The Ends of the World: Last work of Africa online travel pioneer Damian Cook launches on Amazon

Damian Cook, the late Kenya-based adventurer and online travel expert, will be celebrated on what would have been his 58th birthday with the launch of his book on Monday.

The Ends of the World, the last work of Damian, will launch on Amazon on Monday, the book being published four years after his death in November 2022.

The book tells the story of Damian's 2021 hike across the length of the United Kingdom, from Land's End to John O'Groats, undertaken during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a year when much of the world stood still, Damian kept moving and found in the journey a reason to think about how we travel and how overtourism can destroy the places we love. He outlines a number of opinions throughout the book on how tourism, especially in Africa, needs to be extremely conservation focused.

Damian became one of the most recognised figures in African and emerging-market tourism, founding E-Tourism Africa in 2007, which grew into E-Tourism Frontiers in 2010 as his work expanded beyond the continent into Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

Along the way he trained thousands of tourism professionals, worked in dozens of countries and helped shape how destinations from Kenya and Zimbabwe to Jordan and Cambodia told their own stories to the world.

Damian’s favourite line and signature saying — #keepmoving — captured something essential about how he lived: always curious, always in motion, always looking for the next place and the next story worth telling. His book, “The Ends of the World”, combines travel, hiking and adventure during a time when all three were in very short supply.

“For as long as I have known Damian, he loved to tell stories and he loved to write and one of his dreams was to be a published author,” said Elizabeth Cook.

“He finished writing his book three weeks before he suffered a fatal heart attack in November 2022. His book, ‘The Ends of the World’, is the last chapter in Damian’s iridescent life story. I would like to thank Damian’s family, particularly his brother Jamie Cook, for bringing Damian’s book to life.”

Damian was an advocate of sustainable tourism and he campaigned against overtourism. He was a Director of ATTA - Africa Travel and Tourism Association from 2013 to 2018. He was extremely passionate about conservation.

He was the chairman of Local Ocean Conservation from 2012 to 2018 and all author royalties from his book will go to the charity Local Ocean Conservation in Watamu, Kenya, the place Damian called home.