Monthly Archives: April 2009

Ethiopa: No Pain, No Gain

By Tom | Published: April 27, 2009
I waved good­bye to the Tele Café in the piazza of Gondar, where I’d enjoyed many a delightfully-spicy break­fast or pint of mango juice. I was about to exper­i­ence a mag­ni­fi­cent ride through the soar­ing high­lands of north-central Ethiopia. As I rolled out of town towards the green val­leys below, how­ever, I was nervous. Aside [...]
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Rest And Recuperation In Gondar, Ethiopia

By Tom | Published: April 18, 2009
I spent four days in Met­ema. The mild symp­toms of mal­aria were the lesser of my con­cerns. More wor­ry­ing was the stiff­ness and sore­ness that quickly appeared in my legs, as if some­how sparked off by the unex­pec­ted parasites. By the even­ing of my arrival, my lower calves were sore and stiff, caus­ing some dis­com­fort [...]
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When Things Go Wrong, How Do You React?

By Tom | Published: April 14, 2009
My six days in Khar­toum had been some­what sur­real, to say the least. Bar­ging through the dark, dusty, unpaved back streets in a big white United Nations four-by-four, passing observ­ers would have assumed me and my host to be rush­ing to assist in some nearby inter­na­tional crisis, unaware that we were actu­ally try­ing to find the [...]
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Hard Days in the Sahara

By Tom | Published: April 3, 2009
“Four days”, I said to George when he asked me how long it would take to ride to Khar­toum. “Depend­ing on how hard I ride, but I think four days is about right.” I had met a rag-tag band of other trav­el­lers in the small hotel in Don­gola — from Aus­tria, New Zea­l­and, Singa­pore and Eng­land. [...]
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