It is fair to say that for most Western visitors, Cairo is likely to provide something of a culture shock. Stepping off the plane, we were no exception to this rule, although for probably slightly different reasons to most. Driving in from the airport, we were taken aback by how developed everything was. We looked on at the innumerable neon lights with the amazement of children visiting the Blackpool Illuminations. After almost exactly one hundred days in Africa, we had become well and truly accustomed to nightfall meaning that even large cities are shrouded in darkness. Despite it being [View Full Entry]

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Of all the countries that our route would potentially take in, none raised as many quizzical eyebrows as Sudan. Although we always dreamed of being able to complete our journey to Hong Kong without flying, Sudan was always the country most likely to put pay to our quest. In fact, when we describing our route, we often caveated it with, “…..but we’ll probably have to fly over Sudan.” Not surprisingly, despite being the largest country in Africa, Sudan is one of the least visited. Many years of well publicised, bloody civil war mean that it’s not exactly up [View Full Entry]

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The main tourist trail in Ethiopia, although not particularly well trodden, is the so called historical circuit, which consists of a loop to the north of Addis Ababa. Due to limitations in both time and enthusiasm for historical sites, we chose to carry out a truncated version of the circuit. Our first port-of-call was the town of Bahir Dar on the shores of Lake Tana. Here we organised a boat trip, taking in some of the many monasteries populating the islands of the lake. The monasteries were adorned with some impressive, centuries old paintings and the resident monks took great pride [View Full Entry]

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Growing up in the ‘80s, the one enduring image of Ethiopia we were exposed to is that of fly covered, emaciated children starving in a desert. Therefore, we naively spent most of lives assuming that this was an accurate representation of the whole of Ethiopia. It has been pleasing to find that, although most people are far from well off, poverty isn’t any more prevalent than in the other developing countries we have visited. As for the landscape, it wasn’t until we started to research this trip that we discovered that Ethiopia in fact one of the most mountainous countries [View Full Entry]

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Firstly, apologies for the rather poor ratio of pictures to words in this entry, but this leg of the journey has been spent either on the road or in large African cities, which from our experience are neither the most photogenic places nor the safest to carry cameras round. In any case this can hopefully make up for any jealously that our photos of Zanzibar may have caused! It was high time we started heading in the right direction and north towards Ethiopia. The first leg of this journey was a return trip to Nairobi, via the same means that we [View Full Entry]

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It’s not improbable that a few months down the line we will have failed to make it to Hong Kong for our intended flight to Sydney and will ask ourselves, “Where did it all go wrong?” Should this be the case, then it fair to say that the blame should be landed squarely at the door of Zanzibar. In visiting Zanzibar we committed two cardinal sins. Firstly, from Nairobi we travelled roughly five hundred miles in the wrong direction and secondly we stayed too long, far too long. However, we plead extenuating circumstances. Zanzibar is somewhere we have wanted to visit [View Full Entry]

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Given that Mount Kenya lies only 10 miles from the equator, it is somewhat surprising that its jagged peaks are littered with glaciers. At 5199m it was once Africa’s highest point, that is until Kilimanjaro erupted onto the scene. Despite what it lacks in height, it is still considered by some to provide a more challenging, rewarding (and indisputably cheaper) alternative to the more popular choice of climbing Kilimanjaro. The highest two peaks of Mount Kenya, are only accessible to those with technical climbing equipment and expertise. Fortunately, the third highest peak, Point Lena [View Full Entry]

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As the more geographically aware amongst you will have realised, in our quest to get to Hong Kong we have thus far only succeeded in travelling in roughly the opposite direction! Therefore, one month into our trip it seemed like high time we started heading back through Uganda and hence in the right direction. After an enjoyable, but not particularly relaxing Christmas we went in search of some serious R&R and succeeded in finding a couple of excellent spots for putting our feet up and doing not much at all. First stop was Lake Bunyonyi, located some 80km to the east [View Full Entry]

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A belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of our readers! As we are quickly realising, Uganda is a fantastic country, full of things to see and friendly people. However, for most tourists it has one main draw-card, that of being home to more than half of the world’s 700 remaining Mountain Gorillas. The Ugandan Wildlife Authority have cottoned on to the fact that the chance to see such rare and fascinating creatures is extremely appealing to tourists. To their credit, gorilla tourism seems to be run in an sustainable way and the gorillas are certainly not exploited, [View Full Entry]

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We have just finished a four day safari in the Maasai Mara and Lake Nakuru National Parks. We are now relaxing in Kampala (Uganda) after a 13.5 hour bus journey. We won't say too much, but will let our pictures do the talking...... It was just the two of us, an American girl and our guide in our safari van. We spent most of the first day travelling from Nairobi to the Masai Mara a bumpy journey involving two punctures. That evening we went on a game drive and stayed the night in semi permanent tents complete with en suite and [View Full Entry]

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