In short, it was fantastic.
The wonderful feeling I got whenever I`d packed up my bike, riding out of towns/places, knowing I had everything I needed for the foreseeable future right with me there and then was one of the best parts of the journey.
I'd say that 5 weeks for this trip was just about the right amount of time. We covered many kilometers, some 12 000 of them, and very different places in that space of time and distance.
The Bike
I am very happy with the KLR, it fit the job just right. It handled very nicely ON the roads as well as OFF, with the exception of deep sand, however had I put more off-road oriented tires on it and travelled with a lighter load I am sure it would shine also in this area. The engine started up and ran stable throughout the trip, and nothing on the bike failed, even though there was plenty of rough riding as well as a few incidents.
I would not have changed anything on the bike for this trip, except maybe put a big windscreen on it for the highway legs. There is too much wind buffeting putting stress on the upper body and neck without one.
Going 120-130km/h and with a headwind as well is torture after only a few hours. But if I did put a windscreen on it would have to be easily removable and stowable or even adjustable in size, as I would not want the full size windscreen for off-highway riding, due to the warmer temperatures.
The Ride
The best part of the actual riding was through the excellent twisty asphalt roads up in the atlas mountain range and also going off-road into the desert was a real challenge and I learned much.
The worst part was highways. The highway legs were always long in duration, almost always without any interesting sights to look at, and very tiring for the body. Of course the good part about them is that you cover a lot of kilometers fast.
The Companion
The best! An excellent bike rider, Jim is a great organizer and very good at keeping a good overview over the planning details. He is also very punctual and patient. Which fit well, because a lot of the time I was not. Always of good humor, positive, and quick to bring out the Yatzee or some other game to dish out a beating or get one served whenever times were slow. :)
The People
It is a very different culture for sure, and one that I believe takes more time to make sense of.
When we met and talked to that local teacher at the side of the road, he asked us what we thought about the culture and the people. We said that we really hadn't got that many impressions of the culture nor the people, and that we were mostly spending time seeing the landscape and staying out of towns. He said that it made him sad that most tourists he met said the same thing, and that we were missing out.
We could tell him however that the people that we ourselves had made contact with were very polite, hospitable and friendly. The people that made contact with us almost always expected money to start falling out of us if they just kept talking long and loud enough, this is of course understandable in poor areas, but it seemed as long as you were a western-type tourist you were free game for just about anyone regardless of wealth. You got a lot of the "sheep-with-money" treatment.
The Route
The route changed a lot from the original Bergen - Conakry (Guinea). In some ways I wish we could have gone all the way there as planned. Riding from A to B without ever seeing the same things along the route I think is optimal. The downside of course is the hassle of trying to get your bike and equipment all the way back home at the end of the trip.
Having written that, I am glad we opted to take the advise about Mauritania seriously, our source was good, and even though we might have made it through just fine, I don't want to "play" with bad odds when it comes to religious extremists.
The route we did take was surprisingly good. We got to see just about every interesting spot in Morocco and even some of the Sahara. The landscape there is incredible, and it changes so much in very short distances you feel like you are in entirely different places and climates everyday driving through it.
Other
All in all I am very happy with having made the trip. After finishing it the mind does start drifting towards thoughts of: "That was fun, and not too hard.. WHERE NEXT!?".
One thing is for sure, the planning and preparations stage took much longer then expected, and for any potential future trips, I will make sure that I have more time available for it.
South America is for me, very tempting ...
I would still like to go further into Africa, either on the original route or the eastern side down, or even from South Africa up. There is always much instability in some African countries and who knows when and if it will get much better. Time will show.
Me and Jim took a lot of photos and even filmed some, both with our seperate helmet cameras and Jim's hand-held one. We intend to put our heads together and pick out some keepers(h) to upload into a photo-album, and also try to edit a short video of the trip. We have set a deadline by the end of July. I will update here when/if we have anything interesting to show. :)
Right now I am sitting at Schiphol airport waiting for my connecting flight to Split. I had a short week of flying duty, and now I'm going to Croatia for one week on a sailing boat cruising the Adriatic with my sisters Louise and Linda, her boyfriend Andrew and my father.
I am looking very much forward to it, and hope it will look something like this:
No more cabins available? FINE! I'll sleep up here, again...
Thanks for following me on this page and for all your comments and feedback, I had a lot of fun writing this!
