Dark star safari : overland from Cairo to Cape Town / Paul Theroux.

1. Lighting out -- 2. The mother of the world -- 3. Up and down the Nile -- 4. The dervishes of Omdurman -- 5. The Osama Road to Nubia -- 6. The Djibouti line to Harar -- 7. The longest road in Africa -- 8. Figawi safari on the Bandit Road -- 9. Rift Valley days -- 10. Old friends in Bat Valley -- 11. The MV Umoja across Lake Victoria -- 12. The bush train to Dar es Salaam -- 13. The Kilimanjaro express to Mbeya -- 14. Through the outposts of the plateau -- 15. The back road to Soche Hill School -- 16. River safari to the coast -- 17. Invading Drummond's farm -- 18. The bush border bus to South Africa -- 19. The hominids of Johannesburg -- 20. The wild things at Mala Mala -- 21. Faith, hope, and charity on the Limpopo Line -- 22. The Trans-Karoo Express to Cape Town -- 23. Blue train blues.

"Dark Star Safari is an insightful book whose itinerary is Africa, from Cairo to Cape Town: down the Nile, through Sudan and Ethiopia, to Kenya, Uganda, and ultimately to the tip of South Africa. Going by train, dugout canoe, "chicken bus," and cattle truck, Theroux passes through some of the most beautiful - and often life-threatening - landscapes on earth." "This is travel as discovery and also, in part, a sentimental journey. Almost forty years ago, Theroux first went to Africa as a teacher in the Malawi bush. Now he stops at his old school, sees former students, revisits his African friends. He finds astonishing, devastating changes wherever he goes. "Africa is materially more decrepit than it was when I first knew it," he writes, "hungrier, poorer, less educated, more pessimistic, more corrupt, and you can't tell the politicians from the witch doctors. Not that Africa is one place. It is an assortment of motley republics and seedy chiefdoms. I got sick, I got stranded, but I was never bored. In fact, my trip was a delight and a revelation.""--BOOK JACKET.

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