And the kinds of things which don’t fit into any other categories… I’ve now had some experience of travelling and planning my trips, and as much as I think I’m starting to get better at preparations, I still make the odd mistake so for this next trip, I did a lot of preparation. One thing I’ve realised is that when you start planning, there are four parts to your preparations:
- Having an idea where you are going.
- Preparing the bike.
- Gathering all the kit you need.
- Odd’s and ends.
IDP (International Driving Permit)
Looking at my journey, and the possibility that I may go further, I needed to have an IDP. Well, two actually. For Africa I needed to have a 1949 and a 1968 permit, both which are available from the local post office costing of £5.50 each. All you need to do is take your driving license and a passport picture for each license and it only takes a few minutes. The ironic thing is that during my entire trip – I was NEVER asked to show an IDP.
INNOCULATIONS
I went to my local health-centre and they determined that I would need ten injections, which would happen over 5-weeks. Rabies, Hep A & B, Yellow Fever, Cholera and Meningitis. I was up to date with inoculations when I left the Royal Navy but over the years I have let my inoculations slip. The cost of my inoculations was just over £200.
ANTI-MALARIALS
I really did some research about this and found that although there are pills you can take to prevent Malaria, over extended periods they CAN affect your health, so I decided not to use them. Why..? Well, besides the increased cost of buying them, I knew the risk was minimal for the countries I was visiting and if I did go further than Senegal, I could always buy some on the road. Also, I didn’t want to affect my long-term health. The hour-glass of my life is getting smaller now, so I didn’t want to decrease my life-span any further. Deciding not to use them I just made sure I was covered as much as possible, used my repellent stick wherever I could and always kept my tent closed as much as I could. I did experience lots of insect bites, and at one point in Senegal if you’d seen my legs and arms you’d have probably thought I was a heroin addict – but I got through it and didn’t catch Malaria.
INSURANCE
I seriously tried to arrange health insurance but each company I contacted would only insure me for a maximum of two months. The nearest I got was a company that specialises insuring journalists who go into war-zones and they estimated around £3k, so I decided not to bother with insurance – and to make sure I had a good first-aid kit and plenty of ibuprofen with me…
MONEY
When I travelled around Europe in 2022 I used a Post Office travel card. The principle is great: you top it up from your bank account using the app and use it as a normal card. In practice, I found that in some European countries, although it worked fine at ATM’s, I struggled using it at petrol stations. This became apparent in Sweden as there are many unmanned and automatic petrol stations – which you can only use with a card. Fortunately, the day I found this out I had enough fuel to get me to another station. I stopped using it when I returned to the UK.
After hearing many good things about REVOLUT cards, I ordered one a few weeks before I started the journey. It worked perfectly in every country I visited and I never had a single problem with it. Also, because you top it up from your app, it was so easy and quick to transfer funds into it or check the available balance.
When I started the journey, I carried 500 Euro’s and 220 dollars US in currency: the Euro’s were for ‘just in case’ money and the Dollars for Sierra Leone and Liberia visa’s – as they only accept US Dollars. I would top-up the REVOLUT card in £150 increments, and this system worked well for me. Whichever country I visited I never had any problems finding ATM’s or withdrawing local currency. In Mauritania or Senegal I found some ATM’s had no money, but there was always another ATM not too far away.
THROWAWAY WALLET
I always carry two wallets when I’m travelling, my normal wallet and my throwaway. It’s something I learned many years ago when I was in the Royal Navy and it’s something I still do. My normal wallet is always tucked away in an inside pocket, but my throwaway I always keep in an easily accessible pocket.
The throwaway is an old wallet, and inside I carry a few bits of low denomination currency, some bits of paper and some cards that have expired. If I was ever to get mugged, or held up and asked for my wallet – then I would give them my throwaway and hope that it’s enough to fool them.
MOBILE PHONES
For the past few years I’ve preferred being an Android user rather than an iPhone user, but for this trip I was taking my Apple Macbook with me to edit video and soon realised that I needed a quick and easy way to get pictures off the phone and onto my Mac.
Getting pictures off an Android and onto a Macbook is a royal faff. Also, the camera on my android was not very good – so I bought an iPhone 11. This was to be my quick way of taking pictures and my backup phone in case my Android got broke, lost or stolen.
The iPhone is an attractive thing to steal, so I would use my Android throughout the trip as my navigator and my DJ. It would sit on my handlebars every day to play music into my helmet or show Google maps, and I would use locally bought sim-cards or e-sims for data.
The iPhone would just sit in my pocket and I used it for most of my photography. I also made sure that both phones had the same (or similar) apps incase I lost one, and that both were loaded with my music library and had Quadlock cases to it onto my handlebar mount.
PHONE APPS
I’m not an app collector so only have the apps on my phone that I actually use. I normally use my phone as communication device rather than an entertainment device, but realised I needed some extra apps, plus I needed to ensure some similarities in case I lost one of them. These are the additional apps I used while travelling and which I had on both phones:
- This is invaluable and the main way I found places to camp.
- com
- com
- Weather Radar
- Revolut Banking App.
- A currency converter by GV-APPS.
- Google Translate. Invaluable – and used almost daily.
In doing my research beforehand lots of people said different things about apps, and there were many recommendations. I downloaded several more apps but during the trip I deleted the apps I wasn’t using as there just didn’t seem any point of having them on my phones.
PICTURE TAKING
Initially I didn’t intend to take a proper camera with me, but my mate Brian said I’d regret not taking one – so I decided to take a Fuji X-E3 with a 16-80mm lens and three spare batteries. The camera fitted snugly into the middle division of my tank bag as having it there meant it was easily accessible – but – I hardly used it because of two simple reasons:
- Firstly, when you take pictures with a phone people completely ignore you. You’re almost invisible and inconspicuous – because everyone takes pictures with their phone.
- Secondly, as soon as you take out a proper camera you do get noticed. Quickly noticed, and in poorer areas you can easily become a target – so that’s why I used my iPhone for most of my picture-taking. It was easier, quicker and more discreet to take out my phone to take pictures instead of the Fuji camera.
The iPhone was always stored in the thigh pocket of my riding trousers, and because I was using it as a camera I didn’t bother with sim-cards or to backup the pictures to the iCloud drive. The iCloud works well if you are in Europe and have data or Wi-fi but there were times I had no data whatsoever, and for the times I did, it would have been a waste of my precious bandwidth. Instead I would connect the iPhone to my laptop each evening to download any new pictures and then I would back-up the laptop onto a 500GB portable hard-drive. I never lost a single picture during the trip.
DOCUMENTATION
I bought an A4 waterproof document wallet for my documentation and kept the wallet in my top box so it was safely locked away – but easily accessible. The documents I carried were:
- V5 (vehicle registration document) plus a copy.
- Printed copy of my UK/Europe vehicle insurance documents.
- Copy of my MOT certificate.
- Copy of my passport.
- A second driving licence, which cost £20 from DVLA.
- Colour copy of both International Driving Permits (inside cover).
- List of inoculations.
- My yellow fever card.
I also scanned each document and card into PDF’s using a flatbed scanner, and copied all these digital copies onto both of my phones AND my laptop.
I ended up getting two more copies of my V5, and I’m glad I did. Upon entering each country your V5 is always required and eventually the copy gets written upon or gets grubby so the extra copies helped. Other than that, and with the exception of my passport, I was never asked to show my inoculations, yellow fever card or IDP.
FICHE
When you start overlanding and researching about going to Africa there are many tales on the internet about the mysterious ‘FICHE’. In one online forum someone had provided a document in English and French with relevant boxes that you could fill-in with your personal details such as name, DOB, address etc. I had several copies to use as the ‘FICHE’ – which turned out to be UTTER RUBBISH.
When you get stopped in the Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal or the Gambia and you get asked for a ‘FICHE’ and all you need to do is give them a photocopy of the inner page of your passport – either colour or monochrome. And that’s it, a simple copy of your passport.
Why do they ask for a FICHE..? In northern Morocco the police are well-served with tech so if you’re stopped, they will just take a phone-picture of your passport. As you travel further south and into Western Africa they are not as well served with tech and don’t have scanners or smartphones – so they ask YOU for a copy of your passport. It’s easier, quicker, saves them a lot of hassle and as a western traveller – you CAN afford to carry lots of paper copies. It’s part of the cost of travelling.
During my preparations I made around 20 of the English/French FICHE form I had downloaded from the internet and adapted, but when I got further south in Morocco I tried to give the Policeman my FICHE form but he wouldn’t accept it and wanted a copy of my passport – and fortunately I had several copies of my passport.
Before I headed into the Western Sahara I got myself another 20 copies of my passport, more in Mauritania and then more again in The Gambia. All told, I went through at least 80 copies of my passport during the whole trip. I didn’t get stopped 80 times – thought it felt like 80 – but when you stay somewhere in Western Africa they need a record your passport details and having a copy of your passport helps them, so not all were used at checkpoints.
