Uzbekistan - Bukhara & Samarkand

This is that place most people with an inkling of Central Asia are thinking of.

The silk route cities of Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva. Alexander the Great's Óxus river  and the Aral Sea.

Russian anthropologist Mikhail Gerasimov ignored the legend that disaster would befall anyone who disturbed the tomb of Timur the Lame ( Tamerlane ) in the Registan of Samarkand. The day was 22nd June 1941 and within minutes  news was heard Germany had invaded Russia. Two years later within weeks of being reburied the Germans surrendered at Stalingrad.

For the Great Game, the British Officers Stoddart and Conolly were thrown into a verminous pit by the Emir of Bukhara and eventually beheaded outside of  the Ark or Citadel. The pit is still there.

The Metro in Tashkent, built after the great earthquake of 1966 is a work of art in itself and the Opera house build by prisoners of war … the sense of history is everywhere.

Samarkand is now an industrial town but to visit the Registan is one of life's great experiences as are  the remains of  Ulug Bek's observatory high above  the town. His observations placed him in the same league as Copernicus. Like Galileo he eventually fell foul of religious orthodoxy and the observatory was torn down by religious fanatics. Its re discovery in 1909 is considered one of the major discoveries of the 20th Century.

The Registan, Samarkand.

Bukhara remains my favourite in Uzbekistan. It's a magical place. The Ark and the timeless pool of Lyab-i-Khauz . The Kaylan minaret was spared from destruction by Genghis Khan, who found it a convenient height from which to fling the vanquished to their deaths. Thereafter it became known as the Tower of Death.

The Kaylan minaret

I was fortunate to travel across Uzbekistan in the early 1990's as an old world order was evaporating, and a new direction for the County had yet to be determined.

Djibouti & the Danakil Depression

Djibouti was to the French what Aden was to the British.  A key port at the southern end of the Red Sea when steamers could refuel to or from Suez .

My first visit to Djibouti was to open a bank account for an NGO programme in Somalia at the height of the fighting well before the arrival of American forces..

The government ministries had been comprehensively trashed in Mog and the  new owners of the national stock of passports were doing a roaring trade in authentic Somali passports with all the right stamps for ten dollars. Diplomatic passports were slightly more expensive.

Arriving at Djibouti Airport there was a huge barrel  filled to the brim with Somali passports, many fresh off the press. Their dismayed owners sat in a long line on a bench awaiting a long conversation with immigration officials.  My western passport went into the same barrel and I was in.

Djibouti town was  a magical  haven of plenty after months in the Somali bush.  Shops with fresh cakes, air con and cold drinks and of course operational banks. Djibouti also provided access to one place I had always been determined to visit, Lake Abbe on the  border with Ethiopia. It is the final destination of the Awash River that Wilfred Thesiger explored all those years ago and recorded in his Danakil Diary.

Lake Abbe

Lake Abbe is within the Danakil Depression, the lowest place on earth and one of the hottest. The landscape is wild and volcanic and the Afar who live here are perfectly adapted to their harsh environment. If you want to know what they use their curved knife for 'the jile', you really need to read Thesigers 'The Danakil Diary'.

Volcanic activity in the depression

Haiti - a very different Caribbean

Haiti  has taken a battering down the years; dictators, the catastrophic earthquake, a cholera epidemic Hurricane Matthew and now in 2025 another cycle of gangs and intervention missions.

Yet cruise liners still stop on day trips to stunning beaches and the Oloffson Hotel - (Petit Trianon in 'The Comedians') has rooms  named for all the stars that stayed in better times. The house Band RAM fronted by the hotels owner as lead singer, are not to be missed.

Voodoo remains a powerful force in this culture.

I was based at Port Salut in the south west for a while. It may have now been improved, but the road from Port au Prince to Port Salut stopped me complaining about African roads ever again - ever.

Port Salut is a reminder of what much of the rest of the county may have looked like before deforestation and overgrazing.

Despite all its setbacks, Haiti remains a unique culture.

Liberia

For a country adjacent to Sierra Leone the difference is striking. From Graham Greene’s ‘Journey Without Maps’ and Barbara Greene's ' Too Late to Turn Back' , little appears to have changed outside of Monrovia. There are remote settlements frequently cut off in the rainy season and in the dense forests a real sense of  a more ancient Africa, a place where the spirit world is close and deep rooted secret societies hold sway.

The Poro and Sande societies exist across Sierra Leone and parts of Guinea as well, but here in remote forest clearings they feel all pervading, particularly when you see a fully enrobed 'devil' moving through a village as dusk falls.

Liberia has taken a battering from the civil war and the Elbola outbreak, but then with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to lead the country, the basis of relative political stability was established.

Liberia is noted for dangerous rip tides. Once in the water the shore was suddenly very far away.  Rip tides are narrow currents so swimming parallel to the shore is the quickest way to get out of  the flow.  

Security has improved greatly, but the  infrastructure is still limited in Monrovia and minimal elsewhere.  The hinterland of Liberia is a journey into an Africa that much of the continent lost a long time ago.

Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone is home to one of the nicest peoples on earth.

The welcome and the humanity are breathtaking. They have the greatest beaches in West Africa and without doubt  the best snapper and chips anywhere.

Sierra Leone also had one of the worst  mortality rate in the world - dead before  40 was not uncommon and that was before the arrival of the RUF .

Almost every  time I collected my team up to go to the field someone has died. It was simply tragic, These were really bright people of graduate standard with huge potential and it was all over for them before they really got into their stride.

 village blacksmith using hand bellows

I was based around Lunsar on a swamp rice programme with  Liberia busily arming the RUF near the border in return for the wretched diamonds.

Diamonds are the curse of this country because of their alluvial deposition. In other places you simply fence off an area, guard it and dig a hole. Here they can be found across river beds, often near the surface - anyone can find a diamond, although only a few of the well connected will really benefit.


The British army did the most outstanding job to stabilise the horrors of what the RUF did to this country

Today everything has changed, which is a mixed blessing. There are  construction programmes which are great for the economy but concerning for the environment especially the beaches. Sierra Leone needs to quickly get a grip before it ends up with similar problems to Cox's Bazaar in Bangladesh.

Somalia

Somalia is not just a country, it is a state of mind. No one who travels here leaves untouched. Like the climate it is a place of extremes invoking passions unlike anywhere else.  Many leave promising that nothing on earth will ever make them return, or like me you are hooked.

I love Somalia. Once long ago, a Somali friend and I walked four camels from Kismayo up to Hargeisa, travelling mostly at night. It was an unforgettable journey. Then the dictator Siad Barre was overthrown and Somalia descended into a long nightmare.

I returned in 1991 to set up a relief programme for one of the British NGO's and ended up staying a year through some of the worst fighting. The bravery of the Pakistani soldiers in an impossible situation  and the eventual arrival of the Americans and Operation Restore Hope are not scenes easily forgotten.

It was like a tower of Babel. So many nations had soldiers there. From America to Zimbabwe with just about every letter in between. The French Foreign Legion had their first base on the roof of my compound. Then despite a huge effort we had Black Hawk Down and the rest is history.

Now there is finally  tangible progress. Somaliland has a vibrant economy and Puntland has  seen a sharp reduction in attempted piracy from its coastline. The changes down south are also making a real difference. The diaspora are slowly returning as are the refugees from Kenya.

 For those of us who have had the privilege of living there, Gerald Hanley's 'Warriors and Strangers'  encapsulates Somalia's magnetic appeal.

Northern Kenya

For what now seems a  long time ago I was fortunate to live with pastoralists in Northern Kenya.

I worked on  on a stock substitution programme to introduce camels to their traditionally cattle based society.  Cattle are more than livestock in this part of the world. They are financial banks on the hoof and for many  societies the bedrock of the curse of lobola (the bride price) which is an endless source of grief across Africa.

Occasionally Wilfred Thesiger used to wander up from his base at Maralal for conversation and just to ensure I was still alive. He was a great man and an outstanding writer, but  could never be persuaded to pack his own camels.

Camels and sand dams are two of my passions. In the right context they are both environmental superstars for arid lands. The more familiar boreholes for watering livestock do work, but more often open a pandora's box of conflict over ownership and access rights.

In those days local news travelled slowly and the endless cycle of cattle theft between the Turkana, Pokot and everyone else was fought out with spears.

Camel scraping out a seasonal dam

Today the land is drier and competition for resources has increased, with automatic weapons replacing spears as the weapon of choice.

This however remains a unique land that  shape's perspective on your own life.  The sense of light and space  is immense and the people are of a special quality to both survive here and enjoy this wonderful place.