[FIRST PUBLISHED 24.07.2016] A grand total of more than 21,000km travelled on public transport across an entire continent was always going to generate individual journeys that were more momentous than their eventual destination. Here are six of the best, and worst of this African Odyssey… 1: It can’t be done, they said. Meh, I said. …
[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 15.07.2016] 24 – 24 – 14 – 24 – 24 -85 – 1.33 – 14 – 949 – 2,907 – 991 – 4,475 – 134 – 29 – 8 – 12* One of the great masochistic pleasures of multi-country travel lies in the complex intricacies of currency conversion and the arithmetic pitfalls that …
[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 11.07.2016] “Get in, quickly. The convoy is about to leave.” As I haul myself up and into the passenger seat of the truck cabin, my excitement at being able to enjoy today’s lengthy journey from an unusual vantage point is quickly dampened by the sight of a bullet hole in the windshield, at …
[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 23.06.2016] And so it was that the last night of my second African chapter was spent in a Cairo dive bar in the company of a Ghanaian/Egyptian IT technician and a Kuwaiti prostitute. Both were off duty, unfortunately for me as I was rather hoping to get a minor bug fixed on my …
[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 31.05.2016] It was love at first sight. I had already met her parents and seen both where she was conceived and born; I had stalked her relentlessly for more than 1,800km, following her shapely curves from nearby, though she remained oblivious to my presence. Now, we were finally about to consummate our relationship …
[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 28.05.2016] Salvation came in the shape of a cattle truck today. I had just gone over the critical two hour mark with my thumb in the air standing by the roadside in the middle of the Nubian Desert, the point at which frustration at not having been granted immediate deliverance slowly turns into …
[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 24.05.2016] Lady Luck has many ways of manifesting her formidable presence. For some, it is an unexpected slice of chance that occurs following a somewhat obscure series of events mostly of one’s own doing – this is self-made luck; for others, it is a simple set of numbers that tumble into sequence against …
[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 19.05.2016] The natural born pyromaniac in me edges closer still, despite the increasingly unbearable heat emanating from the pit directly in front of me. If it feels as though I am a willing co-voyager on Jules Verne’s Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, about to descend deep into the earth’s bowels, then it …
[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 07.05.2016] I may be a little odd. You see, I really rather enjoy spending upwards of twelve hours at a time going nowhere fast in cramped, hot and often unhygienic conditions on third world public transport systems. Sometimes I even wonder if I don’t actually prefer it to reaching the destination itself. Despite …
[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 02.05.2016] One of the absolute privileges of travelling in Europe is discovering its majestic capital cities. London, Paris, Rome, Athens, Berlin, to name but a few, are all names that evoke enchanting days spent admiring superlative architecture and immersing oneself in millennia of history and culture. In Africa, the complete opposite holds true: …