The Lost Kingdoms of Africa

Even as a child, I was deeply entranced by Africa, and I still am. The word “Africa” conjured up for me dreams of a dark, unknown continent, peopled by a bewildering number of different tribes, each with their own exotic beliefs, customs and dress, unknown numbers of species of birds and animals, impenetrable jungles and impassably lofty mountains. I read everything about Africa that I could lay my hands on. My pet obsession was crossing the Sahara, the largest desert in the world, on camel-back, winding my way through far- flung oases, and then making my way down into the depths of the mysterious “black Africa”, land of gold, slaves and ivory.

That dream still remains with me today, and it has not been quite unfulfilled. But the furthest I could manage in that regard was a trip some years ago to the far north-west of Africa to Morocco, where I made my way down the Atlas mountains to the Berber oases of Ouzanne and Ouzazzat that straddle the Mauritanian border, and another sojourn – in a different direction – to Aswan and Abu Simbel in southern Egypt, near the frontier with Sudan.