I started the year with a January/February trip to West Africa: Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Gambia, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Sierra Leone. It was a small tour organized by Original World Travel. The four of us went with our guide, Traore Mohamed (nicknamed Momo, pictured below), on a combination of modes of transportation: flights, minibus, and boats. It was an excellent trip.
In September, Joanne and I went to the Eagle Festival in Mongolia, with a fun but too short stop in Turkey to visit Cappadocia and Istanbul. I then flew to Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. In October, I made three stops on the Horn of Africa (Somaliland, Djibouti, and Eritrea), topped off with a final stop in Afghanistan.