Senegal & The Gambia Adventure by Intrepid Travel

Just back from this trip. Pulling out the practical stuff because it's easier to find in its own post. Getting around: Download Yango before you leave home. It's the rideshare app in Senegal and it's cash only. Setting it up on the ground is a pain you don't need. Money: Bring more cash than you think you'll need. Cards are accepted at some hotels and restaurants but expect minimum spend limits, extra charges and machines that aren't working. ATMs exist but they're not always easy to find when you need one. Phone and data: eSIMs worked well, better coverage than I expected across both countries. Download offline maps before you go. Google Translate downloaded offline too, Senegal is strongly Francophone and you'll use it constantly. The Gambia is mostly English speaking so easier. Food: Heavy on seafood and meat everywhere. Vegetarians had a difficult trip. Coeliacs would find it very hard. Otherwise food is cheap and generally good. Swimming: Don't count on it until the last day in Saly. There's significant plastic pollution along most of the coast. Hotels with pools were mostly fine. Physical: Lots of walking in sand without proper footpaths. Some long days on rough roads. Comfortable shoes that handle sand are more useful than trail runners. Australians: I wrote a separate post about the visa situation. Read it before you do anything else.

Just got back from this. Ninth time Intrepid has run it, last departure of the season. Not a destination that'll top anyone's bucket list but the itinerary is put together well and you come away with a genuine sense of both countries. Here's what I'd want to know before going. The trip starts at La Madrague Hotel on the beach in Ngor, about an hour from the airport. Easy to book extra nights there directly if you want to arrive early. Worth it. Catch the ferry from the beach over to Ngor Island for lunch on your first day, much nicer than anything on the mainland. Day 2 city tour covers Dakar adequately. The real thing worth your full attention is Gorée Island. The history of the slave trade there is heavy and it should be. Don't rush it. Day 3 is the most varied: boat on the Pink Lake to meet the salt harvesters, some 4WD through dunes, then a long drive north to Saint-Louis near the Mauritanian border. Day 4 passes through Touba and the great mosque before an overnight in Kaolack. If you have any interest in Sufi Islam this is genuinely fascinating, not just a tourist stop. The Gambia days cover a slavery museum and Kunta Kinteh Island, which is worth the boat ride, then a car ferry across the Gambia River to Banjul. Two days there is enough. The trip then heads south to Cap Skirring near the Guinea-Bissau border and on to Ziguinchor before the final night in Saly. A few honest things. Several travel days are long with rough roads and heavy traffic. You walk a lot in sand, often without footpaths. There was no farewell dinner on our trip which felt like an oversight. The hotels were mostly fine, three star, but a couple felt tired. Vegetarians had a hard time throughout. The food leans heavily on seafood and meat and alternatives weren't always available. Coeliacs would genuinely struggle. For everyone else the food was cheap and decent. The people in both countries are welcoming and relaxed, rarely pushy. The cultural mix of Islam, colonial history and traditional religion still visible in the south gives the trip more depth than you might expect going in. Worth doing if you want something genuinely off the usual circuit.

If you're Australian and looking at this trip, please read this before you book flights. The itinerary crosses between Senegal and Gambia four times. Each time you re-enter Senegal you need a valid visa. The standard Senegalese e-visa is single entry, so it's done after your first crossing back. Useless for the rest of the trip. You need a multi-entry visa. Intrepid doesn't mention this anywhere in their booking or pre-departure materials. The Senegalese e-visa portal won't flag it either, their support team will happily send you down the wrong path. Getting the multi-entry visa means physically posting your passport to the Senegalese embassy in Tokyo along with a letter of invitation, supporting documents, application form and the fee. No online option. Give yourself at least a month. The letter of invitation has to come from the ground operator running the tour. On my trip it arrived eleven working days before departure, which happened to fall over a long weekend. Impossible to act on in time. The Gambia border posts don't issue Senegalese visas on arrival. The embassy in Banjul does but only twice a week. I made it through because our tour leader knew people. Most travelers in that situation wouldn't. The trip is genuinely worth doing. Just treat the visa as step one, not something to sort later. Don't wait for Intrepid to remind you because they won't.