Mysore

A beautiful city with a wonderful palace, a colourful market and a relaxed atmosphere with a lot of cows on the roads. Last but not least delicious food!

Mysore

Swiss scenes...

We were on the bus from Bangalore to Mysore together with Roman and Tobi - two ABB guys who were also at the wedding - and had a good laugh when we saw this Indian music song with the video clip showing Bern, the Swiss capital. We had a good laugh at this while the Indians had a good laugh at us taking pictures of the TV...

Wedding Aravind & Vidya - Day 2

What a day! A huge party starting with breakfast followed by ceremonies, lunch, further ceremonies, coffee, more ceremonies and a cake to finish in the evening. THANKS a lot Aravind & Vidya, it was wonderful!

Wedding Aravind & Vidya - Day 2

Wedding Aravind & Vidya - Day 1

The first day was mainly to greet and take pictures with the guests while the ceremonies were held on the second day. Overall there were 1600 people there that night...

Wedding Aravind & Vidya - Day 1

Visiting Srikanth in Bangalore

We had two great evenings with Srikanth and his wife in Bangalore. Clubbing at Fuga, delicious dinner at Hotel Imperial and watching the latest Bolywood movie (in Hindi obviously, without subtitles - thanks for the translations). Thanks a lot!

Visiting Srikanth in Bangalore

Lusaka-Kigali-Addis Abeba-Mumbai-Bengaluru

Our flight from Africa to India was a unique experience for us. I'll try to explain it. 1. Booking - We booked the Ethiopian Air flight Lusaka-Bangalore, Goa-Entebbe in Switzerland prior to departure. Everything went just perfect. 2. Flight confirmation - Typically we don't reconfirm flights these days (haven't done it for yeras) but somehow we felt like we should do it this time. Luckily we did and our travel agent warned us that there was a change in the flight schedule and we would miss the connection in Addis (thanks Carina @ Globetrotter). 3. Re-booking - With this information we headed to the Ethiopian Air office in Lusaka to re-book our flight. A small office with about 20 people waiting in front of us. After waiting about half an hour and seeing no progress (while the office door said it would close in 20 min) I asked the lady and said "Sorry, we have an urgent topic, could you please take care of it?". She "When is your flight?" and me again "Tomorrow, that's why it's urgent" and she replied with a smile "all the other people here will fly today, don't worry...". We eventually talked to a lady but she didn't know of any change in the flight schedule... . With local help (thanks Peter) we tried it through a travel agent and got the confirmation that we would have to spent a night in Addis due to the change. 4. Check-in We agreed that a night in Addis would be no problem as we planed backup days for such situations. With that in mind we went to the check in and told the lady that we knew about the change and that check in to Addis only would be ok. She looked a bit strange at us when we told her that and she said "No problem, I checked in many passengers to Mumbai today, the plane will wait for you". 5. Lusaka - Kigali - Addis Abeba With boarding passes all the way to India we entered the plane. The pilot informed us that instead of flying directly to Addis Abeba (Ethiopia) we would do a stop over in Kigali (Rwanda) to pick up some passengers. That's what we did and obviously we arrived late in Addis and the plane to Mumbai was gone. 6. Nice hotel & upgrade That wasn't a problem at all as we were a group of about 25 people (23 Indians on the way home and 2 Swiss...). Ethiopian Airlines organized a Visa for us, booked us a nice hotel in Addis and even gave us an Upgrade to Business class for the flight to Mumbai. As you can imagine we enjoyed a nice day in Addis before tasting local Ethiopian food with Martini in Ethiopian Airlines Buiness class... (luckily they made this stop over in Kigali)

MyClimate

Traveling from Africa to India and back causes quite a bit of CO2 emmissions. In order to compensate this, we are supporting MyClimate with a donation for a wind farm project in Madagaskar (sorry ABB guys, they use small turbines - too small for ABB).

Visiting Theola and Peter in Lusaka

From Livingstone we took the bus to Lusaka (8h) which was a very nice experience. For the first time we were able to book the ticket the day before, there was a departure time, the bus was on time and even served a snack while driving - just great! In Lusaka we had a wonderful time with Theola, Peter and the entire family (including two very cute kittens Katrin would have loved to take with us...). We were treated like kings, Peter showed us around and helped us rebooking our changed flight to India. Thanks a lot - we enjoyed it very much!

Visiting Theola & Peter in Lusaka

Ferry from Botswana to Zambia

Crossing into Zambia was an experience. Botswana and Zambia are seperated by the Sambezi (the river which a couple kilometers further down poors down the Vic Falls). The border crossing is by ferry. As it's a highly frequented crossing for trucks and the ferry only takes one a time, there are kilometers of trucks waiting on the Botswana side - impressive side. Once at the front we learned that one of the two ferries is broken. So we waited for the other one and had a nice short ride across.

Ferry Botswana - Zambia

Victoria Falls

Visiting the Victoria Falls is impressive and "refreshing"... We spent a day each on the Zimbabwean and the Zambian side and had a good "shower" on both days! Impressive how the huge amount of water poors down. The world is small. As we were walking through the Vic Falls park we met a French couple we earlier stayed at the Okavango Delta with. We had a drink together at the wonderful Victoria Falls hotel before heading back to our slightly different backpacker... PS: On the bridge connecting Zimbabwe and Zambia we saw a truck with "ABB" plates...

Victoria Falls (Zimbabwe & Zambia)

Okavango Delta, Botswana

The northern part of Botswana (towards Zambia/Namibia/Angola) is covered by the Okavango Delta. It's an unique delta as the river does not enter the sea but dries up in a large delta area. As water is rare in this otherwise desert like area, the animals concentrate around the delta. A wonderful place to spot animals. We took the bus from Francistown to Maun (6h) before entering a small plane. There is no other way to get into the delta than by plane. It was only the pilot and the two of us for this 30min flight. In the delta we stayed at a little lodge with space for only 10 guests. From there we did day and night game drives, mokoro as well as boat trips. We had a great time!

Okavango Delta, Botswana

Zimbabwe - the other side

Having showed the negative side, it is very important to show the much nicer other side. Zimbabwe is a wonderful country with very warm and welcoming people! The mountain area is covered by lush green forests, the cities are nice and clean and there are fascinating sites such as Great Zimbabwe (an old stone village). Not to mention the world famous Victoria Falls. Some episodes. - We met a woman on the road who was very excited! "Wow backpackers - haven't seen any for months!" - We tried to visit a national park 25km south of Mutare. What would be a morning trip in most countries turned out to be a full day trip (only with a lot of luck, typically it would not be possible in a day). The reason therefore is the lack of regional transport. We had to hitch and after waiting a good hour got a ride on the back of a pick up together with 3 others, a bike and a lot of luggage for the first segment. We then waited another hour besides the road together with two Police men - who were hitching as well as they had no own means of transport... . Together with them we got a lift for a couple of kilometers. We then walked 1.5 hours through wonderful forests before getting another ride to the destination... - As you can see I opened a hairdresser's shop in Masvingo... (there are two options, 6mm or 12mm)

Zimbabwe - the other side

Zimbabwe - one side

We entered Zimbabwe from Mozambique into Mutare and crossed through the mountain area to Masvingo and Bulawayo before leaving into Francistown, Botswana. Zimbabwe has to very different sides, therefore two entries. The unfortunately more famous side is the negative side due to the current political situation. There is incredible inflation (over 3000%!!!) which makes you walk around with a huge amount of paper which is worth nothing (50 USD were 1 Billion Zimb Dollar) and even less if you keep it till the next day! In addition there is a shortage of pretty much everything. Supermarkets are empty, gas for cars is very rare which causes public transport to dry up and leaving hitching often the only option and and and... Elections are upcoming in 2 weeks (24h propanda is running on TV, incredible) and there was a certain tension mixed with hope in the air. Let's see how it turns out. Hopefully peaceful!

Zimbabwe - one side

Mozambique

Enclosed some pictures from Mozambique.

Mozambique

Heaven on earth

After traveling for a while we splurged and afforded us two days at the beach. We spent the time at Indigo bay, a short flight off the coast of Mozambique - just wonderful! Let the pictures speak...

Heaven on earth

Mozambique

I don't know what image you have in your mind when you think of Mozambique. Quite frankly, I didn't really know what to expect. Having traveled in Mozambique I must say it's wonderful but difficult to explain. Let's give it a try. The Portuguese influence (language, food,...) combined with the warm weather and the nice beaches kind of gives a Brazil feeling. But then there is the Indian influence, the reminders of the communist period with Chinese and Sowjet street names and of course the African influence. In short, come here and convince yourself that it's a wonderful country. Some picutres will follow as soon as the bandwidth allows it. Best regards

Police in Mozambique

Typically we're pretty happy to see police on the streets as it kind of gives you the feeling of safety. In Mozambique it's a bit different, you try not to see the police... The reason therefore is that the police is pretty bad paid and they look for alternative sources of income. They are very creative in finding a reason why you didn't follow a rule and must pay a fine which ends up in their own pockets... So far we got away without a 'fine' but they already controled us once and wanted to see the passport on the road (they didn't find a reason yet).

Swaziland: Pine trees, the king, police control and cows on the road...

Swaziland is a beautiful, little country in a green, hilly area. There is no question about the boss in this country. The king with his 17 wives (subject to change - typically at a pace of one additional wive a year...) rules this place. We entered from Nelspruit and drove through large pine forests before entering Mbabane, a small town followed by Manzini. The 'highlight' for us was actually the bus from Manzini to Maputo. The day started with a 2 hour wait (pretty fast for this area) till the minibus was full. 30 minutes down the road a police man stood on the road and stopped us. He took the driver out of our minibus and entered himself. He drove a tour testing breaks etc with all of us in the bus. A short conversation later we were back on track (don't know how much the driver paid...). Probably half an hour later there was a bang in the back and everybody turned their heads back. The tire of the trailer had bursted. As we turned the heads back to the front two cows were in the middle of the road and it got really calm inside the minibus...! Luckily we had a good driver who managed to get around the cows and pull over. We had a bit of shacky legs when we watched them changing the tire... Afterwards it was a calm ride into the center of Maputo.

"In Switzerland they've got watches, in Africa we've got time"

Nothing to add to this saying we picked up here - the best summary of daily life.

Visiting Charl & Julie in Pretoria

Nick and Anja drove us to 50km distant pretoria, where we could stay at Charl's and Julie's place. We had a great evening with a nice southafrican braai (don't dare to call it a barbecue..). Also the two kids of Charl and Julie just bedazzled us..! The next day Charl showed us the city and its sightseeing points, knowing also the good places where to enjoy southafrican cuisine. He even proved to be brave walking around with us in the city center (which we learned hat improved a lot over the last years). Once again we made the experience of the great southafrican hospitality, thank you, Charl and Julie, for showing us pretoria and it's people from the best side!

Visiting Charl & Julie in Pretoria

Visiting Nick & Anja in Joburg

Nick and Anja were wonderful hosts and gave us a great time! They showed us the nice spots in Joburg, the good food places, the local drinks and let us stay at their beautiful home! THANKS AGAIN - we enjoyed it very much!

Visiting Nick & Anja

JoBurg

It's strange to arrive in a city where you have read that much about crime etc. Katrin and me must have looked like aliens when we left that bus in downtown JoBurg as we were looking where "the crime was hiding"... Everything went well and we enjoyed this city of contrast very much.

JoBurg

Update

Just a brief note, we're doing great and have a lot to put on to the blog (Joburg, Visiting Nick & Anja, Pretoria, Visiting Charl & Julie, Swaziland and now Mozambique) but the bandwidth is currently just too poor to put any pics on or write a lot (waiting times are forever). As soon as this changes we will come back with more news. As for now best regards to everybody! Jonas & Katrin