The idea to walk around a small West African country was conceived at a dinner party in Brooklyn, New York, in March. By mid October, Jason and I were on our way to The Gambia to embark on our adventure.

We’d previously talked for quite some time about escaping the rat race of city life and had been trying to decide where and how we would do it. Jason had always been interested in the Scottish explorer Mungo Park’s expeditions to find the source of the Niger River (Park had tried twice, once in 1795 and then again in 1804 when he unfortunately met his early demise), but such a journey would take at least a year of preparation and full sponsorship to achieve.

So, last March, at the said dinner party, a friend told us about the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage, which involved him walking some 500km through northern Spain. At that point I looked across the table at Jason and said, “How far do you think it is to walk around The Gambia?”

The reason I mentioned The Gambia was because both of us had been travelling there, independently, for many years but neither of us had truly explored much of the up-country regions. Also its a relatively flat country, which is something to consider when one wants to walk the whole way around a country! The decision was made.

The trouble was that neither of us had ever planned an expedition before, so it took about six months of preparation. It was a baptism by fire, but it was also a great learning experience, one that will help facilitate our next expedition (less than a week into our Gambian journey, we decided that following Mungo’s footsteps was definitely on the agenda). Invaluable advice was also gained from purchasing a copy of the Royal Geographic Society’s Expedition Handbook by Shane Winser – it is the explorer’s Bible.

On the fundraising side of it, we contacted The Eden Project, Cornwall, UK, who gave us tremendous advice and support on how to raise money for the trip and for the charity we had chosen: Gardens For Life, a project started by The Eden Project to educate children around the world about agriculture and communication. There are five of these school gardens in The Gambia to date.

Along with the two of us, the expedition team consisted of Janneh, Samba and Momadou (three local Gambians), two donkeys and a cart to carry our supplies.

We walked around 10 hours a day and in the process covered an average of 25-30km for the expedition’s 42-day duration. We quickly discovered that if we wanted to avoid walking for too long during the hottest hours of the day, we would need to rise at 4am every morning and be on the road by 5am – sharp! That way we would have at least three or four hours of walking before the heat of the day really set in. It was a wise move as the donkeys moved so much faster in the cooler hours, as did the whole team.

Arriving at villages constantly proved to be a noisy and boisterous affair, as half the population of local children would instantly surround us; the remainder would join in once the bush telegraph had worked its way from family to family. They would run around us, shouting, “toubab, toubab”, which is the Mandinka word for white man or European.

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Our aim each day was to reach a village by 3pm at the latest so that we could meet the alkalo (village chief). Jason would then engage in the age-old traditional greeting of giving kola nuts. This is known as silafando, which translates to ‘a gift to you on behalf of my journey’. We would then request permission to camp in the chief’s compound or somewhere else in the village (preferably beneath the shade of a big tree) if there wasn’t enough space to pitch our tents. Lastly, Jason would ask the chief if he would kindly agree to having a photographic portrait taken of him.

The traditional greeting was essential in approaching each village chief as this shows an understanding and respect of the Gambian culture. Due to this, all the chiefs and elders we met on our journey agreed to pose for a portrait. Each chief and elder was then given a print, which we printed from a battery-powered printer, before our team left the following morning.

It was also important for us to learn, at the very least, the Mandinka greetings – which can go on for around five minutes at a time with each and every person you meet. Each day, Janneh, an ex-English teacher, would teach us more of the Mandinka language as we walked along.

Whilst on the road, we were constantly greeted by “Nimbara, nimbara, eckatah munto?” which means, ‘How is the work? Where are you going?’ Their inquisitive looks would soon turn incredulous when we told them we were travelling around the entire country on foot (“bi tamala singolah”). On more than one occasion, the Gambian would laugh and respond: “But ‘toubabs’ don’t walk, you drive everywhere! And, as for those donkeys, they will be dead in two days!” One quote I’ll never forget was from a young Gambian schoolgirl in the town of Bansang – “If you speak English, do your donkeys understand you?”

A major highlight of the expedition was crossing the Gambia River at Koina Tenda, the most easterly village in the country. This was quite an achievement, not only because were we halfway through our journey but because we even managed to get the donkeys into a small metal boat. Just persuading them to even get within sniffing distance of water (which they are notoriously afraid of) is hard enough, let alone actually getting them both in a boat and across a river – a true reason to celebrate.

The expedition ended on 13 December, right where we had set off six weeks earlier. Unfortunately, our welcoming party at the Makasutu Culture Forest managed to miss our return as they’d all grown tired of waiting for us and had gone to bed! The irony being that after having found our way on a 930km expedition around the small West African country, we managed to get lost stumbling around in the dark during the last few hours of our walk. We simply didn’t realise that that we were actually only about a mile away from Makasutu and the end of our journey. All part of our Gambian experience!