How I Accidentally Booked A Holiday In Johannesburg

One of the first things I discovered while planning this trip is that getting to Zambia is not quite as straightforward as my imagination had suggested.

In my head, the process was beautifully simple.

Book flight.

Board plane.

Arrive in Zambia.

Volunteer.

Unfortunately, the aviation industry appears to have developed rather more sophisticated views on international travel.

After several evenings spent comparing routes, connection times, luggage allowances and prices, I eventually reached a conclusion that experienced travellers probably knew from the beginning: there are very few convenient ways of getting from the UK to Livingstone.

At one stage I was staring at so many flight combinations that I briefly became convinced I was attempting to solve a sentient, and hostile, maths problem.

Given that there are no direct flights between the UK and Zambia, some routes involved spectacularly long layovers. Others involved arrival times that appeared to have been selected by somebody with a personal grudge against sleep.

A surprising number seemed to assume that passengers enjoy sprinting through unfamiliar airports carrying luggage, arriving at a time which means they are already late.

Eventually a plan emerged. Which is how I accidentally found myself booking a one-night holiday in South Africa.

I will fly to Johannesburg, spend the night there, and continue to Zambia the following day.

My accommodation for this unexpected South African interlude is the InterContinental at OR Tambo Airport, which is, rather gloriously, around seventy metres from the international arrivals hall. This appeals to me enormously. After nearly eleven hours in the air, the idea of walking little more than the length of a cricket pitch before finding a bed feels like one of humanity's greatest achievements.

InterContinental at OR Tambo Airport, Johannesburg

The current itinerary consists of checking in, finding something vaguely edible, sleeping horizontally for several hours and returning to the airport the following morning. It is hardly an action-packed tour of Johannesburg, but after nearly eleven hours on a plane, it sounds suspiciously close to perfection.

The practical advantages are obvious. It removes the stress of a tight connection, provides a little breathing space and dramatically reduces the chances of discovering that my luggage has chosen to continue its journey independently.

But the more I looked at the itinerary, the more I realised there was something rather fitting about it.

Ten years after my HIV diagnosis, I travelled to South Africa to volunteer on a rural healthcare and HIV education project in KwaZulu-Natal.

At the time, I simply thought I was volunteering abroad for a few weeks. I had no idea I was laying the foundations for something that would still be shaping my life a decade later.

Looking back, I can see that the trip changed far more than my passport stamps. It quietly changed the direction of my life in ways I didn't recognise until years later.

It changed how I thought about volunteering, resilience, and bravery. It changed how I thought about my own diagnosis and the role it would play in the rest of my life.

Much of Positive Impact 20 can trace its roots back to that experience.

Had I not travelled to South Africa in 2016, I am not entirely sure this project would exist.

I don't think I was ever under the illusion that South Africa would be my last experience of volunteering in southern Africa. Marking ten years since my diagnosis by volunteering felt so right that I suspect, even then, the twentieth anniversary would eventually draw me back too. I just couldn't have known that it would be Zambia, that Positive Impact 20 would exist, or that the years in between would give me an entirely new story to tell.

South Africa will always be part of my story. Zambia isn't about going back. It's about moving forwards, nearly a decade later, with my route into a new adventure beginning in the same country.

I doubt I will see much of Johannesburg.

My plans currently extend to an airport, a hotel, perhaps a meal and an enthusiastic commitment to sleeping horizontally before the next flight.

My room at the InterContinental at OR Tambo Airport, Johannesburg

Still, there is something oddly comforting about it.

For months I have been focused on the destination and the practical arrangements.

I hadn't really stopped to think about the journey itself.

Yet somewhere between Hampshire and Zambia, there is a brief pause in South Africa.

A chance, however fleeting, to pass once more through a country that played an important part in my story.

Of course, sentimentality only lasts so long before practical concerns reassert themselves.

There are airport transfers to understand, hotel bookings to confirm and ongoing questions about whether I have remembered to pack everything I need.

There is also the ever-present possibility that I will leave something important on an aircraft, in a hotel room or in an airport security tray.

I prefer not to dwell on this.

The flights are booked. The route is planned. And before Zambia begins, there will be one quiet evening in Johannesburg.

I doubt it will amount to much more than a comfortable bed, an airport hotel and an early night.

Yet somehow that feels rather fitting.

Before I begin writing the next chapter of this story, I’ll spend one night passing through the place where so much of the last one began.