In the travel description prior to departure I wrote that I would do the entire journey on my own. My friend Peter Bastjančič was making me company while crossing a part of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia and I have to admit that his company was great; we were having fun and made our long desert stretches shorter with jokes.
But still it's true I made the longer part of the journey alone, but only from the physical point of view. This expedition could never have the success it does without substantial help of many persons that stayed in shadow. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all the sponsors that decided to support my expedition; the journey would be very tough without them. But without Matjaž and Jože from Koketa you wouldn't be even able to follow the tour.
Still, apart of the official supporters there were also others helping me: my dear friend Matjaž who welded me the junction for sand recovery plates, helped me with importation of the GPS and brought my ski equipment from Maribor to Ljubljana; dear Marko who took my passport to the ministry in Ljubljana for translation into Arabic when I was in a time pressure; Špela who brought my ski equipment from Ljubljana to Italian border and who instantly sent a warm e-mail or sms when motivation was on the bottom; Ksenija who is also far from our homeland but who never doubted in the success of this expedition; Alenka who was putting me up-to-date with current stuff in Maribor and in tourism business and who was cheering me up; Matjaž from AvtoPlus in Maribor who was helping me to service the Partner via sms; Marko from Hervis store in Maribor who was doing the same for my mountain-bike; Fatih from Peugeot service Dörtler in Turkish Adana who helped me with substantial information in a light speed manner; Khaldoun who made my stay in Syria an unforgettably pleasant; Haytham from Dahab and his brother who brought my passport with a night bus to the 700 kilometre distant Slovenian embassy in Cairo; The Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia in Cairo; Libyan Peoples' Bureau in Zagreb where they really helped us immensely; Ali, salah, Ibrahim and Hakim from Taknes Tourism Agency; Andrej from Ljubljana Fair (he knows why); Tina from Kompas Holidays who paid attention about our every move in the desert even in the middle of the night and made my sandy hours nicer with her mails; Marijana from Kompas Maribor who was also following my trip and cheering me up; Damjana and Klara from Kompas Holidays who helped me with their unselfish suggestions; Gregor from Kompas Celje who was doing the same thing; Tomaž from Kompas Holidays who said a good word for me at the right time at the right place; Borut from Alpe Adria Media Marketing who was following the expedition at www.aa-mm.si and brought you some exclusive photos; Andrej from Radio Slovenija who was hosting me weekly in the morning program and several times in the night program; Bor from Radio City Maribor who was sending me into air in North eastern Slovenia; Srečko from Radio Slovenia International who was putting me into air for English speaking listeners in Slovenia; Kosovelova knjižnica (library) from Sežana and Knjižnica Šiška from Ljubljana that kindly borrowed me several tourist guides for this long period; Uroš from UScom who, apart of sponsoring me, helped me with great advices; and all the others who were making me life more pleasant and tough moments easier with your kind e-mails or short messages, because not only sun was shining in the desert even though I was trying to send mostly sun to the web-page. Thanks to all of you for following the expedition (attention, the expedition IS IN NO WAY OVER YET!) and for sending me positive energy.
A big thank you also to Peter (I'll tell him this also personally, don't worry) for self-sacrificing organisation of the last stage for getting Libyan visa. He also tried to get some additional sponsors and was making me a great company on the road. Thank you for your good will and fun we were having while listening to the "great selection of CDs", silence and engine buzz.
Even if he didn't put any news on the web, my dear friend Rok was always present. He was a kind of backup back home, the ultimate resource for practically anything. Rok, thank you for unselfish and self-sacrificing help in forwarding urgent mails to the desert, searching for Peugeot services, embassy phone numbers, entering border crossing details on the web page, scanning my mail server when waiting for urgent mails, forwarding phone tariffs… Thank you for communication with the sea carrier a couple of days prior to ferry departure when Peter and I stayed after Syria, Egypt and Libya, for the first time nearly completely cut off the world wide web in Tunisia.