Former soldier braves intense heat and civil wars to walk the Nile

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/07/former-soldier-levison-wood-braves-heat-wars-walk-nile

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A few blisters later, Levison Wood is almost there. More than eight months and 3,800 miles since he began his hike, Wood has almost finished walking the Nile, the world's longest river, from its southern source to its northern mouth.

On Sunday, Wood was in Luxor, passing the burial ground of Tutankhamun. In less than three weeks, he will be in Cairo, within sight of the pyramids. By September, Wood should be at the shores of the Mediterranean, 4,250 miles from where he started last December at a hole in the ground in Rwanda.

"This is probably the easiest stretch of the trip," said Wood on Monday, halfway through his daily 25-mile march, straining to be heard above the midday calls to prayer. "It's easy to find somewhere to stay, the food is good, it's pretty straightforward compared to Sudan and South Sudan."

That is some understatement. In Sudan, Wood battled temperatures as high as 62C (144F). In Luxor on Monday, it was a mere 39C. In South Sudan, Wood walked through a civil war. In Uganda, an experienced reporter assigned to cover Wood's journey collapsed and died of heatstroke.

It was South Sudan that had Wood fearing for his life. Within days of the start of Wood's walk, war broke out between supporters of the president, Salva Kiir, and his deputy, Riek Machar. At the town of Bor, Wood found himself caught in the middle. Dozens were massacred nearby and, with no seats left on a UN plane flying from the region, Wood and his guide Boston were trapped.

"It was happening in the streets around me," said Wood, whose experiences will be televised in 2015. "One guy tried to attack me, and threatened to kill me. They were attacking anyone western, who they associated with the UN, who they felt was supporting the other side. The entire marketplace had been burnt to the ground. Banks had been looted. There were hundreds and hundreds of burnt-out cars. Mass graves everywhere."

A former British army captain, Wood had experienced war before, in Afghanistan among other places, where he served in 2008. But "this was the worst I'd ever seen. It was on another level."

Once of Fulham, west London, via Staffordshire, Wood escaped Bor by car and was forced to skip that particular 400-mile stretch of the Nile. It ended his hopes of being the first person to walk the whole length of the river, though he may return to complete the route when and if the war ends.

Egypt, by comparison, has been a form of respite. Two police cars trail him for most of the time, watching his every move – "which is a bit annoying, because sometimes they're right next to me. But it's helpful because it allows me to get through the roadblocks." Those checkpoints are aimed at flushing out militants who have targeted hundreds of Egyptian policemen in recent months, but Wood has not encountered any unrest himself.

In fact, the only hint of trouble has been local anger at an upstream dam being built in Ethiopia. The dam threatens to stem the river's flow to Egypt, whose inhabitants rely on the Nile for almost all of their water.

Wood is the exception. Having drunk from the Nile in each of its five upstream countries, he is not taking chances in the land of the pharaohs, where the river is not as clean. "I'll probably give it a miss here," laughs Wood. "The water changes colour in Egypt."