Getting Around Senegal

Flying into Dakar is easy from anywhere, as it is probably the most important transport hub in west Africa. The train station also sees a lot of trains pass through it, particularly from neighbouring countries.
Your best option is probably the local taxis (minibuses) which will take you more or less where you want to go. Though more locally, they do tend to be a bit slow, compared with longer distance ones.

At the main roads and in the centre of Tambacounda we saw a lot of horse carts, like we did see in the neighbouring countries during our transsahara trip, like Mali and Mauritania.

The horse carts in Tambacounda were colourfully painted and some had mottos written on it. We saw, that the horse carts were used for transport of all kind of materials, but also for transporting whole families.

And if you like to go to another part of the town and don't like to walk, there are also a lot of horse cart taxis available.

When you visit the Niokolo Koba Park with your own vehicle and you have a 4WD, you can make easily the gamedrives with your own car. So we did. Only the track between the park entrance and Hotel de Simenti is suitable for a normal car.

We did the gamedrives with our own 4WDS, accompanied by a guide of the park. It was allowed that some of us climbed up the roof of the car to have a better view.

If you don't have a 4WD yourself, you can arrange gamedirves at the Hotel de Simenti. While we did our gamedrives the small open truck of the Simenti hotel was the only other vehicle we saw.

It's easy to visit the northern part of the Casamance by taking a plane to the Gambia. There are many direct and cheap charterflights to Banjul in the Gambia, coming from Europe.

The Yundum airport is 30 KM south of Banjul. From Yundum airport you can take a bushtaxi to the Gambian- Senegalese border further south. If you will stay in one of the campements in Kafountine and Abene, they can also arrange transport for you from Yundum airport in the Gambia.

This is the boat that takes you from the port of Dakar to the UNESCO Island of Goree. The ticket costed in 2004 5,000.00 XOF (CFA)
Communauté Financière Africaine Francs=7.62245Euro .
There are boats living every 30 minutes to a 20minutes journey to the Island.

There is a very well known and legendary train in West Africa, it is called the Dakar-Bamako train or the Eastern Ocean-Niger service via Thies, Diourbel, Tambacounda and Kidira until it reaches the capital of Mali, Bamako.
Trains from Bamako leave 10am Wed and Sat. The journey can take 36hours up to 70h... Fares to Dakar from Bamako are about 25,000CFA 2nd class. Once you're on the train you can upgrade your ticket to have a sleeping vagon. If you ask you'llmaybe have a student discount (in case you're a student).

Inside the National Park you can pay for excursions on this big truck that will take you al the parts of the park. Many areas inside Niokolo Koba are impossible to cross without 4WD car or big truck like this that will carry you on the back part.

This is the border crossing of Senegal to Mali in Kidira. On the city you have dozens of cargo trucks getting their douane ready to pass mali and maybe go all the way to Niger and Burkina Faso. I bet these drivers will be more than glad to give you a ride on their truck for free, but they will even like it better if you offer some money up front. Check if you already have your visa done, or if you dont need visa before just a stamp on the border just not lo let the truck driver waiting for you to take care of formalities. Usually trucks stay on the border up to 2, 2 days until papers are ready. You would have to wait in the city or just get a truck going already with papers done.