I woke up at five o' clock this morning, to take the coach from my sleepy little city. It's westward, ho! Destination, Hay-on-Wye, in Wales for the annual literary festival Bill Clinton once described as the Woodstock of the Mind.

The festival, which this year celebrates its 20^th anniversary, began in 1988 as an invitation for a few like minded friends to sit about , relax and talk books. It has now become a much larger event, with corporate sponsorship, A-list attractions, music gigs and even constant TV coverage on Sky Arts. The event has become so popular, that along with me and my girlfriend will be 130,000 bibliophiles from across the world, gathered to 392 events, from debates, to screenings, parties and book signings.

The festival itself will be held in the town of Hay-on-Wye which is among other things famous for being twinned with Timbuktu, the ancient black African city which once housed the world's largest library and which is still home to one of the world's oldest universities - Sankore University. Ah ok, no digressing now. We plan to sit about, hope for some sun, buy a lot of books (we are carrying an empty suitcase for the 50p second hand books there) and maybe meet a famous author or two. Professor Wangari Maathai should be there, as should be Wole Soyinka (I will be looking to avoid him) and Orhan Parmuk. I will be looking to change my mind about the Professor, who I did not think deserved the Nobel Prize, and should have good opportunity as she discusses her autobiography ‘Unbowed'. Other celebrities will include Kiran Desai and Martin Amis, Imran Khan, David Cameron and former Conservative party leader William Hague who will be leading a discussion on slavery.

There's also a film festival which runs alongside the book one. Al Gore made a big splash here with his movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth'. I am looking forward to seeing Baaba Mal for the first time, and listening to him of course. All in all it should be a lovely week.

The organizers say they will have a satellite event in Kenya next year, to add to the two they have now (one in Spain and one in Colombia). Anything that will boost our reading culture will do for me. I remember all those second-hand book seller on the streets of Nairobi, many of them oblivious of the treasures they had before them, or in school how you could sit in the library by yourself because the other kids were not interested in the feast of books and I am skeptical about the success of this Nairobi extension. Even in my university days here, most Kenyans of my acquaintance are allergic to books and knowledge in general, a condition of ignorance which I believe precludes our national development. I should be a citizen of Nairobi by then, so here's crossing my itchy-for-books fingers.