“Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success”
Sir Ernest Shackleton (polar explorer)

Avid readers of my blog know that I am an Antarctica enthusiast. Ever since I read the story of Shackleton’s last expedition as a young man, I wanted to see and explore the continent of endless ice. Despite being still somewhat expensive, over the last few years prices of Antarctic expedition cruises have dropped. Therefore, I felt it was now time to turn this dream into reality and visit the Antarctic continent. My Russian friend Evgeny joined, eager as well to discover this distant land.

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The flight on an “Royal Air Maroc” plane from Banjul to Conakry was short and comfortable. Well, as comfortable as it gets, leaving in the middle of the night and arriving in the wee hours at Conakry airport. Yes, we had our visas, didn’t have any duty-free items over the limit. So, our expectation was to clear the administrative wall swiftly upon arrival. Well, almost… Just before exit to the luggage belt, we spotted a lady in a nurse uniform, who checked the yellow-fever certificate of all arriving passengers. This was fine with me, since I had the required document. But Evgeny whispered to me that he had no such certificate.

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Most of the people know The Gambia due to its funny shape on the map. Located on the West-African coast, with only one neighbouring country – Senegal, that encompasses The Gambia in the North, East and South. In fact, the country is basically a beautiful stretch of land about 10km wide on each side at the shores of  the Gambia river. While being in the capital city of Banjul, Evgeny and I knew that we needed to organize a few things before we could move on to the next country.

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Armed with a couple of visas, Evgeny and I decided to do a small West-Africa trip around the Year End holiday season. The planning and organisation of the trip came with a few challenges and we knew in advance that quite some flexibility is required in Africa as things never go as planned. Our plane ticket set the start and end point for our trip in the town of Dakar, Senegal. Consequently, this defined our itinerary: Driving overland in clockwise direction from Senegal to Mali to Nigeria and along the West-African coast back to Senegal. We knew that this was an ambitious plan, but we kept an open mind in terms of changing the route, as long as we could manage to visit Mali – our main focus for this trip.

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After a six hour drive coming from Pärnu (Estonia), I arrived in the middle of a traffic jam in the old town of Vilnius (Lithuania). What a change of culture! Yes, I liked Riga in Latvia – and I enjoyed Tallinn in Estonia. But Vilnius in Lithuania felt quite different. It’s a whole world apart from the other places I visited earlier during my Baltic road trip. Actually, I am quite happy to have visited the cities in the present order.

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