The Gambia travel guide: the river, the Kombos and the coast

Quick answer · the coast, the river or both

The Gambia is a strip of land either side of one river, so the trip is a line inland rather than a circuit. The Kombos are where almost everyone lands and most people stay: Kololi and the Senegambia strip for hotels and restaurants, Bakau and Cape Point for a quieter version of the same beach, Banjul for Albert Market and the National Museum, and Abuko half an hour inland for the first serious birding. The south coast is the same Atlantic without the strip: Tanji for the fishing beach and the smokehouses, Gunjur and Kartong for small lodges and empty sand down to the Senegalese border, and Brikama inland for the woodcarvers and the kora makers. The North Bank is the history: the ferry from Banjul to Barra, then Juffureh and Albreda on the river and Kunta Kinteh Island offshore, where Fort James is falling into the water it was built to control. Upriver is the half most package visitors never see and the half that repays the drive: the Wassu stone circles, the chimpanzees of the Baboon Islands from Kuntaur, and a night on the island at Janjanbureh. A week is enough for the coast and one trip upriver. Ten days lets you go up by road and come back by boat, which is the version people remember.

All regions Banjul and the Kombos The south coast The North Bank The Central River The Upper River

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Banjul

Africa · 10 picks

Fun fact

One number worth knowing

More than 500 bird species have been recorded in a country of 11,295 square kilometres, which is smaller than Northern Ireland. The reason is the river: mangrove at the mouth, freshwater swamp and gallery forest inland, and dry Sahelian savanna at the eastern end, so a birder crosses four habitats in a single day's drive and picks up Palearctic migrants wintering alongside West African residents.

Stereotypes, sorted out

What the week at Kololi misses, why the border with Senegal is a real one, how far east you can get on a shared taxi, and which shoulder month is the best value on the calendar.

"It is a beach resort with a country attached."

The realityThe strip at Kololi is about two square kilometres of hotels, and it is genuinely where most visitors spend most of their week. It is also the smallest part of the story. Everything the country is actually known for sits inland or upriver: the stone circles at Wassu, the chimpanzees on the Baboon Islands, Fort James falling into the water at Kunta Kinteh Island, and roughly 500 recorded bird species spread across mangrove, swamp forest and savanna. The beach is the arrival point, not the destination.

"It is part of Senegal."

The realityIt is a sovereign state, independent from Britain since 18 February 1965, with its own currency, its own passport control and its own official language in a Francophone neighbourhood. Senegal surrounds it on three sides and the two countries briefly federated as Senegambia in the 1980s, but the border is real: you change money, you change the language of officialdom from French to English, and you stop and get stamped.

"You cannot leave the coast without a tour operator."

The realityThe south bank road runs the length of the country and is tarred for most of it. Shared taxis and minibuses cover it daily and cost very little, the Senegambia Bridge removed the one crossing that used to eat a day, and Janjanbureh and Basse are ordinary towns with places to stay. A tour buys you a guide and a schedule, which is worth paying for on a bird trip. It is not the only way east.

"It is only worth a winter week."

The realityThat is when the charters run and when the weather is easiest, so it is when most people come. It is not the only time the country works. October and November are green from the rain that has just stopped, prices are low, and the migrants are arriving. The wet season is genuinely difficult, with much of the coast closed, but the shoulders on either side of it are the best value in the calendar.

The Smiling Coast of Africa, used as the headline for a piece that then spends its word count on a hotel pool."Africa for beginners", which is true about the logistics and patronising about everything else.Roots, invoked in the first paragraph of almost every article, usually without noting that Alex Haley's genealogy has been disputed for decades or that Juffureh is a working village rather than a set.The claim that you can see the whole country in a day because it is small. You can drive across it. Seeing it is a different measurement.Photographs of a lone fishing pirogue at sunset, filed under a headline about undiscovered Africa, from a country that has had scheduled European charter flights since the 1970s.Bumsters presented as the defining hazard of a trip, at a length that suggests the writer never got past the beach at Kololi.

How to behave

Greet before you ask. A handshake and a moment on how someone and their family are doing comes before the question, and skipping it reads as rudeness in a way that is easy to miss when you are used to getting straight to the point.
Eat and hand things with the right hand. The left is used for washing, and it matters at a shared bowl, which is how most meals are served at home.
Ask before photographing anyone, and take no for an answer. Fishermen at Tanji and women at Albert Market are among the most photographed people in the country and are rarely asked first.
Dress covered away from the hotel beach. The country is overwhelmingly Muslim, shoulders and knees covered is the norm in town and upcountry, and beachwear off the sand reads as a lack of interest in where you are.
Ataya, the strong green tea brewed and poured in three rounds, is an invitation to sit rather than a drink to take away. If you are offered a glass, the polite thing is to have the time.
Bargain at the craft markets and do it pleasantly. The first price is an opening, the exchange is part of the transaction, and grinding someone down over the equivalent of a coffee wins you nothing worth having.

Famous Gambian faces

The prosecutor who ran the International Criminal Court, the woman who broke a seven-century male line on the kora, the campaigner who helped end a practice, and the striker who took a debut side to the quarter-finals. Pick a field.

Fatou Bensouda

Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court from 2012 to 2021, and the first African woman to hold the post. She had been a deputy prosecutor there since 2004 and attorney general and justice minister at home before that. Time listed her among its 100 most influential people in 2012, and she has served as Gambian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom since August 2022.

Sona Jobarteh

The first woman from a West African griot family to become a professional kora virtuoso, in a hereditary tradition passed father to son for some seven centuries. Born in London in 1983 to a Gambian kora master and an English painter, she is a granddaughter of Amadu Bansang Jobarteh and a cousin of Toumani Diabate, and she founded a school in The Gambia teaching the academic curriculum alongside Gambian music and culture.

Jaliba Kuyateh

Known internationally as the King of Kora, and the musician who took the instrument out of the griot repertoire and into dance-band pop. A schoolteacher before he was a bandleader, he is the closest thing the country has to a national performer and still fills grounds at home.

Foday Musa Suso

Kora player from Brikama who founded the Mandingo Griot Society in the United States in the 1970s, one of the first serious attempts to put the instrument alongside jazz and funk musicians. He has recorded and performed with Herbie Hancock and Philip Glass.

Amadu Bansang Jobarteh

One of the last of the great twentieth-century kora masters and a central figure in Gambian musical history, who played at the independence celebrations and spent decades at Radio Gambia. His recordings are the reference point later players are measured against.

Jaha Dukureh

Campaigner against female genital cutting and child marriage, and founder of Safe Hands for Girls. Her work preceded The Gambia banning the practice, Time listed her among its 100 most influential people in 2016, and she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018.

Isatou Ceesay

Known as the Queen of Recycling. She started with a handful of women in Njau turning discarded plastic bags into saleable goods, and built it into a national waste and enterprise movement that has trained thousands of Gambian women.

Dawda Jawara

A veterinary surgeon who led the country to independence in 1965 and served as its first president from 1970 until he was overthrown in 1994, presiding over one of the very few multi-party democracies in Africa through that period. He returned from exile in 2002 and died near Banjul in 2019 at 95.

Yahya Jammeh

The army lieutenant who took power in the coup of 22 July 1994 and ruled for 22 years, latterly as an elected civilian president. He lost the election of December 2016, refused the result, and left for Equatorial Guinea in January 2017 under regional pressure. A truth commission later documented killings, torture and disappearances under his government.

Adama Barrow

President since January 2017, and the man who beat Jammeh at the ballot box as the candidate of an opposition coalition. He was sworn in at the Gambian embassy in Dakar while Jammeh was still refusing to go, and was re-elected in 2021.

Lenrie Peters

Surgeon, novelist and the country's best-known poet, whose collections put Gambian writing on the African literary map from the 1960s onward. He wrote the novel The Second Round, chaired the West African Examinations Council, and was named Gambian Personality of the Year in 1995. He died in 2009.

Tijan M. Sallah

Poet, short-story writer and economist who grew up in Serekunda and Banjul and spent his career at the World Bank. His collections include When Africa Was a Young Woman, Kora Land and Dream Kingdom, and he has done as much as anyone to anthologise and champion younger Gambian poets.

Musa Barrow

The Scorpions' record goalscorer and the forward whose strike against Guinea took The Gambia into the quarter-finals of the Africa Cup of Nations in 2021, on the country's first ever appearance at the finals. He came through Atalanta and made his name at Bologna.

Omar Colley

Centre-back, national captain and the most-capped Gambian footballer, who anchored the defence through that 2021 run. He spent five seasons at Sampdoria in Serie A after moving from Genk.

Must-try Gambian food

Groundnut stew the country is built on, rice cooked in its own stock, okra that divides a table, charcoal-grilled meat after dark, and a green tea poured three times. Pick a category.

Domoda

The national dish and the one to order first. Groundnut paste cooked down with tomato, onion and pumpkin or sweet potato into a thick russet stew, with beef, chicken or lamb in it, served over rice. Rich enough that a small bowl goes a long way.

Superkanja

Okra stew, thick and deliberately so, cooked with palm oil, smoked and fresh fish and often meat as well. The texture divides people on first contact and converts most of them by the second bowl.

Chakery

Steamed millet couscous folded through sweetened sour cream or yoghurt, with nutmeg and sometimes raisins or pineapple. Cold, sweet and the standard end to a celebration meal.

Benachin

One pot, which is what the Wolof name means, and the Gambian version of what the region argues about as jollof. Rice cooked in the tomato and fish or meat stock rather than beside it, so every grain takes the colour.

Yassa

Fish or chicken marinated in onion, lemon, mustard and chilli, grilled, then returned to the reduced marinade and served on rice. The onions are the point: cooked slowly until they are almost a sauce.

Plasas

Leafy greens, usually cassava or sweet potato leaf, pounded and simmered with palm oil, smoked fish and chilli. The everyday green plate, eaten with rice or with a starchy ball rather than on its own.

Base nyebe

A thick black-eyed bean stew with beef and vegetables, served with chere, the steamed millet couscous that comes rolled into small balls. Filling, cheap and the plate you are most likely to be handed in a family compound.

Afra

Grilled meat by the roadside, sold from small shacks that get going after dark: lamb or beef, cut up, spiced, grilled over charcoal and served on paper with raw onion and a sharp sauce. The country's late-night food.

Tapalapa

The daily bread, baked in clay ovens and sold in long batons from stands at every junction. Millet, maize, wheat and cowpea flour make it dense and slightly sweet, and it is better than any baguette at mopping up a stew.

Ebbeh

A soup of cassava and sweet potato loosened with palm oil, lime and tamarind and pushed hot with chilli. Sold from stalls in the morning, and the closest thing here to a hangover cure.

Chura gerteh

Pounded rice and groundnut porridge, thicker than oatmeal and nuttier, eaten for breakfast or as an evening meal. Often served with sour milk and sugar over the top.

Wonjo

Dried hibiscus steeped and sweetened, served cold and deep red. Tart enough to cut through palm oil and groundnut, which is exactly why it is on the table beside them.

Baobab juice

The chalky white pulp of the baobab pod soaked, strained and sweetened, sometimes with milk. Sharp, faintly citric and sold in frozen bags at the roadside as much as in glasses.

Ataya

Chinese gunpowder green tea brewed strong in a tiny pot and poured from a height into small glasses, in three rounds that get sweeter as they go. It is a social occasion with a drink attached rather than the reverse.

The Gambia travel FAQ

Do I need a visa for The Gambia?+

Many nationalities do not for a short stay. British, EU and most Commonwealth passport holders can enter without one and are normally given up to 90 days. Your passport should be valid well beyond your return date, and proof of yellow fever vaccination is asked for if you are arriving from a country where the disease is present. Rules differ by nationality and they do change, so check yours against the Gambian immigration authorities or your nearest Gambian mission before booking rather than against a travel article.

Is malaria a real risk?+

Yes, and it is year-round rather than seasonal, with the risk rising through and after the rains from June to October. See a travel clinic well before you fly, take the prophylaxis they recommend for the region, and use repellent and a net rather than relying on tablets alone. This is the single most important piece of preparation for a trip here and the one most often left too late.

How do I get upriver, and is it worth it?+

The south bank road runs the length of the country and is tarred for most of it, and shared taxis and gelly-gelly minibuses cover it daily for very little. Since January 2019 the Senegambia Bridge between Farafenni and Soma has replaced the ferry crossing that used to hold vehicles for hours or days. It is worth it: the stone circles at Wassu, the chimpanzees of the Baboon Islands from Kuntaur and a night on the island at Janjanbureh are the half of the country that a week on the coast never reaches. Going up by road and back by boat is the version worth planning around.

What are bumsters, and how much of a problem are they?+

Young men on the tourist beaches who attach themselves to visitors offering to guide, help, befriend or sell, in the hope of money. It is a nuisance rather than a danger, it is concentrated on the resort strip and thins out sharply away from it, and the standard advice works: be polite, be clear, keep walking, and do not open a conversation you are not willing to have. Organised effort has reduced it over the last decade, and women travelling alone still get more of it than anyone else.

What does a trip cost, and can I use cards?+

The Gambia is inexpensive by regional standards once you are off the hotel strip, and the gap between a package rate and independent travel is wide. The currency is the dalasi and the country runs on cash: cards are accepted at the larger coastal hotels and almost nowhere else, ATMs are reliable in the Kombos and scarce upcountry, and you should draw what you need before you head east. Change money at a bank or a licensed bureau rather than with someone who approaches you on the street.

The Gambia, one river and both its banks

When to visit The Gambia