Home Again It's been almost a week now. The deep winter duvet has yet to lose its appeal as the weather forecasters describe the evenings in London as "mild". It's less than 10 degrees ! How is that "mild". Brrrrrrrrr. I'm not writing this to whinge but it feels very weird being back and to not be paying less than 50p for a hair cut and beard trim. Good news - Travelblog email notifications are working again I'm told. Only just realised that you haven't been receiving notifications for the last 4 or 5 blogs - including my rant about the death of a climber on Mount Kenya. Hopefully you've been pointed to this entry by a notification email. If you go to my blogging home page (www.travelblog.org/bloggers/solarbod) you can read the blogs you might have ... read more

Breathless On Mount Kenya It's the second highest point on the African Continent, is easily accessible from Nairobi and, with Point Lenana, at 4,890m, described as "trekable", it's no wonder there is a constant stream of tourists and backpackers rolling into Nanyuki looking for a quick and easy taste of the high mountains and falling into the hands of often poorly experienced "guides". But let's get this in perspective. Would you consider trying to climb up to Everest Base Camp in just three days ? No - it would take a couple of weeks at least. So, why should it be possible to climb almost as high up Mount Kenya (and higher in the case of Kilimanjaro) in just three days? As soon as you go above 3,000m you need to be really careful about altitude ... read more

New Years in Paje and Bwejuu Hop in a dallah dallah and head to the beach again - Paje here we come. Squeezed into the back of a Zanzibari dallah dallah surounded by deisel containers, bags of coconut husk and bananas is THE way to travel. It's cheap and very fast and you get to meet the people of Zanzibar (OK, we were trying to make up for splashing out on taxis to / from Matemwe). En route we discovered that the Seven Seas wasn't in Paje but was actually in Bwejuu, a small village about half an hour's walk up the beach. We were dropped off at the side of the road and weaved our way between more coral rag buildings and found a deserted Seven Seas, it's optimistically dug swimming pool unfinished and unfilled. ... read more

Those Bounty Moments It's one of those moments you can't resist - the phone rings (turned on just to check for messages) and you can't help, looking out over the icing sugar sand into the turquoise lagoon, past the coconut palms and over the dancing beach crabs, shouting into the mouthpiece, in true Trigger Happy TV style - "Hello! I'm on a paradise beach in Zanzibar. It's all a bit shit really. Too much sand !" We decided to do some serious relaxing after what was for me, a pretty hectic and very demanding four months of voluntary work. What better place to relax. Pretty much nothing to do other than stroll along the beach, stop for the odd drink in a small beach bar, paddle in the lagoon and watch the seaweed harvesting in rhythm ... read more

On The Road Again Malawi has been very hard work and very rewarding and I have lots to post once I get some time to sit and upload some of my notes from the past 5 weeks. We'd planned to leave Nkhata Bay on Sunday morning but I managed to pick up a nasty throat infection which turned to tonsilitis and which had me in bed shivering and sweating until Tuesday evening. We finally left Paul, Claire and Jorda Norrish to enjoy their own Xmas at Njaya on Wednesday morning and travelled north as far as Karonga - the last major town before you hit the Tanzanian border. This morning, with our full packs strapped on extra tightly, we found ourselves a couple of bicycle taxis to take us the 2km from "Club Marina" to the ... read more