Londoners have a love-hate relationship with their metro system The Tube; but it’s more than just standing on the wrong side of the escalators or not moving down the carriage that gets their goat. Today there’s even more to be annoyed about, like the Pole Hogger, the Backpack Whack and the Ticket Gate Overtake to…
Tag: Travel
Great travel annoyances of our times: The hotel toaster
At the hotel breakfast, that metal appliance that toasts your bread on a little conveyor … I mean… how hard can it be to use? In theory it’s dead simple right? Pick up a bread slice with tongs; place it on the conveyor … et voila … your little white carb is whisked upwards on…
Farewell to the land of a thousand hills – epilogue
Well, it’s taken 42 blog posts and over 60,000 words, but I’ve managed to get there – this is the final post in the series ‘Letters from the Heart of Africa’. Thank you for following and if in some small measure it’s brought you some extra insight of Rwanda, a place of so many complex…
The bar that sold bananas
Wise words I once heard while buying bananas in a bar in Kigali, Rwanda in 2008: ‘Nothing can heal without truth; education seeks truth; so, nothing can heal without education.’ *** Occasionally on the way home from work at the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda, I would go down to a little grocery shop down…
7 tips for volunteers in Africa
It’s almost time to fly home. These seven months in Rwanda have felt so much longer – the richness of new experiences, meeting new people, hearing their stories and living in one of the most beautiful countries in the world, have given my time here some apparent stretch. Rwanda is enigmatic and bittersweet, both joyous…
The Ragged Children of Kinigi
When the ragged children of Kinigi danced, it was a scene of both joy and sadness, those imposters both, two vagabonds who travel this land of a thousand hills, hand in hand and appear when they are least expected. Continuing the series, Letters from the Heart of Africa *** We got to the lower slopes…
The snowman in the heart of Africa – Climbing Mount Karisimbi (part 2)
Continued from part 1 I walked towards the fire where there were two crouching silhouettes outlined in bright orange. I sat with them panting. One poked the embers with a stick, another lay on his coat and stared sideways at the white-hot burning log. The warmth was comforting, and staring in to those dancing flames…
Climbing Mount Karisimbi
CLIMBING MOUNT KARISIMBI , a snow-capped volcano between Rwanda and the DR Congo, the tallest peak in the Virungas, was an arduous and fascinating experience. Many mountains, no matter how high, give you ice-field after ice field, lenghthy scrambles over loose scree and unending deja vu of switch-backs. But Mount Karisimbi is a consummate entertainer, performing…
Images of Angkor Wat
Angkor Wat may not provide you with solitude at times and watching sunrise can be something of a tourist trap. The Bayonne featuring smiling stone faces ***
A Weekend Break in the Northern Hemisphere #2: Kampala and Lake Victoria
Crossing the border from Rwanda to Uganda, a traverse from Francophone to Anglophone Africa, offered subtle changes from the bus window for those who cared to notice them – suddenly billboards were written in English; driving on the right became wrong; there were cricket pitches. Uganda, proud African nation through and through, still had hints…
