I just
spent two days riding about 1200Km to a place called Kigoma and then many hours on a boat getting to my intended destination out at Gombe national park here in far Western Tanzania on
the shores of lake Tanganika…. Then I spent another three days getting back to Moshi here in central Northern Tanzania....
It was a bit of a minor epic getting there and back but in the end it was worth it and Im well pleased :)
Just by
the by, the whole of the mainland of Tanzania used to be named Tanganika after
the lake (back in the colonial days when it was a German territory). Its only more
recently since the country’s independence when a pact was made between the
island of Zanzibar and the mainland to operate as a single country that the
name was changed… They took the first three letters from each former entities
name and combined them to create the name of Tan-Zan-ia J
So, getting to Gombe is a bit of an undertaking! As I said its way over on
the far West of the country and though "far" in this case is only a matter of about 1200Km
by road (its physically only about 700Km in a direct line) from where I was in Moshi, which is
barely the width of the province I live in in Canada. It is quite disconnected
from the rest of the country… The big town/small city here is called Kigoma and
its road connections to the rest of Tanzania all include at least 300Km of very
dusty and often rough gravel roads… And believe me when I say dusty I mean it!
It took me 4-5 hours to cover the distance and Ive never been more covered in
dust than when I arrived at Kigoma (just so many big vehicles on that narrow
little dirt road). There is also a decent but small air-strip and the last old
narrow-gauge railway in operation in Tanzania that link the town to the rest of
the country… and some small boats that ply the lake shore north and south too.
Story continued on next post...
