Glory and Despair Accounts of the heartachingly beautiful and glorious moments of travel, paired quite fittingly, with total despair and disaster.

By the sixth hour the rising nausea began to subside, reduced to a sourness at the back of my throat. I loosened the tight fists that had formed in both hands after a long, stiff session of sitting, and swaying, rocking and jolting. With each crest I swallowed the urge to leap blindly overboard and be devoured by the great, dark, wet distraction.

We were crossing a stretch of early morning sea that ran between Pangani and the shores of Zanzibar. Two men had eaten at a table beside us the night before, animated with offers of a ”good, very good dhow” and a speedy, stunning passage to the island. We set sail in total darkness but when the sun rose the sky did not disappoint, and we caught the glorious waking moments of the Indian Ocean as daylight bled over the sea. The dark was slowly diluted and dolphins broke the surface of the water.

Through it all, those private moments with the sunrise, I could think of nothing I would like more than a shipwreck.
Total disaster. A rogue gust to spill us all out as a kind of rough diversion. I was desperate.
Sickness had swept over me not long after we left the port, and though our guides were determined, the rickety dhow was little match for turbulent dawn winds and queasy passengers.

'Soon, soon', nodded the bristly beard to my right.

I glanced up, daring for the first time in a while to take the focus off my sodden feet. His face was quiet, and expressions moved in slow motion- not too surprising after the many wars won already that morning. He had battled against pelting rain and tirelessly grappled with the blue tarpaulin that shielded against the winds.

I sat wedged between a weeping woman and a girl with a very full bladder; a line-up of desperate faces against a spectacular early morning backdrop. Three rows of rotten wood benches were suspended between arched disintegrating sides, and planted on them an array of restless bottoms, suffering various stages of seasickness and cramp.

In the final hour, and really far too late, I found my sea-legs. They grew in time for the approach to the shore. Our bearded host let out a thick chuckle as a crust of land lined the horizon. The rain became a fine mist and he released the tarpaulin drape from the side of the boat to reveal sun streaming out behind the clouds.

“Now”

Yes. Now. We landed, grasped hands and in a moment he was gone, he left us shipwrecked, deserted and washed up in paradise. Holy land. Heaven on earth. My sea-legs waded me to shore.