Organisation - 1 of many?

Visas
The largest single class of thing that needs organising is visas. I spent ages working through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Travel Advice and filling in a spreadsheet.

The following map shows countries that are on my route and need visas in advance in Orange, with Red for really awkward countries.


Biggest problems are:
Turkmenistan - where they have transit and tourist visas. Web hearsay indicates that one could be refused the former, so the latter is safer but you need to be invited and met at the border by an approved travel agent. Visas are only valid 45 days from issue and for 30 days. Starting from London, that'd be a bit of a tight schedule. Also, you can only go in if you have a visa for the next country, which from London would be Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan only allow you in if you have visas for both Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Aaaaargh!
Libya - who want an Arabic translation of your passport personal info page on a stamped-in format and you also have to hire a guide for $45/day and travel with them.
Laos - who keep changing their visa terms and whose nearest consulate is in Paris.

Carnet
A "Carnet de Passages en Douanes" is a bond that UK travellers driving abroad need to take out via the RAC. You have to provide a multiple of the vehicle value as security against import duties that would be due if you fail to take your vehicle out of a country you've visited. This is well described elsewhere.
Unfortunately, Egypt requires 800% of the value the vehicle would have there, so just driving a £10K car through Egypt would end up costing about £4.6K. Ouch!

Company
As it'd be MUCH better to do the trip with someone else, I have a friend who I hope will go with me. I asked, and he doesn't currently want to be identified in this blog, so I've decided to identify him as N.
This is (randomly) inspired by the Roman Catholic Eucharistic Prayer II:
"Lord, remember your Church throughout the world; make us grow in love, together with N. our Pope, N. our bishop, and all the clergy."

Although N is keen, he's currently gone away to decide whether he really wants to drive around the world (as opposed to reducing his mortgage) and whether he wants to go this August/September (as opposed to improving his CV until next Spring to make things easier when he gets back).
Based on that, my plans are pretty much in limbo until he decides (or I decide otherwise). As N has an extremely suitable 4x4, I can't even think about vehicle preparations.

I feel I have a pretty fair idea of the prep that needs doing, and that most of it can't be done a very long way in advance of leaving. So I can do some of the other things and just wait to push the "red button".

Route Rationale

This needs to be a mega post! I’ve been failing to get around to writing for ages and now there’s far too much to say now.

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)