Travel stories, quotes and fun facts

The question is not what you look at

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.

Zanzibar fought the shortest war

The Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896 lasted under 45 minutes, the shortest recorded war in history.

Stilt fishermen

The men on poles now pose more than they fish, and they say so themselves. One of them told us the technique started during a wartime fuel shortage in the 1940s.

Ngorongoro is a collapsed volcano

The crater is a caldera 20 kilometres wide, home to around 25,000 large animals that rarely need to leave.

Full moon, no alcohol

Every full moon day is a public holiday and the bars close. We ended up at a temple at nine in the evening with a thousand people holding oil lamps, which was a better night out.

Uganda has half the world's mountain gorillas

Bwindi Impenetrable Forest shelters roughly half the remaining mountain gorillas, whose numbers have slowly risen.

Travel light

He who would travel happily must travel light.

Lake Victoria touches three countries

Africa's largest lake is shared by Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, and supports tens of millions of people.

The tuk-tuk negotiation

He named a price, I halved it, he laughed, we settled in the middle and then he took me to his cousin's suit shop anyway. The suit was actually quite good.

Rwanda banned plastic bags early

Rwanda outlawed non-biodegradable plastic bags in 2008, and bags are confiscated from arriving travellers.

If you want to build a ship

If you want to build a ship, teach people to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

Rwanda has a monthly cleaning day

On Umuganda, the last Saturday of each month, communities across Rwanda close shops and work together on public projects.

Songkran ambush

We stepped out of the guesthouse dry and were soaked within nine metres by a five-year-old with a bucket and no remorse. It was 39 degrees. We thanked her.

Burundi's drummers are UNESCO listed

The royal drummers of Burundi perform with drums carved from single tree trunks, a tradition recognised as intangible heritage.

Monks at dawn

Two hundred monks in silence, and one tourist with a flash. A local woman kneeling with rice glared at him with such force that he put the camera away for good.

The Congo is the deepest river

The Congo reaches depths over 220 metres, deep enough that fish in the same river have evolved in isolation.

A goal without a plan

A goal without a plan is just a wish.

Congo rainforest is the second largest

The Congo Basin holds the world's second largest tropical rainforest after the Amazon and absorbs enormous amounts of carbon.

Slow boat down the Mekong

Two days on wooden benches with a boat full of strangers and one guitar. By the second afternoon everybody knew everybody's story and nobody knew anybody's surname.

Gabon is almost entirely forest

Close to 88 percent of Gabon is forested, and the country set aside 13 national parks in a single decree in 2002.

One sees clearly

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Sao Tome sits on the equator

Africa's second smallest country is two volcanic islands where cocoa once made it the world's leading exporter.

Bomb crater fields

The craters are green now and farmers plough around them. Our guide explained the colour code for unexploded ordnance markers in the same tone you would explain a bus timetable.

Cameroon is called Africa in miniature

Cameroon packs desert, mountains, rainforest and coast into one country, which is why it earned the nickname.