Pelumi Nubi’s purple Peugeot 107 — known affectionately as Lumi — isn’t for sale. But if she were to list the car on Auto Trader the ad might read something like this: “Eleven-year-old, five-door micro vehicle with a one-litre engine; survived a recent 7,500-mile drive; current careful lady owner.”
Since Nubi documented her 74-day solo drive from London to Lagos (via Spain, Morocco and Senegal) on Instagram and TikTok, her dinky motor has become a social media star in its own right. “There were moments when people got in touch to check if Lumi was OK and I was like, ‘Erm, hang on, forget the car — what about me?’” Nubi says.
Although other travellers have cycled and motorbiked from Britain to Nigeria, Nubi, 29, believes she is the first woman to complete the challenge — not only alone, but in a car that’s designed more for supermarket runs than off-roading in west Africa. Nubi was born in Lagos and grew up in London, and her journey was intended to connect the two places she calls home. “I’ve travelled a lot in Europe and Asia but my footprint in Africa was so small and I wanted to change that,” she explains.
Nubi shared every step of her journey on social media — even asking her followers to suggest names for her car — eventually settling on Oluwa-Lumi — meaning “it’s God that lights my path” in Yoruba.
“I could have waited and saved up for a newer and more powerful car, but I wanted to see if I could achieve the almost impossible,” Nubi says. “I also wanted to show that travel can be about now and not saving a big adventure for one day in a ‘perfect’ future. I was determined to work with the resources I had to hand in the here and now. And also because Lumi’s one-litre engine meant fuel costs would be lower than for something more flashy.”
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Before leaving London on January 24, 2024, Nubi spent a year meticulously planning her route. She also modified her car, adding a bed, a small kitchen in the boot and curtains that could be drawn for the nights when she’d need to camp in it.
To further prepare Nubi also completed a test drive from London to Lake Como to attend a friend’s wedding in the summer of 2023, and she had previously travelled overland from Lagos to Ghana.
“My Como trip meant I had experience of driving in Europe, so the first section from London to southern Spain was a breeze, with hassle-free moves from country to country and the only hard bit paying for the fuel,” Nubi says.
Taking the ferry from Spain to Morocco was the first challenging point in the journey. “I got to the port and there was a lot of confusion about the paperwork required and whether I needed to show proof of ownership of Lumi,” she says.
Once there, Morocco became one of Nubi’s favourite countries on the trip. “I was driving through the Atlas Mountains and thinking, wow, wow, wow, how lucky am I to be seeing this,” she says. “The only difficulty came at the city of Chefchaouen, where I’d booked a walking tour, which I missed because I was trying to find somewhere to park.”
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Nubi was typically driving five to six hours per day. “Driving through Western Sahara, a no man’s land between Morocco and Mauritania, was terrifying,” she says. “For hour after hour I could see nothing but camels and desert and I was frightened I was going to be robbed, because there were no police.” In Guinea the roads were so poor Lumi’s suspension needed fixing. “It was impossible to find a stretch of road that was actually functioning as a road, and I had to get a local mechanic to fix her. Even then I never wondered whether a 4×4 would have been a better idea.”
But the biggest drama during the journey came in Ivory Coast, when, shortly after crossing the border from Liberia, Nubi crashed into a truck that was illegally parked in the dark with no hazard warning lights on.
“I had been held at the border for nine hours, where officials were asking for more money that I knew I didn’t need to pay,” Nubi explains. “So while I had arrived at 10am, I didn’t get through until 7pm.”
“I should have stopped once I was across the border but I wanted to press on to my accommodation. I had never planned to be driving in the dark and the accident was a knock-on effect of being held up for such a long time.” Miraculously Nubi wasn’t seriously hurt — although she spent two days in hospital — and while Lumi suffered damage to the front wing of the driver’s side, the car was fixable. However, the incident meant delaying her arrival in Lagos by a fortnight.
Nubi estimates the journey cost more than £20,000, with £2,000 or so spent on fuel alone. To her it feels a small price to pay for the adventure and the fact that her raw video diaries have opened honest discussions about the practical considerations of being a woman on the road, including dealing with periods, needing the loo and doing laundry.
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“I took a big supply of super tampons and ibuprofen,” Nubi says. “And I would try to time hotel stays with my cycle to avoid camping during my period. Doing the washing was easy as I had a Scrubba wash bag, which you fill with water and soap and it acts like a portable washing machine.
“When it came to needing to pee at the roadside I developed a technique that involved opening both Lumi’s front and rear doors to act as a screen.”
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An experienced traveller, Nubi had visited over 80 countries both independently and for her work as a social media content creator, and this trip allowed her to add a further six to that tally. The one that surprised her most? Guinea-Bissau. “Hardly anyone goes there, and yet it was in Bissau, the capital, that I exhaled,” she says. “There is a stunning cathedral that was built in the 1930s in the Portuguese quarter and it seemed nobody was in a rush, everyone was relaxed and the place had the feel of a chilled-out Italian town.”
Arriving in Lagos on April 7, Nubi was met by family and friends — and also an army of fans who had been following her adventure online. She has subsequently been named an ambassador for tourism for the city. While Nubi flew back to the UK, Lumi won’t be making a return journey — the Peugeot 107 will stay as a museum piece at Lagos’s John Randle Centre to mark the pair’s achievements. Letting go of her car feels like a fitting end to this journey. “One of the many lessons from this trip is discovering all the stuff I can live without,” Nubi says. “I packed a cooker with a gas cylinder in the boot. Did I use it? Not once. Which isn’t surprising, really. I don’t cook like that at home — so why would I while on the road?”
Follow Pelumi Nubi on Instagram and TikTok @pelumi.nubi
Log books
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Make sure you take your vehicle log book – your V5C document. I was asked at borders for proof that I owned my car and that it wasn’t rented, including when travelling from Spain to Morocco.
Insurance
Most UK insurers provide third-party insurance in the EU. To drive in Morocco you will need to get a “green card” from your insurer — sometimes you can download this but sometimes it needs to be posted.
Cash
Take plenty of currencies as ATMs aren’t always available. Not only did I need it for visas but I often had to buy additional car insurance at the border, for example when entering Senegal and Ivory Coast.
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