After the joy of Cape Town it’s been a sombre yet moving week in Johannesburg getting a greater understanding of the brutal history of South Africa as well as experiencing one of the most surreal mugging experiences imaginable!

When I arrived at my hostel the receptionist innocently inquired about where I had come from and was unfortunately subjected to be blethering for half an hour about the wonderment of Cape Town and what an incredible experience it had been. She proudly declared that ‘cape town has the mountains but Jozie has the people’ and then advised me of the safe places to walk down.

It was this juxtaposition of remarkably gregarious people and constantly feeling on edge that will be my lasting memory of the city and I had my own bizarre brush with the crime.

As I was walking from Johannesburg Art Gallery to a museum I had to veer off the main road and onto a side street. A man then approached me and asked if I was waiting for the tourist bus. After saying that I wasn’t the next thing I knew 4 people had surrounded me asking me for money and my phone.

I initially protested but as they got closer to me I reached into my pocket and handed over 50 Rand (around £3 which was all I had on me). They then reached for my pocket to take my phone and I protested that I needed my phone which was when the situation descended into farce.

They got closer to me and then bizarrely this went from a mugging to a business negotiation! After saying I needed my phone they suggested I keep my sim card for calls and they just give me the headset and said they could do that for me! I almost thought they were going to give me a survey form afterwards asking how my mugging experience had been!

But it was still a frightening ordeal as they kept shouting ‘think fast’ as I fumbled around in my pocket for something to give them. A passer by walked past which I thought was my salvation as they would break this up but to my disappointment he joined in and also asked for money!

Then just as I thought I was going to have to give them my phone and wondered if they had a knife or worse one of them said ‘stop, he’s my friend’ and then they all walked away!

At the time it was terrifying but as I reflect now it was such a bizarre turn of events and I don’t know what made one of them decide we are friends now but he wasn’t the last friend I made in this city!

I’ve met so many locals who have just stopped me in the street (fluorescent clothing and blue hair is generally the conversation starter!) and had a conversation with me and I’ve met so many incredible people who have shared their stories with me which has been incredible. It is these people who will be my lasting memory of Johannesburg rather than my unfortunate mugging.

Going through the Apartheid museum was a remarkable experience. You are randomly allocated a race and walk through that entrance and learn what life was like for that group. Ironically I was allocated ‘European White’ and it was an eerie feeling walking through that ‘whites only’ section – a feeling that won’t leave me anytime soon.

The museum covered the history of the country from early colonisation onwards and it’s as a British citizen it’s impossible to feel anything other than guilt for the role we have played. South Africa is a country rich in natural resources and the population were ruthlessly exploited by wealthy colonial powers to mine the gold and diamonds with money then taken out of the country.

The country had as much reason to prosper as America, the difference was they were never given the fruits of this prosperity, actions which still have repercussions today. It’s easy to patronise Africans with talk of aid and wonder how much more successful it would be without corruption and high crime but we should never forget these are symptoms of a gaping chasm between rich and poor that we created.

Nothing brought the conditions clearer than visiting the miners’ workers museum showing a compound where black workers would live and travel to the mines. Overwhelmingly it was rural workers who moved to the city for work and they would be housed in these compounds. After the National Party came into power they wanted to rehouse them in townships but the sheer number of workers made this impossible and so these compounds in Johannesburg still existed.

When you look at the concrete beds where they slept with no beds and you see the tree where workers would be tied to if they were late for work you start to understand the intolerable conditions the workers were placed under.

It’s a farce to even really call them workers as they were slaves in all but name with economic circumstances meaning they had no option other than to work there, largely due to the new taxes the government deliberately imposed on farms in order to drive workers into the mines in the cities.

The final portentous moment of history came to when I visited Soweto, the large township built to house mining workers when under Apartheid they weren’t wanted to live in the city. As well as the tragedy of the poverty that still exists there today it was striking to stand in the spot of the Soweto uprising, those brave students who protested against the imposition of Afrikaans in their school and were gunned down by government forces.

I often think back to my ancestors living under British imperial rule in India and how much I owe to these brave individuals who bravely fought for equality and self-determination to give me the freedom to travel freely that I am currently so enjoying.

Following on from all these solemn moments I was in desperate need of some light relief and so It was perfect timing today that my Cape Town mate Brecken arrived in Johannesburg and we went to the Rosebank Market to go souvenir hunting.

Many people who go travelling are either enjoying a gap year or like myself are trying to gain inspiration for what they want to do in their lives. Brecken doesn’t fit into either camp however living a genuinely nomadic lifestyle constantly working in order to fund her next expedition. For her, traveling isn’t a means to an end but rather the constant discovery of new people and cultures is the destination instead.

Despite all my talk of looking for something more out of life my thinking is still imprisoned in the concept of needing a career and at first I couldn’t understand how that could be an ambition but the more time I spend traveling and meeting such a diverse range of people I now completely understand the appeal.

She was the one exception to my rule of devoting time integrating with locals rather than fellow travellers as she was too much fun to be around and it’s her fault that I now watch rodeo videos on Youtube and have had to train myself to stop calling people ‘baby girl!’

Johannesburg has been a moving experience rather than an enjoyable one but having ruminated previously about how fake some of the tourist spots in Cape Town felt it was important to understand the realities of lives of the people here, both now and in the past.

Next stop is Makalali by the Zimbabwe border for 2 weeks with a nature conservation charity for a very different experience.

Oh, and she was wrong about Cape Town having the mountains rather than the people. People in Jozi were great but nobody has matched the indefatigable friendliness of the people of Cape Town for me yet!