According to Wanderlust member Kwabena Peprah, the idea to drive from Accra, Ghana, to London, United Kingdom, was birthed circa 2018.
He revealed this on wanderlustghana.com, where he has chronicled the epic journey which has captured the attention of many around the world.
“It was just an idea and I kept talking about it and inviting all my friends to come along,” he noted.
The first challenge was some friends were pessimistic about the journey and “rubbished the idea” immediately.
Circa 2019, however, Peprah said he had great response from friend Kwadwo Saka for the journey, and thus “we began preparing towards a summer 2020 trip”.
The second challenge was securing some mutually beneficial sponsorship from “auto marketing companies” in Ghana.
“We flirted with almost every major car dealer in Ghana and they all literally told us to fork off,” Peprah bemoaned.
The third challenge was the surprising and shocking COVID-19 pandemic, and so “the idea had to be shelved” even though they had aimed to set off on July 25, 2020.
To scratch the itch to travel, Wanderlust elected to do some heavy domestic travelling within Ghana “to while away the time and acquire enough experience”.
Also, “we eventually had a final list of committed travelers and we did a couple of trial runs across the West African sub region. That in itself has been a lot of fun,” Kwabena Peprah said.
Six cars were earmarked for the journey: two Toyota Land Cruisers (V8), a Ford F-150 Raptor, a Land Rover Defender, a Mercedes Benz G63 and a Lexus RX350, which was “the most vilified machine in the list”.
There was also one woman among the men making the journey: Nana Afua Serwaa Adusei, alias Shecanic, an auto repair technician.
The Accra to London trip officially began on Saturday, July 22, 2023, from The Blay Estate, Oyarifa, Accra.
“Work related issues will make some of the participants fly out back to Accra from Dakar and Casablanca, others will have to fly out to South Africa and the Netherlands as well. We also expect to pick up some passengers in Bamako, Casablanca and Amsterdam. The number of people expected to arrive in the UK are 9 in all,” Peprah indicated.
He also explained that: “Due to security and other concerns, the first public post will be when we enter Europe and it will be an aggregation of all my daily compilations.”
From their home country Ghana, the adventurers travelled through five African countries – Cote d’Ivoire, Mali, Senegal, Mauritania and Morocco – and ferried, together with their vehicles, from Morocco to Spain.
Source: classfmonline.com
