If you fancy getting down and dirty with a load of naked Scandinavians (quite frankly who wouldn’t?!) then it’s Roskilde Festival for you. If I were a festival I would want Roskilde to be my husband. It’s got everything I ever dreamed of, and probably a little bit more. It’s bursting at the seams with musical delights, is environmentally aware, raises money for charity, promotes a vegetarian and organic diet, uses green energy sources and rides a bicycle. Swoon! Read more about my future husband here. It’s only a mere 30 days away and tickets are on sale now.

For those who fancy some good old fashioned chaos why not take yourself to Eastern Europe. Belgrade once again brings us sun burn and dance parties in an abandoned fortress at Exit Fest. There are some excellent options for reaching Novi Sad by train, and we’ve featured a number of journeys with stopovers in Venice or Budapest.

If you’re feeling a bit more piratical, (yaaaarrgggh!) then let me recommend the Garden Festival in Zadar.  Funnily enough it’s got little to do with gardens, but will have you sailing the seven seas (*actually just one sea), while you dance in the glorious sunshine on the HMS Goodtimes. Tickety Boo. And here’s a cheeky journey plan.

Croatia is also host to Soundwave Festival in July; another treat on the Adriatic offering beaches, beats and bikinis! They’re going Loco too and offering the Sunshine Bus for a mere £125 return, from Manchester or London. Check out this mighty clever journey plan for further details and how to book.

Closer to home we’re spoiled for choice, with Spain offering its usual cache of fun and frolicks; July sees the 16th annual Benicassim Fesitival. So in the words of Dizzee Rascal (who’ll be appearing at this years gig), “get your passport, and your bikini, you need a holiday…come see me!” Ah, wise words Mister Rascal, and see you I will if I can get my hands on a ticket. For this one Loco2’s teamed up with some clever folks who are offering an all inclusive bus tour to and from the festival to make your festival experience as hassle free as possible.

Come August and it’ll be time to don your over-sized baggy hat and Jamaican themed string vest and take yourself to Rototom Sunsplash. Not only is saying “rototom” in a thick Welsh accent highly amusing, but it’s a tip top reggae festival too, with sunshine and bass and booming beats in the Spanish sunshine…

Right, that’s all for now, but certainly something to get you thinking.

Well, in short, yes! And in fact the newly formed Local Travel Movement is showing that there are a whole host of like-minded travellers and organisations out there that not only recognise the importance of authentic local travel, but are prepared to put their name down in support of it.

In less than a week the Local Travel Movement has snowballed, and there are already over thirty partners in the tourism industry who are entering into long overdue dialogue about how responsible tourism affects us all. From Couchsurfing, whose ethos of cultural exchange, friendship and a place to rest your head has long been awarded our respect, to Ger to Ger, whose Mongolian expeditions showed me that authentic travel sometimes means eating an offal lot of goat, it is already clear that going local is becoming global.

Here at Loco2 we’re not just about conserving CO2, and while we’re prone to a little soap-boxery when it comes to opting for lower emission transport, we’re also keen to emphasize that overland travel makes the journey itself part of the adventure. There’s no better way to engage with a country than travelling through it: be that on foot, bus, bicycle or train. From my own experience of surface travel through three continents I can tell you that you’ll never get a clearer perspective on a people, their culture, humour and eating habits, than by being with them every step of the way, not just at the airport and hotel check-in.

Think sharing walnuts with a Mongolian poet on a train in the middle of the Gobi desert, getting a percussion lesson from a band of toothless Tahitian buskers while taking a break from hitchhiking, or sharing photos of your family with a Vietnamese cyclo rider, these are the experiences that travel should be made up of. Forget finding yourself at a Thai beach party. It might be fun, but once the glow paint wears thin you’re left with nothing but a hangover.

The Local Travel Movement means engaging with people and places in a more meaningful way. We believe that travelling overland is the best way to embrace this great concept: share food and drink on a train, hop on the bus, walk through markets, rent a bicycle and get stuck in a traffic jam. Forgo the in-flight meal, and air conditioned taxi; talk, sweat and laugh with the real people of your destination and you’ll not only be going Local, but you’ll be going Loco too.

The bustling shopping malls of China quickly seemed a world away, and it soon became clear that this was going to be a trip like no other. Milk derivatives and offal jokes aside, our fortnight in Mongolia was one of the most memorable parts of our jaunt across Asia.

With dehydrated camping meals, fake North Face jackets and woefully inadequate sleeping bags we ventured 360 miles South West from Ulan Bator to Tsetserleg, the capital of the Arkhangai province, to begin a two week venture into the interior. We had booked ourselves onto the most genuine nomadic life experience we could find. This sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it? But we had done our research. In the past twenty years numerous nomadic experiences have popped up all over Mongolia, bringing daft tourists into the heart of a fragile community and lining the pockets of foreign tour operators. We were determined to do this properly, and had picked a sustainable geo-tourism, socially responsible type organisation. We were ready for a real Mongolian experience, or so we thought…

We put up our tent, indulged in a little airag (vodka made from the milk of a female horse) and pulled out the trusty phrase book. As with most countries outside of Europe the conversation revolved around Vicki and I being in our twenties, not being married, and not having any children. Curiously, in Mongolia they were also astounded to hear that we didn’t have any animals. Horses? Goats? Yaks? Really…where are your children? Cue puzzled facial expression. We would have this conversation many times. And as the days wore on Vicki miraculously conjured up a couple of kids, a husband and a smattering of livestock, while I remained a lonely spinster with Vicki for a sister and about 7 other siblings. The disappointment in their faces was just too much to bear.

Back in our tent we congratulated ourselves on our authenticity. A little white lie never hurt anyone, besides it gave us something to talk about. Let’s get back to being authentic; where’s the toilet? This question was answered with a smile and a large sweeping arm gesture. When in Mongolia, do as the yaks do… No complaints from me, some of my most memorable toilet visits have been open air – under a starry sky in Egypt, atop a volcano in Nicaragua. So off I wandered into the treeless landscape in search of something to hide behind. Nope. No rocks for you Kate. Not even a shrub. I was forced to hide my derriere behind a yak. This would become a regular occurrence, though be warned that unlike a rock a yak will sometimes wander off.

That night I awoke at 4am to the sound of wolves howling somewhere in the distance. I was shivering, and despite donning every item of clothing I owned I couldn’t get warm. I consoled myself with the fact that this was a very authentic Mongolian experience, and managed to drift off to sleep. The next night I was awoken by a goat tripping over our tent and falling face first into my feet; the night after that a yak had a coughing fit a few metres away; the night after that, wolves scared the herd and four hundred goats ran directly though our campsite. -4˚C at 4am and these things don’t seem quite so funny, and we were not much consoled by the authenticity of the experience. By day fourteen our enthusiasm was severely eroded. The wooden saddles and insane horses had given us mighty bruises, I could barely look at yak milk let alone drink it, and I’d eaten enough offal to put me off meat for life.

On the other hand we had ridden horses through extraordinary landscape, scrambled up rock faces, rolled down hills and fallen off a motorbike. We had a bash at archery, got pretty good at anklebone shooting, made some cheese and used a shotgun. Vicki tried to milk a yak. I tried to ride one. We were both unsuccessful. We had a dance off with a local family, and watched with some extremely homoerotic wrestling. I helped to gut my mate marmot – the obese cousin of the guinea pig, not even remotely similar to marmite – and made sausages out of the intestine and semi-congealed blood of a goat, (delicious?) But most importantly we’d met some real Mongolian characters, good and bad.  Beautiful and sweet children, hospitable and hard working women, hard drinking  old men and everything in between, including my pick for best beard 2009 (see inset).

On the final day of our trip I must admit that we were pretty eager to get back to civilisation. Our faces were wind-burnt, we hadn’t washed since leaving Ulan Bator and Vicki was starting to get a scurvy look about her, but frankly, we were very, very authentic.

We came back to civilisation a few days ago – to beds, running water, toilets and pickpockets. Beer and vegetables were our diet for the next few days as we waited for our train across Russia. We played expats in Ulan Bator, a favourite game of ours that was well honed in Tonga. We hosted a pub quiz and rescued a kitten from the side of a busy road. We did things like cook risotto and make friends with the street vendor who sells boiled eggs. We went to an impromptu party and got our names on the wall of fame for successfully sliding under a chair in under 10 seconds. So you see it’s all very worthwhile stuff, and excellent preparation for a five-day train journey. Roll on Russia.

Yúnnán translates rather beautifully as “South of the Clouds” and although I was alarmed to find it’s towns heaving with busloads of umbrella touting tourists, the landscape did not fail to amaze.

We started off in the region’s capital Kunming (昆明), a fairly typical Chinese city full of banks, neon lights and fast food outlets. My expectations of China had been vague, but somehow I was surprised to find myself under the Golden Arches of McDonald’s looking out onto endless swarms of people. Although I had steeled myself for overpopulation – after all there’s 1.6 billion people here – I was still shocked to find that a city of which I had never heard, and which holds no particular significance was home to a staggering 5.7 million.  Needless to say this wasn’t quite what Vicki and I had in mind having so recently escaped the incessant horn honking of Vietnam, and so after a night in a hostel and a few cheeky Tsingtao beers we dragged ourselves back to the bus station and spent several hours trying to catch a bus.

Although China has not managed to successfully resist the onslaught of the likes of Pizza Hut, KFC and Disney Land, they’re sticking to their alphabet like glue, and if you think that any of the bus drivers are going to humour your vain attempts at mastering their language…well, you’ve got another thing coming.  China was the first of a number of countries that were less tourist-friendly than their neighbours; that’s not to say that you’re not welcome, but that you have to work a little harder to get what you want. I’ve already talked about Vicki’s ever expanding symphony of animal noises, but now consider catching a bus.

“OK, it looks like a square-headed dalek trying to climb a step-ladder”, says Vicki as we walk for the forth time around the parking lot searching for our night bus to Dali. We peered at the stickers on the windows of the many buses, then back to our handwritten Chinese characters that a kindly member of hostel staff had scrawled into our book. Nothing. “Wait, dalek step-ladder is Kunming, we want headless stick man doing the splits in front of half a step-ladder leaning against a window with a bookshelf underneath…obviously”. How embarrassing. 大理. This was to be a defining feature of the next few months of travel.

The next ten days featured rather a lot of overnight travel: from Kunming to Dali, from Dali to Shangri-La, and from Lijang back to Kunming by bus, then on to Yangshao by train, and then from Yangshao to Hong Kong. Ouch. On a map this looks suspiciously like a ridiculous waste of time, and though it was at times a battle against sanity it was a fantastic two weeks of adventure. Did I mention that China is massive? By the time we reached Hong Kong we were well versed in stick men, daleks and step-ladders as a means of communication and had had an extraordinary two weeks.

My overall impression of China was that it wasn’t really for me, just too big and too busy for my appetite. But the Yúnnán province is an unsung gem, and one of only a few places that we found in China that I’d like to revisit. The town of Shangri-La had a very Tibetan feel and provided yak meat skewers and foot massages at the ‘Au Predestined Relationship Foot Bath Shop’. The walled city of Dali shone despite the rain and constant assaults on your eyeballs by passing umbrellas. And the trek through Tiger Leaping Gorge was as exhausting as it was rewarding. Despite the imposing damns and hydroelectric plants that litter the valleys, and the cavernous quarries that scar the landscape, the province is still clinging to its majesty, though for how much longer I’m just not sure.

Capitalism is alive and well in China and it’s only a matter of time until there’s a Coca Cola vendor at the top of Tiger Leaping Gorge. For now though, the beauty of the peaks that are south of the clouds is preserved, and we found a little old lady in her ancient blue suit shelling walnuts at the summit. I relished this moment of quiet reflection as we headed back to Kunming, and onwards to Hong Kong and Beijing. We would have very little peace for the next three weeks.

We had arrived in China the day before after being unceremoniously dumped into no-man’s land by the Vietnamese border guards. We waited nervously on the Chinese side as the guard ruthlessly scrutinised our passports; he looked at me, then at my picture, then back to me, then back to the picture, then at my bag, then me, then Vicki, then back to me. All this took around a minute, which isn’t long in the scheme of things, but if you were walk outside right now and lock eyes with a total stranger, let me tell you, a minute holding their gaze would feel like an awfully long time, especially if that stranger had a machine gun. “Aliens are permitted” said the delightful Chinglish sign, so why on earth was it taking so long?

I tried to ease the tension with a little nǐ hǎo, but he continued to stare me down, so I let my attention wander to the evaluation machine on the counter. These are a pretty common appearance at border controls now; a how am I driving sticker for passport authorities if you will. Curiously, this one appeared to be broken and the only button available to press was “very good”; ah Communism, you’re on to a winner there. Pleased that I had evaluated him so well – and so fairly – I was allowed to pass, but could still feel his eyes boring into the back of my head as I walked away. Little did I know that staring would be a key feature of my time in China.

We took ourselves to the nearest noodle house and took a seat by the window, all the better for people watching we thought. After all, as a backpacker, watching the world go by becomes a favourite pastime. What we hadn’t realised was that in China we were interesting to look at, really really interesting. “Moo, mooo, quack, quack”, Vicki had another bash at avoiding mystery meat in her lunch while I did a little chicken dance to hammer the point home. The waitress smiled awkwardly, then began nodding furiously before bringing poor Vic a bowl of mixed carcass. Vegetarianism really is a foreign concept here. While all this was going on we failed to notice the small crowd of locals gathering outside the window for a good old stare. I kid you not, one man literally held his small child up to the window for a better view, and this was just the beginning.

Minutes later we were running across a car park in a desperate bid to catch the only bus to Kunming, a town that looks to be close to the border, but is in fact a 12 hour bus ride away. This is something I would learn quickly about China; it is massive, like really, really big, (insert some sort of comparison to Wales here), big enough so that every place we wanted to visit was at least 12 hours away. Gratefully we made it onto the bus, and began the first of many journeys we would make on a Chinese sleeper bus.

The sleeper bus is a fantastic invention, and one that is yet to make its debut in Europe. In fact, consider this the beginning of my campaign to get some loco2 sleeper buses on the Continent. Granted they ain’t great if you’re tall – I think my 5ft 6” was pushing it a bit – but being able to lay horizontal on a long journey isn’t something that should be sniffed at. And if you’re really lucky you’ll get the added bonus of watching Chinese love songs on video all night long, and a couple of crates of ducks strapped to the roof rack above your head. While not the great sleep you get on a night train, it sure beats a night in a seat on a coach.

I tucked myself into my Vietnamese silk sleeping bag, pad-locked my backpack and tied it to my ankle, ipod in ears, eye patches on. I know it doesn’t sound too glamorous but believe me, when you’ve done a 17-hour coach trip across Mexico with the air conditioning on full pelt, these buses seem like heaven, ducks and all. With that in mind I drifted off to sleep, dreaming of paradise: in the morning we’d be in Shangri-La…

The next few weeks was an adventure in alternative modes of transport (I really am an advert for my own values aren’t I?) There have been buses, and boats and trains, and bicycles, and night buses, and night trains, and mopeds and motorcycles, a slow boat, a long boat and an elephant. I love it! I’ll show you airline companies, I can go wherever I want and I don’t need you, in your face! My first moped experience was a scream. Literally. And involved rather a lot of dodgy swerving and erratic acceleration. The teeny tiny Thai lady who rented me the bike didn’t seem remotely concerned that I had no experience what so ever, nor did she have any helmets.

But it’s ok, I substituted conventional safety gear with a bikini and a flip flops so it was totally safe Mum; knee pads, helmets…pah!. And I had aviators, so I was pretty much the coolest person who ever lived, maybe. You should have seen us, we surely were the pace setters of the whole island, not even remotely wobbly. At one point I went so fast that I was able to overtake a small child on a bicycle and, wait for it…a parked car!

Just for the record the moped is now my vehicle of choice, although it seems I am not alone. The very funny people at  Stuff White People Like point out that “as it stands, every single white person on earth either owns, has owned, or is dreaming about owning a Vespa Scooter…They are Italian, feature vintage design, low emissions, make the rider look more sophisticated, and they carry a little bit of risk. In fact, were it to have a liberal arts degree and a steady income,  a Vespa scooter would possesses every important quality that a white person looks for in a spouse”. So it’s decided, when I move home I am going to marry a Vespa. Lovely. But I digress.

The month of June involved lots of very interesting (even if i do say so myself) and funny (of course) stories. But as I’m often chastised for writing insanely long posts so I won’t bore you with the all details. Don’t get too excited though as I rarely do as I’m told. In fact perhaps you’d like to go and have a tea break now, and maybe a small nap, tuk tuk??! Just checking.

But just so you know what you’re missing out on there was an incident with an elephant slapping my friend in the face with its trunk, deep fried crickets, long next tribes, and a few ill advised three on a motorbike taxi rides. If you want to hear more about these stories please send a stamped addressed envelope to Kate Andrews, Room 19, A dodgy guesthouse in Asia. It’s the one with lots of motorbikes parked outside, you can’t miss it.

In conclusion Thailand was not really mine or Vicki’s cup of tea, we’re less organised tour, more see what happens sort of girls so we weren’t too fussed about waving goodbye to the beaches and getting ourselves into Laos on a very slow boat.

Images courtesy of Kate

I arrived in Singapore by air after much deliberation. To cross the Torres Strait by sea, while not impossible, demanded far more advanced planning and hard cash then I had. And in the scale of things, I decided that a few miles airborne were preferable to another 6 months desperately trying (and so often failing) to save money in Australia.  Although I have sufficiently justified this to myself by now I will graciously accept abuse and you should feel free to throw otten tomatoes at your leisure.

However, when I arrived in Singapore I was less worried about my carbon footprint than by the notion that I might have forgotten how to rough it. But within minutes of stepping out of the air-conditioned airport into the familiar clammy heat of the tropics I knew I had rediscovered my inner traveller – pass the henna, I need a temporary tattoo immediately! Oi, street trader, sell me an anklet this instant!

Singapore is a city of contrasts (blah, what a cliche) but it’s true. My first site was a small gathering of traditional Buddhist monks, swiftly followed by a group of officials equipped with surgical masks and heat seeking cameras to catch feverish passengers (Swine flu anyone? Pass the oinkment). Next I was handed a list of rules to which I must adhere while in Singapore, for instance: it is illegal to chew gum, smoke within 5 metres of any entrance, drop litter, or J-Walk, hefty fines apply. I was also politely informed that the possession of drugs is punishable by death!! eeek, not that I’m trafficking drugs let me assure you but I did have chewing gum in my bag for the duration of my stay. Contraband!

But what a great city, full of diversity; from Little India with its curry served in a banana leaf (about one pound for a stomach stretching quantity, now that’s a takeaway), and the heady scent of incense and spices assaulting you at every turn, to China Town with it’s herbal eggs and Turnip Cream. But it is clean, tidy, relatively crime free and as organised as a lego city built by a neurotic child. You’ve got a love it! It may not be to everyone’s taste, perhaps a little sterile – Topshop and Marks and Spenser in mega malls, $500 a night hotels etc – but it was a perfect start to my re-immersion into the world of travel.

After a few days I made tracks by bus to Kuala Lumpar to meet a friend. Vicki had proved a great companion through tears, triumph and heartbreak in Tonga (that’s another story entirely), and she had bravely agreed to be my partner in crime for the next few months. She’s very organised and is sure to whip my lazy arse into shape whether I like it or not. And though this makes us like chalk and cheese, she did get a henna tattoo yesterday and I’ve got my eye on an anklet so maybe we’re the perfect team.

Kuala Lumpar was not to my taste, a bit on the insanely hot and so smoggy you can’t breathe side. But the twin towers were pretty cool, and of course the flag pole!!!! Every guide book for KL recommends this sight and believe me it’s not to be missed…a 100m metre flag pole, yes that’s right, a pole with a flag on it. If you can’t imagine it try holding a toothpick really close to your face and looking up in awe. OK, so sarcasm aside, it’s not the most exciting thing I’ve ever seen but I took thirty photos of it anyway, from different angles and with the flag fluttering at different wind speeds, just in case…you know…something…memories. Thankfully, the city redeemed itself on our final day as we went to the Batu Caves, a little north of the city. Imagine a mighty cave cut into a sheer cliff face, and adorned with extraordinary giant Hindu sculptures and teeny tiny monkeys. Brilliant.

That brings you up to date. So here we are, in a hostel, waiting for a night bus to Thailand to get ourselves to the infamous full moon party of Ko Pang Yang. After all if I’m going to be a cliche traveller for a little I might as well do it properly. Otherwise how on earth am I going to ‘find myself’? Who says that my inner self isn’t somewhere on a white sand beach with lots of drunken hooligans covered in UV paint, you never know!

Having been warned against taking the ‘direct’ bus from Thailand to Siem Reap we made our own way to Aranya Prathet. It feels like the end of the road with little in the way of accommodation and the dredges at the bottom of the culinary barrel (including frog, lizard and bush meat).

The border is open from 7.30am to 5pm and you can buy your visa at the border. The tuk tuk journey from town (6km) should cost no more than 50 Bhat, and make sure your driver takes you to the border and not to the ‘Cambodian Consulate’. The Cambodian Consulate is a scam. The sign and building certainly look legitimate and they do sell Cambodian visas, but after one too many “sure brother’s” we got suspicious. Only it was too late; as we had handed over $30 for a visa that we later learnt should cost only $20. The best place to buy your Cambodian visa, if you haven’t got one in advance, is from the visa booth once you have gone through Thai immigration and customs. Cambodian immigration and customs are then a straightforward stamp and enter.

Poipet is an unnerving and unwelcoming entrance to a country. After the relative ease, cleanliness and smiles of Thailand, Cambodia throws dust, ragged children and deformed adults at you. Women pull carts through a cesspool of a road piled high with rubbish and mud. Going through the Angkor towers gate into Cambodia felt like walking through a portal in to another world.

Moving on from Poipet to Siem Reap or anywhere in Cambodia is a chore. The Cambodian authorities claim to have made it easier to avoid scams by providing their own irritating touts and escorts across the border. Whether you like it or not, they’ll accompany you from Aranya Prathet to Poipet and put you on a free bus to the tourist bus terminal (about 200m), where you pay corresponding tourist prices.
It is a slow roller coaster ride on red mud, about as bumpy as the roads in northern Laos, but it is also a fascinating introduction to Cambodia. Dazzling fields of rice stretch as far as the eye can see with water buffalo wallowing, children playing and men fishing with nets all up to their waists in water. Given the country’s history it feels tropically eerie. These feelings were offset by the surreal as a man on motorbike went by with two rigor-mortised pigs, trotters pointing towards the heavens, strapped on the back.

The last part of the trip is finding your guesthouse in Siem Reap. On the city outskirts the taxi driver passes you over to a tuk tuk for the final leg of the journey. Make sure you have a hostel reservation, or pretend you have one, and insist on being taken there and not to the one where the driver receives commission. The tuk tuk ride is included in the taxi fare. Another irritating ‘official’ rides with you trying to sell tours of the temples. Ignore him too. Once settled Siem Reap is definitely worth the hassle, and the journey there is an unforgettable and unique part of the Cambodian adventure.

Photos: nealeanddalissa, John Brennan, Ashengrove

So what on earth led to the decision to undertake this huge mission in January? Like many people who choose not to fly, they are keen to dispel the myth that they are martyrs to the cause of climate change:

“We were motivated both by bloody mindedness, and a desire to prove its financial and logistical viability and reap the many rewards of slow travel. Our actions are far from altruistic, keeping out of the sky is allowing us to feel the land change beneath us. As we pass through places we have been able to far better understand how people subsist on the land, what it gives them and what they give it in return, and how this has shaped their ways of life.”

In the two months since they begun, they’ve made solid progress, and at the time of writing are in Khartoum, Sudan. Here’s a super-quick run-down of how they got there:

• Step one: Eurostar from London to Paris
• Step two: Ferry from Marseille to Tunis (capital of Tunisia)
• Step three: louages (“minibuses scheduled to leave when all the seats are filled”) and trains from Tunis to the Libyan border
• Step four: Escorted drive across Libya for €90 a day (seemingly a condition of getting a visa)
• Step five: Buses from the Libyan border to Cairo (Egypt), via Alexandria
• Step six: Train from Cairo to Luxor (still Egypt)
• Step seven: Train from Luxor to Aswan (still Egypt)
• Step eight: Seventeen-hour ferry ride down the Nile from Aswan to Wadi Halfa in Sudan
• Step nine: Waid Halfa to Abri on the back of a truck carrying cement
• Step ten: Abri to Khartoum via Dongola and Karima on unofficial buses/trucks

View Larger Map

There’s obviously a lot more to it than a bullet-point list and a Googlemap can do justice, and I’m in awe of many aspects of their journey. In particular the sandwiching of Libya in between the relatively tourist-driven Tunisia and Egypt sounds like it presented a real contrast:

“In Libya we got the full 1984 treatment for €90 per day. We had to pay through the nose for both a driver a guide who were with us all day everyday, accompanying us to deserted ‘tourist restaurants’ and officially sanctioned hotels. That is no to say we resented being there, the walking the streets of empty Roman cities, littered with mosaics, toppled pillars and pots was more than memorable, its just that there was just a bit of a weird atmosphere. Libya clearly had enough oil not to be concerned by the tourist dollar, unlike its neighbour, Egypt, of which an illustrious history of money grabbing stretching back for millennia shone through.”

Another fascinating aspect of the trip is the unique atmospheres that Toby and Stewart found on the ferries they took, starting with the “gentle introduction to the sweet coffee drinking and sweet shisha smoking” on the way to Tunis from France, and then the crazy 17-hour stint down the Nile into Sudan:

“The chaotic, stinking seven hour late, seventeen hour long ferry journey was a delight as it was in the company of Sudanese who sang, gave us tea and food, offered up their seats for us to sleep on and told us of themselves and Sudan.”

This type of low carbon travel is clearly not for the light-hearted, but it’s difficult to imagine a more incredible experience than that enjoyed and endured by Toby and Stewart so far. Regardless of the mode of transport (a cement-carrying lorry?!), the humanism of cultural interaction is valuable and timeless:

“In the North [of Sudan] the people and their surroundings lived up to expectations; we were invited into a school and onto a farm, we were chased by children, we were stalked by a man with intricate tribal scarring on his face and we spent endless hours chewing the fat with gloriously happy people … This comes to you from Khartoum, tomorrow we catch the bus to the Nuba Mountains in the South of the country.”

The adventure continues…

To delve deeper into Toby and Stewart’s amazing journey, I strongly recommend reading their blog at http://africacarbonodyssey.blogspot.com.

Post thumbnail: sidelife