Walking the Nile

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Burning back the bush clears away undergrowth that makes cattle-farming harder and allows more grassland to develop. With food running short and with no villages nearby, Boston was forced to use his catapult to hunt birds for something to eat; pigeon became the staple food, but in one period over three days the only delicacy we had was a half starved sparrow. This new four-part series follows British explorer Levison Wood’s expedition to walk the length of the River Nile from source to sea.

From my previous experience I estimate that the sounds could not have come from more than 300 or so metres away. Reminiscent of a scene from a silent Laurel and Hardy movie we chased these laughing beasts for nearly a mile before catching up with them. Lake Victoria is a vast lake, almost a freshwater inland sea about half the size of England; over aeons it had developed a unique ecology.Having been extremely gentle with Kej and Azamak over the last two days, they have repaid our misplaced kindness by doing a runner when we were just about to start the next leg of our journey.

Today marks five months on the road and I am now over halfway through the expedition having covered almost 2500 miles. I hear that two United States helicopters hoping to evacuate civilians had been badly shot up with four soldiers being wounded, one seriously, two Indian peacekeepers had been killed and over 60 innocent civilians massacred. With over 700 miles of his epic journey already under his belt to walk the entire 4250 miles of the River Nile, Captain Levison Wood, aged 31, of Cheadle Road, Forsbrook, felt it was a good time to take a few days off and take advantage of a generous offer made by the Ugandan Government to visit the Mountain gorilla sanctuary in the western part of the country. Why even after being locked up by the Turkish police as a suspected spy and held in detention by the Russian army in case he was a Chechen rebel could not deter him from going again.However the additional burden of dodging bullets without any logistical assurance of any food or water beyond the swampland made the task just impossible.

Thankfully our spirits soared when during the late afternoon we were rewarded with the majestic sight of a large herd slowly crossing the river as we continued our journey eastward into the darkening shy. Along the way, he encounters modern Africa, its people and its wildlife face-to-face and at ground level.Encountering the most dangerous animal in Africa, the hippo, he will pass the Mountains of the Moon, and enter the newest country on the planet, South Sudan which has been forged out of decades of civil unrest and war.