Dark Star Safari

Here, Theroux travels from Cairo to Cape Town by train, boat and cattle truck, passing some of the most beautiful - and life-thereatening - landscapes on earth. This is in part a sentimental journey, as Theroux first travelled in Africa almost 40 years ago, as a teacher in the Malawi bush.

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"Safari" in Swahili means a journey, typically a long one. In "Dark Star Safari", Theroux's itinerary is African, from Cairo to Cape Town - down the Nile, through Sudan and Ethiopia, to Kenya, Uganda and beyond to South Africa. Journeying by train, boat and cattle truck, he passes through some of the most beautiful - and often life-threatening - landscapes on earth. This is travel as discovery, but it is in part a sentimental journey. Almost 40 years ago, Theroux first travelled in Africa as a teacher in the Malawi bush. Now he stops at his old school, sees former students and revisits his African friends. Seeing first-hand what has happened in Africa in those four decades of independence, Theroux is obsessively curious and wittily observant.