About Chris Harvie

Chris Harvie was born and bred in the UK in 1964 but has been living in South Africa since 1983 where, as he says, he arrived by mistake due to the Falklands War putting paid to plans of visiting Argentina. Returning to South Africa twice since his first arrival, he abandoned his UK studies in French and Russian to manage a forest lodge and eventually build his own country lodge in Mpumalanga.

In the winter of 2006 he set off on the 27,000 km road trip that would be the subject of Do Not Take This Road to El-Karama, which he wrote in the historical Graaff-Reinet house that he had bought and restored and where he lives most of the time.

Harvie is a freelance writer for The Sunday Times, where he writes on food and travel, and also appears frequently on SAfm, discussing tourism issues.