Dark star safari : overland from Cairo to Cape Town /
Paul Theroux.
- 472 pages : maps ; 24 cm
Lighting out -- mother of the world -- Up and down the Nile -- dervishes of Omdurman -- Osama Road to Nubia -- Djibouti line to Harar -- longest road in Africa -- Figawi safari on the Bandit Road -- Rift Valley days -- Old friends in Bat Valley -- MV Umoja across Lake Victoria -- bush train to Dar es Salaam -- Kilimanjaro express to Mbeya -- Through the outposts of the plateau -- back road to Soche Hill School -- River safari to the coast -- Invading Drummond's farm -- bush border bus to South Africa -- hominids of Johannesburg -- wild things at Mala Mala -- Faith, hope, and charity on the Limpopo Line -- Trans-Karoo Express to Cape Town -- Blue train blues. 1. 2. The 3. 4. The 5. The 6. The 7. The 8. 9. 10. 11. The 12. The 13. The 14. 15. The 16. 17. 18. The 19. The 20. The 21. 22. The 23.
"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.