As you can imagine there is quite a bit of paperwork that needs to be done when organising a trip like this - below are the major pieces of paperwork and documents you need to sort out.

Visas

We will only need visas for Zambia and Tanzania and will get these sorted once we are there.  Visas for Zambia can be obtained on the border but Tanzanian visas need to be obtained before you arrive in the country.

Carnet  De Passage

A Carnet de Passage is basically your car's passport.  It is an essential document for anyone taking their own vehicle to Africa as it allows temporary importation without payment of customs duties and taxes. The document guarantees that if for any reason the vehicle fails to be re-exported, the issuing club will pay duties liable. RAC is the only issuer of this document in UK.  The booklet comes in 5, 10 or 25 pages and you specify the number of pages you want depending on the number of countries you are visiting - 1 country per page.  If you re-visit a country this will be documented on a separate page so make sure you have plenty of pages available.  On issuing a carnet, the RAC requires some form of security - a bank guarantee, insurance indemnity or full cash deposit, calculated according to the vehicle value and countries/region of visit.  

 

After much consideration and worry that the insurance indemnity or cash deposit would be quite expensive, we opted for the bank guarantee.  This initially proved to be a little time consuming as it took a good 45 minutes on the phone to First Direct to establish who we needed to speak to, however, once we had been put through to the Foreign Department it was a piece of cake.  We downloaded the bank guarantee form from the RAC website, completed it and sent it to First Direct, they rang us with a few questions and did the rest.  They charge £35 for each quarter so it will cost us approx £70 as opposed to £450 for the insurance indemnity or £4,500 for the cash deposit.  For further information on the carnet click here: www.rac.co.uk

International Driving Permit (IDP)

UK visitors wishing to drive in Africa require an IDP in addition to a full UK Driving Licence.  An IDP is internationally recognised and normally allows the holder to drive a private motor vehicle without additional formality.  Anyone who will be driving the vehicle needs an IDP which is valid for 1 year from date of issue.  For further information and to download an application form, click here: www.rac.co.uk.  A really efficient service - we got ours back in 2 days!!   

Vehicle insurance

We haven't taken out vehicle insurance for when we are in Africa as it is very expensive.  Not many UK insurance companies will quote for this type of insurance  and the only 2 we know of who will offer fire, theft and accident insurance for all of Africa are Campbell Irvine and Alexander Forbes.

Other insurances

Third party insurance is compulsory in many countries and is usually sold at the borders.   We have been told to buy the COMESA yellow card insurance in the first country that will sell it to us - apparently it is very useful to have if you come across police checkpoints.

 

As a safety precaution we will be taking photocopies with us of important documents and paperwork  - passports, credit cards, driving licences, V5, list of UK embassies, etc, etc.  We will also leave a copy at home so that we can get it faxed or emailed to us if we need it urgently. 

Someone else recommended scanning copies of important documents and saving them onto the laptop - if we have time we might do this as well.