What's in the panniers and on the bike?
After two weeks on the bike some items stuffed in the panniers appeared to be superfluous and some essential. Here is a list of the main things that made the experience possible, mechanically and humanly!
First things first, if the bike needs some fuel to run, riding under an average 30+ Celsius everyday requires a lot of water to avoid dehydration, therefore, two doses of rehydrate salts in the morning, and a minimum of 5-6 liters of water a day, is a must. When riding a bike you do not want to stop every 15 minutes to have a drink, so the camel pack is one of the essential parts of the gear to ride at this latitude.
Then, about the pannier system, after a small crash in Damiettta (read the blog article about it!), I had my panniers fixed by the engineering department of the Four Seasons Hotel in Alexandria. The Touratech panniers are tough, but well designed with rupture pieces to avoid the whole bike crashing if you hit the luggage system itself. I was a little bit worried about my Sea & Sea housing, which was in the crashed pannier, but nothing happened to it or to the dome port, which are worth, all together, four times the price of the pannier itself! Good job Touratech and a VERY good job by the Four Season's engineering team !
Still looking at the bike, I am amazed about the Pirelli Scorpio MT tires, coming as stock tires with the bike! They have over 28.000 km now. The back one is absolutely worn but they will still do the job until we reach Sharm (Inshallah!)
Break pads have to be changed on a regular basis, as I do not have much more information about the “regular” interval recommended by KTM, I just used them until the last millimeter, resulting in one morning looking for replacement in Luxor…(read more about it in the Luxor blog post).
Hotel bathrooms have a sink, for washing yourself, brushing your teeth, shaving or for doing your laundry! Traveling by bike involves limiting the amount of clothing you carry with you. So, a bar of soap, a sink and water are your option to wash socks, boxer shorts, T shirts etc… During this trip sinks ranged from luxury marbled Italian design to a basic stone carved camp sink, but always there was one for us to do our daily laundry!
A basic foot pump (25 EGP = 3 Euro) and a bottle of “Slime” (tube sealant) are your best friends when you get a punctured tire in the middle of the desert. It doesn’t take up so much space and will give you enough range to reach the next tire repair shop. I did about 150 Km with my back tire inflated to 30 bars and filled with “Slime”.
Navigating through Egypt is quite easy if you know exactly where you go and if you can read road signs in Arabic! If not, a GPS loaded with Egyptian road maps might help! Our units, Garmin Zumo 660's can switch between classic GPS navigation, and Off-Road or compass mode, when you go through the souk of a city like Port Said, forget about the road, just do your best to reach the azimuth you aim to, it works! And when on a long strip of road with no turns for hundreds of kilometers, a bit of music is always welcome! When not talking to John over the headset, I even managed to arrange diving reservations for some of my guests, driving at 120 Km/h, several miles from the first water point!
I could not forget to mention my 3rd and 4th eyes, my two Nikon cameras. The D300 was most of the time safe in its underwater housing, but the D200 spent most of the time around my neck. Thanks to its tropical build, it is not scared of dust and sand! With the attached Gisteq GPS-geotagging unit it makes my life easy to position the picture on the map of our trip!
Many more items were packed in our luggage. I just wanted to mention the ones above as they will for sure not be forgotten to pack for the next trip!
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