The White Nile Diaries

This book follows the journey of 2 friends from Germany through Italy to Africa, on a white motorcycle. It reads as a diary with just enough information to keep the reader interested without becoming boring .The characters are clearly described so that the reader almost feels that she is meeting them herself, and passing through the countrys etc with the author.

This book really gives the feel of the time it was written and John Hopkins' experiences as he and his companion travelled from Europe to Kenya make for fascinating reading. Having visited some of the areas myself I found these especially interesting to read how things had changed - or not! - over the years. The fact that the diaries were written in a personal way, not necessarily for public consumption in the beginning, make them more intimate and interesting. A fascinating read and to be recommended.

If you've been bitten by the travel bug or dream of having exotic, dangerous adventures, then this is the book for you! The White Nile Diaries, by John Hopkins, is a memoir of a motorcycle journey done in 1961 through North and East Africa by two recent American graduates of Princeton, John Hopkins (PoliSci) and Joe McPhillips (English). It reminded me throughout of Jack Kerouac's On The Road, as both books are about quests for self-knowledge and experience. However, for dangerous events, and romantic adventure, Diaries has Road beaten nine ways to Sunday!

Just imagine that you don't want to face family pressure to settle down, get a job and get married. You and your best friend are burning for adventure and you have just been handed a letter from Sam Small, a fellow Princeton alumnus, inviting you to his 46,000 acre cattle ranch in Nanyuki, Kenya, right on the equator, just beside the snows of Mount Kenya, the second highest mountain in Africa. The letter offers lots of game - elephant, rhino, lion, leopard, hippo, cheetah, giraffe, eland, oryx - and the situation is described as "...still in hand here except for constant cattle raiding, and this district is as safe as any place in Africa, at the moment, but scarcely carte blanche. We are all well forted up, and armed, and ready to ride out the coming storm." (Loc 16-20) (The Mau Mau uprising in Kenya had just ended the year before - it lasted from 1952 to 1960.) Your friend says to "Write the guy.....Tell him we're coming!"

Such is the beginning of The White Nile Diaries. The exotic stage is set; the tone of incipient danger is hinted at. And the friends plot a journey from New York to Nanyuki via motorcycle, with stop-offs in Naples, Munich, Rome, Palermo, Tunis, Tripoli, Benghazi, Cyrenaica, Tobruk, Alexandria, Cairo, Luxor, Aswan, Khartoum, the White Nile, Kampala, Lake Victoria, and Nairobi. Of course, as many sages have commented, the destination is secondary; it's the journey that matters. We, the readers, are treated to Hopkins's perspective on people and events through the entries in his diary. And the journey (much more than the destination) fulfills the promise made in the beginning for romantic adventure. Along the way there are motorcycle troubles, the duo is shot at, they are infected by mysterious illnesses, nature shows its brutal side and pure mental and physical survival become critical issues.

Finally, Sam Small turns out to be both more than and less than the man he purports to be in his letters. Hopkins is aware of the contradiction between expectation and reality. While the duo is still near Naples, at the Villa Medici, he writes "Africa --the eager anticipation of travel across wilderness both arid and tropical, the excitement of ideas mingling with exotic adventure--a super-colossal flight of the imagination with the transformation to reality just around the corner." (Loc 432). A continuing theme in the diary is the distance between the duo's plans and dreams and anticipations during each leg of their journey and the reality of the amorphous, ambiguous circumstances they encounter. These experiences necessarily transform Hopkins. He writes, "The more you see of the world, and by that I mean this part of the world (e.g. Africa and South America), the more you are staggered by the sheer glory of it, stunned by its elemental beauty, and the more you realize how little of it you understand. Here reside the richest mysteries of mankind. This raw world should not be viewed as a challenge, to be tamed or conquered, but as something completely original." (Loc 1230)

The White Nile Diaries captures some of this beauty and glory and confusion and disappointment, occasionally flounders in it, but provides structure and meaning to it. As Hopkins writes, "Keeping the diary lends to this daily dilemma a modicum of discipline. It gives some shape to this formless life we are leading." (loc 1293) Understanding that is to understand the precedence of the journey over the destination.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. ( 4 stars )

Exotic, Romantic, Fantastic

This is an intimate and personal book that, I imagine, will affect each reader differently depending on who that reader is and where he is in his life experience. I was immediately taken by the author and his tale, but I actually remember Princeton in the 60's, and Ivy Club, and all of the circumstances and events that open this story. As a consequence I responded to the author's story almost as though the book were just a long letter addressed to me by a classmate and contemporary.

It is a sobering thought that just as I was captivated by the "Great Gatsby", despite the fact that I had not lived in its times, there are many, most, people now for whom pre-1970's Ivy League life is just as distant and unexperienced an historical period. For such readers, curious about what people and life were like before the great cultural shifts of the 70's, this is a wonderful book.

How interesting to experience, even vicariously, the casual entitlements and freedom of wealth and privilege. The assumption that one might do as one wished without constraint. The indulgent support of doting parents. All of this is treated as a matter of normal course. It gives the book a fantastical and almost fairy tale sort of introduction.

And that's fine, because everything about this adventure, even the periods of hardship and privation, is fantastical and out of the ordinary. It's glamorous and almost mythic. It was only the 60's, and yet so long ago we might as well be with Teddy Roosevelt on the Amazon.

I read something once to the effect that modern travel consists of going to places and confirming that they look more or less just like you thought they would. I recently called up a Google map of Timbuktu and put the little street level man in it and walked around the city. This book is the antidote to that type of exploration. It is idiosyncratic; it is elegant; it is meant to be matter-of-fact but it is really almost impossibly elegant.

This book is not only a travel book, it is a time travel book, and sometimes feels like an alternate world fiction. Like some of the best works by authors like Eric Newby and young Paul Theroux, like the fantastic descriptive work of authors like Jan Morris, this will take you somewhere that once was but is no more, (and, it is to be hoped, without the dysentery). Just a marvelous book and a brilliant decision to bring it into print.

So, take the time to visit the Tunisian desert, Leptis Magna, and the Nubian desert. Travel to other worlds with this engaging and clear-eyed companion.

Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book in exchange for a candid review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.

I really loved this book. It was wonderful to travel back in time and discover a less globalized Africa through the eyes of two young men trying to figure out their place in this world. The descriptions brought these faraway places to light. The writing is beautiful and the men's interactions with the local people are genuine and interesting. A special time and place preserved in amber.

A compelling read - the adventurous journey of two young men, John and Joe, Princeton graduates, not yet ready to settle down to the responsibilities of adult life. They have already travelled around Peru, but decided not to follow their earlier dream of settling in Peru to grow coffee.

They decide to discover Africa, helped by a generous offer of hospitality from a fellow Princeton graduate, owner of a 46,000 acre cattle ranch within sight of Mount Kenya. They buy a white BMW motorbike and have The White Nile painted on its sides. On their travels the motorbike itself 'draws a crowd, like we arrived by spaceship'. They themselves enjoy the warmth of the local people towards Americans.

Wonderfully descriptive passages of the places they pass through, the unlimited fresh fish when on the coast, the unrelenting heat inland, and the people they meet, brings it alive for the reader. John's account of lamb kebabs in Egypt has me salivating, and as he says 'when you like their food, they like you'.

The inevitable bureaucratic hiccups, with severe consequences when they attempt to break the rules, add to the suspense. Will they ever make it to the promised cattle ranch?

The book follows the travel of two Princeton Graduates called John Hopkins and Joe McPhillips. They are typical affluent men of their time with a bright eyed and bushy tailed view of the world.

It is written, as the title aptly says in diary form and also filled with correspondence between themselves, some of their hosts and the contacts, who enabled part of their difficult travels.

You can feel the innocence of youth, the burning desire to conquer the unknown and the flame of independence. The two of them plod on through armed borders, endless deserts, tropical diseases and even the occasional dangerous group of rebels. Often the escape conflict, death and prison by the skin of their teeth.

Their travels take place during the 1960's, a time of great upheaval and development. At the same time they are able to experience certain places in a way you can't any more.

One of their more bizarre experiences is at Sam Small's Impala Ranch. I think that particular passage in the book gives the reader an excellent feeling of the vast space and feeling of loneliness foreigners, who chose to settle there, experienced.

That feeling of being surrounded by nothing but wild country and despite the fact the native inhabitants put up with the pesky colonialists, there was always the underlying feeling of not belonging.

Hopkins gives a realistic flair, taste and colour to the places they travel through. It is almost as if the reader is sat on the back of the sturdy motorcycle they called The White Nile.

This is a ride through history written by Hopkins during the actual travels with a great dollop of energy and the devil may care attitude of youth

I received a copy of this book courtesy of Netgalley and I.B. Tauris

This is a travelogue by John Hopkins, who in the early 60s, after spending time in Peru, looks for a new adventure instead of going home to a typical East Coast preppy lifestyle, as his parents want. The wanderlust is so huge in him he goes despite the love of what seems to be his dream woman. Given an opportunity, or at least encouragement, to visit Kenya, he and his buddy buy a motorcycle in Germany and cross the Sahara before making a right turn at the Nile.
At first I was a bit disappointed that they weren’t actually following the Nile to its origin, as the title might imply; instead it’s the name they give their motorcycle. But like with Robert Heinlein’s Tramp Royale and the recently read and reviewed Harry Harrison autobiography, I’m fascinated by descriptions of places I’ve traveled to, reveling in the differences 50 years have made. Of course this also made for some obnoxious moments when I suddenly yelled “Been there!” like with Djerba and Leptis Magna, but that’s neither here nor there.
My favorite part of his writing is description, from the mournful call to Islamic prayer to the blonde blue-eyed denizens of the Sahara. He and his buddy also seem to have a lot more fun at border crossings than is really recommended. More importantly, he doesn’t give short shift to the bad moments, especially the boredom.
My favorite line: “My only revenge is this diary, where I record how awful it all is.”
On the other hand, if there’s one thing to love about this author/adventurer, it’s his optimism: “Whatever I leave on a page, unless a mystery breeze whisks my notebook overboard, a snack for the crocs, these words will be with me forever. That was what the Pharaohs aimed at. Forever. That was what they got, but it took a pyramid to do it. I can achieve it on a single page. Forever.”
One more quote, which reminds me of why I only travel to places I like now: “We showered and washed our clothes by treading on them in the shower.”
So, in sum, a pleasant enough yarn with plenty of funny moments among the introspection.
4/5