In bed with…
In bed: There’s an elephant on the other side of my tent. I can hear it ripping apart the foliage beside my bed. It would be three meters from where […]
NOTEBOOK
Canter past Patagonian icefields. Sail the tranquil waters of Lake Como in Italy. Sip coffee in a Palestinian village. Listen to the ancient voices of Australia’s Arnhem Land. Climb the mountain paths of northern Albania. Let’s go!
A dry issue
Everything is at the waterhole even though it’s an unfashionable time to be drinking, now at lunchtime – despondent wildebeest drink morosely, zebras kick and frolic, baboons spit and argue, […]
Carnival of the Animals
Tonight, from my balcony, I watched the carnival of the animals: deer of all sizes from the tiny dik dik to the walking meal that is the waterbuk, trotting elegantly […]
Buffalo King
The crunching of rabbit bones is loud, even from 15 meters away, over the din of my chatty guide. The lion licks the bones, tears the meat and crunches merrily, […]
The not-quite-Nairobi tour
Today was mega-Nairobi tourism, though interestingly enough, nothing I saw was actually in Nairobi. It was all on the fringes of the city of nearly four million, which includes the […]
Jambo (hello), Kenya
Nairobi has Schweppes tonic! OMG, I’m a tonic snob. But then I’m being a snob by where i’m eating tonight – on the verandah of the Norfolk Hotel, the oldest […]
Flesh and modesty in the name of religion
There are a suspiciously large amount of semi-naked men walking around Cairo airport as I am on my way to Nairobi. They are clad only in sparkling towels and shawls. […]
Cruise control
Like many other countries, Egypt can’t see why a motorbike or scooter should cope with just one or two people (even if the cost of petrol is, by our standards, […]
Sufism in Cairo
The Hussein mosque in one of Cairo’s main square is one of the holiest in the country – take a look inside and encased in a silver casket is the […]
The tonic of life
“Here’s your G&T,” says my current visitor, Andrew. Surely one of the nicer sentences in the English language. Tonic is a soft drink regarded with an evil eye here in […]