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Travel Diary - 2003
5 January | Senegal
22 January |Gambia
18 January |Guinea
9 February | Mali
22 February | Burkina Faso
3 March | Ghana
19 March | Togo
20 March | Benin
25 March | Niger
12 April | Chad
15 April | Cameroon
16 April | Nigeria
30 April | Congo
24 May | RDC
31 May | Angola
5 June | Namibia
27 June | South Africa
30 August | Lesotho
10 September | Swaziland
9 October | Botswana
17 October | Namibia
19 October |
Zambia
29 October | Malawi
4 November |Mozambique
16 November | Tanzania
12 December | Rwanda
16 December | RDC
18 December | Uganda
24 December | Kenya

Travel Diary - 2004
9 January | Ethiopia
6 February | Sudan
21 February | Saudi Arabia
23 February | Jordan
3 March | Syria
5 March | Turkey
12 March | Greece
21 March | ...And Home

 

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17 months, 43 countries, and 2 vehicles

Chad

Chad, Continued

After a short pit stop we are off again, but no departure from Chad would be complete without a serious amount of unnecessary hassle at the border as everybody and his dog tries for a bribe - sorry but we really weren't in the mood. And to add insult to injury you have to pay for a return trip across a crap bridge into Cameroon in the sure knowledge that Chad is one place you won't be hurrying back to.

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N'djamena, 14/04/03

Three days of hard desert driving have taken us around Lake Chad, and we are now resting and cleaning the feche, a fine powder that gets into everything, from the car. Our camp site is in the car park of the Novotel which offers safe parking; an important consideration in what we have basically found to be an inhospitable country.

The driving itself has been tough, with deeply rutted truck pistes and soft sand, but luckily enough we had no punctures until I awoke to a flat tyre (read trashed tyre) this morning. Will emailed me to say that the truck crossing was marked by loads of thorn punctures for which the route is famous. We got to work out with the spade and sand ladders a lot, and are now experts in deep sand recovery... and in getting stuck, apparently.

From our arrival at Nuiguimi, which is a sleepy village just over the border that offered us a camping spot for the night, we travelled to Liwa, then on to Bol where we managed to blag our way into the governors compound for the night. In the morning the man himself came out to greet us, and it was a delight to meet such a hospitable and welcoming gentleman. Unfortunately he seems to be pretty much on his own - our usual departure from villages where we have stopped for water, air or fuel, seems to be a swiftly executed withdrawal, usually with me riding the tailgate to stop anybody climbing aboard as we escape, and more often than not amid a shower of whatever can be thrown at us (fortunately stones are in short supply in the desert, and the children responsible are poor shots...)

Often the vehicle is mobbed by children while the adults stand by watching in amusement - the atmosphere varies from unpleasant to outright hostile, and the sour flavour that this country is leaving with us is compounded by corrupt and misleading officials who try to shake us down at every opportunity.

We finally arrived in what feels like the sanctuary of the Novotel late on our third day of travelling in a state close to exhaustion, and with firm intentions of moving on as soon as  visas allow.

In spite of everything I've heard, the capital itself is not really so intimidating, and certainly seems more laid back than the villages we passed through en-route, but once we have a replacement tyre and Cameroon visas it's going to be time to get the hell out of N'djamena