Hi there,

I'm planning a pretty long trip for the next august/september.

I'll be driving a Defender 90 Td5 (one car, one driver), taking a ferry from Genoa to Tanger. From there, I'll drive to West Sahara and get to RIM. Route in Mauri should be Nouadibhou-Atar-Tidjika-Tichit-Nema on track (if possible) or mixing roads and tracks if too hard for a single vehicle.

From Nema I'll drive to Bamako in Mali and then towards Gao. Along the route, I plan to visit Mopti, Bandiagara and the Dogon region and get to Tombouctou.

Then I'll drive the Gao-Niamey road and cross the Niger. Route will be Niamey-Tahoua-Agadez-Arlit-Assamaka.

I'll finally enter Algeria where, according to what is left of time and money (and myself :-) ), I 'll try to reach Djanet and enter Tunisia in Nefta.

A ferry in Tunis will carry me back to Italy.

I really would appreciate any info/suggestion on the planned route considering that:

1. I'll drive a "factory default" car, in good conditions but with no particular raid-wise preparation. I'll bring some obvious spare parts (suggestions ???) but I'm not going to stuff another unmounted Defender in the back.

2. I'll bring some 20l jerry cans and should have no problem doing almost 1000 kms if the track is not 100% soft sand (in which case I'll probably won't do the track anyway).

3. The whole trip duration should not be too far from 5 weeks.

Finally, if someone is going to be there around (or just would like to) in the same period, I would enjoy sharing some road/tea/chat or simply the cost of a guide where needed.

Thanks in advance for any reply.

Ciao,
Mario