1/n #VirtualSafari #1, of mine. It's East Africa for us all, folks, and first choice is: which airport to fly from? I recommend you fly into Düsseldorf or Cologne, to join the group, and we fly from there to Arusha international airport, Tanzania. It's easier on the whole.
2/n With all respect to @robby_dendrons and @evamariacurlew, while one can fly direct from Amsterdam to Arusha, TZ, I find the miles and miles of walking one has to do in Schipol, & the long queues there, srsly off-putting. So Cologne it is. Me there.
3/n Cologne is not bad if you flew in there, to fly out to TZ. After all, I took this photograph of a cheetah actually in Cologne (Köln). Stick with me, and you'll see the best ever things, unexpectedly.
4/n Flying from Cologne means a change-over in planes in Addis Abba airport, which is a welcome break from being cooped up in a tin can. Not much to see in the fairly basic transit-lounge, but here's my photo of Addis Abba from the window in the mens' in the lounge.
5/n At this stage y'all looking at me in vocal protest about being cooped up in a tiny tin-can for AGES, so, one, I'll tell y'all if you thought Cologne to Addis Ababa was bad, one day try flying say London to Sydney, Australia. IOW, don't complain to me, I've had it far worse
6/n To distract you from woes: I tell y'all of my projects. One plan is to go to this place below one day, which is a very expensive place to stay in, outside Nairobi, Kenya, but would be a fantastic place for me to photo other people with giraffes over breakfast. NOT my photo:
7/n I mean, seriously. All I need is someone to photograph. This place. I've never been there yet, but definitely one day.
8/n Another project I have definitely to do is to go to Namibia, and photograph someone walking with cheetahs. Plus naturally I want to go just to walk with cheetahs myself. Definitely one day. NOT my photo, again
9/n Anyway, time to board the aircraft for next leg. Addis Ababa -˃ Arusha, TZ. This has 2 big advantages; one being, it avoids Dar-es-Salaam. Avoid using Dar-es-Salaam airport like the plague. The other advantage is; unlike the Amsterdam direct flight, it's a day-time flight
10/ A day-time flight. Which means at one point you can look outside your airplane window and see the peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro as we fly over. Or it could be Mt. Meru. Why worry? It's one of the two. My photo:
11/ I immediately fill you in on everyone who's written about Kilimanjaro. From ancient Greeks, to Arabs, to 19th-century Europeans, to Ernest Hemingway, to Martha Gellhorn. You learn a LOT about Martha Gellhorn, including her spy trip w/ Hemingway to pre-1941 China. Fun, yes?
12/ Finally, we land at Arusha, Kilimanjaro airport. Finally landed, completely. It's a very relaxed airport. A ton of paperwork to fill in on tourist entry, but them's the breaks. Leastaways, you won't die in queues.
My photo.
13/ We negotiate the entry paperwork & passport control. We finally get outside.
"... a gentle breeze kept it swaying, and oh! the sweetness of the air!" ~ Jeff Wayne's War Of The Worlds. The scents of flame-trees and frangipani, the scent of Mt. Meru & Kilimanjaro, of childhood
14/ Had this been the night-flight from Amsterdam, all this would be in darkness. I dive off to a tiny hole-in-the-wall office to exchange currency, becoming a paper millionaire. We get a taxi or a couple of taxis. On the hour's drive, if in day, you can see many dust-devils
15/ We finally arrive at the lodge where we will be staying. I tell you to take Room 1. I wander off to smoke & drink coffee moodily, something I'm very good at. You go to your room, open the curtains. If we arrived in the day, this is what you see just outside your window.
16/ If we came on the night-flight, I tell you to set your alarm on 06 am. You glare at me, because you think I'm insufferable. But it's the other way round; if you followed the suggestion, you see this in the distance in the very dim light of early dawn.
</End of first day.
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