Travel, Photography, Conservation and Random Thoughts
Viewing entries tagged
travel
Virunga. A place that inspires fascination, desire, fear. That pulls at the heartstrings of many adventurers, a place that echoes Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. For it is a magical and beautiful place, hauntingly so for its story s often enshrined with violence and tragedy. This Chapter was very much unplanned, celebrating the life of a brave brave man who’s job it was to protect people as they climbed one of Africa’s most active volcanoes, Mt Nyiragongo.
At the ripe age of 15, I did a work placement for my school at WWF - UK. That’s when I heard about Virunga National Park for the first time. A few months later, they officially launched their campaign against Soco, a British company seeking to drill oil in the National Heritage site - which was completely prohibited by Congolese law.
4 years later, as a young conservationist completing her second year at university, and preparing an internship at The Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya, I thought it was the right time for me to visit Virunga. Things were more stable politically, although with Kabila cancelling the elections in the DRC -meant to take place on 21st August 2017 - I didn’t know if I’d have another opportunity.
My first ever solo(ish) African adventure! I'd been wanting to write about my experience for some time now (hard to think it's already been 5 months!) To share it of course, but also for myself. I realised that every time I told the story, I relived it fully. So I thought writing it down must be on a whole other level of re-immersion. And… reading multiple blogs and recounts of other people’s treks helped a lot for the preparation and anticipation. So if my advice/story can be of any help, then why not?
Here, you’ll find a more or less detailed account of my climb (I’ve tried to include as much as I could…this definitely doesn’t do the actual version justice of course, but nothing ever will).
The following post is dedicated to Advice on Climbing Kilimanjaro.
