Quite some time ago, El (my better half) and I had made ourselves a promise. When she had finished her accountancy thesis and exams, we would take off for a while, travel the world, have a little fun. Leave Brussels, leave the flat, leave computers, leave accountancy and law books, leave the bad weather, leave stress and long hours. As the prospect of an end to the accountancy qualification nightmare firmed up, we began to plan. I asked my work for some unpaid leave, which they kindly granted, El left her job with some satisfaction. We started with the idea of five months, but finally four became more realistic. You can do a lot in four months. But where to go?

Afghanistan wasn't looking good. We ruled out the Isle of Wight. The obvious continent was Africa. We had never been there (apart from Morocco) and the combination of time and reasonable access to cash would allow us to see quite a bit. But we fancied Nepal/India as well. In the end we put together a curious but effective compromise. Ten weeks in Africa, followed by a couple of weeks at home to facilitate job hunting, followed by five weeks in Nepal. As the date grew nearer, we followed the FCO tourist safety bulletins with considerable interest, and when BA cancelled all its flights to Nairobi (including ours) we decided to change the plan. We dropped Kenya and added Namibia, giving us a two part trip – plenty of time in Tanzania, followed by a road trip style tour of greater southern Africa. The aim was to do a wide variety of stuff – some touristy things, some mountains, see some friends and
family. El did most of the planning, and in the end it worked impeccably.

This journal covers just the African section of our time out as, to be frank, I was sick of typing up the African story when we headed off to Nepal and there's only so much you can write about a trek ('Get up. Walk. Mountains very beautiful. Go to sleep...'). Most of it dates from notes I took in the evening, facilitated by the fact that in many areas we couldn't walk around at night and we hardly ever had access to a TV. I have allowed hindsight to creep in in some places though.

A long day in and around aeroplanes. The problem with the flight to Dar es Salaam is that it's not quite long enough, strangely. They insist on giving us a meal and showing us a film, so that when we get woken up by the passengers getting off at Nairobi, it feels like we have barely closed our eyes. Impossible to sleep for the hour or so that we have left, so that when we do arrive in Dar, the fatigue plus the remmnants of a cold means that I am in some form of trance-like vegetative state. This is a shame, as the small plane we take to Arusha is quite spectacular, with good views of Kilimanjaro.

First impressions of Arusha are that it seems to be a bustling kind of place. Bicycles fight for space with Landcruisers and people bringing in big bunches of grass on their heads for cattle. The roads are wide, with space on both sides for a variety of open air workshops - garages, coffin makers, stalls selling fruit or sugar cane. We pop past the Arusha International Conference Centre - grander on the outside than the inside, with the Bill Clinton quote about Arusha being the Geneva of Africa featuring prominently.

We meet the Canadian couple with whom we will be travelling for the next two weeks - they have planned the trip for their honeymoon, but wanted company - and our cook and driver. We then head out for the safari, via a western style supermarket. Lots of UK influences, Cadburys chocolate etc and also plenty of South African products.

The drive starts on a tarmac road, but this rapidly becomes a dirt surface. The colour of the earth is amazing, a bright red contrasting with the lush green foliage. By the time we get to the campsite I'm practically hallucinating, so it's an intense relief to finally be able to sleep.

There is something unreal about the Ngorongoro crater. We were expecting to see the odd animal, separated by chunks of boredom. Here from the word go, animals stream past us, doing their thing. It's a bit like being in a giant safari park - I keep expecting to see fences and an ice cream van. Animals of various shapes and sizes roam around looking for something to eat or sleep with, and we follow them at a more or less discrete distance. My personal favourite animals of the day are the hippos - submerged like an iceberg most of the time, they have the good grace to stand up for us and to roll over, showing their pink belly. Also special is watching a lioness hunt - she just sits patiently in the long grass, alert but immobile, waiting for an unwary zebra or foolish wildebeest to get too close. Unfortunately we don't have the time or the patience that she has, so we leave her to her vigil.

As well as the teeming animal life, the crater is quite full with pink and brown bipeds collected together in hard white or green shells. There is everything from would-be Hemingways, with the longest possible camera lens to make up for the absence of the rifle of earlier times, to some elderly Indians, asleep in the back of their Landrover after one zebra too many. When one of the few black rhinos left in Tanzania gets close to a track, we are one of at least 12 trucks queuing up to snap the beast. Better that than a queue to sample the dubious delights of its horn I suppose. There are so few rhinos left here that this one has its own permanent guard and tracking team. Bit ironic for what is basically a solitary, ornery animal.

Maybe the Indians got their inspiration from the lions. We examine at leisure a lion and a lioness separated from the rest of the pride. They are sprawled on their backs in what is probably a post-coital stupor - extremely inelegant, not making much of a case to be kings of the crater. They barely bat an eyelid as we approach them, stop, reverse and then head off again. Much more majestic is a solitary elephant that we see near the picnic site.

Leaving the crater by the northern road takes us straight off the (most) beaten track. No lodges this way, which instantly reduces the tourist population. We camp by a rangers post next to Nainoka Noka - a Masai market village with 200 people or so. Its name means place of clouds - the sky is clear for us, with a magnificent range of stars, but it is cold. Janine has been supplied with a kiddie's sleeping bag, which doesn't really do the job either in thickness or in length.

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