Richard Stupart

I love the questions that readers of this blog occasionally ask about travel, life and the big choices we make as we negotiate our paths through it. Not because I have any answers in the maths-exam sense of the word, but because it’s an opportunity to stop, look back and regain some perspective. A reader sent me an email the other day which echoes some themes that have been bouncing around unusually often in conversation with some fellow journalists-to-be and with my online travel friends, so to make the universe happy, I have published the replies here in the hope that it might be useful to others. There may be no answers, but ideas might be the next best thing.

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The wind tumbles uncoordinatedly down the side roads. It’s the fastest thing in the quiet streets – not quite refreshing, but blowing hard enough to lift the heat from my skin, to make me believe that it’s not really as hot as it is. Dust crunches softly underfoot, leaping up in angry puffs as Yusuf, Katherine and I approach the community hall.

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A few weeks on and returned and adjusting to life in the small microtropolis of Grahamstown. Of which there is so much to write, so many places I want to go and play with my camera, and so many big discussions to be had in the Rat & Parrot tavern. Those self-important discussions about challenges – about life, direction and meaning – that  universities seem to burst with, fading beyond their walls as responsibilities run screaming into your days like an insistent toddler.

But while these stories brew and strengthen like a fine ale waiting to be tapped, here is an interview on wanderingeducators.com, who caught me even before my flight had returned from Cairo and interrogated me thoroughly on my last two months.

One of the questions most frequently asked in the last few days has been whether I will be traveling alone on this trip, or whether I will be joined in the end with any intrepid traveling folk. For a time, Audrey was going to be exploring with me, but life, love and really big, snowy mountains called – and so I will be doing the trip solo. Sort of.

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This time it’s a super treat. On-theme, but not about either me, packing or visas for a change. Sihle Khumalo, who was kind enough to phone me the other week, was even kind enough to do a mini-interview on questions Cape to Cairo related. For those who don’t remember, Sihle Khumalo is the author of Dark Continent, my Black Arse – the book that initially inspired the idea, now manifested, of travelling Cape to Cairo on public transport. He was also the person that I most dearly wanted to ask questions about his journey, since much of my intended route will go along a similar path. So, without further ado, I give you an interview with Sihle:

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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.

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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.

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Part of any good trip is planning. And part of any good planning is asking those who know. Thusly motivated, I have been trying to contact and ask (occasionally naive) questions of anyone who has done a fair amount of traveling through the African outback. By far and away, the most experienced African explorer that I have spoken to was Ockie Muller, who – together with his wife May – spent nearly a year traversing Africa in a converted Unimog. It was an inspirational undertaking, covering almost every country on the East African coast and many more besides.

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