After 6 months planning and preparation, various vaccinations and visas it seems like I’m on the final furlong before departing these shores with just one or two bits of the itinerary to finalise. Let’s hope it doesn’t all kick off in the Middle East. A BBC News report suggested that Lebanon could collapse into civil war which will really screw up dinner in Beirut.
The plan is to let the train take the strain as much as possible from the northern end of the rail network in the Finnish Arctic Circle right down to Cape Town with a number of flights, buses and cars in between to hop over war zones, countries I’ve already visited extensively before and, quite simply, where no rail network exists.
Passing through the Arctic Circle, Tropic of Cancer, Equator and Tropic of Capricorn between 18 & 40 deg East, 20 countries and only three time zones the Cape to Cape trip should take 3 months…..if all goes according to plan!