Gambia: Bicycle Tour Travel Guide
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by David Mozer
[An introduction and overview to travel in Africa is available by clicking here. This section has not been comprehensively updated since 2015.]
Senegal and Gambia have nice beaches, warm weather in January and are a short trip for European tourists, so they come in large numbers and there are a lot of large beach resorts that cater to them.
There are a few things few other things that also recommend historical sites like ; the enormous variety of birds of the West African flyway; the culture and the general beauty. The diversity of points of interest is very satisfying.
Routes
Going east from Banjul there are two choices; the North Bank Road and the South Bank Road. Since we started tracking conditions, the north bank road has been paved, which is a vast improvement. The south bank road has been paved since the 1980s, as far as Basse Santa Su, but the last time we saw it there were long sections which were torn up, and much of the paving seems to have been done by throwing down globs of asphalt embedded with billions of little seashells. It was a horribly rough ride!
The next challenge is finding services. There are rustic guesthouses in several of the villages between Bwiam and Kalaji, Farafenni has a hotel and restaurant and you can find accommodations in Georgetown and Basse Santa Su. Other than that, you are going to have to be prepared to improvise. There is a larger population on the south bank so there is more commercial activity, but there is also more traffic.
One thing that makes Gambia a delight for cycling is many villages have capped borehole wells with hand pumps. And the water tastes good.
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