Visa for Turkmenistan...

Yes, the visa for Russia was a pain but Turkmenistan was able to top it... . In Dubai it was simply niet if you don't have your own car. In Teheran we had to provide copies of our passport and the next visa and they said they would send it to Ashgabat (Turkmen capital) and they will check your data and decide whether you get a visa or not. We should come back in 5 working days. Obviously the working hours don't match - Iran has weekend on Thursday & Friday while Turkmenistan has weekend on Saturday & Sunday making 5 working days a bit longer... . Luckily Ashgabat approved our request but then the embassy let us run back and forth (call there and come back, now call there and come back, get a colour picture...) till we finally got the visa. The funniest thing was that the guy at the embassy pretended to speak only Turkmen or Russian which made us use Russian speakers, hand, feet, sign language etc. At the very end when he handed over the visa he spoke perfect English and had a big smile on his face...

Night train from Teheran to Mashad

What a ride! We took the train from Teheran to Mashad and it was the best night train we've ever been on. Compartments with 4 beds, 2 TVs, superbe service including hot dinner, tea and breakfast etc. Very comfortable. Btw It was the first time for us to experience that a train stops for evening prayer. Amazing to see how everybody leaves the train to enter the small mosque at the train station.

The scarf and me...

No, I have neither converted to Islam nor do I have constantly bad hair days in Iran... Wearing the scarf is mandatory by law in Iran, foreigners not exempted. It's quite a strange feeling to wear something on the head all the time and not to have the possibility to put it off. It took me quite a while to get used to it and I still fight everytime there is a wind gust or when the sun is beating down. But then, not to wear it is simply no option here, and we already get a lot of attention by being foreigners, so imagine the situation "Katrin without scarf" (I guess I could just as well walk around nacked).. In the end the question is, Do I want to visit Iran or not? and if yes, I have to respect this rule. But I have to admit: I'm looking forward to put that *** thing off (and to get back my freedom of choice) as soon as we cross the border again..

Want to be famous?

If you would like to experience how Roger Federer must feel like when he walks through Basel then go to Iran... It must be kind of a trophy for Iranians to get a picture with a foreigner. It is therefore very often that somebody approaches you "asking" to take a picture with him. We must be in dozens of Iranian family albums by now... It's typically pretty funny as their English and our Farsi is about at the same level making conversations very short. Conversations are like this "Salaama (hi in Farsi) Flash?" - "???" - "You, I flash (using body language and showing his camera)?" - (ah, Foto) "No problem" - Click, big smile and waving good bye.

Is the cold war over?

Getting a visa for former Sowjet countries can be a pain in Switzerland as we had to experience on earlier trips. Getting one outside your home country is even much worse as we (unfortunately) can tell now... . It's a story over 3 episodes... 1st attempt - Russian embassy in Dar es Salam, Tanzania. The consul was surprised to see Swiss people in Tanzania applying for a Russian visa. He informed us that "You know, Russia is very far away, you really want to go there?". All small talk didn't help, he wanted an additional paper with a russian reference number. FAILURE 2nd attempt - Russian embassy in Dubai, UAE. Pretty short process. no visa if you're not resident in Dubai. Mmmh, poor travelers... - FAILURE 3rd attempt - Russian embassy in Teheran, Iran. This "rendez vous" actually lasted 3 days... . - Day 1: The guard welcomes us with "niet, tomorrow". It takes a while to just get in and explain what we need. After discussing with two different guys the consul comes in person and talks to us in French. He says that 1. he can't issue a visa if we are not resident, 2. our invitation letter is copied - he wants the original and 3. it taks min 10 days to get the visa. Pretty frustrating. We try to organize the original invitation by DHL from Moscow but this takes too long. - Day 2: We return and explain that the letter is coming. They discuss back and forth and say that they can't do anything unless the travel agent in Moscow calls the consul on his personal mobile. We leave the embassy and ask Moscow to call "Mr Dunaev". The response is quick and negative - if the embassy wants to talk to us they should call... (grrrh) - Day 3: We go there before they open and wait in front of the gate. This gives us plenty of time to discuss (which is needed). After long discussions the consul decides to issue the visa (now all of a sudden without calling Moscow...) but only 3 days later. As we lost plenty of time before, this doesn't work out as we have to leave earlier... . No chance to discuss this, even after more than 30 minutes it's 3 days or nothing. During the 3 days at the embassy we made friends with an Irani who works for a local travel agent and is at the embassy every day to get visas for his customers. We had some small talk with him every day and gave him a look at our Russia Lonely Planet which turned out to be valueable as he "saved us". He said accept the delivery time the consul offers. That's what we did. So consul himself tells you that it's impossible to get a visa faster than in 3 days. Our 'friend' then walks to one of the windows and says 'Olga..... (Russian discussion which I didn't understand) and 30 minutes later we had our visas...

Teheran

Teheran is an amazing city. First of all the size - 15 Million people and a huge area make it impressive! Then the wide range from noisy basar to efficient metro, from rich jewel museum to smoky Paykan cars, from cheap kababi places to up-market starbucks like coffee place, from hot downtown to fresh air at the mountain at the northern end of town (3900m) incl ski lift! Simply amazing.

Teheran, Iran

Esfahan

Esfahan is a wonderful city. Impressive sights, a nice market and a very relaxing river area. The Iranian people like to spend their spare time in the public parks. Consequently these parks are very busy with families having pic-nic, girls playing badminton, boys playing volleyball or anybody smoking water pipe and having tea.

Esfahan, Iran

Special things in Iran

Some things are special in Iran. Enclosed a few examples. - Toilet signs A scarf is compulsory for all women in Iran. Consequently the toilet sign also shows a women with a scarf. - Hotel registration The registration forms are two sided. The front page is a regular registration form with name, passport nr etc. This page is only used for the man. On the back page is a table with name and job with 4 lines to register the wifes... - City buses City buses are seperated in the middle with a metal screen. In front are men only while the back is reserved for women.

Special things in Iran

Shiraz & Persepolis

Shiraz is a pleasant city in the south of Iran and home to the grave of the Iranian Poet Hafez. Besides, its nice alleys and parks make it a perfect place to enjoy iranian fruit juices and ice cream at a shadowed place. Some 50 km outside of Shiraz are the ruins of the ancient city of Persepolis. The remainings are impressive and we spent a whole morning wandering around what once used to be the capital of a huge imperium.

Shiraz & Persepolis

Yazd & surrounding

The desert city of Yazd and the surrounding area has many sights. Wind towers (ancient air condition), impressive palaces and mosques, traditional tea houses with delicious food (incl camel meat), tower of silence (graveyard of Zorostrians - they put the dead bodies on top of a hill and waited till the vultures cleaned them to the bones) and much more.

Yazd & surroundings

Bam, Iran

Bam used to be one of the jewels of Iran until an Earthquake flattened the ancient mud city. Today little remains of the once impressive sight. Reconstruction is ongoing but there is a long way to go. Besides the mud city the market is an impressive place today. After the earthquake all shops were gone. Instead of reconstructing them ship containers were put creating a container town. In Bam are also a lot of refugees from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Bam, Iran

Kerman, Iran

After arriving in Bandar-e Abbas we spent the first night in Sirjian, further north before moving to Kerman by Savari (shared Peykan - Iraninan made car). Next to me was a local who's English was about as good as my Farsi... . We had an interesting "conversation" using his English-Farsi translator on his phone... . He also showed me his "best pictures" on his cell phones. Iranian women drinking alcohol, Iranian women without scarf etc. He was very proud of these pictures. After arriving in Kerman he insisted on showing us around. He organised a friend iwth a car and the two of them together showed us around Kerman and nearby sights for 4 hours and invited us for ice cream etc. We had a great time although communication was very basic. This happened already several times that locals invite you, offer you food etc. The hospitality is incredible!

Kerman, Iran

Flight Dubai to Bandar-e Abbas

There are two options to cross from Dubai to Bandar-e Abbas (Iran), boat or plane. The boat isn't recommended as the waters are known for smuggling and pirates aren't unheard of - so we took the plane. This turned out to be more challenging then expected (thanks Feras for the support). - Buying a ticket The only airline serving this link is Iran Aseman 3 times a week. Unfortunately most travel agents don't book these tickets. It took several calls just to figure out where to get it. After finally finding a place, we got the ticket, which was special as well. Hand written... . - Airport Armed with the ticket Feras brought us to the airport only to learn that Iran Aseman flies from a seperate terminal (which wasn't even familiar to the locals!). It's actually the cargo terminal which is also used by "less known" airlines (I didn't know a single airline flying from there). It's one room, no finger docks nothing. You wait for the bus to pass the cargo planes to enter your plane. While waiting you had the opportunity to brush up your geography knowledge as many locations weren't exactly familiar. Besides Baghdad and Kabul which were familiar I was struggling with Ahway, Vnukovo... - Flight The plane was ok, not much older than Katrin and me together. On board the crew (obviously with covered hair) served a good snack.

Dubai - Bandar-e Abbas

Visiting Feras & Maha in Dubai

It is crazy when you arrive in Dubai from Switzerland and it was even more crazy after coming from Zanzibar. Whether it's the huge shopping malls, the never ending construction sites, the tallest building in the world, the amazing Palm, the air conditioned bus stops (...) or the indoor skiing Dubai just has it. We had a great time in Dubai thanks to our wonderfuls hosts Feras & Maha - thanks a lot!

Dubai

Picture update

We had a fast internet connection which allowed uploading some old pics from locations where we couldn't upload. There are now pics of Hampi & Goa (India), Aksum, Lalibela and Bahar Dar (Ethiopia) and Kigali (Rwanda) under the existing text entries below.

Doha

By far the cheapest deal to get from Dar es Saalam to Dubai is by Qatar Airways. We took advantage of this and did a stop over in Doha. Doha is a booming town with an amazing amount of construction sites...! Otherwise it's pretty warm (35-40dep C) and has great restaurants.

Doha

Flying Qatar Airways from Dar es Saalam to Doha

Flying Qatar Airways from Dar to Doha was a very pleasant experience. Excellent service, delicious food, nice route over Zanzibar, Djibouti, Yemen and Riad (Saudi) by night.

It was the first time I was on a plane with TV screens showing the changing direction of Mecca.

Zanzibar (Tanzania)

It's only 2.5 h by boat from Dar es Saalam to Zanzibar but the change is immense. From high risers to narrow roads, from Christianity to Islam, from busy streets to wonderful beaches and and and. Zanzibar is amazing for many reasons. Be it the beaches, the house where Freddy Mercury was born, the delicious seafood or the spice plantations where you can see how the spice plants look like (very different to one would expect). The only downside of the island are the "papsi" (touts) which are very annoying.

Zanzibar

Dar es Saalam

Dar is the first real city we've been to for a while and we enjoyed it. You get everything you wish from the delicious croissant to Lebanese food (we tested both). During the current rainy season it can poor down and if that's the case then it turns into a second venice... . Incredible how the streets get flooded. Unfortunately they don't change to gondulas but "swim" their cars thru...

Dar es Salam

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