Levison Wood

Wood walked through some pretty serious terrain (the Sahara) and came this close to dying of thirst, dangerous lands (South Sudan), and paranoid lands (Egypt). What I loved most were his conversations with Boston, Wood‘s Congolese guide who lived in Uganda, which consumed a lengthy part of his walk. Boston provided a unique perspective about so many things, but mostly from the experiences of the destitute who do what they can to survive, even if it means clearing forests to grow crops or show more catching and selling baby monkeys 😭 to feed their families. Climate change be damned when you have to feed your family. Such a horrible but enlightening truth—one we‘ve got to realize if we are to help create incentives NOT to clear habitats and kidnap baby animals. We‘ve got to listen & understand, or as my parents used to say, “walk a mile in their shoes.” I learned a lot. Highly recommended. show less

Read: February 2016
Re-read: April 2019
Rating: 5/5 stars, best of 2016

Walking the Nile is the companion book to the TV documentary that was shown on Channel 4 last January. I really enjoyed watching it and when I saw the book was available on kindle for 99p I had to buy it.

Levison Wood is a really good writer. His descriptions of his surroundings, the people he met and the countries he visited were so vivid and real. The book adds more depth to the journey he took as he is able to describe show more more details than could be shown on TV. In particular he wrote a lot about the death of Matt Power, an American journalist who was going to accompany him for a week on his journey but died of heatstroke after only a few days. The book shows how much Wood struggled with the decision to carry on walking the length of Nile, and how Matt's death influenced the way he carried on with the walk. It was very moving.

Wood didn't shy away from talking about the corruption in some of the countries he visited, especially at the border crossing into Egypt but he also showed how generous and giving the people were who lived along the route. In Sudan he was offered a place to stay and given food every night by people who barely had enough to feed themselves.

You don't need to have watched the show to read the book; the fact that Wood is being filmed all along the walk is barely mentioned at all. I think anyone interested in travelling and exploring would really enjoy reading this book.

I have just finished watching Wood's new Channel 4 show; Walking the Himalayas, and I will definitely buy the companion book to that series as well. show less

At one point, Levison Wood says that “exploration has always been about more than pure discovery or of being the first to do something." His travelogue, WALKING THE NILE, speaks to that thought. Despite his obvious admiration for the explorers who preceded him, his focus on this 4,000+ mile, 9-month adventure is about much more than geography. In fact geography seems to be incidental in the age of Google Earth. Instead he gives us a fascinating collection of stories about the history, show more culture, climate, terrain, fauna, and especially the people of the region.

There is much to admire about the people Wood met on his journey. They are struggling under incredibly adverse conditions including kleptocracies, civil strife, disease and poverty. Yet one can’t help but agree with Wood’s sentiment about their hospitality and concern for his welfare. "I also saw how incredibly hospitable they were to a man walking through Africa.” Villagers offered to build him a house and find him a wife. On the last Saturday of every month, the people of Kigali perform service to maintain their city. Refugees from the Sudanese civil war do more than just make due. As one porter tells Wood, "Life goes on." Wood’s journey would not have been possible without the assistance of several pretty amazing guides and porters, the most notable being Boston Beka. In addition to providing the services for which he was paid, Boston welcomed Wood to his home and became a dear friend. He clearly wanted to travel with Wood to the Mediterranean, but was sent home for his own safety.

Of course not all that Wood encountered was pleasant. The death of the American journalist, Matt Power, from heat exhaustion was indeed tragic. It shook Levison’s resolve to its core. “I wanted to be anywhere but here, thinking of the man who had died so that he could write about me on my indulgent, pointless, selfish trek.” Other bad experiences can be viewed as minor by comparison, but seen together, they demonstrate a level of commitment to adventure that few could match. Trekking in the Sahara with little water, camping in an abandoned prison that was a massacre site, bypassing the Sudd swamp because of the obvious danger from a very hot war, the need to bribe corrupt officials just to walk in Egypt, and interrogation at every border crossing by secret police or child soldiers serve as examples of hardships that exceed the challenges of just walking 25-30 miles a day through some of the most inhospitable terrain on the planet.

The narrative is simple and often too matter-of-fact. Levison, after all, is not a seasoned writer but an ex-soldier. He still manages to convey a sense of adventure few would want to miss. show less

Levison Wood, right at the beginning of his travelogue, echoing the mountaineer George Mallory's raison d'être for climbing Mt. Everest, states that he wanted to walk the length of the Nile "Because it's there." He then amends that statement, saying that he wanted to follow in a great tradition, to achieve something unusual and inspire others, but that much of his motivation was selfish - to go on a great adventure, to test himself. (Kindle location 67) Later he further refines those show more objectives to a more external, less personal, focus: "to see how [the Nile] shaped lives from the ground, day by day and mile by mile." (Kindle location 137)

He starts his story not at the beginning of his trek, but in the middle as he encounters the front lines of the Sudanese civil war, where he witnesses rocket fire and an angry mob who wants to kill anyone who may be associated with the United Nations (and, as a white Britisher, he could easily be mistaken for one and shot on sight!) The story then moves back in time to the beginning of the trek, in December, 2013, in the Nyungwe Forest in Rwanda, to a tiny spring sprouting a trickle of water from a hole in a rock, claimed by an agent of the National Tourist Board of Rwanda to be the source of the furthest tributary of the Nile. Wood provides a bit of history, linking his forthcoming journey to Alexander the Great and the Roman Emperor Nero, to Stanley and Livingston and Speke, and rooting it in historical and geographic controversy (Lake Victoria is the commonly accepted origin of the White Nile.)

And so, Wood sets off, determined to walk every step of the entire 4,250 mile length of the Nile (measured from the Rwandan spring.) We learn quite a bit about the guides and friends who accompany him through different stages of the trek, and the history and details of the living conditions of the villagers and inn-keepers whom he encounters. We learn about the physical difficulties he and his compatriots face - searing heat, blisters, thirst - but actually little about his own personal discomfort. In the manner of the notable British explorers who preceded him, he soldiers on.

That doesn't mean that he isn't affected by those travails. After all, the group faces many dangerous circumstances, from single-minded crocodiles and hippos in the deep jungle to heat exhaustion in the Sahara Desert to AIDS in the villages to war. Indeed, death does overtake the party, causing some soul-searching in Woods. He wonders if continuing the pursuit of his goal at the risk of the lives of his compatriots is too selfish.

While the physical difficulties of the trek are discussed, the majority of the focus is on the societal difficulties Wood faces and that the people met along the way endure - the problems at the borders as he passes through Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, Sudan and Egypt, the collapsing economies and infrastructure, famine, war, and the greed of the police and military personnel.

On the 30th of August, 2014, after 271 days of trekking, he reaches the Mediterranean port of Rashid (the place where the Rosetta Stone was discovered), in Egypt. Here the Nile waters complete their long journey and a changed Wood realizes, in contrast to his attitude at the beginning of the venture, that he had only gotten through his journey due to the kindness of strangers, the normal people that he had met day to day - a most unselfish understanding born out from all of the events experienced in his story.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. show less