Karl’s Chronicles Article 37 Temples in Ten – Part 1
Religion has always played a monumental part in shaping humanity, civilizations, politics, culture, dress and behaviour. In fact, it filters down through all levels of functioning society regardless...
Karl’s Chronicals. Article 36 Down and Out.
“The Downs .. too much for one pair of eyes, enough to float a whole population in happiness, if only they would look.” -Virginia Woolf diaries. Rich in history...
Karl’s Chronicles; Article 34 Variations In Seven
It could be easy to dismiss Egypt as a land known only for its red sea resorts, pyramids, and tombs of the New Kingdom pharaohs that line the...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 33 The Pyramid Game
The last of the great seven wonders, an exclusive club of architectural might and splendour on a pre-biblical scale. Time and natural calamities have brought the others to their...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 33 Out To Sea
Wide and open, under the vast canvas of a shifting sky, the Cuckmere Haven in England’s South East epitomises the striking blend between man, nature and the subtle chiselling...
Karl’s Chronicles. Article 32 The Roman Five
Tunisia’s history is as rich as it is varied. A heavy necklace of Muslim dynasties that shaped the land, under the command of outside forces, or like the Fatimids...
Karl’s Chronicles 31; Tunisia, Small Land, Big On Diversity
Tunisia seemed to epitomise the bargain holiday destination for all-inclusive deals, those guaranteeing, sun, sand and long lazy days working up a King Midas tan, slipping casually back and...
Karl’s Chronicles. Article 30 Tunisia – Defiance
With life continuing to unfold indoors, the idea of travelling feels as foreign and distant as the places we have in mind. Bail-outs and hand-outs will increase in scope...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 28 Cameroon – Antiquated Modernism
The trace perceptions of an idea hang on the tree like the last defiant leaves in the thrashings of a bleak winter. Out of reach and separate until by...
Karl’s Chronicles; Back to the Beginning. Article 28.
From supermarkets to stock-markets, from festivals to football, the CORVID19 pandemic has infiltrated and affected the mechanisms and fabric of our world. An invisible enemy, alien to the human...
Karl’s Chronicles no 27 Cameroon: The Sultans First Stand
Heralding back to 1334 and founded by Prince Nchare Yen, who came from the Tikar tribe. The Bamun Empire established its first and brief capital at Njimom, twenty kilometres...
Karl’s Chronicles. Article 26 Cameroon: Forty Ninety-Five High
Known as Mongomo Ndem – The Mountain of Thunder in Baweri, and Fako – Mountain in the Mokpe language. Mount Cameroon, rising to 4095m, is West Africa’s highest peak....
Karl’s Chronicles Article 25 Cameroon: Open Enclosure
The vast, secretive Equatorial forests are home to an eclectic family of animals. Antelope, elephants, buffalo, pangolin, bongo, drill, numerous species of monkeys and abundant birdlife. An aged eco-system...
Karl’s Chronicles. Cameroon: Natural Density
Contention in the pick-up mounts, as three of the ladies, heavily obese, force the insufferable driver into a human Tetris game. Rearranging between front and back seats to accommodate...
Karl’s Chronicles. Article 23 Sao Tome: If These Walls Could Talk
Sao Tome, though a capital falls drastically short of being credited a city as we would know it. A third the size of Eastbourne and where the entire island...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 22 Sao Tome & Principe: After Chocolate
In the first of this two-part article, we explored the Portuguese arrival to Sao Tome & Principe and the import of both coffee and cacao from South America, chiefly...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 21 Sao Tome & Principe: Chocolate Before
Tumbling down over cobbled stones in the humid murkiness of dense hillside forest, one could be rightly forgiven for not seeing the wood for the trees. Mesmerized by torpedo...
Karl’s Chronicles. Article 20 Ghana: House of Three Colours
A plump lizard lay just behind a python, all coiled up like rope down at the harbour. In front walked a contented crocodile, tail in the air with a...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 19 Benin: Four of a Kind Part II
…cont 3) Scorched yellows, rust reds, tobacco browns with splodges of green. The parched landscape looked like a Turner painting left out in the rain. Swathes of savannah embedded...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 18 Benin: Four of a Kind. Part I
The Four of a Kind is a two-part article that centres on four different projects in Benin that promote tours and programs that benefit both tourists and local communities...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 17 Benin -Twelve Kings
A column of grey gunpowder was discharged into the air like the venomous spit of a cobra, but where the defensive attributes of a serpent came silent and cunning,...
My Favourite: Karl’s Chronicles. Where The Wild Beasts Roam.
Whether it is a herd light-footing across the savannah during the fresh hours of early morning or quietly observing a silver-back gorilla on forested lowland slopes, there is something...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 16 Long Walk to No Freedom
Ouidah, a small town on Benin’s south coast is synonymous with two powerful entities: one- slavery confined to the crumbling architecture of European Empires and the four-kilometre route from...
Karl’s Chronicles. Article 15 Benin – Grand Popo
With Togo behind me, the coastal road continued flowing like one of Africa’s great rivers, staying close to the Atlantic after turning southeast from The Ivory Coast and Ghanaian...
Karl’s Chronicles. Article 14 Togo: Between History & High Water.
Romantic poetry that had painted a slow boat to China had decompressed into a slow-boat to Togoville. A pirogue (a traditional fishing boat) was punted along the lethargic kidney-bean...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 13 Tamberma Country
Driving into Tamberma country contained all the splendour of entering a national park. With the tourism kiosk behind us, the landscape took on a wilder outlook void of people...
Karl’s Chronicles. Article 12 Organic Monastic
‘Life is a school where the monks learn to dwell in listening to the word of God, in silence and recollection and in praise of his name and intercession...
Karl’s Chronicles; The Kaiser’s Footprint
Though King Leopold II’s interest in Central Africa soon enticed other European powers to launch their claims on the continent, Germany had never shown any interest. With Bismarck...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 10 Ghana & Togo – A Landscape Shared
So far this journey has unveiled the historical epoch of self-determination, championed by Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president and his grand ambitions to modernize the country after ending colonial...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 9 The Fetish Market
Boar skulls, calcium white with worn teeth and small tusks, had been lined up with the same passion for precision as a greengrocer. Though they had no eyes, one...
Karl’s Chronicles; Article 8. Across the Volta, (well almost!)
Standing at the muddy shore of the milky brown waters of Lake Volta it became glaringly obvious, that any pretence of catching the Yapei Queen south to Akosombo was...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 7 Where The Wild Beasts Roam.
He jumped from the vehicle and pursued a trail through the undergrowth like a bloodhound on the scent of a fox. Reappearing minutes later, doused in perspiration with his...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 6 Creative Minds
It doesn’t take long or with much effort to soon discover the various forms of artistic temperament beavering across this highly creative land. Ghana possesses a varied mantelpiece of...
Karl’s Chronicles. Article 5 Food for Thought.
Great metal pots, all bubbling away in the backyard as if the place carried a penchants towards sorcery and witchcraft. On the table nearby lay a pile of fresh...
Karl’s Chronicles, article 4 Varied Shades of Green
Less than 40km, one hour north of Cape Coast in Ghana as the crow flies (3 days if it walks) is Kakum National Park. Exchanging the churning Atlantic for...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 3 The Door of No Return
The Castle stood white as skimmed milk on its small rocky ledge. The mood of the Atlantic came in powerful angled waves, slamming against the rocks but having little...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 2 Ghana; Kwame Nkrumah – Changing Course
Arrive in Ghana and it doesn’t take long before you start to acquaint yourself with two impressionable forces. The heat that pulls you down and the courage and vision...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 1 Out For Eleven
Roll back the clock to the mid 80s. Halfway through secondary school with no real interest in the outside world, aside from what flickered in from the imagination of...