The planning

I love the planning almost as much as I love the trip. That’s not an exaggeration. Months of it, sometimes. Hours of YouTube in the evenings, reading, conversations with anyone who’s been where we’re going.

I take from everyone. Andrew St Pierre White, Edward Bath, Ryan Crocker, the XOverland lot, all the other adventure travellers knocking about southern Africa putting their trips online. My family who live out there, who know things you’ll never find written down. My own knowledge of the area, which counts for a fair bit by now. And the brands too, Alu-Cab, Front Runner, Opposite Lock. I’ll happily lose an hour looking at how somebody’s set their vehicle up. Tracks4Africa for the routes. The Bushlore team. The reservations people who sort the bookings and know which camps are worth the detour.

Then the good part, which is the route. What it actually looks like on the map, how far each day is, where we end up at night. It’s never a strict plan. It’s a guide, a heading, a direction of travel. But drawing it out is what makes the whole thing real. You go from an idea to a line on a map and suddenly it’s happening.

Anna is a passenger princess and very happy about it, and she does the food. Two weeks’ worth. The larder stacked, the freezer full, the fridge packed properly. Wine, obviously. We’re spoiled for it coming out of South Africa. Kruger in 2023 with my cousins, we loaded so much of it the back of one of the trucks looked like a wine cellar. Firewood for days.

Here’s the thing I’ve come round to. The planning is the only part of it I actually control. Once we’re moving, the road does what it wants, the animals turn up or they don’t, and the weather has no interest in what I wrote down in March. So I prepare properly and then I let the rest happen. I think that’s most of what a decent life looks like, and I’ve never had it demonstrated to me more clearly than sitting in a camp chair waiting for something to walk past.

We’re made by our experiences, and the experiences are made by the work you put in before them. Very little of it is luck. It’s the months of reading, the route drawn out, the food packed, the people you choose to have with you.

And it’s where we’re meant to be. That’s the honest version. Not for two weeks a year, but properly, in the end. It’s where I want to be when I’m older, and it’s where I’d want our kids to grow up, so that dust and long drives and sitting still are just what normal looks like to them.

Planning is essential.

Simon