Selling a UK car in Gambia

[aeytr5]

Hi all,

Ignore the Gambia aspect of the sale - I imagine the DVLA process remains the same. I will be in a UK car in the Gambia. If I sell it there, what do I have to do to satisfy the DVLA and make sure nothing comes back to bite me?

I sold a car years ago for export, two Cypriot men arrived to collect it, I simply wrote ‘CYPRUS’ in the relevant section of the V5 and send it to the DVLA… I assume they dealt with duties etc as I never heard anything again.

Is it as simple as that?

Many thanks

[nismocat]

How did you end up in the Gambia (is it "The Gambia"?) in a UK car is the more interesting question!

[5lab]

I did exactly this with a Volvo turned into a convertible about 18 years ago. We had to use a lhd car (so it was never registered in the uk), but others with British cars just marked them for export.

The biggest restriction was Gambian import duty - it was 20% if the new value of a car, we bypassed it as they were donated to charity but not sure if that's the case these days..

[anyoldcardave]

aeytr5 said:

Hi all,

Ignore the Gambia aspect of the sale - I imagine the DVLA process remains the same. I will be in a UK car in the Gambia. If I sell it there, what do I have to do to satisfy the DVLA and make sure nothing comes back to bite me?

I sold a car years ago for export, two Cypriot men arrived to collect it, I simply wrote ‘CYPRUS’ in the relevant section of the V5 and send it to the DVLA… I assume they dealt with duties etc as I never heard anything again.

Is it as simple as that?



Many thanks

Fill in the red " Export" section on your V5, send it to Dvla, ?

[aeytr5]

nismocat said:

How did you end up in the Gambia (is it "The Gambia"?) in a UK car is the more interesting question!

Two friends with a month to kill!

[aeytr5]

5lab said:

I did exactly this with a Volvo turned into a convertible about 18 years ago. We had to use a lhd car (so it was never registered in the uk), but others with British cars just marked them for export.

The biggest restriction was Gambian import duty - it was 20% if the new value of a car, we bypassed it as they were donated to charity but not sure if that's the case these days..

Thanks for this. Think this is just stuff we’ll have to work out when there / weigh up our options. Very familiar with how these borders work at this point! In Senegal without a Carnet which wasn’t cheap.
Is there any kind of duty/tax to pay on the UK side? Export duty?

[Marquezs Stabilisers]

Sold a motorbike to Lithuania once. Guy collected it in a van and said he was straight off to the tunnel after my flat in South London. Had a number of other bikes and white goods in the van, and made the trip once a month as it paid well compared to the cost of stuff back home.

I held onto the number plates as the V5 was marked as exported.

[5lab]

aeytr5 said:

Thanks for this. Think this is just stuff we’ll have to work out when there / weigh up our options. Very familiar with how these borders work at this point! In Senegal without a Carnet which wasn’t cheap.
Is there any kind of duty/tax to pay on the UK side? Export duty?

nothing when we did it, but things might have changed (I suspect not)

its worth noting that nearly every country in africa has very tight vehicle dumping laws - I think our car was stamped in-and-out of my passport in every country on the way down - so you do need a future plan unless you've got time to drive all the way back to spain. Some options that might help

1 : dump it in no-mans land between two countries - these are quite large down there (often a mile across), so easily done - it will be stamped out of your passport in one country but not back in for the next. If you leave the keys and a sign saying "take me" it'll be gone the next day

2 : find a fixer to bribe a border official to get you in or out without the right stamps. One person in our group had to do this when their 20 year old chevvy blazer developed big end knock. The price of the bribe (plus the fixers fee) was conveniently one broken chevvy blazer

[aeytr5]

5lab said:

nothing when we did it, but things might have changed (I suspect not)

its worth noting that nearly every country in africa has very tight vehicle dumping laws - I think our car was stamped in-and-out of my passport in every country on the way down - so you do need a future plan unless you've got time to drive all the way back to spain. Some options that might help

1 : dump it in no-mans land between two countries - these are quite large down there (often a mile across), so easily done - it will be stamped out of your passport in one country but not back in for the next. If you leave the keys and a sign saying "take me" it'll be gone the next day

2 : find a fixer to bribe a border official to get you in or out without the right stamps. One person in our group had to do this when their 20 year old chevvy blazer developed big end knock. The price of the bribe (plus the fixers fee) was conveniently one broken chevvy blazer

Just thought I’d update. The Gambian Red Cross have very gratefully accepted the car. No issues with duty, RHD, etc. They are talking to the police and all is good. So this is a good option for people doing the same. Also worth noting that they are an extremely lovely bunch doing a very worthy job.

All is cleared with the car passport and our passports etc. and we will leave by plane.

[Roman Moroni]

aeytr5 said:

Just thought I’d update. The Gambian Red Cross have very gratefully accepted the car. No issues with duty, RHD, etc. They are talking to the police and all is good. So this is a good option for people doing the same. Also worth noting that they are an extremely lovely bunch doing a very worthy job.

All is cleared with the car passport and our passports etc. and we will leave by plane.

Coincidentally I'm driving to the Gambia in the next few months. Which route did you take? We're taking the ferry to Santander; then following the Spanish south coast (popping into Gibraltar), ferry over to Morocco then driving down through Western Sahara/Mauritania/Senegal, into Gambia & ending up in Banjul

[aeytr5]

Roman Moroni said:

Coincidentally I'm driving to the Gambia in the next few months. Which route did you take? We're taking the ferry to Santander; then following the Spanish south coast (popping into Gibraltar), ferry over to Morocco then driving down through Western Sahara/Mauritania/Senegal, into Gambia & ending up in Banjul

It’s great fun! We did a slightly odd route. Eurotunnel to Calais, down to Spanish border, across near Bilbao, down through Salamanca, Seville and crossed Algeciras to Ceuta. Then stayed in Tangiers, Marrakesh, Sidi Ifni, Layounne, Dakhla, unplanned stay at border to Mauritania, Nouakchott, St Louis, Dakar, Toubakouta and Banjul… where I’m currently sipping a cocktail!

Really really good fun. We struggled to find information about the trip (especially up to date). Please feel free to drop a message, we can email or call etc. I now have an enormous knowledge of how it all works, what I wish we’d done etc.! Also a good knowledge of where is worth seeing and where is worth skipping.

[Roman Moroni]

aeytr5 said:

It’s great fun! We did a slightly odd route. Eurotunnel to Calais, down to Spanish border, across near Bilbao, down through Salamanca, Seville and crossed Algeciras to Ceuta. Then stayed in Tangiers, Marrakesh, Sidi Ifni, Layounne, Dakhla, unplanned stay at border to Mauritania, Nouakchott, St Louis, Dakar, Toubakouta and Banjul… where I’m currently sipping a cocktail!

Really really good fun. We struggled to find information about the trip (especially up to date). Please feel free to drop a message, we can email or call etc. I now have an enormous knowledge of how it all works, what I wish we’d done etc.! Also a good knowledge of where is worth seeing and where is worth skipping.

Thanks for the offer of help, but there's a whole load of us doing the trip several of whom have done it before, so we'll just be retracing their steps.They had problems at the Mauritanian border so we're setting a day aside just in case.

Never done anything like this in the past, it's completely outside of my comfort zone

[aeytr5]

Roman Moroni said:

Thanks for the offer of help, but there's a whole load of us doing the trip several of whom have done it before, so we'll just be retracing their steps.They had problems at the Mauritanian border so we're setting a day aside just in case.

Never done anything like this in the past, it's completely outside of my comfort zone

Neither had we! From deciding it sounded like fun at the pub, we bought a car 2 days later and left a week later.
The Mauritanian border took us 27 hours!
Weirdly, the entire trip we never had our car searched, and were never even asked for a bribe, let alone had to pay one. In about 80 police/military checkpoint, 85% had a smiley chat and waved us on our way. 15% asked for passport… and that was it!
Enjoy it - it’s a blast.

[Roman Moroni]

aeytr5 said:

Neither had we! From deciding it sounded like fun at the pub, we bought a car 2 days later and left a week later.
The Mauritanian border took us 27 hours!
Weirdly, the entire trip we never had our car searched, and were never even asked for a bribe, let alone had to pay one. In about 80 police/military checkpoint, 85% had a smiley chat and waved us on our way. 15% asked for passport… and that was it!
Enjoy it - it’s a blast.

[Mr Penguin]

aeytr5 said:

It’s great fun! We did a slightly odd route. Eurotunnel to Calais, down to Spanish border, across near Bilbao, down through Salamanca, Seville and crossed Algeciras to Ceuta. Then stayed in Tangiers, Marrakesh, Sidi Ifni, Layounne, Dakhla, unplanned stay at border to Mauritania, Nouakchott, St Louis, Dakar, Toubakouta and Banjul… where I’m currently sipping a cocktail!

Really really good fun. We struggled to find information about the trip (especially up to date). Please feel free to drop a message, we can email or call etc. I now have an enormous knowledge of how it all works, what I wish we’d done etc.! Also a good knowledge of where is worth seeing and where is worth skipping.

Sounds like it would make an interesting thread. How was driving through Mauritania? I've always been tempted to drive to and through Africa.

[aeytr5]

Mr Penguin said:

Sounds like it would make an interesting thread. How was driving through Mauritania? I've always been tempted to drive to and through Africa.

Do it! It’s great fun.

On the driving front, and this goes for the whole of Africa, it is utter chaos. There is no such thing as a give-way, donkeys and motorbikes will blindly go the wrong way around roundabouts, down the wrong side of the motorway, people and children hanging off the tops of trucks and the sides of vans etc. The rule seems to be, beep a reasonable amount, but not as much as in India, and that it’s always your right of way so just go! After a month of this, I feel I’m going to be beeped a lot when back in England! People have some discipline out of town, but driving in any kind of town or city from Morocco onwards is completely lawless.

Morocco and Western Sahara are easy as pie. Lovely smooth roads. The landscape and general atmosphere changes the further south you go. South of Guelmim, so the ‘Western Sahara territory’ itself, is unbelievably quiet. Eerily so… at times we didn’t see another car for 3 or 4 hours. Fewer police checkpoints, and they became slightly more official and stern.

The Mauritanian border is utterly appalling. Extremely long wait for us to get in, then the jittery few kilometres drive through the heavily mined No Man’s Land. The Mauritanian side is by far the worst, however. Absolute chaos. You have to just throw your documents in amongst the hundreds of people. We had no clue where our passports even were for about 2 hours … this is normal. Expect to be shoved around with absolutely zero regard for personal space, accompanied by some really unpleasant smells. You are pressed into a tiny building with hundreds of others. It has no air con, and was 48 degrees C when we were there.

In Mauritania, the striking things are both the serious poverty as well as just how large and unpopulated the country is. Western Saharan/Moroccan checkpoints have kitted out Nissan Patrols, flashy uniforms, bodycams and guns. The few Mauritanian checkpoints we encountered were ancient green tents, no signage, and border staff in mucky green overalls with little to no equipment. The road is initially very bad, and the sides are just mile after mile of shredded tyre. However, after about 20 minutes, it clears up, and we found the road to Nouakchott to be unbelievably scenic, smooth, fast and quiet.

Nouakchott itself - there is no getting around just how deprived the place is. In all honesty, it’s not somewhere I’d rush back to or recommend. The people are friendly, but the poverty is so bad that it is quite difficult to get to know locals outside of hotel staff at all well, as they are solely fixated on your money. I absolutely understand how bad the situation is for locals, but purely from a travelling perspective, we probably enjoyed Mauritania the least. It is also striking just how alone you feel there as a Westerner. Not only are you unlikely to see another foreigner, but the police force is not remotely effective and the British embassy (which is a ‘pop-up shop’ in the US embassy) has very limited assets and ability to help you. It was where I was most worried about something going wrong from the offset.

Senegal is a lovely place with lovely people. The roads are really quite bad, however. If it has rained, bear in mind that a lot of puddles will actually be 3ft deep car-killing craters. The speed-bumps, of which there are zillions, are also absolutely huge. A standard height Passat painfully scraped across almost all of them… even with extreme caution. A rut near the Mauritanian/Senegalese border actually punched a 4sq/in hole in our oil sump… which was fun!

Dakar, which is where I initially aimed to reach, was the least favourite destination in Senegal. I have never been somewhere with such thick air pollution… it genuinely made us both feel quite ill just to be out and about. The roads outside the commercial centre are utterly appalling, and most of the smaller roads are dirt tracks. We were very thankful to leave, and from there stayed at our favourite location in Senegal - a small remote village called Toubacouta. Friendliest people on earth and an authentic experience. No hot water, no roads etc.

Gambia - where I still am - is a lovely place. The people have hard lives, and, surprisingly for me, have an odd respect for the British as an ex-colony. Also the first place you’ll reach where French and Arabic is replaced by English. The only real downside is having to be near/associated with all of the creepy old Western sex tourists. Just as many 70 year old white women walking around with 20 year old local men as the other way round. I recommend interacting with the Gambian locals and not the other travellers!

It is absolutely worth doing and immense fun. If you exercise caution and prepare reasonably well it is perfectly safe, and probably a lot easier than most people imagine. We ended up staying in some quite nice places (which are still v v cheap vs England), had nice meals etc etc., and it probably cost as much as 2 weeks at a reasonably nice Mediterranean all-inclusive. Though if the road trip appeals, I’m guessing that isn’t your kind of holiday either.

We did it in a completely unmodified £800 2002 1.9PD Passat estate. I’d choose slightly more ground clearance past Mauritania if I went again, but we had absolutely no issues other than getting a short tow and weld job on the sump. I never took a tool from my box… didn’t need the spare wheel etc. But we were definitely lucky!

Hope that sheds some more light on the trip. Apologies for the brain diarrhoea… still quite exhausted from all.

[porterpainter]

Great adventure - thanks for sharing

[daqinggregg]

+1 Fascinating.

[Stuart70]

Chapeau

[Granadier]

O/T but your adventure reminds me of a book I read many years ago, written by two guys who drove across Africa in the 80s in a 1920s Talbot, on their way from London to Sydney