The Clock Ticketh

To my horror, I’m starting to notice references in the press and social media to C#*&@%. It’s such a horrible thing I can’t ever say it. You know, the thing on 25 December every year. The THING . Yes, that! It evokes instinctive mutterings of bah, humbug. Note to self: flee

Well, time to get my Advent(ure) Calender out and to begin counting down the days to my next Madventure adventure to North and West Africa.

I leave Dublin on the morning of Sunday 29th to fly to Fes, Morocco where the journey begins. It ends on 26 January of next year and will be mostly bushcamping.

We travel through these countries: Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria. I might end the trip in Ghana but I’m not sure about this yet. It depends on how the trip pans out.

I’ll be traveling on The Beast, a converted truck with 25 to 30 other mad people and we bushcamp 90% of the time. Bushcamping means that we find a patch of fairly level ground and pitch camp there. I have done this before in Eastern and Southern Africa, the Silk Route and also Arabia. On my previous trips, we bushcamped about half the time and used existing tourist infrastructure the rest of the time. Because West Africa is more basic, we won’t have access to camping sites, lodges and the like. When we’re in cities, we stay in hostels or hotels.
You can keep an eye on my travels on PolarSteps