True source of Nile found by explorers

THE true location for the source of the Nile has been found by a dedicated team of explorers.

Briton Neil McGrigor and his colleagues endured 80 days of trekking up the river from the Mediterranean to a jungle ravine more than 4,000 miles away in Rwanda.

Their endeavours, braving armed rebels and crocodile infested waters, revealed the Nile is more than 60 miles longer then previously thought.

Speaking by satellite phone from Rwanda Mr McGrigor, 44, from Lymington, Hampshire said they were delighted but exhausted after their efforts.

He said: “It’s been incredibly tough. We were ascending the Nile for 73 days then had to abandon the boats and move on to trekking through the Nyungwe rainforest.

“The vegetation got so thick we were travelling just 200 metres an hour - we just couldn’t hack our way through it.

The Nile has two main branches, the white Nile from equatorial east Africa and the Blue Nile from Ethiopia.

Various Victorian explorers from John Hanning Speke to Sir Henry Morton Stanley concluded the Nile’s source was in Lake Victoria.

But the British explorer and his co-leader Cam McLeay and colleague Garth MacIntyre, both from New Zealand, settled on a point for the source of the White Nile when they found a “perceptible flow” of water in the Rwandan jungle.

They have now calculated the Nile is 4,198 miles long - 66 miles more than previously recorded.

Their adventure began last September when they started their ascent of the river in three motorised twin-hulled inflatable boats travelling through Egypt, Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda.

During the expedition they crossed the Sudd - a vast swamp in Sudan - encountered a platoon of soldier ants and suffered endless mosquito attacks.

They travelled through parts of the river that had not been chartered in decades and relied on satellite navigation for help.

But the team’s biggest setback came last November in Uganda when they were attacked by gunmen who killed team member Briton Steve Willis, 36, and left some of the group injured.

The project was suspended to allow them to recover but the team resumed last month and as they crossed Lake Victoria to Rwanda had to fend off crocodiles.

Mr McGrigor, said: “When we got to the source we had a big reception, the Rwandan government is rightly very proud that we’ve established the source at that point.”