You are browsing the archives of animal.

I left Kasane, with the words ‘I’m surprised you’re still living’, still ringing in my ears. The road from Kasane south to Nata passes through game reserves. This means more animals and less people. I would need plenty of water and to be on the lookout for elephants and lions. Concerned with lack of water […]

Scene 1 The dirt road from Ekok wound its way round and up and down through the thick, overgrown forest. Everything was big. Trees competing to grow the tallest, to reach out above the canopy and feel the sunlight on their leaves. Hillsides vanished into a mass of green where fast-flowing waters rushed loudly, out-of-sight, […]

This is the long awaited update of my last days in Ghana before I returned to England for a holiday and to get a new passport. Hopefully you won’t have to wait so long for my take on Ghana part 2. Road to Larabanga Yet more corrugated roads. It is impossible to describe the effect […]

Ouagadougou – Bobo – Banfora – Bobo Any Which Way Leaving is always hard. It’s not that I fear the open road. I don’t fear the unknown. On the contrary. That’s why I travel. That’s why I travel by bike. But no matter how much I know I will love the freedom and the new […]

Leaving Mali Leaving Mali was tougher than I thought. Not due to any particular attachment, although I did enjoy my time there. It was the wind and the rough, corrugated, roads. Mostly the wind though. It tried it’s hardest to blow me right back into Mali, even after I’d got the Burkina Faso entry stamped […]

Firstly, Timbuktu is a real place – a dusty town on the edge of the Sahara in Mali. Timbuktu is a place of legend and many early European explorers through the desert strived (and often died trying) to get to this fabled town. For those who did arrive in Timbuktu, leaving was often harder. Not […]

Day 11: Feb 16th 2010 Warthogs – Broken boat – Hippo encounter – Bush fire – Bat exodus – Uniformed and uninformed – Poacher or American? A long, hard morning paddle – at least we were paddling and not pushing or dragging, but the wavelets on the river surface were tiresome. With the ripples lapping […]

Day 7: 12th Feb 2010 Ou tu vas comme ca? – Bee island – Frogs and splashes Nearly a week into the trip, about 100km downstream of Faranah, getting close to the National Park and the number of people we are seeing has diminished – just the occasional onlooker from a riverbank and lone fishing […]

On day 10 of the Niger River boat trip, we came across a Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Sanctuary. Here are some photos from our visit… For more information on chimpanzee rehabiliation and the Sanctuary, visit The Project Primate website

Day 4: 9th Feb 2010 Quiet morning – shallow maze – near-disaster – crocodile island Following a quiet morning on the river where progress was slow but steady, the afternoon brought with it a maze of rocks and shallow waters that slowed progress drastically. We would stop paddling and stand up to get a better […]