Travelogue

Mahale, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, is one of Africa’s most hauntingly beautiful national parks. Covering the densely forested Mahale Mountains as well as  part of the lake, it is hard to access and feels very remote. We spend four days at Greystoke Mahale, a small camp with six tents located close to a colony of 60 habituated chimpanzees who live nearby in the forest.

Lake Tanganyika is Africa’s longest lake at 673km, and also its largest (in terms of the quantity of water it holds). It seems animated by a will of its own. At times dark and brooding, light hearted and friendly or menacing and unfathomable, its mysterious presence surrounds us during our stay.

The boys go fishing on the camp’s dhow, procuring a sashimi dinner every day. And we go swimming – away from the shore (which is teeming with crocodiles and hippos), conscious of the fact that, when we are floating on the lake’s surface, we are at the midpoint, almost equidistant between the bottom of the lake (at 1,400m) and the top of the surrounding mountains.

Mount Meru is shrouded in clouds, and for most of the ascent we can only guess where the summit is. 

Clouds rest gently on the valley below, looking like whipped cream. It takes us two and a half hours to climb the remaining 400m to the summit. It is a difficult climb where we frequently stare down at an abyss below. Edward motivates us by telling us that we are about to “eat the lion’s heart”. The last 100m are so steep we need to scramble on all fours.

Then, suddenly, before we realise it, we are on the summit. After all the efforts of the last three days, it feels almost disappointing to have reached the summit. Climbing a mountain really only has meaning in the journey. The end is strangely devoid of value.   And then, the long, tedious trek down begins. By the time we reach the Momella gate, at the entrance of the park, we will have walked for 30 hours.

It is the eve of our summit attempt. We spend a very short night at the Saddle Hut and get woken up at midnight for a departure for the summit a 1.30am. Saddle Hut is at 3,500m. It’s a miserable night, and we get no more than two hours’ sleep before we are woken up and force-fed a heavy breakfast to energize us for the summit ascent.

We hike up the mountain in complete darkness for five hours, using head lamps until we reach to mid-point to the summit. It’s a challenging walk and at times we are clinging onto the mountainside, with sheer drops of several hundred meters just beneath us. By the time we get to the midway point, at 4,100m, we’re tired, hungry and running low on motivation.

At this point, the boys decide to return to Base Camp with Oswald, the Ranger, while Laura and I carry on towards the summit with Edward, the Head Guide, and Isaac, one of our porters. We are so proud of what they’ve achieved, overcoming their fears and physical limits to come this far !

It’s a long slog up. We spend two nights in National Park huts with spartan levels of comfort. Along the way, we meet herds of buffalo, bush bucks and see signs of leopards.

On Sept 29th, we leave for Arusha National Park to begin the ascent of Mount Meru. At 4,566m (14,978ft), it isn’t the tallest mountain in Africa (that title goes to Mt. Kilimanjaro at 5,895m) but it is one of the most challenging, and reportedly steeper than Kili.  By the time we get our briefing, we realize that we are woefully unprepared and have approached the whole affair in an amateurish manner.

The conditions on the summit of Mount Meru are extreme, with temperatures  close to zero, the last few hundred meters require one to climb on all fours and the return trip to the summit covers almost 80km. We will spend four nights in mountain huts with minimal facilities, no showers and no heating.  We have an expedition of 14 support staff, including a Head Guide, an armed Ranger, a Cook and 11 porters to bring up everything we need for the four day hike.

We spend our first couple of days hiking through beautiful montane forests…Gnarly old trees, Old Man’s Beard, the odd Alpine flower… Where Kenya’s Chyulu Hills felt like Fangorn Forest, Mount Meru’s forest is Lothlorien. Magical, bright, one almost expects to see Elves darting between the trees.

Finally, it is time to leave our Alpine paradise and return to the hot and dusty Maasai plain.  The seven hour drive to Ndarakwai, a camp on a Maasai ranch in the West Kilimanjaro region, gets us there just in time for a surprise birthday celebration for Enoch.

Bush babies pop out of the bush to join the party and a surprise cake and celebration leave Enoch beaming and looking as impish as a leprechaun.

Taking advantage of their good WiFi, our time at Ndarakwai is otherwise entirely focused on filling out the boys’s school applications in anticipation of our return to Singapore, a year from now. It feels quite unreal to write school application essays when that part of our life now seems so remote.

Still in the Usambaras, we drive three hours to the remote town of Mtae, a small settlement on a mountain bluff which juts out over the Maasai plain, 1000 metres below.

The road seems to go on forever, our journey only interrupted by the small school children who dart on and off the road like will-o-wisps, materializing seemingly out of thin air, just long enough to yell, “jambo, wazungu !”.

At the end of a long, winding road, Mtae has an almost otherworldly feel to it. With a few houses scattered around dusty roads, shrouded in clouds, preternaturally quiet, it seems to exist in another dimension.

After the dry dust bowl of the plains, our arrival in the Western Usambara Mountains feels like crossing the Looking Glass. Lush forests, terrace fields and cool mountain air . 

We spend three days in a chalet on a Swiss farm, complete with sensible wooden furniture, fireplace, pretty flower beds and black and white Swiss cows grazing in the hills above the chalet. Home baked bread and cheese from the farm complete our Swiss fantasy.

The scenery could be anywhere in the Alps (or in Malaysia’s Cameron Highlands), with a few surviving German homesteads and churches dotted around the hills.

It is a seven hour drive from Bagamoyo to the Usambara Mountains, where we plan to spend a few days in Alpine isolation from the dust and heat of the plains.

African roads are the asphalt rivers of the continent. The lifeblood of towns and villages. People virtually live on the roadside and there is a continuous stream of activity alongside the road.