Only 7 days until departure

Months of preparations are coming to an end and I can see the departure rapidly approaching.

Preparations have been ongoing for a long time. Let me share some of the headlines of planning involved in the journey. As the journey then gets underway and routines are created and settled down through Europe, I will be sharing more details of the individual parts of the planning process.

Route planning has been several years in the making. On paper I have a very detailed map with hundreds of locations to go to. This has been used to create a giant spreadsheet with driving distances between each location.

Next step was to estimate how many kilometers to drive per day, and how many driving days per week.

In summer 2025 I went on a 4000 km test trip from Denmark to France and back. Based on that, an average of 275 km on days of driving seemed appropriate. Additionally, the plan for now is an average of 4 driving days per week and 3 days of not driving.

For now that gives a framework for route planning and approximate timings. The plan calls for visits to 7 countries in Europe before crossing the Strait of Gibraltar and then 41 countries in Africa before the trip ends by Christmas 2027.

Some of the locations are shown with red dots on the map. Sao Tome & Principé as well as Madagascar are islands, hence I will not drive there. Other locations are too dangerous to drive into due to local unrest and will have to be in/out by plane instead of in the van.

But route planning is the least bit of it. There have been plenty of practical matters to prepare as well. For now I will simply summarize them. Later I will make more detailed blog posts in here for anyone seeking to either learn from these experiences - or poke fun at what I have surely overlooked in my planning :-)

The car needed quite an overhaul to be ready for the trip. This included a complete engine refurbishment, installation of new water and fuel tanks, mounting equipment at the back of the van, protective plating underneath the van and lots of other odds and ends.

The car also needed its own "passport". A Carnet de Passage to facilitate the temporary import and export through many of the African countries. This could not be issued in Denmark, and hence had to be done through the German automobile association.

Despite my own passport only being 1½ years old with 8½ years until expiry, I needed to get a new one. My many travels in the past 1½ years had already led to many pages being filled with immigration stamps and it simply did not have enough pages for the new journey.

Visas are needed for a range of the countries on the route. But visas also expire after a while hence they cannot be applied for before departure but have to be taken care of at various embassies along the way.

Then there is a packing list of various types of gear which had to be acquired and tested. This included tables and chairs, cooking equipment, foldable firepit, an assortment of spareparts for the van, a rather large kit of working tools and an assortment of fluids for the van.

There is also quite a large first aid kit. Fortunately my partner is a former midwife with experience from Afghanistan and hence a professional in putting together such a kit for challenging conditions. Vaccinations also needed to be done. Due to my extensive travel for many years I had most already, but a few needed a booster and Rabies was new to me.

All of this is now in place. The main element missing is packing up the clothes for the journey and getting it all to fit into the van.

I am very excited to get on the road and start the journey