Richard Stupart

Eileen from bearshapedsphere is busy a-mustering horrid-yet funny (i.e. you survived intact – mostly) stories from the far reaches of blogzakstan. Ranging from being caught in the middle of a taxi-war (a more gentle, non-South African version of one, thank god) to the epic search for the 99 bus here. So if you have a terrible, terrifying or tortuous tale of travel, now is the time to file said megaultrabad story here. Now. As for me, having written about terrifying bus rides of my own, and near-cholera-inducing accommodation, this new story (which actually happened shortly after the Laos bus ride of terror (see above link) began thus…

Read the rest of this entry »

One by one, lots of the little things I own have been frogmarched into a big pile, ready to be identity paraded so that their mugshots will accompany their biographicals online as they are sold off. The last thing to be sold will be my bed. Partly because I need it to sleep on, but even more importantly because of what its loss will represent.

Read the rest of this entry »

With each passing day, I find myself trying to be increasingly dexterous in trying to find new and meaningful permutations of numbers to express the current position in the countdown sequence. Forty-nine days was far more elegant, being seven weeks precisely until departure. A week squared, if you will. But alas, I was not able to get an update together in time, and so it shall have to be a forty-eight day update instead – the ever so slightly younger brother of more cleverly-described fourty-nine. Forty-two will at least carry Douglas Adams’ fingerprints on it forever more, making it as suitable a deadline as any for having made some more progress or at least sussed out an interesting new development or two.

Read the rest of this entry »

52 days left on the countdown until boarding a flight to the Cape. There remains, as ever, a good deal still to be done – but little by little, tasks are being performed and small nuggets of self-satisfaction are being earned. Such as this weekend, for example, spent trying to find a place in Grahamstown for next year.

Read the rest of this entry »

Stepping out the front door that night on some or other half-planned errand, I noticed quickly that it was a warm night for a change. Winter has finally broken and the highveld is starting to see dry nights, where unchanged winter duvets will keep you hot and restless. Jasmine had also started to raise its head somewhere, with its teasing sweetness starting to mingle with the heavy scent of bushveld burned somewhere nearby. That particularly dark smell that you taste as much as you breathe it in. Unmistakably African in its tones, reinforcing the evening’s announcement that summer had arrived, sending ahead of herself one of her finest messengers in that perfectly balanced evening. A good evening to be going out. To be finding new purposes in the world, new tasks that matter. Or simply awakening to an appreciation of what you were doing already. Regardless, pausing briefly to take in a little more of the warmth, burning and jasmine, I wondered whether it would be like this night then? When, having moved or sold everything else here, I will step out into as warm a night with all that remains of my life in Johannesburg on my back. Departing these surroundings and gently, quietly stirring the night as I melt into the beginnings of a new story.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s reminder politely informed me that it is exactly two months to the day until I get on the plane to Cape Town to begin the journey. I politely informed the reminder that I was not nearly ready. I am not sure it understood.

Read the rest of this entry »

For an extended overland trip in Africa, particularly one made without the (relative) luxury of a 4×4, there is the inevitable question of what gear to take. While there remain a fair swarm of decisions still to be made about everything from a tent to a first aid kit, I have largely made my mind up about the key gear I intend to take to fulfill two of the most creative activities on the journey. Taking photographs to reflect the story of the journey to Cairo – and weaving together the words to bring out the rest. Read the rest of this entry »

Not perhaps the most attention-getting news in the run up to the journey (certainly less attention getting than, say, typhoid), but perhaps useful to readers considering a similar trip themselves. Or anyone who cares that I feel as if I have been punched in my arm.Yup – today’s topic is vaccinations.

Read the rest of this entry »

66 days remain. I know this because I finally caved and set up the exact same system of daily mailers that I so derided previously as being overkill. So now I receive a pretty picture of something East African in my mailbox every night at seven thirty sharp (today was the Simien mountains) and a countdown to the number of days left (today was 66 days to departure). Sixty six. As in, less than ten weeks. A little over two months. Three fortnights. Not very long.

Read the rest of this entry »

When I first contemplated the idea of travelling from Cape Town to Cairo on a wing, a prayer, a small budget and no transport besides whatever people in the area used, I realised that it may necessarily be a solo voyage. While that would mean possible disbenefits such as not having anyone to go and fetch the doctor, or a second alarm clock in order to make sure you catch the early morning bus, making my peace with the possibility of it being an extended, lone journey meant that certain important things could be taken for granted. Such as the fact that, one way or another,  I would be stepping out on November 13 into the unknown.

Read the rest of this entry »