Today, I’ll talk about cycling Mauritania to arrive in Senegal. Our bike ride in Mauritania was like the nomad’s people daily life using their camels to move from one area to the other one during the daytime and then pitching their tents at sunset time in an open Sahara area where they find water and enjoy watching the sunset.
Mauritanian Landscape
We were so surprised that in cycling Mauritania, we found that the Mauritanian Sahara wasn’t that barren, and it has a large water table. In each village, you need only 4 or 5 meters of digging to find water. Unexpectedly, the Sahara contains rocky mountains between its dunes and a variety of wild plants and trees which creates a colorful scenery. It has also many lakes and rivers where goats and camels can find water.
Tea in Mauritania
While cycling Mauritania, we found that the Mauritanians love drinking tea. The tea was like a holy drink for them, and the Mauritanian paper currency had an image of a teapot on it. In one hour, Mauritanians can make at least 6 or 7 teapots of green tea and they have their own special way of doing it. They are careful about all steps and try to make every cup special and perfect.
Mauritanian people believe that every cup should be covered by bubbles. To make it bubbly on the top they add to it while cooking a special product called in Arabic “elk”, it’s a natural gum made from the Acacia trees from the Mauritanian Sahara. It’s also so important for them to keep pouring the tea multiple times from the cup to the tea pot. That helps more to create foam on the top which helps to keep the sand away from the tea liquid under the bubbles. The nomads adapted their lifestyle to the Sahara like this special way of protecting their favorite drink from the sand as well as a special fabric that protects their faces from the sun. This fabric is called “Litham” used by Tuareg and North African nomads.
Safety while Cycling Mauritania
We consider cycling Mauritania really safe for travelers and we didn’t face any problems while camping or looking for a place to spend the night. No one bothered us during our multiple camping nights on the way. During our long ride, we encountered many policemen who asked us gently if they could check our “fiches” which is a piece of paper including our personal information or a copy of our passports. They were so easy-going asking about it and a few of them just asked to take pictures of our passports using their phones without asking for more information before letting us cycle further.
Mauritanian Food
The “Marou” dish is the most famous meal for Mauritanians which is rice with red meat, chicken, or fish sauce. Mauritanians mostly eat using their hands instead of utensils. Sitting on the ground in a group, they put the plates in front of them, grabbed some Marou and shaped them like tennis balls then used their hands to eat them. They repeat the same movements until finishing the meal.
Dialect of Mauritania
I was surprised discovering the Mauritanian dialect and was really hard for me to understand it. I thought that it would be like other Arabic dialects which are easy to understand. But they used a lot of words from the “Hassanian” dialect, which is an old nomadic people’s dialect, that sounds different from Arabic.
Choum
After taking the “train of life”, we started cycling again from the Choum village which is located between Nouadhibou and Zourat. Choum was a modest village and most of its homes are made out of wood and mud. We kept riding our bikes until the capital Nouakchott crossing the city of Atar and many small villages.
Meetings with Travelers and Locals
On our way to the capital, we met many other travelers. Some of them were on a nomadic-style trek with a local tour guide, others were cycling using a tandem bike. We also met a cyclist couple a few times on our way, a German man and his Australian-Nepalese wife. On our last meeting by coincidence, we decided to ride together and spent the night camping in a peaceful area enjoying talking about our similar experiences while drinking tea around a bonfire. On our way cycling we encountered also many religious signs advising people to be consistent in their praying routines and practices.
In the city of Atar, which is located before Nouakchott, we met a Mauritanian man who was kind enough to invite us to spend the night with his family. Even though he wasn’t there when we arrived, he arranged our stay with his family of six people.
The mother was the one taking care of the family while the father was working abroad. When she noticed that we were so interested in the Mauritanian culture and traditions, she and her oldest daughter invited me to try their traditional dress. Not only that but they also let me wear makeup and do a Henna tattoo on my hands. They also tried to straighten my hair and put on some jewelry.
Looking in the mirror, I didn’t recognize myself. They tried to make me as beautiful as they believed in their Mauritanian society standards. It looks like they did a good job of changing me and adapting to the image that they had on mind. The only thing that was hard for them to change was giving me extra weight.
Yellow Fever Vaccine
We had our yellow fever vaccine in Nouakchott which is mandatory in West African countries starting from Senegal. It was expensive to be vaccinated in Tunisia and Morocco but so cheap in Mauritania. It only costs one dollar or less.
Nouakchott
Nouakchott was one of the weirdest cities that I visited in my life. It felt like there was no order in the city. We were obliged to walk and push our bikes every time we went for a ride because of the amount of sand covering the streets. For Mauritanians using old Mercedes cars, the sandy roads aren’t difficult to navigate as they’re habituated to it. In the heart of the city, there was a crazy traffic jam of cars, tuk-tuks and donkeys pulling trolleys.
Cycling to Senegal
After taking some rest, we started our cycling Mauritania trip again towards the South. There was 400 kilometers left to reach the new beautiful country of Senegal. The scenery changed after leaving Nouakchott. It looked like we started getting a little farther from the Sahara. The climate was arid, and the landscape had some acacia trees here and there. When getting close to the Senegalese border, we crossed a national park that is a habitat of many birds and animals especially since it was migration season.
While cycling across the park, we saw many kinds of birds like pink flamingos, and other animals like wild buffaloes. We wanted to see crocodiles because of all the warning signs but we didn’t have the chance this time. We were so lucky to ride on a gravel road across the park when it wasn’t raining otherwise, I couldn’t imagine how we could make it cycling to the other side.
Finally, we arrived at the border crossing called Diama and were welcomed to Senegal.
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