Take two trucks, an incompetent expedition leader and fifty hapless passengers. Mix with drought, disease, theft, thuggery and ignorance, and you have a recipe for an overland trip like no other.
Long Haul Through Africa tells the story of the author's disaster-prone journey through parts of the continent now closed to tourists.
The expedition was the first overland company to attempt a crossing of the dried bed of Lake Chad following years of civil war – a decision which they barely survived.
It is a personal account of African nations on the cusp of transformation – and of individual transformation too.