Apologies to our faithful readers for the incredibly long holiday we have taken from blogging and keeping you all updated about our exploits. As I, Jeremy, write this I’m currently I’m the United Arab Emirates waiting for a visa for Nigeria to rejoin Keith and the bikes, I guess that takes some explaining! So here goes.
Keith was back home for a month in July and I was supposed to spend a month in August back in Europe before we were both going to resume travelling. Unfortunately sometimes things don’t go according to plan and after getting a new visa for Nigeria from Dublin I had to get my passport couriered back to me in the UK. This is where the plan fell apart as my passport with all my precious stamps and my expensive visa for Nigeria along with my plane ticket was lost by FedEx!!!! You can imagine my frustration and the uncertainty of the next couple weeks was a killer.
In the end I escaped the UK for 10 days on a cheap flight to California on my other passport while my Irish passport was being replaced. The time I had there was relaxing and allowed me to think a bit more about the remainder of the year, so as soon as I had a new passport I was on a plane to Afghanistan to spend a little time with my parents who live there.
- Greetings from California
- Chilling out on the beach in California
- Jeremy in Afghan gear
After an all too short time at “home” it was off to Yemen to spent a few weeks travelling around with Richo, the mad Aussie who patched me up in Ghana after my accident!
- Richo in Yemen
More bloggage about both these places will follow with pics on the site.
During all of this time I was caught up in an internal battle about what to do with the remainder of the year. To either return to Africa and push for Cape Town or to fly the bike to Dubai and cross over into Iran and ride back to Europe via Turkey… Much too and frooing occurred with a couple turn arounds, before like a politician, I finally settled on a decision to rejoin Keith and ride to South Africa together.
So here I am applying for another visa to Nigeria hoping to rejoin Keith and the bikes by the start of December with a goal of reaching Cape Town sometime in January. Rather optimistic perhaps, but achievable and I’ve got to go back to work and earn some dollars for the next trip!
Meanwhile back at Drill Ranch Keith has been busy plugging away helping run the place and generally being indispensable. I’ll let him fill you all in on his activities in the last few months in another blog post.