Richard Stupart

As part of compiling ever more detail of the intricacies of the pending odyssey from Cape Town to Cairo, what follows is a short interview with Audrey Mash, who I will be meeting up with in Lusaka, Zambia on 1 December. We will be travelling onwards from that point up until our final destination in Cairo, writing and generally sniffing out what interesting things we can along the way. You will be able to follow her take on events as they unfold on her blog, written in her own honest and entertaining style – and shake your communal heads at our courageous naivety with each passing day.

Read the rest of this entry »

Having stopped bouncing around from unrelated task to unrelated task long enough to actually sit, stop and give my blog some more love (love ya blog!) – I managed to add the nondescript little sidebar widget which counts down the days to departure. This is no guesstimate, no “gosh i’d like to leave by…” date. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the launch timer. The flight is booked, the mind is made up and the time for second thoughts has long since passed. In 78 days I get to begin the most challenging rough adventure that i’ve done yet.  78 days doesn’t seem like nearly enough time to get all of the things that must be done, done.

Read the rest of this entry »

I had promised, both in my last post on Lesotho and to Moruti, the owner/manager/everything at Mamohase Home Stay that I would speak a bit about the place which rescued us from our own lack of planning driving into the mountains late on a Saturday afternoon. Read the rest of this entry »

“Welcome to Rhodes – I hope you enjoy studying here”, said the man at the counter.  I grinned like an idiot. I don’t think even first years grin with such an overpowering glow of stupidity. Yes, in part the glow emanates from the place in me that likes the fact that Rhodes – a tiny little town-university in the Eastern Cape – actually feels like a cosy little university. Like a community, where my alma mater, the University of the Witwatersrand never did.  But the truly stupid part of my glow was coming from somewhere else. From the thrill of taking a tiny, but terribly significant, step in my life.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jim, Mark and Justin are three friends who biked into Cape Town on 27 July having traveled the full length from Cairo down to the Cape. Jim was kind enough to oblige my scattered questions on aspects of the trip with his views and observations from their own extended adventure – the full length of which you can read on their blog Cairo to Cape Town C2C.

Read the rest of this entry »

To choose forever between following a distant star or trading with the devil for a lesser truth. This, above all else, is the decision with which we must live.

Strange days indeed. But breezily refreshing to the big questions. The ones that matter. A friend who knows where her heart would lead her – half way across the planet to another life. Another who cannot seem to find a place in this world of pursuits, of endless jostling and comparison. And my own most fundamental challenge to, in carefully planned time, begin to live consistently with what I believe of the world. To live in defiance of the order that raised me. Taking what I have become and denying it my obedient payback. Read the rest of this entry »

There is something magical about travel, about an adventure becoming real. With each passing stage as departure draws nearer, the excitement grows and daily life fades into a muted irrelevance next to the anticipation of the unanticipatable. So it was with every progressively more interesting journey I have ever awaited and so again the rumblings are making themselves felt ahead of November’s departure.

Read the rest of this entry »