Vagabonding in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, without plan or destination.

Tartu is the second-largest city in Estonia, the northernmost Baltic country. It’s wonderfully relaxed, with quiet roads, few cars, and lots of green space, public and private. Everyone is friendly and speaks English, and the national currency is the euro. Estonia is a very old country, but had to deal with invaders and occupation forces…

Jozani is Zanzibar’s largest forest. It’s a dense jungle without human management, except they run guided walking tours. The highlight are probably the red colobus monkeys that jump from treetop to treetop at high speeds, but they also have miniature frogs that fit on a thumbnail (at the tip of the leaf below), black monkeys,…

Another opportunity to dive, this time at the opposite end of the island. More corals, more fish. I was with a group of newbies which gave me more opportunities to explore. Saw a giant lobster, a turtle, box fish, and all sorts of strange spiky sea stars and soft and hard coral. The Nemos are…

Nungwi is at the north end of Zanzibar island, Paje is near the southeast end. To get there it’s necessary to connect in Zanzibar City, which involves a long motorcycle ride because each line has its own bus station. The “bus” to Paje was really a Thai-style songthaew, a truck with two facing benches along…

Nungwi is a town capping the northern tip of Zanzibar island. All the beach hotels and bars cluster right at the ocean. Instead of a second and third row like in Kendwa, the rest of the town is where the locals live, with very little attention to the tourist industry. Almost all houses are single-story,…

Kendwa is all about beaches. What isn’t on the beach is boring, endless walls that enclose the resorts that are open only to the beach. There aren’t even souvenir shops more than 100m from the beach. If you don’t come to the ocean then the ocean will come to you, at high tide some shops…

There is an One Ocean dive center just around the corner from my hotel, and I went out with them for two dives. It’s off-season and I was the only customer, so I had the divemaster to myself. The water temperature is 30 degrees, visibility is very good, and at a depth of only 16…

I am back on the island, now in Kendwa near the northern tip. Kendwa is all about its beaches, beach pubs, fishing boats, and beach boys. “Beach boy” is the official term for a young man who wants to sell something, or who plays annoying music and wants money. No idea what other services they…

Four-wheel drive trucks have their limits. Ours was a a wet grass field so soaked that it was more like a swamp. The rear wheels sank in and were just spinning in the mud. A group of Massai (aka Maasai, an ethnic group in northern Tanzania and southern Kenya) came to help, bringing rocks and…

Tarangire is the last park on my circuit. It’s more about the landscape than the animals, although they do have the usual elephants and things. The largest trees are the baobabs, huge trees with an emormous barrel-like trunk. Six postings down you’ll find photos of the Madagascar type; here they are more the type that…

Serengeti is a large national park, over 30,000 square kilometers. It’s all grassland with very few and occasional small rocky hills call kopjes, usually occupied by lions. It’s flat grassland all the way to the horizon in all directions. The hrass is green because the rainy season has started; a month earlier this was all…

Ngorongoro is a national park in the center north of Tanzania. The main attraction is a huge intact volcano crater, 610m deep and 260 square kilometers inside. You can seen the crater rim from any point inside. It’s a bowl of wildlife. I was visiting with a small group of six, in a 4WD truck…

Hakuna matata means “no problem” in Swahili. I took an early morning flight to Arusha on the Tanzanian mainland with Auric Air. The goldfinger in charge of the x-ray regretted that sunscreen can’t be in cabin baggage because it’s flammable (what?) but — sotto voce — for a small fee he could let me pass.…

Got a driver and ventured out  to a Spice Farm, a popular tourist destination, after helping the driver to push his car to a gas station when he ran out of fuel. The farm is really a large forest where they grow cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, pepper, cardamom, vanilla, jackfruit, coconuts, yellow and red banana (red…

Zanzibar is part of Tanzania in east Africa. Stone Town is the historic part of the capital, and it feels like a large number of old buildings had been randomly scattered and densely packed near the ocean. There are almost no streets, the haphazard layout allows only very narrow and never straight alleys. It’s easy…

Normally I travel without much of a plan, deciding every day where I go next. That doesn’t work in Madagascar because there isn’t much of a transport network and what there is is not well maintained, distances are large, and many options just aren’t on the Internet. I found this agency, https://remoterivers.com, that worked out…

Back on the capital but this time with opportunity to check it out. The affluent part is on a ridge that is 200m higher than downtown. The queen’s palace, moat museums and several churches are up here, as is my hotel. Great views. All the attractions are closed, maybe because everybody is packed into an…

When it’s not New Year’s Eve, the Madirokely village on Nosy Be is just a sleepy place. Pretty but there isn’t much to do here. I chose a hotel in the tourist part of town because that’s where the hotels are. There is also a local part with bad traffic, rutted dirt roads, and the…

What dis you do on New Year’s Eve? I went scuba diving. Arranged a dive trip to Nosy Tanikely, a small island not far from Nosy Be where I am staying. The corals are not the brightest I have seen, but they have swarms of fish, turtles, and a shark. It’s not the season for…

The other thing Madagascar is famous for. This is the Avenue des Baobabs not far from Morondava at the west coast. The trees here are a thousand years old, and the oldest in Madagascar is estimated at 2000 years. They rise to about 30m, but their cylindrical trunks with diameters of 3m makes them seem…

There are five species of lemurs on Madagascar. I had already met King Julien. At the Kirindy national forest I got to see three more. I especially liked the sweet white guys. Lemurs don’t appear to be afraid of humans. Also saw a bat that seems to have lost its way and simply hung off…

That’s it with hiking this year, it’s time to head north to Antsirabe, a big town that serves as a transport hub. From there it’s all downhill to the west coast. But since some sections of the road are really rough that would be a 20-hour drive so I stayed in the Colour Café in…

We got a heavy thunderstorm lasting five hours that night of the 24th, with heavy rain and lots of lightning. I was counting seconds to estimate the distance; too close and I would have had to abandon that freestanding tent with its metal poles. It was a good tent but at one point I had…

The 23rd and 24th were the first two days of hiking in the Andringitra National Park. It’s beautiful and a series of relentless ascents and descents, about 600m per day and 11-12km. Camping, no electricity and no network. I had four people with me, the park guide who was hiking with me and three others…

You have seen the Dreamworks Madagascar movies? One of the most exuberant creatures is King Julien,  a lemur with a fancy pineapple headdress lording it over the other lemurs. Lemurs are to Madagascar what kangaroos are to Australia. Technically King Julien is a Kata lemur, but people here call the species King Julien now. Even…

Madagaskar is the world’s fourth largest island, off the coast of eastern Africa. Once again my EU passport did its job and I just walked in with a minimum of formalities and waiting. The taxi ride to Antananarivo (always have to count my a’s here) was traffic hell and I could barely breathe, apparently nobody…

On December 20, 1848, slavery was abolished on La Réunion. This is celebrated with a big parade in Saint-Denis, and I waa there. People show their traditional attire and facepaint, beat drums, and dance. No floats. It took hours and it was very loud! I think I spotted Hagrid.… Read the rest

After all this hiking I went to the towns of Saint-Gilles-les Bains and Saint-Paul. There is a saint behind almost every town here. Diving wasn’t possible, I checked five centers and all were fully booked, so I spent time on the beach and had a great fish for lunch with a view of the beach.…

Had some time for the village itself. It won the title of one of the 150 prettiest villages in France, and the only one on La Réunion. It’s well-deserved. Low wooden buildings with tasteful decorations, not too many cars, and polite people. Very pastoral. Embedded in steep mountains on all sides. The village wakes up…

One would think I’d have enough hiking yesterday, so today I went all in and visited the Trou en Fer, a deep canyon with a waterfall. Trou en Fer means Iron hole; the water carries iron and colors the walls red. Getting to the viewpoint is hard. It’s 9km on narrow, rocky often very steep…