Thanks navalarchitect

Always helpful to get insights and I appreciate you taking the time to give them.

I am nervous on the timescales so your challenge is helpful. I am in the process of working through my provisional route to map out sensible timescales and see what to keep in the itinerary. This is proving interesting so my plans are adapting. If you'd be happy to have a look it would be great to run it past you when i'm done to hear your thoughts. (For reasons I won't bore you with my detailed planning has started on Malawi and then headed north so not done Mozambique yet).

I don't have the option of extending my timescales, but a possible 'plan B' for me might be to leave the bike in Ethiopia and carry on next year.

Hopefully the visa is less of a problem for me (famous last words!). I have links with a couple of charities, one of whom supported my application for a duplicate UK passport (which I now have). I have an agent lined up to sort my Ethiopian and Sudanese visas in my second passport, while i start the trip on the first so I believe I can get these in London.

The average speed and realistic distances is a challenge. I have travelled a bit in Southern Africa (RSA, Zim and Namibia) but not further north. I am trying to test my timings against recent travellers blogs so your comments are really helpful.

I hope you enjoy your trip and really look forward to following how you are getting on.

Cheers
Andy