Km 165,417 (or 55,000 km since HK)
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Km 165,417 (or 55,000 km since HK) |
| Km 165,417 | |||||||||
| On March 27th, 361 days after having left Hong
Kong (and only 20 days after reaching the last 5K mark in Luxor), we reached km
165,417 or 55,000 km since
leaving Hong Kong. After having spent 2 days at the Libyan border, we were
finally free to roam around this vast country. We had decided not to take
the busy coastal road but to head south into the desert on roads that have
been built to bring Libya's oil reserves to the Mediterranean Sea. The
desert is also the only place in Libya where fresh water is found.
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Km 165,417 in Libya : not much green on this map..
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| The scenery around us ? After
long stretches of vast emptiness, we were finally reaching inhabited areas
as we saw a few fields around us. At around 16.00 in the afternoon, there
was a very strange light. It was very bright yet the sky was covered. We
had just been through a sandstorm with Troopie barely managing to reach
100 km/h. The air outside was very hot and we immediately thought we were
witnessing our first Ghibli, that strong and hot wind from the South.
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Stopping at 165,417 after being hit by the Ghibli
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Where there is water, there is life
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| Making sure we did not go
faster than 100 km/h was not the only way strong Ghibli winds affected
Troopie. Strong winds also blew around a lot of sand. As we stopped to
take pictures of the 165,000 spot, we immediately noticed our car had been
"sandblasted" by the winds. All the dirt had been removed from
the left side of the car, paint had been removed from the front bumper,
our number plate had lost nearly all of its colouring, our headlights had
lost their shine and... our extra horns stopped working ! As we tried to
repair them a week or so later, we took off Troopie's front grille and saw
which areas of the radiator had been sandblasted !
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How Troopie gets sandblasted by Ghibli winds in Libya. The A/C pump on the right of the horns : with black paint or sandblasted.
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The whole undercarriage was surprisingly clean. Only the front spring leaves that we had had greased in Alexandria kept their dirt and sand.
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| On a less funny note, the
windscreen that we had replaced in Istanbul after hitting a stone the size
of a tennis ball at 90 km/h had also suffered. It is now completely
stared, a real nightmare to drive with at night as light does not shine
straight through the glass but is spread out. Even worse, our windscreen
also started to crack. This happened on a smooth road at a normal speed.
All of a sudden we heard a few clicks and that was it. And the cracks grew
bigger and bigger. Having taken so much care of our car for the past year,
the first days in Libya were really hard on us but there was little we
could do.
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We now have 6 cracks, all on the left side of the windscreen leading us to believe that the new windscreen put in in Istanbul was not OK
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Libyan drivers have good eyes ! (We were not the only one affected by the Ghibli)
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Where were we at km 110,000 km ? Hong Kong, P.R.C. |
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Where were we at km 120,417 km ? 10,000 km after HK. Gilgit, PAKISTAN |
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Where were we at km 125,417 km ? 15,000 km after HK. Vishnupur, INDIA |
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Where were we at km 130,417 km ? 20,000 km after HK. The Indo-Tibet highway, INDIA |
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| Where were we at km 135,417 km ? 25,000 km after HK. Punjab Province, PAKISTAN | |||||||||
| Where were we at km 140,417 km ? 30,000 km after HK. South of the Caspian Sea, IRAN | |||||||||
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Where were we at km 145,417 km ? 35,000 km after HK. North Eastern Anatolia, TURKEY |
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Where were we at km 150,417 km ? 40,000 km after HK. Western Anatolia, TURKEY |
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| Where were we at km 155,417 km ? 45,000 km after HK. Badiya desert, SYRIA | |||||||||
| Where were we at km 160,417 km ? 50,000 km after HK. 25 km east of Luxor, EGYPT | |||||||||
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Where will we be in 5,000 km ? Somewhere between Milan and Geneva ? Check it out ! Km 170,417
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| Coming from Egypt | Back to Trip page | Heading to Tunisia |
