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Rediscovering Tanganyika

December 2021 - January 2022
From here to there, simply strolling everywhere. Read more
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  • Michi, derRediscovering Tanganyika
    3

    The finite loop of street food

    January 4, 2022 in Tanzania ⋅ ⛅ 27 °C

    I decide to take a rather rough road from Singida to Mbeya via Rungwa along three big game reserves. It takes me 2.5 days. Holy Banana! Theoretically it's just nothing but trees to the left and right. Practically the locals tend to have logged whatever they could get. Forest reserves and these game reserves make an exception.

    Of 400 km dirt road 320 km are "good dirt" which means "freshly graded" and "not mudded". The rest I better do not talk about. The biggest relief is that I just pass 10 cars and 3 buses on these 400 km. The road is mine! A deep dive into the inner me. Enough time for self-analysis and ancient Metal.

    At Mwamagembe ranger post I overnight for free and learn a lot about the landscape from my hosts, and about hunting activities. Interestingly, at night I wake up and have to vomit out of my car. Apparently some street food decided to get back out on the street. Or it was the three-day-old partly fermented ginger tea from my thermos? Shit happens.

    At the headquarters I learn that Rungwa game reserve is indeed pretty interesting! It sources rivers which drain into lake Tanganyika and into the Indian Ocean. Thus, you can see it as "the very centre of Tanzania". In dry season I have to return and then it is possible to drive all the way through Ruaha national park into Rungwa game reserve and further west to lake Tanganyika without having to use any of these boring tarred roads :D    Read more

  • Michi, derRediscovering Tanganyika

    I got a visitor ...

    January 8, 2022 in Tanzania ⋅ ☁️ 26 °C
  • Michi, derRediscovering Tanganyika
    2

    Lukewarm and crystal-clear

    January 10, 2022 in Tanzania ⋅ 🌧 23 °C

    On the way to lake Nyasa I throw Sanda into the crater lake near the town of Masoko. Beautiful place surrounded by forest! Crystal-clear and lukewarm water with stunning mountain scenery and some bathing locals. They also built a new campsite recently where we should have stayed rather than rushing down to lake Nyasa. Next time ...Read more

  • Michi, derRediscovering Tanganyika

    Matema

    January 11, 2022 in Tanzania ⋅ ⛅ 28 °C

    Shallow bathtub water with looong, brown-reddish and clean beaches, surrounded by mountains from Tanzania and Malawian side. Just a few people around. It's our beach! Welcome to lake Nyasa! We stay two nights in a lovely room with great view on the scenery and weather, get in touch with the locals and enjoy yummy coffee.Read more

  • Michi, derRediscovering Tanganyika

    Kipengere Range

    January 12, 2022 in Tanzania ⋅ ☁️ 16 °C

    Too grey and too rainy for Kitulo, Tanzania's famous flower national park. Is it already in full bloom with the delayed rains? I doubt that and we decide not to spend 100+ Dollars just for peeking into it. Anyway, the whole Kipengere Range around here is already beautiful enough! Soft, juicy, herbily smelling, green hills, at some places with commercial forests, at others untouched. We sleep at a crazily cold viewpoint overlooking a bamboo forest from 2880 m. The wind eats our last energy while we prepare a light salad dinner outside. The misty morning makes us move onwards without breakfast 🌧.Read more

  • Michi, derRediscovering Tanganyika
    2

    Somewhere along the road ...

    January 13, 2022 in Tanzania ⋅ ⛅ 28 °C

    ... with Italian-style Mozzarella in my fridge from Njome milk factory. I have to start growing a new sour dough soon for adequate Brotunterlage!

    We fall in love with Songea and in general with the Ruvuma Region in this southern part of Tanzania. You get rich beef soups with aromatic African bell peppers and a hint of lime for breakfast, accompanied by chapati. The people are somehow different, even friendlier and just natural. Everything is colourful. Nobody bugs us. We feel the first chunks of Mozambican influence with sporadic "obrigado"s from the left and right while strolling along the markets. Yum!Read more

  • Michi, derRediscovering Tanganyika

    Lake pigs

    January 14, 2022 in Tanzania ⋅ ☁️ 24 °C

    The beautiful lakeside road meanders up the steep hills with sharp corners, reveals wide views of the lake and comes back down to flat bays with small villages. Over and over again! While the evening progresses we spot a promising path towards the beach and ask the smiling locals.
    "Can we follow this narrow path with the car?"
    "Yes."
    "Does it lead down to the water?"
    "Yes."
    "Can we camp there?"
    "Yes."
    I'm not sure if they understood our questions and if they are aware of the consequences of their answers but we proceed, as threatened 😋.

    Down at the waterline we find a small soccer pitch and ask again. The shy boys enthusiastically gesture that we cannot drive on the sand with the car and that sleeping here is not possible. Damn. As we are about to turn back, one of them is pushed forward by the others in our direction. He speask some English, yay! He wants to show us a different place for the night and jumps into the car while Sanda crawls onto the bed in the back. Just around the corner he guides us to a tiny bay with a perfectly flat spot at the beach, two log-boats and a mother pig with three black youngsters. Still, he insists that it is not a good idea to drive onto the sand with the car. The goal is so near! I check the track's condition and convince him of the contrary. Finally we build camp. Hurray!

    We share some beers with our guide and the two fishermen around their boats. They disappear with the falling dark. While we prepare curry for dinner three small boys watch fascinatedly. And they eat our watermelon. And all our bananas.    Read more

  • Michi, derRediscovering Tanganyika
    31

    Huhu Ruhuhu

    January 14, 2022 in Tanzania ⋅ ☁️ 25 °C

    I am pretty angry on the police officer whom we asked yesterday about the road condition of a shortcut from Njombe into the Livingstone Mountains: "You cannot drive it, the bridges are washed away". Bla bla bullshit! I will never again listen to route recommendations from random locals. Later I will learn from a Belgian motorbike traveller that it was indeed very well drivable 😡

    Anyway, after taking the main road to Songea we at least turn onto the northern dirt road towards Lituhi at the lake shore. The first half is full of ugly Chinese trucks transporting tons of stone coal from the surrounded mines. But the second half degrades to a curvy, narrow and joyful ride through light natural forest down to Ruhuhu River. Oooh, what a relief!

    Ruhuhu is supposed to be crossable from the north only by ferry but wait! We encounter a newly built bridge and a rather resting ferry. After a short break in the low sun and nice conversations with welcoming locals we continue south along the shore of Lake Nyasa into the colourful dusk.    Read more

  • Michi, derRediscovering Tanganyika

    Around the bay of thunders

    January 15, 2022 in Tanzania ⋅ ☁️ 27 °C

    A few weeks ago I learned from Bernhard in Singida the true meaning of the Swahili word "mzungu" which is used by the Tanzanians to label white people. It literally means "people who go in circles". In early times the white explorers and discoverers arrived at the coast, went into the mainland to search for this and that, returned to the coast and left again. Roads did not exist. By then the locals did not understand why the hell anybody would go all the long way to lake Tanganyika, then to lake Victoria, then up some mountains, just to return and to leave again. They did not see any purpose in this. In fact, nowadays little has changed when looking at the common tourist from a Tanzanian perspective. But after today I strongly believe that the locals play the major role in this circleification game! In Mbamba Bay we ask five guys for the location of the new beach restaurant and get seven different directions. Three times we pass the actual access road where we would have had to take the turn. The most ridiculous direction we get from a police officer exactly opposite of this very access road from where he points us to the other end of the town. Half of the day we spend in the nearby roundabout going to and fro. People already start dancing for every new circle we drive. Finally we find the fish. And the beach. And the sunset.Read more

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