Welcome to the Garden Guesthouse

Welcome to the Garden Guest House. Here we will explain as much as possible about our holidays in The Gambia, on the smiling coast of west Africa. We offer you an ecologically sound alternative to the usual hotel or 'luxury safari' rip-offs. We are first and foremost about 'reality' and are not stuffy, nor pretentious. We believe in giving you real value for money and a genuine experience of this country, it's culture and it's wonderful people. The 'Real Gambia' experience.

Unlike the hotels, we do not try to pass off on you any psuedo culture. We always offer you the real thing.
Here you will easily make new friends with local people. Haruna will be your best friend and advise you about other people you meet. Even if you happen to be here on your own you'll never feel lonely, neighbours and friends of ours will look after you and keep you company.

We offer you the opportunity to live in a normal house, much like any others in the area. Living in with the local community, amongst the people; you will not be divorced from them, as you would be enclosed in an hotel that could be anywhere on the planet. But you still have a very secure and happy environment.

The Gambians still live in the extended family and call their home a kunda or compound. Our neighbours the Ceesay family live in the Ceesay kunda. We live in the Garden Guesthouse, and all the people staying with us here, mirror the extended families around us, we live like them, in our own kunda.

We have been in business connected to West africa since the late 80's and have been running holidays here since 1994. We have a wealth of experience and have all the right contacts to make sure you have an excellent holiday here.
We are offering you a package that allows you to have your own unique experience, exploring this country and it's culture, whilst being quietly and expertly looked after in the background.

Folk music trio pop in

Map of the west end of The Gambia

Download all the holiday info [as an easy to print PDF] here: This is our brochure. We don't waste trees printing them, willy nilly, but you will want a copy, to easily refer to, as and when you like, without going online: although the photos may look better online, especially if your printer is not very good. A short version is available here, as you may want to save paper too. You can open both files online to look through and then decide which one you may want to print.

This website is geared to what most people want, most of the time; a 2 week half board holiday. However, we can be very flexible about lengths of stay and other details as is explained on the rates page.

But first of all, take some time to explore our website. You'll find lots of information about the guest house and Real Africa holidays, about Bakau our town, about The Gambia and the West African peoples. The site features photo galleries, live music recordings and video clips as well as a link to The Gambia Echo for the latest Gambian news, plus links to other information of interest. And if you still want to know more, just email or call us.