The Gambia is looking for 'quality tourists'

About three hundred kilometers upstream on the Gambia River, near the river island Janjanbureh, Jalamang Danso guides tourists by boat and car past villages, islands and extensive baobab forests. “Most tourists come to Gambia for the three S’s,” he says as a motorboat slowly chugs along the river, “sun, sea and sex.” He scans the coastline for any activity. “While Gambia has so much more to offer.”

The tourism season in Gambia is in full swing; many Dutch people like to flee the cold, Dutch winter for some time in the sun. But they come not only for sun and sea, but also for paid sex. A growing number of Gambians say that this type of ‘sex tourism’ is exploitative and needs to stop. To attract ‘quality tourists’, tourism alternatives aiming for young travelers are slowly coming of the ground.

Read the whole story here.

New work for the Financial Times: a photo series of the Sudanese pyramids of Meroë

For my first Financial Times assignment, I photographed the pyramids of the royal city of Meroë, a site of the Kushite kingdom dating from the eighth century BC, are smaller than their Egyptian counterparts in Giza, at roughly 30m high.

But there are many more, about 100 some 200km from Khartoum, though their tops were blown up in 1834 by Italian treasure hunter Giuseppe Ferlini as he plundered their contents.

The site is largely unvisited by outsiders, apart from the odd group of diplomats, aid workers, and young residents of Khartoum. Stepping alone into one of the world’s greatest archaeological sites may be marvellous for one lucky visitor, but it is also testament to the sluggish state of Sudanese tourism.

“This is the biggest concentration of pyramids in the world. You don't see such a number in one place anywhere else,” says Mahmoud Suliman Bashir, the archaeologist who manages the Island of Meroë World Heritage Site. “It is unique in that you have a site just for yourself,” he adds, comparing the experience with that of other sites with pyramids in Egypt and Mexico, usually teeming with global tourists.

Read the full piece by the FT’s Andres Schipani by following this link, or read more in the posts on my Instagram profile.