This account of a journey for which few predicted a happy outcome before or after it began with struggles through unforgiving terrain, close encounters with hostile animals, and a disastrous camp fire has turned out to be not only a full-on survival story but also a rare time-capsule of life in Central Africa in the early era of independence. The author shares his enjoyment of a rich variety of people encountered, from astonished children first seeing white faces to great-grandparents with family memories of Victorian explorers.
A fed-up city-dwellers idea of retracing on foot Stanleys 1,200-mile expedition of 1871 originated in his boyhood reading of the American explorers classic account. Stanleys team had been nearly 200 men; George Tardioss for his equally historic expedition was himself, his wife and a young friend.
With eight pages of photographic illustrations, this diary-based account of a journey accomplished 40 years ago has had to await the authors thorough physical and mental recovery from it, further years earning a living in Tanzania, and self-reinvention in a changed England.
