Non-Fiction – Page 2

Fleeing the M23 rebels, a Refugee in Rwanda

While researching Pygmy peoples access to healthcare in the DR Congo, I hear the booming of artillery fire across Lake Kivu. The M23 rebels are attacking Goma, and we have to flee…

Volcanoes, Pygmies, and M23

I was worried I might need to cancel my field trip in the eastern Congo, and the Foreign office travel advisory was less than reassuring: We advise against all travel to eastern and north eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The only exception to this is within the towns of Bukavu and Goma, where we advise against all but essential travel. In Bukavu and Goma we advise against travel at night and to avoid travelling alone at all times.

The Lions Gate Bridge Caper

Greenpeace Daze part 6 15 minutes In the spring of 1987, Greenpeace launched an important new international campaign called Nuclear Free Seas. Most of the nuclear weapons in the world are carried by the world’s nuclear navies, especially the US and the USSR, but also by China the UK and France. With the majority ofContinue reading “The Lions Gate Bridge Caper”

A Short Walk in the High Sierras

The mountain Sequoias are the most massive trees on the planet, with a deeply furrowed scaly bark of a beautiful red. They tower over two hundred feet and an old postcards shows a carriage driving through a hole cut in a tree a hundred years earlier.

Agadez, Heart of the Sahara

Hitch-hiking across the Sahara in 1972, I got a ride with Jacques across the most isolated part of my route, the 1,000 km from the Tamanrasset, Algeria to Agadez, Niger. We had run out of spare tires at the tiny community of Tegguiada In Tessoum, and Jacques had managed to get a ride with four flat tires and an empty jerrycan into Agadez, leaving me to look after the car until he returned.

Overland To India 1963

A couple of months after my sixteenth birthday, I set off from London to hitch-hike to India. I’d only hitch-hiked once before, when I was twelve, from London to a caravan in Suffolk with a woman I’d just met who had offered to show me how to make toffee!

Sahara Daze-3

At the camp ground in Tamanrasset there was a group of five Italian junkies who had decided to hitch-hike across the Sahara to get off heroin. Tamanrasset is the southernmost town in Algeria, sitting almost in the middle of the great desert.

Rajas, Palaces and Tiger Hunting

Shrubbery filled the narrow space between street and tall gothic windows. The front door was wide open, so I poked my head in to have a look. A large hall with a high ceiling was filled with trophies of numerous animals: rhino, buffalo, antelope of all kinds, a lion or two. I was fascinated and went in to see better. Walking towards the great wooden staircase, I saw to my left a long, high-ceilinged side room, where numerous tiger heads snarled from the panelled walls.

Partners for Life

15 minutes I once said to a long standing climbing partner, ‘We’ve spent some of the best days of our lives together’, he looked at me with surprise, paused for a few moments and then replied, ‘You’re right we have!’ A climbing partner shares some of our greatest moments: the excitement, the fun and theContinue reading “Partners for Life”

Yukon Adventure

There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold;