Articles > Time Lite African Odyssey

Be honest, aren’t you just a teensy bit jealous when people talk about their student travels and the adventures they had? Even if some of it sounds grim? How they slummed it in a third class train carriage for four days, sleeping with chickens, while travelling around India for a month or three.

If you missed out on the backpacker experience and have never done anything more adventurous than order room service, there’s still hope. With some judicious planning, the help of a knowledgeable operator and more readies than your average Lonely Planet traveller, you can have most of the experiences and as much of the adventure in far less time.

I've just come back from Africa where I travelled third class (for the fun of it) on an old iron ship that criss crosses the inland sea of Lake Malawi. It was fabulous. I journeyed from Mozambique to Malawi. At each port men in dug-out canoes or dhows with patchwork sails would come alongside to allow passengers to clamber aboard with their belongings - furniture, animals and boxes galore. On the foredeck of the ship (named the Ilala and built in Glasgow), young men told me about their lives and how they trade in dried fish they buy from islands in the lake.

While in Malawi I also went on safari: day drives, night drives, river cruises, a walking safari. I saw a bird so rare I contemplated becoming a twitcher just to boast about it (Böhm’s bee-eater for those that know) and more elephants and hippos than you could fit in a production plant of Minis.

But mainly I stayed on the huge lake – all 11,150 square miles of it. I kayaked around an island where, at one point, I feared I'd be swamped by waves before being eaten by crocodiles. I snorkelled among countless colourful fish. I lazed in hammocks. I met friendly local people and other travellers who regaled me with stories of meetings with witch doctors and scuba dives which were "like being in an aquarium".

There was no slumming-it in cockroach-infested backpackers' though. Everywhere had a view fit for a brochure and was spotlessly clean. It wasn’t rushed. I spent two nights at each place, apart from one gorgeous lakeside lodge – Mchenga Nkwichi, on the Mozambique side, where there was only time for one night. How long was I travelling? Not one month, not even a fortnight, but just over one week. (And that ship journey from one country to the next? Well, that was just forty minutes.)

Malawi is a perfect destination for an adventure - even one of only eight days. There is no jet lag as the time difference is one hour maximum. It’s not as mainstream as South Africa, Kenya or Tanzania. The capital, Lilongwe, can be reached via Kenya daily. The return flight arrives into London early morning. You can be at your desk, with your tan and tales by nine.

Although only a small country, the former British colony has a hugely diverse landscape: from the gigantic lake which it's nigh impossible to not think of as the sea, to high, grassy plateaux, mountains, marshes, golden beaches and barren, baobab-dotted islands. There are good charter airlines and rural airstrips so that you can travel, albeit expensively, from one landscape to the next in an hour or so.

One of the baobab-dotted islands is Likoma. The ship journey I enjoyed was from Cobwe in Mozambique to Likoma (which although in Mozambican waters, is part of Malawi). At less than an hour’s travel time and an optional three or more hours at anchor, it’s a very time-lite version of the backpacker’s adventure, with the bonus of being short enough to endure third class (not an endurance at all if the weather is good and you can stand on the open foredeck) rather than squeeze among the bags and boxes.

There are no docks at the Mozambique or Malawi side - just small, lakeside villages - so passengers are ferried to and from shore. At Likoma, the 1950s vessel anchors for a good three hours, giving you time to enjoy the hustle and bustle before disembarking. From the top deck you can peer down on the loading and unloading. Meanwhile the ‘real travellers' all scurry ashore to visit the impressively incongruous Anglican cathedral. Few stay in Likoma, they're all too busy travelling for days on end - in the cosy comfort of cane armchairs and an empty first class deck on which to lay their Karrymat.

Not me. I was spending my last night in the quirky and peaceful Kaya Mawa Lodge, where stone cottages nestle among a boulder strewn promontory. The next afternoon, after more time on the clean, golden beach, I would be flying back to Lilongwe and then on to London on a BA flat bed.

It had been time-lite travelling, but I’d done so much, including ‘slumming it’ in third class, I had a month’s worth of tales to tell, not one of them grim.

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