Thiès
The railway and tapestry town, where every road in the country crosses — and half an hour from the airport.
- Business
- Families
Thiès is where every road crosses: the one from Dakar, the one to Saint-Louis, the one to Touba, the one to Mbour. People pass through, and that is exactly why the city took the shape it has — the railway made it. The Dakar-Niger depot and workshops employed thousands of men here, and this is where the railwaymen's strike of 1947-48 began, the one Ousmane Sembène told in "God's Bits of Wood". The station is still standing, its sheds too, and older residents will tell you what time the train for Kayes used to leave.
The other legacy sits in a quiet building downtown: the Manufactures Sénégalaises des Arts Décoratifs, founded in 1966 around the painter Papa Ibra Tall. Tapestries designed by Senegalese artists are still woven there by hand on low-warp looms, and the workshop can be visited — the room smells of wool and wood, and a single piece takes two or three weavers several months.
Otherwise Thiès is a working provincial city and a liveable one: the central market and the Nguinth market, Sainte-Anne cathedral, the Iba Der Thiam university, a garrison, mechanics' yards along the Dakar road, and courtyard houses where you sleep better than on the coast because there is neither humidity nor mangrove mosquitoes. Prices are those of a town that does not live off visitors.
It is the best base for the interior: the Bandia reserve is thirty minutes away, Tivaouane twenty-five, Touba two hours, and the airport half an hour — which also makes it, very plainly, a sensible last night before a morning flight.
In the evening the city contracts onto two or three roads: the Dakar road and its restaurants, the streets around the station, a few terraces. You have dinner at eight and by eleven there is barely anyone out. For a traveller that means genuinely silent nights less than an hour from Dakar, which exists nowhere else at that distance. Add the climate: forty kilometres from the coast the air is dry, the nights are cool from December to February, and you sleep without air conditioning half the year.
Getting there
From AIBD: 30 km, 30 min on the Thiès road — the argument to remember for an early flight. From central Dakar: 70 km, 1 h 15 on the toll motorway, 2 h in the evening peak. Shared "sept places" cars run Dakar-Thiès continuously from Baux Maraîchers (around 2,000 CFA, 1 h 30). From Thiès: Tivaouane 25 min, Touba 2 h on the Ila Touba motorway, Saint-Louis 3 h 30 on the N2, Saly 45 min. In town, a taxi ride costs 500-1,500 CFA.
Coming up
December: the month everyone comes home
From December 1 to December 31, 2026
In December, Senegal changes composition. Flights from Paris, Milan, Madrid, New York and Casablanca land full, families drive to AIBD at three in the morning to collect their own, and houses fill with suitcases of presents. It is the month of weddings — more are held in December than in six ordinary months — of naming ceremonies postponed until the uncle from Milan is back, of housewarmings for homes built at a distance over five years, and of reunions planned since the summer.
In practice that means three things. Airfares double from mid-December. Rooms are booked early, especially in Dakar, Saly and each family's home town. And the roads are heavy at weekends, particularly Dakar-Touba, Dakar-Kaolack and Dakar-Saint-Louis.
It is also the best time of year to be here. The weather is dry, it is twenty-five degrees, the sea is still warm, and the drumming in the courtyards never stops before two in the morning. If you are housing someone coming home — a mother, a brother, cousins passing through — this is the month when nobody forgets to count the beds.
Tabaski: the sheep, the family, the road
From May 15 to May 18, 2027
Tabaski — Eid al-Adha — falls on the 10th of Dhu al-Hijjah, which means around Sunday 16 May 2027. In Senegal the exact date is announced a few days ahead by the religious authorities, and the country sometimes celebrates over two days: it has happened again in recent years, and nobody treats it as a crisis.
It is the most important feast of the year. Every head of household who can afford it buys a sheep — prices have been climbing for weeks, sale yards appear on the waste ground of Dakar, and the national conversation is the going rate for a ram. The day before, tailors deliver in a panic the outfits sewn at the HLM market. On the day itself: open-air morning prayer, the sacrifice, the butchering, grilling all day, visits to neighbours and elders, and the formula repeated from house to house to ask forgiveness.
For a traveller: transport is besieged three days ahead — everyone goes back to the village — banks and public offices close, so do many restaurants, and taxis are scarce on the morning of the feast. On the other hand, if you are staying with someone, you will eat as never before.
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