Brother...reading every word and can't fathom the sense of dread you must have felt when you realized the panniers were MIA. I'll be doing the same trip solo in a few weeks and starting to doubt my judgement. I guess, however, if your dreams don't scare you a bit, maybe they're not big enough?

Gordon: based on your experience so far are there any other visas which you would now recommend obtaining in London before starting? (In addition to Ghana and Nigeria).
I’m thinking in particular of:
- Guinea: Would it help one to avoid a visit to Conakry with the “immigration form”, (from what you say, it seems that might be desirable on several levels)? But then doesn’t one still have to go there come what may to get the Carnet stamped?
- Côte d’Ivoire: similarly, could having that visa in advance help one to give Conakry a miss?
- Cameroon: would having that enable you to by-pass Lagos?
- Congo: it sounds like getting the visa in Yaoundé or Douala involves either a long delay or a hefty “expedite” fee. Could that be avoided by getting it in advance?
- DRC: (as for Congo).

I am now planning to get my bike down to Casablanca in the next three or four weeks. I’m just waiting on a new passport (mine didn’t have enough blank pages left).
Then back home for a few weeks, three weeks holiday with ‘er indoors, and finally starting the main ride from Casablanca on the 14th or 15th of August. Solo (for a number of reasons). Nothing in my diary then until Christmas. I hope that will give me a decent margin for any delays.

Good luck, chin up and stay safe.

Chris.

Chris: Guinea visa can be done in Dakar and you have to go to Dakar to get your carnet stamped anyway.
It would be great if you could get a Cote d'ivoire visa beforehand. We went to Conakry to get ours but if you already have it you can just ride from border to border and don't need to go to Conakry to get the Guinea visa page put in your passport. You can then cross the country in less than 5 days on the entry paper. I'm not sure where you could get the Cote d'ivoire visa though as the embassy in Dakar won't issue it. Maybe try in Morocco?
We got the Cameroon visa in Abidjan but it took 8 days to process. I'd rather spend time in Abidjan than Lagos! Again, not sure where else you could get that but yes, you want to avoid Lagos if possible.
We haven't received our Congo visas yet which is why we're still in Douala.

Problem with getting lots of visas before leaving your home country is the expiry of the visas you have already obtained. If visa processing takes up to three weeks in London for a Ghana visa you can't afford to then send your passport to multiple different embassies after that without the first one you obtained expiring! Expediting our Ghana and Nigeria visas in London meant we spent about £750 on those two visas alone.

Good job on the passport, you'll need loads of blank pages!

Let us know if you need anything else.

I posted this on a separate thread in case anybody wants to discuss it but for Africa overlanders it is relevant.

Many overlanders talk of buying Brown Card insurance when travelling in West Africa. This insurance is often sold at borders and the agents selling it say it is valid in all the ECOWAS countries. That means it pretty much covers you from Mauritania to Nigeria. I have bought it in the past but on speaking to real insurance agents, they tell me it is invalid. They tell me that the problem is that the Brown Card is not actually and insurance in its own right. It only extends the cover of an existing policy to other ECOWAS countries. If you're familiar with the old European system it is the equivalent of a Green Card, you still need to have an insurance policy on your vehicle in your home country.
For a Brown Card to be valid, you would have to have valid insurance on your vehicle in an ECOWAS country, then the Brown Card would extend your cover to other ECOWAS countries. Overlanders with vehicles which are not registered in an ECOWAS country are not likely to have a local insurance policy upon which Brown Card insurance could be added. A search of the official Brown Card insurance web sites seems to confirm this. Also, Brown Cards must be typed, not hand written. As I understand it now, if you buy hand written Brown Card insurance at a border you are effectively buying a piece of paper which the police will accept as insurance because they don't know what they are looking at but in the event of an accident, when the insurance is checked, it will be found to be fake. I'd like to know the experience of others with the Brown Card for overlanders.

Whoa! That’s definitely valuable info.
My bike insurance has limited annual mileage (I mainly use my other bike). I was telling myself that didn’t matter because once I got to Africa my UK insurers would be off-risk, and I could even cancel the policy.
Clearly life is not that simple.
So it seems I will need:
- to get the mileage limit increased, and
- to take with me my UK insurance Certificate and Schedule (as well as an electronic copy and several hard copies).
Thanks for the additional crucial intel.

One obvious question would be whether a Brown Card--the real thing, not the fake version--will extend your UK insurance, or do you actually need local insurance as is stated in the post above yours (to which a Brown Card can be added).

In other words, I can't see any reason to carry multiple copies of your UK insurance certificate....but this is all news to me. I've rented quite a few bikes in West Africa and all came with local insurance, some with Brown Cards coverage. I used only one to cross borders, and nobody cared in the slightest.

Canucklr: Good luck with your trip. It's not easy but hopefully some of the info on here will be useful. Let us know how you get on.

Congratulations on the completion of this trip and thanks for posting your journey as it was helpful. I budgeted 5 mos. to get to South Africa, but finished in 3 arriving at the end of August. I expedited my trip because, as you know, most of Africa is a rather hostile and unpleasant place to motorcycle through with Namibia and South Africa being the exceptions. I probably wouldn't have done it if I knew what I know now and don't recommend it.

I completed the trip without a carnet and definitely would recommend not getting one though I've heard rumours that Angola may now require one. I had no problem with TIP's/Passavants and even while paying some of the highly suspect fees, it was cheaper than a carnet.

The DR650 would not die or break even after filling it with crappy fuel, dumping it it frequently in the mud and crashing it once.....it just kept going. Only failure was a broken speedo cable. The bike is a bit bent.....but a few replacement parts and fasteners will straighten the girl out again. The Motoz Tractionator GPS tire I installed in Morocco lasted the entirety of the trip.

I too ended my trip at African Overlanders and will have the bike shipped to South America where I plan on picking it up in January and riding back to Canada possibly with another Canuck on a KLR I met up with in Namibia. Sorry to hijack your thread, but I thought I'd would recognize your accomplishment and let you know how things turned out for me.

Excellent job. Well done and thanks for posting your update. Really good to hear you made it all the way to SA. Answering the carnet question will be a big help to others doing the same route too.

The border crossings, corruption and visa issues certainly make it a challenge. Sounds like your DR650 was the perfect bike for the trip.

Good luck for the next leg and keep us updated, we'd love to follow along.