If you are looking here, you are obviously interested. So what is this site all about?
My name is David Priddis and I am 25 years old. I enjoy traveling, swimming and kayak surfing. As well as many other activities.
I also have a great interest in engineering and I am often found lurking
in the garage or tweaking my computers. I am generally easy going and look
on the brighter side of things, but also have a logical practical and
sensible side when it comes to organizing trips and other things.
Picture of me
As a lot of good ideas, this mad plan was conjured up in my last year at Uni. It was a result of reading two books that the inspiration for the trip came about. The first was "Living Dangerously" by Sir Ranulph Fiennes and the second was "Thrust" by Richard Noble. These books had sections that described Africa, one as a place to grow up in and two as a continent to cross. These descriptions and stories captured my imagination, and started me looking into the feasibility of traveling across Africa for my self. Granted the situation that now exists is different from the era these books were based around. As borders and names of countries have changed and governments have come and gone. But it still looked a very real possibility. The more I looked the more information I found on other people who had done this sort of thing. So the idea was a gooden, why overland? I thought this would give the best opportunity to interact with the people and cultures on the way as well as covering the ground and getting me to the places I wanted to see.
I left Jersey (Channel Islands) 20th March 2004 and traveled down France and Spain and crossed over to Morocco. From there I drove through West Africa to Ghana, then along through Togo, and Benin across to Nigeria. Then headed down the West coast to South Africa, Cape Town. Once there, I came back up through Southern Africa to the East coast, Tanzania and headed North through Kenya and Ethiopia to Djibouti. From there I shipped the Land Rover back to France and I flew to Paris. This all took around 11 months and what a 11 months they were!
I fully kited out a Land Rover 110 200 Tdi for overland travel. Most
of the work was done by myself and my Dad (Thanks Dad!). The list of
additions and alterations are to many to list here, but can be found in the Vehicle section of the web site. But to give you an idea the vehicle is kited with a
winch, roof tent, fridge, recovery equipment, up rated suspension and under
body protection plates. This and other kit cost £12,000+ and I took £12,000+ along for the full trip, which I pretty much spent all of by the time I returned to Jersey.
E-mail me at: walkabout2408#yahoo.co.uk
(Due to mailbots and junk mail my e-mail address is displayed with a # instead of a @. Please change the # for a @ when trying to e-mail me.)
