The big adventure begins!

Today, we are leaving Mahe after almost three weeks of sun, sand, and relaxation. It's been amazing, but we are ready to move on to the next part of the adventure.

And this is the big one!! I can't believe the day is finally here! We started planning our Africa overlanding trip years ago and first booked it in autumn 2019 with a departure date set for September 2020. For well-known reasons I don't need to go into 😂, it didn't happen! We kept our booking and made the best of our unexpected time in the UK by managing a campsite near York for a couple of seasons. Eighteen months ago, Dragoman, the company we had originally booked with, contacted us to say that they were mothballing the company for the foreseeable future. They refunded us the money we had already paid. Disappointed but undeterred, we looked around for a trip which would be as close as possible to what we had planned. We settled on three Intrepid tours, with stops in between. Later, we added the cheeky three weeks in the Seychelles before our overlanding adventure begins.

And, finally, today is the day!!

Our itinerary for the next few months looks something like this:

- 1 week in Johannesburg.
- 3 weeks on the Kruger, Coast, and Cape Tour, visiting South Africa, Eswatini, and Lesotho.
- 3 weeks in Cape Town.
- 6 weeks on the Cape Town to Zanzibar tour, visiting South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, and Tanzania.
- 2 weeks in Zanzibar.
10 days on the Stone Town to Nairobi tour, visiting Kenya 🇰🇪 and Tanzania 🇹🇿.
2 weeks in Kenya, including a safari to the Masai Mara.

19 weeks, 10 countries, 6 capital cities, 24 national parks, and one natural wonder of the world in total! To say we're excited is an understatement. So long in the planning, let the adventure begin!!

Our five-hour flight ✈️ from the Seychelles to Johannesburg with Air Seychelles was smooth and uneventful. Fortunately, unlike our inbound flight, we had a window seat so I was able to take some photos 📸 as we left Mahe. The island 🏝 looked stunning in the glorious sunshine 🌞.Lue lisää