Africa...once again
Stuttgart to Cape Town E-07 ride report
I was travelling with a Honda XL 600V Transalp, starting in Stuttgart
Germany. The first few thousand kilometres through Austria, Italy and
Greece, we had more or less tarmac. The Mitas gave me a good
Feeling while we enjoyed the winding roads along the coastline in
Greece.
The roads through Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Egypt were very hot and almost straight.
This made the Michelin Anakee of my travel partner go down like butter.
My Mitas did not lose too much profile.
In Sudan my travel partner had to put on Pirelli Scorpions on his Suzuki DRZ400.
With lots of luggage I was also carrying a spare Continental TKC80 which
I had planned on using in Sudan.
Because my Mitas E07 still looked very good I decided not to change it which was a good decision. My Mitas took me through the desert with no problems.
While the sand was hard, it only used the middle part which is made for street use but when the sand was soft, the Mitas pushed me forward with its strong, long knobs at the side.
In Ethiopia we reached rocky terrain. While lots of tread from the
Pirelli scorpion just broke off; my Mitas did not get any damage because it was made out of a harder material and did not have such big gaps between its tread.
While crossing Tanzania and Malawi, the middle part of the Mitas tire was gone but now the tire switched to reserve: In the middle it has a big bar going all around the tire. While I was doing a lot of hard tarmac road through Mozambique, the Mitas was running on this middle part which was made out of hard material and seemed to last forever.
At the Baviaans Kloof I could even test the Mitas E07 in mud and water. There I could see again the good side of this tire. Even after most of the middle of the tire was gone after 25.000 km, it still did not get stuck. The side of the tire was still almost new and pushed me through the slippery mud. It did not sink in because after doing very long distances with no corners, the middle part was flat like a plate.
After almost 26.000 km I reached Cape Town with no flat tires at all.
Tobi