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African customs, photos and stories from a travel blog that explores the art and science of unusual journeys.

Overlooking beach in Barbados

Standing Alone on Slavery, Barbados

The problem, if you happened to be a slave owner, was that slaves just kept on dying. It was bad for business. Arguably, this also caused problems if you happened to be a slave, but…

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Breathing In the Atlas Mountains

Sometimes I dream that I am falling. Apparently, everyone does. But more often than that…

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Driving in Morocco

Driving in Morocco

It’s an inauspicious start. No map. No SatNav. No cash – my very last dihram cleared out by the unexpected fuel charge.

No internet access to check the route. No signal on my iPhone. Just a pen, a scrap of paper and a hastily scribbled map, uneven streaks of biro connecting Moroccan towns that appeared on a picture in the hotel lobby.

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Private island profiling

Sleeping Inside A Volcano – Desroches: A Private Island in the Seychelles

The sand I’m standing on is soft and bleached, the type that squeaks beneath your soles if you walk too fast.

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Pink rose in HIppocampe Hotel Morocco

The Dry Side of Morocco

So much of Morocco reminds me of Andalucia. The heat, the orange-red earth, the metal lanterns, intricate tiles…

Both, too, wear a mixture of myth and mystery…

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Beautiful women in Maun

Art in Botswana

I found this beautiful image in the well-trodden yet overlooked town of Maun in Botswana, southern Africa. The town sits at the edge of the Okavango Delta and pilots, tourists and enterprising locals buzz around the small airstrip, restless to leave Maun behind and to let nautre brandish the blues and greens of the Delta beneath them.

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Namib Desert Sesriem canyon

A Sense of Scale – Sesriem Canyon in the Namib Desert

I was looking for a photo to use as a test while I’m sprucing up Inside the Travel Lab – you know, washing behind its ears, dampening down tufts of hair and generally trying to get it to look its Sunday Best – when I found this.

The sight of

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Desroches Lizard

Desroches Island: The Seychelles in the Sun

Raindrops decorated most of my days in the Seychelles, the days passing beneath skies streaked with charcoal, while

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Spa Seychelles view

Blissing Out in the Banyan Tree Spa Seychelles

Picture this: a beach of white sand that curves to clasp the Indian Ocean. Palm trees fluttering at the edges of your vision. The crash and sigh of the waves in the distance. I open my eyes and…

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Desroches Island Flower

Desroches Island – Raindrops in the Seychelles

Rain. When I first arrived on Desroches Island, the rain stalked and prowled and lurked around like the relentless soundtrack from a gothic horror film. Yet all the malevolence and theatre of the sky couldn’t…

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The Okavango Delta – On Video

In the world’s largest delta, transport takes place on water. While a few motorised boats cruise along the main waterway, to travel through the reeds, you still need a traditional mokoro…

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Elephants in the Okavango Delta

Bringing you Elephants from the Air. Simply one of the most amazing moments in my life.

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Shadows over sand dunes in the Sahara, Morocco

Shadows in the Sahara

The Sahara Desert has a name that lives up to its reputation. Not simply because it sounds rippled and mysterious, but

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Ghandi - You must be the change you wish to see in the world - street art in Swakopmund, Namibia, Africa

Street Art in Swakopmund

Alright, I admit it. I did agree with the description of Namibia’s adventure playground, Swakopmund, as “unimaginably dreary.”

I still do. Yet as I was leaving town, I drove along this street of, well, street art that lifted my spirits…

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Swakopmund Desert SIgn - Warning Sand in Desert in Namibia, Africa

Warning: Sand in the Desert

The Namib Desert runs for over a thousand miles in southern Africa, and at 55 million years of age, geologists feel confident that it’s the oldest desert in the world.

Yet on the road between Swakopmund and Walvis Bay, the authorities feel we may not have noticed…

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Unimaginably Dreary: Namibia’s Adrenaline Capital

The violence of the wind whips me with my own hair and spills tears down my frozen cheek. Somewhere in the greyness, the wind howls, screams and groans, ripping up canvases and kicking over dustbins like the soundtrack to a teen horror film.

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Solitaire – An Unlikely Oasis in Namibia

My mind jumped to computer card games and Karen Carpenter’s warbling, but in Namibia, Solitaire is a place on the map. It’s also…

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Inside Angola’s Markets

When I visited Tunga N’go market on my first morning in Luanda, I knew that I was really seeing Angola. This run-down but real-life market in the neighborhood of Rangel…

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Zebras in the Moremi Game Reserve, Botswana

What the Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana lacks in fame, it makes up for in undisturbed viewing opportunities. Here’s one of my favourite shots of…

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Life in the World’s Oldest Desert, Namibia

Desert. It’s a word that used to have two effects on me. First, it conjured up images of parched wastelands and a world of emptiness scorched into never-ending death and sand. Second, it triggered a paranoid rush to the dictionary

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