I did not sleep well last night, for a few reasons. This is inconvenient because today I have big plans. Kissidougou to Guekoudou is only 84 km, straight down a road that is probably paved (its well paved through Kissidougou). This will leave me with extra time, so I check Lonely Planet for things to do in town or on the way. There isn’t much. The area around Kissidougou is certainly beautiful, but there are no tourist tracks. I can only guess why this might be the case. Maybe there aren’t many specific natural sites, like waterfalls, or viewpoints that would attract traditional ecotourism. More likely it probably has to do with the relative instability and underdevelopment of this area for most Guinean history.

Indeed, most of the last 30 years has been dominated by multiple and repeated political crises in neighboring countries that spilled into Guinea on multiple occasions. Sierra Leon had a civil war from 1991 to 2002, Côte d’Ivoire had civil wars from 2002-2007 and 2010-2011, and Liberia from from 1989-1997 and 1998 to 2003. All of these wars created large numbers of refugees that fled into Guinea Forestiere. The Second Liberian Civil War in particular spilled over with political chaos. And Guinea, under the government of Lassana Conté, was by no means an innocent bystander during this conflict. In fact, the rebel group that invaded Liberia to start the Second Liberian Civil War had been hosted in Guinea and supported by the government of president Conté. The politics and history here is very complicated. What’s worth knowing is that in addition to accepting refugees, Guinea was an active participant, in some ways, in the 2nd Liberian Civil War. A handful of battles and other violent incidents took place on Guinean soil. A Liberian rebel group briefly occupied Gueckoudou. It is alleged by many that active duty, official Guinean military forces entered Liberia at one point in the war. Etcetera.

And all of was like… 20 years ago. But if I hadn’t read about it, I would never know. Kissidougou is not a nice city, but it certainly doesn’t feel one that was embroiled in ethnic conflict within recent living memory.

Anyway, Lonely Planet has one recommendation for what to do around here:

“The surrounding area, with gently rolling hills and many villages, is great for bicycle tours. The rarely visited village of Koladou, 30 km down a rough, nearly non-existent road, has a vine bridge above some rapids.”

I locate Koladou and look at the distance between it and the paved road and how many kilometers / hours this detour will add to my trip. It’s hard to estimate because ~30 km each way on rough bush trail could be really slow. I plug in various estimates for what my pace could be on these bush roads. No matter how I run it, I’m getting to Gueckoudou well after dark. And that’s assuming the main road stays reasonably well paved the whole way. And then I check the weather. Starting around 4 pm there is a 40% chance of rain. It remains 40% until about 7, after which it increases sharply to about 60%, and by 10 PM its 100%.

But risk mitigation is really not the strongest constituency in my brain’s decision-making process. Rationality and caution have a strong, well-articulated voice. They compel me to consider worst case scenarios and make the above calculations. But the stronger voice in this situation is the damn the torpedoes, constituency. The full send delegation.

So, sleep deprived but otherwise ready to rock and roll, I head to Koladou.

The road heading south out of town is very good. As good as any road I’ve seen in Guinea. It looks like a minor French highway, with bright white paint delineating lanes and wide shoulders. Signs welcome you to every village along the road, and reflectors line each blind corner. So the first 10 km south, to where I will turn off onto a bush trail, zip by. The landscape is, as described by Lonely Planet, only gently hilly, and even pretty flat in a lot of areas. Plenty of rice farming.

At the turnoff I am greeted by a few Guinean Gendarmes standing in the shade next to a police vehicle, yelling at traffic and attempting to whistle down people on motos, many of whom just ignore them and drive right by. I’ve seen quite a lot of Guinean military and gendarmes the last couple weeks. Since getting into more populated areas and traveling on major roadways, they have been rather prolific. While I was in the more remote parts of the Futa Jallon, conversely, I hardly saw any military or gendarmes at all. I’ve grown much more confident, even bold, around these law enforcement personnel. While at first any interaction with them would get my blood pumping and adrenaline flowing, they have become much more commonplace with time/experience. And I think they can tell, based on my reaction, or lack thereof, that I am a seasoned traveler in Guinea and not susceptible to petty intimidation.

And petty intimidation, for lack of a better term, is the main tool they have at their disposal. Yet, I have not paid a single bribe on this trip, unless you count the $5.50 I gave to a drunk military officer to see the Kinkon waterfall near Pita. This is because, I have heard, Colonel Doumbouya, the interim president, is making sure they get paid. For some reason the police and gendarmes were not, apparently, getting paid under Condé, and so resorted to roadblocks, and extracting petty bribes from people traveling on highways. Many people have told me that as recently as a year ago, before the coup that brought Doumbouya to power in September 2021, there were police stops and roadblocks all over the place. Travelers were made to pay petty bribes constantly. These have almost completely gone away, and everyone is happy about it. My timing with this trip is fortuitous. I remember when I first heard about the coup last year. I assumed it would make my trip more complicated, but in fact it’s been a positive development.

There are still some roadside checkpoints, and they seem to be more common down here in the forest region. If I had to guess I’d say this is a holdover from the civil wars and efforts to secure the borders. My default is to simply ride right by. If there is someone nearby I’ll wave and smile and say bonjour. The majority of the time this is fine and I’ll cruise by getting nothing more than disinterested glances from the gendarmes. Sometimes they’ll yell something at me. Usually it’s just a joke or a verbal jab of some kind, like “oooh le tourist!!” Often someone will yell at me to stop and wave their hands. This is generally just bullshit and I keep riding, and no one pursues me. They don’t really have any authority to stop me, and if they are not desperate for money to buy rice, they are not going to press the issue once it’s clear I’m not a green tourist.

Today, as I turn off the highway onto the bush path towards Koladou a guy waves and yells and blows his whistle. I can tell he’s a bit more serious so I pull over and stop, and say bonjour, cheerfully. Often times they just want to say hi and joke around. He comes up to me and, with a show of umbrage, points at his head “Where is your helmet?” (Ou es ton casque de protection?) As he says this he almost laughs. I can tell he isn’t fully committed to this bit. But I can’t blame him, its worth a try. “Where is his helmet?” I say, pointing to a moto driver that’s parked nearby, chatting to another gendarme. “Everyone has helmets,” says the guy who approached me. “Right.” I say chuckling, “Listen, I am just going to visit the village of Koladou. I hear they have a vine bridge,” and start getting back on my bike. Another gendarme emerges from the back of a truck with a military style helmet. “Look! Here is my helmet!” He says. I laugh as I ride off. They laugh too. There is a thin line between petty bribery and joking around, I guess.

The bush road isn’t so bad for a while, and I begin to think, maybe, maybe, I can do this visit and still get back to the paved road and to Gueckoudou before the dark, and more importantly, the rains. It is also really beautiful and lush, and as I ride the terrain gets a little hillier. There are indeed, as Lonely Planet points out, “many villages” in this area. The road goes directly through the center of each one along with way, and I stop in a few of them. These villages are mostly, perhaps all, of the Kissi ethnic group. The Kissi language is in the Mandé language family, but not within the Manding language cluster. The Kissi here are almost exclusively Christian.

I can’t help but notice some things. A little disclaimer— I have no dog in this fight. I have no affiliation or affinity for Christianity. It is also true that mine is a very small sample size. But this is what I notice: The women in these villages are so, so much more confident. When I stop they march right up to me, smiling, making eye contact, and shake my hand. I can not remember this happening in any of the Muslim villages I’ve visited. They speak sturdy French. They ask me questions that indicate they know something about the wider world, and have received some education. The villages are fairly clean. The space between compounds is swept and there is little to no plastic trash on the ground. This last one might be more tenuous, but again, these are just my observations: the dogs are friendly. Most dogs I come across in Guinea are hostile at worst, timid and cowed at best. The dogs here wag their tails. I see people petting them.

I wish I could spend more time in some of these villages, but as I explain to people, I am in a bit of a rush. So I keep trucking towards Koladou. The road soon disintegrates into the nearly non-existent road Lonely Planet warned of. It’s not too wet, which helps things, but there are still plenty of puddles and stream crossings. I am impressed by how lush it is, despite there being a relatively high concentration of villages in the area. I pass by several areas with slash and burn agriculture underway. This phrase/technique gets a bad rap, I think, but it’s not a simple thing to assess. There are different ways to do “slash and burn,” it is not a monolith. What I witness here is mostly farmers clearing out underbrush, but leaving tall trees throughout the area they are going to cultivate. This maintains much of the environmental benefits of tree cover, and helps the area revert more quickly to dense forest when left fallow again.

I finally get to Koladou at about 2:30. I’m pretty stressed about time and hope to make it a quick visit. I ask some young men where the vine bridge is. They inform me that a storm last year knocked down one of the trees supporting the bridge, and that it is no more. Bummer, but these things happen. I ask if they can take me to the site of the bridge anyway, and we walk down to the creek. Or is it a river? It’s a decent sized waterway. We spend a couple minutes looking at the tree that fell, which now crosses the entire creek, and in fact offers an alternative means of crossing to the defunct vine bridge. I am ready to hike back up to my bike when a contingent of about 10 young and middle-aged men show up. One of them, a short man in his 50s, is dressed in slacks and a button up shirt. He is a bit more assertive than the rest and introduces himself as “Monsieur Benoit.” The young men I was with initially spoke decent French, but they weren’t too sure footed with their language, or as guides.

Monsieur Benoit launches into what I would describe as a masterclass in being a local, impromptu guide. He tells me that went to university and trained as an agronomist. His French is good and he answers questions about the land, the ethnic groups in the area, a bit about the history. He’s very friendly and knowledgeable. I ask him if he gets many western toubab visitors. “Yes!” He says, “in 1996 some missionaries came here and were very impressed with our vine bridge.” After this? “No, no visitors.” I find it interesting, and I’ve noticed this before, that very often there are sites recommended by Lonely Planet that the guidebook writers themselves don’t seem to have actually visited, but rather heard about from missionaries and published. The amount of primary knowledge on many parts of West Africa that is generated originally by missionaries is impressive. The core of almost every Peace Corps language manual I’ve ever come across began as the notes of some missionaries.

At Monsieur Benoit’s insistence we cross the river and look at a large field cultivated by the people of Koladou. It is beautiful, and appears to be excellent land for farming— a flat, fertile alluvial plain. Monsieur Benoit talks about how there is a lot of potential in this area for agriculture, hydropower, and mining. He’s probably not wrong on any of these. I have to remind him that I am simply a tourist. Many people in Guinea, even the more well informed/educated, assume that any white people visiting are connected in some way to a development industry or project. This is a testament to just how limited true tourism is and has been in most of the country. Nonetheless, it is interesting to hear his ideas about what could happen around here. I don’t know how realistic any of this is, but, I do, in a way, feel a little bit of a premonition, looking around the fields and huts of Koladou. At present, Koladou is a small village in the bush. But it could so easily develop and change rapidly, if any number of potential investments gets made, or certain resources are located. This happens to villages all the time. I’ve been to gold mining boom towns of tens of thousands of people that, only a decade or so before, were tiny communities of fifty or so people. Am I bearing witness now to antediluvian Koladou?

The name of the village is quaint. Kola refers to kola nuts, the not-so-secret ingredient to coca-COLA. Dou is a just abbreviated “dougou,” “land of.” Before I leave Monsieur Benoit brings a handful of kola nuts to give to me. They are fresh, still in the perfectly white coating which indicates that they were just extracted from the pod. I accept this gift gratefully, and we take some pictures together. Monsieur Benoit has a digital point and shoot camera, a rare sight. Then we walk, along with about 12 kids and young men, to the trail leading out of the village. I slip him 40,000 GNF before leaving, $4.44. This is a very generous tip. M. Benoit knows what he’s doing. He, and the whole village was very nice and friendly, so I am fine with this.

I rode to Koladou on bush trails angled southeast. Now I take trails in a southwesterly direction back to the paved road. The ride out is, somehow, even more beautiful than the ride in. The land is hillier, and I pass through more pretty, clean, friendly villages. I wish I’d had more time to enjoy the scenery and villages, but I am stressed about time, especially after my visit Koladou ended up being longer than expected. Some of the rice paddies are so beautiful I can’t help but stop and stare. Then I wipe my phone and fingers off on my towel and attempt to take a picture. The humidity continues to make this a bit difficult.

I reach the paved road at 5:30. From here it is 61km to Gueckoudou. Even if I do 20 km/hr, which is a lofty goal on hilly roads, I’ll get there at 8:30. It could be raining by 8:30. All I can do is ride. So I do, and it is beautiful, and not too hot, and the sunset is absolutely gorgeous. I stop briefly in a couple villages, one to buy a few little corn bread things, which make a good riding snack, and again to fill up water.

As night falls lightning becomes visible on the southern and eastern horizon, but it is far off. No breeze or noise. Then, about 12 km from town, at about 7:30, the pavement ends abruptly, and the road becomes gravel. It’s not the worst gravel road I’ve ever been on, but it’s not great. This slows my pace down significantly. Riding at night, with only the light of my little torch, on a rough gravel road, requires a lot of focus. It brings me into a bit of a zen state, there is only me, and the 10 meters of road I can barely make out in front of me, and my pedal strokes. Normally my mind wanders while riding, especially if I am not listening to music or a podcast, but not tonight, on this last stretch into Gueckoudou. Tonight I am one with the road.

As with the last couple nights the lightning grows stronger on the horizon as I approach town, but as I crest the hill and begin the descent into town it is still not audible. My luck with early evening storms continues to hold. My luck with roads, though, does not. As I get closer to, and finally enter Gueckoudou, the road becomes absolutely atrocious. Usually it’s the opposite. Telimele, for example, is not connected to anywhere with a paved road, but once you enter the city, the main streets are paved. I don’t think I’ve ever been in such a large town with such a bad main thoroughfare as here in Gueckoudou. Nonetheless, I find myself liking the city almost immediately. It feels surprisingly laid back. The streets are quiet, and the din of the crowds I pass at a distinctly lower decibel than I encountered in Faranah, for example.

My Lonely Planet does not even mention Guekoudou. This is probably because, when the guidebook was published in 2009, this city was still recovering from the fallout of the 2nd Liberian Civil War. Gueckoudou was arguably the center of this war’s spillover into Guinea. If the Lonely Planet was published in 2009, it’s based on reporting from a number of years before that, and Gueckoudou was certainly not somewhere to stop for many of those years. Because of this I rely on Google Maps to recommend a hotel. I stop at one mostly out of convenience, right along the main road, and near the center of town. The first floor is an outside covered bar where I find 20 or so men drinking beer and watching English football. Again, it’s a surprisingly chill scene. People are relaxed, no one is yelling. I’m shown a room. It’s a bit of a dive, but clean, and very quiet considering the existence of a bar downstairs. Most importantly it is priced appropriately: 100,000 GNF, or $11.11. The room also has a nice view of the river that runs through town. The bed is large and comfortable, and the AC unit is pumping. I can definitely do this.

After showering I head out to find some food. It’s after 9:30 at this point. I want to eat as soon as I can and get to sleep. It’s a little difficult to find the rice stands. They are all concentrated around the “gare voiture.” But once I find them, I have a plethora of options. I go for a meat stew much like what I ate yesterday. It is delicious and filling. Then I buy a bunch of bananas and salted peanuts and water, get back to the hotel, and fall asleep. I pushed my luck a little bit today, and it turned out great.