Further Contemplation...

The next question to resolve, seems to be "What are my desired destinations within Africa?"
What is my hit-list of things to see and do?

Well, the list can be made as long as you like of course, but if I try to stick to some major interests then it would be something like this:

Egyptian ruins... Pyramids/Luxor etc.
Gorillas/Chimpanzees - Rwanda/Uganda (Virunga Mtns?)
Flamingo flocks - Kenyan Lakes
Mombasa Beaches - Kenya
Lake Victoria - Kenya/Tanzania/Uganda
Zanzibar - Tanzania
Serengeti wildlife (great Migration)  - Tanzania
Mt Kilimanjaro - Tanzania
Ngorongoro Crater - Tanzani
Mozambique - Beaches/Diving
Victoria Falls - Zambia (May-June)
Lake Malawi
Okavango Delta (wildlife) - Botswan
Kalahari desert - Namibia
Desert Landscapes of Namibia
Lithops plants - Namibia deserts

There are numerous excellent wildlife parks in many of the counties, but I figure you would get "all safari ed out" rather quickly, so for the time being Ive limited my intentions to two major locations for focusing on "big game", those being The Serengeti area and the Okavango delta area.
And of course there are infinite aspects of human culture all along the way too which Ill inevitably be experiencing as I go... But all-in-all, that's a basic list of places Id like to go and see that will give me something to try to stich a route together around :)

...and I think that will suffice for the purpose of inspiring my travels  :)


Then the next question becomes  "When is the right time to ride these different portions of an Africa route?" Essentially what are the seasonal conditions like along the way...

Well, again, tackling it from N-S, the first section is basically the Sahara desert!... No surprise here, but you really dont want to be doing this in high summer!!!... Thats the Northern hemisphere summer. So "Not from June to August" if you can help it, and it'll be nasty hot through-out April  to October.
Then the next challenging section is the equatorial tropics and the season to "avoid" there is the monsoon. The "Long rains" are the worst of it and its very wet from April to June with flooding through till August.
And South of that, its less critical and different areas have different "high and low" tourist seasons... So I should be able to work something out... There are two periods of "high season" for the Serengeti area (Jan-Mar, Jul-Sep). Botswana "high season" is Jul-Oct, and namibia is Apr-Oct...

But, what does that all mean for a route/schedule plan?
Well, Im loosely planning on taking about six months for this trip(6-10 I guess), and Im planning to commence the trip some time between February and April of 2014...(I could start at the earliest  in mid January, or could wait things out till May if its significantly more preferable)
Im also planning to fly to my start point and purchase and kit-out a motorbike there, rather than shipping a bike from Home... That will likely take a couple of weeks to a month to sort out.


So, if I started in the North, Id need to really "get cracking" pretty early... (I could maybe have a bike sorted by week 1 of Feb.)
Say Egypt - 3 weeks, Sudan, 2-3 weeks, Ethiopia 3-4 weeks, Kenya/Uganda 4 weeks, Tanzania 4 weeks... and then the southern section of the continent can be "addapted" as seems fit at the time :)
But, that all seems rushed at the top there, especially since I couldnt buy a bike in Egypt, and buying, equiping,shipping from Greece all inside a month seems a little over ambitous!

OK, so what about S-N...
I want to hit the southern edge of the tropics (Northern Tanzania) after about August
I want to hit the southern edge of the desert (Northern Ethiopia/Sudan) after October... Which suggests finishing  in Egypt around end December 2013!... But thats a very long trip... so maybe start later in April/May???

Hmmm... Well, it looks like either direction can work. But, for N-S it would be better if I started in December I think, while for S-N it would probably be better to start in April or May.

No hard plan at present... Ill play it by ear I thnk. :)