West African Odyssey

Arrive at Murtala Muhammed International and meet your expedition leader for the private transfer to Victoria Island. The afternoon is an orientation drive through Victoria Island and Lekki (the bridges, toll gates, and lagoon crossings that structure the city's days) before the first briefing at sunset over the water: the geography of a metropolis built on a lagoon, and how the next three days move through it.

The day the expedition is named for. By arrangement with the community, canoes and resident navigators carry us into Makoko, along waterways that work as streets, past stilt houses and smokehouses, the floating school, and the boat-builders' yards where the settlement's hulls are cut and caulked. The day runs inside the fisheries economy that keeps the city in fish, hosted by the people who run it. Back on Victoria Island, an evening debrief on the waterfront puts it in context: what Makoko is, what it is not, and what the city plans for it.

Across the bridge and into the velocity of the mainland. The morning is market navigation with our fixers: the dense trade canyons where most of the city actually shops. The afternoon maps the creative city: street studios and galleries, and the Afrobeat lineage from Fela's Kalakuta Republic to today's scene, with a short, controlled stretch of the city's own transport (a danfo ride with the team) for those who want the full register. After dark, the night food circuit: suya, fresh fish, and jollof at the stalls our fixers rate highest.

South-east down the Lekki peninsula to where the metropolis meets the ocean. A shoreline walk follows the Atlantic edge at the city's southern boundary, with time among the fishing communities that work it at dawn and dusk, and an optional boat circuit on the lagoon for the water-level view of the city. A coastal-expansion briefing closes the day: land reclamation, the engineered new coastline, and what it means to build a city into the sea.

A last breakfast on Victoria Island, then west out of Lagos along the Badagry road and over the Seme border into Benin. It is only about 120 kilometres, but the Lagos traffic and the busiest crossing on this coast make it a full travel day, and we plan it as one, with our fixers waiting on both sides of the border. Cotonou by late afternoon, and the evening is yours to recover before the coast road west begins.

Out in the morning to Calavi and across Lake Nokoué by pirogue to Ganvié, thirty thousand people living on stilts in the lagoon, in a place founded because the Dahomey raiders would not follow anyone onto water. Then about an hour west to Ouidah for lunch. In the afternoon we walk the Route des Esclaves past the slave posts out to the Gate of No Return on the beach, marked at every stage of what was done along it, then the Sacred Forest, the Ouidah monument and the salt village.

About two and a half hours inland to the old heart of Dahomey. The Chameleon Temple first, then the underground village at Bohicon, dug as a refuge in the wars of the kingdom, and finally the Royal Palace Museum in Abomey, a UNESCO site and the seat of the Dahomey kings, whose wealth came largely from the trade you walked yesterday. Back to Ouidah for the night.

The morning in Ouidah, at the Cathedral and the Temple of the Sacred Pythons, which face each other across the square. Then the border at Hillacondji, and into Togo. We take a pirogue across Lake Togo to Togoville, where the 1884 German protectorate treaty was signed and where the vodun shrines are still in daily use, and stop at the preserved slave house in Agbodrafo before the last stretch into Lomé.

A morning in Lomé: the fishing harbour, the fetish market, where healers and vodun practitioners buy their herbs and carved figures, Independence Square and the Grand Marché. After lunch, the Aflao crossing, minutes from the centre in the only capital in Africa that sits directly on its own border, and about three and a half hours along the coast road to Accra.

A full day in Ghana's capital. Osu Castle, the old Danish fort that became the seat of government, then Makola Market, the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, and Jamestown, the oldest neighbourhood in the city, where we climb the lighthouse above the fishing beach. We finish at Black Star Square, where the nation holds its parades.

A slow last morning in Accra, then the short flight west to Abidjan, a little over an hour, where the Ivorian convoy is waiting. The language changes to French. Abidjan in the afternoon is towers, lagoon ferries, the Plateau skyline and traffic, and the evening is in Treichville.

North out of Abidjan on good tar to the political capital that Félix Houphouët-Boigny built out of his home village, and to the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace standing in the bush at the end of it. We spend the afternoon there, under a dome that answers St Peter's, with room inside for eighteen thousand people and rarely more than a handful.

West into Guro country in the morning for the Zaouli, a masked dance performed at a speed the eye cannot resolve, the dancer's feet blurring under a carved face that never moves. We watch it in a village that keeps it rather than on a stage. Then on west through Daloa to Man, a town ringed by forested hills close to the Liberian border, for the night.

The day the flight used to take, now driven. Out of Man early, over the hills to Danané and the border into Liberia, then from Ganta south on the paved road through Gbarnga to Monrovia, arriving as the light goes. With the border it is ten to twelve hours, and we say so plainly. Monrovia is where the hard half of the expedition begins.

Liberia's capital rewards a slow day. Providence Island, where the first settlers from America landed in 1822; the Waterside market; the burnt-out Ducor Hotel on its hill above the city; and street names that read like a road map of the American east coast. We also re-provision here, because the hardest week of the route starts tomorrow.

The defining overland day of the expedition. North-west from Monrovia to the Mano River, across into Sierra Leone, and on through the rice country to Freetown in the dark if the border is slow. It is a long, hot day, and the border sets its pace. It is also the reason the line on the map holds together.

A day in one place. Morning in the city: the Cotton Tree, the Krio board houses on the hillsides, the market streets that run straight downhill to the water. Afternoon on the peninsula beaches south of town, at Tokeh or River Number Two, which is where Freetown goes on a Sunday and where the convoy crews catch up on sleep.

Out along the peninsula road, with the city on its steep green hills above one of the largest natural harbours in the world behind us, then north into Guinea. Past the border the road runs inland to Kindia, at the foot of the highlands, where we leave the coast for the next four nights.

North onto the plateau on the long climb to Labé, through the mining towns and the mango belt, with the temperature dropping as the altitude rises. By the afternoon you are in the Fouta Djalon: plateau grassland, waterfalls off the escarpment edges, and air ten degrees cooler than the coast. Labé, the capital of the highlands, is where we sleep for two nights.

A day out of the vehicles. We walk a section of the escarpment with a local guide, down through terraced Fula smallholdings to one of the falls, and back up in the afternoon. The highlands are the reason to come to Guinea and the reason we do not simply drive through them, which is what almost every crossing of this region does.

The hardest border on the route, so we leave Labé early and give it the middle of the day. The road comes down off the plateau toward Guinea-Bissau, and on the far side Gabú, a Fula trading town at the edge of the plateau country, hot and busy and entirely unvisited, is where we sleep. We get the paperwork in order here for the rest of the run to the coast.

West toward the Atlantic again, stopping en route at Bafatá, the colonial river town where Amílcar Cabral was born. Bissau at the end of it is a city of collapsing Portuguese facades, bougainvillea growing out of the plasterwork and a waterfront that has stopped pretending to be a port. It is one of the strangest capitals in Africa.

North through cashew country on a road that alternates without warning between tar and red earth, to the crossing at São Domingos. Senegal changes character below the Gambia River: the Casamance is green, slow and threaded with mangrove creeks, and it has spent decades feeling separate from Dakar. We finish on the Atlantic at Cap Skirring, in time for the sunset, which is the best on this stretch of the ocean.

A light day on purpose, after the borders behind us. The morning is for the coast: the fishing beach, the palm line and whatever the tide has left. Then a short run east on back roads through Diola villages and stands of sacred forest to Ziguinchor, the old river port, on the waterfront at dusk.

North out of the Casamance on the last land crossing of the trip, a gentle one by the standards of what is behind you, and into The Gambia. Banjul, the smallest capital on the Atlantic coast of Africa, is where the convoy stops after three weeks on the road, and we spend the evening on the riverfront before the Sahara.

A last morning to walk Albert Market and the Banjul riverfront, then the transfer to the airport and the flight north to Nouakchott, connecting through Dakar on days without a direct service. Our Mauritanian team meets you on arrival, helps you through the e-visa formalities and takes you to the Semiramis Hotel. The evening is a welcome dinner and a briefing for the Sahara week ahead. Overnight in Nouakchott.

We leave the coast early and drive north into the Adrar, some seven hours across open desert, with photo stops along the way and lunch in the shade of an acacia. By late afternoon we reach Azoueiga and the tallest sand dunes in the country, a sea of gold rising hundreds of feet from the plain. We make camp at their foot, and the evening belongs to the fire, the silence, and a sky with no competition. Overnight in a private desert camp.

A morning drive brings us to Terjit, one of the Sahara’s most beautiful oases (date palms and warm springs hidden inside a narrow canyon of red stone) with a picnic lunch at Tivougar along the way. We spend the afternoon in the greenery and cool water, a startling contrast to the dunes behind us. Overnight in camp at the oasis.

We drive to the Richat Structure: the “Eye of Africa,” a vast set of concentric rings some forty kilometres across, so large it is used as a landmark from orbit. After exploring its rings and ridges, we continue to Ouadane, a ruined caravan city half-swallowed by sand and one of the oldest towns in the country. In the late afternoon we walk its stone lanes and the old UNESCO quarter. Overnight at an auberge in Ouadane.

A desert drive brings us to Chinguetti, the seventh holy city of Islam and a UNESCO World Heritage site. We tour its ancient manuscript libraries, where scholarly families still care for handwritten Qur’ans and astronomical treatises nearly a thousand years old, walk the sandblown old town, and visit the Grand Mosque with its famous stone minaret. We climb the dunes above the town for sunset. Overnight at an auberge in Chinguetti.

The headline day, and the night of the whole expedition you'll remember longest. We drive out toward Tmeimichat, passing the Choum Tunnel and Ben Amera, the second-largest monolith on Earth after Uluru, before reaching the rail line to prepare for the crossing. The train keeps its own schedule, so we hold time in reserve and board the moment it arrives, an open ore wagon on a convoy that can run three kilometres long. We ride west across the Sahara as a desert sunset gives way to a sky of impossible clarity; wrapped in scarves against the dust and the cold, we bed down in the wagon beneath the full sweep of the Milky Way and sleep out on the train as it rolls through the night toward the coast.

We roll into Nouadhibou soon after first light, dust-covered and quietly transformed. A hotel, a hot shower, and a warm meal are waiting, and the middle of the day is for rest. In the afternoon we drive out along the Cap Blanc peninsula, the windswept headland that shelters the largest surviving colony of Mediterranean monk seals on Earth, around 300 animals protected by a national reserve, for the sea air and a coastline that feels a century removed from anywhere. Overnight in Nouadhibou.

We drive south along the Atlantic, stopping at Tiwilit, where the dunes run straight down into the ocean, for a last desert lunch on the shore. Continuing to Nouakchott, we visit the great camel market and watch the fishing fleet come in at the Port de Pêche as the sun goes down. A farewell dinner closes the expedition before your onward flight: most international departures from Nouakchott leave late in the evening. Thirty-three days and twelve countries, from the canoes of Makoko to the iron ore train, and a Sahara that will call you back.