We did Germany to Cape Town just in the last year on an R100GS and an F650GS. I've recently bought an R1200GS so I know a bit about that as well.

When we rode down through Sudan we teamed up with four other riders, one of them on a beautifully prepared R100GS in true rally raid style. Big tank plus the small HPN tail tanks for a total of 50 L of fuel. Very nice. Somewhere in the middle of the Nubian desert his bike broke down. He had all the spare electrical parts that one normally takes for an airhead but it turned out to be the one part he didn't take, the regulator. He got on the sat phone (!) and called a friend back home to send a regulator ahead to Khartoum. The lesson learned was that you can't possibly carry all the spares you may or may not need. I lost the steering head nut from my bike and while the African solution of manufacturing a new nut worked just fine (OK riding without a steering head nut for 1,000 km was a bit unnerving) I was also able to contact a friend and send a new one down to Addis Ababa.

Nowhere on the trip did we need a range greater than 450 km so my 35L tank worked fine. Of course if you take a more adventurous route you may need more (e.g. Lake Turkana).

I would suggest that you don't need to carry a whole wack of spares, that a 450 km range is just fine for fuel load and that water was readily available except for a 100 km stretch of the Nubian desert and for several good stretches on the Moyale - Isiolo route.

Have fun planning!

__________________
Ekke Kok

'84 R100RT 141,000 km (Dad's!)
'89 R100GS 250,000 km (and ready for another continent)
'07 R1200GS Adventure 100,000 km (just finished Circumnavigating Asia)
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

www.ekke-audrey.ca