Nairobi to Namibia Motorcycle Tour: Enduro Expedition

The YAMAHA Tenéré Rally stands ready to go, at camp the preparation for the coming 5,000 kilometres is underway: 'Go south!'. Your Nairobi to Namibia motorcycle tour follows the roughly 6,000-kilometre East African Rift through a country with over 40 ethnic groups. Along the Kenyan savannahs, acacias, low sun and huge herds of wildebeest, zebra and antelope accompany you between the Serengeti and Masai Mara. A spectacle is the crossing of the Mara River, where the crocodiles already wait.

You cross the border post from Kenya into Tanzania and already see Kilimanjaro from afar, with its 5,985-metre Kibo summit. This stage of your Africa enduro expedition leads to the foot of the mountain at Arusha, where you take time for the town or a safari into the Ngorongoro Crater, home to around 25,000 large mammals and a high density of predators. After freshly brewed plantation coffee, a long enduro day awaits along the Kizigo and Usungu game reserves.

By now the enduro group is a well-rehearsed border team, and online tour guide Jojo always knows where you are via satellite tracking. On this enduro journey through Africa, tough kilometres on laterite-like tracks lie ahead, past extinct volcanoes. The paths through Malawi lead through tea plantations, mango forests and banana fields as far as the eye can see. In the evening you set up camp at Lake Malawi: cold beer, a jump into the water and a view of the crocodiles included.

With the first rays of sun over Lake Malawi you get on the motorcycle and ride toward Zambia. Between warm rain showers and sunshine, unforeseen adventures await. This stage has its riding challenges: our enduro trips are known for a 'battle day', and this last stretch along Lake Malawi can become the surprise stage of the equator motorcycle expedition. Past the Nkhotakota game reserve you reach a small border post into Zambia.

English as the official language helps you through the many ethnic groups and languages of young Zambia, independent since 1964. On your motorcycle expedition you trace your own line along the Lower Zambezi National Park and Lake Kariba. Depending on your condition and schedule, two sporty riding days lie ahead until you arrive in Livingstone at Victoria Falls. A rest day is worthwhile, for example for a helicopter flight over the roaring Mosi-oa-Tunya.

Motorcycle and enduro trips are unusual in Zambia, so the border officers in Kazungula look on with some surprise. Here, at the four-country corner of Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Namibia's Caprivi Strip, you cross the Zambezi border river and reach the expedition's last landlocked country. Botswana counts only around four inhabitants per square kilometre, but around 130,000 elephants, so on the tracks you often meet more elephants than people.

Welcome to the last country of the Trans-Africa motorcycle trip: Namibia, the land of the San. After Mongolia it is the most sparsely populated country in the world, around 2.5 people per square kilometre. On the last kilometres you cross the Omaheke, Khomas and Erongo regions and, with a bit of luck, spend the night at a San village kraal. Not far from Namib-Naukluft Park you enjoy the million-star hotel under the open sky one last time, before Walvis Bay awaits.