Stormchaser

A year on, the last of my days on a diamond in the rough. Bye bye, my lady.

Turn a corner, around a Cape

For a trip that started with my mobile phone being stolen the day I landed in Cape Town, the one week that I spent with South Africa was more than sublime. It was therapy, a full-body massage for a very weary soul.

Long hours spent on the road, watching the country blur beside you, soaking in the newness and the sun, the tangible dust, the noisy wind and endless roar of the engine. Just sitting, seeing, and watching quietly as the knots and stress and knuckles and chewed fingernails all seep away.

A visit to any part of Africa is deemed incomplete without having been on a safari, regardless of whether the African nation or region you happen to be visiting is at all known for bountiful wildlife. Still (thankfully), I seriously doubt anyone looks for ostriches in Egypt. Anyway, South Africa is in fact unabashedly rich in the wildlife department, thanks to its phenomenal, world-renowned Kruger National Park. But, as things came to pass, it turned out that the six usable days I had in South Africa would not allow for a trip up far north to visit Kruger AND do it justice AND do a certain other activity I’d set my sights on in the southeastern part of the country.

Next best? A half-day safari in a private game reserve a few hours drive from Cape Town. While nowhere comparable to what I can only imagine the splendour of Kruger to be, this safari was charming its own way, with its grumpy buffalo, aloof zebras, lugubrious giraffe, feisty springbok, sassy elephants, and our excellent guide, who, on one occasion cheerfully handed us all a large ball of rhino dung, asking us to sniff it, and extolling its awesome aroma, before actually telling us what we were cradling so lovingly in our arms.

A mid-morning pit stop during the safari for a ‘drinks break’, which consisted, oddly enough, of juice and/or wine/champagne/beer in the afternoon had me immensely puzzled, until a visit to the reserve website a few days later revealed that what we had signed up for that day was in fact a half-day tour at the “Aquila Luxury Private Reserve”. Suddenly, the made-up faces of our safari-companions and the slight wrinkling of their noses at our disheveled presence seemed to make a lot more sense. In spite of (and probably because of!) all of this, the day was incredibly, surprisingly fun. Next time, maybe we’ll even see not just one, but a whole herd of gnus.

Cape Town’s most popular claim to fame is the towering Table Mountain that dominates most of its landscape. Technically, Table Mountain isn’t exactly “towering”; it’s more of a mountain stopped short in its tracks… into a plateau. This table-top is easily accessible by cable car today, although several trekking routes snake all around as well. Table Mountain adds to Cape Town that exotic air that Rio de Janeiro is said to exude; to say that the views from above are stunning is a terrible understatement.

And yet, there are those other bits and bobs about South Africa that everyone knows and shies away from mentioning. As the Lonely Planet admits, it’s very easy while in South Africa to have an exclusively “white” experience of the whole country. The hotel the company had me staying at in Cape Town was distinctly, unapologetically “white”, or non-black for the most part, its clientele comprised mostly of young, rich, yuppie white South Africans, hip and terribly cool. As a little brown girl in the midst of this strange divide, neither here nor there, I was as confused and ill-at-ease as I daresay many of the immigrant and first- and second-generation Indians in South Africa are. In the end, for my part, I was happiest in the Baz Bus backpacker bus, on my way to Stormsriver, to stand on the Bloukrans bridge and contemplate jumping off it. When the world ceases to make sense, take a little walk and get lost a little bit. Or take a little swim, and drown a bit. Or a little jump, and fall a fair bit.

I was fortunate enough, however, to have met a Cape Town local while at work on the boat, the Marine Mammal Observer, Victor, who, when he heard that I would be spending a few days in his city, promised to devote an entire day to showing me parts of Cape Town that I wouldn’t normally see as a tourist.

What followed was a completely mad and enlightening day, where, among a multitude of lightning visits and drives, I saw Cape Town’s local casino with its own ice skating rink, desolate at 10 AM on a Friday morning, where Victor and I promptly proceeded to skate away shakily at first but with steady improvement, to some seriously horrible music, for the rest of the morning.

Celebrating our achievements with a very suspect brunch at Wimpy’s, we headed back to the city via a combination of the local train and rikki, a sort of shared-taxi-which-is-actually-a-minivan. A note about Cape Town’s train system. The Lonely Planet will have you believe that it is a dodgy and substandard mode of transport, but it is by far of much better quality that local intra-city train systems in India. And yet, the Lonely Planet calls India’s local trains a vivid and thrilling not-to-be-missed experience. I guess India is allowed its charming third-worldliness, as long as it doesn’t aspire to move up the global food chain. But for South Africa, which insists that it is as First World as any other, thankewverriemuch, why, the train system is truly “appalling”!

As is the crime rate and poverty in the Cape Flats, Cape Town’s edition of Dharavi. And yet, as Patrick, Victor’s oldest friend drove me through the flats, and after a visit to both his and Victor’s homes, I was left scratching my head with puzzlement at what exactly it was that South Africa was so ashamed about. Agreed, the City Bowl and Cape Flats residential areas are worlds apart, but the city’s (and country’s) refusal to accept that the shiny-happy and the not-so-shiny-happy are all part of the whole package is bewildering and disheartening.

The paranoia exists everywhere. All through my week in South Africa, with uncanny frequency, I’d see houses fenced in with tall, barbed-wire meshes, all claiming to be electrified with enough voltage to vaporise the foolish instantly, guarded by the “city’s best armed forces”, shops with loud posters declaring that they had “absolutely-no-cash-on-the-premises-so-please-don’t-rob-us”, travel books and pamphlets detailing precautions to take while travelling through the country, entreaties to white travellers to please not look too rich, thankyou. In all the hotels, in the tourist buses, the staff, drivers, servicemen are black or coloured, the clients, white. You catch the driver muttering under his breath, “#*&@&# whiteys”, you watch the doorman stare stony-faced straight ahead as he holds the door open for twittering, dolled up, white twenty-somethings. Years after the official end to apartheid, South Africa still remains a country divided. Enough has been written and said about this. But to see it for yourself, through neutral, brown eyes, is a very strange kind of tragic.

I spent the better part of three days on a bus to get to the far-flung Stormsriver on the eastern cape. Stormsriver is the closest settlement (“village” would be a generous term) to the Bloukrans Bridge, site of the world’s highest commercial bungy jump, something I educated myself about soon after I knew I’d be spending some time in South Africa. But the lesser known factoid about Stormsriver is that it is at close proximity to the Tsitsikamma National Park, a rather rambly, lost, confused, and incredibly beautiful parkland, fringed by a fantastic beach and seaside cottages.

I stumbled into Tsitsikamma in a post-bungy daze, blissfully and deliriously happy, with the majority of the day left at my disposal to ruminate shamelessly over my free-fall into the void. And Tsitsikamma provided the perfect venue for the indulgence I had in mind. A lazy lunch by the sea, followed by a wander into the woods, conversations with the birds, and inordinate photo-clicking. One of those days of unmistakable perfection.

I will always swear by backpackers, even the grimy ones. I cannot stand spending more than a night at a hotel; most hotels are depressing, solitary, and utterly soulless. The only reason I survived two months in a hotel room in Norway was because I barely spent any time in it at all.

The Tube n’ Axe backpackers in Stormsriver was an incredibly lucky find. Alright, so it wasn’t so much a find as one of (a grand total of) three available backpacker lodgings in the village, and somehow, it sounded the most appealing. And it was the first backpackers I rang from my depressing-yet-oh-so-cool Cape Town hotel. And it was also one of the hostels where the Baz Bus, easily South Africa’s best backpacker bus, made a routine stop. Enough said. Convenience is a very compelling thing.

The two nights I spent at Tube n’ Axe backpackers were probably the most fun I’ve had at a backpackers in a long time. Travelling solo this time, I found myself in the company of great hosts and very easy-going and friendly co-travellers. From a solo young Brit, Nick, recently laid off from a investment banking job in the UK (and not the slightest bit broken up about it) and heading to Jo’burg to meet his dad, and who seemed to have fallen terribly in love with the Dutch hostel receptionist, to a young South African couple heading for a week-long trek, to an intriguing German couple who “made factories for people”, to the toothless African chef, to the fire-stoking bartender, Andrew, and his accidental, thrill-seeking Brazilian girlfriend, Lorena, the mix was fantastic and fortuitous. The nocturnal bonfires to stave off the chill added to the merriment, as did the pool table and the large-screen TV. My last night at the backpackers was spent guzzling a deliciously cold bottle of cider, somberly watching “I Am Legend” with a bunch of my hostel-mates and discussing the vagaries of an emotional Will Smith, before we all stumbled into our respective dorms and into a very pleasant, very content slumber.

But even now, looking back at my week in Africa nearly a month ago, I know I did everything I possible could’ve in the little time I was there, and yet left so incredibly much out. The journey back to Cape Town with the Baz Bus provided glimpses of the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. The Drakensburg mountains, Jeffrey's Bay, Port Elizabeth, Plettenberg Bay, and even a place magically called “Wilderness”. And that's just the southern cape. I’m holding on with bated breath. Until next time?

Addendum:

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of leaping into nothingness, with the sky at your feet and a seemingly endless fall, the cold rushing into your face and drowning your cheeks, arms spread-eagle and free. And then, silence. Nothing but the quiet. And the bliss.

Starry Nights at Zero Degrees

What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.

I got through Kilimanjaro through the skin of my teeth, although, in the end, I felt like I hadn’t nearly given it everything. It’s easy to ponder wistfully once the deed is done and the dust has settled. It’s human nature to look back in regret and wish so desperately that you’d held on for just that bit longer, for just those couple of hours more. Breathed a little more, a little deeper, tried a little harder, a little more desperately, a little more determinedly.

But it’s one thing to look to live by a quote like – The pain will go away, but giving up will stay with you forever. And it’s quite something else to remember to repeat that to yourself over and over, with indisputable conviction, as you heave what you’re convinced is the heaviest body on the planet (yours, that is), 5,895 metres up the earth. Gasping for air, desperately trying to ignore a pounding headache and bubbling nausea, straining at muscles that have all but shriveled up and died, quaking in the bitter, inhuman cold, it’s the starkest struggle to find purpose and reason in the madness that finds you inching your way up a continent’s highest mountain in the dead of the night, under the blinding stars, in the silence of the darkness. The only sounds you hear are your own ragged, deathly breathing, panicked gasps, uncontrollable, wheezy coughs, and the sickening sound of the gravel sliding under your feet as you take three steps backward for every two steps forward.

And yet, merely a day later, once lower altitude and thicker air have left you all but completely renewed, you eagerly seek and plan your next fix, the next time you get to put yourself through yet another experience of agony. Nothing logical can really explain this – it isn’t masochism, nor fatalism of any kind, merely just mountain-madness, that inexplicable strain of wanderlust that compels you to undergo a ludicrous amount of pain and suffering for, among other things, a fantastic view. One would imagine the rewards couldn’t possibly match up to the effort. And one would be mistaken.

Africa is mad and glorious. And much like India in many ways, as far as my limited experience of the former goes. The roads are about the same quality (and therefore range from fabulous to bone-dislocating), the streetscapes look and feel more or less the same, the clothes are functional, the vendors affable, the summer sun searing, the cars dusty, the language colourful. But some exceptions – nearly all women with very short hair, nearly every bawling baby trussed behind a woman’s back, open vehicles rapidly filling up with red earth, the absence of neon signs, the multitude of Lutheran churches, $20 bottles of Nescafé. And 1,250 Tanzanian Shillings to the US Dollar.

Tanzania, until recently, was continually plagued with economic turmoil, given its wild neighbours and the equally wildly fluctuating oil and commodity prices. Yet, as Joseph, our young Chagga guide offered optimistically, things are now looking up, what with the wealth of natural resources prevalent throughout the country, especially gold and natural gas. Natural resources sitting pretty, sitting ready, sitting-ducks for exploitation, sitting in anticipation of better times ahead. Why, let’s bring those Nescafé prices down, now, shall we?

As with several other parts of Africa, tourism plays a large role in supporting the economy. In a country that boasts of the Kilimanjaro National Park, the Serengeti, and Zanzibar’s glorious golden beaches, it’s not surprising to find tour operators and their accompanying touts at every street corner. Booking a trek to Kilimanjaro can be done in two ways – locally after arriving in Tanzania (at, supposedly, a greater risk to life and limb while up the mountain), or in advance with an “internationally located” booking company prior to setting foot in the country. Given that our contingent comprised two Aussies, one Pole, and one Indian, we resorted to following the latter, admittedly “safer” option. There’s only so much flexibility you have when you take on the responsibility for the well-being of others. Gambles, risks, and experiments can only be attempted when traveling solo, or with companions equally reckless.

And so it was that we chose to book with Africa Travel Resource (ATR), a UK-based travel company, who employed African Walking Company (AWC) in Tanzania to do the honours for us. Although they didn’t come cheap, neither ATR nor AWC could be faulted for efficiency or service. If you ignore the muddy (yes, literally muddy, with bits and pieces bobbing about) water we had to drink on one of the final days of the trek since one of the “regular” lakes supplying water had frozen over, things went perfectly according to plan. A plan that did not rule out the possibility of mild diarrhoea, hypothermia, acute mountain sickness, and sleepless nights. And we cheerfully acquiesced.

Kilimanjaro International Airport was a very pleasant surprise. Small, spotless, very pretty, and very well-maintained. Given that it’s the first stop for many Europeans in Tanzania, it’s probably no surprise that all the signs are in English, the souvenir shops list prices in Euros, and the beer and wine bars are well-stocked. PrecisionAir and Air Tanzania operate several domestic and international flights; yet, in a manner nearly exclusively and charmingly African, the check-in counter for the Ethiopian Air flight from Kilimanjaro International Airport to Addis Ababa on my way out of Tanzania did not open until an hour before my flight was due to depart, due to the blatant absence of Ethiopian Air staff anywhere in the airport that afternoon, as we were nonchalantly informed by the airport staff. The fact that the flight eventually departed and landed exactly on time is due credit to a continent where things work exactly as they should, in a manner you’d least expect.

And so it was that we began our trek, at the Rongai gate, sitting at 1,950 metres, with “only” another 4,000 odd metres to scale over the next 5 days. With lungs filled with an equal amount of fresh air and red dust, accumulated during the hour-long ride to the National Park gates, and stomachs fortified by a substantial packed lunch, the possibilities seemed endless. It seemed paranoid to imagine that our legs perhaps wouldn’t be able to take us to the summit. Given how easy the first day was, with the incredibly slow (“Pole, pole”, Swahili for “slow, slow”) pace in the shelter of the forest, shielded from the blazing sun, and unchallenged by the mild inclines, it really didn't seem like we'd suffer too much through the adventure. Naïve, hasty conclusions, drawn and designed by oxygen-filled brains.

The camp at first night was everything a “first” camp promises to be – new and therefore exciting, quaint, and reasonably comfortable. After a very Rajesque dinner, seated on a table outdoors, drinking a cuppa and downing bowls of soup and bread, we proceeded to while away the twilight hours playing cards and losing in turn, like clockwork, hurling good-natured abuses and well-aimed jibes, under the inky blue-back skies, huddled in the cold, in our fuzzy jackets and hilarious beanies, giggling uncontrollably into the night, laughing in our contentment.

The second day of walking was similar to the first, but now emerged the extra layers out clothes, the path got a little steeper, and we were suddenly faced with legs a little less fresh than before. Long days on the trail, tired evenings in camp, restless sleep inside tents rattled by a persistent wind. That was basically how it went, day after day, gaining altitude with each morning, sniffing at smellier clothes, anxiously observing more irritated tummies, more tired legs, and braving that stronger nip in the air.

By day three, at around 4,000 metres, we all started to feel the effects of altitude in different ways – all quietly moaning and clutching various body parts, heads, tummies, calves, feet, yet plodding on as resolutely as we could manage, because down as we were, we weren’t anywhere close to being out yet. Every rest stop rejuvenated, every sip of water and every bite of chocolate refreshed, each stint of forty winks made us feel that much more capable of facing up to the now clearly formidable task we’d taken on so brazenly.

A long walk across a surreal, lunar-esque landscape, completely exposed to the harsh sun, all through day four took us to the veritable “base camp” at 4,700 metres, where we were meant to eat and sleep as much as possible in preparation of the insane, long night/day ahead. By this time, I was battling a severe headache, nausea, and constant chills. Popping a few pills alleviated matters only slightly, a nap some more; yet, the nausea ensured I barely did any of the eating I was meant to do, which meant that I woke up at midnight tired and far from full-strength. A nocturnal battle with a mouse, who chose that very night to camp with me inside my tent, meant I had even less sleep than I had dared hope I’d get amidst the howling wind. Even so, waking up in the dark, dressed for the worst, in five layers of clothes, two pairs of gloves, and a head swathed in fabric like a mummy, over which sat a head-torch, the possibilities, still, seemed endless. In the constancy of that moment before the first step toward the summit, watching the billion dizzying stars blink in mad approval, it felt wrong to not believe that we were meant to be there, and, several hours later, at the top.

However, a six-hour summit climb in torchlight, in rapidly thinning air and freezing temperatures, truly is a killer. What seemed certainly possible at 4,700 metres quickly disintegrated into the ultimate struggle, step for step, as the headache re-emerged and worsened with each metre we ascended. Then along came the nausea, closely followed by total breathlessness, and legs that felt like lead. Inevitably, four hours on, I had reached the brink of my battle, staggering sideways and endways, devoid of any sense of balance, and chilled to the bone. The moment of truth when Joseph and I decided it was best I went back down before the altitude sickness got any worse didn’t quite feel as indecisive and weighty as I imagined it would (yes, we all imagine it, no matter how optimistic or hopeful. It would require either a staggering amount of confidence and/or vanity to think you wouldn’t come to a point where you had to make a decision, one way or another, either in your head or out aloud…). At that point, it felt like the only possible decision, and one I made without too much angst. Asking yourself to face three more hours of dark, speechless agony when the next five paces feels like the end of you, requires fortitude and strength of will I’ll easily admit I lack. Or, lacked. Failure only makes you more determined.

The others struggled on after I started descending, but they never made it to the highest point, Uhuru peak at 5,895 metres, either. They climbed as far as the Kilimanjaro crater rim (Kili is an extinct volcano), a certain Gillman’s point at 5,681 metres, and decided they’d definitely had enough. Then came their excruciating 2-hour descent back to base camp, which they all completed at different times, one managing a scree-run, one stepping gingerly and painfully slowly, and one combining the two.

My descent back to camp took place in a feverish, headached daze, which involved some amount of spewing as well. The glorious re-entry into camp and inside my tent was quickly followed by six hours of the deepest sleep I’d had in days; when I eventually woke up, the night and the summit attempt seemed light years away, and all I knew and felt was immense gratitude for the warmth of the tent and the silence in my head, which had finally ceased pounding. Very few things in this world can measure up to the enormity of such pure, unadulterated gratitude.

That afternoon and the following day merely involved moving our weary bones all the way back down to the Park gate. The walk downhill was naturally easier, and the thicker air the lower we reached cheered us no end. Here stories tumbled, jokes were shared, and the banter that had slunk away the past few days returned with a bang, shoving to the side any contemplation of stinging toes and knocking knees. Yet, the look of pure relief and surrender that filled each of our faces as we walked through the Park gates the following day should’ve been recorded somewhere for posterity. It wasn’t, but I doubt we’d ever forget.

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More and more, with each passing day, I find myself colliding with kindred spirits, restless souls with itchy feet, aching for motion, tortured by inertia, always searching for the next new landscape to tread, the unfamiliar language to decipher, the unpredictable roads to peer out into. Not all of these seek to defy gravity; some stretch their legs and run as far and long as their legs can carry, some find themselves in the silence of the world below the oceans. All looking for worlds different to those they are otherwise wrapped and surrounded by. Spilling out of the containers they find themselves in, splashing about trying to see more and discover a view so different to what they’ve grown accustomed to that their eyes barely know how to describe it. And then again, over and over. That insatiable greed. That addiction of discovery.