The White Nile Diaries

A riveting coming-of-age journey and a tantalising glimpse into a time when Africa was an oyster for the young, the brave and the free.

It all began at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station, in 1961. Two young Princetonians have returned to New York from South America, where their dream of buying a coffee plantation in the Peruvian jungle evaporated. With the fire for adventure still burning in their veins, they are tempted by a mysterious letter from Kenya and plan a trip across Africa. They buy a white BMW motorcycle and paint the words ‘The White Nile’ on the tank, to honour the route they will follow.

In limpid, elegant prose John Hopkins describes deadly salt flats where tourists vanish without a trace, mysterious Saharan oases and the funerals of young Tunisians killed by the French Foreign Legion. In Leptus Magna, he conjures visions of ancient Rome and visits Homer’s fabled island of the Lotus Eaters.

The adventurers escape armed vigilantes in the Tunisian desert, and are chased by the border patrol across Libyan sands. They climb the Great Pyramid at Giza at dawn, endure ‘The Desert Express’ across the Nubian desert and travel by paddlewheel steamer through the Sudd, a swamp bigger than Britain. Their final adventure, at the idyllic Impala Farm at the foot of Mount Kenya, turns out to be a poisoned paradise.

The places, the people, the writing, and the emotional reverberations of The White Nile Diaries hold the reader enthralled.