SDA Movers

The traditional Trans Africa route is from London to Nairobi, Kenya and Cape Town, South Africa. The route started in the 1970’s and becaming popular with small companies using old Bedford four wheel drive trucks carrying about 20 people each Also independent travellers; normally run by or groups of friends in 4×4 Landrovers headed out from London from November to March every year, the winter months been considered the best to cross the Sahara. The usual route was from Morocco to Algeria with a Sahara desert crossing into Niger then Nigeria in West Africa, followed by a month long journey likened to Joseph Conrad Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” through the forests of Zaire with the trucks surfacing into the relatively modern word in Kenya. From Kenya the last leg was south through Tanzania to either Zimbabwe or South Africa. The writer Shiva Naipaul travelled in an Overland truck and wrote of it in his novel North of South, he was disparaging of the people on the truck and their motives for travelling. The route has changed dramatically with border closures and no-go zones with the closure of Zaire now the DR Congo and the Darfur crises’ forcing the biggest change in the route. The route has, since the year 2000, reversed itself somewhat with truck now crossing from the north to the south of Africa following near to the west coast all the way from Morocco to Cape Town. The biggest recent change in the route been made possible by the opening of Angola to tourism, letting vehicles pass into Namibia into South Africa; leaving then to complete the old route by turning north in Cape Town to travel to Nairobi and on to Cairo.

The second most popular route was the Nile, starting in Africa after a long crossing of Europe to Athens then by ferry to Alexandria in Egypt. The trip mostly followed the Nile River through Egypt and Sudan to Uganda and laid over in Nairobi before heading further south. The Nile trip was much shorter at ten weeks as opposed to the western Trans Africa at 22 weeks to Nairobi.

Since 2006 a few companies have offered overland expeditions from the UK to Australia. Originated by Exploratory Overland Expeditions in 2006, the expedition is marketed as the longest trans-Asian overland journey available.

The longest overland expedition of any kind is run by African Trails their London-Capetown-Istanbul journey (43 weeks) remains the classic overland expedition for die-hard travellers.Though the longest combination of trips is 50.5 weeks run by Dragoman from Helsinki, Finland to Cape Town, South Africa via Russia, China, Middle East, following the Nile and to Kenya and on to southern Africa