It is now only 17 days before the start of my bicycle ride from Lagos to Ghana and back and I am getting more and more excited as the count down continues. I got my Ghanaian visa two days ago and my visa application for Togo will be submitted this morning. The Togolese high commission does not usually take a long time to process visa applications so I expect to have it in my passport before the end of this week. That will leave me with Benin before all my papers are ready to enable me cross all the border postings.
Friday, support vehicle driver, got his Nigerian passport last week. Since Nigeria is a member state of ECOWAS (Economic Communities of West African States), Friday won't be needing any visas. Additionally we should be getting all the other mandatory papers for the car (Ecowas Browncard, international insurance, international driver's licence, etc.) next week.
A lot of bureaucracy-yes! Lots of paperwork and a lot of manual intervention-yes. So therefore I still expect a fair amount of wahala (Nigerian for "trouble") when I get to the respective border crossings but that is all part of the fun of the trip.
As for the other preparations all seems to be going according to plan. On saturday I joined a group of 9 other cycle fanatics for a 81km training ride. I did better than what I have expected and felt remarkably well after we finished. The challenge will now be to do it back to back for 5 days and then all over again. It's definitely going to be a tough experience.
My inventory list is also nearly complete so this weekend I will start to buy what I can buy locally. For the rest of the stuff I will have to rely on people I know who are going to travel into Lagos during the next two weeks.
I can't wait to start!
No comments:
Post a Comment