About 8 months ago, my buddy (who was working in Dar es Salaam at the time) and I talked about doing a one-month trip to the East African game parks and Kilimanjaro when he's done with his contract. Slowly but surely, our East African Safari turned into an epic trans-continent road trip, and perhaps beyond if time and money allows.

We bought our own vehicle - a 1998 Toyota Prado 4WD - in Dar Es Salaam. Our current itinerary is to go from Dar es Salaam to Cape Town, then up the east coast of Africa to Cairo. If time and money allows it, we would like to make it to Istanbul. If we still have any will to travel by that time, we are going to make a right turn and head into central Asia, with Kathmandu being the ultimate destination. At this stage I would say our chances of making it to Kathmandu is worst than a 1-outter on the turn, but I would never say never.

I flew into Dar es Salaam on June 8th, planned to start our road trips 2 weeks later but major car problems (cracked pistons) delayed our trip by 2 weeks. We didn't end up leaving Dar until the 1st week of July. In the 3 weeks or so since I've been on the road, we've made it thru Southern Tanzania and most of Malawi. I'm currently sitting my hotel room in Zomba, Malawi, getting our car packed and documents ready for Mozambique tommorrow. It is going to be a rough couple of days as we are planning on crossing the Tete Corridor from Malawi thru Mozambique into Zimbabwe. 2 African border crossing in 2 days, should be fun.

Our highlights thus far:
- The Southern Highlands in Tanzania: never the focal point of Tanzanian travel literature (Kilimanjaro and the Northern game parks are way more famous) but it is surprisingly lush and scenic.
- Lake Malawi: We spent the last 2 weeks chilling so hard on lakeshore towns in the Northern, Western, and Southern shore of the Lake. So beautiful and peaceful

Our Lowlights:
- Tanzanian traffic police (we've gave quite a few 'gifts' already to officials)
- Border Crossing (hopefully this gets better)

Feel free to ask any questions you have about the countries I have visited, countries I plan to visit or life on the road in Africa in general. I'll try to update this thread and my travel blog whenever internet permits and maybe even get some hands in when the connection is stable.

Here is a picture of the beast that will carry us across Africa.



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Sounds AWESOME

You are going to have a lot of issues making it all the way to Istanbul. You will have to go through either Syria or Iraq. Putting it on a boat from Egypt to Turkey is your best bet (assuming that is possible). Getting to Nepal poses more problems too.

There are always solutions. Enjoy the trip

It is still a VERY LONG way away but our original plan was to ship our car from Egypt to Syria so we won't have to go through Israel. I guess Syria is probably not happening now. Contingency plan was to ship car from Egypt to Turkey or somewhere in Europe, we'll see... Fingers crossed that the Syria situation gets better by the time we get there (probably won't be until early 2013)

Well, border crossing doesnt get better. Although tbf, borders at Namibia and SAF are some of the easiest. I really recommend Namibia btw.

Good luck on your trip, sounds awesome!

If Syria is ok by then you could ship it from Sinai to Jordan. Would likely be a lot cheaper and Jordan would be well worth seeing.

This sounds like a lot of fun. I will definitely be following this. GL and be safe!

Post pics from thus far.

Looks like it's going to be epic.

LOL at buying a lemon.

Awesome trip! Keep it updated.

Are you going through Zim or all the way down to South Africa through Moz?

Not sure which is more difficult...probably Moz I assume. You'll be missing Malawian roads before long.

Woo! Looks amazing.

How did you do that map with the letters?

I'll be in South Af in mid Sept -- will you be there still?

IMO drive to Israel/Jordan, ship from there (unless Iran is in the plans, then Egypt to Turkey ftw)

Also did you do rafting in Uganda? Thoughts on the risk for Schistosomiasis?

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/16/...40_article.htm

ask adsman i think he rafted in uganda for several months

op this sounds really cool please keep thread updated + photos

what are the most dangerous areas you expect to drive through in Africa?

There's some vague plans of mine to do this in the future. I've been traveling mostly for the past 4 years so those vague plans should happen, so i'm interested in keeping up with this.

Can you give us some more details about the low point of the border crossings. Is there any risk of not being allowed to enter the country or are they just being difficult for the sake of it? Any they actively checking for anything? Anything you should avoid saying about your reasons for traveling or your profession?

I heard buying a used car anywhere in Africa is stupidly expensive compared to elsewhere, is it? How did you find the process of buying the jeep?

Any reason you are avoiding Israeli? If it's because you have just been to a lot of Arabic states then you could ask them not to stamp your passport/stamp a piece of paper if you want to go to Israeli. Although crossing by land from a neighboring country kind of moots what i just said.

There's only a few do not visit places in Israeli right now and there's lots of beauty there and lots of beautiful Israeli girls.

Read through your blog and came up with a few more questions. I'm sure some of these will read like an armchair travelers naive questions of Africa.

- Preparation you did before going? Books you read before? Goals and general reason for desire to go here rather than somewhere else? I get the impression you are fairly well traveled from reading your blog, past travel?

- How much is the going rate on the small gifts you are having to give to police officers?

This sounds hilarious. Picture?

What is your past experience with car maintenance? This is one of my worries of doing a trip like this. I would be absolutely hopeless at fixing any car problems and the idea of breaking down a million miles from a repair is a slight mental deterrent on my trip. There's no breakdown service that covers the whole continent of Africa?

Also it's rare i say this but i really like your writing style.