G’day folks. For months now I have been retelling the story of going from Dhaka, Bangladesh, to Dakar, Senegal, and finally we are nearing the finale. Today’s post is a post about some long travel days, which often for me are my favourite days of any trip, and certainly that is the case again!

After bidding farewell to Graham over an early lunch at our favourite spot in Marrakesh, Graham headed to the airport to head home and I headed to the train station because that’s where the buses leave from. I was booked online on Supratours, I think the largest bus company in Morocco and it’s got an okay website where you can book and pay for your tickets in advance. As Graham was not continuing the journey with me, I had an extra ticket which also meant I had an extra seat next to me for the entire journey.

Supratours had pretty decent reviews, and although I knew the journey beyond Dahkla, which is where I was headed on the bus, would be more improvised and interesting, it was reassuring to know I was on a regular, popular bus company for the first stretch. I had a long bus journey of some 24 hours in front of me south to the town of Dakhla on a small peninsula that was in Southern Morocco.

A large part of southern Morocco is known as “Western Sahara” and they have been trying for independence for years now. It was and still is unclear to me if the Dakhla Peninsula is technically in “Western Sahara” but it is controlled by Morocco as is, as far as I could tell, this sliver of land from the Atlantic Ocean in a bit. Morocco certainly do NOT see Western Sahara as a separate country. The important thing though is there may still be fighting somewhere going on, but nowhere near the route the bus takes.

The total distance by bus from Marrakesh to Dakhla is around 1400 kilometres, and the bus left mid-afternoon from Marrakesh and was due to arrive at a similar time in Dakhla the next day. At 600 Dirhams the ticket was a little under $60USD, and interestingly it refers to ‘Dakhla’ as ‘ADDhakla’.

We took some time to fill up, I had a seat near the front of the bus which suited me fine with an empty seat beside me. I think if I knew I was travelling solo I would have considered buying that second seat which would have been Graham’s anyways. If he had come it would have been pretty uncomfortable I think through the night. The seat was comfortable enough, reclined but was a little hard.

We were travelling south, through Agadir and further down until you hit the coast. It’s an impressive coastline when you can see it. After a few hours we stopped for a meal. It was Ramadan so this was ‘breaking of the fast’ meal which is often set and it’s usually a set sort of meal with bread and soup and a couple of other items I didn’t recognise. I tried the soup which tasted nice with bread, however my stomach was unsettled after it and that affected me all night. I had a bunch of snacks with me too.

This was served at a roadside restaurant and on the other side the Atlantic Ocean smashed into the sand. It was too dark to see properly but I realised we were now getting down to some wild parts of the planet. Because south of here to the Mauritanian border it was pretty empty apart from the old town here and there.

Sleep was not forthcoming for much of the bus ride. In South America I had been impressed with the VIP buses where it was a little like a Business Class seat, but this was a fairly normal bus. At 3am we stopped for dinner. There was meat and a few options at this stop in a small town somewhere, but my stomach wasn’t happy and frankly, I would have been happy not to stop at all.

After that I got one or two hours of sleep. The sun was just moving when I woke at maybe 6-630am. Now it was just sand and sand and for something different, a little more sand. There was the odd police check point, and the road was still pretty good – sealed all the way. Surely now we were in “Western Sahara”? But no. Moroccan flags everywhere. If it was supposed to be Western Sahara, Morocco didn’t want anyone to know!

As the hours went on, there was a stop in the town of Layounne and then Boudour. The sun was up though so they were brief stops and no where was open to sell food due to Ramadan. As far as Google Maps is concerned as I write this, I was in Western Sahara. No evidence of it though. I could get a signal on and off to this point on my phone too and followed roughly our progress towards Dakhla. And also I received a phone call from the bank back in Australia that my debit card had been skimmed when I was in Florence, luckily no money was taken.

As we went deeper into the south a sand storm whipped up and visibility was reduced to very little. Maybe 2-5 metres I couldn’t tell really. We slowed down but kept going. In bad sand storms sand can get into the motor which is a disaster.

An hour maybe late, around 2-3pm, we arrived in Dakhla. A share taxi took me to my hotel. The sand was still flying about but over the next hour or so settled to some point. I took the camera and walked around this little town which isn’t known for much although I believe there is some good surfing off the peninsula.

The dunes were just incredible though on the journey, it was really like travelling through Tatooine. That’s the desert planet in Star Wars if you were wondering! The town had an army base, mosques, a few closed places to eat (until after dark and after the breaking of the fast). I went to the Sahara Hotel as the guide book recommended going there to organise onward transport to Mauritania.

There was a Supratours bus but it only went as far as the border, so I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to organise a place in a share taxi all the way to Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital, for the next morning. After that I relaxed briefly before heading out for a quick dinner at a local restaurant and going to bed early.

I was told the pickup would be at 8am. Apparently the driver had arrived at 6am though and been turned away from the hotel. I woke at 730am, basically ready to go, and he had returned. I forwent the shower and came downstairs. Somehow I had the front seat – not sure if I asked for it. I had paid 700 Dirham so less than $70USD for this journey. There were a few packing issues getting stuff in the car. There was the driver, myself, and three young guys in the backseat all going to Nouakchott.

We soon departed, the weather was stunning. Little wind and no sign of any sand storm today. This journey was a real highlight of the three months I spent going Dhaka to Dakar. Leaving from the similarly named Dakhla.

The ride started off quiet, I think we were all pretty tired. To see the peninsula without the sandstorm though was impressive. Our driver was a cool guy who drove pretty fast. In fairness, pretty open roads. Through the journey on both sides of the border we would pass the smallest of villages with just three or five huts built near the side of the road. It was seriously difficult to imagine people living there, but some had cars parked next to them.

A few hours in and we hit the border. The Moroccan side is somewhat impressive, and a money changer approached the car so we could get some Mauritanian Ouguiya. Then we moved on, handed passports over, waited. It took 30 minutes probably and so that’s nothing. Then we proceeded through a kilometre or two of no-man’s land. The road was sealed and good for half, then unsealed and super uneven for the second half – presumably the part that the Mauritanians have to look after.

I needed a visa for Mauritania. Someone came out and I was led into this small office which surprisingly had internet access. They were some pretty basic huts to be fair. They took a photo of me and printed out the visa and stuck it in my passport. It took maybe 15 minutes, I was the only foreigner (surprise!) passing through the border. The car I think had already been cleared to proceed, so I joined it and off into Mauritania we went!

The rest of the day…. Well it got seriously hot by the end of it and no, no air conditioning. But we’d all woken up and listened to music and chatted the whole way to Nouakchott. There was a bit of local politics discussed and the driver disagreed at one point with the guys in the back quite vociferously but it was all good. There was a short stop a couple of hours from the end and I think the driver actually took a nap. It was just at a service station where there were prayer rooms and other facilities to rest, again Mauritania is also a Muslim country and Ramadan was also being observed.

Then we pushed on to Nouakchott, getting there around 5 – 530pm. We had travelled a long way through a whole lot of… sand! Nouakchott itself was a super sandy and spread out city. Mauritania is a wide open land with less than 5 million people living there. Around 1.5 million or just under live in the capital Nouakchott. In that single day we had travelled over 820km, making it a total journey distance of some 2200km or so!

And it had been an adventure, a good adventure! The car to Nouakchott with the friendly guys singing, laughing and at times arguing was just a wonderful highlight of the whole Dhaka to Dakar experience, and it’s these sort of experiences that lead me to do this kind of travel.

So folks, safely in Nouakchott, the Dhaka to Dakar post will see me checking out the city! Thanks for joining me today as always! Take care wherever you are in the world and… May the Journey Never End!