After a devastating breakup and corporate burnout in 1995, 29-year-old Brisbane local John Ahern sold everything for a one-way ticket to post-apartheid Africa, only to face charging elephants, active landmines, and armed militia.

His impulsive journey took a deadly turn in Kenya when a stranger drugged him with a piece of chocolate on a bus, landing him behind bars and caught in a capital punishment trial - a harrowing survival story he has now captured in his new memoir, The Last Bus to Lamu.