My girlfriend and I just watched a pretty cool doc called "Stop Filming Us" about how we view Congolese as people "in need" rather than people who have something to offer and then we saw the nature is beautiful and the culture is pretty rich so we decided to try our first ever road trip together and the first time either of us have been to Africa.
We plan to start in Goma make our way up through the Kivus, For sure do some hiking and gorilla watching in Kivus plus visit pygmy villages, then make it up to Isiro. Then head to Kisangani
stopping at village inns along the way maybe camp (I still need to check what the camping policies are in DRC - anybody know)? then follow N7 to Lodja to Kananga.
MAJOR QUESTION: Which has more to see? The way to Lubumbashi or Kinshasa? We don't know which we want to end our trip at.
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Volcanoes are cool
Is this a LARP? You are just going to fly into Kinchasa, rent a Land Cruiser, and cruise around one of the world's most undeveloped and unstable countries on a road trip like you were driving Route 66 across the American Southwest?
Officially designation of highways on Google Maps has absolutely nothing to do with the actual road conditions. I learned this lesson well driving around Mexico, where even the worst highways are in tip-top condition compared to the DRC.
Finding a clearing to camp on would be the smallest of your concerns in the African rainforest.
I follow several FB groups for overlanders in Africa and Westerners drive through DRC all the time. It's not an unusual or special thing. Lots of current info on road conditions available from people who have done it recently.
Have you done any African travel before? If not, start somewhere "easier" while you get used to the way things are done there. Maybe Zambia.
>so we decided to try our first ever road trip together and the first time either of us have been to Africa
Lol
Go for it
Good luck. Here's an account from experienced adventurers and their troubles with Congo
https://forum.expeditionportal.com/threads/democratic-republic-of-congo-lubumbashi-to-kinshasa.50799/
You prob gonna die
these guys were Belgians (and know French), which I assume OP is not. They also planned ahead and had quite good connections on the insides especially with Catholic missions. Although if OP is stuffed and just pays up at every "checkpost", he will probably be fine
Funny how that guy was describing the chinese presence a year before Empire of Dust came out.
I'm one of the people who look on with contempt towards normalgays and /misc/ crossboarders who are scared of countries like Ghana or Ethiopia but the DRC is the stereotype they imagine in their mind when they think that going to Rwanda will get them killed if they leave their hotel. It's still 1970's cold war tier over there
There's an evil undercurrent there if you watch youtube vids that cannot be explained by poverty alone. I'm not surprised that Hutu genocidaires found refuge there.
Only Congo refugee I ever met was strangely cold. Not unfriendly just "cold". It was like the PTSD was somehow warping the physical enviroment around him
People that have worked there for mining firms and shit call the country the CFUC, the crazy fricked up Congo. It's a dark place even by African standards.
Just travelling there is hard enough. Overlanding is probably in the top 5 hardest travel ideas a person can think of.
I would definitely not take a young white woman with me. Jesus Christ. This thread is almost too stupid to reply to.
I've ridden motorbikes across Ethiopia, Pakistan and many other countries. A visit to Goma is adventurous enough.
You will need to know French, car mechanics and be extremely lucky. You will probably be killed and your girlfriend raped.
There is a famous trip report online about a Belgian couple that did it successfully. Read like a fever nightmare. Quite a few escapes from death.
If you are gonna do something like this, don't bring rape bait with you. Rape is ridiculously common.
Just getting a DRC visa is apparently a pain.
I wonder how far OP will get.
A DRC roadtrip sounds absolutely insane with just you and especially with your (assumably) white gf. I don't think going there in itself isn't as crazy as people make out though. The guy who runs Geography Now went there and was completely fine and he's a bit of a soiboy for lack of a better term. You could probably find a guide and be fine, I'll try to find the community post he made on YouTube when he was there, it was a while ago
The oldest community post on his channel I can find is from 8 months ago so he must have deleted the older ones but here's proof he went https://twitter.com/GeographyNow/status/1462048545406697476
This is either a LARP or you're a dumb as frick delusional redditor.
You will be scammed, you will get your ass beat, your GF is absolutely going to get sexually harassed and likely raped, raw. There's a strong possibility you will both be killed. Do not frick around you stupid fricking reddit homosexual.
Scammed, yes. But cite one example of any of those other things happening to a tourist in DRC in recent memory.
doesn't take long to find stories like this
obviously there has been little or no tourism in the covid time
There aren't many tourists so obviously there isn't gonna be much news about things happening to tourists. The DRC is huge, there are areas he could go to and maybe be relatively safe, but doing some big overland road trip as an obvious foreigner is just stupid in this country.
>camping policies are in DRC
lol
...LMAO...
The policy is "Where ever I go I must also rape."
Bait