We Wander — Mark & Meghan’s World Travels

After nearly four months of driving through Africa, the last leg of our Oasis Overland truck journey had finally arrived. We set out from Luxor after a too-brief visit and headed into Egypt’s Western Desert for four days of travel on our way to Cairo. I have to admit that it was a leg of the journey that I was not too excited about at first. Our time in Aswan and on the felucca had gotten me used to the trappings of civilization again, and I didn’t relish the prospect of heading out into the unrelenting heat of the desert for another stretch of several days. On the other hand, there were a few things to look forward to on the way: we would be driving through the White and Black Deserts, and hopefully getting a few more nights of desert bush camping along the way. This was the home stretch, and Cairo was the ultimate destination, the end of our marathon overland crossing of the African continent. Only one little desert left to cross…

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After arriving in Egypt via the overnight ferry across Lake Nasser, we spent three very relaxing days in Aswan. Compared to the Sudanese desert and Wadi Halfa, our accommodation in Aswan was pure luxury: our room had A/C, an ensuite washroom with shower, a fridge, clean sheets, good mattresses, a rooftop swimming pool, and even cold beer! On reflection, that description might be misleading to some: if, for example, you’d booked 2 weeks off of work to travel across an ocean and live in high style in Aswan, you would likely have considered the hotel a little shabby, maybe rough around the edges, or just straight up disappointing. But after a week spent camping in the desert in 47ºC heat, believe me when I say that it was a palace in our eyes. Welcome to Egypt indeed!

Feeling recovered and somewhat less cooked, we departed Aswan not on the big yellow truck, but on a felucca. For anyone who has never heard of a felucca before, it’s a sailboat, and there are hundreds of them on the Nile in Egypt. We had two boats for our group, each one big enough to hold about 12 people plus a crew of 3. What was in store for us was two days and nights of sailing on the Nile. It was something we’d been looking forward to for some time, but it well exceeded our expectations.

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We arrived in Wadi Halfa after what felt like our longest marathon journey to date: seven whirlwind days around Ethiopia, followed by a two-day long border crossing and four continuous bushcamps across a stinking hot desert. Our arrival was welcomed, yet still somehow anticlimactic. We were onto the homestretch, getting to Egypt, but the some of the worst was yet to come. Don’t get me wrong here, I am loving traveling through these parts of the world, but it is full-on. There is very little relief from the skin-melting, life-sucking, dry heat of the Nubian desert. After a while, even the hardest-worn traveler craves staying put in one place, a little shade, a cold beverage, a bucket shower, bare shoulders and knees, and sweet, sweet air conditioning…to name a few.

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After a couple of relaxed days in Khartoum (and one ridiculous Nile River cruise) we headed out of the city and into the desert. Our destination was Wadi Halfa on Lake Nasser, where we’d be catching a ferry to Egypt. Between us lay over 900 km of Sahara and Nubian desert, 300 km of which has no roads at all. We were in for four days of sweat, dust, dehydration and heat exhaustion, of beautiful nights under the stars and scorching afternoons under the sun.

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Crossing through the Sudan is a leg of our journey that we have anxiously and apprehensively anticipated since booking our African overland trip; our path was to take us through the north-east corner of the country, and it is a stretch that has ever been on our minds. Anyone that has ever watched international news or read anything about the Sudan’s recent history will know that “the Sudan” and “danger” are nearly synonymous terms in many parts of the world. The Canadian Travel Advisory webpage says “Avoid all travel” to the Sudan, and advice from friends and parents is the same. Nevertheless, our truck was bound north through Khartoum and into Nubian Desert on our way to Egypt, a route which is happily distant from the much more volatile and dangerous regions of Darfur and the south. We were headed into the Sudan, and we where about to learn a few things about a country we seemingly weren’t supposed to visit.

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This is a post that I’ve been waiting to write for over a year now. When we made our booking with Oasis Overland back in the spring of 2009, we decided to pay the extra money to reserve our mountain gorilla trekking permits well in advance. It wasn’t an easy decision to make — the permits cost nearly $600 a piece, which is no small pocket change for travelers. However, ever since hearing Douglas Adams’ account of hiking through the cloud rainforests of the Virunga Volcanoes to find these incredible animals* I’ve been indescribably drawn to the prospect of having the experience myself. It would have been unbearable to be in the heart of Rwanda, so close to the gorillas, without a permit in hand. So we bit the bullet, paid the money (gulp), and started counting down the months. Finally, our planned trekking day was upon us: June 29th, 2010, almost 14 months after booking. This was it. We were going to meet the gorillas.

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We’re back in civilization, in Addis Ababa, after going off radar for a week, traveling up through Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia. Yes we were ragged and filthy, but it was phenomenal. Over the course of seven days, on one long, straight road, we passed through the lush foothills of Mt. Kenya, along escarpments looking out over the Great Rift Valley and crossed the equator. We crossed dry savanah and volcanic desert. In Ethiopia we climbed up and down through coffee-growing highlands scattered with beautiful grass huts and villages to taunts of children shouting “you you you!”

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We like to camp. We’ll gladly go into the backcountry for a week at a time, cook over an open flame and sleep on our inflatable sleeping mats. By the end, a soft mattress and hot shower is always in order. We have been on the trans-African Oasis truck for 73 days now and have slept on a soft(ish) mattress just seven times - thankfully we’ve showered a few more times than that! The other 66 sleeps have been on our inflatable sleeping mats in a heavy duty canvas tent. This is by far the longest stretch of camping we have ever done. It is also what is making this journey so memorable, not to mention affordable.

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Chitimba Beach was our next stop on Lake Malawi. Besides being a beautiful location on the northern end of the lake, it’s also a popular stop because of it’s proximity to Manchewe Falls and the community of Livingstonia. We were staying for two nights, so on the full day we decided to venture out on a guided walk to Livingstonia. It’s nearly 15 kilometres and 3000 vertical feet from Chitimba Beach, and there’s only one very rough road connecting it to the rest of the world. We headed out at 7:00am and psyched ourselves up for a long day.

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After leaving the wineries of South Africa behind us, we crossed the border into Namibia and began to put some serious mileage behind us. On our first night in Namibia we were introduced to bush camping, which is something we’re going to be doing a lot of. Basically, the truck drives all day until the sun is dropping towards the horizon, and then finds a convenient spot off a side road to pull over and set up camp in the desert. We’ve bush camped three times so far, and they have all been in the most incredible settings, with bright moonlit nights. We’ve started to do yoga together regularly, and I have a hard time imagining a more peaceful setting: at our last bush camp, we did yoga in the middle of a vast desert landscape, while Barbara-Jeanne played music for us on her ukelele. The sun was setting in front of us, while the moon was rising huge and red behind us, and a distant lighting storm played along the horizon and the stars began to come out above us. Not bad at all.

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