I crossed from Morocco into Mauritania and eventually into Senegal without taking a flight. The whole trip took about six weeks. On a map, it looks like a line heading south. In practice, it was buses, shared vans, a freight train, a river crossing and more waiting around than any map can show.
I landed in Casablanca and worked my way through Fes, Chefchaouen, Merzouga, Marrakesh and Essaouira before turning south toward Agadir and Dakhla. Some stops lasted a few days; others were there because that was where the next bus left. I rode with a traveler I’d met in Morocco for part of the route to the desert. By the time I got on the long bus toward Dakhla, I had begun to appreciate how much of a country you see between the places you meant to visit.
From Dakhla I crossed into Mauritania and went on to Nouakchott, where a local host took me in for about a week. I had wanted to travel this way partly because it forced me to spend time in places I might otherwise have passed over. In Mauritania, that decision gave me a friendship, meals in someone’s home and a chance to sit still for a while before I headed back out. It also led me north to the iron-ore train. I took it across the desert to Nouadhibou and came back covered in enough dust to remember the ride every time I opened my bag.
The final border was at Rosso. I crossed the Senegal River by ferry, then found a shared car to Dakar. We waited for the car to fill. It took hours. Travel can make you feel wonderfully independent until the next leg of the journey depends on several strangers deciding to go to the same city. Eventually we did, and I reached Dakar.
I spent my first week there at a surf camp on Ngor Island. I had moved for so long that staying in one place felt like its own kind of arrival. I ate with the other people at the camp, tried to surf and let the buses, borders and timetables recede for a few days.
I wrote down the prices and transport details at the time because I knew how difficult it had been to find firsthand information about this route. Those notes still show how I made the journey; they aren’t a promise that the same bus, border process or fare will be there when someone else goes. The part I trust most, years later, is simpler: I kept moving south, and the people who helped along the way changed what the trip felt like.