Traveling to Africa

At the risk of propagating a dodgy cliché, Africa remains one of the last frontiers of travel.

Non-air-conditioned travel, that is, i.e. the kind where you risk stubbing your toe occasionally or getting genuinely lost.

From gorilla sighting in the Ugandan highlands to skiing — yes, skiing — in Morocco, it promises untold travel wonders.

But new Africa hands should worry less about stocking up on viral jabs and safari suits than ditching their preconceptions.

For a start …

It might straddle the equator but not everywhere in Africa is scorching.

Mt Kilimanjaro (Tanzania) and Mt Kenya both have glaciers and nights can be dangerously chilly in the desert, with temperatures dropping to as low as -10C.

It snows in places, too.

Africa does have vast swathes of desert and flat savanna but also mountainous and exceptionally green parts.

There are the sprawling rainforests of Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire) and the soft green hill country of Senegal, Guinea and Tanzania.

For more cultivated greenness, South Africa’s garden route, on the south-east coast, is so-named because of its lush vegetation and lakes.

And not every desert is a stretch of barren wilderness.

The Kalahari is known for its spring flowers, while the Namib, the oldest desert in the world, is home to desert-adapted elephant, rhino, giraffe and lion.