southeast Africa: when trips go very very badly

[netllama]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you seriously need to alter your planning and decision making processes or someone else is going to have to re-host the forum content yet again - assuming your next of kin have the administrator passwords.

Glad you made it out - hopefully wiser - and thanks so much for sharing the harrowing story!  As they say, a wise man doesn’t learn from his mistakes - he learns from others’ mistakes.  But that requires folks brave enough to share their mistakes openly.  Kudos to you for doing so!  I’m only a little way through the more detailed write up and hoping the rest of the trip is a smoother adventure.

My biggest mistake was not turning back when the road conditions didn't match expectations.  Of course, I made other mistakes after that, but at the end of the day, if I had stuck to the (awful, horrific, potholed, cratered) paved roads, none of the problems that I ran into over that 6 day period would have happened. 

In terms of planning better, I honestly don't think that was the issue.  I've yet to find a single map from any source that flagged any of these roads as being in the condition that they were in.  The sad reality, is much of the developing world has not great roads, and their condition is often not documented anywhere until some foreigner with a vehicle drives them.