Africa - Photoreport (Prague to Cape Town)

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Xpat

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Introduction

I was asked at work to prepare a small presentation about bike trip I did in 2005/2006 that took me from Prague to Cape Town. While I was going through the pictures I thought there may be people here who may find the trip interesting. So here goes - it’s not going to be standard ride report with detailed description of the trip as it’s been long time ago (and it would take months of hard work which I’m not prone to), but rather a photo-report of highlights of each country with short commentaries and snippets I still remember to hopefully put things into a bit of context.

Little background: Over the years I’ve done quite a bit of backpacking around the world until 2000, when on my mates urging I’ve made driving licence, bought Africa Twin and went for a 3 months overland trip to India and back to Prague. Five years of rat race later, I felt in dire need of another proper R&R - another overland trip. Ever since the India trip I had Africa at the back of my mind. After Asia, Africa seemed as the most logical overland destination as there is no need to ship the bike, or only worst case only one way. Plus, quite frankly, Africa must be the top destination (bar none) for any self-respecting seasoned adventure biker.

Which I was not. Yes, I have ridden 25 000 km to India and back a month after I got drivers licence, but since then I’ve just ridden occasional summer weekend and eventually almost stopped biking completely. So when the time came for this trip I decided to substitute missing substance with form. I went full in and purchased the best the money could buy: almost new GSA1150, Touratech panniers, full BMW Rally twatsuit, tank bag and lots of other crap. Oh my, as I’m writing this I feel sympathy for the younger and slimmer naive idiot, but the truth is, if I could reach back in time I would have given my little self a proper klap over the back of the head to get some sense.

Here is the young slim idiot somewhere on Lake Nasser:
051121%2520121-38.jpg

To my credit, I came up with all this on my own - I have never seen or heard about the two British lads (is that short of ladies?) prior to the trip and used to react very grudgingly when asked by random tourists if I ride the GS because of Evan. And to be fair, while I did end up sending quite a lot of stuff like rally jacket back home, the GS did quite well - out of total of 40 000 km, I have ridden about 15 000 km off tar and few thousands I would even qualify as offroad (e.g. deep sandy double tracks in Sinai, Sudan or rocky Kaokoland) The only issue I had by the time I’ve made it to Cape Town was slight leak in the rear shaft. And the only time I had to turn back was on the Kunene river track between Swartbortsdrift and Epupa Falls, and that was mainly because I hit it in the late afternoon and didn’t have a clue where it is going.

But the trip would have been much more fun on 640 Adv, XT600 or DR650, to mention bikes available at the time (sadly, those are still probably the only options available now - maybe with exception of Tenere or possibly Terra) and of course using soft luggage.

In terms of route, I wanted to go overland down the east coast, via Syria and Jordan. I’m not big on planning and usually figure things out once on the way, so I have just secured upfront visa for Sudan and Ethiopia which were supposed to be very unpredictable (and maybe Syria, don’t remember now), bought maps, Lonely Planet and was ready to go. This is the rough route I ended up doing (total of 40 000 km):

Africa%2520Trip.png


I did not have hard deadline (I quit my job), but I expected to take about 6 months to get down to Cape Town, ship bike and fly refreshed back to rat cage called Europe. I ended up taking one year to get to CT (September 2005 - September 2006), in the process got bitten by the African bug, managed to score a job in South Africa and stayed here since.

I’m not going to cover the Europe and Turkey portion as I have just rushed through those and they are not that interesting anyway (except for Turkey). To get to Syria I have ridden through Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey.
 
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