Donkey Crossings. A wild and desperate journey down the Transkei coast

Description:

This odd-ball armchair travelogue by Kim McGowan tells an extraordinary tale of a donkey trek through the Transkei of 1988. Two agreeable men, two donkeys and two dogs set off from Kokstad. They are chasing visions of reaching Khartoum round the western margins of Africa, but don't even make it to East London.

While one of them optimistically takes the lead, the other brings up the rear, muttering in his beard, inscribing the diary that eventually becomes this book. Donkey Crossings is the whacky, off-beat, jaundiced, and altogether wonderful account of that journey. As the six merry companions weave their way through a perplexing network of pathways, donkeys are stolen and recovered through slow negotiation, amid lashings of Transkei gin.

If not that, our travellers themselves get pulled over for donkey theft. Rained on, tick-ridden, plagued by mosquitoes, they discover truths: how incompatible two very amiable people can be; how oppositional a donkey becomes when a river must be crossed; how frightening a crowd of two hundred inquisitive children may seem. After six months they abandon their journey, lest they decide never to leave the Transkei at all.