In 2006 if traveling in
your own vehicle and wanting to go South, you have to be accompanied by
a guide. As far as we could find out there is no way around that. If there
is no room in your vehicle the guide will have to have his own. This is
of course more expensive and depending on which way your are heading,
make sure the guide will have the appropriate vehicle.
If you only want to transit Libya and therefore stick to the roads in
the North, it is apparently possible to get a Transit
Visa.
Arranging for a guide is a bit of a lottery. Basically you have to contact
a travel agency in Libya which will arrange everything. We did this by
e-mail and it was a very long and painful process. Sometimes I would get
a reply right away, sometimes you had to wait for weeks and some questions
they did just not answer (like could you confirm in writing the following
arrangement.). I think they would prefer to deal with you on the phone.
I prefer e-mail, because at least this way you have some sort of conformation
of what was agreed on.
Any way in the process of finding an agency I got a lot of different offers.
Here is the information on the agency that we ended up using:
Shati Zuara Tours - Mr. Haji Ben Kalifa
e-mail: shati_zuara@yahoo.com, info@shatizuara.com
web: www.shatizuara.com
phone: 00218 913 222 418
fax: 00218 25224 606
We agreed on the following prices:
| Visa and border service |
65 Euros per person
(including the 50 Euros the Libyan government charges for the visa) |
| Border service for the bikes |
25 Euros
(not including cost for insurance, license plate and carnet) |
| Guide |
25 Euro per day without car
65 Euro per day with his own 4x4 car
65 Euro for the guide to return to Zuara from the Egyptian border |
As far as we could tell, this is a one man operation. Mister Haji was
very helpful and professional in setting this up. During our stay in Libya
we called him various times when there was a disagreement with the guide
and things always got sorted out. The guides as far as we could tell got
subcontracted from other operators. The guide we ended up with did not
speak any of 'our' languages but only arabic, which was at times a real
problem. So when setting things up make sure you let Mr. Haji know that
you want a guide who speaks one of your languages. Other than that we
can really recommend Mr. Haji.
In Tunisia we met Ennio Cavallucci also traveling on a motorcycle. He
had crossed Libya just before us going the other way, that is from Egypt
to Tunisia. He said he had a really nice guide who spoke English. Here
is the information for the agency that Ennio used:
Sindebad Tours - Mr. Rabih Barudi
e-mail: rbarudi@hotmail.com
web: www.sindebadtours.com
phone: 00218 21 360 9658
mobile: 00218 92 509 3110
| Visa and border service |
unknown |
| Border service for the bikes |
unknown |
| Guide |
40 Euro per day without car
|
Transit Visa
We met a Swiss couple traveling in a VW Bus across Northern Africa. They
managed to get a Transit Visa for Libya in spring 2006. Here is how they
did it:
They wrote a letter stating who they were, their travel plans, explaining
why they didn't apply for the Libyan visa at home (they said they had
already been on the road for three months) and asking for a Transit Visa.
They had this letter translated in Arabic and handed it in at the Libyan
embassy in Tunis. They were told to come back in ten days and then after
paying a fee, they were issued a Transit Visa for 10 days. Inside Libya
they managed to get that Visa extended to 30 days in Benghazi. They had
already tried to do that in Tripoli, but there they were refused an extension.
They said that once inside Libya they tried to go South, but got turned
around by the checkpoints.
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