Along the Gambia River: Markets, Crossings and Chimpanzees

Before I properly met the river that gives The Gambia its name, I met a kola nut.

It was bitter, faintly medicinal and almost comically unpleasant — but it also turned out to be a small doorway into the country itself.

From the market stalls of Soma, the journey moved east: across a river strangely quiet for a waterway that once carried empires; past crocodiles, kingfishers and rice fields; aboard crowded ferries and along roads punctuated by “sleeping policemen”; finally upriver to Kuntaur and the chimpanzees living on their islands of exile.

I had gone looking for the Gambia River expecting it to explain the country that bears its name. Instead, the river kept its own counsel. The story was happening along its banks.

Along the Gambia River: Markets, Crossings and Chimpanzees, in Go World Travel Magazine.

Read the full piece here:
https://www.goworldtravel.com/gambia-river-journey/