Road trip: Ghana – Switzerland

I came to Ghana with a one-way ticket.
I wanted to go home over land because I wanted to see the world change. My first thought was to do the trip with public transportation or hitch hiking.
10’000 km West Africa, Sahara and Mediterranean Ocean.

Suddenly I realized that a motorbike would be a nice way to travel…

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Some SMALL details: I had no experience riding a big motorbike (600ccm / 200kg). I didn’t have a bike licence. I had to buy a motorbike in Accra and had no knowledge about bikes. I didn’t have experience in fixing engines and some countries require caution (Mail / Mauretania) because of recent kidnappings.
On my side: I had experience with difficult conditions, with developing countries, with traveling, backpacking, hiking and with adapting to cultures and I love challenge and adventure. I have critical but positiv thinking and – maybe the most important – I am at a point in my life where I feel at home with myself.

My dear “Michelin Nordwest-Arfrica Map” – To follow the journey, you can either go down the blog or here is a day by day listing.

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Kobi, a neighbour in Accra, was a tremendous help. He had been selling bikes before and helped me with everything. My whole trip would have been a complete different story without him. Thank you thousand times!!!
Also very helpful was the Bike-Website Horinzons Unlimited with it’s wonderful forum and lots of helpful information!!!

The battery was new, the rectifier had failed (one for a 200 ccm bike had been installed before!) and was replaced with an original part, some of the electric was replaced, I had done my first oil change, knew how to change the break fluid, knew how to take care of the cooling fluid, knew where the bike had fuses, how to replace or shortcut them and I knew how to lubricate and span the chain. I had organized the papers for the bike, the insurances for Ghana and ECOWAS countries and bought a driving licence and I had even found good protective equipment in Accra!

Kobi my bike angle 🙂

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I bought a “home use” bike from Italy with a milage of 320 km 😉 – yea good joke.
It was on 3000 km when I left Accra. I had gained some experience with the bike and all parts that wanted to fail had failed in Accra.

I WAS READY!

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~ by lifefragments on 18/08/2010.