This blog is a free resource filled with information that we have gathered from living and traveling in West Africa. We’d love to have you on one of our trips but from one traveler to another, we are just happy to see people visiting the region.
The blog is also a reflection of our travel philosophy. It’s possible to have quite the adventure in West Africa, but we are a bit tired of reading travelogues that make it seem like walking down the street in your average West African city is a death defying experience. We’d like to think that the advice provided in these pages will help you discover West Africa on its own terms, with an eye to the simple things that make this such a great place to visit.
If you would like to contribute, please get in touch with us on the contact page. For more stories from the road, follow us on Instagram, Youtube and Patreon.
If you join our Scoot West Africa Patreon and sign up for the Chauffeur or Grand Chef membership options, you will get unlimited West Africa travel planning assistance from us for as long as you are a member. The Patreon is also where we share a number of stories and adventures that can’t be found on our other channels.
It’s super simple. Apply online for the e-visa. The biggest thing we found is to ensure your bank account has sufficient funds to sustain you for your trip. They ask for six months of bank statements. If your account is healthy, you’ll be fine. You get issued the...
We have been running trips in Senegal since 2017. We would ride, bus or fly over from Mali, run a trip, and then return to the Sleeping Camel in Bamako. In 2023, as the situation in Mali continued to deteriorate, we rented a house in La Somone, a small beachside town...
Every so often someone writes in asking if we can take them to see “real tribes” and go see a ceremony or something not touristy. That phrase “real tribes” is a trope I’ve come to dislike intensely. It carries too much old baggage and it has never been the kind of...
This is a long overdue video introduction to the bikes that we use on our riding trips in West Africa. The reason I say "bikes" and not "scooters" is because these "bikes" are more of a hybrid, which Matt pointed out in this piece he wrote some years ago. Despite the...
From space, the Sahara looks endless. Then, in the middle of Mauritania, a strange swirl interrupts the monotony: a giant target about 40 kilometers across. This is the Eye of the Sahara, better known to geologists as the Richat Structure. Astronauts use it for...