My journey through the Congo had its ow unique category. It did not quite do it justice to call it adventure travel, and it certainly wasn't pleasure travel. My Congo journey deserved its own category: ordeal travel. At every turn I faced challenges, difficulties and threats when in the Congo. The challenge was to assess and choose the option best suited to making progress. But there were moments when there were no alternatives, or shortcuts or clever ideas. At these times, ordeal travel became really no ordeal at all.

~ Tim Butcher

Tim Butcher Africa Congo Travel Travel Quotes Travel Writing Travelling Alone

the normal laws of development are inverted here in the Congo. The forest, not the town, offers the safest sanctuary and it is grandfathers who have been more exposed to modernity than their grandchildren. I can think of nowhere else on the planet where the same can be true.” p141

~ Tim Butcher

Tim Butcher Congo Despair

In six harrowing weeks of travel I felt I had touched the heart of Africa and found it broken.

~ Tim Butcher

Tim Butcher Africa Congo Henry Morton Stanley Katanga Mobutu Sese Seko

Almost astride the Equator, night fell like a portcullis. The sun dropped below the horizon and suddenly all was dark.

~ Tim Butcher

Tim Butcher Africa Congo Travel Writing Tropics