just travelled UK to ghana with Kudu. happy to answer any questions or provide feedback toanyone that is interested

I am considering doing the London Cape Town trip next year and would be very interested in your experiences with Kudu this year. This is a big deal for me both financial and time, and I want to get it right.

it was a big deal for me financially as well, which i felt was not appreciated by kudu. my views are personal obviously but i would like to tell it like it was for the benefit of others. since kudu is a major sponsor of this site, maybe better to email me on markbadcock@hotmail.com

Have sent you an e-mail. Also read my other post in the London - SA thread

Hi

I travelled on the kudu expeditions Mar-Aug 2006 Cambridge to Cape Town trip. so could answer any querries you might have but I havent sat down and thought out some great what did I think of them type essay.

They are ok but they have a schedule and a budget to stick to or else they dont make so much money. This means sometimes they make you push on because they are worried about falling behind the plan just when you want to see something spectacular like the Etosha Game Park. Its marked as one of the trip highlights and we only got one evening and one day there before we had to move on which was a real shame. This was often the case on the trip and is a downside of going on an organised trip where you are not in control of the itinery.

Stopping when you want is ok but they often would follow only a couple of minutes behind you on the road. This meant that I rarely felt like I was on an expedition fitting the elements rather I was being nannied. This may or may not seem important but it will if your even slightly adventureous. Their reason was that they didnt want to loose anyone or that if you had an accident you where less far from help. These are valid reasons but didn't fit with my pre trip expectation.

Overall when you get back you can look back on the trip with kudu expeditions and feel good you did it but it could of been so much better if they would of listened to the participants during the expedition rather than just sending us a questionaire at the end once it was to late.

Its easy for me to say this now but after two of the 17 countries I was already confident enough to wish I had just set off with a friend or someone met from Horizons. If you are not good at organising yourself then these guys will get you there and you can tell your friends you did this great journey but I think you miss so much of africa because you just take the best roads possible (they have a schedule and mixed abilities to consider)rather than the most interesting ones.

look I could talk and talk and this is just a tiny part of my feelings today I must right something down and post it onto my web site as its impossible to describe the trip and how you feel about it even in a few pages but for me its still sinking in and dont want to say its all bad as its not but there are a lot of problems with kudu that I hope they do something about. Like the trip to Dakar we did this in much longer time and the road down there is boring then we got a day and a half to cross the sahara this was not quite the advertised three days but you see even this little part of the trip would require a message on its own.

Good Luck