A story of courage and adventure, set against the backdrop of the
race to exploit Africa by the colonial powers. For millennia the
location of the Nile River's headwaters was shrouded in mystery. In
the mid-19th century, Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke were
sent by the Royal Geographical Society to claim the prize for
Britain. Burton spoke twenty-nine languages, and was a decorated
soldier. He was also mercurial, subtle, and an iconoclastic
atheist. Speke was a young aristocrat and Army officer determined
to make his mark, Burton's opposite in temperament and beliefs.
From the start the two men clashed. They would endure tremendous
hardship, illness, and constant setbacks. Two years in, deep in the
African interior, Burton became too sick to press on, but Speke
did, and claimed he found the source in a great lake that he
christened Lake Victoria. When they returned to England, the two
became sworn enemies. Yet there was a third man on both
expeditions, his name obscured by imperial annals, whose exploits
were even more extraordinary. This was Sidi Mubarak Bombay, who was
enslaved and shipped from his home village in East Africa to India.
When the man who purchased him died, he made his way into the local
Sultan's army, and eventually travelled back to Africa, where he
used his resourcefulness, linguistic prowess and raw courage to
forge a living as a guide. Without Bombay and men like him, who
led, carried, and protected the expedition, neither Englishman
would have come close to the headwaters of the Nile, or perhaps
even survived.
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