AGATHA'S AFRICA

MYSTERY WRITER AND INVETERATE ITINERANT AGATHA CHRISTIE'S GRAND TOUR COMPLETES 100 YEARS THIS YEAR. FOLLOW HER FOOTSTEPS ACROSS SOUTH AFRICA, FROM URBAN ESCAPES AND SEASIDE EXCURSIONS IN CAPE TOWN TO LUXURIOUS TRAIN JOURNEYS THROUGH THE SHIFTING LANDSCAPE

- PRANNAY PATHAK

1926. Shaken by an impending divorce with husband Archie, Agatha Christie suddenly "disappeared". She drove a couple hundred miles from her home in Berkshire, to Harrogate, and checked in at the historic Swan Hydropathic Hotel. A public outcry ensued, launching a protracted manhunt that lasted 11 days, and Christie's whereabouts were traced. The author was revealed to have spent her vacation as one Mrs Theresa Neele, from Cape Town, South Africa.

No wonder, the southernmost African nation stands out particularly in the beloved mystery novelist's memories of her travels across the world. In 1922, she accompanied Archie on a 10-month voyage sponsored by the British Empire from South Africa to Australia and New Zealand, then Hawaii and Honolulu, and, finally, Canada. She had been on an extended visit to Cairo before, and would go on to accompany her second husband, the archaeologist Max Mallowan, to Iraq and Syria. Yet, it was in South Africa that a 32-year-old Christie first got a real taste of the joys and peeves of travel.

It was here that she famously learned to surf, took in the sights and sounds of cities such as Cape Town and Johannesburg ("Whenever we could steal time off or rather when Archie could we took the train and went to Muizenberg, got our surf boards, and went out surfing"), and brought back impressions that would prove instrumental to her body of work.

THE ITINERARY