Today, ‘Kilwa on the Island’ is a quiet fishing village. Still, in its heyday, it was the centre of a vast trading network linking the old Shona kingdoms and the goldfields of Zimbabwe with Persia, India and China. While these days are now well in the past, the ruins of the...
As a primary trading post on the spice, silk, and slave trade routes for over a millennium, Mji Mkongwe, known as Stone Town, has been a unique meeting place for centuries and is now one of the few remaining ancient towns in Africa. We wandered for hours through a maze of narrow streets...
Once we arrived in Kigali, we realized that if Rwanda is the Land of a Thousand Hills, then Kigali’s setting right among rolling green vistas makes this a fitting choice of capital. It is a contender for Africa’s most scenic capital and the cleanest, safest, and most relaxed...
Rwanda’s ‘second city’, Huye, is a relaxed and sprawling town. It was the nation’s former capital. Butare, as it was known (and Astrida before that, in tribute to the 29-year-old Swedish wife of Belgium’s King Leopold III, who was killed in a car accident), was established under Belgian...
Like any other large and growing city, Nairobi has a rough underside that travellers are well advised to avoid. But Nairobi is also the vibrant, multicultural epicentre worth a few days to experience. We spent around a week exploring its interesting parts during the day and enjoying the...
Lamu is a town, port, and island in the Indian Ocean off the East African coast, 240 km northeast of Mombasa. A former Persian, then Zanzibari, colony, Lamu Island rivaled Mombasa until the late 19th century as an entrepôt for gold, spices, and enslaved people. The town of Lamu, the...
We arrived at the charming 15th-century stone village of Dana, which dangles beneath the King’s Highway on a precipice, commanding exceptional views of the valley below. That valley and the surrounding area make up the Dana Biosphere Reserve. The village of Dana has been occupied...
We took a scenic drive from Umm Qais to Pella, near the modern Arab village of Taqabat Fahl. It was one of the cities of the fabled Roman Decapolis. It’s essential to archaeologists because it reveals evidence of 6000 years of continuous settlement. Many of the ruins are spread out...
We spent a night in the northwestern corner of Jordan, in the hills above the Jordan Valley, where the ruins of the Decapolis city of Gadara are now called Umm Qais. The site is striking because it juxtaposes Roman ruins with an abandoned Ottoman-era village. It also has a tremendous...
We arrived in stormy and windy weather at the Umm Al-Jimal near the Jordanian–Syrian border. An extensive rural settlement in the lava lands east of Mafraq. The incredible ruins are located on the edge of a series of volcanic basalt flows that slope down from Jebel Druze, providing high...