have ever been on.
Now, over 500 days, 4 continents, 75
000 kilometres and countless memo-
ries and experiences later, here we
are: exploring Africa on our two loyal
steeds: BMW F650GS twin and F800GS
Adventure and we’re having the time
of our lives.
Yes, this part of the world is very
different from what we are used to.
Yes, the traffic can be overwhelming
at times. Yes, it does take a bit of ex-
perience to stay upright on a heavily
loaded bike in some sections of what
locals call “a regular road”. But as well
as that, Africa is a place we will never
forget. But let’s start from the begin-
ning.
Sub-Saharan Africa was what we
found most alluring, so we decided
to start our adventure in Kenya. To
get there, we shipped the motorcycles
from Bandar Abbas port in the south
of Iran to one of the busiest sea-ports
in Africa: the port of Mombasa. Try-
ing to avoid arriving in Kenya during
Christmas week (because of the po-
tential delays due to the festive time),
we loaded our motorcycles into a con-
tainer as quickly as we could. From
there we set off to visit Iran’s historic
wine capital Shiraz on an overnight
TRAVERSE 16
bus. Imagine how disappointed we
were when a message from our ship-
ping agent said that the ship will not
leave on time and is likely to be delayed
by two weeks, which would mean that
it would reach Mombasa … right on
Christmas Eve! Then we heard from
another world traveller, that the port
of Mombasa: “Is a zoo, especially that
time of year ...“, making us even more
nervous.
Finally, just as expected – right on
Christmas Eve, our Iranian cargo-ship
called Alvand, reached the shores of
Africa. By luck we met a local shipping
agent in Mombasa who agreed to help