Explaining the route
Having decided to drive around the world there are a couple of issues.
- One is the fact that there whilst the aim is to go East-West, two of the more interesting bits run North-South. I definitely want to go down Africa but do I then want to turn round and drive straight back up it again?
- The other issue is that there are (at least) two big wet bits – lets call them “Atlantic” and “Pacific” for a laugh.
It turns out that one issue can be the answer to the other. If driving, I’ll end up at the bottom of Africa or South America with a car that I can either ship or dump/sell and buy another on the next continent. So I can go down Africa and up South America (or vice-versa) and see each just once. Dump/sell potentially has its own complications, with import duties, paperwork, etc. so the current plan is to ship.
Hopefully, shipping will be easiest in containers and therefore between the world’s great container ports. This means that it’s most likely to ship once between:
North America: Vancouver, Seattle (Wa), Oakland (Ca) or San Diego (Ca)
And
China: Shanghai or Hong Kong
And the other time between:
South America: Buenos Aires, Montevideo or Rio de Janeiro
And
South Africa: Cape Town, Durban or Port Elizabeth
In each list, the ports are in my approximate order of preference based on an interesting land route. Uncertainty of choice between Cape Town and Durban explains the “loop” through South Africa on the map in my previous post.
Which way round?
When I drew my route map I intended to go westward (for some reason I always think of it as clockwise). However, getting visas for the "stans" and the prospect of snowed-up Silk Road mountain passes if I leave much after September has made me think about going anti-clockwise. That’d put me in the following places (letters are month initials)
SOND: Africa
JFMA: Americas
MJJA: Asia
I’d be in each place in Summer and, as I know from a past business trip to South Africa, things can look very parched and beige then so I probably won’t see them at their best. That’s probably better than getting stuck for months because Winter weather is early or late.
However, I may have to delay my departure to Spring ’09, which would encourage reversing the route again:
MJJA: Asia
SOND: Americas
JFMA: Africa
Although I think it would also work as:
MJJA: Africa (cooler)
SOND: Americas
JFMA: Asia (but need to check snow here)
Myanmar
On the map in my previous post, you can see that I just showed a route avoiding Myanmar (Burma) by looping around to the North, through China. This was dim. It turns out that there’s a small thing in the way that I’d like to call The Himalayas (but should apparently be the Parallel Gorges Area of the Tibet and Central China range of mountains – whither artistic licence?).
For a while, this gave me a bluey :-(
I could get to the Eastern border of India and then seemed stuck, with the mountains to the North and unfriendly people to the front. Myanmar has a bad rep for murdering monks and doesn’t recognize UK or International Driving Licences – “You must apply for a Myanmar Driving License at the Department for Road Transport and Administration in Rangoon” (fco). Then I found that there are a small number of open land borders and hope to hire a driver – someone must want the money, although I understand that locals do need permits to travel between districts.
There is a vast difference between (a) reaching India and giving up, (b) looping back into China via Pakistan or Tibet, and (c) crossing Myanmar by any means possible and getting into exciting South-East Asia.
The resulting route
So, with changes for Myanmar (transit), South Africa (unlooping) and Tierra del Fuego (added, courtesy of my mate Ed www.Overlandy.com), the route is now:
(Click to enlarge)
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