Diana Fletcher is a veteran traveller with a lifelong affection for camels and the Bedouin tribes of North Africa. She owns a black stallion camel, called Zeydoun, whom she keeps in the Tunisian Sahara where she goes camelback riding on him at least three times a year, accompanied by two guides.  Diana loves introducing friends, family, and like-minded travellers to this authentic, no-frills desert experience, which she has aptly named Camel Voyages.

Often asked what she enjoys most about this form of travel, she unhesitatingly responds ‘being out in the open air twenty-four hours a day’ – an impossibility in London, where she has lived since 1975, and enjoyed a demanding but exciting career working within the hospitality and public relations industries, which included twelve years as Personal Assistant to the General Manager of The Savoy Hotel, and  seventeen years as Personal Assistant to the Deputy Chairman of Bell Pottinger.

Diana first set foot in Africa in February 1977 in Morocco and rode her first camel within a few days. There began a lifelong love affair with the animal and the continent itself. As she says herself: ‘I respect the camel more than any other animal in the world because of its resilience in hostile environments, and the invisible thread that binds them to the men who look after them’.

Diana’s past camel safaris have taken her to Mali, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Oman, Mongolia, the Northern Frontier of Kenya and Alice Springs in Australia. Passionate about wildlife, she has also ridden elephants on safari in the Okavango Delta in Botswana, Africa and in the remote Madhya Pradesh district in Central India. A Long Serving Fellow of The Royal Geographical  Society, Diana is also a member of The British Tunisian Society. A keen photographer, she records each of her safaris with an illustrated blog, which you can find on the Blog Page.  She has recently completed writing her first adventure story ‘Great Aunt Alice And The BlackCamel’.  Although it is fiction, it is all about the people, animals and places that she knows well, and cares for deeply.  Great Aunt Alice, the central character, is of course based upon herself, an eccentric lady in her seventies!  

©Diana Fletcher