An African Odyssey

For ten months Peter Winton set out alone on an epic 10,000 mile journey of discovery overland through 25 countries around the African continent; making his way along endless, empty red roads, lake, river, through bush and desert, by cattle truck, motorcycle, dilapidated bus, freight train, crowded matatu, cargo ship, and canoe. Along the way encountering tribal warfare, religious extremism, threats, roadblocks, monstrous delays, a brutal climate, arrest, interrogation, those in uniform, and unimaginable discomfort. Sleeping at times in rat infested crumbling pensions and hotels, and on occasion beneath the stars on jungle tracts, and border posts, amid swirling desert sands, Through country after country coming face to face with some of the most squalid and desperate places on earth, but also some of nature’s most extraordinary natural wonders - the Victoria Falls, the Nile River, the Okavango Delta, Game Parks, and the astonishing expanse and beauty of the Namib and Sahara deserts, having close encounters with buffalo, elephant, baboon and crocodile. He passes along the way crumbling cities, ancient towns, crowded streets, markets, and bazaars, where he comes upon the ordinary, good folk of the land - toilet attendants, ship workers, bus drivers, day labourers, hawkers, sweet smiling school children, and the desperate and those disenfranchised – prostitutes, beggars, and the forgotten, meditating all the while on its history, its politics, its lack of so many things, the injustice of so much, and the impossible to believe poverty and struggle of millions; but also marvelling at the endurance, self-sufficiency, and kindness of Africans.
This astonishing book is of one man´s journey into the unknown, where chance encounter is everything, where departure and arrival times are an irrelevance, and where contentment and joy are found in the ordinary, the everyday, and the most unexpected of places.