Packing, unpacking, repacking.

Well, that's it everyone. No more worrying. No more counting down the days. Tonight is the night.

I am sitting at Dree's after taking everything out of my bag and then, after fifteen careful minutes of looking through it all, putting it all back in exactly the same way. Then repeating the process.

Earlier on I couldn't see my bedroom floor. This afternoon it was covered with a ridiculous amount of travel items - mosquito spray, sun cream, guide books, shorts, deodorant, toothbrush, travel towel, flip flops, wet wipes, penknife, gaffa tape, malaria tablets, camera, wind-up head torch, insurance documents, Euros, padlock, plasters, clothes....

It's a green carpet, I'm sure. Or is it? Too late now. I'll email Dad to check.

We have brought a lot of strange things between us - I have got the world's largest daypack with my camera inside, Barney has six pairs of shorts and Dree has the world's largest bottle of antiseptic handwash as it was reduced.

But don't worry everyone, all is well. Bags are packed, passports in date, photocopies photocopied. Burchy has very kindly offered to drive us down to Heathrow at 10pm (after filling up his tyres with petrol, according to his girlfriend), and Barney's just nipped down the road to Tesco's to get those bargain reduced items.

Will let you know how the next 24 hours pans out. If everything goes to plan, we should be relaxing in our hotel in Dakar. Nerves, excitement, sleep deprivation to come before that. Can't wait.

The Ghanian Visa Saga

One week to go and no passport = panic attacks and dreams of adventures floating out of reach.

Turn the clocks back three weeks. We all sent our passports to the Ghanian embassy in London to get our visas in advance. We had tried to get as many of them as possible before we flew; in case we were ripped off on the borders or had some kind of bureaucratic delay; travellers will know what I mean - Poipet?

In some instances we weren't able visas until we arrived in the country in question (such is the case with Togo), but with others you were required to get a visa beforehand. Swings and roundabouts really - in hindsight, what an utterly ridiculous phrase.

Dree and Barney's passports came back within a week, but Kerry and I assumed they were just doing two at a time. We had triple-checked all of the details; money, signatures, forms, photos, and were sure that everything was in order.

Another week passed and Kerry was getting especially nervous (she was flying out on Weds 23rd), so she phoned up the embassy. This was a trial in itself, with irregular opening hours, and no one able to give a definitive answer. Two days before she flew out to Malawi, Kerry and Dree drove down to London and got the two remaining passports back minus the visas, but thankfully with a full refund.

Possibly the most ironic thing about all this is that I we were more worried about getting our Burkina Faso visa, from a bloke called Colin in Guildford! We had to send them to a private address as there was no other way to get the visa until we were in the country. But Colin was very professional and they were all returned within days.

At least we got the refund, but I can see this causing a grand ol' pain-in-the-proverbial when we come to apply for it abroad...

Floods

Ironic that I chose to compare Timbuktu to Atlantis in my last post, as most of the countries we are visiting are now under water.


Ghana, Benin, Burkina Faso and Senegal are majorly affected, with residents of Ougadougou (Burkina) and Dakar (where we are flying into) fleeings in their tens of thousands. Sewers are overflowing, hospitals are washed out and everyone is worried as there are a few more weeks of the rainy season to go.


The UN and aid groups have told of bridges and roads being literally washed away. Power supplies have been knocked out and in Burkina alone 150,000+ are homeless. My worry isn't about the water itself, its about the dangers that come with it; water-bourne diseases like cholera and typhoid that become pandemic after the contamination by raw sewage.

But then again maybe this could be something we could help out with in Burkina. All of the other countries on our list we've got a handful of places that we definitely want to visit. But Burkina's list is sparse. There are some sights we'd like to check out, but the plan was to just arrive in Ougadougou and see what was going on.

We could help out with some aid agencies and give our stay in Burkina a bit more purpose. By the time we reach there though, it should be well into the dry season, and hopefully the floods will have subsided, if not dried up completely.

On a side note, I sent my friend a text asking if he'd seen the news about the floods. His reply was a swift "I'll sleep on the top bunk then". Smart ass.

From here to Timbuktu

For me, Timbuktu falls into the same category as Atlantis; a mysterious, ethereal place that everyone has heard of, but are unsure whether it actually exists or not. Or at least it did before I begun to research it for my trip.

One of my friends is organising accommodation on the Ghanaian coast for Christmas, the other sorting our first few nights after we fly into Dakar, Senegal. I have been handed the arduous task of how to get to Timbuktu. Yeah, that's right, the place that's synonymous with being in the middle of nowhere. Great.

However, the more I learn about the desert city, the more excited I am about making the epic four-day river journey to get there. Starting life as an oasis camp for the nomadic Tuareg tribe in the eleventh century, Tombouctou blossomed into a trade and education centre for the whole of West Africa. Gold from the Ivory Coast passed through on its way to Europe, and the grand mosques were utilised as some of the first universities in the world, with thousands of students learning about Islam, trade and commerce.

Adding to its mystique, Timbuktu wasn't stumbled upon by a European until Scot Gordon Laing made it in one piece in the 19th century, after being slashed almost to death by Saharan robbers. Luckily, we won't be travelling through the desert on our way, as there are murmurs of modern bandits roaming the dunes above the city. But these guys have AK47's, not knives.

We shall be taking the far safer route up the river Niger through the fertile, green south of the country into the drier, dusty north. Our mode of transport will probably be one of the huge ferries that make regular journeys in the wet season. The alternative is on a tiny fishing boat called a pinasse, where we'll be sleeping on corrugated iron, and you have to lean over the side to go to the toilet...

So the atmosphere on this ferry sounds amazing! Honestly though, four days of not doing much at all, apart from soaking in Malian hospitality and culture, is just what the voodoo shaman ordered. Watching hippos graze as we pass, sunbathing on the roof and meeting some of the locals along the way. Stands to be one of the highlights of the trip.

Africa

So this is it, a step literally into the unknown. On October 1^st me and two of my best friends will be flying out to Dakar, Senegal, for four months backpacking across the west coast of Africa.

Nervous hardly covers it. I’ve been travelling before (to south-east Asia), but this will be a completely different scene. No Khao San road, no air-conditioned minibuses, no ticket touts. But for this, I am glad. This is the travelling I’ve wanted to do for ages; to see some real diversity and get off that notorious ‘beaten track’.

From Senegal we’re heading through The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo and ending up in Benin. Along the way we shall spend a week on a fishing boat going to Timbuktu (yes it’s a real place!), helping in a Gambian orphanage, visiting the deserted Bijagós islands, living with a Dogon tribe and taking part in a Voodoo festival.

So, why Africa? I’ll come clean here. It was my best mate’s idea, and at first I complimented him on his good joke. I thought of Africa and visualised famine, disease, corrupt governments and armed militia, and all those other preconceptions that come from watching Blood Diamond and The Constant Gardener.

But this is what excites me – the unfamiliar, the adventure. We are going to places, and undertaking journeys, that very few people will ever do in their life. Do not get me wrong, I don’t want to end up on TV in an orange jumpsuit, but the more I travel, the more I want to explore more remote places.

I am also a budding travel journalist, aiming to incorporate my joint loves of travelling and photography into a perfect career. It would also be useful to use my journalism degree, after it costing me three years of my life and however many thousands of pounds. I would truly love to be paid to travel the world, reporting on places that others will become inspired by. And why not…someone has to!

Unfortunately, we’ve had to miss out other countries in the region for various reasons; military juntas, difficulty in obtaining visas, civil wars, but mainly because of a traveller’s worst enemies – time and money. For instance, Guinea was on our list, but the cost of the visa (£113) combined with the fact that we’d only have two weeks there meant we had to revaluate.

If I could I’d spend at least a month in each country, but the aforementioned constraints limit our stay to four months. However, if I can I’ll stay for longer. I’ve recently been offered an exciting opportunity to work out there for a volunteering organisation – building wells, teaching and helping communities in need.

So that’s it; the step into the unknown. But as a great man once said, “Buy the ticket, take the ride”, and I think I shall do just that.