Gorom-Gorom Voyage Tips and guide

Gorom-Gorom is a market town in North Burkina Faso.

Why come to Gorom? The famous Thursday market is still as big as always but not as quaint, rustic, or charming as the days before economic development brought concrete and tin construction. The town has modernized a lot and is getting timbuktu-ified with tourists. The guides are pests. But it still makes a convenient base for travelling to other, more culturally interesting, colorful, remote, exotic villages and sites in Oudalan.

The area as recently as 2024 has witnessed displacements and repeated attacks on villages from insurgents.

Everyday the SOGEBAF and TSR lines run buses leaving from Ouagadougou in the morning and afternoon and stopping at Dori. At Dori, get a bush taxi by asking one of the touts that hangs around the bus station - they will most likely find you first. A trip to Gorom costs 1500 CFA as of May 2006, but fares might be 2000 CFA in the rainy season, when the road is trickier.

On Sundays and Wednesdays there is a direct SOGEBAF from Ouagadougou to Gorom. It can be very crowded, since these buses serve people going to the Thursday Gorom market and the Monday Markoye market.

Bush taxis leave from the market to and from Dori everyday and to other nearby towns on their market days. You can also take a camel ride. Going any further than 10 km by camel will pulverize the behind of anyone unaccustomed to this mode of transport.

• The Thursday market
• The white hill
• The Songrei neighborhood in sector 3
• The Tabaski festivities (a Muslim holiday - check your calendar)
• Many Mosques
• Visit the artisan associations Tadarfit and Tegust in sector 4 and see their Toureg leather and ebony artworks. Buy art directly from them to cut out the exploitative middlemen.

• street food
• leather, silver, ebony, and bronze art
• bissap and zoumkoum
• rice and sauce
• a turban

There are little kiosks all over the marché and the major streets serving rice and sauce, mutton soup, rice and beans, and other traditional fare. Don’t overlook the street vendors selling fried snacks. Fried dough-balls with a little sugar makes a good breakfast—something like a donut if you use your imagination. Fried bean-flour balls make a good snack with a beer.

There are qny number of small bouvettes where you can buy whisky, rum, gin, or wine and talk to local drunks. They are sure to love you.

• Auberge. On the main road from Dori, close to the hospital and gas station. Basic rooms, and beverages served. Looks rundown and poorly managed. Cheap.

• Go look at the archeological site at Oursi
• Koryzena has an auberge for travellers.
• Menougou - scenic village near a marsh -- good for bird watching
• The marsh of Darkoye
• Go to Deou to see the last remaining all-traditional market in the area (that is, all wood and thatch hangars instead of concrete and tin stalls.)
• Go to Tin-a-Koff to see the Touaregs, the river, and the forest. There is an auberge there as well.
• Go to Markoye and see old rock carvings and other archeological attractions.

All three Sophie books by British children's author Stephen Davies are set in Gorom-Gorom.