Cairo to Cape Town

The first three capitals of Ethiopia were Axum, Lalibela, and Gondar. I’ve now visited all three, and they were truly spectacular. After crossing the border form Sudan, my first stop was Gondar, which became the capital in the 17th century. Each successive king built a new castle, which combine influences from Moorish, Portuguese, and British […]

There has been civilisation for millennia at the place where the Blue and White Nile meet, but the current incarnation of Khartoum is relatively recent. Today, three cities have grown together here, each on a different bank of the Nile. In the South is the original city of Khartoum, in the west is Omdurman, founded […]

I arrived in Aswan after 2am and spent the next hour looking for a place to stay. My first choice was closed for renovation. I would spend four nights in Aswan. On my first day, I woke up late and worked on planning the flights that will take me back to London in a few […]

After getting my visas in order, my vaccinations complete, and bags packed, I was off on a five hour flight to Hurghada, on Egypt’s Red Sea coast. There was some initial confusion about the arrival time and duration of the flight, which differed from several sources. It was caused by Egypt’s last-minute decision not to […]

Luxor is perhaps the Egyptian city with the most ancient sites. I chose to visit the most famous three – the Valley of the Kings, the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, and the temple complex at Karnak. I arrived in Luxor by bus around 9:30 in the morning and immediately went to the train station to […]

Cairo’s location at the beginning of the Nile Delta has always been of strategic importance, but the current city was not founded until the second half of the tenth century, when the Fatimid Caliphate conquered Egypt. The walled town they constructed was initially quite small, but has grown to be the 13th largest city in […]

I was still exhausted from the previous day’s trip to the pyramids, so all I could muster on my second day in Cairo was a walk to the Egyptian Museum, which houses most of the important artifices from the Pharonic era. Photos were forbidden, so I’m afraid I don’t had much to show, but I […]

On my first day in Cairo, a trip to the Pyramids at Giza was my first priority. Getting out to the pyramids was an adventure of its own, as I refused to be gouged by taxi drivers and went by public transport. I ended up lost in Giza twice, but eventually found my way there. […]

The I arrived in Alexandria with little sleep, no plans, and no reservations. The first order of business was to find a hotel and/or a place to put my heavy backpack for the day. The first hotel I tried was full, and after trying to look for luggage lockers at the train station (I failed), […]

The visa situation in East Africa is unbelievably complicated and convoluted, but with only a couple exceptions, countries are doing their best to welcome tourists with open wallets.  Since most tourists to African countries arrive by air, visa information on embassy websites usually is geared towards travellers arriving at a country’s main international airport. This […]