Enter Togo, by means of the least likely looking dirt road imaginable. That there can be both a Ghanian and Togolese immigration Post at the end of this meagre country road, where the grass grows as tall as men and trees abound, seems impossible, and yet there they are. Only a few passengers produce passports and receive entry and exit stamps; the majority hand over folded notes of local currency to the border officials and resume their seats in the truck. After purchasing a visa in a nearby one horse town, we're dropped off in Kpalime. I want to call it [View Full Entry]

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And so we come to Ghana, on the hunt for the Nigerian visa. Seth has arranged to take some photos for a development charity called Trax Ghana and thus we base ourselves in the little touristed northern city of Bolgatanga for a few days. It is a compact, hassle-free town, with chilled out folks getting on with their daily business and absolutely no children asking for presents - amazing. We meet Vincent, the regional director, over dinner and he explains about the projects Trax have been working on, and arranges to pick us up the next day to drive us out [View Full Entry]

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As we entered Burkina Faso the border official stamped a one week visa in our passports. Naturally it felt a little restrictive, but it was a good thing, preventing us from dawdling and forcing us to pick up the pace. South Africa felt a whole world and too many thousands of miles away, and our aim to reach it often became clouded by the glories and distractions of the here and now. We’d given over a fortnight to Morocco and the Western Sahara, 9 days in politically dubious Mauritania, 10 to tiny Gambia, and even our sometime nemesis, Senegal, had eaten [View Full Entry]

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In Bamako, we took a box of a room - the kind dead bodies might be found in come morning - and I think you could even say we relaxed. Certainly we slowed down. Road travel in the Gambia and Senegal had drained our energy and we were flat like pancakes; emergency! Bring on the Vietnamese food, Castel beers and glowing riverside sunsets! Seriously, there is nothing like beef Saigonese style and a view out over the Niger River as the sky turns golden to soothe the impact of eighteen hours of the stench of illness and a soundtrack of baby [View Full Entry]

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Fifty kilometres; it was an inoffensive distance to travel between the villages of Bintang and Tendaba. On the map, it was a mere wiggle, a jubilant jump eastwards then westwards, passing a handful of small villages. In my head, I had us relaxing beside the Gambia River by lunchtime, eating chicken and chips with our feet propped on garden chairs. We had been camping, badly, for two days and nights now, and were orange with road dust, ready for some R&R. Here’s how the fifty kms treated us: Phase one - A lift from Bintang village to Sibanor village, where we [View Full Entry]

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Encircled by loud, angry men who literally herd us towards the bus to Mbour while spraying us both with a fine layer of whisky tainted spittle, it is at least satisfying to know that this will be the last of our Dakar experiences. When you have been hustled, hassled, followed by thieves and robbed, even an overcrowded bus begins to look good, as long as it is going somewhere - anywhere - away from the city. While Seth runs off to get some water, I perch on a fold-down aisle seat of questionable stability, and unsurprisingly find myself being yelled at [View Full Entry]

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The journey from Rabat to Laayoune, in the Western Sahara, took a full 21 hours. Late at night we paused in Agadir, and while sleepy-eyed passengers ate tajines and salads, I sighed in relief to know that, from here on in, we would not be doubling back on ourselves - equipped with our Mauritanian visas, our journey south into the unknown would now begin. The sky was full of stars and when the sun finally rose, it was over desert scrub as far the eye could see in one direction and with royal blue ocean in the other. This was Western [View Full Entry]

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We slept at Stansted Airport. I say we, but in truth Seth slept and I woke up every fifteen minutes freezing cold and wondering why my wrist was in so much pain. Realising that this was in fact due to vigorous cleaning of the oven before moving out of our flat the previous afternoon, I knew it was my most pathetic war wound to date. Such banalities, I thought, will at least be left behind for the next six months, while in Africa... yet here I am hand washing my clothes and hanging them out on the balcony to dry. I [View Full Entry]

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Having spent the past three days with a bastard of a winter flu-style head cold I am now coming out the other side of a lethargic bed and sofa ridden weekend, and my head is finally clearing - time for a blog. The African Alphabet draws ever closer and we find we are frequently turning to each other, gawping, saying, ‘My god, it’s only three weeks. We’ve got to do blah blah and blah…’ How can you really prepare for something like this - a six month journey to the world’s second-largest, most varied continent, trying to visit a place for [View Full Entry]

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The ferry crossing was quite rough. I lay in a half-sleep, thinking about Kobo Daishi's dangerous crossing to China by ship, and, on a personal level, of the irony of walking an 850 mile pilgrimage only to die at sea two days later. (Ever the drama queen.) It had been a good evening, though. I'd met a Finnish traveller, a monk from Detroit and a Japanese couple planning on doing the Shikoku pilgrimage. I'd also had the ferry's communal bath all to myself as I gazed out to sea, watching the last of Japan's islands disappear into the distance. I'd lived [View Full Entry]

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