A recent report by the UK newspaper, the Independent said that the Gambian Tourism Association is fed up with reports saying that 60% of visitors to the country would not return after they found themselves the target of harassment by bumsters (beach boys). Some tourists, who were quoted as saying that The Gambia offers a wonderful and ideal holiday experience, said the bumster menace presents a frightening blot. The Gambia Tourism Authority (GTA) has announced that they are adopting tougher measures against the presence of beach boys (bumsters), through the temporary use of the National Guard.

Comments from tourists reported by the Independent include:

‘I found The Gambia excellent apart from the hassling, not only from the people outside, but also from the staff at the hotels, which should be stopped’, said a tourist who was ending his holiday.

”I found it difficult to cope with the harassment outside the hotel and the constant begging. There were times when I did not to go outside the hotel’ another complained to the Independent newspaper.

Other tourists were however more interested in the brighter side of the country, saying that in spite of harassment from bumsters they will return.

The bumsters said that the approach adopted by the GTA, having armed guards patrolling the beaches is a curb on their freedom. They noted that since the start of the tourist season soldiers are seen in every part of the industry armed with guns and arresting any individual or group of people on sight. However they said people arrested around hotels are taken to the Fajara military barracks, where they are subjected to hard labour and their heads completely shaved. According to them even girls found around the TDA are not spared. They are rounded up and forced to do laundry.

Despite the bumsters, the Beetle wondered what there was to do in The Gambia and has come up with the following suggestions.

When to Go:

The Gambia is a popular winter holiday destination. The best time to go is between November and March when it is dry and cooler than the searing hot summer months. The rainy season is June to October. Visitors no longer require a Yellow Fever certificate, (unless you are arriving from a country where Yellow Fever is endemic.) Most visitors from Europe do not require a visa for stays of up to 28 days. There should be no jet lag coming from the UK, as Gambian time is (theoretically!) the same as GMT. The Gambians have a reputation as being a very friendly people, but watch out for the beach boys, locally called “bumsters” – see above – who have a tendency to harangue, hassle and generally ask tourists for money.

Where to Go:

Most people come to the Gambia to stay for a week or two on one of the beaches on the Atlantic coast. It’s pretty easy to get to as the 10 km stretch of hotels is only about 15km from Banjul International airport. Popular resorts include Bakau, Fajara, Kotu and Kololi where you can find many good class hotels with all the usual tourist attractions including golf courses, water sports, cycle rental and good beaches for swimming and sunning. Incidentally, the further south you stay, the better the beach is likely to be for swimming. Banjul is served by a number of charter and scheduled flights from Europe and other African countries.

Banjul, the Capital:

You might be tempted to step outside your hotel compound as there are some interesting sites around The Gambia. Banjul, the capital city is on an island at the mouth of the River Gambia, separated from the mainland by a narrow creek. Because of its location, it has never really grown into a large city and it is worth maybe half a day to wander around. Take a look at Albert Market, a great example of an African market, with its fruit and veg stands, shoes and clothes and household goods. Close to the market on MacCarthy Square there is a War Memorial and Fountain, erected to commemorate the coronation of Britain’s King George VI in 1937. The Gambia National Museum is a bit decrepit but has displays of photos, maps and text about archaeology, African people and the colonial period. Close by is The Gambia’s tallest building, the 35m (115ft) Arch 22 which was built to celebrate the military coup of 22 July 1994 (led by Lieutenant Yahya Jammeh, who is still The Gambia’s president). You can go up the arch – take a camera as it has great views over the city and the coast.

Roots:

If you enjoyed reading the book Roots or seeing the film or TV series, you could take a tour to explore Jufureh, a small village on the northern bank of the River Gambia about 25km (15miles) upstream from Banjul. In Roots, Jufureh is the place where Kunta Kinte, Alex Haley’s ancestor, was captured here and taken as a slave to America some 200 years ago. Today, Jufureh is very much on the tourist trail as it’s easily reached from Banjul although there’s actually not a huge amount to see there, but the locals put in an appearance, there’s an artisan’s market and again, according to the Lonely Planet, an old lady called Binde Kinte, (a descendant of Haley’s), makes a guest appearance at her compound. Photos are produced of Haley and Binde Kinte and of the griot (storyteller) who first told Haley the tale of his family. The tours you can take usually include the village of Albreda. Here you can see the ruined ‘factory’, a fortified slave house originally built by the French in the late 17th century, and there’s a museum that tells you about the history of slavery on the River Gambia.

Well, that’s Banjul visited! If you are a twitcher, there’s good bird watching to be had around the mangrove swamps of Banjul Island; there are plenty of tours. The Gambia’s largest town and de facto capital is Serekunda. This is the transport hub and the economic centre of the country. There’s not a huge amount to see here for the tourist, but if you want to look around urban Africa, then this is it.

OK, so back to the Atlantic resorts: Bakau, the northernmost resort has botanical gardens, if that is your thing. They were established during colonial times and according to Lonely Planet it is looking “a little dilapidated now, but it’s still a peaceful, shady place that’s good for spotting birds”. Also at Bakau there is the Kachikaly Crocodile Pool, a sacred site for the local people, who come here to pray, as crocodiles among some tribes in The Gambia represent the power of fertility. At the southern end of the coastal strip at Kololi, there is a small wildlife reserve, Bijolo Forest Park, which has trails through dense, shady vegetation, where you can often see monkeys and birds.

Getting Around:

It is pretty easy to get around in The Gambia. Green (Tourist) Taxis are painted green with a diamond sign and a serial number on the side. They are licensed by the Gambia Tourism Authority and dedicated to serving tourists and other visitors. They are normally parked outside the hotels in the resort areas. Yellow and Green taxis are mainly 4 passenger saloon cars painted in these colours which run a shared taxi service between short distances or park by the roadside for individual hire. Collective (Bush) Taxi: The most common way of travelling in The Gambia is by Collective Taxis otherwise called ‘Bush’ Taxis. These are mainly 7 passenger saloon cars, vans and mini- buses and buses. They do not have a single colour and operate everywhere.

The Beetle would like to hear from you, if you have visited The Gambia – how did you find it?

Sitting silently during the drive over from Rosleague Manor to Killary Harbour, I reflected on whether this was one of those trips where I would fail to write about what I could see. Despite being surrounded by striking views, I was troubled on how find a theme with which I could connect an article.

However as soon as I had dismissed any writing expectations I might have had, our progression along the fantastically situated N59 immediately provided the missing inspiration! As this west coast route ran along side Kylemore Lough, it struck me that autumn Connemara is full of rich, varied colours, which are vividly magnified by the ever-changing climates of each weathered hill we passed. These colours instantly brightened as the afternoon sun chased away the day’s heavy rain clouds leaving a valley of wet, verdant grass to open up before our eyes. Further out across the landscape of boggy fields and coniferous plantations, neatly stacked and apparently drying (!) peat bricks helped contrast this lush greenness. At this section of the N59, the road rises away from Kylemore and up alongside the mitre shaped and wonderfully named Church of our Lady of the Wayside! Across the horizon the dark, sodden clouds clung to the high peaks of the distant Maumturk Mountain, lingering for simple chance to return centre stage.

If I were ever to seek voluntary exile, Killary Harbour would be high on my choice of havens! As the N59 drove us towards our initial view of Ireland’s only fjord (can anyone provide a geological definition?) I found myself surprised by what lay ahead. To the north the 817 metre high Mweelrea shouldered this long, silver water along its winding course, whilst the road, sheep and houses competed for footholds on the lower hillsides of the southern shore. Despite this forcing of direction, Killary itself still had space to be laned- off like a swimming pool by the blue buoys of the local fish farms. At the head of this natural harbour sat the scattered village of Leenane and the Aasleagh Falls, across which the browned and fast flowing Erriff River flowed out and into the harbour.

To stop rather than peer round the next corner of our road was difficult but the deep red and slowly settling Guinness of Gaynors’ allowed us a splendid retrospective on what we had just taken in ! And even though we were almost as far west as possible on the Irish mainland, Steve and I found the hospitality of this whole haven to be of somewhere much more cosmopolitan…

How else could these colours be surpassed? Later from our week of touring I could offer up the small market town of Westport with its brightly painted market streets or the tidally excluded Omey Island but I feel that our journey to Inis Mór deserves is a highlight worth mentioning.

At the third time of asking we were able to catch the ferry across to the largest Aran Island and spend the best part of a glorious day surrounded by blue seas and bright, clear skies! A smooth forty five minutes later we found ourselves spilling out in to Kilronan, where the majority of our fellow passengers were swept up by the waiting horse and bicycle-hiring locals towards the most famous Celtic antiquities. Steve and I had to be different, much to the consternation of many, and as such we walked in the opposite direction towards Killeany. My fellow traveller even managed to add to the collection of colours in his own style – as without notice he stumbled across the beach and had to issue expletives and bloodied grazes to make himself feel better! All that our small tourist map seemed to reward such stubbornness with was a ruined castle and a very precariously perched church!

However reality and bright sunshine proffered sights of both that deserved better depiction. Caisleán Aircín, built in the sixteenth century, did not survive its Cromwellian ransacking and now exists solely as a facade monitoring Killeany Bay. Aran Islanders have since stole a march on twenty-first century recycling ideas by converting much of the castle’s rear into small farm buildings and dry stone walls. Though the claim to be one of the smallest churches known to exist could be counter claimed, Teampall Bheanain did offer a wonderful perspective across the eastern end of the island. According to myth and legend St Bheanain, a successor to Ireland’s patron saint at Armagh, had this small and unorthodox church built over one thousand years ago. Unusually to those in the know, this church stands on a north-south axis, allowing the sweeping weather to ride along its’ frame rather than across any roof that it might have supported! Sitting up against one of its granite grey walls we could understand why the founder soon accepted a higher position on the mainland, even though his church had not been completed too long ! The nearby airfield and its surprisingly regular prop driven flights emphasised the battering that Inis Mór faces – how could those small aircraft handle those constant winds?

Returning from our perch, the leisurely paced walk awoke me to the fact that all journeys have to end and that our general direction was now eastwards, all the way back to our home lives. Still time a plenty left to enjoy an ever growing delight of mine in west Ireland – fresh seafood washed down with another of Arthur Guinness’s finest at The Aran Islander!

Contact the author of this article: Matt is happy to be contacted if you’d like some more information about planning your travels or about any of the places he talks about in his own travel planning. E-mail mattdoughty@tiscali.co.uk

It was 31^o C and a cold one slipped easily down my throat. The cyclists were lying in the hot sun, and yet this was still England. We were awaiting our pickup from the European Bike Express, which was on the way down from Middlesbrough. They do three routes: Alpine, Mediterranean and Atlantic. For some of the cyclists this was their third trip, a good omen I thought. The Alpine route bus pulled in, on time to the second, picked up its passengers and their bikes, and was off. Soon we were on the Mediterranean bus, off and rolling. The idea is that buses drop you off en route and pick you up at a mutually agreed point somewhere on the return route.

I was taking ‘time out’ from urban London and its tourists, to join all the rest of the tourists who had gone to the Costa Brava. Through ‘The London Cyclist’ I had found out about the Bus and its enormous specially designed bike trailer. This was a holiday that had to be taken in a limited time. I wanted to chill out, with some good food, wine and a little exercise, in other words, fifteen days of fun in the sun, or so I hoped.

A couple called the Champions were taking their tandem. They had King of the Mountain racing jerseys – and of course they were dropped off in the south of France to do some climbing. Meanwhile I and one of the other fellow cyclists, John McGuigan, spent the night at the town at the end of the line. Empuriabrava is a large holiday town, with large campsites, and man made canals with hundreds if not thousands of moorings each with their own house! It was not exactly what I wanted from my holiday but I knew that if I looked around I would find many uncrowded places. The next day John cycled off. I stayed another day as my birthday was coming up and I wanted to celebrate. And celebrate I certainly did. I swam in the Med, went for a cycle ride, ate an excellent fish dinner, drank lots of wine with some Germans, and then smoked a cigar. The next morning I woke up somewhere near my tent and decided it was time to move on. The idea was to spend two or three days at a different campsite and explore the local area in a cycling softy sort of way.

A good campsite on the other side of town in a small National park, called ‘Camping Laguna’ became a favourite. Laguna is still big but it faces the sea, and the town can be reached by wading across the Lagoon exit or a fourteen kilometre ride to the nearest bridge. My next stop going south was a small town called Sant Pere Pescador, a campsite by the river, which of course was called, ‘Camping El Rio’. This place is the start of a cycle track that leads all the way to L’Escala. From here it was a delightful days gentle cycling starting on a slightly roughish track from the river, continuing by the sea and ending up as a paved track into L’Escala, a popular resort but at the same time still a nice old town.

I had travelled down the coast on a boat and had seen some great looking harbours, from Rosas to a lovely town called Cadaques, and had decided that not withstanding a very hard climb, I would visit it. At first the fifteen Kilometre climb seemed not too bad, then perspiration broke out all over my body – or was it the red wine leaking out of my system? Then I began to wonder: why was I carrying so much gear? It’s at times like this that I remember all the stories about the cyclists who cut their toothbrush in half, have an extra small toothpaste tube and also don’t carry a bottle of wine in their bottle cage! The hill grew steeper, the cars hooted to give me encouragement, the sweat streamed into my eyes. I looked up and the lovely girl in front said, “If you can’t keep up you don’t deserve me”. Another two Kilometres and I new the fantasy of the girl wasn’t enough to keep me going, so I changed the fantasy to an Afghanistan warlord chasing me on horseback and I had to get to the top before he cut my head off. I collapsed finally at the top of the hill with clouds all round me, so no vista after all that effort. Then rolled all the way down to Cadaques, wimped out and booked into a hotel for this one night. The film the ‘The Bourne Identity’ had its last happy scenes in this town and it was certainly worth the pain of the climb. Should I come back this way again, I will certainly revisit this picturesque town by the sea. My one mistake was to buy a disco ticket without looking or listening properly to the seller. It turned out to be for young people between the ages of twelve to sixteen. Embarrassing, especially when the doorman asked me, “where is the young person that you’ve brought with you”? As he looked at my one ticket and me!

Back on the Bus, John, the Champions and I exchanged stories and drank some wine, maybe more than a little, as the bus rolled on into the night, through France and on to England – and yes we did have fifteen days of fun in the sun.

About Tony, the author of this article: I have worked, lived and rolled about this lovely planet from a very young age and in fact just back from a magazine shoot in Rio. I’m nearly sixty five, still alive, my get up and go has not completely got up and gone and like good whisky I’m still going strong. If you would like to contact Tony, his e-mail address is: tony@annis.co.uk

Well, it’s now official: European budget carrier Ryanair has completed its take-over the low cost airline Buzz , formerly owned by KLM. Ryanair paid EUR 20.1 million (USD$21.5 million) some EUR 2.8 million lower than the original purchase price. Ryanair has formed a new subsidiary – Buzz Stansted – and the company will operate a fleet of 10 aircraft, employ up to 130 people and start flying on May 1st. It will serve a network of 12 routes, formerly operated by KLM UK/Buzz. The new Chief Executive of Buzz will be John Osborne, a former Director of Operations for Ryanair and former Chief Executive of GB Airways and Virgin Express.

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And still on the subject of Ryanair, a recent Mail on Sunday article, spotted by webmaster Paul made the Beetle laugh. It states that Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary is, in his spare time, a keen breeder of Aberdeen Angus cattle. The article asks how would he like it if you agreed to sell him a pedigree bull, but actually, out of the cattle carrier toddled a hamster? The article then goes on to compare this to booking a flight to Ryanair’s new destination, Barcelona – you actually get flown to Girona, some 60 miles away. In response, Mr O’Leary says: “Don’t be cross; by comparison Gatwick is also a long way from the centre of London.” (It’s actually 30 minutes away from either Victoria or Blackfriars station in central London – Beetle). The article goes on to show how in Ryanair’s world Hahn manages to become Frankfurt 70 miles away, and how Forli doubles as Bologna some 50 miles away. Not so long ago, readers may remember the howls of discontent when the Beetle travelled 2 hours from Oslo to Ryanair’s base at Torp airport. By way of appreciation, the article says that “whilst many have managed to come to terms with Ryanair’s rather cavalier attitude to customer relations. i.e. you got a cheap ticket – what are you moaning about? But why is it that for an airline that hails from a country famed for its blarney, Ryanair manages to exude so little charm?”

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A Ryanair Joke spotted by one of our readers

American special forces have this morning reported the successful takeover of Baghdad airport. However further inspection by Irish journalists of the lack of ground staff and no open services or shops revealed it to be the Ryanair Baghdad airport. American troops have in fact landed 400 miles south of Baghdad but will avail of the feeder bus that leaves from Mohammed O’Kelly’s Irish bar every day at 6pm.

All the houses in Kaza are built in traditional Spiti style: massive two-storied mud brick structures. Their flat mud roofs are supported by beams of poplar tree trunks with a network of branches and twigs crisscrossed over them. Stacks of shrubs pulled from the mountainsides and used for fuel surround the edges of the roofs like thorny crowns. Such buildings as these are practical only in a rainless climate and Spiti, lying in the so-called rain shadow of the Himalayas, are a high-altitude desert and see virtually nothing of the southwest monsoon that drenches virtually the entire Indian subcontinent each summer. In winter, when huge amounts of snow do fall in Spiti, the weight on the roofs would become unbearable and so they are swept clean as snow accumulates. Every house has a long-handled wooden snow pusher.

On that first visit to Kaza we stayed in a guesthouse built along traditional lines. After attending the fabulous lama festival in Ki Gompa that I described in my last letter we returned to our guesthouse and relaxed on the veranda drinking cups of chai. The sky was a deep blue and as the sun set; the mountains lining the Spiti Valley took on magical hues. And there were some clouds in the usually cloudless sky.

We went out to cosy Layul’s restaurant for steaming bowls of skiu, homemade noodle squares with delicious chunks of local vegetables in a flavourful broth, and steamed momos with chilli sauce. Some juicy apricots from farther down the Spiti Valley (it’s a bit too high here for apricots trees to grow: 3600 meters) completed the meal perfectly. It had been a wonderful day and we slept like logs.

The next morning was unmistakably cloudy and we wondered. After all, we were in Spiti, virtually in Tibet, where the skies are a soul-piercing blue, where the houses are made of earth and water carefully measured! We did some shopping in the bazaar that afternoon and bought some incredible wooden masks, just like the ones the lamas had worn in their dances and beaded collars with strange tribal designs. Even a tantric mirror, a convex brass disk worn to keep away evil spirits.

Well, there’s nothing evil about rain and no one would want to keep rain away in a dry place like this, or would they? Anyway, that evening it started to drizzle. It was not the sort of rain that would attract much attention in temperate climes – a light, insistent sprinkle, consisting of mist rather than discrete drops. But it fell continuously for three days and three nights. During the first day, there was no foreboding among the locals. A day of light rain is an infrequent but not a truly unusual occurrence. Rather, there was quiet enjoyment– a sprinkle to refresh the fields and lanes was a welcome event.

But the morning of the second day brought a change in local consciousness. It was not only the fact that it was still raining, it was also that the rain, light as it was, had been continuous – it had not let up for more than five minutes in the past twenty-four hours. And the look of the sky and the feel of the air promised more of the same.

The dry dusty paths that are the town’s streets were already turning into a substance somewhere between mud and slime. It was earth not used to being wet and didn’t know how to handle it. People started collecting mud and putting it on their roofs: the idea being that the thicker the layer of mud on the roof, the longer the rain would take to percolate through it. No one seemed particularly worried about the extra weight the mud-brick walls and the roof-support beams were being subjected to. After all, these houses were “built”. The walls were two feet thick. The main thing was to keep the houses from dissolving.

Before we retired on that second night, having sat through a day of precipitation identical to the one before, and having watched bag after bag of mud being dumped onto the roof, I carefully questioned the owner about sleeping under this now sodden roof, bearing I didn’t know how many times its usual weight. Our room, wouldn’t you know, was on the top floor of the guesthouse.

“Don’t worry! No problem! The building is strong and the roof is thick and the water will not come through,” he said. But he said it with such hearty offhandedness that I was not at all reassured. Before we went to bed we organized our belongings for a quick getaway.

It was two-thirty in the morning when we woke up, Carol having just been nailed between the eyes by a dollop of water. Directing our torch beams around the room, we noticed strange patterns on the white walls, ochre stains that hadn’t been there when we went to bed. And in a few places water was running quite uninhibitedly down the walls. We quickly packed the rest of our belongings. Stepping out on the veranda, I realized that the entire town was awake and that it was still raining. People were on their roofs spreading still more mud. We moved down to a vacant ground floor room and blithely resumed our night’s sleep.

The next day dawned grey, and yes, it was still raining. All the ceilings and floors of the upstairs rooms were pocked with leaks, but the building had not collapsed and our ground-floor room, though somewhat damp, was unblemished and leak-free.

Nature called, and as I was inside the outdoor toilet, a piece of land above it gave way and a miniature landslide composed of bowling-ball size rocks and a ton of mud stopped just short of the outhouse door. And just short as well of the nicely ambiguous headline that would no doubt have appeared in newspapers throughout the world: “Tourist washed away in toilet.”

About the authors of this article: Carol and Martin Noval have lived in India for more than twenty-five years and organize and lead cultural and adventure tours and treks throughout India and the Himalayas. Check out their website: www.tripsintoindia.com and can be reached at: tripsintoindia@usa.net