Malawi 2012

Journey West, Malawi.

27th January 2012, 3am

At 0300, all the alarms in my room went on; minutes later I heard the horn of taxi guy outside my house! I was all set for my journey West into Malawi! By 0330, I was at the railway station to board my train to Cuamba; about 350km West of Nampula. I was shocked to see a long queue outside the platform; no seat numbers for this train unfortunately. It only meant that the earlier you are, better are your chances for a seat! Stood in that queue for a few minutes and the guards opened the gates by 0400. I then got a chance to ask one of the guards if I was standing in the right place! Fortunately I wasn't in the right place! The second class compartments were on the other side and there was no queue!

Hopped on to the train, found myself a seat next to a window and after an hour of waiting we were on our way! It was a 350km journey but was going to take 12 hours!!! Every 10 minutes the train stopped to pick up more people at small villages! There was no station/platform or anything like that! People were just standing next to the tracks and when the train stopped, people threw their bags into the train and quickly hopped into the train! Meanwhile the vendors flocked around all the windows trying to sell food grown around that region! Every stop had different fruit or vegetable! They sold tomatoes, potatoes, onions, cucumbers, sugarcanes, mangoes, bananas, pineapples and so on! I got myself a whole sugarcane at one of the stops and spent most of my journey chewing on it! At 1730, I finally reached Cuamba. Immediately after I got off, I hopped on to a minibus going to Mandimba; border town. The road was a nightmare! 150km took over 5 hours! Found myself a place to sleep as soon as I got off the bus and got to bed before midnight.

28th January 2012, 6am

Just outside the lodge I stayed, there were many guys waiting as soon as I got out! Each one had his own type of transport; bicycles with a seat at the back, motorbikes, cars and pick-up trucks. The border gate was quite a distance from the town. So I had to pick one of them to take me there. I couldn't resist trying out the bicycle taxi! It was slow and bumpy but was fun! Within minutes the immigration was done and I was on the other side the border. Boarded a minibus to Mangochi hoping that I could get a bus to Lilongwe from there. I was amazed to see the quality of roads in Malawi! Beautiful! Even in that crappy minibus, I didn't feel a thing! As we started getting down the mountain, I got a glimpse of the lake; Lake Malawi! It was a beautiful view but didn't last long as the driver seemed to be in a hurry (and it was downhill). From Mangochi, I continued to Liwonde to catch a bus to Lilongwe. By 1600, I was in Lilongwe and within hours I had gotten myself a place to stay. For less than $8, I had gotten a huge room with a satellite connected tv, air condition and a beautiful bathroom! I then got some dinner and called it night watching a football match!

29th January, 2012

I woke up early, got ready and decided to take a walk around the neighborhood before my meeting. I felt like I was in South Africa again! To start off, there were decent roads; they were clean and the traffic seemed organized. A lot of South African retail stores were present. As I was heading back to my room, found a huge group of craftsmen. Very friendly men; they all wanted me to buy from them! They all gave a ridiculous price to start off with and after bargaining you could have found yourself a good deal!

After my meeting, I got myself the famous Malawian tea and headed to the bus station to get back to Mandimba via Liwonde. After 2hours of waiting in the bus, we headed to Liwonde. The guy sitting next to me in the bus spoke pretty good English, so I kept him busy with all my questions about Malawi. As soon as I got off the bus in Liwonde found an overcrowded minibus headed to Mandimba. I was sitting on a small platform behind the driver's seat; facing the opposite direction of the rest of the passengers and squeezed between fruit bags and chicken(alive)! Decided to rest in Mandimba for the night and head to the border in the morning. I got a room for $1.5 and it was pretty good!

30th January, 2012

I was up before sunrise; all set to leave to Mozambique. Walked to the highway and within seconds I found a mini truck going to the border. I hopped on the back of it and we started climbing up hill. It was dawn, fresh wind blowing on my face and a breathtaking view of the Lake Malawi along with the mountains and plains; it felt like I was in Nat-Geo or Discovery channel!! The lake was mighty; extended all the way into the horizon; it looked like the ocean! The view was beautiful and I'm pretty sure it will remain in my memory for a long time!
Once we crossed the mountain, we couldn't see the lake anymore! The cold wind blowing on my face started to give me an ear ache! By 0730, I had crossed the border and entered Mozambique. I waited for an hour and a half before I could find my way to Cuamba! Unfortunately, it was only an empty 8 ton truck heading that way! I really didn't want to do this! The road was a nightmare and the sun was out! I spotted a few military tanks along the road left to rust. Apparently the war was quite intense in that region and there are quite some land mines in the region which haven't gone off yet! After 5 long hours of tiring travel, I arrived in Cuamba. I headed straight to the railway station to get my ticket to Nampula. I bought a second class ticket and minutes later I decided to try my luck with the trucks/cars going that way to avoid a stay over at Cuamba as the train was on only next morning at 0530! I returned my ticket and went to the highway! After 2 hours of waiting, I found nothing! So went back to the station, but now I had lost my second class ticket also! So traveling 3rd class this time! I walked all over the town; bought some vegetables and decided to have a salad for supper! Got a room to stay for the night and tried to get some rest for the night.

31st January, 2012; 3am

Again all the alarms went on at the same time! Within minutes I got ready and walked out of my room. I then spot the customs officer that was working at Mandimba border gate standing outside his room! He was also heading to Nampula on the same train and also in 3rd class! I was just glad there was another English speaking person on the train! We walked to the station and boarded the train! Fortunately the train was not as full as I thought it would be. We got ourselves window seats and the next thing I know we are 3 hours through our journey! We picked up lots of different types fruits and vegetables from vendors standing next to the train selling it through the windows! The vendors managed to sell everything cause it was in pretty huge bags and for a price next to nothing. The passengers bought these bags with an intention to sell it in Nampula which fetches them a good price!! My window unfortunately did not have a metal grill; so it ended up being a loading entrance. Midway through our journey the train, the train started to fill up; lots of people, chicken, fruits, vegetables and roots(cassava). I had my seat and my fruits; so kept myself busy eating and got as much sleep I could! After
long eleven hours, I reached Nampula! I couldn't wait to get a hot water shower and some decent food!

Mozambique 2012; Journey up North!

Journey up North in Mozambique!

Day 1: 4th Jan, 2012; Woke up as usual in Nelspruit on the 4th morning; had planned to leave to Maputo on the 6th January. After some thinking, I decided to leave to Maputo in Mozambique that noon and go explore the city, do some stuff for a couple of days before I departed to Nampula. So I packed my bags, left to the bus station and got myself a ticket for the bus leaving at1230. The bus was delayed in Johannesburg, so arrived only at 1400. Boarded my bus and in a couple of hours we were at the libombo border post getting into Mozambique.
After a long wait standing in the queue on a hot summer day, we got all our passports stamped and continued our journey to Maputo. At 1900, my friend picked me up from the bus terminal and took me to his house; introduced me to his lovely family and we started off at the dinner table. It was clams for appetizers and a meat fondue along with pao (local bread) and piri piri sauce! After a lot of socializing, I got to bed and called it a day!


Day 2:5th Jan, 2012; After a good night's rest, I woke up fresh; all pumped up to go do my chores in the city! 0800 on the clock, we hit the road; first stop to TCO office to book my bus to Nampula.
We got there in no time luckily, but I didn't matter anyways cause all the tickets were booked until the 12th January. So I headed to the LAM office to check flights to nampula;
there were flights available, but priced approximately $550 for a one way ticket!!! I then headed back to TCO to check if they could accommodate me any earlier! When we parked there, we saw a board called Zhe Cheng Transportes; got inside the office and found only one ticket to Beira (half way to Nampula) departing that noon at 1500 and the next available bus was only on 10th. Didn't think twice about it; rushed to the forex and got my money changed to Meticais. Got back to the office and collected my ticket. We
then headed to Malawian Embassy to get myself a visa for Malawi. The guy was friendly and he agreed to give me a six months multiple entry visa in less than 3 hours; this is a miracle in Africa! I'd never expected the guy to have my passport ready by the time he had promised! At 1300, collected my passport and headed to the bus. At 1500, the bus arrived and I was surprised it see that the bus had only beds and no seats!! I managed to get myself a top bunk bed next to a window! Minutes later I dozed off to dreamland
and woke up occasionally for the pot holes in the road!
The driver stopped the bus at a gas station to fix a minor fault on the bus; this delayed us by an hour and a half! We then headed to Beira without any further delays and arrived
at Beira at 0700 on the 6th.



Day 3: 6th Jan, 2012; Got dropped off at Zhe Cheng Transportes office in Beira at 0700; found myself a taxi to the minibus (chapa) station. My friend had asked me to find a way to get to Gorongosa
(a small village on the way to Nampula, about 200km from Beira). Got into a 14 seater minibus, was quite empty when I got in. The driver said we would be leaving as soon as he filled up his bus. After 2 hours of waiting, he managed to fit in 28 people in it!!! My heart was in my mouth few minutes into the journey!; Firstly I was squeezed so hard against the wall, I couldn't even breathe well and secondly, the driver drove his minivan like a race car in need for speed game! He managed to get 300MT off me (about $11)
for a ride that was supposed to be 170MT; he said my bags were as heavy as I was! We arrived at Gorongosa at 1230 and I found my way to Mr. Hassan's shop just to find it shut for lunch! I managed to communicate to a local on the street about my situation. He took me walking into the bush and mud roads; he was asking me to follow him. I was just hoping that he would take me to Hassan's house. The kind man even carried my suitcase on his head after he saw me struggle with 3 heavy bags. After a mile long walk, we reached the house. Minutes later Hassan also arrived and we got delicious lunch! He then tried to organize me a car to get to Nampula but no one was ready to take me that far! I then stood out on the highway, few meters away from his shop trying to get myself a ride. I spoke to all the people along the pavement if they knew of anyone that was headed North! After two long hours of waiting, I saw 2 buses heading North!! I was overjoyed and so were the locals on the street! The bus stopped about 50 meters from where I was standing; sprinted all the way to the bus. Had to beg and plead the driver to take me to Nampula; after a lot of "por favor" (please in Portuguese) and a lot of locals supporting me, he agreed! Meanwhile the locals got my luggage that was in Hassan's shop about 100m from the bus! I threw my bags inside and climbed up the stairs just to see the exact same type of bus I used to hop onto in India to get to school! Ashok Leyland passenger buses used in Bangalore as public transport.
I used to complain about these buses for a 10 minute ride back home during school times. And now I will be sitting in this bus for the next 15-20 hours!! I'm going to call it a day now and get some sleep if I can!


Day 4: 0000, 7th Jan, 2012; I heard the bus stop and didn't move for a while! Mosquitos started buzzing in the bus; so decided to get off and speak to the driver. He told me that he wanted to rest until 0300 and then continue the journey. Just then a man greeted me in English and asked me where I was going! I was thrilled out of my mind to find another English speaking person! So we got to talking; he shared some of his experiences of Africa and I did too. Out of curiosity I asked him what he was doing so far up in Mozambique? He replied saying "at this time of the year,there is a lot of money here!" I didn't quite follow; gave him a few minutes and then I asked him to explain his previous statement. He then
explained to me that every year at this time he travels to this part of Mozambique in pursuit of Gold! He hand picks stones of Gold on the banks of the river downstream from the Gold identified areas! And this time of the year because of the rains in the area help his cause! Talking about all this, didn't realize it was almost 0300 and time to hop on the bus again! Just minutes after we began our journey, I managed to fall asleep; couple of hours later, I was woken up by the hopeless condition of the road!The seats and windows were rattling; bags were thrown out of the racks! The road remained bad for the next two hours of our journey! Thankfully we are back on tarred road and just about 300 km from Nampula. 1230, the bus arrived at Nampula and my friend sent me his assistant (Nasir) to fetch me! And that's how I covered around 2500 kilometers on road over 3 days.

It's almost been a week here in Nampula since I arrived and loving the experience! I've met quite a lot of people in this short while and managed to take a few walks around the town exploring it. I'm looking forward to go check out the museums here in town and also go to Ilha de Mozambique (Mozambique island) which was used as the capital of Mozambique during the colonial times by the Portugal. Thank you for your patience. I will soon update you about Northern Mozambique; until then ciao!

South Africa 2007-2011

May 30th, 2007 I flew out of Bangalore, India into Johannesburg, South Africa on South African Airways and took my connecting flight to George, Western Cape, SA. I absolutely had no clue of how things worked in this part of the world; this was my first time in Africa. I was in George to do my Commercial Pilot's Licence course. The flight school's instructor picked me up from the airport and dropped me at the crew house. It was a pretty small place about 8km outside the airport in a valley next to a lake. I know it sounds really nice, but wasn't the best place to start life in Africa. It was totally isolated from the world; for a person like me, coming from one of the busiest countries in the world, this was a little too difficult to adjust living without neighbors, satellite television and internet in the beginning. As days passed by, I adopted to the life in George. I only learnt later that George was laid back town and people all over South Africa usually consider retiring in that town; get beachfront house and play golf all day long (that was more or less the attitude of most people there). Well, after 6 months I got tired of living in a town with just one main road, two restaurants and two night clubs! I then moved to Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape, South Africa and decided to continue my course with another flight school there. This city is one of my favorite cities in the world I have seen at least. It was filled with people who got along very well regardless of color, religion and whatever it is that usually keeps people from not mingling. Apartheid, I'm sure you all have heard of that term before; I had too, but had never understood until recently. South Africa, like India has a wide range of people with different cultures; this country has a wide European influence like the British and Dutch. Generations of this influence gave way to another culture; its a mixture of African culture and European skin; they are called Afrikaaners. They are mostly animal farmers and refer to themselves as "boor". And then there are the native Africans belonging to multiple tribes who constitute to majority of the population with respect to color of their skin. There is often tension and  differences among all these people; the government currently favors the native Africans and the program is called "Black Empowerment Era (BEE)"; this has created favoritism in the government, thus affecting all the people of this country. Let me not get into details of that!!

Later in 2009 I moved to Nelspruit, Mpumalanga, South Africa and finished my course. This is the biggest town in the North Eastern side of the country; connecting Johannesburg and Maputo in Mozambique. It is a quite place; the streets aren't busy, handful of restaurants and couple of small malls; unfortunately the night life here is pathetic! By then I'd gotten used to not living in a city and had adjusted to laid back African towns. Don't get me wrong here; cities like Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban in South Africa are very well developed and extremely busy.

Well, in Nelspruit I did a lot of free-lance jobs in aviation; Taught quite a few students at the flight school and some highly experience pilots too for their Airline Transport Pilot's Licence examinations. I then managed to get a job from a guy who was willing to start a charter company; this helped me sustain financially in SA.

Later in April, 2011, I traveled to Nampula, Northern Mozambique to meet a few people and then continued to Arusha in Tanzania via Dar Es Salaam. I was there to verify an aircraft and its documents that the company was willing to buy. Arusha is a border town filled with tourist all over the place. It's one of the starting points for the legendary Serengeti safari trials and just a few kilometers away from Africa's tallest single standing mountain, Mt. Kilimanjaro. This airstrip was busy like Dubai/ Heathrow airports (slightly exaggerated)!!! Every other minute you could see a small passenger aircraft carrying about 10 people landing and taking off one after the other! The aircraft we had to buy looked amazing as we approached it! It was painted white, green and red! Looked like it was taken good care off. After verifying the logbooks of the engines, propellers and the airframe we discovered that the aircraft had engines that had done its life, the propellers had no history recorded and  after a thorough search we discovered a couple of bullet holes that were patched up on the airframe!! Apparently those were the bullet holes from the time they flew in Sudan! This happens only in Africa!!

I then drove to Kilimanjaro Airport to catch a flight to Nairobi, Kenya. I decided to meet a couple of Kenyan friends I made in Port Elizabeth. Nairobi is one city that made me feel at home!! The busy streets, local markets, the friendly people and the weather made me feel like Bangalore in Africa! My pals showed me around and got me nice Indian food the first day. The next day we went to Nairobi National Park and had my best safari so far!! Lions and lionesses walking just next to the roads, we later spotted a couple of Rhinos, Buffalo, Giraffes and so on! We then went to a restaurant that sold exotic meat; CARNIVORE! I had a 3 quarters of a kilogram platter filled with Crocodile, Camel, Ostrich and Ox meat! The next morning I took a flight back to South Africa.

Today is the last day of 2011 and I have decided to move out of South Africa and go to Northern Mozambique to explore and analyze the aviation market in and around the region. I have decided to travel about 2500 km on three buses for a duration of 2 days. Things in Mozambique are going to be much harder than in South Africa; especially cause of the language and lack of developed infrastructure. I have loved Africa from the first day I entered it and have gradually gotten used to living in this place! I'm quite prepared for this adventure up North mentally and physically with my Malaria prevention medication, Mosquito repellent sprays, Yellow fever vaccination and so on!
Soon I will be posting about my Northern Mozambique experiences...thanks for your patience!