Why?
Growing up, I always loved adventures—anything from visiting old castles to climbing the fence of old military camps around Norway. I decided once I got my driving license: the ultimate freedom, I had to do some sort of crazy trip.
My criteria for this trip were:
- It had to cost less than $5k
- It had to be to countries no one goes to, so I’d have cool stories
- Covering a considerable distance
- Ideally starting my drive from home
I started reading about what trips “overlanders” (people who travel in 4x4 cars) were doing at the moment. The most popular ones were: shipping your car to Latin America and driving around there or driving to Iran. The former was both too expensive and touristy, and the latter just wasn’t far enough. So I read about some of the trips which used to be popular in the 80s, one of them being driving through the Sahara, this was more up my alley. I wanted to go even further, and decided I should be able to get all the way down to South Africa.
I started doing a tonne of research around visa rules, country safety, and different routes I could take. This needed a lot of planning.
After finishing high school, having just turned 18 and received my driving license, I took a year off to ensure I could accommodate this trip.
The trip
After having planned everything out, we went to my grandma’s place in Munich to save on the costs of buying a car in Norway.
We then bought what was probably the cheapest 4x4 on the market that was still able to drive for $3200, a Hyundai Galloper 1999 model. We also purchased a rooftop tent, after I convinced the Chinese manufacturer that I needed a cheap sample so I could buy 100’s of units for my “tent-import business.”
I had also managed to convince three friends to go on this trip with me. Being 18 years old, the first one got a straight no from his parents, the second one stayed with us in Munich for two weeks preparing, then got too homesick and had to go home. So myself and the only friend left embarked on what was going to be a 4-month trip.
How it went
We ended up driving for 3.5 months and over 20,000km through the entire African continent. We did everything from driving through places without governments, being chased by a guy with a machete to getting stuck in the mud on a 200km empty stretch on the DRC border.
We ended up with a trip of a lifetime and loads of crazy stories, hit me up any time if you want to hear them. We also wrote an entire blog where you can read about our journey at: tourdeafrica.com
