Dakar 2023 - Stage 7 - The Summit

We start very early. It's worth it. I'm contemplating how a herd of cows, illuminated by the rays of the low sun, raise dust, creating an incredible spectacle. The animals move slowly. I hear them breathing. We stay in this world until noon, when we hit the tarmac. We want to take advantage of being here and reach the last and furthermost point of the expedition - the Dindefelo park, right up to the border with Guinea. After the experiences of the last few days, these 150 km of tarmac is taking forever. The only entertainment is pondering whether riding bikes into the park would be wise from the perspective of the wild animals living there, whether lions might attack us, pulling us off our bikes like rag dolls? Apart from that, not much else, I regret how much grass people burn here, just few steps from the Sahara. The same Sahara that every year pushes and greedily takes over new areas. Do they not realize this? We pass an overturned, still smouldering, truck. Its load is entirely garlic. The view is as strange as the smell.

Finally we reach the Gambia River. Riding over the bridge, I admire dozens of people standing knee-deep in water doing all sorts of work, half-naked women washing clothes, some boys carefully rummaging through the bottom, children playing in the shallows. Right after the bridge we decide to take a swim too. We find a spot, from a distance we are greeted by the screams of children, they are jumping into the water from a tree, below a woman is doing laundry, perfect! I don't rush this moment, I let it last until we decide together that it's time to go.

What begins from this moment is an exact image of how I have always visualized this part Africa, the cherry ontop. We are in a mountainous, sparsely populated area, mindbendingly beautiful. Right next to it is the famous Niokolo-Koba park. There are no roads as we know them, we move along paths that are only used locally, by two-wheelers, there is an incredible peace and a feeling as if I had gone back in time, to a world without cars and developed civilization. The landscape has taken on a volcanic appearance, the soil is even redder than before, now covered with chunks of solidified lava. It has become hilly, we often come across massive formations of smooth rocks that resemble the Seychelles. Everything is covered with increasingly dense forests, green trees are full of leaves, nature has become completely juicy. This is a place where I feel a childlike joy of discovery, pure pleasure from the fact that I can be here and ride these wonderful areas on a bike. The views are absolutely heavenly. I float in this motorcycle fairy tale, carried by delight, and I do not even notice when the evening comes. It is only Tomek who shakes me out of my dream, after one of the descents we wait for him for quite a long time but he doesn't come. When we return for him it turns out that the fate we have been putting off for many days has reached us finally. Because for many days Tomek and Kuba have been riding with their lights off, saving batteries in every way we know. I thought that we would manage to finish like this, but Tomek is standing without electricity, his bike is shot, on singletrack in the middle of nowhere, and behind us the sun is setting. We make a quick decision, we camp here, we will look for the cause and think how to manage the bike. After a while we are all dressed and prepared, the tents are set up, we tinker with the the bike for a while and then on the tablet we watch reports from the Dakars of the 80s. Someone mentions lions, is it possible for them to venture here? Niokolo Park is very close, is there even a risk of attack, and why are all the huts so tightly fenced, with sheets of metal and wire? The lack of possibility to check it on the Internet, the lack of precise information, makes everything more interesting, spiced with a hint of mystery. What an evening!

In the morning we continue with all those out of this world singles. We are going to get to Dindefelo Park, waterfalls and rocks at the top. When we reach the main road, Tomek is riding on the last of voltage, and it's unlikely he'll make it to the top in this condition, especially since we expect the track to be technically demanding. We decide that Tomek will return to Kedogou and replace the stator, while we will continue the trail and reach the summit. The very beginning gives us a taste of what awaits us, excellent single tracks winding through volcanic landscapes. Once again I ride in complete awe. When we reach the village and order our daily morning baguette, I realize how far we have come. Here, there is no mass tourism, no concrete, people live the same way their grandparents did. The girls who prepare our food giggle under their breath and comment on our arrival, the guys watch the bikes, someone keeps showing up and uses some pretext to spy on what we are doing. Only t-shirts and plastic bowls on their heads, not wicker ones, says what year it is.

We finish breakfast and head towards the Dindefelo waterfall. At home I drew a daring track straight ahead, on Google Earth the scale and elevation were not so visible. At the end of a gorge, we enter a parking lot briskly and meet some guy, who is probably a park ranger. As I am trying to convince him that we know what we are doing, I am looking at the vertical walls of the gorge and start to change my mind. Finally we decide to go from the Segou side. I recognize this uphill immediately, I have already seen it in the Kap2Cap movie, when Lolo and Amaury negotiated it on their Yamahas. We manage somehow, maybe clumsily, but we ride it all at once. Then I see a boy on a scooter, going down the same road... and holding a phone in one hand, which he is talking on. Ok, I turn my head, focus on what is in front of us. We're on a plateau, and these are definitely much less accessible areas than those at its base. At some point, my attention is drawn to strange stone mushrooms, each several dozen centimetres in size. They are fossilized termite mounds, I've never seen anything like them before. We continue along a path where there is a lot of stone steps and ridges, it is really technicall. Suddenly I ride straight into a waterfall and a group of nearly naked women doing laundry. They are surprised, but don't stop working. Then the path climbs uphill with many steps, so we turn around and take alternative path. After a while, we reach the villages on the top. There is a huge waterfall, all dry. At this point Kuba decides that he will not go any further, the battery charge has dropped critically, the radiator fan has sucked out the last of the power. The end of our journey is really strange. Everything happens as if by itself, next to us, without us. Piter and I decide that we will go to the top, we have radio contact with Kuba all the time. We meet some women going to a festival organized by the waterfall, they are carrying baskets of fruit, we admire a tree with beautiful red flowers, we look for our path in the forest. Finally, we are there. The end.

I take off the helmet and enjoy the moment. I collect a few stones, they are burnt by blistering sun, their surface shines as if baked in a kiln. We find Teeth of Dande - pointed red rocks, we rode up here to them. It is forty-something degrees, even in the shade it's unbearable. At one point Piter, staring at the horizon, says that he wanted to go further. We are surrounded by a sea of trees and hills, only in one place does the city break through, the rest is unspoiled.