Pole to Pole

Day 108: Kigoma to Mpulungu

We bid them farewell as we disembark at the small dockside of Mpulungu. Looking back on it from a distance, with the chunky, upright Liemba and its attendant crane nestling among wooded cliffs, surrounded by a stack of oil drums and building materials, it looks like a set in a James Bond film. The sort that is about to be blown sky-high.

New Customs and Immigration to be gone through, a new production team - Roger and Mirabel take over from Clem and Angela - and new guides and fixers. For once I don't feel I have the energy to respond.

The thick woolly heat seems to be inescapable down here by the lake, and I miss the openness and space of Kigoma.

Lunchtime. Feeling much recovered. We are lodged at a small collection of rondavels set in a tree-filled garden and run in easy-going fashion by Denish, an Indian of unforced charm and dazzling smile who came to Mpulungu for a ten-day holiday and was so captivated that he stayed and built this place - for himself, and any guests who might drop by. The first people we saw as we drove in were the overlanders, already pitching their tents on the grass, washing out clothes, and forming a queue for the lavatory and the thin trickle of cold water that is the shower.

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PALIN'S GUIDES

Series: Pole to Pole
Day: 108
Country/sea: Zambia
Place: Mpulungu
Book page no: 244

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Marsabit - Livingstone