Ascend the Nile

By Garth MacIntyre, Neil McGrigor and Cam McLeay with John McCrystal (Random House, RRP $39.99)

 

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Few who adventure into the deepest reaches of Africa have been supported by hampers from Fortnum and Mason, let alone an aircraft, a doctor, porters and even a PR person.

Yet this unlikely scenario materialises when two Kiwis and a Brit secure the sponsorship of the famed British food company and the Daily Telegraph, no less, and set out to travel the length of the Nile in search of its source.

You have to wonder about their sanity, given that the world's longest river flows through five African countries, including some of the continent's most lawless hotspots. Indeed, when a friend comes to their rescue in Uganda and is shot dead by rebels, they return home for six months to lick their wounds before completing the journey.

Others long since dead had claimed to find the source, of course, but this time the intrepid trio would nail it once and for all with their handy GPS.

And nail the "muddy trickle" they did, in Rwanda, some 6700km away from where the Nile flows into the Mediterranean on Egypt's northern shore.

Of the three Mcs and a Mac, clearly it is McCrystal who has turned the travellers' jottings into a cracking read.

Presented in diary form, this "extreme reality" adventure that takes in rapids, a wrecked outboard motor (and ditto support plane), broken bones, an ambush and much more will appeal to adrenalin junkies and couch potatoes alike.

- © Fairfax NZ News