Kilimanjaro Expedition 2012: Flying is such a pain

After 4 months of preparations, the big day had finally arrived. After a nightmare of a time trying to pack all the gear for the 7-days on the trail, I hauled the equipment off to the airport. As excited I was about the trip, I wasn't that excited about being away from my family, and to make matters worse, it's a 2am flight via Qatar Airways. Don't ask me why, but I hate flights that are in the middle of the night. Maybe it's because I have to wait for my flight at a time when I'm supposed to be sleeping. The flight was completely full, with most of the passengers traveling from Bali.

The flight was largely uneventful, with an excellent in-flight entertainment system (loads of movies, music, TV programmes, games, etc), which isn't surprising considering that it's Skytrax's 2011 Airline of the Year, and a 5 star airline. However, I felt that the stewardesses could be more friendly, even when you are polite to them and speak to them with them with a smile, it's still a pretty dour expression on their faces. The food was unremarkable although there was a good spread and the appetizers were pretty nice. Caught the movie "War Horse" (LOVED it!), caught a bit of sleep, and 7.5 hours later, we arrived in Doha at dawn.

Looking out onto the tarmac

I was interested in seeing Doha since it was one of the world's richest nation, and like its fellow Persian Gulf states, it's launched many multi-billion construction projects and showcase events, and most recently, winning the right to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup. In order for us to get to the terminal, we had to hop onto a bus to take us there, and there were a total of 3 different alighting points, namely for transit passengers, arrival, and premium cla$$ passengers (Oops! They actually have limousines to pick them up. Only the plebeians in economy class had to take the bus). It's not an ideal situation but apparently when the new Doha International Airport is up, things will be easier. From what I could see, there were no aerobridges that connected the planes to the terminals, thus allowing for passengers to get directly into the terminal. For all its gleaming new structures, Doha is very much like Singapore: all hardware but no heart. Travelers were greeted by stony faced staff, who can sometimes border on being rude. And I also noticed a large number of migrant workers working at the airport. I read recently that Singapore celebrated its close relationship with Qatar, that Singapore had been sharing its economic model with Qatar. I hope that Qatar hasn't picked up the Third World service standard that Singapore has. 
 

To be brutally frank, I wasn't impressed with the Doha airport during my 2 hour transit. I had to use the toilet and I found the floors wet and even dirty, and I was mortified to find a HUGE glob of thick yellow phlegm on the toilet seat, part of which had flowed into the toilet bowl, and yet, due to its amazing viscosity, the two globs were still connected! Major gross out at 5am. I decided to walk around the terminal and it was the usual cafes and duty free shops. I took some pictures and proceeded to the glass panels to peer out on the tarmac as the sun began to break. I must express admiration for the Qataris with their battle to build over the desert. Anyway, before I could take anymore pictures, a security guard practically grabbed me by my arm and told me gruffly that I wasn't allowed to take pictures within the airport. I was perplexed because taking pictures in airports is something that almost all holidaymakers do. It wasn't as if I was taking pictures of some restricted area, like the immigration. Nevertheless, being a stranger in a strange land, I had no intention of being detained, so I put my iPhone away.

I had more opportunities to observe Qatar from the air after we took off for the Doha - Dar Es Salaam leg of the flight (yes, we had to bus out to the tarmac again), and while the city centre and waterfront developments were impressive, the outskirts of the city was very much brown in colour, which I presumed to be caused by the desert dust. This leg of the journey took us over the Gulf Peninsula, and over the Horn of Africa. Looking out of the window, it was mostly red dusty landscape, with long tracks cutting across the large stretches of land. I got a bit excited when the flight information display showed that we were flying over "Nazret". Silly me got it mixed up with "Nazareth", the childhood home of Jesus in Israel. Thing was, I was flying over Ethiopia. Apparently after World War 2, the then Emperor of Ethiopia renamed the city after the Biblical Nazareth. Since 2000, the city reverted to the name of "Adama", but "Nazret" is still widely used.

As we made the approach over Dar Es Salaam, I could see the beautiful islands off mainland Tanzania, which I later found out to be the old trading port of Zanzibar and the island of Pemba. I later found out from my mountain guide that many Western climbers would fly out there to relax after climbing Kilimanjaro. Looking at the beautiful clear azure water, it's definitely a place I'd want to visit with Kat for some scuba diving. 

Disembarking from the plane, it struck us that we'd finally arrived in Africa, and continent so far away, and one that we'd never thought that we'd have a chance to visit. Moving from the international terminal to the domestic, we were greeted by a scrimmage of travel agents trying to sell us domestic tickets. The next 6 hours waiting for the Precision Air flight (Precision Air is a subsidiary of Kenya Airways) would be a restless one. The terminal was really small with just one cafe, and one bookshop. While the students sat at the cafe sipping from glass bottles of Coke (by the way, no one understood when I said I want a bottle of "Coke". I have to say "Coca Cola"), I sat at the hard plastic seat of the terminal and pondered what laid ahead, and realised that exactly a week later, I would find out if I'd summited Kilimanjaro. That made me even more restless. I'd also noticed that there were a fair number of Chinese at the airport, and remembered Tanzania's long ties with China, and that China has been making in-roads with Africa's construction, manufacturing, and exploitation of natural resources. There were also quite a number of Westerners there too, and I found out that a number of them worked for the United Nations (Arusha, Tanzania, hosts a number of United Nations' offices), although I must confess that after watching movies such as "Blood Diamond" and "Lord of War", they looked like smugglers. My bad! 

Finally, it was time to leave! Boarding the little 70-seater ATR 72, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the interior of the plane looked much better than I thought it might, although the service is pretty gruff. The last time I'd flown in an prop plane was 20 years ago when I flew from Sydney to Newcastle (Australia), and that was a roller coaster ride. Remembering that experience, I was rather apprehensive about the flight, but it turned out much better than I'd expected. I had another chance to check out the city of Dar Es Salaam and I could see how densely populated the city centre was, and it was also sad to see factories spewing yellow fumes that lingered above the city sky. As we approached Kilimanjaro, Swee Chiow (our guide) pointed out a distant sighting of Kilimanjaro, and everyone got so excited.

After planning for four months and with loads of gear in our duffle bags, we were massively relieved that find that our bags have arrived together with us after the 3 flights. At almost 900m above sea level, the evening air was crisp, something that we had not expected of Africa. We were met by the local travel agent and after an hour's bus ride, we arrived at the Impala Hotel. After traveling for 24 hours, we were exhausted and just wanted to grab dinner and go to sleep. As expected, I was jet lagged and woke up several times through the night, including once at 2am (East Africa Time, GMT+3) when it was time to wake up for me at 7am in Singapore. 

The following day was for us to just take it easy and recover from the jet lag, do a spot of sight seeing around town, some peer teaching for the students, and last minute packing for the 7-days ahead. For when we wake up tomorrow, it'd mark the start of the expedition proper. And the butterflies are starting to flutter in the belly.

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The Mt Meru market.. stuff for tourists. As it was the low season, the stall owners were VERY persistent

The Arusha Clock Tower, popularly supposed to be situated at the midpoint between Cairo and Cape Town