10 Must-Do Things in Scandinavia

Posted on by
2

1. Go for a walk in the rain in Helsinki … Why not? If you don’t do so, then you won’t go for a walk at all.
2. Stay up until it gets dark … Impossible! As I started writing this the other night (in Oulu, Finland) it was 10 past 10 and the sun was still fully visible…it eventually set at 11.05pm! There was no darkness that night, nor any other night during summer when you’re this far North. It is light all night so there’s no such thing as staying up til it gets dark, but it is “least light” around 1am. Have a look at the three photos in the Scandinavia album (click here) which were taken in our camp at Luleå in Sweden on the night of 10-11 July using the same camera settings each time: at 11pm, 1am and 2am. Admittedly it’s hard to portray the exact light conditions for you but these photos are pretty accurate. At the “darkest” hour of 1am, the conditions are surprisingly similar to a dull overcast afternoon in mid-winter at home…..well and truly light enough to see what you’re doing, that’s for sure.
3. Go and see Santa Claus … Yes, he’s real alright – and we know because we met him at Rovaniemi in Finland. Not some department store fake that gets trotted out in December, oh no, but the real guy. We had a wander through his official offices, saw the earth time regulator which is a huge mechanism that Santa uses every Christmas Eve to slow the Earth’s rotation down just enough to enable him to visit every good kid’s house on the planet (now you know), and then met the big man himself. He spared the time for a very nice chat which was kind of him as he’s really busy – although July is probably the best time to catch him, when Christmas is still 5 months away. And in turn, we spared €49 for the photos and video of the event!
4. Count the trees … This one is probably impossible too, because most of where we’ve been lately (Helsingborg to Örebro to Stockholm to Årjäng in Sweden; Oslo to Borgund to Bergen to Balestrand to Trondheim in Norway; Östersund to Sorsele to Luleå back in Sweden; and Rovaniemi to Oulu to Vaasa to Helsinki in Finland) seems to have been covered in trees as far as the eye can see. There’s farmland too – a bit of dairying but much of it is cropping or vegetables – but for hours on end at times, we drove past thousands of hectares of forest, mainly birch and pine, stretching in every direction! Oh, and there are lakes too – that’s another challenge…count the lakes (there are over 180,000 in Finland alone!). But the overwhelming impression is the fantastic scenery: not taking anything away from the other three countries but Norway in particular had us spell-bound at times. There’s been more than a few times when we hurriedly pulled over to take the photo of the day, only to come around the very next corner and have to do it all over again! Mountains, rivers, waterfalls, fiords……the breath-taking beauty of that country is incredible. We thought New Zealand was the most scenic country in the world but Norway is right up there – amazing! If only it wasn’t such an expensive place to be, it would be close to perfect.
5. Herd some reindeer … It must take Santa most of December to get this task accomplished because for a while there, we were encountering reindeer on the road around every second corner. At this time of year, they look a bit scruffy with half their winter coat still on board, but it is still quite fun to have to slow down and avoid yet another one of Santa’s team. Interestingly, not one had a bright red nose! Another animal hazard on the road is the moose, although despite hundreds of warning signs, we actually only saw two of these, and neither time could the camera be focused in time. The first instance was the most spectacular – on the outskirts of Oslo, still within city limits, a very large moose suddenly bounded out of the trees right in front of the truck in front of us (which slowed very rapidly…you’d be very unwise to tackle a moose head-on with your front bumper), leapt over the 1m high concrete road dividing barrier like it wasn’t there, cleared the guard rail on the far side, and crashed headlong into the forest to our left. It was all over in seconds, but it was an amazing sight that we won’t forget in a hurry.
6. Go underground … you can do this a lot in Norway, because there are almost as many tunnels as there are lakes, or fjords! The first encounter was just before the moose incident actually, when we passed under a large part of Oslo through the Operatunnelen complex. This is not just one tunnel, but a major motorway with a full set of on and off ramps thrown in…..for Aucklanders, imagine Spaghetti Junction but underground, and you start to get the picture. But of greater note, really, are the hundreds of tunnels on the highways. The Norwegian Roads Board obviously has a policy of “through, not over” so any hill that gets in the way is simply bored through, no matter how long the resulting tunnel. On the morning we set out on the E16 from Borgund, heading for Bergen, of the first 87km fully 50km were spent underground. This includes the 24.51km long Lærdalstunnelen which is the world’s longest road tunnel and is quite an amazing 25 minute drive, another tunnel of 11km length, one of 5km, and many others too short to mention (for example, only 2km long etc.!). In all that day, we well and truly lost count, but believe we went through nearly 100 tunnels and only a handful of these were ones where you could see both ends at once. However, there’s a couple of negative sides to this tunnelling craze: firstly, the huge amount spent on tunnels is counteracted, it would seem, by next to nothing being spent on potholes and road resurfacing elsewhere; and secondly, the locals can be a bit scathing about the policy (I guess if they’ve just endured a rough, pot-holed ride to work, they don’t see the good side of yet another multi-million kroner engineering marvel somewhere else) and we heard about hugely expensive bridges being built out to islands with only 50 inhabitants, 100% of whom were happy with the ferry they’ve been using for generations. But to be fair, there are some outstandingly windy roads up hillsides every now and then, so maybe they haven’t tunnelled everything!
7. Visit friends and relatives … These people know who they are, but for the record, we have enjoyed two fantastic weekends in Scandinavia, one with cousin Dermot Clemenger and Molly, Marcus and Maya in Örebro in Sweden and another with new friends Eva and Jan in Vaasa, Finland. Thank you to all concerned.
8. Contribute to the Mayor of Bergen’s Retirement Fund … To put this another way park your motorhome in what we maintain is clearly marked as approved parking for such vehicles (there are signs to prove it!), pay for a few hours parking, go away to enjoy the very beautiful city of Bergen, then return to your motorhome to find a 500kroner fine (NZ$102) ticket slapped on your windscreen. Don’t panic folks – Andrew “don’t take a backward step” Moffat is on the case and a brilliantly worded email is currently with Bergen Parkering to get this little injustice sorted out.
9. Play in the snow … As we did in the Hemsedel area of Norway where the road was around 1100m above sea level and even although it is summer here, the snow still lay deep and crisp and even (well in large patches near the road anyway, with full cover further up the mountains). So it’s compulsory to pull over, trudge a couple of hundred metres off road, and then stand in jandals and shorts, in the snow. Why wouldn’t you?
10. Cross a line … We stayed one night in a rest area right on the Arctic Circle near Rovaniemi. That means, as you all know, latitude 66d33’07” North and it will be the most northerly point on our travels. As we were getting there, we talked about the Arctic Circle and how, of course, it was just a line on the map and not a line actually on the ground. Well that’s not true! There is a line on the ground – again the pictures tell the story. It was just one of those bucket list things now ticked off…..but I’m not sure that if we ever get the chance, crossing the ANTarctic Circle will be as easy however, certainly not in a motorhome anyway!

P.S. If you want an 11th thing to do next time you’re passing through Scandinavia, then kill some mosquitoes in Sorsele (Northern Sweden). There are about a billion we didn’t manage to exterminate, so you’ve got plenty to choose from. And if you don’t get them, they will surely get you!

The Weather Forecast

Posted on by
3

I was going to call this blog post “Oh to be in Summer, now that Europe’s here” but that would have summed the entire thing up in just one sentence, so I’ll try and expand a bit. It would be fair to say that the weather has been fairly evenly divided into two camps over the past 99 days….generally speaking hot and sunny throughout Asia and Africa, and generally speaking cold and wet in the UK and Europe. There have been exceptions of course – we had a good soaking in Hanoi while we were looking for the entrance to Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum and we had daily thunderstorms most afternoons for about 15 or 20 minutes, in both Penang and Zanzibar. And it did get cold in Morocco – some days it was still only 35 degrees at 10am!

But sadly there haven’t been too many exceptions to the wet and cold rule so far in Europe… perhaps the nicest days, fortunately, were those spent in the battlefields I wrote about in the last blog post. Just as well – it was depressing enough seeing all the gravestones without being in the drizzle as well.

Anyway, based on what we’ve experienced so far, in our three weeks in the camper-van (which is nice and dry and warm by the way), here is the forecast for this part of the world….

South East England: apart from brief periods of sunshine that will be measurable only in nano-seconds, the weather will remain overcast for 4 days in succession. Cold winds will blow off the English Channel at all times, except when the rain is falling, in which case they’ll blow off the North Seal as well. The heaviness of the rain will be directly proportional to the distance the shower block is from the motorhome. Conditions underfoot in the first campground will be such that any motorhome that attempts to drive on the grass will not be successful and will only get unstuck after covering most of the side panels with thick mud that will then not wash off despite all the succeeding days of rain.
Northern France and Belgium: more settled weather with only occasional showers, mostly at night. Sunny spells will be longer, and whilst it will remain possible to wear jandals and shorts at all times, a polar fleece top will often be required.
The Netherlands: A day of rain, followed by showers, and interrupted only by violent thunderstorms, will be followed by two days of showers. Dry spells will occur only when you are indoors, but will be broken by showers that commence immediately upon stepping outside. On the fourth day, the rain will be at its heaviest outside the Van Gogh Museum and especially on the 300m long queue of people waiting on the footpath to get in. [NB – this will only be alleviated by finding out after 150m or so (60 minutes) that if you go to the Diamond Museum across the road, you can buy VG tickets for the same price, and can then skip the rest of the sodden wait and go directly to the front door!]
Denmark: Quite cool days, with overcast skies and skiffs of rain only for two days, followed by a stunning day in Copenhagen where sitting outside with a cold beer and talking to fellow travellers will be possible, followed in turn by a very wet “full speed wipers” day. Ground conditions on the morning of day two will be so wet that anyone with a camper-van weighing 2.8tonnes WILL get stuck in the mud and, after a fellow camper breaks his brand new tow rope trying to pull such a camper-van out, it will only be extracted by the camp janitor using his tractor. What fun!
Sweden: a mixed bag of sunny spells and overcast conditions, although still a little cool and with showers of rain most days. Evening twilight will last until about 11.30pm and dawn will start around 2.30am. The better weather in the first three days of July will be a positive sign but will be counteracted by the news that June in Sweden was the wettest since 1786! [That is NOT a joke!!]

That is the end of the weather…..now back to the studio.

In Flanders Fields….

Posted on by
11

…..the poppies blow,
between the crosses, row on row…..

We probably all know those opening words to John McCrae’s poem, written over 90 years ago during the terrible days of WW1. McCrae was a Canadian doctor who served as a field surgeon both at the front in Flanders and elsewhere, and also in nearby Boulogne, where he died from complications arising from disease just before the war’s end in 1918. But – and forgive me if I get a little philosophical here…it was that kind of experience – I wonder if we really understand the words of the poem until we’ve actually been there, in Flanders Fields??

I know a lot of you have done just that, and recently we too had the privilege of seeing where our soldiers fought and, so very often, died for us. We had three special days visiting some of the WW1 battlefields of Northern France and Belgium….and what a different scene it must have been back then, compared to the peaceful outlook we can see today. To see the serene rural countryside where a farmer’s biggest worry today is his crop yield per hectare of rich fertile soil, yet where in 1914-18 hundreds of thousands of men fought and died to gain a few yards of that same soil only to lose it again a day or so later, just brings home that whole futility of war yet again. I read somewhere during our visits that the average gain over the ebb and flow of four years of war and stalemate, for each of the hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers from both sides, in just one battlefield alone (Passchendaele I think), was a mere two inches of ground. And of course we weren’t just there to look at the countryside – we visited some of the many, many memorials and cemeteries – and those visits really ram the message home.

Significantly, the poppies truly do blow, and there are certainly crosses, row on row, thousands and thousands of them.

Among other places, we went to Flanders in Belgium, most importantly to Ypres and Passchendaele; we went to Longueval on the Somme, and we went to the medieval walled town of Le Quesnoy in the Nord Pas de Calais district. Every place has a story to tell…..the French National Military Cemetery at Notre-Dame de Lorette which contains 20,000 white crosses, generals alongside riflemen, in memory of the 120,000 troops from both sides who died in 1915 fighting for the piece of land where the memorial now stands; the German cemetery at Neuville-St-Vaast which interestingly has row upon row of black crosses; the South African Memorial at Longueval, the Canadian Memorial at Vimy which is actually a Canadian National Park (on French soil) and also Canada’s largest war memorial, the Australian cemeteries in so many towns (including one near Bapaume where we saw a pub in the nearby village called The Canberra), and all the British cemeteries….

I’m not sure ‘highlights’ is the right word, but here’s a few of the special places, some of which are shown in photos which you can see if you click here. The following is mainly from a New Zealand point of view, I’ll admit….
:: Le Quesnoy is the town held by the Germans for almost 4 years, then liberated by New Zealand troops who scaled the medieval walls on ropes and ladders, just a week before the armistice. “Our boys”, 90 or so of whom died in the attack with another 400 wounded, are very fondly remembered in Le Quesnoy, although we’d have to say that compared with the immaculate presentation of every other memorial or cemetery we visited, the grounds around the New Zealand Memorial were very overgrown which was an unexpected disappointment. However, at least there is a memorial, and a couple of streets named in New Zealand’s honour, and every ANZAC day, there is a full commemoration held at Le Quesnoy…John Key was here on ANZAC Day 2011.
:: Near Longueval we found a cenotaph-like New Zealand Memorial, which commemorates the NZ Division’s involvement in the First Battle of the Somme on 15 September 1916 when they played a key part by capturing the nearby village of Flers. This memorial is on the spot where our involvement in the battle began and while this now places it in a very practical position right amongst paddocks of potatoes and beet, in this case it was great to see the pristine condition of the surrounds with the lawns and flower beds and hedges obviously always kept extremely tidy by the locals. The memorial itself, like the one in Le Quesnoy, notes the factual details, then adds the words at the base “From the uttermost ends of the Earth”.
:: Just a kilometre or so away lies the Caterpillar Valley Cemetery which holds the remains of over 5,500 soldiers, more than two thirds of whom are unidentified…..there are rows and rows and rows of headstones, many with simply “A Soldier of the Great War ~ Known only to God” on them. Two significant aspects here for New Zealand – after WW1 we chose not to list all of our dead on one central memorial like the Menin Gate and instead created seven Memorials to the Missing across the region – this one lists the names of over 1,200 of our soldiers who died on the Somme but whose remains were never found. And secondly, it was from Plot 14, Row A, Grave 27 that our Unknown Warrior was exhumed in 2004 and brought back to be interred in the National War Memorial in Wellington – the headstone now carries an explanation of this historic event. Quite a special place to visit really.
:: On the outskirts of Ieper (Ypres) in Belgium, we visited the Tyne Cot Cemetery which relates primarily to the battles at Passchendaele – this site contains over 12,000 graves row upon row upon row, but also a seemingly endless series of marble panels engraved with over 35,000 names of the missing. The numbers are just staggering. The battle in this area on 12 October 1917 is particularly significant for New Zealand because on that one day alone, over 800 of our soldiers died….the worst ever day in our country’s history in terms of loss of life. And while we were in the area, we visited the Passchendaele Memorial Museum and then later in the day, went to the “In Flanders Fields” Museum in Ieper. This latter museum was particularly outstanding – just reopened the previous week (by Helen Clark, no less) after a long closure for redevelopment which has been done extremely well. The whole experience of war is told in a compelling and absorbing way, often using re-enactments of personal stories of the participants, from both sides too. A place not to be missed if you ever have the chance.
:: And finally, after a very nice meal in the main square of Ieper, we went to the Menin Gate for the daily playing of the Last Post. This has been done on this site every evening at 8pm since 1928 (apart from during WW2 when Belgians in exile in the UK carried the practice on there instead), and so according to the Last Post Association’s website, we were there for the 28,886th ceremony. The traffic is stopped, the crowd is silent, and 4 local buglers play The Last Post. On some occasions, and ours was one of them, a longer ceremony is held, which includes the laying of more wreaths in addition to the hundreds on the memorial already, and in this case also, the presentation of the flag of the Swindon Branch of the ex-Naval Division of the British Legion. The Ode to the Fallen was also read, and the buglers played Reveille. A very moving and special ceremony, and to think that they do this every single evening because the people of Ieper will never forget those who ensured their freedom. And a footnote to the Menin Gate experience – I spoke afterwards to the Belgian man who had read the exhortation, and when he worked out where we were from, he went straight to one name on the wall (no mean feat as there’s over 54,000 names all told) and showed us: Captain W. H. D. Bell of King Edward’s Horse Regiment. Unusually, a New Zealand name, as our names are not listed on the Gate unless the soldier served in the UK forces as William Henry Dillon Bell did after resigning as an MP and going to England to volunteer. He was a son of Francis Henry Dillon Bell who was an Old Boy and Dux of OBHS and also the first New Zealand born Prime Minister of our country (and one of the shortest serving, just 20 days in 1925).

This blog post has been quite some time in the making – I found it the most difficult to write so far, because the subject matter is pretty intense and so hard to put into words that adequately describe how you feel when standing amidst 20,000+ headstones in an immaculately kept cemetery. Headstones for people who came from all over the world to fight a war that in some respects wasn’t theirs to fight….but fight in it they did, and in so doing, created a nation. Again that’s probably a bit on the philosophical side, but I don’t think it’s going overboard. It’s often said that Australia, Canada and New Zealand came of age during WW1, and as I touched on at the beginning, I honestly think you have to be there in Flanders or Gallipoli or the Somme to really grasp this, and begin to understand. I hope I’ve done a passable job of sharing this experience with you all.

A couple of final notes – I couldn’t help but think that, but for a quirk of fate that saw my Grandad return home from Egypt along with many others from the Otago Mounted Rifles before the ANZACs went to Gallipoli, it could have been his name on one of the memorials. But then again, if his name was there, then I wouldn’t have been visiting would I? Interestingly though, at Tyne Cot I chanced upon a headstone for “39272 Private J. H. Moffat, N. Z. Otago Regt, 3rd December 1917 Age 24”. A relation….?? Not sure, but it’s something to research in due course.

We will remember them….

20120630-184600.jpg

A word from (and a word for) Morocco…

Posted on by
8

I’ve been sitting here racking my brains for a word that best describes Morocco, but all the good ones have been used….for example magical, exotic, spectacular, mysterious, alluring, intense, exhilarating. Others that would work might include “noisy” (try being in the Jemaa el Fna, which is Marrakech’s main market square, at night when the snake charmers, the bands, the story tellers, the food and drink salesmen, the henna artists and everyone else are all vying for your attention in a cacophony of competing sounds) or “hot” (every one of the last 11 days has reached at least 35 degrees and usually higher – yesterday for example we waited for a bus in a place where there was no shelter and the time/temp clock across the road reminded us every few seconds that the temperature was either 39 or 40 degrees).

However, I’ve decided my word for Morocco will be “orange”” because the one defining image of this magical, exotic, spectacular, mysterious, alluring, intense, and exhilarating country, among many images, will be the colour orange which, it seems, is everywhere we look. From the fifty or more carts lined up side by side in rows in the Jemaa el Fna, each with hundreds of oranges and sometimes grapefruit stacked high on the front and sides of the stall, selling incredibly refreshing cold glasses of juice for just 4 dirhams each (that’s about NZ60 cents); past the consistent terracotta colour of every building, public or private, in Marrakech where everything must meet the standard colour scheme; via the deep reddish soils of the High Atlas mountains; and on to the postcard perfect colour of the Sahara sands in the setting sun at near Merzouga where we rode camels far into the desert to reach our Berber camp – there are varying shades of orange everywhere in this country.

And, for posterity, we want to take some kind of defining image away from our last stop before Part 1 of the Adventure Before Dementia tour comes to an end…..and if orange does the trick, then so be it! Morocco has been so much fun, such a great place to visit, and we have seen so many amazing things, that we really don’t want to leave – so it looks like Morocco has made a late run to secure first place as “favourite country (so far)”…

Every single day here has been full of highlights, especially when we were on our On The Go/Nomadic Tour for 8 days with our excellent guide Brahim. That makes this part of the trip hard to summarise, so maybe we’ll just have to give you the best of the best…..
– an extremely well paced tour with excellent food (Moroccans seem to think 3 courses at every single meal is a minimum requirement!) and a delightful hotel each night. Included on most days was a lunchtime swimming stop, and when it’s 35 or so degrees, a dip in the pool is very welcome indeed.
– very informative commentary from Brahim about what we were seeing, the history and politics of the place, the cultural background, even his own family details to illustrate how mountain families live their relatively simple, uncomplicated lives. Here’s an example – Brahim is around 32 years old and has no idea whatsoever of when his birthday is! All his mother remembers is approximately when he was born (she knows 1980 but not the day or month) based on her recall of the seasons, the farming patterns like whether or not they’d harvested their crops at the time, and whether or not the nomads on their continuous wanderings had reached Brahim’s family valley yet or not. So, when he first enrolled at university he was ‘allocated’ a birthdate, and then subsequently when he applied for a passport he was allocated another (1 January 1980, along with all other 1980-born Moroccans without an exact date) which is now his legal DOB and then when he joined Facebook he decided to do a bit of thinking and worked out, based on family reminiscences that 20 July 1980 was about as close as he was going to get!
– visits to the UNESCO World Heritage sites of the Marrakech Medina (the old fortified city dating back to the 11th Century and containing iconic places such as the main square and the endless labyrinth of the souqs and market alleys) as well as the Kasbah at Ait Ben Haddou.
– shopping in those Marrakech markets, if you can stand the endless entreaties to “come into my shop – looking is free – I make you good price” and also if you can survive the continuous barrage of motorcycles and sometimes even cars which barrel down alleyways that are barely wide enough walk in let alone have motorised traffic! Add to that a visit to the adjacent leather tanneries which are large outdoor complexes of open vats which are used to prepare the hides of camels, goats, cows and sheep – curing, tanning, preserving, colouring etc. When your Berber guide showing you around uses the technical Arabic term “pigeonshit” for the active ingredient in one of the tanks, then it is little wonder that they give you a large bunch of mint to hold under your nose throughout the visit….this is known locally as a “Berber gas mask”!! Unfortunately, we were about two weeks early for the postcard shots of all the different bright colours in the vats – this apparently only happens in the hottest months of July and August when drying is at its best, so we only saw the sepia version of the process.
– a night in the Sahara at a Berber camp, one and a quarter hours by camel from the end of the road in the seemingly endless dunes of the Erg Chebbi, which is one of Morocco’s two ergs, large dunes of wind blown sand near the Algerian border. Erg Chebbi’s dunes are up to 150m high, and cover an area of around 200 or so square kilometres. When you’re sitting atop a camel silently padding its way toward your camp as the sun begins to slowly set in the western sky and all you can see is sand in every direction, or if you’re back on that camel next morning at 5.30am so you can experience the magnificence of a Sahara sunrise, and again all you can see is sand, then the whole thing becomes quite overwhelming. Add to all of that the fun of sand-boarding down a dune or two, a full Berber feast (3 courses again), and sleeping outside under the full moon and a million stars….and it all adds up to a pretty good excursion!
– rock climbing maybe 40m up the 160m high walls of the Todra Gorge was also a lot of fun although in the 40+ heat, it was no easy task, but again both the oldies on the tour (that’s us) managed to complete the job
– visiting the movie studios at Oaurzazate to see where films like Jewel of the Nile, Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, Babel, and many more were made and discovering in the process that most of what we see in the movies is actually polystyrene. There was a full scale set of the Temple of Karnak in Egypt (we’ve been to the real thing) and it is all fake…..but very well done all the same. The studios have been there since the 1980s although the Moroccan film industry really started back in the 60s when most of Lawrence of Arabia was filmed there
– crossing the High Atlas mountains by way of the Tichka Pass at 2260m, on a road built by the French in the 1930s when they we’re pillaging Morocco for every ounce of mineral wealth they could find and needed a road to transport their goodies to port. It’s an impressive feat of engineering and matched only by another French built road in the Gorge du Dades where we spent a night – both roads twisting and turning back and forth, almost tying themselves in knots at times as they rapidly climb very steep slopes

There’s more, much more, than this to Morocco but I’ve gone on long enough….and it’s time for bed. To summarise, we have really enjoyed every minute in this country. It’s a great place, with great people, great weather, great scenery. What else can I say but……
…..ORANGE!!

For a few photos, just click here: Morocco

20120612-011608.jpg

Photo update

Posted on by
4

Thank you Doha Airport Transit Building, in Qatar – for not only having Wi-Fi but at a speed that makes sitting here at 3.45am worthwhile! We are between flights – Dar Es Salaam to Doha arrived in at 11.30pm Thursday, and we leave again at 8.45am Friday bound for Casablanca, with a short stopover in Tunis on the way.

So while we’re here….a catch up on photos for your enjoyment:
– There’s an album for Victoria Falls if you click here
– And there’s an album for our safari and Zanzibar stops if you click here

By the way…..a disclaimer is needed as some people may be getting the wrong end of the stick. Just because I (Andrew) write the blog posts, this does not mean I’m the only one having all the fun! The posts are on behalf of us both! The adventures are definitely jointly enjoyed, and usually it’s Pauline who goes first. For example, shark diving was her idea in the first place (long before we ever left home) so we both spent time “in the cage” and also she was first to leap off the cliffs at Victoria Falls. And Pauline was also the first, and so far only, person to trip over the tent flap and nearly break her nose! Just letting y’all know……

Wild At Heart

Posted on by
5

The fingers of dawn creep slowly and unevenly across the Serengeti – quickly across a patch of bare dust here, slowly over one of the many low Hook Thorn or Whistling Thorn bushes there, and even more slowly as their westward progress is barred by a Fever Tree or a tall Flat Topped Acacia tree, one that has neither been defoliated by grazing giraffes nor casually pushed over by a strong old bull elephant unaccustomed to such obstacles impeding his progress.

As night slowly turns to day, sleep turns to wakefulness across the vast and seemingly empty savanna. But it’s not empty, far from it. The great sea of grass, named by the Maasai as Siringet which means “land of endless space”, comes to life. Hyenas stretch and then snarl at their mates, the zebras standing in pairs nuzzle each other before recommending their seemingly endless quest for fresh grass, an old lion growls menacingly before cuffing one of the nearby playful cubs which hasn’t realised yet the respect it should be showing its elders.

And deep inside a tent in the pre-dawn darkness of the Nyegere campsite, not far from the almost dry Ngare-Nanyuki River, and about 10km from the Seronera airstrip, an irritatingly persistent noise grows in intensity as Lisa from Melbourne’s alarm begins to wake everyone within 100m – everyone, that is, except Lisa herself. Soon, however, all campers are awake and breakfasted, ready to embark on a dawn game drive…..all perhaps secretly hoping that yesterday’s sighting of four out of The Big Five will be complemented this morning by a glimpse of the fifth. Replete with yesterday’s photos of elephants, lions, buffalo – all just a matter of a metre or two away – and perhaps a little less than replete with evidence of the sighting of a black rhino in the Ngorongoro Crater thanks to the extremely sharp eyes of Copacabana, the Landcruiser driver – just a fairly general shot of the Crater area in which an otherwise unidentifiable black spot is assuredly a rhino – today is the day to spot a leopard.

Not that yesterday had been anything short of amazing – in addition to the sightings already mentioned, there had been closeup encounters with a huge variety of birds including black kites, fish eagles, weaver birds, bustards, vultures, buzzards, ostriches and flamingoes to name just a few; along with similarly close sightings of wildebeest, zebras, waterbuck, bushbuck, dikdik, Grant’s and Thomson’s gazelles, hippopotami, giraffes, impala, hyenas, topi, warthogs, jackals, baboons, and perhaps top of the second tier, a fantastic close approach by a cheetah. In the latter case, what started off as a very distant dot on the horizon that would need to be viewed only later when photos taken at the very limit of the zoom lens could be enlarged, gradually became better and better as the cheetah, like all the animals seemingly oblivious to a dozen or more vehicles each packed with camera wielding tourists, stalked majestically towards the cameras, closer and closer until finally it sauntered across the road between a bunch of the trucks and then slowly but surely receded again into the distance on the other side of the plain.

And perhaps that encounter was matched in a way by the closeup view of the annual migration of thousands of wildebeest and zebras. In fact, it’s not so much an annual migration – just annual to be in the Seronera area around May – but a continuous migration. There are approximately two million wildebeest (or white bearded gnus) and 300,000 or so zebras (plus a million or so other assorted beasts including any predator with half a brain), which migrate in a more or less clockwise fashion across Kenya and Tanzania for nearly 3,000km each year seeking out the rain ripened grasses. By May, the wildebeest with their young which are about 3 months old and the zebra with offspring around 4-5 months old have eaten much of the grass in the southeast that arrived after the southern rainy season, and they are heading to the north again, where March sees the heaviest rains and so the grasses are much more lush again there. So to be on the main Naabi Hill Gateway Road into the Serengeti National Park watching curiously orderly herds of fast moving wildebeest, often in kilometres-long single files, thundering across in front of you is a sight to behold, and to savour.

And so back to today’s expedition – we see more lions lazing in a tree, this time with a good number of cubs below; elephants and giraffes wander past the truck grazing contentedly as they go, there’s another cheetah just metres away, hippos, gazelles, boks, baboons….they are all there. But not that long after we set out, there they are – a hungry scavenging hyena gazing hopefully at a Mlegea (or Sausage) Tree in the distance and hoping for some crumbs at the table alerts us to two leopards in the middle branches of the tree. One keeping a watchful eye on things, the other gorging itself on what looks like a very large amount of red meat. The sight is magnificent, and our list of 5 is complete…..another item ticked off the list, and it has been such an experience. A large male lion yawning lazily just a metre or so away, a mother elephant and baby passing behind our truck and in front of the one following not too far behind, hundreds and hundreds of impala not even raising their heads as we come past, the encounters with the cheetahs, seeing leopards and lions up trees just off the path, hippos doing that crazy 360 degree ear-wiggle thing, witnessing the tenderness of zebras looking out for one another and next minute the full-on majesty of a thousand wildebeest on the move – in due course, the pictures will hopefully tell the story much better than I can with mere words.

And on that note, I need to end this Blog post with an apology for absence – absence of photos, that is. We’ve now been on this trip for a day or so over 2 months, and have enjoyed pretty good (and free!) access to fast Wi-Fi Internet almost everywhere we’ve been, until now. But in Kenya and Tanzania, including Zanzibar, the service has been excruciatingly slow at best, non-existent at worst….and all this at a time when we so much want to share photos of us swimming with sharks in South Africa, jumping off cliffs in Zimbabwe, or being amongst the most amazing wildlife in the Serengeti.
But until we re-enter the 21st Century (technologically speaking) you will have to put up with the word pictures instead….however, as soon as there are photos to be shared, we’ll let you all know via the Blog 😊

25 things we have learned in Africa

Posted on by
1

1. Not everything is black or white here
2. Most sign writers in Tanzania can’t spell “stationery”
3. Rain from the ground up can be wetter than from the sky down
4. Table Mountain isn’t flat (and it isn’t a table either)
5. If you multiply the circumference of an elephant’s front foot by 2.5, you get its height at shoulder level
6. David Livingstone’s heart is buried under a tree in Zambia, but the rest of him is buried in Westminster Abbey (the first part being as he wanted it to be, not sure about the second)
7. When you land at Johannesburg’s O R Tambo International Airport, the in-flight info screen still reads 1710m (ASL)
8. Female elephants pee just in front of their poo, males pee right on top of the steaming pile
9. Feeling sick in the Serengeti is no fun, plus you miss out on tea
10. Rhinoceros are very hard to spot
11. Lions are inherently lazy creatures, and they are usually covered in little black flies
12. Most of the world’s supply of red paint has been used in advertising for Coca-Cola in Africa – coating anything that doesn’t move like shops, houses, trees etc
13. The 2010 Môreson Pinotage, direct from the winery near Franschoek in South Africa, is quite possibly the nicest red wine we have ever tasted
14. Hawkers on the beach at Zanzibar are extremely annoying, but so are those on the bridge at Victoria Falls, those at the gate into the Serengeti National Park, those at the snake farm near Arusha – in fact, anywhere else on the continent.
15. Apartheid was bad
16. Nando’s Chicken started in South Africa
17. Sharks aren’t scary, as long as you’re behind bars
18. Herds of wildebeest DO thunder majestically across the plain (thanks Basil Fawlty) but, in reality, do so mostly in single file
19. Maasai people don’t like white people attending their cattle sales
20. Queues on a normal day at the Post Office in Pretoria move even more slowly than those on Christmas Eve at the Moray Place Post Office in Dunedin
21. Copper bangles cause power cuts (South Africans will understand this one)
22. To go on a game drive in the Ngorongoro Crater in the morning, and then on another on the Serengeti Plain in the afternoon, is a rare and treasured privilege which we shall never forget, nor shall we forget seeing so many different varieties of animals and birds
23. For the most part, the people of Africa are happy, funny, contented, hospitable souls, and we have enjoyed their company immensely
24. Some say Africa gets under your skin, others say it gets into your heart – both statements are true. (It also gets under your fingernails)
25. It’s not over yet – Morocco is still to be revealed to us

Zim, Zam, thanks (for the buckles) Sam!!

Posted on by
4

Hello everyone….it’s been a while since the last blog post but as many of you know, we’ve been in the Internet-less wilds of Africa for a few days. But now we have several “rest days” in Dar Es Salaam and then Zanzibar (on the beach) so we can catch you up on happenings over the last couple of weeks. So it’s travelogue time again – starting with our action-packed 48 hours in Victoria Falls. Our brief time in Zimbabwe and (even more briefly in Zambia) went something like this….

Tuesday
1pm – arrival at Victoria Falls Airport from Johannesburg, and landing some 15 minutes after we could first see the “Smoke (or the Cloud) That Thunders” which is the name the tribes long ago gave to the falls on account of the spray that rises high into the air from the Gorge….it must have been at least 50km away when we saw it first.
1.45pm – we get our ride to our hotel on the second attempt after having sat where we were told to by one ‘greeter’ who was not our driver, and who didn’t actually tell our driver we were there! So off the first van went without us, but no problem, as being on Africa Time means such things don’t matter….
2.15pm – arrival at The Kingdom Resort which is a very nice hotel indeed, with pools, a huge restaurant, a casino which we didn’t visit, and a greeting from a native warrior who threw down a cowhide for us to step onto like some kind of Zimbabwean red carpet. And all this just 500m or so from the Falls themselves, and about 200m from the early 20th century Victoria Falls Hotel where warthogs and baboons occupied the lawns and our tour guide who arranged our activities occupied the foyer.
3.45pm – pickup from the hotel and travel to the nearby helipad, where we boarded a Bell Long Ranger along with 4 German tourists for a 15 minute flight including 3 circuits above the Falls. What a sight, 70-110m high and 1.7km wide, and with of 1,000,000 cubic metres of water per second tipping off the edge (it is high water season at present) – it is VERY impressive…
4.15pm – back to the hotel for a swim, a drink, and dinner before a reasonably early night (we had had to get up at 3.30am in Cape Town that morning in order to meet our flight connections)

Wednesday
9.00am – breakfast before getting picked up for our next adventure
9.30am – arrival at the sheer cliff edge of the Zambezi River Gorge about 100m or so directly above the river and about 1.5km downstream from the Falls and the road/rail bridge. First activity: a flying fox across the gorge at cliff top level, right to the other side, diving off the edge face down with plenty of belts and buckles attached to your back. Second activity: a tandem Zip-trek ride at about 100km/h down to about 30m above the water (despite the rumours, there are no crocs as the water in the Gorge is too swift – they all live in the wider, placid waters above the Falls). Third activity, with the assistance of belts and braces man Sam (and there were plenty of belts and braces believe me!): the Gorge Swing. Or as the Activity List back at the hotel would have you believe, the George Swing! This one consisted of a step or leap off a cliff top platform, a 70m sheer free-fall drop before easing into a huge swing right out across the river, even closer to the water than the Zip-trek. It was truly brilliant, but just a tad scary as you fell straight down for a second or three, during which time gravity was in charge and the ropes and harnesses were just ornaments. Would we do it again? Too right!!
11.00am – time to walk to another country, so down to the Zimbabwean border post, around 500m or so from the middle of the bridge, fill in a form, and we were officially passport-stamped out of the country. Walk the 500m, and out onto the bridge, and soon enough you are at the middle, just near the bungy jump, and you can stand with one foot in Zimbabwe and one foot in Zambia. Speaking of the middle of the bridge, when it was built in 1905, it was one of the world’s highest bridges and was by all accounts quite an impressive engineering feat for its day. But the story goes that when it was nearly complete and the two sides were to be bolted together, no matter how hard they tried, they just would not line up and the project appeared to be a failure. So much so that the designer, distraught at what he thought were his mistakes having led to the whole thing becoming two useless piles of scrap metal, jumped from the structure to his death over 100m below in the river. Not too much later, a clever person on the construction team suggested that they should try the joining again at dawn before the heat of the day made the metal of the two halves expand and warp out of alignment, and guess what? It fitted perfectly, and is still in use as a major road and rail bridge today, 107 years later!
Noon – after walking the next 500m or so, we avoid the baboons in the car park, fill out more forms, hand over US$30 each and get passport-stamped into Zambia (country #9 so far this trip) and head for the National Park gate which leads to the walkway to the lip of the Falls. Another US$20 each there and we can enter the park and wander along the various walkways past the statue of David Livingstone who was the first white man to see the Falls back in 1856 (at the base of his statue is his quotation where he described the Falls as being like nothing any Englishman could ever hope to have seen – he was Scottish though – and something that “only angels in their flight” could haves seen); past the World War One war memorial; and past the man hiring out raincoats for the walk ahead. We had our own coats and we certainly needed them because we got VERY wet despite it being a 30degree day – the spray rising from the falls has to be seen (and felt) to be believed. There are occasional lulls in intensity but basically all the time we were on the point of land where the water drops into the gorge and then bends around towards the bridge, it was like being in a very heavy rainstorm. It’s no light misty spray, it is a full-on cloudburst! We went across the Knife’s Edge Bridge and got as wet as possible, and went very close to the edges in many places – apart from a few token guard rails, Zambia has no concept of any sort of safety regulations!
1pm – after a quick walk around to the river above the falls (where you can get as close as you like and people are allowed to walk – at their own risk – across the lip of the Falls), we reversed our journey through Zambian Immigration, across the bridge and past all the touts, and back through Zimbabwean Immigration, then back to the Hotel for the next pick-up. By the way, despite being soaked right though, we were 100% dry within minutes of starting back.
3.30pm – off for our Sunset Cruise on the Zambezi River which was a lot of fun….we met Germans, South Africans, Italians, and a Scottish lady who had been to Greenock two days before (that will only mean something to one person – you know who you are!)….and we saw hippos, and crocodiles, and gazelles, and all sorts of birds. We also saw, about 6pm, a very spectacular African sunset over the river, a view that was well worth the effort of going on the cruise.
7.30pm – dinner at the Kingdom Hotel, including the local fare of choumoulier and worms

Thursday
Pretty boring really – just a sleep in, breakfast, and then the shuttle back to the airport for a flight bak to Johannesburg

I’ll try and put some photos here but the Internet is so slow this attempt may fail. However, if they’re not there at first, keep trying, as I will eventually succeed!
Victoria Falls

Letter to John Minto

Posted on by
4

Dear John

It’s nearly 31 years since you and I had a “conversation” outside the Southern Cross Hotel in Dunedin – you possibly don’t remember me though as I was just one of the thousands of New Zealanders who talked to you in 1981 during the Springbok Tour, and 99% of us probably weren’t very complimentary. Now, all these years later, it’s time to put this right. If it’s good enough for South Africa to acknowledge the errors of its ways during the rather nasty Apartheid Era, then it’s good enough for me. You see, back in 1981 all I wanted was for the All Blacks and the provincial sides to be able to play rugby against the touring Springboks, without a bunch of lunatic weirdos (yourself included) interfering at every turn. Yes, sure, we had an idea that there were a few black people who didn’t get treated that well back home in South Africa, but the Boks were here to play sport man, and that was the key thing. And I’d been to South Africa the previous year (at the time, you’d never been) so I was right and you were wrong!

But in the last week or so, I’ve been back in South Africa, and what a transformation there has been in three decades. That’s the first thing – the country is completely different, and the difference is for the better overall. For the most part that is – there are some exceptions which I’ll explain shortly. The second thing is this: the South Africans have faced their country’s evil past and, with the clear assistance of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission, have been able to move forward in a positive, equal and generally inclusive way. In fact, New Zealanders no longer have any grounds to look sideways at South Africans when it comes to race relations because in many cases, we have some way to go yet.

And apart from the obvious manifestations of the change – for example no more “Whites/Non-Whites” toilets, beaches, public transport, footpaths, entrances to sportsgrounds; the previously unthinkable sight of black and white couples together in public places; poor white people/rich black people; to name just a few – we have had the opportunity in this last week to visit some places where the message was well and truly rammed home….the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto, and Soweto itself. Soweto – “South West Township” – is no longer a township, it is a large city in its own right, with over 4 million inhabitants!

Within Soweto is one of the first exceptions – when we first drove in we travelled along very modern streets, with Audis and BMWs parked in the driveways of lovely homes surrounded by ‘normal South African’ security fencing amidst green manicured lawns….surely we had taken a wrong turn because this wasn’t the Soweto that we were expecting. But that’s because most of the city’s residents DO live in similar surroundings – for them, life since the 70s has improved a million fold. But within minutes, we had left the nicer part of town and were in more expected territory – the informal housing (read: “corrugated iron shacks, one tap per street, dusty alleyways, barbed wire fences”) which is still home to thousands upon thousands of black people who are on the list for a real house. Essentially illegal housing but a situation that is tolerated by the authorities because they have no magic wand to wave in order to solve the problem, not any time soon any way. So not everyone has made it yet….but in their own way, their shack is their home and they are very house proud, with as clean and tidy an environment as they can possible manage under the circumstances. And make it, eventually, they will – the government is building homes (with co-operation from the likes of the Nelson Mandela Foundation) as fast as possible, and when the people get to the top of the list they get their house free – no purchase price, no rent – as long as the house stays within the tenant’s family and is never sold. Even if the original tenant dies, the house remains free to the family.

While we are on exceptions, another thing that still needs improvement is the crime rate….overall I don’t think the problem is as drastic as it was in the bad old days but maybe that’s only partly because the need for crime to survive has lessened and maybe it’s partly because almost everyone now has full-on security at their homes in the form of alarms, electric gates, security fences, infra-red sensors, armed response call outs etc. But despite that, on our first night with Remo and Angeline at their fantastic home and stables on a lifestyle block halfway between Johannesburg and Pretoria, the power was cut at 2.30am because thieves stole about 3m of the copper wire from the power pole on the road outside the house (at no small risk to their own lives of course); and then two days later, Remo had his laptop stolen from the back seat of his car either whilst he was at traffic lights on his way to pick us up or shortly afterwards whilst we were in a shop (always physically check your remote locking has worked, because enterprising thieves in South Africa have worked out that to hold a button down on an ordinary TV-type remote while a car owner locks their car, cancels the “lock” command and actually leaves the car free to loot). And then, today, we discovered that some light fingered South African Airways baggage handler at either Victoria Falls or Johannesburg airports had helped themselves to two iPad/iPhone chargers from our bag when we flew back from Zimbabwe yesterday! The funny thing is that both plugs are NZ ones so now they need to nick an adapter as well – serves them right! But no wonder there’s still some paranoia about security!

Back to the main point though – visits to the two Museums certainly were sobering experiences. Firstly the Apartheid Museum in Jo’burg along with its current special exhibition “Mandela” was quite disturbing. In a nutshell, apartheid just was plain wrong and so unfair – it was something happening on another planet as far as most Kiwis were concerned, and we should have been more concerned. For people like me who hadn’t developed any kind of meaningful social conscience by 1981, we didn’t listen hard enough to you John and for that, I apologise. The way in which non-whites were treated was just appalling and should never have been allowed, not just from 1948 onwards when apartheid became official government policy, but neither from 1902 when the government then began its policies of segregation which is just apartheid by another name.

The list of injustices is way too long to detail here but why, in 1955, did the ANC and its allies feel it necessary to draw up a Freedom Charter (commemorated today in Freedom Square in the suburb of Kliptown in Soweto) with demands such as “All people shall be equal before the law”, “Living wages and shorter hours of work”, “Free and compulsory education, irrespective of colour, race or nationality”, “All national groups shall have equal rights” and so on. The driving force wasn’t so much to give blacks and coloureds better rights specifically, but in actual fact to give ALL South Africans EQUAL rights, regardless of colour. The irony is that the government of the day signed the charter in a patronising display of dishonesty and then of course promptly ignored every single clause, but some 40 years later, with the ANC in power and Nelson Mandela as President, many of the original Freedom Charter demands formed the basic clauses of the new South African constitution. How the wheels turn….

Lastly in this long winded epistle, a few words on Hector Pieterson who, when I met you in 1981 John, I must admit I’d never heard of. But whilst I guess we’d all heard of the 1976 Soweto Uprising (where school students at the time peacefully protested about a Government edict that all significant subjects would henceforth be taught in the relatively unfamiliar – and disliked in black circles – Afrikaans language rather than the English they were used to), I don’t think I recall having any great concern at the time that over 200 of the students and other innocent hangers-on, some as young as 7 years old, were killed by police gunfire on or shortly after 16 June 1976. Nor do I recall knowing that the killing of Hector, only 13 years old, became the symbol of the uprising which in its own right became the turning point of the anti-apartheid struggle (a point from which the white government’s hold on the people became less and less secure, leading eventually to the abandonment of apartheid some 15 or so years later). But Hector Pieterson DID make that difference, and his unwitting posthumous contribution to change in South Africa is now very appropriately commemorated in ‘his’ museum in Soweto, just a block down the street from where he was shot. It’s a place that we’re glad we’ve been to, although it could hardly be called a pleasant place, it’s a place where we learned an awful lot, and it’s a place that all pro-Tour people back in 1981 should now visit.

So, that’s it John Minto….31 years down the track I’m big enough to realise that I got it wrong way back then…..hopefully you’re big enough to accept my apology!

Cheers

Andrew Moffat

P.S. there’s a few photos of South Africa to be found here, as always, more to be added later

Frustrated?? Try dealing with the Indian Bureau of Immigration

Posted on by
22

Let’s imagine a scenario – two travellers (let’s call them Andrew and Pauline) decide to visit India and Nepal on their upcoming holiday. Being the clever people they are, they do all the necessary homework first, including finding out what visas are needed in the different countries but they find that the Indian Immigration website is a little ambiguous when it comes to a second visit to India within a week of the first visit. So, Andrew makes a call to the Indian High Commission in Wellington which goes something along the following lines (this is the short version):
“We are visiting India for one week from 22 April to 29 April, then we fly to Nepal for 6 days before returning to India for one night, in transit at an airport hotel in New Delhi. What sort of visa do we need?”
“You must get the double entry visa, sir. It is not allowable to enter India for a second visit within 60 days of the first visit, unless you have the double entry visa, sir”
“Even although we will only be back in India for a bit under 12 hours, after a visit to Nepal, and won’t be doing anything except sitting at a hotel near the Airport?”
“No sir, you must be getting the double entry visa”

So, at a cost of something like NZ$150 each, two double entry visas are purchased, and the passports come back from Wellington with the visas inside along with a very impressive stamp signed by S K Verma, Second Secretary for Bureaucratic Nonsense, High Commission of India, Wellington, stating that two entries to India are permitted, the second within two months of the first, and (note this….it’s a key part of the story) “registration required within 14 days of arrival in India”. Another small, but key factor here is the fine print on the visa itself which states “Registration required within 14 days of arrival essential for stay beyond 150 days”. These things are admittedly open to interpretation but the message seemed to be that you should register somewhere (no information was given as to with whom, or where) within 14 days on any visit if you intended to stay 150 days or more, plus maybe you could glean that registration within 14 days was certainly needed regardless of total days, should you be on a second visit under a Double Entry visa.

Fast forward three and a bit months, to Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi on the evening of Saturday 5 May. Our travellers arrive on a flight around 5.30pm, having spent a few days in the neighbouring country of Nepal and looking forward to a few hours rest at a hotel, a hot shower, a meal and then a return to the airport around 2am to check-in for the next leg of the journey, a flight to Mauritius departing at 5.20am on Sunday 6 May. Waiting in Arrivals is a man from the tour company, and a driver, ready for the trips to and from the hotel (which has been paid for by the way).

No-one had factored in Immigration’s approach to the situation. The man behind the counter looks at the passports and visas for a very long time, then has a long conversation with his neighbour (in Hindi of course – there’s no sense in speaking the language of the people at the centre of the issue and thereby letting them in on the secret too soon). Eventually, Mr Bureaucrat (“MB”) turns back to us (“AP”) and says “You cannot enter India as you have not registered”.

AP: “But we don’t have to as our total stay is only 8 days, and anyway, the second visit hasn’t started yet”
MB: “Yes you do”
AP: “OK, our mistake, sorry. We’ll do so now – where do we go?”
MB: “You must go to the AFFRO office”
AP: “Where is that?”
MB: “In New Delhi, near the Hilton Hotel”
AP: “But if we can’t get into India, how can we go to the AFFRO office in the city. And even if you let us in, what time does the office shut?”
MB: “It is not open on weekends, sir. You need to go there on Monday”
AP: “But we are leaving here at 5.20am tomorrow, less than 12 hours from now. How can we go to an office that won’t open until the day after we leave? Why don’t we just stay in the Airport, and become transit passengers only?”
MB: “No, you have a visa for a second entry, so you don’t need to stay in transit”

This circular conversation continued for some time, until eventually our man went away to speak to a superior officer, and came back to advise two things.
*Firstly, by virtue of the great kindness of the Government of India, we would be allowed into the country on one very strict condition – that we did not leave the Airport until we had gone from where we were at Arrivals on Level 0, to Departures on Level 2, where (wonders will never cease!) we would find an AFFRO office that was open for the next hour or so. Once we had registered, we would be free to go to our hotel.
* Secondly, double entry visas are only necessary for instances when you leave India for distant parts such as a return to your home country, and because we had only visited a neighbouring country (like Nepal, Burma, Bangladesh etc.) we had not needed the “2nd Visit” endorsement after all.

The illogical connection of these two contradictory pieces of information escapes us still – we were being given grudging permission to use a visa we actually didn’t need in the first place, and which therefore presumably could be ignored. Deep and meaningful sarcasm was contemplated at the time but, surprisingly, it wasn’t used as one imagines it wouldn’t have helped the cause in any way at all.

So, we are stamped into the country, we collect our bags and we emerge into Arrivals to be greeted by our tour guide who had probably thought by now we weren’t coming. We explain to him that we need to go out the doors (into the 38deg heat by the way) and upstairs to the AFFRO office, so as it may take a little while, could he look after our bags and stay put in nice air conditioned Arrivals? No problem, so off we set through the airport doors, thus technically setting foot of course on Indian territory. Big mistake!

Upstairs we go, but security (we’re talking seriously armed people here) will not let us into Departures because, whilst we have a ticket to leave, no-one gets into the Terminal for any reason unless they have a ticket and are within 4 hours of their departure time. No amount of discussion, conversation, cajoling, pleading, begging makes any difference – the rules are the rules, and until 1.20am, we ain’t getting into Departures. It is now around 7.30pm.

So, back downstairs where, you’ve guessed it, we are still on the outside and now, we are not allowed into Arrivals either, and our guide and our luggage are still on the inside! If you’ve persevered so far, you may be getting a sense of growing frustration at this point. You would be right….

Eventually, after much discussion, an armed guard escorts me into Arrivals where I collect Jitendra and our bags. The guard also understands my request to ask the next set of guards on the doors between Arrivals and Customs if I can go back through to MB and see if another solution can be found to our Catch-22 situation…..probably knowing full well that a reverse move i.e. an ENTRY into Customs and Immigration via the EXIT door just isn’t going to happen. Naturally, he was right.

So, here we are: in India but not in India. Unable to register, unable to go to our hotel (yes, we probably could have just gone but how did we know that MB wasn’t watching us on the CCTV, cackling away like a mad man, and hoping we will flout his petty little rule so he can call up the soldiers and have us cut down in a hail of bullets on the edge of the carpark?), unable to yet get into Departures, and unable to get back into Arrivals! Has anyone watched the Tom Hanks movies “The Terminal Man”? At least that character was inside looking out and not the other way around.

What to do?? At this stage, we sent Jitendra and the driver home because it’s becoming clear that even if we do solve the problem, we are only just going to get to the hotel in time to turn around and come back, so staying what’s left of the night at the Airport has become the best option. After all, in the gate lounges there are reclining seats, food courts, places to freshen up etc. But, hold on, those options aren’t going to become available until after 1.20am!!

But there’s a solution, albeit an uncomfortable one. On Level 2, in a glassed off area with strict security (i.e. you can SEE Departures, but you sure as heck cannot BE in Departures) there is a Visitors’ Lounge which, after showing the same ticket that won’t yet let us in next door, we are allowed to enter and find a seat to settle in for the long wait until 1.20am. There’s a small coffee stall, but that’s it, or so it seems. After a while one of us needs to to the toilet, so follows the signs which interestingly enough lead to a lift, which takes you down to Level 0…..but INSIDE the building!! So suddenly, we ARE inside Arrivals, and freely walking up and down within a metre or so of the goons who wouldn’t let us in just an hour or so before! Still can’t get in the next set of doors to Immigration of course, but that doesn’t matter now because we’ve given up on going to the hotel.

Stay with me – this story has another twist yet!

The hours pass, and with our trips up and down the lift to Arrivals, we manage to get fed, watered, toileted, amused etc., until finally 1.20am arrives, and we get released into the wonderful world of Departures. Whilst we imagine that the AFFRO office is highly unlikely to be open at this time of the night, especially on a weekend, we do look for it in the place where we were told it would be. To our complete lack of surprise, it does not appear to exist so we don’t bother to look any further, and therefore we don’t bother to register, and go to check-in instead.

That completed, we head back to Immigration (or Emigration would be a better term in this case) and approach the counter. The man behind it looks at the passports and visas for a very long time, then has a long conversation with his neighbour (in Hindi of course – there’s no sense in speaking the language of the people at the centre of the issue and thereby letting them in on the secret too soon). Eventually, Mr Bureaucrat Number Two (“MB2”) turns back to us (“AP”) and says “You cannot leave India as you have not registered”. !#%^*!!

Let’s leave it there….suffice to say that after much debate amongst about six Bureau of Immigration men who all looked at the passports and visas several times each, MB2 eventually went and spoke to his superior officer, but God heard our prayers and MB2 came back, actually smiled and said “It’s OK, we won’t worry about it this time”, stamped our passports and waved us through.

A little under 3 hours later, as dawn was breaking over New Delhi, we lifted off Indian soil, and didn’t look back.