Using beta from locals, hours on Google Earth, and more than a few blog rabbit holes, the route started to fall into place. Sure, it wasn’t a full crossing of the continent in the purest sense, but it was still a lengthy adventure across several borders. Linking them together, our route wound through the lush hills of Uganda and Tanzania, crossed the savannas of Zambia and deserts of Namibia, transected the famed Skeleton Coast, and wrapped up in South Africa. We plotted key stops like Katavi National Park, Lake Tanganyika, Victoria Falls, the Caprivi Strip, the Skeleton Coast, and Namaqua National Park, plus a dozen or so more. We began piecing together the route from halfway across the world. This left 5,000 miles-the equivalent of driving from NYC to LA and back-to figure out. We planned to go off-grid for long stretches, which required tents, stoves, dehydrated meals, first aid, tools, and a repair kit, among other things.īy opting to start in Kampala, we cut a couple thousand miles of sandy riding across the Sahara, allowing ourselves to focus on temperate zones to the south. Food and gas stops were left unplanned, to preserve a sense of freedom and flexibility. We started by mapping a series of checkpoints- national parks, lakes, deserts, waterfalls, and lodges for semi-regular showers-and connected these dots from north to south. Photo by Andy Cochraneīuilding an Africa road trip route from the ground up So, we unanimously chose the alternative, a shorter route that allowed us to go further off the beaten path. Even with the right bikes, 7,500 miles in 25 days (after excluding a few for flights and a buffer for mechanical mishaps) didn’t pencil. Napkin math showed it wasn’t possible to ride from the Med to the southern tip without an abundance of long, boring highway miles. The first step was securing a month of PTO, and the second was figuring out how in the world we were going to tick Sean’s bucket list. We knew early on that we needed to start from scratch we weren’t keen on a copy/pasted trip report. It’s a potent emotion, and once you get a hit of it, it’s hard to quit. This kind of adventure tends to invoke a feeling of being raw, small, and very alive all at the same time. This wasn’t a matter of practicality as much as it was knowing what makes us happy: driving down a dirt road, semi-lost in a foreign land. The second most popular trans-continental route follows the western coast and ends in Morocco. It stays mostly on tarmac, paralleling the southern coast to Durban, then north through Mozambique and Malai, before heading to Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, and Addis Ababa, followed by a final push to Cairo. While there's no set moto route across Africa akin to the Pan-American Highway in our hemisphere, there is a well documented thoroughfare from Cape Town to Cairo. After years living in Uganda, exploring rural roads on a beater four-stroke, he chirped, “I’ve dreamt of riding across Africa for a decade.”Ī handful of months later, relying on some mystery cocktail of hustle, luck, and collective penchant for mischief, we set out to do just that. His answer was as immediate as it was simple. I asked Sean about his dream trip, thinking little of it. The entire week was a comedy of errors-dead batteries, broken belts, blown tubes-which set the scene for a big idea. Our co-conspirators, Marlin and Josh, were busy hooking up a tow rope in hopes of limping a bike back to Bishop. We were testing new electric motos and things weren’t exactly going to plan. Six months before I embarked, I sat on the side of a dirt road in the southern Sierra with my friend Sean, riffing on how to get out of our current pickle. Such is the genesis story of my motorcycle ride across a large swath of African soil, measuring out 5,000 miles from Uganda to South Africa. Or perhaps better said, the best ideas often come at the hardest times. Inspiration, in most cases, isn’t born out of routine.
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