While I will never pretend to be a seasoned traveler by this point, after five months of backpacking through Africa and Southeast Asia, I feel like I have at least a couple thoughts worth sharing about traveling. Some may also be blindingly obvious, but I learned a lot of things in short order that seemed painfully apparent only after the fact. I meant to post this a few months ago, but better late than never.

One way tickets only.
This is important. You may save a bit of money by booking all your flights up front, but any long trip is an exercise in change, and you never know where you’ll end up, and when. As I discovered, time budgets are far more oppressive than money budgets – you can pinch pennies, but you can’t squeeze the days.

Travel alone, at least once.
Trust me. It can be boring at times, but the freedom to do exactly what you want, whenever you want, is unparalleled. Not to mention, without idle conversation to keep you perpetually distracted, you can really soak in your surroundings. Or drift through them, lost in your own thoughts. It’s safe, really. And you won’t die of loneliness, because…

When everyone’s a stranger, everyone’s a friend.
The social aspect of travel has been one of the biggest eye-openers for me. Going solo demands that you become something of an extrovert, and more often than not, people will be willing to open up if you try. Conversation blooms easily on the strength of mutual experience, and you meet an impossible number of different people, many with interesting stories to tell. At times, it’s surreal; you become soul-mates for a few hours, knowing full-well you’ll likely never see each other again. You may not even bother trading names. In the downtime, the depth of the relationships you develop contrasts with their transient nature, and it can tend to underline just how alone you are once they’re gone. But ultimately there’s no sense in regretting it – after all, you never know who you’ll meet tomorrow.

I’m worried that the inability to strike up conversations with random strangers may be the hardest aspect of readjusting to ‘real life’ after my six months on the road. Following a daily routine in the city, it’s all too easy to live strictly within your comfort zone; when traveling, you’re never completely comfortable, so something as simple as a shared language becomes a bond with those you meet. I’m hoping that until now, part of the problem has been on my end, since it takes two to create a pact of polite social solitude – but I suspect that I’ll just end up being ‘that guy’ on the subway, trying to chat up random strangers who secretly fear that I’m either hitting on them, or am generally off-kilter. We’ll see.

Travel with a friend, at least once.
I would be hard-pressed to say it’s better or worse than traveling alone, but rather completely different. A companion to chat with definitely takes some of the boredom out of the inevitable downtime while traveling, and having someone to share the special experiences with can make them even better. That, and sharing accommodation means you get way better rooms for way cheaper, and sharing dinners means twice as many delicious new flavours for the same dollar. Just make sure you’re ready for it – I’ve heard horror stories of travel ruining friendships and relationships – since you’ll definitely be spending a lot of time together.

When packing, in the battle between clothes and books, let books win.
I’ve read more this trip than at any other time in my life, and I’m savouring it, because I fear I won’t be able to keep it up once I fall back into my mundane routine. Underwear is the sole exception to this rule (and its not like it takes up much space, anyway).

Never turn down an invitation.
It’s a lot harder to regret things you’ve done than things you missed out on. (Unless you get AIDS, or something. That’s not what I mean, though)

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Unless you’re on the strictest of whistle-stop trips, sticking religiously to a travel plan just doesn’t work. If, for example, you have to spend an extra day or two in Tad Lo in Southern Laos to catch the party celebrating the annual buffalo sacrifice in a nearby village, do it. Chances are, you’ll never get that opportunity again in your life, and it’s almost always worth giving up time you would have spent at elsewhere at some static attraction – you can always go back there some other time. Similarly, if you know you’ve got a good thing going, sometimes it’s worth it to stick around instead of perpetually hoping that the next place you go to will be better.

Obey your wanderlust.
I tried to cram way too much into my African tour – I could certainly have spent a month or more in every country, but I ended up bombing through five countries in just over two months. That said, there’s a real thrill that comes with crossing a border into a new country. I found myself riding on a wave of childlike glee for the first few days in a new place, reveling in discovering the different foods, languages, traditions, architecture, money, and all the other things that give a culture its flavour.

Keep a journal.
You may think these blog updates are for you, but they’re really for me. Hence the mind-numbing detail that likely goes way beyond your passing interest in my whereabouts. Perish the thought that I ever find myself in a monotonous life without anything to drive me, but if I do, at least I’ll have these memories to look back on. Photos can also work as a trigger, but I don’t document even half of the interesting things that fill my days, and after an academic career of writing nothing but essays, I actually genuinely enjoy writing prose for once.

While it’s difficult for me to convey a real sense of landscape in a 4:3 photograph, rather than a panorama (it will probably take me a week to stitch together the dozens of them that I’ve taken), I’ll do my best here.

The view from the Sirimon Gate, with the tiny peaks in the distance.

Partway up the trail to the first camp, sighting down the electrical poles leading to a meterology station partway up the mountain.

Day 3 (which was really Day 2), up to Shipton’s Camp.

The goal.

The moon over the flag planted on Point Lenana, 4985 m up.

Dawn’s greeting. Not exactly the most visibility, but it was exhilarating in its own right.

Note the snot and frost in my beard.

Apparently there’s some pretty hardy flora up over 4500 m…

The first day of descent down the Chogoria Route completely stunned me with its beauty.

Dancan, my guide/porter. He carried half my stuff, in addition to his own equipment. While he claims it’s policy for him to carry it himself when there’s only one client, but I suspect he just wanted to get a bigger cut of the wages (undoubtedly meagre) by not hiring an addition hand. He was a nice enough guy, considerate and reasonably knowledgeable, but our conversations never really went anywhere, so I was glad enough to spend most of the time admiring the scenery in silence.

The last day dawned with so much promise. There are no pictures from that point on. In retrospect, I probably should have taken a picture of the dorm room back at Milimani with all my things spread out to dry on every possible flat surface. It was actually pretty funny, once I’d accepted it.

So my trek on Mt. Kenya was a pretty incredible experience. It was at times truly spectacular, and at others, one of the worst physical and mental tests of my life. This is the longest and most in-depth journal I’ve yet posted, since it made a pretty dramatic impression on me, and has been an unforgettable climax to my time in Africa, for better or worse.

Day 1
The first day, in (immediate) retrospect, was something of a waste. When I was told that it would be spent in Nanyuki town (near the Sirimon Gate), in order to ‘acclimatize,’ it didn’t quite sink in that I would be doing no trekking whatsoever, so my 5-day itinerary would really only be 4 days. The elevation in Nairobi is around 1500 m, while Nanyuki is only about 2100 m, while the gate is nearly 2600 m, so the idea of using the town to help prevent altitude sickness is a bit of a joke (though it most definitely lets the tour company save money on park fees, charged daily).

In any case, staying in Nanyuki did give me the opportunity to try some local Kenyan fare. I took my break from vegetarianism in order to try the local flavours whereever I’m traveling, and I would have been remiss in visiting Kenya without having some nyama choma. Nyama choma is essentially just barbecued hunks of animal, sold by the kilogram. The server cut up a giant piece of beef into bite-sized chunks in front of us, then poured out a little mound of salt in front of each of us to dip the pieces into. You eat it with the staple carb of your choice (in our case, chapatis). From my veggie perspective, it’s not really any more ridiculous than the Korean BBQ that I’ve enjoyed in the past, but that’s not saying much. At least the meat’s local and organic, right?

Besides the food, there wasn’t really anything to do in Nanyuki. I spent a little bit of the afternoon visiting in a village hut with some relations of my guide (the only real time I’ve spent with more rural locals), but beyond that, I read Lovecraft and had an early night. Maybe for the best, since I still had something of a cold (though it lingered with me to some extent throughout the trek).

Day 2
The trek started, in earnest, sometime around noon, after we took lunch outside the wind-whipped Sirimon Gate, with the tiny peaks of Mt. Kenya visible through breaks in the clouds in the far distance. The first day is an easy uphill walk along a dirt road for 9 km to the Old Mose’s Camp, and took about 3-4 hours. The vegetation transitioned from grey, gnarled old-growth forests to scrubby, yellow brush as we moved up. At one point, some porters up ahead of us threw down their bags and leapt to the side of the road; apparently they’d spotted an elephant, and were taking cover. There was certainly enough evidence of their presence from the mounds of grassy dung, though we didn’t actually see any.

The first base camp was only around 3300 m up, but I’d obviously spent far too long on the Tanzanian coast, because by the time the sun was setting, I was chilled to the bone, and had to put on my wool gloves. Despite having no feeling in my toes, I slept surprisingly well despite the shabby camp dorms (though the fact that there were mattresses, however ratty, on the mountain impressed me a bit).

Day 3
We woke up not too long after dawn, took breakfast, and started the hike to the second base camp, Shipton’s, at 4200 m. Our route took us up and down steeply sloped mountain valleys for 14 km, past all kinds of bizarre plants (Kenyan Highland Cabbages? Sirimon Spire Pineapples? Tufted Pickle Weed? I haven’t a clue) that grew inexplicably larger the higher up we got, to completely unexpected proportions. The whole trek took 6-7 hours, and by the 5 hour mark or so I started to flag before we ate lunch next to a glacial river.

The meals on the trip were simple, but the portions were generous in the extreme – I would be surprised if I was eating fewer than 5000 calories in a day, though I was burning it all. A sample day’s meals might include:

Breakfast: 3 pieces of fried bread, one plain piece to eat with the fried eggs, a sausage, 3 pancakes, and fruit (usually a banana, some passion fruit, and mango or orange slices), plus tea, coffee, or hot chocolate.
Lunch: 3 or 4 sandwiches with an avocado spread including onions and tomatoes, more fruit, and some sugary, concentrated orange drink.
Snack: A large plate of biscuits, with popcorn or home-fried donuts. Lots of tea.
Dinner: Thick oxtail soup and bread, giant servings of potatoes, vegetable stew, several pieces of fried fish, and dollops of local spinach-like greens, followed by fruit for dessert. More tea.

Shipton’s Camp is directly below the base of Mt. Kenya’s three main peaks, with astonishing views when the clouds broke. Despite the altitude, it was warm enough while the sun shone, but the temperature quickly plummeted after dark. High mountain winds whipped through the valley, like the African Gods on the peak were bellowing pagan warnings at us silly interlopers.

Despite the truncated 4-day route, I was quite lucky that I didn’t suffer from my rapid climb, like some of the others doing the trek. I drank prodigious amounts of water and tea (though the latter was as much to warm my hands as stave off altitude sickness) and took rehydration sachets, and it seemed to work, since I had only a very mild headache before I took a brief nap in the afternoon.

Since we were challenging for the summit around 3:30 in the morning in order to reach it by sunrise, we retired for the night around 9:00, though between the cold, the thin mountain air, and the anticipation, no one slept very well, and I snatched only a few hours of sleep.

Day 4
Bundling up in three pairs of socks, two long-sleeve shirts, two hoodies, my wind/rain shell, hat and gloves, we had a light breakfast of tea and a few biscuits, then started our climb to the peak, Point Lenana. Neither me nor my guide had headlamps, so we had only the light of the full moon filtered through the morning mist to guide us. I relied heavily on my walking sticks, scrambling up the scree slopes, the low visibility helping me to focus on planting one foot in front of the other. It was a rather surreal experience, with exertion, altitude, and the impossibly subtle gray-blue palette of the night lending a dizzy determination to the climb, with no sense of passing time. When one other hiker, a zealous Dutchman named Manuel, and his guide came to overtake us, wearing headlamps, it actually made seeing much more difficult, since the erratic contrast of light and shade were confusing. As we got closer to the top and persistent snow started to become visible underneath the boulders, we actually needed to stop for a few minutes, since we had climbed too quickly, and would reach the freezing, unsheltered peak before dawn. About fifteen minutes before dawn, as crepuscular light began to diffuse through the dense mist, I finally started to get some sense of the terrain I’d been scrabbling up. Painted in gray scale, the frost-tinged boulders and gravel looked like an unreal moonscape, completely unlike anything I’d seen before. Near the top, we abandoned our packs and started the final stage of the summit climb, scrambling up and over huge, shear rocks.

Manuel and I were the first climbers to reach the top that morning. Point Lenana, the only peak of Mt. Kenya that can be reached without technical climbing, is 4985 m above sealevel. While the morning dawn was obscured by clouds, it did little to dampen our giddy elation of having met the mountain’s challenge. The clouds moved quickly, however, offering stunning bursts of sunlight and tantalizing glimpses of the higher peaks, the permanent glaciers, and the surrounding countryside, including Mt. Kilimanjaro, hundreds of kilometers in the distance. My fingers froze stiff from trying to snap photos of the stunning scenery, with no shelter from the frosty winds.

I have no idea how long we spent on the peak, but all-too-soon we were beginning our descent. In the morning light, the scenery transformed completely, moon rock becoming brown, only dusted with frost. The way down was much harder than the climb up, as I slipped down loose gravel, losing my footing all too easily and hammering my joints with every step. Finally, crossing past gorgeous glacial tarns that had been invisible in the dark, we arrived at Minto’s Hut, at 4300 m, on the other side of the mountain. We had traveled 12 km and ascended and descended 800 vertical meters before breakfast. The remaining 16 km in the day’s hike took us along the Chogoria route. While there must be more beautiful places in the world, I would need compelling evidence to prove it to me – nothing in my life thus far can compare with the sight of the Gorges Valley yawning before me, with blue skies and rolling green hills in the distance, and the jagged rock of Mt. Kenya brooding behind me.

The brilliance of this day, which ultimately took us to the park gates, stood in stark contrast to what would come next.

Day 5
My first rumblings of discontent occurred when I found out that I would not be staying in the self-contained (hot-water equipped!) bandas as I’d been told originally, but would instead be spending the night at the adjacent campsite, in a tent that was too small for me to stretch out completely. Even that wouldn’t have bothered me, had I not woken up with my head in a puddle around 4:30 in the morning. It had started to rain, and my tent evidently leaked around the zipper gasket. I spent a little bit of time reorganizing my things to get them out of the rain, tried to shift my position, but as the rain started to seep through my sleeping bag, I decided to get up. The cook was already starting to prepare the morning’s meal, and I think that they could tell from my expression that it would be a good idea to get a cup of coffee into my hands as soon as possible to occupy me.

I was actually in good spirits by the time we set out. The rain had been intermittent that morning, and I saw no reason to assume it would be otherwise the rest of the way (this was the dry season, after all), so I didn’t even bother to put on the rain trousers I’d rented in case of bad weather. The rain was relatively light at first as we started the final 32 km push to Chogoria village, along a dirt road through temperate bamboo rainforest.

It rained harder, and the dirt road rapidly became a slippery river of mud. After about two hours, I was thoroughly sick of the rain, and quite ready for it to stop. I was soaked but not saturated, and so if the sun had come up at that point, I feel like I could have entertained some hope of drying out by the time we arrived. Soon, however, my boots had completely soaked through, so with every step water sloshed around my socks. As the third hour progressed, I was actively in the process of hating life. The only saving grace was conversation with a British traveler named Andy – without something to keep my mind off the slog, I’m not sure I could have made it. By the fourth hour, the entire affair had moved beyond miserable, to the point of being completely, comically ludicrous – so while the physical discomfort intensified, we were at least able to joke about it, slightly deliriously. I barely even bothered avoiding the puddles – I would swear, reflexively when I accidentally slipped into one, but I soon found that the sensation was the same as stepping on the drier portions. At some point we passed a Land Rover that was quite stuck in the mud. At about the fifth hour, the forest opened up, the scenery began to change and we saw the first hints of civilization. I bought a handful of bananas for 4 cents (our first break, though we didn’t sit) at a roadside shop, and finally, the torrential rain stopped. While we saw more signs of life, the roads became much worse – where before there had usually been at least some hard clay to walk along in between the rivers, here the road degraded into a slippery, sticky morass. The sunlight and change of scene brought an end to the monotony, which actually made the remaining hour more difficult. The roads went from terrible to worse, so that progress was slow, drunken stumbling, and the rain would sporadically start up again to spite us.

Finally, we made it to our destination in Chogoria village, where we would stop for lunch before the matatu ride home. It had taken us something over six hours to traverse 32 km, without breaks, in uninterrupted, pouring rain. I had entertained some meager hope that some of my things would be dry, but mostly I had completely avoided thinking about it. When I finally had a chance to open up my bags to find something dry to change into, it was a bit like a kick in the stomach as I realized that quite literally every single possession I had brought with me to Africa was now wet. Clothes, books, journals, papers, all were soaked through with the oppressive, penetrating moisture from 6 hours of torrential downpour. It seemed so cosmically unfair that after what I’d just gone through, that the hits kept coming. The ziploc bags that I kept my electronics in, thankfully, saved my laptop and cables, and my camera had been at my belt under my rain jacket the whole time, but anything paper was largely ruined. It hadn’t even occurred to me to leave some of my things back in Nairobi – I didn’t have anything to put them in, and wasn’t sure of a secure place to keep them, so I thought storing a pile of assorted valuables would be more trouble than it was worth. It was an egregious error in judgment, but no one could have foreseen the extent to which we had been soaked – according to my guide, in seven years of trekking, something similar had only happened to him three times.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in a rather foul mood, and after a few tentative attempts at consolation, my guide quickly learned to leave me alone. The five hour matatu ride home didn’t help (the ride to Nanyuki had taken just over 3 hours). At one point, after an interminable time spent with my knees pressed against the seat frame in front of me, crushed against the side window bar by an immensely fat woman, and needing to visit a toilet, I asked my guide how far we were from Nairobi; I nearly snapped when I heard that we were still two and half hours. I spent some time reading Lovecraft, ignored my bladder, and calmed down a bit. The whole miserable joke that the day had turned into came to another head when our matatu ran out of gas and stopped at the side of the road, but I took it as a blessing, a chance to stretch my legs, piss, and reshuffle our positions on the matatu, and my mood improved. Eventually we made it back to Nairobi, I got back to my hostel, took inventory of my things (unsticking each individual page of the brand-new-but-ruined SE Asia Lonely Planet that I still needed for the next three months), had a hot meal and a beer, chatted with some of the other travelers, and actually managed to feel normal again.

At any other time in my life, I can’t imagine enduring what I did that morning. Never before had I been faced with such an extreme physical and mental trial, and in other circumstances would simply have said, “Fuck it!”, stopped for a hot drink somewhere, and called for a ride. But here in Africa, on a mud road, many miles from anything, I knew that I was the only one who could help myself. No one else could help relieve the pain in my shoulders – they were carrying their own loads. No one else could take me to my destination – as we’d seen, the roads were completely impassible to 4WDs. There was nothing I could do but walk on, and bear it. I’ve made mention, half-jokingly, in previous posts, of building character, but this was the kind of dramatic, traumatic, daunting experience that builds character. Before in my travels, I had found myself dealing with discomfort that would have driven me mad in Canada, all without complaint, simply because I had no one to complain to. This last death march brought that feeling to a final, climactic head. I would never, ever repeat the experience willingly given the choice – but having done it, I really do feel like I’m a better person for it.

That’s life.

My last night in Moshi, I realized with some glee that my trip to Nairobi would be the last time I’d need to take a bus in Africa. Hubris! The African transit Gods, sensing my smug satisfaction, decided to mete out their wrath, dashing any hopes of a pleasant journey. I had been unable to book a direct bus from Moshi to Nairobi (though they do exist, and take about 6-7 hours), so I needed to first take a shuttle from Moshi to that den of Tanzanian iniquity, Arusha. I had been told that there were plenty of buses connecting with Nairobi, but the bus that I ended up on was somehow the most local of local buses (except for price, of course - I found out that the mzungu price I paid was nearly double the going rate). Dangerously overloaded and crowded, slow and rattly, the bus took hours to fill up, and once underway, it stopped interminably to take people on and let them off. And then we got a flat tire, in the middle of the driest stretch of highway I’d ever seen, as dump trucks drove to and fro around us, generating even more dust. It took forever to get organized following the stop at the border, and on the Kenyan side we were stopped for extended stretches by police no less than three times. We began letting people off around sunset, in the industrial parks surrounding Nairobi – cement factories are a bit less scenic than unspoiled savanna. Finally, we got into Nairobi at almost 8:00, completing (or so I thought) the 12 hour fiasco. As it turns out, even riding in a taxi in Nairobi on a Saturday night is an intense experience. The traffic is insane, with drivers lurching jerkily into any available spot – at one point, we actually traded paint with a bus. No one stopped – it seems they’re used to it. At another junction, some locals apparently didn’t like the spot that we were sitting waiting to turn, and hammered on our doors and the hood of the taxi. I had assumed that tales of Nairobi at night were overblown…it seems not.

Normality finally set in once I arrived at Milimani Backpackers, which is a pleasant enough hostel in a suburb just west of the city centre. I wandered into town the next day to see what the city is like, was impressed by the huge central park in the downtown core, and was able to conveniently book a Mt. Kenya trek for the next day, thinking that Nairobi maybe wasn’t so bad after all. This impression was quickly shot down, as I sat down for a cup of tea with a friendly man who had mentioned his intentions of studying at the University of Guelph.

The man soon mentioned the predicament he was in (supposedly, he had been a student in Harare, Zimbabwe, and had been blacklisted, forcing him to flee the country or be ‘disappeared,’ presumably) and the money that he of course need to rectify it. Conveniently, scarce minutes later, two other men sat down at the table posing as Kenyan Armed Forces, suggesting that the man I had been consorting with was a terrorist. I instantly smelled a scam, but all the same, I was a little bit worried about how deep police corruption might run when it came to scamming bribes out of mzungus. The first man was, of course ‘arrested’ and led outside, while I was given the 3rd degree. I was cooperative enough in describing, quite clearly, how I had nothing to do with anything, but I made sure to demonstrate early on that I had no reason to believe in his apparent authority, roundly refusing to show him my passport when he requested it. At that point, I ignored any connections they may have tried to draw between me and my erstwhile companion, and basically told them quite flatly that I was going to pay for the tea and get on with my life. Amazingly (supposedly since I hadn’t given the man any money, so there was nothing to link me to him except idle conversation), I was thus able to extricate myself neatly from the scam without paying for anything but the (5x overpriced!) tea. Oh, Nairobi.

I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring some more, and visited the Railroad Museum, which was actually quite interesting. I’m not sure whether I was supposed to wander into the old cars that were sitting outside, but no one was there to stop me, nor was there any signage to the contrary, so I went for it. I also dropped by the National Museum, which is by far the best natural history museum I’ve come across in Africa (for what that’s worth), but was also blindingly expensive. Nice enough, but I was getting a bit antsy, and didn’t spend too long. I arrived back at Backpacker’s towards the end of the day, with a bit of a sunburn, in time to hang out with some of the other travelers and enjoy some pizza for dinner.

Mt. Kenya for 5 days, starting tomorrow.

I ended up waiting two days in Dar es Salaam to see if my ‘throat infection’ would get better, since I wasn’t optimistic about the medical facilities in the Usambara Mountains, should it turn out to be anything worse. I’d only planned on one down day, but I’d talked to a couple bus companies and found that the buses to Mombo, the transit town near Lushoto on the main road to Arusha, left (very) early in the morning, so I wanted to give myself a little bit more time. As it turns out, not only do buses from Dar’s Ubungo bus terminal leave direct for Lushoto all day, but my sore throat turned out to be the advance symptom of a particularly nasty cold (I think African doctors just love to give out antibiotics for everything), so I would have been just fine spending my down-time in a more interesting locale. I actually would have preferred the throat infection, since the antibiotics would have cleared me right up – as it stands, I’m now sick with a cold just as my last days in Africa tick down, and I still want to climb Mt. Kenya. In addition to the downtime in Dar, another day was wasted in transit to Lushoto – the bus (which, being a mzungu, I was of course overcharged for) was supposed to leave at 11:00, but as always, we ended up leaving when we had more people aboarc than seats, at quarter to 2:00. To try and distract myself from the discomfort of having a 70L backpack in my lap for 6 hours, I occupied most of my trip reading (with nothing to do but read, I managed to burn my way through another 1000 page book in just over three days), but the last part of the trip once we turned off the main road towards Lushoto took us through some rather stunning scenes along curvy mountain roads.

Lushoto is a sleepy little town nestled in the lushly-wooded Usambara mountains. It does get tourism from hikers, so the guides make sure to latch onto the mzungus coming off the buses, but on the whole, the people are nice and unpretentious, and food and accommodation are cheap. The climate is also much nicer than Dar, though it gets downright chilly at night. In all ways, it was a welcome breath of fresh air from the Coast. I’ve found that in areas where tourism is widespread, Zanzibar especially, my interactions with the majority of locals is inevitably soured – people become persistent, pushy, and they develop a comfortable familiarity with lying and cheating in order to capitalize on the endless supply of mzungus, all of whom seem to have endless money to burn. That isn’t to say that everyone in Zanzibar was bad, but it can be so frustrating having to sift between the well-meaning and the snake-tongued that it ultimately becomes easier just to assume the negative default and ignore everyone, which is unfortunate.

Were I in better health, I think I would have loved to have spent at least another day or two in Lushoto, hiking the surrounding mountains and forests. As it stood, I spent my one day on an easy amble up to the Irente viewpoint. I got a late start, and had probably wandered (at my leisurely pace, taking in the scenery and the mountain air) for almost two hours before I made it to the Irente Farm, where I stopped for a meal. They’ve developed a lunch that I suspect is quite irresistable to most of the outdoorsy mzungus who make it to their door – rye bread (in Africa!), farm-fresh cheese (in Africa!), quark with herbs, sweet, coarse fruit jam, vegetables, and a jug of fresh pineapple juice. I had packed some chapatis for lunch, and was only planning on buying a little cheese for my picnic when I got there, but I splurged, and it was worth it.

I’d lost my bearings a bit when I’d taken the shortcut up to the farm (not that I really knew where I was going in the first place), so I asked one of the idlers hanging around the shop which direction to head. Smelling money, he of course decided to show me the way himself, presumably hoping that I’d ask him to take me somewhere else afterwards. He was nice enough, but I really prefer to be alone when I’m hiking – when you’re with a guide, it’s far too easy to miss out on the broader scope of the walk, as you zero in on following them. Oddly, I think it’s when you’re farthest from everything, at the times when you are most completely alone, that you’re the least starved for company; nature offers better conversation than the idle chit-chat that can be enjoyed with strangers.

Unlike some destinations that might give a hint of their splendour before you the arrive, the Irente viewpoint shocks you with its drama when you come, suddenly, upon it. Jagged, forested mountains rise on either side of you, while several hundred meters below the cliff, the entire countryside is spread out before you. Towns, farms, roads, and woods in the plain beneath you all lose any sense of scale or proportion, flattened like a painting by the sheer distance and space.

While my pseudo-guide didn’t bother me with conversation and seemed content to lay around for as long as I felt like sitting there, I really just wanted some time alone with my thoughts, and so I dismissed him as politely as I could, to his obvious disappointment. Eventually, a few tourists and another guide came up to the viewpoint and shattered its spell for me, so I followed them back to town for a while before falling back by myself again. We came across two chameleons. In town, I spent some time watching the locals play soccer, and then slowly strolled back to my hotel. On the way, two children sprinted by, pulling behind them cardboard boxes with little wheels and (sort of) square holes cut into the sides so that they looked like buses. It was pretty adorable.

En route to Kenya, I could stop in either Moshi or Arusha, so I decided on the former, hoping that I could at least catch a glimpse of Mt. Kilimanjaro. It turns out that the perpetual clouds tend to obscure any views during the day, but you can see it in the evening and early morning. Mt. Kili is actually a little bit anticlimactic; it is absolutely enormous, but because that enormity is so uniform - it’s squat, old, and rounded - it’s not a very intimidating mountain. The bus ride here in the morning was relatively uneventful, though by the fourth repeat of the cassette of terrible Afripop tunes, I’d developed a bit of a twitch as my mind started to destroy itself.

Tomorrow, Nairobi, and from there, Mt. Kenya, which is looking like it may be my final adventure on this continent. I can hardly believe I’ve got barley more than a week left here before I’m off to Asia. How time flies.

As is often the case with travel, I’ve found that I’ve read more in the past six weeks than I had in the six months preceding it, without the distractions of normality to fill my time. Having read nothing but non-fiction for years, I’d also forgotten the joys of good fiction, that can make the truth sing more sharply than the mere statement of facts. The last two books that I read on my trip, “The Famished Road,” by Ben Okri and “A Fine Balance,” by Rohinton Mistry were both excellent, and the similarities and differences between the two provide an interesting comparison.

“The Famished Road” takes place in rural Africa around the time of independence (while I am not sure when it took place in Nigeria, most of East Africa became independent in the early 1960s), though none of the details surrounding time and place are stated explicitly, leaving the reader to draw clues from the gradually expanding context. The story is presented in the first person, through the eyes of a child. Okri’s prose is spare and poetic, and the imagery is fantastical, seamlessly weaving together the realities of poor village life with the rich colour of African myth. The departures into the abstract imagery of the spirit world are occasionally confusing, but the writing is beautiful enough that you never mind. The introduction of politics into the plot are the first definite hints as to the timeline, and the themes of political alienation, bully violence, and grinding poverty provide a striking contrast to the fantasies of the other half of the narrative.

Where “The Famished Road” is whimsical and airy, both in style and the plot, “A Fine Balance” is anything but. Taking place during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency act in mid-1970s India, Mistry offers us an utter matter-of-fact glimpse at the atrocities of the period. Rampant government corruption, police brutality, inter-caste violence, involuntary sterilizations, bulldozed shanty-towns and forced labour camps, all against the backdrop of crushing poverty are described without embellishment or the overwrought bombast of editorial – they simply are. Mistry paints a portrait of daily life among the homeless and impoverished with subtlety and humanity, creating such immersion that any commentary beyond the descriptions would be unnecessary, even crass. But the book would be impossible to bear were it nothing but gloom, and the glimmers of hope, the resilience of spirit, and the moments of harmony between family and friends sprinkled throughout the book are so beautiful that it makes everything that follows all the more heartbreaking. I was reminded of Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” - each time the characters are given a tenuous thread of hope to grasp, it is ripped away from them before long, and the situation grows worse than ever, the narrative proceeding in a lurching, downward spiral. While the subject is not always easy, the writing is completely captivating and eminently readable – when packing, I had hoped its 800 pages would keep me occupied for weeks; I ended up finishing it in less than four days.

In both cases, I find that I took far more from the books reading them here in Africa than I would have back home. As with “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” that I read whiling away time in Burundi, “The Famished Road” perfectly suited the mood at the time, my setting lending further richness to the words. I certainly caught many more of the allusions to everyday life and food in the developing world, having never been exposed to them until now – references to sugar cane juice, chapatis, or village staples brought a little smile to my face. Likewise with the descriptions of the sad ubiquity of corrupt politics, inequality, and gang justice that remain too-familiar throughout this region, even now.

While I know that none of you people in the real world have time for such idle pursuits as literature (I certainly didn’t - the Internet beckons!) I have to heartily recommend both books. You may even be able to get a little dose of culture shock from them, without having to spend two months in East Africa.

The night before I left Stone Town, I spent some time with a Kiwi couple, and we ended up chancing upon a restaurant with live Taarab music, a Zanzibar institution that I’d resigned myself to missing out on. The ambiance was fantastic – rich, traditional decorations, low tables, and cushions to sit on while we sipped our drinks. We got the impression that the waitress was irked that we were taking up a table and not buying expensive dinners, but she gave up her not-quite-subtle hassling after a little while.

So my last day in Stone Town was not exceptionally pleasant. It was mostly spent wandering, but I was not feeling great, and the heat was absolutely oppressive. I did, however, run into my dentist, of all people, which was an interesting surprise. Small world.

The ferry ride back home was a welcome reprieve and a chance to rest (that is, when not watching the fine selection of brutal action films. On the way to Zanzibar, it was such early-90s Jean-Claude Van Damme classics as “Hard Target” and “Double Impact,” and on the way home it was the newest “Rambo” movie, a pleasant vision of SE Asia).

When I got to Dar, it took a while to find accommodation due to the exodus of New Years mzungus from Zanzibar. After finally getting a room, I decided it would be prudent to wander up to a medical clinic and get myself checked out. While I’m sure that 99% of the time it’s nothing, when in Africa, that other 1% can be particularly nasty.

Being a private clinic, it seemed pretty much just like any other urgent-care clinic I’ve been to in Canada (except that at the end of the day, I was about $35 poorer). After the full blood count and malaria smear, the verdict seems to be that I have a throat infection, so I’m going to chill out for another day or so in Dar es Salaam to see if it improves with the antibiotics. It’s frustrating that it’s happening now, just as time is running out and there’s still so much I want to do, but at least it’s nothing major. After this, I’m planning on making my way up to Lushoto in the Usambara mountains, on my way to Nairobi via Arusha. I’ve had enough of sweaty beaches, so Tanzanian highlands seem like a good change of locale.

My last day in Stone Town before New Years was spent, much as predicted, wandering the city, sampling food, and snapping photos.

For transit up to Nungwi, I decided it would be more convenient just to join on with a private van for a little bit more money so that we at least knew we’d have accommodation at the other end (the touts get commission from the resorts), and that way we wouldn’t need to haul our backpacks around for too long, either. In organizing that trip, I learned an important lesson – never pay for anything in advance. The sketchy tout who I worked out my deal with directed me to a van in the morning, coincidentally, the same one some friends I’d met in Dar were going in. He kept hassling me to try and arrange a return trip (for more money in advance) or to lend him some cash, so I was happy to see my friends and get him out of my hair – I only learned once we got there that the tout had made the organizer of our trip pay him a referral fee, having told him that I hadn’t yet paid anything, so I had to pay on arrival for the actual service as well. I was a little bit pissed off, but I can take solace in knowing that it was a cheap lesson at only 10,000 Tsh, and that the tout will remain a poor, pathetic leech despite his swindling. And having found our way up to the beautiful beaches of Nungwi – and with a room for New Years, when almost everywhere else was booked up – it would have been difficult to stay upset, anyway.

On New Year’s Eve, we woke up early to go snorkeling off the Mnemba Atoll. The company we organized our trip with seemed to have the slowest boat of the whole lot, which might have been frustrating if it wasn’t so enchantingly exotic – a hand-built dhow. While an outboard motor was our main source of power, we hoisted sail when we were out farther from shore where the winds picked up and the deeper waters got choppy. The contrast in the faces of terrified tourists and the nonchalant crew was pretty amusing to watch as the dhow pitched and rolled and large waves broke over the bow. It probably took us almost two hours to get to the island, watching more modern, smaller boats speed by, but we took it as part of the charm, and a fun opportunity to watch seasoned sailors work their craft.

I had been rather nonplussed with my introduction to snorkeling, off a beach in Cuba. My mask and snorkel had been leaky, and while there were some fish and the odd colourful invertebrate, it was still a bit of a treat every time you saw something. It certainly didn’t do anything to prepare me for a coral reef. From the moment I first put my face underwater, I was immersed in a world of exotic life the likes of which I’d only seen in Discovery documentaries. Everywhere there was colour – corals, anemones, crustaceans, fish of all shapes and sizes. Simply breathtaking. Along the edge of the reef as it plunged further into the depths, there were tempting glimpses of other wonders to see – I envied the divers. I’m now very tempted to get myself some diving training and a certificate in Thailand when I’m on that side of the world.

Our lunch on the boat was another highlight – big portions of fresh barbecued tuna (which we’d watched the crew cut up and clean on the way over) seasoned with garlic and ginger, along with coconut rice, salad, and sweet, delicious pineapple. Simple, but probably the nicest meal I ate in Nungwi (especially compared to the horrifically overpriced mzungu fare at all the beach resorts).

The rest of the day we relaxed and I took a brief nap before setting off for the big New Years party at Kendwa Rocks, fuelled by Red Bull, Konyagi (a cheap local booze that was surprisingly not-horrible and tasted vaguely like gin), and Safari lager. We partied, danced and made merry on the beach until about four in the morning, then haggled with a disagreeable taxi driver and made our way back home to pass out.

The next day I woke up shockingly intact, even in time for the continental breakfast, though I went back to bed afterwards. Later in the afternoon, however, my condition deteriorated a bit, and I suffered my first intestinal upset in earnest (which, disappointingly, I probably need to attribute to the mediocre local lunch I ate rather than the previous night’s festivities). I chilled out for a bit and burned through a couple hundred pages of ‘A Fine Balance’ before I decided I needed to at least do something with my day, and took a walk up the beach to snap some photos. I passed the locals hammering away at the dhow-building yards, the partially-completed boats like the skeletons of great wooden fish in varying states of decomposition. Kids were frolicking naked in the ocean, or playing with impromptu toys fashioned from string and tourists’ discarded water bottles. At the end of the strip of beach was a little enclosed lagoon that had been turned into a sea turtle sanctuary. There were dozens of turtles inside – many had been caught in fisherman’s nets, and were being nursed back to health (and sexual maturity – at the age of 30!) before returning them to the wild. Some of them were quite large, and it was fun watching them greedily chomp at the clumps of seaweed we tossed them. I was invited to touch them, and I was surprised by how hard and bony their heads were, while their necks were wrinkly and leathery. The smaller ones were kept in a separate reservoir apart from the main one, and I had a chance to pick one up (I was a bit hesitant, but curiosity overcame it – it seems to me that only in Africa would some random shmoe be able to heft an endangered species).

I was getting tired of the overpriced accommodation and food at the resorts, and I’m not one for prolonged beach vacations, so I took the dala-dala back to Stone Town yesterday, slept and chilled out for the rest of the day while my little bout with stomach bugs ran its course.

Today I took a spice tour, where we bussed around the island a bit and visited a spice plantation where we got to see where many of the most significant fruits and spice crops are grown. It’s really fascinating to see, taste, and smell the plants and see how they’re harvested before they arrive in little ground-up parcels. We were given a little cone of a palm leaf to carry around fresh spices (though given my timeline for the rest of the trip, I won’t be able to keep them). I tried climbing one of the coconut trees, as the locals do, with my two feet bound together in a figure-eight of rope to provide traction while you hug the tree and hop up - it is much, much easier said than done. Lunch was simple and good, a home-y tasting meal from the Swahili kitchen - I was hoping for some more dramatic flavours, but given that it needs to cater to all, I’m not surprised, and it was enjoyable nonetheless.

After lunch, we saw a cave where the illegal slave trade was carried on after it was officially abolished in the late 1800s (it went on illegally until 1907 in Zanzibar). After that, it was a short walk to the beach (I believe it was near Matemwe). I hadn’t brought my bathing suit, but I swam in my underwear, just to cool off a bit. Besides snorkelling, it was actually the only time I spent in the ocean, despite having three days at the beach (the first day I’d tried, the tide was out, so it was just jutting rocks and weeds for a long ways, so I abandoned my attempt half-way).

Tomorrow I’ll grab the ferry back to Dar es Salaam and plan my next moves. With just over two weeks left in Africa, I’m debating whether I should just skip mainland Tanzania entirely and hop up the coast until I hit Kenya, where I can climb Mt. Kenya and maybe do a safari at Masai Mara. One-way tickets are the key - lesson learned.

*Happy New Years!

Stone Town on Zanzibar is probably the most surreal places I have ever been. Every single view down its endless, tortuous alleyways is worthy of immortalizing in a photograph, so rich is the character of the city. The entire place feels like an impossible anachronism – you truly wonder how it can still exist in this form, with culture and architecture seemingly so untouched by history, so distinct from anywhere else in the world. The answer, of course, is tourism, which it attracts in droves – while I’m sure part of it is that I’m on the island during the high season of Christmas and New Year’s, the main boulevards are rammed with tourists. It would shatter the fantasy a little bit, were it not so easy to avoid them by taking a turn down a random alley and getting completely and utterly lost. The street layout has no real rhyme or reason, twisting and turning, with angles and widths that are consistent only in their inconsistency. Getting lost is what Stone Town is for, and at least during the day, there’s no good reason not to – inevitably, no matter how far you walk, you will end up at the ocean, or at Creek Road, the main thoroughfare that divides Stone Town from the rest of Zanzibar Town to the East. From what I gather of the history (while I rushed through the museum exhibits at the House of Wonders with far too little time), the road was built by British colonialists to reorganize the city, separating the well-to-do in their stone houses (hence, Stone Town) from the village rabble. Whatever its original inauspicious reasons for existing, Creek Road is remarkably convenient, allowing you to wander endlessly, pleasantly soaking in the sights and sounds of this unique city so steeped in Swahili culture, without any possibility of getting truly lost (in a bad way).

As I did my second night in Dar es Salaam, yesterday I ended up eating an impromptu dinner at a cheap local place that a street tout showed me too – both times I was a little bit disappointed, expecting that it would be more flavourful given the context, but in both cases is was pretty much quintessential African food (i.e. bland but filling staples). And while local food is cheap, the balance becomes a little bit less dramatic when I let my de facto guides guilt me into buying them dinner, too. I discovered shortly afterwards that I should have held my appetite for the Forodhani Gardens night market.

The night market is yet another one of those magical aspects of Stone Town where you need to pinch yourself just a bit to reassure yourself that its really happening. After night falls, the laneway (unassuming during the day) is quickly packed full of locals preparing fresh seafood, grilled meats, soups, breads, and snacks, all by the warm glow of lantern-light filtered through the haze of cooking smoke. It’s also crammed with mzungus, so after I ordered my dessert pizza (a fried, doughy snack filled with bananas and chocolate) I spent a while chatting with different groups of travelers.

I also tried some freshly squeezed sugar cane juice. Seasoned with ginger and lime, it is absolutely delicious – comparing it to soft drinks is like comparing fresh baked cookies to packaged ones (though obviously the cane juice isn’t carbonated, but you get the analogy).

I ended up wandering over to a local bar (a hot, stuffy, slightly dingy place, but with the cheapest drinks I’ve seen on the island, and a nice character, regardless) with some Malawian Peace Corps volunteers for some Serengetis - definitely the best of Tanzania’s popular beers. Afterwards, the night walk through the twisty, intermittently lit alleys was a little bit nervous until I came to a street where I could grab a moped taxi back to my hotel. While safety is one of the disadvantages of solo travel, I’d say the more noticeable one is the you don’t always have someone to share just how special what you’re seeing is with.

Saw another museum today (Beit al-Sahel, the palace of the Sultans), and spent the rest of my morning getting lost and sampling street food. The afternoon and evening will be spent doing much the same, I think. Tomorrow morning, I head up to Nungwe, the tourist-y party beach at the northern tip of the island, where I’ll (hopefully, assuming there are still places to stay) be spending New Years and getting a bit rowdy, like the filthy mzungu tourist that I am.

There will be plenty of pics to come at some point.

So Christmas in its entirety – and then some – was taken up by a 30-hour long straight bus ride from Kampala to Dar es Salaam on the Tanzanian coast. It was by far the longest trip I’ve taken so far in East Africa, and probably on the worst roads, so considering some of my previous transit experiences in the region, I was not looking forward to it. That said, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been - Scandinavian Express isn’t cheap, but the seats were reasonably comfortable (and I actually had one to myself!) The constant bumps on many stretches of road made reading or writing pretty difficult, restricting bus-ride pastimes to staring-out-the-window, nibbling-on-bread, or the ever popular attempting-to-sleep. The three made a surprisingly good combination, and I spent a considerable chunk of the trip drifting in and out of consciousness, pleasantly surprised by new scenery every time I opened my eyes. Ironically, I had the most difficulty sleeping at night – I hadn’t realized just how cold it would get (in stark contrast to the baking heat of the days in Kenya and Tanzania during the dry season), so I didn’t think to get any extra long-sleeve clothes from my stowed pack. As it happened, the consistent jolting of the road made keeping the windows closed impossible, rattling them open within minutes and letting chilly gusts into the cabin. I did my best to sleep with my arms tucked inside my t-shirt. The last stretch during the day seemed to be on better roads, so I spent most of it window-staring or reading my Lonely Planet and pretending to memorize some rudimentary Swahili.

As much as the long transit can be frustrating, it always makes me happy when I emerge into a new country and find a totally different world waiting for me. Everything changes - the climate, the scenery, the architecture, the people, the culture, the food, the mood. As much as its nice to be able to chill out somewhere for a while, I find that before long the wanderlust sets in and I’m craving something new.

Dar is a pleasant enough city. It’s very hot, but there’s an ocean breeze. The traffic is downright placid by Kampala standards (with barely any zipping bodas!), and at least where I’ve explored in the city centre, the overall laid-back feel belies its size - it’s the biggest city I’ve yet visited. The population is more diverse than I’ve found in the rest of the region, with the addition of Arabs and South Asians into the mixture of Africans. Perhaps as a result, eating here has made me realize how much I’d missed spicing in food. I like Ugandan staples as much as the next guy, but I’m really enjoying the Indian influence here.

I spent the day wandering about. It’s well-signed by African city standards, so it wasn’t too difficult, and the core is very walkable. I visited some Botanical Gardens (where I was startled by almost stepping on a peacock!) and the National Museum, which was somewhat haphazardly organized, but has some really interesting history on the region, and the trade routes (including the slave trade) in particular.

I also wandered along the coast and headed to the fish market. Smelly, but kind of fun, and I enjoyed seeing the slightly-decrepit ships of all shapes and sizes plying the waters. I also bought my ferry tickets to Zanzibar, fending off scams from the official salesman who wanted to charge me an extra ’service’ charge. His undoing was lowering his charge after he admitted that since he hadn’t mentioned it, it was ‘his fault.’ I have to say, it gets tiresome when everyone tries to rip you off.

My sandals were also starting to come apart, so I paid a cobbler on the street corner to fix them and learned a couple words in Swahili. He also reminded me that I need to try some of the local Tanzanian beer - I think some Safari Lager is in the cards with dinner, tonight.