OverlandSphere
Overland Travel, Expedition & Adventure Information for 4x4, motorcycle and truck overlanders
After a week of being horizontal we headed off to Aswan to start the next leg of the trip. Along the way we stopped for somebody who had just written-off his car. From the state of the car we were expecting the worst, but the driver was sitting on the side of the road, clearly shaken, but fortunately with no…
In Luxor we stayed at a campsite called Razeiky Camp. This is a hotel with a large garden / sandpit and as we sat nursing ice cold beers in the afternoon heat we were told grand stories of yesteryear by the manager (who reminds Jules of her dad, but for the sake of keeping wills intact no photo was taken),…
As a student I had a Mini 1275 with a 34 litre fuel tank. Filling up a 90 litre gas guzzling 4×4 along with several 20 litre Jerry cans in Egypt 15 years later is considerably cheaper. In Cairo we paid 1.1 Egyptian Pounds per litre. I’ll let you do your own currency conversions and calculations, but if you’re too…
Egypt has a lot of mosquitoes. You would think the author would have warned us about this when he wrote about all the other plagues in the Old Testament. When we finally left Hotel De La Post the room looked like a murder scene with splotches of blood all over the place after four nights of gruesome attacks and counter…
Egypt Overland Vehicle and Tourist support regarding entering & leaving Aswan port and Egypt Contacts We recommend these Egyptian Agents Mr Mohamed Abouda Amir (Mohamed’s cousin) They deliver an incredible professional service around arranging all the paperwork, traffic checks, licenses, customs etc. you need to get vehicles into and out of Egypt seamlessly. Their fees are well worth the headache…
boarding goods Fellow passengers Leaving the cars in Port Aswan Aswan to Wadi Halfa via Lake Nasser – 01/04/2013 The port at Aswan is hot, chaotic, busy, with boxes and luggage everywhere. We had an agent called Aswan ferry goods , a lovely man who has sorted out our passage with ease so we can get to Sudan. He cost…
Two posts in one day? A public holiday in Egypt with a car stuck in customs allows for these little lucky breaks. We arrived at Iskenderun on the Friday to buy our ferry tickets. These were bought through an agent for Sisa shipping, Remon Travel. Tickets weren’t cheap – $180 each and another $590 for the car. We spent a…
I have been meaning to write a blog now for weeks, but just never seem to have had the time to get round to it. Last country in Africa & we have been busy, busy, busy….lovin’ it It’s funny how, for us, countries seldom live up to their negative press. I really don’t know what it is. Maybe we are…
Well we’re here – Egypt & our last African country. When we left in August 2009 a friend’s daughter was doing a school project on Egypt. We promised her that we would be there soon (well, in 18 months or so) so we could tell her all about it. Alice was in year 3 at the time – now she…
OK, first, a disclaimer. In the interest of full disclosure I think I need to get one thing out in the open right away, I don’t like history. Wait, let me rephrase that, I LOVE being in historical places. I love wandering the same the same rock pathways that people have wandered for thousands of years. I love poking around…
Sinai 13th March – Nuweiba 10pm via fast ferry from Aqaba Jordan 15th March – route 15 East Sinai desert to Dahab. 17th March – Dahab to Sharm el Sheikl but bypassed the town and headed to the west side of the Sinai to Ras Sudr. 18th March – Ras Sudr to Suez to Cairo Egypt 21st March Cairo to…
Dusty Beni Suef, Land cruiser dirty We left the bustle, the dirt and mayhem of Cairo and headed south to Aswan. The journey was approximately 1000km and our speed is slow, around 70-80kmph. Having left the Pyramids late on Thursday afternoon we found the road to the Nile and then headed south towards Beni Suef on the west side of…
West of the First Cataract, Nile River, Aswan Close UP, faded with sun damage I’ve just found an old Springbok rugby Jersey on Bar Bar desert beach, West Bank Nile River, west of the first cataract, Aswan, Egypt. I don’t know how long it’s been there, but judging by the material and sun damage, probably quiet a while. It should…
So we say thanks to “Greer” at Lifesaver Systems for your partial sponsor, we’ve had time now to test the jerry cans on “Egyptian Nile Water” and it seems as if we’ve all stayed healthy over the last few weeks. They fit next to my diesel jerry cans in the same jerry can holder and have proved robust enough to…
For those who drive or are driven, there’s a clock wise drive from the Pyramids of Giza which goes past the pyramids and down the hill past the Sphinx, so all these wonderful sites are in the same park. Make sure you go in at the Giza entrance and not the sphinx, because of the one way system. Also, don’t…
Three pyramids 90 land cruiser took us here Nic’s on the car’s roof Nic’s on the car’s roof We reached the Pyramids of Giza, where a chap stopped us at the bottom of the hill and told us only government vehicles could travel up the hill and that we should park at the bottom. The staff said that we should…
Windsor’s Old telephone exchange Windsor’s old lift, classic Windsor Officers Bar Area Windsor Hotel, Cairo Best Bar Man ever, Marco – Hotel Windsor bye bye Marco We are now in lovely Cairo. A filthy, bustling place full of battered cars racing around to find the smallest gap to squeeze into. It is chaos here almost as bad as India when…
Cars queuing up for diesel Sinai desert We drove from Nuweiba to Dahab 90km south through blistering heat, rocky mountains and desert. Before we left we tried to fill up with diesel but there is shortage in Egypt and particularly the Sinai. There wasn’t any diesel in Nuweiba so we continued onwards and then there wasn’t any in Dahab! Christ…
Traveling through the Sinai, Egypt Parked at the Blue Hole, Dahab Driving back from the Blue hole The Blue Hole, Egypt Bosom the Mountain What a dive site. It’s simply amazing to be able to swim about 10-20 meters from the shore and then to watch the ocean drop down under you into a blue abyss teaming with fish and…
So Michael’s around the world in 80 days while we cross it from North to South. I met Michael a few month back in St Johns Wood and mentioned our expedition and by chance came across his photo on Hotel Windsor’s reception wall. So cheers, G&T’s on you and the spirit of world adventure! Michael Palin, visited the Windsor…
It transpires that Aswan is a tourist hotspot. We discovered this when we tried to buy a kofta roll and paid five times the going rate for it. People visit in order to cruise the Nile and visit the colossal tombs at Abu Simbel. We arrived however to catch the ferry to Sudan. For this reason Aswan is also a…
We decided to drive the Oasis road, looping for 800 miles west, away from the Nile, rejoining it at ancient Luxor. Diesel was a big problem. The country was virtually dry due to the conflict inhibiting trade. To avoid the day-long queues of lorries, one had to turn to the black market. Fortunately, Sam had a contact, Badri, a local…
In 1952, over the oasis town of Siwa, it rained for three hours. In this unprecedented deluge, the entire mud-brick town dissolved back into the desert. Surprised but unperturbed, the inhabitants, using the technique of their grandfathers, re-built the town as it stands today. Our stay in the super-city of Cairo was drawing to a close. This conurbation of old…
Merry Christmas everyone! You can find our Christmas video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a56bHM4hfMM&list=HL1356340210&feature=mh_lolz Yesterday we manoeuvred our car onto the Aswan ferry barge, at great cost to our nerves and some cost to nearby freight products that were crushed and mangled in the process of clambering onto the tiny area of roof space allocated for our car. An ordeal I think every…
Cairo – 10,472 miles The taste of freedom was fresh on our palates as we approached Cairo, and our excitement offset any apprehension we should have felt on approaching this hotbed of political strife. The world’s media was honed in on this city as the crowds expressed their discontent with the current government. The Egyptian people famously ousted their leader…
Tuesday 4th to Saturday 8th December 2012. Port Said, Ferry from Port Said to Iskenderun. We had news a week or two back that we were no longer able to get a visa for Libya. Our lifeline, Jill Wilson from Libya Travel and Tours, told us that they discovered the contact that they had helping them organise business visas was…
Monday 3rd to Tuesday 4th December 2012. Cairo. The next morning we took up Sam’s kind offer of his washing machine before we ventured out into Cairo for the day. We found a little deli near Sam’s place that served up a mean toasted sandwich. Then we hailed a cab to take us to the Egyptian Museum, on the meter.…
Sunday 2nd December 2012. Giza, Sidaqua, Dashur, Cairo. We were up for another gorgeous desert sunrise the next morning. We wanted to make it to the pyramids at Giza today and still have time to explore, so we got packed up and ready to leave early. The only hitch was that Tom’s Landy, Schinedot, wouldn’t start. He’d had a few…
Wednesday 28th November to Monday 1st December 2012. Western Desert (Al-Kharga, Dakhla, Farafra, White Desert, Bawiti). The next morning we lingered for a while to soak up the desert peace and quiet. It really is beautiful out here and desert wild camps have been some of our favourite throughout the trip. On most of our drive we were surrounded by…
Sunday 25th to Tuesday 27th November 2012. Aswan, Luxor. The next morning we had a call from Kamal. He claimed that both we and Tom had left behind the Arabic version of the vehicle licence. Without this, we couldn’t drive around Egypt. We thought it was more likely that he’d forgotten to give it to us, but asked him to…