Welcome to www.dakar.se. Site of Gustaf Bengtsson The contents of this site is about the planning and adventures of my first motorcycletrip. The tripdate was planned to be late october 2004 and i left in november 4th 2004, but it all started in my mind over a year ago. I've always had a facination and passion for two-wheeled vehicles. Until recently that's been limited to bicycles. Riding mountainbike and working as a bikemessenger in Stockholm.   The trigger was a documentary about seven UK motorcyclists, Mark Friend (Business Accountant); Dr Clive Greenhough (Doctor of Dispatch); William Penty (French and Japanese Teacher); Chas Penty (Journalist); Nick Stubley (Aircraft Engineer); Austin Vince (Maths Teacher); Gerald Vince (Railway Clerk and Walking Encyclopaedia), calling themselves "Mondo Enduro" trying to ride the longest land route round the world, 28,000 km, in the shortest possible time. I started to look around the net and found alot of good information for making such a trip. After some planning and a Tv-documentary of Anette Bovin riding her Suzuki DR350 from Akalla (Sweden) to Accra (Ghana) I decided i would plan my trip to westafrica. I started to look for travelguides and books covering the subject and found an array of useful stuff. Some overlanders with useful books and websites that hevily inspired me would be:    Ted Simon, wrote a book about his 4 years around the world motorcycle ride, made in 1976 Ted Simon on a 500cc Triumph Tiger. Author of; "Jupiter's travels" ISBN: 0140054103 "Riding high" ISBN: 0965478513    Chris Scott, extremly experienced sahara rider. Author of; "Adventure Motorcycling Handbook" ISBN: 1873756372 "Sahara Overland: A Route and Planning Guide" ISBN: 1873756267 Nina Rasmussen & Hjalte Tin, a Danish family of four travelling up all the way through Africa using three bikes (one Honda Dominator and two Honda NX250). "Från Kapstaden till Kairo" (org. title "Fra Cape til Cairo") ISBN: 91-87894-27-0 They also have an excellent website contraining all of their adventures, books, articles and much more, www.ninaoghjalte.dk. Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Argentinian revoutionary making a journey through South America on a Norton bike in 1952. "The motorcycle diaries" ISBN: 1857023994 Robert M. Pirsig, wrote a more philosophical book using the elements of maintaning a bike as examples. "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" ISBN: 91-0-057832-0 Touratech.de, not really a book in that meaning but a catalog of inspiration. Touratech in Niederschach, Germany makes a ton of goodies for overlanders and their bikes. "Touratech catalog" www.touratech.de Arto Rasimus, finnish worldtraveller riding a DR BIG, Suzuki 800. He has a site covering alot of his travelling; http://www.geocities.com/artorasimus/. Any overlander link list would be incomplete without Horizons Unlimited. A huge site packed with information, tips and a great bulletin board for up to date information and any question you might have. The site was made by Grant & Susan Johnson. The couple have covered most of the globe with their BMW R80G/S. The site can be found at; http://www.horizonsunlimited.com. And ofcourse the reason for driving to Dakar in Senegal would be the famous Paris-Dakar race http://www.dakar.com. It's always a cool thing to be able to say you have driven Gävle-Dakar (and back) on a motorcycle.

You can also watch pictures from my trip to Norway in July 2005. Riding accompanied by my friend Olof. Download the article about my trip featured in the local newspaper "Gävle Dagblad" (swedish, PDF-format, 64kb). The entertainment guide "Nöjesnytt" in Helsingborg also did an article about my trip, download it here (swedish, PDF-format, 348kb).          The route is planned to go from Gävle in the middle of Sweden down through Denmark, Germany, France and go to Morocco via Ceuta in Spain. Down in africa i will continue through Morocco, Western Sahara and into Mauretania. There i will go to Mali and finally end i Dakar in Senegal. After that i will take the shortest route back home. The actual trip i did became a little different due to weather and luck at the Senegalese border. I went Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Luxemburg, France, Spain, Marocco, Wesern Sahara, Mauretania Senegal. On the way back home i did the same countries except i used the excellent auto-train (www.autozug.de) from Narbonne in France to Hamburg in Germany then up and back home to Sweden.          Read about my bike by clicking 'tech' in the menu.          See the things i pack with me under 'misc' in the left upper menu.