From my recent blogs you might think a horrible death is part and parcel of exploration. Not so. On occasion serious injury or circumcision will suffice, and sometimes just sometimes, you can get away with falling down an elephant pit containing 12 inch long spikes to be saved only by… Continue reading
I wouldn’t need much luggage. A small holdall would probably suffice, containing a notebook and novel as well as a sandwich, scarf and gloves. The last section of the London Overground rail orbital was officially opened at the beginning of the week. The orbital makes use of a group of… Continue reading
Long before Richard Burton married Elizabeth Taylor, he (or at least a namesake) was a Victorian explorer fluent in 29 languages. Being barely fluent in one makes me inordinately jealous of the man’s skills, as well as what he termed his “wanderings”. Burton’s wanderings took him through Asia, the Middle… Continue reading
Drink on the eastern side of the African continent can appear limited to locally-brewed international soft drink brands. Coca-cola for instance, is one of the only international bodies to seemingly recognise the existence of Somaliland, the breakaway republic within Somalia, with a plant in the capital Hargeisa. That is, until… Continue reading
Antoine de Saint-Exupery landed on the sands of Cape Juby in 1926, having leapfrogged his biplane along the North-west African coast from Toulouse in the south of France. I reached the same sands, a rubbish-strewn beach of occasional low dunes, 85 years later. Cape Juby had become Tarfaya, and I… Continue reading
Darwin’s nose It was his nose that led Charles Darwin to the Galapagos Islands on the second voyage of HMS Beagle, a survey ship captained by Robert FitzRoy. FitzRoy was a well-respected naval officer with a surname to match – George V considered it for the British royal family when… Continue reading
All across Africa I was aware others had been there before me. This became increasingly apparent as I reached southern Africa – Angola, Namibia and South Africa. Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias reached Tombua, in the far south of modern day Angola in 1487. He had made his way along the… Continue reading
Spending the weekend in the Royal Geographical Society’s Ondaatje Theatre at their London headquarters for the annual ‘Explore’ weekend (see last blog) got me to thinking of those adventurers who predated me. The theatre’s wood-panelled walls are marked out in gilding with the names of the world’s most important explorers…. Continue reading
British reserve and the sense of being completed overwhelmed by what lay ahead soon broke down into an excited buzz as delegates made new friends and probed speakers like myself for information. I was at the Royal Geographical Society’s annual Explore expedition and fieldwork planning weekend at their London headquarters… Continue reading
I was there. Honest. Vilankulo, Mozambique. I may be back in Britain but Encircle Africa activity has been keeping me busy all the same. You can now check out the first cluster of excellent photographs from the expedition on flickr at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ian_packham and launch a slideshow at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ian_packham/show/ As time… Continue reading
