We left Alexandria at 8:15 on Monday morning. Traffic was still a bit sleepy at that time of the day – good for us. Still took us a long time to worm our way out of this giant city, and…
The good, the bad, and the ugly: the Egyptian metropoles
The road from Hurghada to Gizeh leads North along the Red Sea coast, before swerving West to cross the desert again. We had been warned by the Aussies, who had passed on this road the day before, to prepare for…
YallaYalla, get going!
We had some troubles leaving Aswan as early as planned, as the gas station Abdullah had told us to go to had ran out of petrol. We found another one, closer to the city, but it took us some while…
“Sittin’ at the dock of the bay… “
We knew we had crossed the border from Sudan to Egypt when the beautifully-lit temple of Abu Simbel turned up on the Western bank of the Nile. Together with the crowd of Sudanese and Egyptians on the ferry, we watched…
Along the Nile, from Nubia to Egypt
Leaving Karima at dawn, we headed for Dongola, about 400km short of Wadi Halfa – where we would then ship our bikes across Lake Nasser to Egypt. We had originally planned to take the long route from Karima to Dongola,…
The joys of the desert, or: A new level of heat
The day we had set to leave Khartoum, we got up at 4:30ish and rolled out of the gates of our Youth Hostel at 6am. The roads in Khartoum were eerily empty – lucky for us also void of rainwater…
Salaam Aleikum! – Welcome to Sudan
We had arrived at the Ethiopian-Sudanese border very early – before 11am – and were also lucky with the speed of the proceedings: Even though the Ethiopian customs officer actually made us unpack several bags (a first! I know, we…
A word on… riding through Ethiopia
We were both apprehensive because of the horror stories we had heard from all bikers going through Ethiopia – Kids throwing stones at you, people driving donkeys and cattle out in the road to hit you… After two weeks of…
Last days in Ethiopia
We left Lalibela early in the morning and reached Bahir Dar by 4pm. This is how we would have liked to introduce this part of the text, but alas, it all came differently. When we stopped on the dirt road…
Check-lists and Churches – from Addis to Lalibela
As always when we reach a capital, we have a long list of to-dos. Sorting out everything that needs to be sorted out for the next country on the list, doing maintenance on the bikes, catching up with the blog,…