Overlanding without a Carnet de Passage?

Question

There's a lot of (sometimes contradictory) information to be found around the internet about a Carnet de Passage. The linked Wikipedia article, for instance says that

a Carnet de Passage is required in Burundi, Egypt, Kenya, Libya, Senegal (for vehicles older than 5 years), Southern African Customs Union (BW/NA/LS/SZ/ZA), Sudan, Uganda.

Well, last year, I've been doing some overland traveling with a friend and we drove a 15 year old car without Carnet de Passage (besides through Europe) through Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia. And I can tell for sure that the only country which was kind of problematic (but not even impossible) to enter without a Carnet was Egypt.

We had to actually buy a local Carnet which was only valid in Egypt and costed us around 500€. All in all it was much cheaper for us to travel without a Carnet as the cash bond of 5000€ (which is the minimum in Europe) was much higher than all the money we spend on the car, including the purchase and all temporary import taxes we had to pay at the different borders (we knew in advance we wouldn't bring the car back home).

From other overlanders we met, we heard that the only countries in the world that are kind of "problematic" concerning a Carnet de Passage are Egypt and Iran.

I've been thoroughly searching for this info before we left, and I could only conclude that the only possibility to know for sure was to just show up at the border and hope for the best.

With this question I would like to gather real-life, hands-on experiences with overlanding without a Carnet de Passage, with the ultimate intent to create a trustworthy reference so future overlanders don't have to hunt around the internet to only find contradictory information and in the end buy themselves a Carnet de Passage while it wasn't really necessary.

Answer 1

These are the costs (approximately) we had and the time it took at each individual border in the period october - december 2010 to get our car into that country:

Syria:

• ~$100 temporary import tax + insurance
• ~$100 diesel tax (this is a per week cost)
• quite smooth... less than 2 hours

Jordan:

• ~50€ temporary import tax + insurance
• very smooth, less than 1 hour

Egypt:

• ~500€ temporary Carnet de Passage
• ~100€ extra administrative costs
• very problematic, as we didn't have a Carnet, it took a whole day (+10 hours) to get everything sorted administratively

Sudan:

• $40 for everything (that's not including the cost to put your vehicle on a barge, which is necessary to travel from Egypt to Sudan)
• quite easy, there was a very helpful guy who gave us some good tips: don't say you don't have a carnet, take a couple of copies of your certificate of conformity, staple them together and show them that when they ask for a carnet ==> this turned out to be no problem at all

Ethiopia:

• $100 for everything (not official)
• a couple of hours (but this was especially because we just arrived there as they were having their lunch, so we had to wait for that), so very smooth.

Answer 2

I drove across west Africa to Cameroon early last year (December 2009-January 2010) as part of a charity rally and many of the teams drove from Senegal all the way to Cameroon without using their carnets (we'd been advised to get them by the rally's organizers). The route they all took was Senegal - Mali - Burkina Faso - Togo (some went straight to Benin) - Benin - Nigeria - Cameroon.

There are a couple of caveats to this though:

• Senegal was a special case as we'd shipped our cars in and we all had to show carnets for our vehicles to recover them from customs.
• One of the pieces of documentation required by the Nigerian embassy in order to issue our visas was the carnet.

I can't give first hand experience of travelling through the area without using a carnet as we used ours on every border (in some cases refusing to give them money and insisting that they take it). We also travelled through Ghana where, I believe, a carnet is required if you're driving a car.

My personal advice would be to get one if you can as the border crossings (in most cases) become an easy job of getting all the bits stamped. No payments to dodgy officials and no having to turn around and find a more lenient crossing point or a way around the country.

The RAC in the UK gave us our carnet for about £200. If we'd had to pay the insurance option for the security payment it would have cost an extra £80 (10% of the security, which is 150% of the vehicle value (£500+insurance tax) plus a £350 deposit. I may have misunderstood this, but that seems pretty reasonable and becomes better value the more countries you drive through.

Answer 3

I recently (early 2013) took a Tanzanian registered vehicle through Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia with no Carnet de Passage. Results as follows:

Kenya/Uganda/Tanazia are all part of an East African union so the process was very simple. Think we paid $40US to customs at each point for up to 1 month. Free for less than 2 weeks.

Ethiopia we pleaded ignorance at not having a Carnet and got away with it, no cost! We did have to register our GPS capable devices, again no cost though just hassle.

We intended to travel up through Sudan and sell the vehicle in Egypt. After reading all the reports online and my experience when I got to Egypt yes it's possible but it was going to cost about $1000US including fare for the vehicle ferry. So.. we decided to sell in Khartoum until we found out about a new law forbidding importation of vehicles older than 2 years. Sudan authorities were tricky enough as I later found out so ditched plan B as well. We ended up selling in Addis Ababa for parts. To import legally was ridiculously expensive. i.e One of the import taxes is 100% of the NEW retail price of the vehicle!

Of course we could have sold it easily if we wanted to drive back down to Kenya/Uganda. Also vehicle was a complete dog held together seemingly by string. I would not recommend buying off a local. Buy off an ex-pat. Oh and to change ownership in Tanzania you have to become a tax resident. A lot of paper work and buerocracy but got it all done in a single day. Never again though!!

Hope this helps :)

Answer 4

I have travelled to Africa via the Middle East with a carnet, though another overlander managed without too much trouble to get through to Ethiopia without a carnet where he sold his car. Egypt was more expensive but took no longer than the rest of us.

I continued to travel to the south finally leaving Mozambique with an expired carnet. I then entered Kenya Uganda and Tanzania without a carnet using a temporary import permit, which essentially is for East African vehicles only, though each border will readily issue this. This is $25 per month but can only be renewed for 3 months. My time is up though and it cannot be renewed within East Africa. One problem can be officious police checks or over zealous customs official that may seize the car beyond this period if you are unlucky.