Tarka and I have been working full time on the One World expedition for 17 months now, along with the additional help from a team of 10 others. In 2009 the workload will increase to unbelievable amount and the team of people involved in project will stretch to over 150. So now seemed the only time to get out on an adventure. Without an adventure to re-fuel us it can become extremely hard to stay positive and motivated in the long hard sponsorship battle.

So in four weeks time we are off once again. No financial sponsorship involved, no world first to attempt, no intense logistical planning needed, just a pure adventure for the fun of it!

We are heading off to cycle 8000km, from the tiny African country of Djibouti, down the east cost of Africa to South Africa, in a little over 3 months. Why Djibouti? Well the fact that we had never heard of it was as good a reason as any.

In order to make the journey more of a challenge we have decided to leave our fancy bikes at home, wait until we arrive in Djibouti and buy a couple of old heavy steel bikes from the locals, which will more than likely have no gears AND no brakes!!!

We will be traveling through a total of 8 countries (Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland and South Africa) and do our best to capture some of the incredible landscapes and cultures we’ll pass.

We will need to cycle 110km a day in order to cover the distance in the time we have, which on a good bike and on a good road is no distance at all. However the quality of roads and the quality of the bikes will play a healthy part in the daily mileage we actually achieve. We will be giving our saddle soars a 7 day rest from cycling when we cross into Tanzania in order to climb Africa’s highest mountain, Kilimanjaro (5895m).

Although this is more of a holiday than a ‘Primal Journey’, it does have its place in our training schedule. Its important to be accustomed to repetitive workloads, One World will be a colossal psychological battle above everything else.

We would like to thank our long-term sponsor Mountain Equipment for stepping in and providing much of our technical equipment for the journey.

Don’t panic… we will regularly updating the site, right here with stories, photos and videos of our adventure as it unfolds.

Katie-Jane