Greetings fellow travellers,

It is hot and dusty somewhere else. Here, it is raining and will be for about the next four months.

The only Paradise you know is the one you've lost.

Self-flagellation aside, I'm going to the bloody dusty Sahara if it kills me. The only problem is how.

Never rode a bike, so I'm wondering if I should learn to, and haul it across the desert. A 4x4 is a big, unwieldly thing, not easy to put on a plane from here (Vancouver) to there, but you can sleep in it and it protects you from stone-throwing children. And lions, not that there are any where I'm going. I hope.

Okay, on to my questions, which are several, having spent so much time reading the related portions of this well-appointed BB that my eyes are drying up and threatening to fall out:

1. Anyone have experience shipping a vehicle (two or four wheeled) from Canada/US to North Africa/Europe?

2. Anyone from Canada/US have experience in crossing the Sahara (Morocco-Algeria-Niger-Chad-Sudan, or Morocco-Mauritania-Mali-Niger-Chad-Sudan, etc) WITHOUT the sell-your-other-kidney initial outlay cost of a CDP ?

3. Anyone have experience continuing onward from Sudan/Ethiopia and environs to Saudi Arabia/Yemen and points East?

4. This is my idiotic question: Would it be better to travel as an American or a Canadian? I hold both passports.

5. This is my ludicrous question: Is it possible to hitch-hike across the Sahara, Morocco-Egypt or Mauritania-Sudan, or some wildly zig-zagging combination? Anyone done this?

Thanks for any info.

Michael

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I am going because I cannot not go.

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I am going because I cannot not go.