Appointment in Zambia: A Trans-African Adventure

The journey described in Appointment in Zambia: A Trans-African Adventure, by Sara Dunn, is probably the most incredible one I’ve read.  Incredible not so much for the actual route through Africa, which was tough but not completely extreme, but because it was undertaken by a young couple from Edinburgh in 1970 in just about the most inappropriate vehicle you can imagine, with possibly the least amount of proper preparation and suitable kit.  I’m amazed that they made it in the end.

Newly married Sara and Ross Dunn set off from Edinburgh in a new Hillman Hunter car and drive south.  Their first breakdown happens in Newcastle, but isn’t serious.  They continue south, through France, Spain, Morocco, Algeria and across the Sahara.  They don’t have enough money, they have underestimated the mileage, they haven’t got essentials such as a shovel or sand ladders – and are forced to repeatedly dig their car out of drifts using tupperware!  Oh, by the way, Sara can’t drive.  Somehow they manage to get through the desert, and then Niger and Nigeria, where they skirt the Biafran conflict.  They continue east into Cameroon, the Central African Republic and eventually Uganda, just missing the start of Idi Amin’s rule, and then south through Kenya, Tanzania and finally Zambia, where Ross appears for his new job and promptly needs hospitalisation from infected kitten scratches.  For most of the journey they simply sleep in the car.  They both lose a lot of weight because they don’t really have a food budget.  They can’t afford film so have only a handful of photographs to remember the trip by.  The photograph on the front cover of the book shows a car very unsuitable for such a long journey, with a spindly roof rack (which doesn’t survive the trip) holding spare tyres.

Not once do they pay a bribe, but manage to get through numerous roadblocks and border crossings with nothing more than smiles.

The two of them were absolutely mad to have attempted such a journey in such a way, but you have to really admire them for succeeding.

Cycling without Fat Mac to Decathlon

I had to go back to Decathlon today because I realised that they’d overcharged me for the clothes I bought there on Wednesday.  I cycled the direct route – along the canal, and what a glorious track it is.

The development of the Fountainbridge area has really come along well over the past year.  It’s now quite an attractive part of town, with student flats, residential flats and a school.

Above is where, at Sighthill, the canal used to be breached.

The trip to Decathlon was much more enjoyable today without having Fat Mac complaining all the time from the rear.  The wind was twice as strong this afternoon, so even if he’d come, Fat Mac would probably have quit before reaching Waitrose.  I feel a responsibility to Fat Mac to try to get him out of his house more often, as most days he sits in his lobby thinking about death, doom and damnation, and then in the evenings he drinks in his kitchen, but it would be much easier if he wasn’t so crabbit all the time.  In fact, what he really needs is a complete character transplant.

Cycling with Fat Mac to Decathlon

I can get to the Decathlon shop from Porty almost entirely along cycle paths apart from a wee bit at the beginning through the housing estate south of Porty Golf Course.  After that, you soon get onto the old Innocent Railway and then through the Meadows which now has a bike track, then along the canal for a few miles to Sighthill, and then 200 yards down the road to Decathlon.

 

Above is a map of the route.  But today I called into Fat Mac, who lives in Stockbridge, who said he’d love to go a bike ride to Decathlon.  He’s lived in Stockbridge for 50 years, so all he had to do was get us from Stockbridge up to the canal.  Not difficult, you would have thought.  You’d have thought that he might even know a cycle path from nearby Stockbridge up to somewhere on the canal.  But when I asked him about a possible route, he grimaced for a while, said he had no idea whatsoever, then said “Ah’ll jes follow yous, Rodz.”

So I lead us along his road, past Waitrose just along from his flat, where the posh people buy their food.

“Whar the feck are weez goin’ Rodz?”

“To Decathlon.  That’s a shop.  It’s near Sighthill and the canal.”

“This is nae ra way tae Sighthill.  Ah kin get uz tae Dalry.  That’s whar ma dealer used tae live.”  Fat Mac offered, trying to be helpful.

“We can go up and over into Murrayfield, and then see how to get to the canal.”

“Rodz.  It’s always the effin same wi yous.  I could be sitting in ma lobby meditating!”  Fat Mac complained, getting more and more crabbit by the minute.

After a mile or so Fat Mac found some other things to whinge about.  “Ah’m effin caul.  They’s too much wind.  Where the feck is weez goin?”

“A shop near Sighthill” I explained again.

“Ah’s kin get uz tae Sighthill”

Now, I know that Sighthill is a relatively big place, and that Fat Mac would only know about the unsavory parts of it, so I continued to lead over past Murrayfield.

“There’s far too much traffic, Rodz.  This is an effin lousy route you’ve chosen.  I could be havin a bath and a nap.  Instead Ah’m oot in the caul and wind cycling till Ah’m knackered. Ma legs is hurtin.  Ah’ve nae been on ra bike fer a year.”

At this point, I must admit to becoming slightly flustered, what with the constant complaining from behind, so I gave up trying to get to the canal, and instead used Navigator to plot a more direct route to Decathlon.  This took us through several fairly bleak housing estates, but was a very direct route, apart from the fact that we cycled one block too far south at one point.

“Ah’m nae goin oan thon duel carriageway” Mac complained, looking ahead, so instead we took a quiet road through another housing estate.  Eventually we got onto a cycle path at Saughton.  This is when the whinging from behind reached a new high.

“Ah could hae goat uz ontae this cycle path almost from ma hoos.  Why did yeez nae say this is whar weez wiz goin? Fer feck sake.  It’s caul.  It’s windy.  Where the feck is this shoap onywaiys?”

“Two blocks west”  It turned out to be 4 blocks, but we’d cycled in a very direct route, apart from one short bitty.

“Why the feck are yous goin to ra shoap oot here.  Yeez can get stuff aff ra Internet, my daughter telt me.”

“I like to sometimes see the goods in question.”  I answered.  Anyway, Mac never stopped complaining until we got to the shop, at which time he calmed down a bit.

“This is an effin complete waste of ra day”  Mac piped up again, once we were out of the shop.  “Ah’m caul.  Ah thunk ah’ve come doon wi ‘flu.”

From the shop, it was easy to cycle 200 yards south and get onto the canal bike path, my original route, go past the edge of Sighthill, and then zoom in, the wind at our backs, all the way to Fountainbridge.

“Why did weez nae gang oot this ways, Rodz?  We should go cycling mair often.”

At Fountainbridge we had a coffee in a Swedish cafe, where Fat Mac spoke non-stop about death, doom, damnation and more of his favourite topics.

Hindu Temple parade near Varkala

We were walking along the clifftop at Varkala Beach one morning at the end of February when we noticed a poster which seemed to be advertising a parade, including elephants, at a temple.  A tu-tuk driver noticed us and said that if we came back at 4pm he could take us to the temple in question, for a reasonable price.

Well, it was too hot that afternoon to walk all the way back to the cliff, but at about 4pm I asked one of the tuk-tuk drivers who parked outside our hotel if he knew about the parade, and he said yes, he would take us there and back.  We didn’t find out the name of the temple, but it was about 20 minutes away, and just as we arrived, the parade started.  A wonderful experience – very noisy, with lots of enthusiam from the drummers, and at first it seemed chaotic, but it was actually well organised.  People with gold sashes seemed to be in charge.  We never knew what was going to appear next on the road – a giant model fish on the back of a truck, or a giant model tiger.

Click on the image above to watch a short video of the procession.

Just north of the cliff, where most of the hotels, restaurants and shops were located, was a small fishing village.

Kayaking the backwaters of Kerala

Our recent trip to Kerala was essentially in three parts.  First of all I booked the land only part of the Exodus Spice Trails of Kerala tour.  I booked flights with Travel Trolley, departing a couple of days before the start of the Exodus trip and returning two weeks after it finished.  These flights turned out to be a bit cheaper than they would have been if booked through Exodus, and the times were more convenient.  Then I added a five-day Kayaking in the Keralan Backwaters expedition through Kalypso Adventures (see the short video above) and finally booked five nights at a beach resort in Varkala.

The combination turned out to be pretty good.  I’ll write some more about the Exodus tour another time.

Kurialacherry House at Edathua

Edayadil Tharavadu

Emerald Isle Villa

The three homestays, Kurialacherry House at Edathua, Edayadil Tharavadu, and Emerald Isle, which were part of the Kalypso package, were wonderful. Homestays are a cross between a bed and breakfast and a boutique hotel, and usually there’s lots of contact with the house owner.  All three houses we stayed in had a great deal of character, and the food, which naturally featured fish, was superb.

Our room in Kurialacherry House was a converted rice store.

The kayaking was not particularly challenging because the water was calm at all times, and no spray decks were needed, but nevertheless it was really enjoyable.  It did get tricky sometimes, but this was due to the fact that some of the canals were completely overgrown with water hyacynth and other weeds.  It was also so hot that we had to look for shade where at all possible.  Having said that, on the second day we kayaked about 25kms, according to our guide, and this was definitely tiring!  In fact, due to cramp in my arms and fingers, I had to get towed the last hundred metres through the thick weeds.

Our guide from Kalypso, Vinnie, looked after us well – we would quickly have got lost without him – and there was also the support motor boat as a backup, which transported our bags to each new destination.

It was a joy to kayak the backwaters and see life going on in the villages, people doing their washing in the canals, tourist houseboats sailing past, fish being sold from canoes, and the birdlife along the banks was particularly wonderful.

One of the short stops was to look at a snake boat.  These are long racing boats which have a crew of about 100 people.

At the end of the day, there’s always a lovely meal to look forward to.

This chap cadged a ciggie from me at a shop

On the final morning, a boat taxi came and took us across the water where a car was waiting to take us to Varkala, three hours down the coast.

Incredible India

What a great holiday we had in Kerala.  Above is a video of the Exodus Spice Trails part of the trip, which involved four days walking in the Western Ghats, including an ascent of Meesapulimala Peak (2630m), then on to Madurai, Thekkady (Periyar National Park), Alleppey, where we had a terrific night on a traditional houseboat, then the beach and finally back to Kochi.

The Old Courtyard Hotel in Ft Cochin

‘Chinese fishing nets’ Ft Cochin

Old buildings near Ft Cochin

If you’ve watched The Real Marigold Hotel, a British travel documentary series on BBC One and BBC Two, you’ll know about the shop shown above.

Stasiland

This book, Stasiland: Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall, by Anna Funder, which I bought second-hand through Amazon, fell apart while I was reading it, but this did not detract from the enjoyment, if that is the correct word for it, of reading about life in the German Democratic Republic.

The GDR was the most perfected surveillance state of all time.  The Stasi had 97,000 employees, 173,000 informers and in addition many part-time informers.  This is in a relatively small country with a population of 19 million in 1948 – which declined to 16 million in 1990.  There was an informant for every 63 people.  The Stasi had files on virtually everyone, for no-one was trusted.

Funder talked to various people who experienced life in the GDR, and also, in several cases, about their life after the Wall came down.  She interviews Herr von Schnitzler, who had broadcast anti-capitalist TV programmes in East Germany.  He was unrepenting, and obviously still a maniac.  Von Schnitzler was not pro-GDR or pro-Stasi, but simply anti-capitalist.  He sounds like my friend Fat Mac when he’s had six pints of Guinness and starts sounding off against the evil bourgeois.  I think I’ll recommend that Fat Mac reads this book so that he can see what life is really like in a socialist state.

She talks to Hagen Koch, who drew the line along pavements where the Berlin Wall was then built.  She talks to many more, normal, people, many of whom had horror tales to tell.  She also asks her interviewees about what it was like when the Wall fell, and the barriers that had held them in opened up like a dream.

Funder explains that “Communism, at least of the East German variety, was a closed system of belief.  It was a universe in a vacuum, complete with its own self-created hells and heavens, its punishments and redemptions meted out right here on earth.”  The GDR lasted forty-one years during which it tried to create a Socialist German Man and get the population to believe in him.  Socialist German Man was to be different from Nazi German Man and different from western (Capitalist Imperialist) German Man.  Emphasis was placed on an educational system that taught history as a series of irresistible evolutionary leaps towards Communism: from the feudal state through evil capitalism and then on, via a great leap forward, to socialism.  Complete codswallop, of course, but unfortunately some people (for example Fat Mac) still believe this tosh.

Funder visited several old Stasi buildings, and describes Communism’s gift to the built environment as being linoleum floors and grey cement walls, asbestos and prefabricated concrete and, always, long long corridors leading to all-purpose rooms.  Those who were called in by the Stasi never knew what they would find behind each door.

In the middle of the Delhi night

Starting from Kerala in India, we were facing a long journey and then an overnight flight home to the UK, and we wanted to keep as fresh as possible.  This was not so easy, because the first part involved a five-hour car ride from Varkala to Cochin International Airport in the heat of the day, but we arrived there with time to spare without too much difficulty.  At the Cochin Airport check-in, the attendant mumbled something about not having power banks in our hold luggage, but I wasn’t sure that that was what he’d said, and in any case I have a tendency of not admitting to anything in such circumstances, so we checked-in as usual.  I also vaguely remembered something I’d heard, somewhere, about not carrying power banks in cabin luggage, and subconsciously connected that with what the attendant had said. 

Our itinerary meant that we flew firstly to Delhi, and then left for London Heathrow in the middle of the night, at about 2.15 am, though that flight ended up being delayed for half an hour or so.

There are all sorts of in-transit security checks at Delhi, but we eventually ended up in departures, and were looking for things to buy with our remaining Rupees when I thought I heard my name being announced on the tannoy.  Well, I thought, that can’t be me, so I ignored it, as one does.

The second time there was an announcement I listened more closely, and sure enough, my name had been mentioned.  I had not heard where I was supposed to go, so I went over to security and asked what I should do.  The guard said I should go to the Gate from where my flight was leaving, which I did.  All the time my mind was racing…what could it be?  Why did they want me?  Was I about to be interrogated for unknown reasons?  Had someone died?

At the gate, a woman was waiting.  I introduced myself and she was clearly relieved that I had appeared.  “Do you have a power bank in your checked-in luggage?” she asked.  Gulp.  Mea culpa.  She explained that I would have to accompany her to where my luggage was located, and that I could not take anything with me, definitely not my mobile phone, or water, but only the keys needed to open my case.

Well, then it got very interesting.  I followed her to a corner of the departure lounge where she filled in a form while being watched over by an armed guard, indicated that I had to sign the form (what was I signing?) and then ushered me to a lift.  We descended two floors and emerged in that part of the airport where an overhead automated baggage-handling system was delivering vast amounts of luggage to different destinations.  It was like a large warehouse.  We went under some conveyor belts, through a door, along a corridor, and into a room where I immediately noticed our bags on a table.  It didn’t take long to extract the two power banks which I held up like offending objects, and then the woman indicated that I should once more follow her.  We retraced our steps, signing out on the same list beside the guard, and then I had once more to go through security to get back to departures.

It was somehow reassuring to know that small items such as power banks could be identified so easily amongst thousands of bags, presumably using x-rays, and that Indian airport security was so efficient.

The rest of the journey didn’t exactly go smoothly.  We landed at Heathrow only to discover that all flights to Edinburgh, and several other destinations, had been cancelled due to snow.  There was a long queue of people at Terminal 5 waiting to re-schedule, so we joined the line, thankful that BA had thoughtfully supplied a trolley with free snacks and drinks.  Some people were opting to go on a standby list for possible flights the next day, but I’d heard that Edinburgh Airport was not expected to be clear until the day after, so we decided to get confirmed flights for the Saturday.  We were assured that we could claim back hotel costs from BA, and so we proceeded to a hotel a ten minute ride from the terminal.

When I later checked my phone messages I was very confused to see, as shown below, that my Ref for the BA website included an emoji!

Hmm.  In my befuddled and sleep-deprived state it took me a few minutes to figure out that my messenger app had translated it from Ref :OQOQWU

We eventually got home 84 hours after leaving Varkala.