It's Christmas! And we know what tradition that brings... Mince pies by an open fire, carol singers at the door, interminable jokes over a turkey dinner about 'who wants stuffing' and 'whether you're a leg man or a breast man'. Right? Wrong. Christmas means it's time for the taste of sand in your mouth. The feel of insects in your matted hair. The ceaseless beating down of an equatorial Sun. The engine oil smeared across your face and under your fingernails. Christmas means... it's time to Rally to Africa.

As ever, we can't have things being simple. Even more so than in any previous rally. Admittedly, the Nissan was rubbish. And the thought of even returning to the same country it's in fills me with dread. But it was far better than the current plan - turn up in Africa without a car. This time we'll be looking to cross several thousand miles - by any means necessary. Oh, and we're not even going at Christmas, so you can ignore that whole preface.

Why? Because it might be fun, and we might not get shot by Al Qaeda going the usual route. Admittedly, we might get shot in Guinea instead. Thankfully, the other countries we're passing through have no history of such problems at all. If there were any problems, I'm sure the FCO would know about them.

But really, why? Because that wasn't the plan. What would've been nice would have been to pick up a car in Mali from an earlier team rallying there, and take it deeper into Africa. A nice civilised jolly. Since those rallies are cancelled, we're probably going to have to get a bus across Burkina Faso or rely on bush taxis instead. Worst case, we can always try our luck at hitch hiking.

Any more details? Yep - it's a short one. Land in Bamako, Mali on the 19th January, back in the UK for 1st February flying back from Freetown in Sierra Leone.

What's with the diamond bling? I needed a theme for the site. Oh, and there's that slight issue with diamond mining in Sierra Leone. Whilst the diamond situation may be bad, we can at least rest fairly safe in the assumption that we won't have to suffer any Hollywood Rhodesian (or Seth Effrikan) accents.

DiCaprio - Not invited on our trip.

montage Us. What could go wrong?

Life Updates

Same drill as ever: we send a text, it'll get picked up somewhere on the Internet, played around with, and posted up to this page. The same goes for piccie messages if we've got a proper signal anywhere en route.

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-Messages currently unavailable - please click here to view them on the main PDC site instead.

MMS Photos

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Sponsorship

You can thank Al Qaeda for removing most of the charity element of this rally... the distinct lack of British cars making it south of the Sahara will mean there's not much to give away in Mali. And, as we only decided this was a sensible(!) idea in December, we've not even picked a charity for sponsorship. As ever, I'll be plying all the unwary locals with corporate t-shirts, though. If you're feeling like giving something back to the world, head over to Just Giving and find a charity you like the sounds of to give a few pence to.

Links

Some of the Plymouth-Dakar teams might try out something like this since their rally got cut short. If so, they'll be posting updates on one or other of the pages listed below.

Latest FCO Travel Advice:

The Car

We don't have one. Nothing to fix, nothing to go wrong... nothing to cross the countries in. Flights to Mali are sorted, from Accra in Ghana to Freetown in Sierra Leone, and back from Sierra Leone to the UK.

Other than that, it's a bit of a guess. There's a train from Mali into Ivory Coast, apparently. And a bus service from Burkina Faso to Ghana. And some taxis. If we can pick up a car in Bamako (Mali), great. Chances are it'll look like something on the right, though.

The Route

I got the crayons out and drew a picture. Then got a length of string and draped it randomly over the bit of the picture that most resembled West Africa. This might be the route we take. Or it might not even begin to resemble it. It'll be fun to find out, though...

Note: The random bit of squiggling might make a bit of sense - quick sortie into Guinea to get passport stamps, back into Mali, head across to Burkina Faso, down into Ghana, another border dash and back for Ivory Coast, then fly from Ghana to Sierra Leone.

The Silk Road The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.