I'm all for progress and I have dedicated my entire professional life as a transportation engineer to the civil service so I can certainly appreciate the impact that transportation infrastructure has on the socio-economic life of a region. But... I think that this website is about motorcycle travel. To that end I stand by my original comment that it is a sad state of affairs when the adventure disappears from the classic overland route of Cairo to Cape Town. If this were a website dedicated to improving the lives of Africans I would certainly agree that my comments were "selfish and brainless" but the reality is that this website caters to the "filthy rich overlander types". As an aside, we may not be filthy rich at home (except for that pair of famous actors mentioned above) but when you ride through Ethiopia and realise that your jacket is worth more than the average annual salary of ten Ethiopians you quickly realise that you are indeed filthy rich.

If you go to the "Which Bike?" forum you'll find that discussions usually centre around whether an R1200GS is better than a KTM 990 not whether a Gold Wing is better than a K1200LT. There is a forum dedicated to 4x4s not one to camper vans. That's because this website is for adventure travel. If adventure disappears then it is most certainly a sad day for the users of this website.

If I would have made my comments in the "You can make a difference" forum you bet I would have been out of line but in the Sub-Saharan Africa forum I think it was perfectly OK to bemoan the loss. Maybe if Uganduro would have approached the topic a little more tactfully I would have been much more amenable to agreeing with him (or her) but the manner in which this was presented certainly raised my hackles.

__________________
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