My name is Tagore Sureshbabu, and I’m from India.
I’ve always enjoyed long-distance motorcycle adventure enduro travel, especially the sort where the route doesn’t necessarily go according to plan. For me, the interesting part is usually everything that happens between where you start and where you’re trying to get to. The idea of riding across Africa started in 2021 while I was travelling through Kenya. I began thinking about a much bigger trip, starting at the bottom of Africa and riding all the way north to Morocco. It was one of those ideas that gets into your head and refuses to leave.
In April 2024, I finished another big journey, riding from Ushuaia in Argentina all the way to Alaska. Having crossed the Americas, Africa was still waiting. I decided it was finally time to go back and attempt the trip I’d been thinking about since Kenya.
Starting in Cape Town
I eventually got my South African visa and flew from India to Cape Town. The rough plan was simple enough: get a motorcycle, point it north, avoid highways where possible and ride as much dirt as I could find along the way.
Rather than shipping my own motorcycle from India, I bought a KTM 690 Enduro in South Africa and fitted it with Turkana Madmule™ rackless soft luggage and a Duffalo™ watperoof duffel bag for the trip. Unfortunately, there was already a problem. My South African visa was only valid for seven days, which wasn’t enough time to complete the registration of the motorcycle into my name before I had to leave the country.
The solution at the time was to make a rental agreement with the seller and use that, together with the motorcycle’s documents, for the border crossings. It wasn’t ideal, but I needed to get out of South Africa before my visa expired. It worked, too, at least for quite a while. Much later, it would become the problem that finally stopped the trip.
At that point, though, I had a KTM, the luggage was packed and Namibia was waiting.
Namibia
Once I crossed into Namibia, the trip really got going. I wanted dirt, and Namibia certainly wasn’t going to disappoint me. My route took me through Ai-Ais, Keetmanshoop, Sesriem, Walvis Bay and Windhoek, with long stretches of gravel and desert in between.
Namibia is an incredible country to cross on a motorcycle. The distances are huge, the landscape seems to go on forever, and there are places where you can ride for hours with very little around you. Coming from India, where finding somewhere without people can be a challenge in itself, the scale and emptiness of Namibia were something completely different.
The KTM was also in its element once we were off the tar. Everything I needed for the journey was strapped onto the bike and, kilometre by kilometre, I worked my way north.
Botswana
Botswana changed the scenery again. The roads became more remote, and wildlife became a much bigger part of the experience. This was much closer to the Africa I’d imagined when the idea for the trip first started forming a few years earlier.
Travelling alone also changes the way you experience places like this. The distances between towns can be large and when something goes wrong, there isn’t necessarily somebody just down the road who can help. You become used to dealing with whatever happens and working things out as you go.
From Botswana, I continued towards Zimbabwe.
Across Zimbabwe
I crossed Zimbabwe, travelling through Harare and eventually towards Victoria Falls. Seeing Victoria Falls was obviously something special, but some of my best memories from trips like this don’t necessarily come from the famous places.
It’s usually the bits in between that I remember: small towns, strange border crossings, dirt roads, people I meet along the way and problems that weren’t part of the original plan. When you’re travelling overland by motorcycle, you don’t just arrive at a place, take a photograph and leave. You have to cross the country to get there, and that’s often where the real story happens.
From Zimbabwe, I continued north towards the Zambezi.
Crossing the Zambezi
My route took me through the Kazungula and Kanyemba region and the wider area where Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique come together. By this stage, wildlife was simply part of the environment I was travelling through.
On a motorcycle you are very exposed to everything around you, which makes riding through areas with large wild animals a rather different experience from watching them through the window of a vehicle. You’re very aware that you’re the visitor.
Eventually, I reached one of the smallest and most unusual border crossings of the trip and crossed the Zambezi River into Zambia. After all the planning and paperwork it had taken just to get this far, it was a pretty special moment.
Then the KTM690 decided it wanted some attention.
Zambia and a Broken KTM
I continued towards Luangwa, but somewhere along the way the KTM broke down. This wasn’t one of those problems where you pull out a few tools, swear at the bike for twenty minutes and carry on. The motorcycle had to be towed towards Lusaka.
Suddenly, the ride to Morocco had become a recovery mission.
I eventually got the KTM repaired in Lusaka and, once it was running again, loaded everything back onto the bike and continued north. Mechanical problems are frustrating, but at least they’re usually understandable. Something breaks, you find the problem, repair it and hopefully continue.
The next problem wasn’t mechanical, and it turned out to be much harder to fix.
Tanzania and the Paperwork Problem
From Zambia I continued towards Tanzania, where the motorcycle registration issue that had followed me from Cape Town finally caught up with me.
The KTM690 still wasn’t registered in my name. Up to that point, I’d managed the border crossings using the motorcycle documents and the rental agreement I’d made with the seller in South Africa. But in Tanzania I was told that continuing onwards into another country with a motorcycle that wasn’t registered in my name was going to be a problem.
That was difficult to accept. By then I’d already travelled thousands of kilometres through southern Africa, crossed multiple borders, ridden through deserts and wildlife areas, dealt with a major breakdown and somehow kept the whole trip moving north.
A broken KTM I could fix. The paperwork was another story.
Dar es Salaam
I was able to enter Tanzania and continued as far as Dar es Salaam, but by then I had run out of sensible options. Continuing north meant more borders, more questions about ownership of the motorcycle and potentially much bigger problems further up the road.
Eventually, I had to make the call. The KTM was running, I still wanted to ride and Morocco was still the destination, but this attempt was over. I stopped the journey in Dar es Salaam and returned home to India.
Of course I was disappointed. I’d started in Cape Town intending to cross the African continent and finish in Morocco, not Tanzania. But when I looked back at how far I’d already travelled and everything that had happened along the way, it didn’t feel like a wasted journey.
I’d made it from South Africa to Tanzania by motorcycle. That was still one hell of a ride.
Not Finished Yet
The idea started in Kenya in 2021. A few years later I came back to Africa, bought a KTM in Cape Town and finally started riding north. I crossed South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania, covering thousands of kilometres and seeing parts of Africa I’d wanted to experience for years.
There were remote dirt roads, wildlife, border crossings, a broken KTM, a tow to Lusaka and eventually a piece of paperwork that proved harder to overcome than any mechanical problem.
But the original plan hasn’t disappeared.
There is still a line missing from my map between southern Africa and Morocco, and I intend to come back and finish it. I’ve also learnt one fairly important lesson for the next attempt: I won’t arrive in South Africa and buy another motorcycle with seven days left on my visa.
Next time I’ll bring my own bike from India. Then I’ll point it north again.
Morocco is still waiting.
