Philip Briggs has been exploring the highways, byways and backwaters of Africa since 1986, when he backpacked from Nairobi to Cape Town. Over the course of the 1990s, Philip wrote pioneering Bradt guidebooks to South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Ghana and Rwanda, destinations that were then practically uncharted by the travel publishing industry. He has also authored Bradt Guides to East African Wildlife, Somaliland, The Gambia, Suriname and Sri Lanka, and written or made significant contributions to the Insight Guides to Kenya, Tanzania, Madagascar, Namibia, South Africa and Senegal & Gambia, and Eyewitness Guides to Cape Town, Kenya and South Africa. He typically spends at least four months on the road annually, usually accompanied by his wife, the travel photographer Ariadne Van Zandbergen, and spends the rest of his time battering away at a keyboard in the sleepy village of Wilderness, South Africa.