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Livingstone & Stanley: Journey into Africa

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Mid-nineteenth century saw multiple explorations of Africa by European explorers. Nothing obsessed these explorers more than the quest for finding the source of the Nile which, to this day, is under contention. One such exploration was led by David Livingstone in 1866, a veteran who had already spent twenty years in Africa and whose past adventures had sparked such awe and who exercised a strong influence on attitudes towards Africa in Victorian England. Livingstone did not succeed in this quest to find the origin of the Nile - John Hanning Speke had earlier claimed that honor - but this epic journey over seven years, intertwined with an equally audacious exploration by Henry Morton Stanley (more on it later), had such an impact on our understanding of Africa and provided a detailed journal on what an expedition looked like in the 19th century.  Livingstone was already a household name at that time and his disappearance early on during this mission sparked huge distress and many ex...
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The map of the motorcycle diaries

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Ernesto "Che" Guevara along with his friend Alberto Granado set out on a travel around South America in Granado’s motorcycle Norton La Poderosa II in 1952 from Buenos Aires. When they started the trip, they were just two adventurous souls keen on taking a semester off to see the world that they had only read about in books. Over the next seven months, Guevara would visit Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela, and witness social and political injustices that would have a profound impact on him, the history of Latin America, and the history of the modern world. His story is more a discovery of self. This is not a political article. In this article, we track the footsteps of Guevera and Granado with the curiosity of an adventurer, a traveler, and a history buff. Guevera, in an alternate universe, would have become a great traveler and a travel writer as evidenced by the eloquence and knowledge with which he describes the experiences of his travel. In my favorite line f...
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The history that is not consigned to the past

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There are historic sites that, time has ensured, are no more than ruins – for example, the Roman forum, Machu Picchu, and Acropolis. Then, there are historic sites that are still physically intact eliciting grandeur – the pyramids of Giza, Chichen Itza, the many castles of Europe – but have lost their vitality and their intended purpose. Finally, in my mind, there is the third kind – heritage sites that still live today and retain their authenticity; the historic sites that take you back hundreds of years but refuse to consign themselves to history. Ait Benhaddou is one such place. Our road trip started in Casablanca. We were on our way to Merzouga to celebrate the New Year in the middle of the Sahara desert. We spent two days in the beautiful Marrakesh and the night before at Ouarzazate. The next morning instead of driving east our friend, Hakim, took the road back to Marrakech. After driving for about 15 mins, he took the detour north. The air got thinner as we got higher. He said he...
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