Articles by Doug Nienhuis
I am a Canadian, and I am currently traveling through Asia with a touring bicycle. These are stories and pictures from my trip.
Guinea 037
Thursday, January 18 7:39 a.m. Dalaba
The dreaded cold that everyone warned me about has so far turned out to be more myth than fact. I find it quite mild this morning. Mamou felt much colder. Of course that could be just a question of the difference between a cold bucket bath and an actual hot water shower. And the Tangama Hotel is based on courtyards …
Guinea 036
Tuesday, January 16 2:41 a.m.
I was having trouble sleeping and decided to get up and have one of the world’s best cheese sandwiches. It’s very good. Unfortunately most of the mosquitoes in Mamou have decided to join me. They’re the small, soundless ones with the really savage bites. Their anti coagulant produces a much stronger allergic reaction than that of the big hairy mosquitoes. I’m …
Guinea 035
Monday, January 15 8:00 a.m.
I can add bed bugs to my list of pseudo new experiences. I thought I’d seen them, experienced them before but obviously before Guinea I hadn’t. I didn’t notice them in the night shift room when I was there in Tamagaly. That’s one of the considerate things about bed bugs. They have a very light touch and their bite is painless. …
Guinea 034
Saturday, January 13 1:38 p.m.
The turtle lives. I moved a scant twenty kilometres down the road from Linsan before I decided to call it a day. I thought I was in Konkoure, the only town on my map between Linsan and Mamou, but in fact I’m in Tamagaly. (Though of course that depends on who you ask and how you ask. I could be in …
Guinea 033
Friday, January 12 8:15 a.m.
The plan was to spend only one night in Linsan and cycle to Mamou today but the plan has changed. “J’ai beaucoup de temps” has become my motto repeated over and over again to Guineans querying me about my slow moving bicycle. And with lots of time on my hands I might as well stay in Linsan a day and see …
Guinea 032
Thursday, January 11 12:00 Noon
For the first night in my tent in Guinea (lying on top of it in Mambiya doesn’t count) it was pretty successful. I didn’t sleep the whole night through but didn’t mind drifting in and out of sleep as I searched for comfortable positions. Each time I awoke I could listen to the night sounds. The ground where I’d pitched my …
Guinea 031
Wednesday, January 10 7:00 p.m.
On the road again, fifty-eight kilometres up the road from Kindia in the small town of Sogueta. There’s no hotel here and I find myself camping out in the dirt lot behind the local hospital. There’s a respectable latrine and a good supply of water right at hand so with my tent, Thermarest, stove, and other technological marvels it’s quite comfortable …
Guinea 030
Tuesday, January 9 6:00 a.m.
Yesterday was a day spent in a search for the mysterious land of “la bas.” I don’t know if this is a Guinean French word or if it exists in France as well but as far as I can tell it means “there” or “over there” or “down there.” Whatever it translates as it is a wondrous place, a land of …