Dulwich Festival: A solo walk across Africa

Inspired by the legendary crossings of the great explorers, Fran Sandham left the daily grind of London to walk solo 3,000 miles across an entire continent from Namibia to Zanzibar, accompanied only by a disastrous donkey.

He is now a critically acclaimed author and public speaker and is giving a talk at the Dulwich Festival on 13 May.

[slideshow id=1513209474820464981&w=426&h=320]Fran explains how he came to leave London to go on this remarkable adventure:

“By my late twenties I’d been on a few backpacking trips to exotic places, but I’d never done anything I could describe as truly adventurous. Instead, I was spending far too much of my time working in a West End bookshop. And merely reading books about travel and exploration on the 8.23 to Waterloo each morning somehow lacked the adventure of crossing high Tibetan passes by yak caravan or exploring the tropical African rainforest.

Looking around the train carriage each morning, it struck me that the books people read often say a great deal about what they’d really like to be doing, if they dared. I realized I was developing an obsessive urge to see for myself if anything still remained of the Africa of the Victorian explorers. I convinced myself that I could best find this out not through academic analysis of their achievements, but by sharing at least some of their hardships on my own modern-day trans-African journey. This dubious notion finally crystallized into the decision to go when I was at a dreadful New Year’s Eve party in South London.

The image of crossing Africa on foot seemed already firmly established in many people’s minds as some exceptionally difficult feat. But how many people had actually done it? The idea held immediate and obvious appeal, the effects of eight pints of lager at the party banishing any logistical concerns. I decided to walk every step of the way from one coast of Africa to the other, completely alone: no back-up, no support team, no one to make arrangements for me, no one to carry my gear, no sponsors, no funding, no film crew, no journalists, no fuss, no cheering crowds and no strings attached; above all, it had to be on a one-way ticket, with no safety nets, no get-out clauses and nothing to fall back on. After all that, I couldn’t think of anything else to exclude on what was turning into rather a Zen expedition.

Africa seemed the complete opposite of the life I was leading in London, to such a dazzling extent that even trying and failing was well worth the gamble. But I had to make sure this was what I wanted, as the risks demanded sober consideration. At this stage I was not excessively worried about being eaten by lions or getting trodden on by an elephant, or even having my throat cut by bandits – every adventure worthy of the name must surely bring its share of danger. I was more troubled by the fact that if I walked across Africa I’d have to give up my flat and my job and then return to England penniless, probably ill and certainly exhausted, with no job and nowhere to live. Which would be enough to dishearten most reasonable folks.

Yet the whole equation was beautiful in its simplicity: all or nothing. And it was no easy thing to get to Africa in the first place. Lacking a magic wand, it took me over a year to get there, a year of the most undignified and soul-destroying scrimping and saving to squirrel away barely enough money to enable me to live like a tramp when I finally got there. I had no savings, no property, nothing to sell; the pay in the bookshop would barely support a fasting saint, let alone finance an African expedition. So it was goodbye to smoking and drinking and chocolate biscuits and half-decent coffee and buying books, and just about anything else that over the years had made life worth living. My rent was high, my draughty flat cost a fortune to keep even tolerably warm in winter; overnight my life had been reduced to a wonderfully simple choice: either walking across Africa or staying put in a London bedsit, huddled over an ancient electric fire with both bars on.

But in all that time of living on toast, porridge and raw carrots, wearing a coat in the flat to keep warm and walking miles to save pennies in bus fares, the idea of crossing Africa on foot lost none of its appeal. It was only when I finally set out from the Atlantic coast of Africa that I realized what I’d let myself in for. By that time I was in the middle of the Namib Desert, carrying an enormous pack, panting like an elderly dog in the midday heat and feeling decidedly foolish…”

From Traversa: A solo walk across Africa by Fran Sandham (£8.99 paperback, published by Duckworth)

Find out how Fran got on in Africa by coming to his talk at this year’s Dulwich Festival (Wednesday 13 May at 7.30 pm, Linbury Room, Dulwich Picture Gallery)