Travel in Senegal

Sitting on the far west coast of Africa , just south of Senegal, Guinea Bissau is a small yet vibrant African nation just beginning to take its place on the tourist map. Years of colonial rule followed by decades of political instability kept this once-Portuguese outpost a secret, known only by dedicated deep-sea fishermen and a handful of NGO workers. But it’s not going to remain a secret for much longer, as Explore begin running trips to Guinea Bissau in November 2016. We sent photographer Diana Jarvis to uncover Guinea Bissau – here are some of her best shots.

First came the coronavirus pandemic. Then came so-called "revenge travel." Now, it seems like the mad dash to Europe is an annual phenomenon that's here to stay.

"New Orleans is a city of mood,” chef Serigne Mbaye tells me one Wednesday morning in September. We've been discussing the merits of Parkway's po'boys and the old-school kitchen at Commander's Palace. While growing up in Senegal and New York City, Mbaye cooked with his mother, and his Uptown restaurant, Dakar NOLA, braids his memories of this time with his haute restaurant experiences and the deep-rooted African heritage of New Orleans.

Jan 30, 2025 • 7 min read

Jan 20, 2025 • 6 min read

In 2025, travelers are venturing further around the globe and staying in their destinations longer, signaling a move toward authentic and immersive experiences—a trend also known as “slow travel."

Planning international travel in 2025 will be a lot easier thanks to a wave of new flights kicking off in the new year. Even better, these flights are expected to be more affordable than ever.

Urban Africa is a love letter to the bustling African metropolises south of the great desert—Dakar, Kigali, Lagos, Addis Ababa, and Johannesburg, to name a few—that are dynamic, diverse, and more traveler-ready than ever. Find more inspiration here.

It's impossible to talk about my solo travel experiences without mentioning Senegal. In 2018, I flew to Senegal alone, knowing no one and nothing about the country. When it was time to board my flight home four weeks later, I didn’t get on the plane. This happened three times. Eventually, I returned home three months later, but the country's effect on me has kept me running back ever since.

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Mongolia. Greenland. Senegal. Sicily.

“As far back as I can remember, I knew I was different,” says Alexander Smalls. Growing up in a Gullah Geechee household in Spartanburg, North Carolina, the chef says he recognized the implication of those differences—in appearance, history, and cuisine. “I discovered early that my friends did not eat any of the foods that I ate. My foods were more akin to West Africa, you know, and very much pronounced in that way,” he says. It wan't until he moved to New York as an adult, that he assimilated the value of that diasporic connective tissue. “Food was a big part of cultural expression and identity of the African diaspora,” he says.

United Airlines will launch flights in eight brand-new cities next year, marking what the airline called the largest international expansion in its history.

In a move that has aviation circles buzzing, United Airlines announced its biggest international expansion ever, with eight new international cities added for 2025. The new routes span multiple continents and include destinations that are especially difficult to access, such as Senegal, Greenland, Taiwan, and Mongolia.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Friday, October 11, 2024, and here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today. 

United Airlines just announced its largest-ever international route expansion for summer 2025—including increased flights to tourist-favorite countries like Spain, Italy, and France and brand new routes to lesser-visited destinations like Mongolia, Greenland, and Senegal.

United Airlines is making bold route decisions as it continues to expand its giant international presence.

Airbus is about to kick-start a new era of long-haul travel.

When most Americans think of cruises, they probably think of island-hopping in the Caribbean or cruising by glaciers in Alaska from afar. That may be appealing for some people, but for others, the idea of being lazy on a ship of thousands of people for a week doesn’t sound like much of a vacation.

On a cloudy morning in Senegal, surfer Babacar Thiaw paddled through a sea of plastic. That day, he was the only local in the lineup at his home surf spot of Virage on the coast of Dakar, where his father first opened a surf shack in the 1970s. As he marveled at the barreling brown waves riddled with trash—and travelers—it hit him: “They’re just here for fun and will leave, but I’ll be here forever,” he thought. “Am I going to be condemned to live in this environment for the rest of my life?” Fast-forward more than a decade, and you’ll now find Thiaw making his own waves as the owner of Copacabana Surf Village, a surf shop, zero-waste restaurant, and a hub for sustainability initiatives like beach clean-ups and youth surf camps with an eco lean.

The rapidly brightening sky was painted with swaths of orange, pink, and yellow. The early-morning light revealed a city that seemed to be little more than a patchwork of haphazardly planned mid-rise buildings in varying states of repair, punctuated with sprawling bushes, trees quivering in the morning breeze, and lawns sloping toward the nearby sea. The nocturnal beep-beep of tree frogs gave way to the insistent chirp of morning birds that rose from the trees to swoop across the sky like animated chevrons. As I watched the Senegalese sunrise on my first day in Africa, I was vibrating with anticipation. Dakar was waking up, and I was here to witness it.

As the world continues to heat up, close to half a billion children globally are living in regions that experience at least twice as many extremely hot days as their grandparents did.