This wonderful, narrated video details a trip made by a group of friends from England, throughout Africa, and back in 1959/60.
Archives for category: Africa
If you’re at home, and you have some time on your hands, check out this 1986 documentary about the Paris-Dakar Rally. You may remember that that was the year Porsche got their rally program dialed and pulled off a 1-2 finish with their newly-developed 959. There’s some great footage of the 959s in action across Africa.
This English couple has written a photo book about their 5-month trip, north to south, through Africa. To do it they bought an 80-series Land Cruiser which they named “Indlovu,” the unstoppable elephant.
They’re currently pre-selling their book on Kickstarter.
Link:
Indlovu on Kickstarter
The other day I posted about enduro riding techniques. This post is all about adventure riding skills. One set of resources is the video viewer above. It contains an entire playlist of 26 videos on adventure motorcycle riding brought to you by Offroad Fanatic, which seems to be the YouTube face of South African driver development school, ADA.
I’ll also add a throttle control tip that I learned from former AMA national champion, Rich Oliver, who runs Mystery School, a training facility in central California. Hold the throttle like you hold a screwdriver. This will give you greater precision and enable you to roll the power on in finer increments. It will also force your elbows out and up, which will give you better control.
All the videos in the above playlist are listed (with links) after the jump. So you can either use the list as a guide and skip through videos in the viewer above or use the links to open the videos individually in new browser windows.
Btw, I spent a couple of days at Mystery School a few years ago and found it well worth it. Read the rest of this entry »
Ride along with Kevin Richardson and GoPro to see lions up close and personal. It’s amazing to see a person with such a close relationship with the lions he raised as young.
Kevin works to preserve and restore the dwindling habitats of these big cats. By his estimation there will be no lions left in the wild if habitat loss carries on at its current rate.
Links:
Kevin Richardson
Wikipedia: Lions
This promo film is amazing. Two guys, Adam Riemann and his friend Mark, ride two KTM 500EXCs 7,000kms (4,350 miles) from Austria to Egypt in 32 days days, filming as they go. They have no support crew and no back-up vehicles. Everything they bring, they carry on their backs or their bikes. That’s thousands of miles overlanding on a couple of 500cc dirt bikes. Awesome.
The full-length Motonomad film is scheduled to be released next year. The aerial shots were filmed with an XAircraft X650 quadcopter. Hats off to these guys.
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I found this great video on Expo the other day. In 1995 Austin Vince and seven friends went traveling around the world on motorcycles along the longest route possible. They started in their home country of England and covered about 40,000 miles visiting 44 countries. Great stuff.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Porsche’s dynamic and durable 911. Despite being a tarmac legend, the 911 did venture off-road on occasion. Case in point, this Porsche 911 SC ‘Safari’, designed for the 1978 East Africa Rally with long-travel suspension, bull bar, classic Martini & Rossi livery, and a locking rear differential. Despite being two-wheel-drive, having the engine (and weight) out back over the drive wheels, made it potent off-road performer.
The ‘Safari’ was displayed at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed in conjunction with the 911’s 50th anniversary celebration. Here’s a press release from Porsche describing the car and the rally.
The other day I posted about the Africa Twin and its 25-year history. Today I have some vintage video for you of both the 650 and 750 versions of the bike in its glory days.
The first two videos are in French but the appeal is universal. Same goes for the last one of a Africa Twin 750 starting up. Read the rest of this entry »
In 1993 three friends from New Zealand set out from Morocco on what would become an eight-year, eleven-part adventure through Africa, the Middle East, India, China, and Mongolia.
In their travels they saw the whole of human experience: war, corruption, but also great festivals, amazing desert cities, and friendly people of all creeds and colors.
These four videos detail their trip. By all evidence, it was epic. Read the rest of this entry »