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It was finally the day I had been waiting for! And boy was it a looooong day… I couldn’t really get any sleep the night before due to the excitement and ended up getting up before 5am, and as my flight wasn’t until at 22.40, it was a long wait. I tried to nap during the day, but I couldn’t. Initially I had thought it would be a good idea to book an overnight flight so I could sleep on the plane and arrive in Nairobi at a comfortable hour. In reality, I couldn’t sleep at all during the flights and although it was nice to arrive in the afternoon, I was pretty exhausted after having been up for about 36 hours by the time I arrived at the hotel!

The journey itself was pretty uneventful. I flew with Qatar as they had the cheapest rate at the time of booking, and as they’re a part of Oneworld I could get Finnair flight points from booking with them. I had a changeover in Doha, Qatar which meant that I would be flying over Middle East, Iran to be excact. As most of you probably have heard, there was the unfortunate incident of the Ukrainian flight being shot down by missiles near the Iranian capital Tehran, after which air carriers left and right were re-routing their flights away from the area. Not Qatar though, because the country has some problematic relationships with it’s neighbours, and their only possible route to Doha is through Iran, as they are not allowed to enter the Saudi Arabian airspace. Initially I was quite worried, but after it became clear that it was an accident and it was very, very unlikely that something like that could happen again, I stopped worrying.

Arriving in Nairobi, the passengers are transferred straight through to Immigration, where I was given a couple of forms to fill, stood in line for about an hour and paid 100$ for my East African Visa. I later noticed that they got my name wrong in the visa, and used my surname as my first name and my third name as my surname. Hopefully that won’t be an issue.

After immigration it’s straight through to the luggage hall, where I picked up my bag and headed to the bank counter to change some money. I had intentioned to buy a sim card at the airport as well, but I forgot to do this. Outside there were a lot of people trying to get you to take a taxi, but I quickly located the person who was there to pick me up. She wasn’t holding a sign like I had expected, but she called me by my name so I knew it had to be the person. We get in the car and as we’re pulling out of the parking lot, the driver points out into the shrubbery around the airport and asks ”can you see the giraffe?” and I’m like WHAT, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! And there they are, four or five long necks sticking out from behind the tree tops only a few hundred meters from the road. Welcome to Africa!

I stay the night in Wildebeest Eco Lodge, which is a lovely little garden compound with ponds, lots of greenery and birds, and a lot of frogs that provide a lovely soundtrack through the night. I join a couple of girls from the tour for dinner and head to bed exhausted at around 8pm, only to wake up at 1.30am and not being able to sleep anymore. At 3am I give up and start writing this blog post instead of trying to sleep. I haven’t really been able to sleep normally for about a week now, I fall asleep easily at night as usual, but I wake up early hours in the morning and can’t get back to sleep. I part blame the malaria pills and part the overall excitement of the upcoming trip. Anyhow, so far the lack of sleep hasn’t had any effect on my overall energy levels, and I’m sure I’ll get back to my usual sleep cycle as soon as I get into routine. It’s 4am now and breakfast starts at 7, after which the adventure gets really started!

I had been saving for the downpayment for a flat for nearly two years, when I started getting increasingly anxious about actually buying one. I had just moved back from northern Finland, where I had been studying photography, to my parents house in southern Finland, where I was going to stay for the summer and buy a flat in the autumn. I wasn’t feeling comfortable with taking a huge loan, especially since I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do in the next few years, and having big loan payments to pay every month would not be helpful in saving money for traveling, which I had been missing a lot while I lived in London.

I think it was around July when I decided that I would take a break in saving for the flat, and instead save to go traveling. I was thinking about going to Spain for the winter, when I suddenly remembered a trip I had been dreaming to do years earlier, but always put off because the timing was never right. Overlanding in Africa.

I didn’t have any rent to pay, and my parents could take care of my dog while I was away, so it was the perfect opportunity to quickly save a lot of money and make the dream come true. It was time to start budgeting. I figured I could save about 1000€ every month. I compared different overlanding operators, and decided to go with Absolute Africa. I was also considering Oasis Overlanding as both of these companies had tons of experience and a budget that was right for me. The reason I chose AA was that they had front-facing seats on their trucks, which I figured would be much more comfortable than the ones on OO that were sideways. Small, but very important detail when you’ll be spending hours and hours on the truck each day for three months!

I had already decided years ago that I wanted to do the Nairobi-Cape Town tour. It was priced at £2670 including the optional Zanzibar stay, which had to be paid beforehand, plus 1260$ that would be paid in cash in Kenya. There was also a long list of optional activities listed, and after carefully considering what I would want to do, I calculated that I would need about 1000$ for these. It worked out quite cheap for me as I don’t really like any water sports as I can’t swim, and those were the most expensive things on the list. I’m quite happy with walks, village visits and sunset cruises!

About 300$ would be needed for visas. I booked flights from Helsinki to Nairobi through Doha with Qatar Airlines, those were about 600€.

Then there was the spending money. That was tricky, how could I know how much money I’ll be spending on lunches, souvenirs, internet connection and drinks? Absolute Africa has a helpful article on budgeting at the website, where it says that 1500$-1800$ should be enough. I decided to aim for 1500$ and if I managed more, great.

I would need to get yellow fever vaccination and malaria pills, they cost me about 150€. I already had traveler’s insurance, so I didn’t need to budget for that.

That was about it. Adding it all together I figured I needed roughly about 7500€. That meant I would need to save for about seven months. I then booked the trip to start in mid-January. In hindsight it would’ve been better to book it 2 or 3 weeks later, as I ended up spending a lot of money on things that I would need to take with me on the trip, including a last minute decision to buy a 700€ teleobjective for my camera. Got to get those close-ups of the elephants… I managed to meet my target, but I think I would’ve been much more comfortable to have some extra, just in case.

Well, there are always credit cards…

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Now that the financials had been sorted, I had to figure out what I would need to bring with me. After hours and hours of googling and reading packing lists on different overlanding operators websites I finally came up with a pretty comprehensive list. A lot of the things I already had, but a lot of things would still need to be bought. I ended up spending a lot more money than I had thought, as things like solar-charging powerbanks, head torches, first aid kits and medicines are not cheap. I ordered a lot stuff on the internet and picked up things from shops little by little.

I also had to get a new passport as mine was expiring – another 100€ expense. I had to book an appointment for getting the yellow fever vaccination and the prescription for malaria pills. I checked that my insurance was sufficient for the trip, read the 42 pages of the pre-departure pack over and over again to make sure I had done everything I needed to get ready, and counted down days for the big adventure. When I got my final paycheck before the trip there was just one final preparation to do, changing my €uros into dollar$.

This turned out to be more expensive than I had anticipated. The instructions were to bring most of the money in US dollars, as this was the preferred currency around Africa. Even though I pre-ordered most of my dollars online beforehand, which gave me a lot better excange rate, I still had to change some money at the shop as my last paycheck arrived just before the start of my trip. I bought a little over 3300$, which cost me about 3250€ when with the ”proper” rate I would’ve got about 3600$. Ouch!!! I would’ve saved about 100$ had I changed all the money beforehand rather than the last 1000$ at the airport, but unfortunately that was not an option.

That was it, everything was quite simple in the end, as the tour company gave very specific instructions, and were always happy to help if I had any questions.

One week. One agonising week while I still have to go to work every day, before it’s time for take-off. I’ve been trying to snatch as many shifts as possible, but work hasn’t always been available so I haven’t saved as much money as I would have liked. I’ve met my minimum target, but it would’ve been nice to have some extra so I wouldn’t have to count every cent so carefully. I do have a credit card with me if money gets tight, but hopefully I won’t have to use it too much.

I would be lying if I said I’m fully confident that the trip will be nothing but epic. I’m used to traveling on my own so I worry that I’m going to get frustrated with following a pre-organised itinerary all the way through, and that I might get annoyed with being around the same people all the time. I also worry that we might be trodding along a very beaten path with tons of tourists around all the time, but then again it is not the busy season now and we do venture into the bush quite a lot too, unlike the package tourists who stay in hotels and are shuttled to safaris and back.

In the end, I do believe that there is no better way for me to see Africa. I’ve been dreaming about this trip for years, and it’s finally happening!

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I did quite a lot of research around the internet to compile a list of items I would need on an overlanding trip. Although I’ve traveled to over fourty countries on trips varying in length, from a few days to a couple of years, I have no previous experience on this type of travel, of changing locations daily and camping in remote campsites, often going on for days without access to shops and such amenities. Also the tour company told us to pack light because there is very limited space for luggage in the truck, so packing was going to be tricky.

I’m used to always traveling with hand luggage only, so this concept of having a lot of stuff with me all the time was alien to me. However, I managed to come up with a list that seems quite comprehesive at the time of writing, though only time will tell whether there is something I could’ve left out, and other things I should’ve brought.

Lists are boring, so I’ll show what I have in pictures. On the top of this post is the 60l sports bag that I had to fit everything in. I would’ve preferred an 70-80l bag, but unfortunately in my price range it was a choice of either 60l or 90l, so I chose the smaller one.

Most of the items were really straightforward. I’ll need this, everyone says so, it makes sense, I’ll bring it. The most difficult bit was the clothing. It will be really hot in some places, yet I need to cover myself from the sun, because I’m one of those people that burns time after time after time, and tans only slightly. In Australia it took my skin three months to learn how to produce melanine, until then I only burned again and again. I’ve since learned my lesson. Sun screen is not enough, I need to cover my skin. So what would be lightweight, yet bring enough coverage? Also I live in a country where winter lasts for eight months, so my closet isn’t excactly full of light summer clothes. In the end I decided to bring just a few essential items, and hoped to find more suitable options once I get there.

My 60l bag ended up being packed to the brim (even without the pillow, which I will carry in my hand luggage so that I can sleep on the plane, as my flight leaves late at night). I couldn’t take a small backpack in my handluggage because I was carrying my camera backpack, so I had to fit all my stuff and the day bag inside the 60l bag. It was only just big enough, so I’ll probably have to buy another bag for all the souvenirs for the return flight! 😉

I didn’t take pictures of the clothes (because I kept changing them until the last minute, but what I had were: two t-shirts, two tank tops, one light long-sleeved shirt, one pair of shorts, one pair of light pants, one pair of hiking pants, one summer dress, five pairs of socks and six pairs of underpants and two sports bras. I also packed a rain jacket, a hoodie, a tube scarf, a cap and a fishing hat and two pairs of sunglasses.

Bag is now ready for check in!

”I never knew of a morning in Africa when I woke up that I was not happy.”

– Ernest Hemingway

It’s now a little less than a month until I start my great African adventure. I’m going on a 77-day overlanding trip with Absolute Africa that starts from Nairobi and ends in Cape Town. I will be traveling through ten countries in a converted truck with a group of people, of whom at the moment I know nothing about. Not even how many there will be!

In the next few weeks I’ll try to write a few posts about preparing for the trip, including packing, budgeting and other preparations. Both as a reminder to myself and as a way to make it real for myself – I’m actually going now, after dreaming about this for years!

I’ll only be shooting animals with my camera, unlike Mr Hemingway. It’s time for Africa!

Finnish girl currently living in Finland after nearly five years living in my favourite place in the world, London. Unfortunately living in London meant I couldn’t afford my favourite thing to do, traveling, which is why I returned to my native country. Now I can travel again.

I wanted to write a blog about my trip to Africa mainly as a journal to myself, something that I can look back in the years to come. However, if anyone else reads this, I’m very happy to share my dream adventure!