Boujdour, before heading to camp, I decided  to have a cold drink. When I sat down I saw a sign for a restaurant called Fruits de Mer, and decided to check it out later for dinner.

Alas, when I arrived for dinner it turned out that the Fruits de Mer had ceased existence in some distant past and it was now a local coffee shop where a couple dozen men were watching a soccer game. So I ventured off in search of a restaurant where I could eat some fish, Boujdour being situated on the ocean. After a half an hour walk my search parameters expanded to include any kind of restaurant that might have Moroccan food and after another 20 minutes my search simply focused on finding some local fresh food. In my wanderings I came across many coffee shops.  In all of them, the same picture appeared as in the former Fruits de Mer – men watching television.

So ‘Lonely Places’ are not places where there are no people. They are more like places where the modern world has not yet decided that there should be fancy restaurants, Starbuck coffee shops and tourists looking for ‘authentic’ experiences. Boujdour, in fact, is so ‘lonely’ that even though it is a fair sized town on the main Atlantic route to Mauritania, Senegal and rest of West Africa, it is not even mentioned in Morocco’s Lonely Planet book. It is so ‘lonely’ that I have yet to see a Trip Advisor ranked establishment not to mention their omnipresent logo. What is one to do if you wanted to stay in one of the hotels on the main street? There is no one who has ranked the hotels for you in terms of price, cleanliness or hospitality. What an ordeal it has been for some of our riders who chose not to stay at the campsite.

Mind you, it is not just Boujdour that is so ‘lonely’ on this section of the West Africa en Vélo. We have been cycling, and will continue cycling, on terrain that many would never consider worth visiting. That, of course, is not always the case. The famous aviator and author Antoine de Saint-Exupery the writer of such as wonderful books as The Little Prince and Wind, Sand & Stars, did come to the region and wrote about the place.

The Little Prince was composed by Saint-Exupery while flying the desert route, rescuing pilots who had crashed delivering mail from Europe to Dakar. “This is, to me, the loveliest and saddest landscape in the world. It is the same as that on the preceding page, but I have drawn it again to impress it on your memory. It is here that the little prince appeared on Earth, and disappeared. Look at it carefully so that you will be sure to recognize it in case you travel some day to the African desert. And, if you should come upon this spot, please do not hurry on. Wait for a time, exactly under the star. Then, if a little man appears who laughs, who has golden hair and who refuses to answer questions, you will know who he is. If this should happen, please comfort me. Send me word that he has come back.”

So why would one go to see and experience such ‘lonely places’? I will leave the Little Prince to answer – “People where you live grow five thousand roses in one garden… yet they don’t find what they’re looking for… And yet what they’re looking for could be found in a single rose, or a little water…” Antoine de Saint-Exupery himself put it this way – “A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral“.

The final countdown is over. The excitedly anticipated cycling expedition – West Africa en Vélo – embarks tomorrow on what is bound to be the trip of a lifetime. That is certainly saying something as most of the riders have completed numerous other TDA tours.

What We Do Know

This is the inaugural West Africa en Vélo and, as such, we are eagerly awaiting the unexpected. We do know that we will begin by pushing high up into the mountains near Marrakesh before descending back to the coast in Western Sahara. As we pedal through the Sahara Desert, spending the afternoons swimming in the Atlantic Ocean and our nights gazing at a million stars, we will hopefully find a friend in desert tailwinds. In the sub-Saharan jungles of Senegal and Guinea we will fill our shoes with red dirt, rest at the foot of age-old baobabs and cross rivers on the bows of old wooden vessels – if we’re lucky! There is much to look forward to on this expedition – the predictable, the unprecedented and the unexpected.

What We Think We Know

The riders and staff have come from all over the globe to experience West Africa from the seat of a bicycle. In fact, they represent 19 different countries. Some are here to see, hear, and taste all things West African while others want to challenge themselves physically and mentally. Most alumni are simply excited to be back on the road, cycling with friends from tours past. When I began asking the riders what expectations they had for the tour, there was a pause. I could see them considering many factors while trying to choose just one word. When I  probed for a gut answer, I heard everything from “challenging” and “sore bum” to “spectacular” and “sand storm.”

Everyone’s background, gives them a different set of expectations. For some, the unknowns are in their own physical and mental abilities – knowing they will be testing their limits in an extreme environment. Some think more of the tangible details – understanding that the weather and climate will be unpredictable through the desert and jungle, especially without weather apps. Others consider it will be the local language and culture, the distance between coke stops, and of course, the kinds of food we will be presented with along the way that will be the unknowns.

The best part, many agree, is expecting the unknown, the adventures, and the challenge, even if it comes with a “sore bum.” That is why many riders come back to TDA, tour after tour. TDA founder, Henry Gold, knows this spirit of adventure lives on in every rider and is proud to be joining us on this inaugural expedition.

What We Know We Don’t Know

Standing at the Hassan II Mosque (our start line) tomorrow morning, we cannot predict what it will feel like to cross the finish line 71 days from now. We cannot know how this tour will impact our lives – physically, emotionally, or on an entirely soulful level. It is impossible to know what days will be our hardest and even more difficult to understand that, unexpectedly, those may also be some of our favourite days. The idea that the nightmare of getting caught in a thunderstorm or having a flat tire in the middle of the jungle may become your favourite post-tour stories? Crazy! Yet, “life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% what you make of it” [Charles Swindoll].

Well, time to roll, we’ve got 6,420 km to go!

“A journey is a door through which one goes out of the known reality and steps into another, unexplored reality resembling a dream.” – Henri Albert Guy de Maupassant

At its core, it was just a cycling trip. I take my bike, put one leg over the bar, push on the pedal and off I go. It was January 2003 and I, together with another 30 people, were off on the adventure of a lifetime, a cycling journey that would take us from the watchful eyes of the Sphinx by the Pyramids in Cairo to the beaches of Cape Town under the incomparable Table Mountain.

On paper, the inaugural Tour d’Afrique looked insane and some actually said just that; in letters to the editors, in emails to our office and some to my face. It was something that had never been done before. I put on a brave face and shrugged my shoulders but inside a little voice occasionally said – ‘listen to them’. Why was I doing this? I can come up with many answers, maybe even good ones. Well, why do people volunteer to test a new plane or go to Mars?  In reality, the real answer still eludes me.

Now here I am about to start another new, tough, perhaps even extreme adventure – West Africa en Vélo – 73 days on a bicycle from Casablanca to Cape Coast in Ghana. I am constantly being asked ‘how does it feels to set off again’. What should I respond? Should I  respond with  platitudes -that I am excited and apprehensive?

Should I say that I am surprised? That even in my wildest dreams I would not have believed that 15 years later, after cycling all six continents, I am again undertaking such an incredible journey?  That who knows what surprises will it bring, what joys and sorrows  I will experience, what lessons the journey will teach me?

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Should I respond that one is never too old to take on new challenges? I am 66 years old but there are quite a few on this ride that are older than me! Should I point out how great it feels that I am not really involved in the running of the tour, that the wonderful TDA staff is doing all of it?

Should I point out that I am a really lucky man to be in a position to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity? All of those things, and more, are part of how I feel ‘setting off again’.

The answers to a simple question can be elusive because, in reality, what I recall now and what I really felt then are most likely totally different. What I can say with certainty is that each journey that takes me out of my comfort zone, is never disappointing, and most importantly , is always enriching. It forces me to stretch myself, mentally and physically. It forces me to meet people, whether my fellow cyclists and staff or the locals that I meet one day at a time. To quote Maupassant again “it is the lives we encounter that makes lives worth living”.

So how does it feel to set off on another new adventure? Wonderful, just simply wonderful, I think. But then again, why am I doing this, whispers my little voice.

In February we announced the Best. Video Internship. Ever. We were searching for some new talent to help us capture the images and tell the stories of our inaugural West Africa en Vélo – a tour we finally launched this year after many years in the making.

After receiving 144 applications from 28 different countries we had the difficult task of having to choose just one out of the many talented videographers who applied. But we could not be more happy with our choice, and would like to now introduce our first videography intern, Esen Küçüktütüncü.

And what better way for a video intern to introduce herself, than with a video…

Esen will be getting some training in Spain and Portugal before heading to Casablanca where she will follow the tour from start to finish and document this event we are all so excited for.

If you’re like me, you’ve spent many hours in your life staring at a world map asking yourself what’s hidden in all these countries. You’ve travelled to many countries in different ways and one day you stumble upon the TDA Global Cycling website. Once again, you were facing a world map, but this time it was marked with lines crossing every continent. All these lines seemed intriguing, but one particular continent struck you, because it was mainly unknown to you: Africa. Here’s a post that might help you discover or rediscover it.

Everyone has heard about Giza’s pyramids and Moroccan beaches, and many among you have been there, but just a few are able to tell you what’s different or similar between Sierra Leone and Malawi, for instance.

I’ve travelled to 21 countries on this continent, mainly with TDA, except for Tunisia that I had visited previously and I had worked in Senegal for 3 months in 2004. I was lucky to work on the flagship tour of TDA (the Tour d’Afrique) in 2017 and I did the scouting with Sharita for West Africa en Vélo in 2016. I’ll be the tour leader for the latter one this year for its first edition.

When one thinks about Africa in general, one thinks about the poverty and harsh living conditions that can prevail there. One thinks about all the images of droughts and people suffering from malnutrition thrown at us by NGOs working there. But Africa is rich in natural, cultural and human diversity. Africa and its inhabitants deserve to be known and I’m sure you’ll be amazed by this continent.

In Eastern or Western Africa, children will run to you with a big smile and will greet you by waving their arms or with local words like “Toubab” in Senegal, “Foté” in Guinea and “Mzungu” in Tanzania. People are very curious to meet you. You might get bored acknowledging everyone, but remind yourself that for every one of them it’s a great joy to see you and it’s fun to reply the same way and see their sparkling eyes and hear their genuine laughs.

On both sides of the continent, you can experience life in the desert. Vast and flat spaces stretching as far as the eye can see and the most starry nights you’ll ever see in your life. You’ll be in the desert in Egypt and Sudan on one side and in Morocco and Mauritania on the other. Even though it’s the Sahara spreading all across North Africa, the landscapes are of similar kinds. On the west coast you’ll see sand dunes and meeting points between the desert and the ocean. On the east side, the desert is more rocky. Nevertheless, camels call it home in both parts.

A major difference between both tours is the ocean’s proximity that we find on the West side. On the Tour d’Afrique route, we pass by the Red Sea in Egypt and it’s only at the end in South Africa that we reach the Atlantic Ocean. In West Africa, there’s a more intimate contact with the ocean. Only in Guinea do we not see it. The journey starts in Casablanca, next to Hassan II mosque, half of which is built over water. The second rest day is in Agadir, situated next to one of Morocco’s finest beaches.

All along Morocco and Western Sahara, we will glance at different beaches and high cliffs overlooking the sea where the occasional fishermen throws a line 50m down, hoping for a good catch. In Mauritania, we can swim in Nouakchott, the capital. In Senegal, we are riding a few days on the beach at low tide and we spend 3 days in Dakar, a city surrounded by water. Freetown, in Sierra Leone, is at the tip of a peninsula that we circumnavigate on our bikes. The last four days of the journey, in Ivory Coast and Ghana are entirely by the seaside. For sure, the ocean is going to be the background of many of your travel pictures. And for this reason, fish is quite common on local menus on this route.

In East Africa, the uniqueness is found in the exotic animals we see from Kenya to Botswana regularly. You’ll be quite familiar with zebras and elephants by the end of this trip. In Namibia, you can go to a restaurant and taste most of these exotic animals. On the other hand, in Guinea, you’ll see people eating rats and various roadkills… yours to try at your own risk! Regarding the culinary aspect, there’s a healthy competition on both sides. Morocco’s tagines, kebabs and royal couscous, Senegal’s mafé, tié bou djien and yassa poulet and Guinea’s different sauces can compete with Egypt’s humus, Sudan’s foul and Ethiopia’s wat and injeras.

On the Eastern side, you might spot a few baobabs, but in Senegal they are legion and some of them are big enough to hide someone inside their trunks. We see so many palm trees from Ivory Coast to Ghana, that we called that section the Coconut highway. In Guinea you will see waterfalls spilling out from the high uplands, but they are not comparable to Victoria Falls in Zambia.

Ethiopia is famous for its delicious coffee and the way it’s served, the jebena buna. The beans are roasted on a charcoal and incense bed, ground and infused in front of you. Arbol, the first cup, is supposed to be the most full-bodied and the best at the same time. The second cup, named Tona, is made with the remaining beans used for the first one, so it’s slightly less strong and finally, the third cup, Beraka, is “the coffee to go”, the one that we take before leaving the table. You’ll experience the equivalent of this with the green mint tea in Senegal. Quite often you can see a group of friends meeting at the beach to drink tea and they are inviting people passing by to join them. Senegal is not called the country of Téranga (hospitality) for nothing! Serving tea is also a three folded operation. The first glass, called Leweul, is bitter like life. The second, Niar, is sweet like love. The third glass, Niet, is light ‘like the breath of death.’

Architecture is more impressive on the eastern side with Egyptian and Sudanese temples and pyramids. On the other side, in Senegal and Guinea, you’ll witness an authentic, ancient architecture used to build round houses made of clay and hay, called ‘cases’ in French. In Guinea, once again, you can admire the handwork needed to assemble a vine bridge near a village where we’ll be camping. That bridge is rebuilt each year by the locals and requires 3 weeks of hard work.

The customs offices differ greatly from one another. Forrest Gump would say not only life, but also customs in Africa is like a box of chocolates, that you never know what you gonna get! Always bring a lot of patience and a good sense of humour in your back pocket, otherwise the crossings would become painful. I think the biggest contrast is between the Namibian customs with its AC and concrete walls and the Guinean customs which consist of a wooden hut in the bushes with plastic bags on a chain to mark out the border. It’s only when crossing the ‘No Man’s Land’ between Western Sahara and Mauritania that I fully understood the meaning of this expression. I really had the impression it was a lawless territory where anything could happen: it’s a bumpy road over a kilometer long and it seems to change its course every month. There are random people fixing old cars to be resold in the neutral zone and there are warnings to not leave the “road” to avoid running over an anti-personnel land mine!

In West Africa, you’ll have good conversations with locals in English (in Sierra Leone and Ghana) and in French (Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast), which deepens the journey and makes it more interesting and remarkable. In East Africa, it is difficult to even speak for more than one sentence in English to locals until we reach Malawi, which leaves a superficial feeling for local interactions in the first half of the trip. From Malawi though, things get better and you can speak in English with the locals until the end.

So that’s it, it was only a short comparative look, by no means an exhaustive one, about some similarities and differences of the countries on both African coasts.

Si vous êtes comme moi, vous avez passé plusieurs heures dans votre vie à regarder une carte du monde et à vous demander ce qui se cache dans tous ces pays. Vous avez voyagé dans plusieurs pays de différentes façons et un jour vous êtes tombés sur le site de TDA Global Cycling. Encore une fois, vous vous êtes retrouvés devant une carte du monde, mais cette fois-ci elle était rayée de lignes traversant tous les continents. Toutes ces lignes vous paraissaient intrigantes, mais un continent en particulier vous a frappé, parce qu’il vous était presque entièrement inconnu : l’Afrique. Voici un billet qui peut vous aider à le découvrir ou le redécouvrir.

Tout le monde a déjà entendu parlé des pyramides d’Égypte ou des plages du Maroc, et beaucoup parmi vous y êtes allés, mais peu sont en mesure de vous raconter les différences et les ressemblances qu’il y a entre le Sierra Leone et le Malawi par exemple.

J’ai visité 21 pays sur ce continent, majoritairement avec TDA, à l’exception de la Tunisie que j’ai visitée antérieurement et j’avais déjà séjourné 3 mois au Sénégal en 2004. J’ai eu la chance de travailler sur le tour éponyme de la compagnie en 2017 et j’ai fait le repérage avec Sharita pour le tour West Africa en vélo en 2016. Je serai le tour leader de ce dernier pour la première édition qui aura lieu cette année en 2018.

Lorsqu’on imagine l’Afrique en général, plusieurs pensent à la pauvreté et aux dures conditions de vie qui peuvent y régner. On pense aux images de sécheresse et de gens souffrant de malnutrition que nous bombardent les organismes non gouvernementaux oeuvrant dans la région. Mais l’Afrique est riche en diversités naturelle, culturelle et humaine. L’Afrique et ses habitants méritent d’être connus et je suis sûr que ce continent saura vous surprendre.

À l’est comme à l’ouest, les enfants viendront à votre rencontre avec un grand sourire et vous salueront en vous envoyant la main ou avec des mots locaux comme “Toubab” au Sénégal, “Foté” en Guinée et “Mzungu” en Tanzanie. Les gens seront curieux de faire votre connaissance. Vous pourriez devenir las de saluer tout le monde, mais dites-vous que pour chacun d’eux il s’agit d’une grande joie de vous voir et il est agréable de leur rendre la pareille et de voir leur yeux s’illuminer et d’entendre leurs rires.

Dans les deux cas aussi vous pourrez expérimenter la vie dans le désert. Les grands espaces plats s’étendant à perte de vue et les nuits les plus étoilées que vous verrez dans votre vie. Vous serez dans le désert en Égypte et au Soudan d’un côté et au Maroc et en Mauritanie de l’autre. Bien que ce soit le Sahara d’un bout à l’autre du continent, les paysages diffèrent grandement. Du côte ouest, vous verrez plusieurs dunes de sable et vous apercevrez les points de rencontre entre le désert et l’océan. Du côté est, le désert est plus rocailleux. Malgré tout, on y retrouve des dromadaires aux deux pôles.

Une des différences majeures entre les deux tours est la proximité avec l’océan que l’on retrouve du côte ouest. Dans le trajet du Tour d’Afrique, on voit la Mer Rouge en Égypte et ce n’est qu’à la fin en Afrique du Sud que nous voyons l’océan Atlantique. En Afrique de l’Ouest, il y a un contact plus étroit avec l’océan. Il n’y a qu’en Guinée où nous l’évitons. Le voyage commence à Casablanca, près de la mosquée Hassan II, dont la moitié est construite au-dessus de l’eau. Le deuxième jour de repos est à Agadir, au bord d’une des plus belles plages marocaines. Tout le long du Maroc et du Sahara Occidental, nous découvrons différentes plages et de grandes falaises qui surplombent la mer et d’où de temps en temps un pêcheur tire sa ligne du haut des 50m et espère une bonne prise. En Mauritanie, nous pouvons aller nous baigner à Nouakchott, la capitale. Au Sénégal, nous faisons quelques jours de vélo sur la plage à marée basse et passons 3 jours à Dakar, une ville entourée d’eau. Freetown au Sierra Leone est au bout d’une péninsule dont nous faisons le tour à vélo. Les quatre derniers jours du voyage en Côte d’Ivoire et au Ghana sont entièrement sur le bord de la mer. Bref, l’océan fera partie de plusieurs de vos photos souvenirs de voyage! Pour cette raison de proximité, le poisson est très fréquent dans les menus locaux de ce parcours.

En Afrique de l’est, la caractéristique unique est la présence régulière des animaux exotiques que l’on voit du Kenya jusqu’au Botswana. Les zèbres et les éléphants vous seront très familiers après ce voyage. Et en Namibie, vous pouvez en déguster plusieurs de ces animaux exotiques dans les restaurants. En contrepartie, en Guinée vous verrez des gens manger des rats et d’autres animaux tués sur les routes… à vos risques d’y goûter!

Côté culinaire gastronomique, il y a une bonne compétition des deux bords. Le Maroc avec ses tagines, ses kebabs et son couscous royal, le Sénégal avec son mafé, son tié bou djien et son yassa poulet et la Guinée avec ses différentes sauces peuvent rivaliser avec l’houmous de l’Égypte, le foul du Soudan, le wat et les injeras de l’Éthiopie.

Du côté est, il arrive que nous voyons des baobabs, mais au Sénégal il y a en a en grande quantité, dont certains sont suffisamment gros pour pouvoir entrer à l’intérieur du tronc. Nous voyons une grande quantité de palmiers en Côte d’Ivoire et au Ghana au point que nous avons baptisé cette section Coconut highway. En Guinée il y a plusieurs chutes tombant de hauts plateaux, par contre, elles ne sont aucunement comparables aux chutes Victoria en Zambie.

L’Éthiopie est bien connue pour son café délicieux et la cérémonie entourant son service, la jebena buna. Les grains sont torréfiés sur un lit de charbons et d’encens, moulus et infusés devant vous. Arbol, la première tasse, est supposée être à la fois la plus corsée et la meilleure. La seconde tasse, appelée Tona, est faite avec le reste des grains utilisés pour la première, donc elle est légèrement moins forte et enfin la troisième tasse, Bereka, c’est « le petit café pour la route », celui qu’on prend avant de quitter la table. Vous vivrez l’équivalent avec le thé vert à la menthe au Sénégal. Il est fréquent de voir un groupe d’amis se réunir à la plage pour déguster le thé et d’inviter les passants à se joindre à eux. On ne dit pas du Sénégal qu’il est le pays de la Téranga (hospitalité) pour rien! Le service du thé se fait en 3 temps. Le premier verre, appelé le Leweul, est amer comme la vie. Le deuxième, le Niar, est sucré comme l’amour. Le troisième, le Niet, est suave comme la mort.

L’architecture est plus impressionnante du côte est, avec les temples et les pyramides en Égypte et au Soudan. Par contre, au Sénégal et en Guinée, vous retrouverez une authenticité dans l’architecture séculaire de maisons rondes faites de terre et de paille, appelées des cases. En Guinée également, vous pourrez admirer le travail manuel requis pour construire un pont en lianes près d’un village où nous campons. Ce pont est reconstruit à chaque année par les locaux et demande 3 semaines de travail acharné.

Les postes douaniers diffèrent énormément de l’un à l’autre. Forrest Gump dirait que non seulement la vie, mais aussi que les douanes en Afrique sont comme une boîte de chocolats, qu’on ne sait jamais sur quoi on va tomber! Il faut toujours être armé de beaucoup de patience et d’un bon sens de l’humour, sinon la traversée deviendrait pénible. Je crois que le plus gros contraste est entre le bureau douanier de la Namibie avec l’air climatisé et les murs en béton et celui de la Guinée qui consiste en une hutte en bois au milieu de la brousse avec des sacs en plastique attachés sur une chaîne pour délimiter la frontière. C’est en traversant le No Man’s Land entre le Sahara Occidental et la Mauritanie que j’ai compris tout le sens de cette expression, j’ai vraiment eu l’impression que c’était un territoire sans lois où tout pouvait arriver : le chemin est cahoteux sur plus d’un kilomètre et semble changer de tracé au fil des mois, il y a des gens épars qui réparent de vieilles voitures pour les revendre en zone neutre et il y a des avertissements de ne pas quitter la “route” pour ne pas rouler sur une mine anti-personnelle!

En Afrique de l’ouest, vous pourrez avoir de bonnes conversations avec les gens en français (Maroc, Mauritanie, Sénégal, Guinée, Côte d’Ivoire) et en anglais (Sierra Leone et Ghana), ce qui rend le voyage plus profond, intéressant et marquant. Du côté est, il est très difficile d’avoir une conversation en anglais avec quiconque avant d’atteindre le Malawi, ce qui laisse un sentiment superficiel lors des rencontres pour toute la première moitié du voyage. Par contre les choses se rectifient ensuite et les conversations anglaises sont possibles avec les locaux à partir du Malawi jusqu’à la fin.

Donc voilà, c’était juste une courte réflexion comparative, d’aucune manière exhaustive, sur quelques aspects similaires et différents des pays présents sur les deux côtes africaines.

Three hundred and ten days. Three hundred and ten sleeps until the highly anticipated West Africa en Vélo Cycling Expedition pulls out of Casablanca and heads south through Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire & Ghana. You can start the countdown today because this cycling adventure is now a ‘Guaranteed Departure‘.

Long discussed by both TDA staff and alumni, this route promises to take riders back to TDA Global Cycling’s roots. Back to a time when the idea of cycling across Africa was seen as ‘crazy’, ‘insane’, ‘dangerous’ and ‘irresponsible’. Of course, we all know how that story ends – next month another group of riders will join the hundreds of others that have ridden the now legendary Tour d’Afrique from Cairo to Cape Town over the past 16 years.

>>Review the tour details here

We are excited to share this experience with all our cyclists, new and old alike, and feel confident that West Africa en Vélo will join the Tour d’Afrique as one of the world’s great adventures.

Limited spaces remain, don’t wait too long. See who is already signed up or register now.

>>Prices, dates, and details for the 2018 route can be found here

TDA Global Cycling got its start in Africa by creating Tour d’Afrique, the now legendary Cairo to Cape Town Cycling Expedition. While we have added many new tours over the years, in Europe, Asia, North & South America and Oceania, in the back of our minds we have always had the dream of cycling West Africa. So today, we are overjoyed to announce our newest expedition, West Africa en Vélo!

Join us on this unique cycling adventure and explore West Africa from Casablanca to Cape Coast. Clocking in at just over 2 months and 6,200 km, riders on this adventure will spin across Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire & Ghana. The route will take them through the High Atlas Mountains, the Sahara Desert and past colourful coastal fishing villages before turning inland and heading into the African interior.

Here the cyclists will pedal past ancient baobabs and plunging waterfalls as they head up into Guinea’s Fouta Djalon, a grassy plateau crisscrossed by canyons and valleys. Very few Western cyclists, if any, have ridden through these isolated areas and the participants will experience the real, rural Africa. The remote and rough jungle roads mean that rivers will be crossed, not by bridges, but by canoes and non-motorized ferries.

The riders then head back along some challenging roads toward the coast and into Sierra Leone where they enjoy a couple of well-deserved rest days in Freetown. Refreshed by the city’s vibrant music scene, the cyclists pedal back into the interior, quickly crossing into Cote d’Ivoire and testing their mettle on some incredibly scenic roads. Finally, they will spin down to the aptly named Coconut Coast and follow the crashing waves towards Ghana’s historic Cape Coast and the end of this amazing cycling adventure.

Rest days are scheduled to allow the riders to enjoy the best of West African culture: the spice souk in Marrakech, the fish market in Nouakchott, beach soccer in Dakar, families flying kites on Freetown’s Lumley Beach, the world’s largest basilica in Yamoussoukro and the haunting slave museum in Cape Coast.

>>Prices, dates, and details for the 2018 route can be found here

Leaving Dakar, the most western point of the African continent, the beach and the Sahara desert behind we headed out into the heart of the dry plains of Senegal. We drove on good tarmac roads with the wind behind us, surrounded by plenty of ancient, enormous baobabs.

The original plan was to include Gambia on our route but the border was now closed due to political unrest. This small country had recently held elections and the incumbent President had accepted defeat. Then 10 days later he had a braincramp and decided to change his mind and refused to step down. We now had no option but to look at alternatives.

We had two options available to enter Guinea, the 5th country on our scout. We, of course, decided to go with the more adventurous option, which cost us dearly in the end. It turned out that it was not even remotely suitable for bicycles and hardly passable for vehicles It is difficult to describe but this clip shows the “un – cycleble” “National Road” of Guinea from the Senegal border to the town of Mali. Therefore the tour won’t go through this part because it’s logistically not possible, not even for TDA Global Cycling!

We ended up having an unforgettable 2 day adventure. However, it is not something I would do again anytime soon. My body is still recovering from all the bruises and bang ups and Max’s chain ring is still stuck in my ribcage. The route we took is one of the legendary brutal routes on the planet. I declare the roads in Guinea to be some of the worst roads in the world. When you do 50-70 km in two days, then you know you it’s been epic.

There was not much time to recover after that brutal stretch.  We had to go back to the map and find another road so we headed back to the Senegal/Guinea border on the main highway, which is currently under construction and being paved by the Chinese. This route takes you through the heart of the Fouta Djalon mountain plateau and passes through tiny local villages and plunging waterfalls.

This African nation may not be for the faint hearted but if you have a good sense of humour and a spirit for real, raw adventures you will truly enjoy your time in Guinea.

Crossing borders on this trip is also a highlight because it’s almost comical to watch. Crossing from Guinea into Sierra Leone was certainly one to observe. You have to sometimes ask yourself how their system works and what happens to all these forms and papers you fill out. Does it go straight into the trash or do they use it to start their fires at home every night?

Arriving in Sierra Leone, an English speaking nation with brand new tar roads was definitely a nice welcome, allowing us to temporarily forget the dusty, rough roads of the past couple of days.

Sierra Leone (Lion Mountains) – What a weird name for a country! It is definitely a very attractive destination, especially its white sandy beaches situated so close toFreetown, the country’s capital. ‘Freetowners’ love to party until the early morning so don’t count on too much sleep if you are planning to visit the city.

Our time in Sierra Leone was short. The roads were so good that we were able to cover substantial distances everyday. Our route did also include another memorable off-road stretch through the wild jungles of eastern Sierra Leone. Passing through, you got the feeling that you were far, far, away from anything and anyone.

Here is one useful piece of advice I can give for travelling in Africa – accept the fact that there is NO HURRY in Africa. It will already make your travels much more enjoyable. We arrived at another border crossing – again, a chain with plastic bags tied to it. A bunch of officers were sitting and lying around in palm tree huts, yelling at each other as to who should get up and deal with these tourists.

Probably 3 km from the immigration hut was the Moa River. At this point you have to take a little canoe to the other side in order to enter the country of Guinea. Our vehicle’s path was more complicated because for that we needed the ferryboat, which had no engine. Instead it was pushed with bamboo poles across the river by its crew.  I was entertained by the locals, loading and offloading their palm oil containers from their canoes. It’s amazing to see how many containers they could load on a single canoe. While it took a while to negotiate our fee for the crossing and even longer for the boat to get our vehicle across the river,  all in all, it was a smooth crossing.