Mt Kilimanjaro (5895m)

It's a special feeling to be in the snow in Africa, knowing you're over 1000m above the roof of Europe! Thanks to the rain season we were only 3 small expeditions together on the mountain. Two guys from South Korea with their crew, four from Papa New Guinea (PNG) with their team and the two of us with our team. We had a great time with the PNG guys. Our crew (8 incl us) consisted of a guide, an assistant guide/porter, a cook/porter, a server/porter and two regular porters. They were great! Our program was the following Day 1 (Tuesday 22.4.) Ascend to 2700m Day 2 Ascend to 3700m Day 3 Acclimatisation day at 3700m, short walk but mainly eating, drinking (over 4 liters/person to compensate the dry and thin air) & relaxing (and playing poker with the PNG team) Day 4 Ascend to 4700m, early dinner at 17.00 and bed time at 18.00 till 23.00 Day 5 We get up at 23.00 (still day 4) - so Friday night but we don't dress up to go to a bar but pack our stuff to leave for the summit. At 00:09 we (2 guides and the two of us) depart from 4700m, at 04.00 we reach Gilman's point (5681m) at the crater rim, from there we follow the crater through heavy wind till we reach the Uhuru peak (5895m) at 05.30. The weather is pretty bad, it's freezing cold and the hard wind carries a lot of snow. After 2 minutes on the summit we start the decend. While walking back the sun rises. At 08.00 we're back at 4700m and relax before heading down to 3700m for the night. Day 6 Descend to Moshi, hot shower (ahh) and Pizza for dinner! (We have traveled for more than 2 months through Africa and India and didn't have diarrhoea/stomache problems once, which was great. Unfortunately it hit in a very bad moment - Jonas got a bad drink at day 3 of the Kili trek which left his stomach busy till we were back down. He can "sing a song" about climbing Kili with stomache problems...)

Kilimanjaro

Serengeti, Ngorongoro & Lake Manyara

Serengeti, Ngorongoro as well as Lake Manyara are wonderful national parks. Traveling through them is wonderful as the animal density and diversity is high. We enjoyed it very much.

Serengeti & Ngorongoro

Tanzania

Arriving in Tanzania from Europe might be different but arriving from another African country feels a bit like traveling to Mallorca. Everything is set up for tourists, the touts already wait at the airport and in Arusha you can't walk 5 meters without having somebody who wants to sell a Safari, a souvenir or something else. This is quite a contrast to eg Rwanda where there are hardly any tourists and it happened several times that we had a group of people around us just watching us (that's the way animals must feel like in the zoo, except that we had no sign "Please don't feed them"). Once you get over this it's a beautiful country.

Kigali (Rwanda)

Kigali is a small city on a hill and you wouldn't think anything bad could happen here. But history as well as two famous sites - the Genocide Memorial and the Hotel Mille Collines (remember the movie Hotel Rwanda) - remind you of what happened here in 94. Both are very moving sites.

Kigali, Rwanda

Giseny & Goma

From Kinigi we headed towards the Rwandan "beach ressort" of Giseny. It's a small village at the shores of Lake Kivu and has beautiful hotels along the lake. Despite being a holiday ressort it's not safe to swim in the lake as there is a large gas deposite at the bottom of the lake and sporadically bulbs rise to the surface which is lethal. Giseny is also a border city to DR Congo. 5km across is the Congo counterpart of Goma which unfortunately made it to the news these days due to the plane crash (this happened a couple hours after we had left Giseny).

Mountain Gorillas

Visiting the Mountain Gorillas is not easy (there are only 8 permits a day to protect them and these are typically taken by large international travel agencies - getting one as individual traveler was pretty difficult) and very expensive (500 USD per person). Nevertheless, it's worth the pain as it's a wonderful experience.
Once you have the permit you take a bus from Kigali to Ruhengeri (2.5h). There you change to another minibus to Kinigi where you jump onto the back of a motor bike which brings you to the camp at 2300m in a wonderul setting in the Rwanda - Congo border area with several volcanoes around. The highest is over 4000m and snow covered.
The next morning you meet your guide at 7 and drive a good hour on a bumpy road with a solid 4WD. There the Gorilla trackers as well as an army patrol waits. With an Army guy in front and the back you start to hike. After about an hour you reach the boundary of the jungle and it gets really interesting. It takes you another hour of climbing over bamboo and other plants till you reach the Gorillas close to 3000m. There you are in the middle of the jungle and in front of you is the Susa group (the largest Gorilla group with 39 animals). From the 1 month old baby up to the huge silverbacks gather there. It's an amazing experience and the hour with them just flies by.
Btw this is the area where Diane Fossey studied the Gorillas.

Gorillas

What are you doing here?

We are walking through Kigali on the way to the bus station when a white guy approaches us and asks "What are you doing here?". Well, traveling. "Yes, but what is the purpose of your visit?". Mmmh, holidays. "No other reason like business, just for holidays you come here?" The guy, which turns out to be from Kiev, doesn't feel comfortable at all here and apparentely wouldn't come here on his own. He was sent here for business and it's his first day in town. The next question is even better. "How do you handle security here? Do you carry a weapon?". Mmmh, probably not... (To put this into perspective. Kigali is a small city on cool 1500m above sea level and one of the most relaxed capitals in Africa. Guess it was his first visit to Africa.).

Kempala - Kigali

From Kempala we took the bus to Kigali (Rwanda). We "splurged" and took the VIP bus (15 USD instead of 10 USD for 9 hours) although I coulnd't really figure out what VIP stood for. The bus was pink, that must have been the P... . No in fact VIP means 4 seats in a row while normal would be 5 seats in a row. It's a pleasant 9 hour ride through wonderful green countryside. Entering Rwanda is a bit special. In Rwanda plastic bags are forbidden, yes - no joke and they inforce it. You have to open your luggage and they take away any plastic bag. There was this lady who had her shoes, shampoo etc all neatly packed in seperate plastic bags. She had to unpack everything. Luckily we had our plastic bags at the bottom of our backbag and they only looked at the top... Once that's over you enter hilly Rwanda with it's tea plantations, a wonderful countryside.

Entebbe & Kempala (Uganda)

We decided to skip Kenya for security reasons and fly directly to Entebbe (Uganda). The first thing you realize when flying into Uganda is that everything is green! A wonderful view. The second thing you spot are the huge amount of UN planes and helicopters at the airport. Beyond that, Entebbe is a tiny little "village" while Kempala is a lively city with a huge Chinese and Indian influence. They say Kempala overtook London in terms of Indian restaurants and they might be right. On the other hand traffic is crazy in Kempala and smog like hell...

Entebbe & Kempala (Uganda)

Bahar Dar

Between Aksum and Addis Abeba is Bahar Dar. A small city at a wonderful lake which gives it a rich vegetation. It's completely different to the dry north and it has kind of a beach atmosphere, also fersh as still on 1800m. The highlights of the lake are the monastries which are spread over many islands as well as the fact that the water of this lakes forms the source of the blue Nile. Another highlight is a night at a local bar... . We went to this bar with only locals (and us) where a men was singing improvised songs (that's the tradition, they sing about everything) and men and woman were dancing the local dance - best described as "shoulder shaking". Guess the locals had good fun that night as the singer kept on singing about us. Unfortunately we coulnd't understand anything as it was in Amharic but the laughter of the others showed that it must have been funny...

Bahar Dar, Ethiopia

Lalibela - Africa's Petra

What Petra is to Jordan, Lalibela is to Africa. 11 massive churches completly built into solid rock are an impressive sight. Besides the churches there is not much here. It's nice and fresh as it's on 2600m in the mountains. Only few people live here and it's mainly farming they do. Therefore donkeys are the main 'machine' used in the area.

Lalibela

Aksum - nothern Ethiopia

Ethiopia is a large and hilly country. Consequentially the ground transport takes quite a while. Eg Addis to Aksum would be two days by bus one way... . Therefore we decided to fly up there. Aksum is in the very north towards the borders of Eritrea and Sudan. It's a small village at 2100m above sea level which used to be a large ancient city. Today it's a relaxed little place with camels and the ruins of this city.

Aksum

Getting a Chinese Visa in Addis Abeba

As we intend to travel through China towards the end of our trip we took advantage of the time in Ethiopia to apply for a Chinese visa in Addis. Well, applying for a Chinese visa in Addis is pain! Why? China tries to keep the number of job seeking Ethiopians low and therefore makes the process lenghty and complex. So there I stand in front of the embassy at the end of a line of about 20 people. Nothing happens for 10 minutes, 20 minutes,... half an hour. Not one single person moves in. Interpolating how much time it would take me to get in (rather days than hours) I get a bit worried... . Eventually the door opens and one person is allowed in. I take the chance and talk to the guard who just replies with WAIT! Seems like there is nothing to do. But then he sees my passports and says, "ahhh Red Cross, please come in". I hesitate for a second as it's not very fair but then decide to take advantage of his colour blindness and move in as it's the only chance for us to get the visa. 30 minutes later I applied for the visa. A week later I'm there again waiting to pick up the visa when a young chinese guy walks out for a smoke. We chat together and it turns out that he is a Chinese Army representative at the Embassy. After an interesting chat he leaves with the words, wait here. He returns with a self burned CD ROM with a PDF file of a scaned China Lonely Planet on it that I can read a bit about China. Great isn't it? Applying for a visa and even get a copy of Lonely Planet?

Traveling cheaply?

Ethiopia is one of the cheapest African countries to travel in. Therefore it's definitely a good start to travel there if you're on budget. If you want to reduce costs even more then you can book a flight with Ethiopian airlines... We already mentioned the trip Lusaka - Mumbai earlier. Afterwards we booked some domestic flights in Ethiopia. You won't believe it but we are now up to 3 free nights (Hotel paid by Ethiopian Airlines) plus 200 USD compensation as they keep on missing connections, canceling flights etc. For us it was no problem as we planed with some spare time and it gave us the opportunity to stay at much nicer hotels than we would usually stay at. (Saila, please don't travel with Ethiopian Airlines. Their reliability combined with your travel luck...)

Agonda (Goa)

From Hosped we moved no by train towards Panaji and then Agonda in Goa. Agonda is a small village with more cows at the beach then people (yes, that's true). We enjoyed very relaxed days including Yoga with a "Guru", delicious fish, Dolphin watching etc.

Agonda (Goa)

Different time, calendar,...

Due to the orthodox influence Ethiopia uses the Julian calendar which is 8 years "behind". We therefore had the unique opportunity to go back to the Millenium year 2000! It's a huge party here! The year consists of 13 months and it starts on 13. September, simple isn't it? To make it even "simpler" they have a different time format. Sun rise is at 12 (our time it would be 0600), sun set is again at 12 (1800). Due to the global influence they now mix "our" and their time and you always have to check...

Ethiopia is different

Yes, it's really quite different to the other African countries. One of the reasons is that it was pretty much the only African country which was never a colony. The Amharic is a very unique language, the food (injera, fir fir,...) is totally different, they use different time as well as calendar and the people are quite different as well.

Goa - Mumbai - Addis

From Goa we moved on by Jetair to Mumbai where we stayed for one night and had some nice experiences (eg Taxi drive who gets lost after confirming he knows where the place is, book shops which are closed but still sell a book after long negotiations etc) - in short it was fun! From there we went back to Ethiopia and everything went fine on this flight.

The shortest night...

... of my life. Backtracking slightly to Mysore. After visiting Mysore we bought a ticket for the nightbus to Hospet, since there is no other public transport connection on this route. The only bus doing this 10hour ride is a semi-deluxe (yes it sounds good but it's actually 3rd class behind Volvo and Deluxe - they just use nice words for this class). Well, the bus wasn't too bad, it had 4 wheels, chairs and windows and we didn't change one tire along the route! As we were waiting for the departure a police men came to us and said 'take care of your luggage on this bus'. We followed his advice. Finally neither the bus nor thieves were a problem but the driver combined with the roads! We have driven quite a bit in Africa and other countries but this one was special. He drove like crazy and the roads were obviously unsealed making it really bumpy. You can imagine the feeling of waking up due to a huge bump and seeing two headlights of a truck a couple of meters in front of you...! In short, we arrived.

Swiss colonies...

We have now seen the Portuguese influence several times on this trip (Mozambique, Goa) plus many more times on earlier trips. On one of the long bus trips (yes, there is plenty of time to think about many things...) we thought through a Scenario of Swiss colonies. How would the world be like if not the Spanish and Portuguese (and other countries) set off to found colonies but Switzerland?
Could you imagine that most of South America as well as parts of Africa and Asia would speak Swiss German, eat cheese fondue and sell pocket knifes and watches as souvenirs? Well, frankly speaking I think it's better the Portuguese did that...

Hampi & Goa

We had a great time in Hampi and later on in Goa, which we reached by train and bus. In Panaji (Goa) we enjoyed the Portuguese food and the nice little roads before we relaxed at the beach in Agonda (Goa). It was wonderful!

Hampi

Panaji & Old Goa (Goa)