Life on the truck (or: It's too darn hot!)

First things first. It is a TRUCK. God forbid anyone should refer to it as a bus. For some reason, it’s a grave sin to refer to it as a bus. (My patience for this little quirk has worn tissue-thin at this point, which usually results in me referring to it like this: “Bus. TRUCK. FUCK! Whatever!”)

Here’s what it’s like on the TRUCK, on a long long drive day between Lushoto and Dar Es Salaam:

Breakfast is at 5:00 am, and it’s a relatively easy morning unless you’re on Cook Group, who have to report for duty at 4:45. We’re all divided into different groups and the duties rotate daily. Cook Group, Fire and Water, Security, Tent Locker, Back Locker, Binology (garbage), and Truck Clean. Of these, Security is the most slack (checking that the windows on the truck are rolled up, and all the lockers are secure), and Cook Group is the most work (getting up early, helping Charles with prep, and a lot of washing up). I’ve been lucky with duties so far but none of the jobs is really horrible, and most people pitch in wherever.

We’re told the drive will take twelve hours though the trip notes say we only have to cover 380 kms. This gives you an idea of how slowly things move in Africa. And that’s before we stop because the road is blocked by a cargo truck that tipped over on its side and ended up perfectly perpendicular to the road, spanning it completely. It’s cleared away in about half an hour, but it’s impossible to predict how many other of these kind of events will slow the glacial progress towards Dar. (That’s what the cool kids call it – Dar. Not Dar es Salaam.)

We’re heading for a campsite on the beach in Dar. The campgrounds have all been much better appointed than I was expecting. The documentation for this Dragoman trip seemed to indicate that there would be times we’d simply be pulling off the road and bouncing out to some random bit of wilderness to set up camp entirely on our own. Instead, we’ve been at serviced campsites with toilets and showers (often even with HOT showers). There are normally permanent cooking shelters and often there’s a bar and a dining room and sometimes even internet access and the chance to upgrade to a real room with walls and a ceiling.

The cook’s shelter / cage at our Serengeti campsite. In this case provided not to keep the cooks in, but to keep the wildlife out.

Luckily, upgrades were available at a recent stop in Lushuto, a small town in the Usambaru Mountains. We arrived after an awfully long drive up a very steep and winding road, with nine of the 23 souls on board in various stages of some kind of gastro-plague that swept through the truck with alarming speed and ferocity. Everyone on board wanted an upgrade, and if it had turned out that there weren’t enough rooms available, I suspect there would have been tears, or bloodshed, or both (likely both from me).

But back to the truck. We bounce down the not-too-bumpy-for-Africa roads. The farther we travel the hotter it gets. Not surprisingly, the truck does not have air conditioning so it gets stuffy, especially when we’re stopped and there’s no breeze through the windows. Lots of people sleep, but some read, or listen to iPods, or chat. Most of the seats are in pairs that face forward, but there are two sets of four seats that face each other and share a table between them. We’re supposed to shuffle around each day, and on this day I’m at a table, which I like. The worst seats are at the very back behind the wheels, where it’s smartest to keep your seatbelt on when going over the frequent and lofty speed bumps. I work on putting darts into the new short-sleeved shirt I picked up in Istanbul, though the quality of the roads in Africa and the suspension on the truck make it tricky work. Still, the results are good and it’s exactly the kind of tedious but useful work that makes time pass.

Here’s the inside of the truck, with Dave giving us a little speech on our first morning, pulling out of the hotel in Nairobi.

After about five hours we stop for a quick lunch. Most of us made sandwiches at breakfast and packed them away for later, but then we ran out of bread so we had to stop for more bread and pull out a table and sandwich fixings in the parking lot of a gas station. I extract my lovingly-made sandwich from underneath someone’s 15 lb daypack and munch around the squished corner. And I unearth a can of beer from the cooler in the truck. The beer is a temperature that may once have had a passing acquaintance with coldness but could now best be described as Not Boiling.

The lunch set-up

It’s hot. Really hot. And humid. Even the Aussies admit it. We pile back onto the stuffy bus and continue on the way to Dar, though progress gets slower and slower as we get into the outskirts of the city. The traffic get heavier, the truck creeps along, the temperature gets hotter and we’re all wilted and tired and dreaming of the beach at the campsite just outside of Dar. But first there’s a stop for people to change money and buy cold drinks, and for our tour leader to get our tickets for the short ferry ride. Finally we’re all rounded up again and sit in line for the ferry and continue to quietly melt into a large puddle of multi-national goo. Eventually we pull into the campsite and start to set up. Did I mention it’s hot? Really, I can’t stress this enough. It just saps your will to do anything. However, we get the tents up and change into swimsuits (swimming costumes for the Brits, swimmers for the Aussies).

Some of the tents, with the Indian Ocean in the background

And then, finally, we’re in the water. Except the water is warm. Really warm. Like almost bathtub warm. Don’t get me wrong, it’s better than the hot, sticky mess we’ve been dealing with but it’s not exactly refreshing. Still, it’s nice, and it’s even nicer to get out and stand under the cool shower. What’s not nice is that there’s actually no period of dryness in between getting out of the shower and starting to sweat again. It really gets to you after a while.

Me, after the ocean, and the shower.

We’re lucky enough to have dinner made for us at the campsite so there is no cooking to do, and, most importantly, no clean-up. This is a real treat because it mean no flapping. We overlanders don’t use towels to dry our dishes, because towels get damp and gross quickly. Our dishes are washed in soapy water, then rinsed in water with Dettol, then rinsed in clear water. Then every plate, bowl, mug, frying pan, cook pot, spatula and spoon is vigorously flapped around until dry. And when I say “dry” what I really mean is “not sopping” because more often than not when you pull out a cereal bowl the next morning there’s a skim of water at the bottom, to help in pre-moistening your Weatabix. (Dave thinks we’re just not flapping hard enough, though I’m pretty sure I saw Nicky get airborne for a few seconds one morning.)

Silya, demonstrating the Norwegian Double Pan Flap maneuver. Not recommended for beginners.

But as I said, there iss no flapping this night. Just a swim in the ocean, a cool shower, and a nice Krest Bitter Lemon soda in the bar. Krest Bitter Lemon is my new second-favourite thing, right after Krest Bitter Lemon with gin. Though on this night I go for a mojito, which is very nice indeed. Not nice enough to erase the heat a drift me off to a comfortable sleep, but nice enough for Africa.

My arty shot of Krest Bitter Lemon

Christmas on the Serengeti

I alluded to it earlier, but I’m now on an organized group tour with a company called Dragoman. There are 20 people in the group along with our leaders Sarah and Dave, and Charles the all-important cook. Our home is an enormous diesel truck (apparently a converted cement truck) called “Christie”. The truck carries all our personal crap, tents, sleeping mats, food, kitchen gear, folding chairs, beer, maps, books, and 23 increasingly grubby people.

Pic of Christie

The day after the village walk with the banana beer pitstop we abandoned the truck, pared down our gear, and split up into 5 small jeeps to carry us into Serengeti National Park for two days of game driving. (And here I’ll admit that I really didn’t have a clear idea of what “game driving” is, but it turns out it’s exactly what it sounds like – driving around all day, looking at game.) The jeeps are equipped with pop-off roofs, so you can stand up and have a 360 degree view.

A pair of Maasai who were herding their goats alongside the road as we passed. We stopped to take their picture, for which we were charged 1,000 Tanzanian shillings each (about 80 cents). They really know how to work the tourists, the Maasai, though you can’t really blame them. They can be found wherever tourists gather, pushing necklaces and blankets and spears and even pairs of the odd sandals they wear which are made out of chunks of old tires with inner tube straps.

Our jeep driver (hose name was, I’m not kidding, Honest) was really good at spotting the game. We’d be bumping along the corrugated roads and he’d stop and say, “See the hyena!” and we’d all peer vainly and break out the binoculars, and sure enough, there would be a hyena poking its head out. It was like the guy had laser vision or something.

Honest, with the laser eyes, sporting a traditional Maasai blanket

But on to the game – we saw: baboons, antelope, lions, leopard, warthogs, giraffes, elephants, zebras, wildebeest, gazelles, monkeys, hippos, buffalo and rhinos. Some were breathtakingly close (a giraffe walked across the road between two of our jeeps) and some were binocluars-only. I took loads of photos, though in many cases there was little point because the animals were too far away to appear as anything other than an indistinct smudge to my tiny pocket camera. Luckily there are some serious photographers in our group with serious cameras and mega-zoom lenses and talk of f-stops and ISO settings and opto-graf filtration and things, and I’m sure they’ll be sharing once they get a chance.) Until then, check out these pics:

Zebras and warthogs – one of the coolest things about being out in the natural habitat is that you see the animals all mixed up together. Sometimes you could do a full turn and see zebras, giraffes, elephants, gazelles, wildebeest and warthogs all just hanging out.

A giraffe munching on a thorny tree. I don’t know how they do it – those trees are completely covered in thorns two inches long. They look just vicious. (The trees, not the giraffes, who look quite lovely, as you’ve already seen.)

Thompson gazelles, there are zillions of these. So many (and so many zebras and wildebeest) that our jeep quickly instituted a “We don’t stop for ungulates” policy.

Hippos. We also saw one on land, though very far off. They are improbably fat and it’s hard to believe they can move as quickly as they do. But really, they looks exactly like they are supposed to.

In fact, everything looked exactly like it was supposed to. It sounds stupid, but I kept thinking. “It all looks like ‘The Lion King’!” Take the warthogs – they really do trot along exactly like that, and when they’re alarmed their tails stick straight up in the air and trot a little faster. And hyenas really do have that hunchbacked sneaky look, and hippos really do open their mouth that wide.

Baby warthogs, who were part of a family living, unwisely, under the entrance porch at the Serengeti Visitor’s Centre. There used to be four babies, but one got eaten by a lion a few days earlier.

There are approximately 3,876,320 different safari companies, all with the pop-top jeeps to cart tourists around, and the drivers all seem to be pretty friendly with one another. When we encountered another jeep, we’d almost always stop so the drivers could have a little conflab. I imagine they were letting each other in on where the good viewing was, because most people want to see the “Big Five” – lions, buffalo, elephants, leopard and rhinos. Word travels pretty quickly when there’s a good sighting, and there can literally be traffic jams when eight or ten or more jeeps all cram into a short section of road. It’s a bit weird.

Traffic jam at a leopard sighting. No pics of the leopard because it and its baby were up in a tree and almost impossible to see, even with binoculars (or “nokkies” as the Australians in the group sometimes call them, because Aussies generally seem to be incapable of pronouncing all the syllables of most words)

We had about two and a half days of game driving, some at Serengeti National Park (where we also camped for two nights), and some at the Ngororgoro crater, which is not really a crater at all, apparently, but in fact a “caldera”, whatever that is. Either way, it’s a pretty stunning view.

Me with the crater in the background. And no, I have not had a haircut. I decided to try growing it out, though I think that making that decision immediately before embarking on a 23-day camping trip might not have been smart. It would be much more practical to just shave my head. No promises on how long I’ll be able to hold out, because it already feels unbearably long, but I’ll give it a shot.

And other than the first night in Nairobi, we’ve been camping the whole way. We all pitch in setting up tents, hauling water, and helping to cook and clean, which is one of the reasons the Dragoman tours are so reasonably priced compared to more “full service” overland touring companies. I don’t have a problem with camping, and the Dragoman system seems to work reasonably well. For me, though, the whole thing breaks down when it starts raining, which it did very early on Christmas morning when we were camped in Serengeti National Park.

It really wasn’t the best Christmas morning. I slept fitfully and every time I woke, I could hear rain. Some people like the sound of rain on the roof of a tent when they are snug and dry inside. For me, it’s just a harbinger of what’s to come – a wet, muddy mess. Sure enough, I woke up at 5:30 am on the 25th and it was just miserable. Laurie tried to cheer me up by giving me a small present to open, which was sweet. Perhaps if it hadn’t been dark, AND raining, AND Christmas Day it might not have been so soul-destroying. As it was, we had a quick, damp, muddy breakfast, and struck our soggy tents and loaded up for the trip to Ngorogoro crater. We got away late, and then ended up later still because the previous night’s rains had overtopped a small bridge that was the only way in and out of the park. There was a big lineup of jeeps on either side, and lots of people milling around, checking things out.

The lineup. Christmas Day, on the road in and out of the Serengeti.

Really, though, all you could do was wait for the water to recede enough to pass. Because there was a lot of it.

There’s a concrete bridge under there.

Luckily, we didn’t really have to wait long, though we heard that the first trucks in line waited for a couple of hours. In a way, it was quintessentially Africa – you really just have to go with the flow.

By the time we finally finished with the Ngoogoro crater and made it back to our campsite to be reunited with the truck, I was done with game driving. In fact, I was kind of just done in general. It was Christmas, and I was tired and dirty and I’d just finished setting up a soggy tent. I’d discovered that the text message Twitter updates I’d been sending hadn’t gone through, and I couldn’t get my cell phone to receive calls from Canada. And I was standing in a not-at-all-hot shower being cold and wet and listening to the rain outside and wondering why I was standing in the shower getting cold and wet when I was about to go outside and do the very same thing. And it was CHRISTMAS. The campground we were at actually had a lodge as well, and, like many of our stops, we were told we could upgrade to a room in the lodge when they were available. This upgrade would have cost $60 USD, and as I was standing in that shower I thought that sounded very very cheap indeed.

But then I dried off and we discovered that there was a space inside where we could have our Christmas dinner, and Laurie poured me a generous vodka and orange squosh and things seemed vaguely better. This is especially lucky, because it turns out there were no rooms available anyways. And really, it’s a good group of people, and there are enough of us that even if a few people are having a bad time of it, there are always other who are happy and cheerful and able to pull the others along until things get better.

So we had a nice evening, enjoying having a roof and walls while eating our Christmas dinner. And Dave and Sarah even gave us each a little Christmas package with some small treats and a Christmas cracker. And I played carols from the computer, and we drank and talked and laughed. I had a few minutes of credit on my phone to talk with people at home, and then Laurie and I retired to the tent and opened some little stocking stuffers my mom sent with her all the way from home. And it all seemed not so bad after all.

So that was Christmas on the Serengeti. I hope everyone had a nice holiday, and thanks for all the best wishes in comments and emails. I don’t have a lot of time to reply, because I’m trying to use my time online as efficiently as I can. So just know that your messages are getting through, and they are appreciated, and I’m doing fine and am among friends.

The Banya

Ah, the banya - a Russian bathhouse. This is definitely another one of those things I'd never had done if I wasn't with a group and accompanied by a native guide. To quote the trusty LP:

"The main element of the banya is the parilka (steam room), which can get so hot it makes Finnish saunas seem wussy by comparison*. Here, rocks are heated by a furnace, with water poured onto them using a long-handled ladle... After this... people stand up, grab hold of a venik (a tied bundle of birch branches) and lightly beat themselves, or each other, with it."

Yup. I went to a Russian bathhouse and beat myself with sticks while standing naked in a steam room so hot that it felt like I was trying to breath scalding hot chocolate pudding. It was surprisingly refreshing, and we all agreed that it's easy to understand why this is a weekly ritual for many Russians.

Russian Banya (Not my photo. Unsurprisingly, I did not take my camera into the banya. Ours was much more dimly lit, and had no men in it.)

Here's how it goes, or at least how it went for us. We arrived at the banya and Katherine, our leader, gave the boys instructions, since they'd be on their own in the men's side of the banya while the rest of of would be in the women's side. She handed them 100 rubles and said, "That's to buy the whips", at which point their eyes got quite large. In fact, the whips - veniks - are bundles of thin birch branches with the leaves still on them, about 18" - 24" long and around an inch in diameter where they're all bundled together.

RuA venik (also not my photo, but they looked just like this)

So off the boys went, somewhat apprehensively, I think. The rest of us headed to the women's side and into a sort of communal change area where women were hanging around, all naked except for sandals. They were chatting, and changing into and out of clothing, sitting around drinking beer, and generally being completely uninhibited. We were not so uninhibited, but managed to make it into the steam rooms in various states of undress.

I cannot describe to you how hot it was in that dimly lit room. I was covered in sweat and condensation about 3 seconds after entering; it took quite a bit longer before I was able to breath. The floors were all wood, and there were benches around the edges, and stray leaves from the birch branches stuck to the floor. The whole place smelled vaguely woodsy. We spent 3 or 4 minutes in there before coming out to cool off. During this time, our birch branches were soaking in a pan of water, I suppose to soften them up. We took them in with us when we went back in a Katherine administered the whipping, one bundle in each hand. Basically you just get smacked all over your back, butt and legs. It doesn't hurt at all, as the LP says, " ...the effect is pleasant and cleansing: apparently, the birch leaves and their secretions help rid the skin of toxins." After a good whipping, you go out again and stand under a cold shower for a few minutes. They also had one shower stall with a big wooden bucket full of cold water that you could tip down on top of your head. That was fantastic.

And then you go in again for more steam and whipping.** It looked like a very social thing - lots of women were lying down on the benches while friends whipped them. Some whipped themselves. Some just sat around sweating. And after a time you go back out for another cold shower, and repeat the cycle as often as you like. I think I did it 4 times before soaping up in the communal cleaning area to get rid of all the sweat and banya leaves.*** There were showers there too, and lots of stone benches with big shallow pans where you could soap up. I particularly liked filling the pan with cold water and dumping the whole thing on top of me. By the time we dried off and got dressed and met the boys outside I was pleasantly knackered - sort of like you feel after a long run and a shower. Or maybe like after a massage. Satisfyingly noodle-like.****

And then we went for supper, where I had caviar blini and two large Heinikens. It was a good day.

* Steve, Lisa... have at 'er. But I'm here to tell you, that place was HOT. You could probably do booming business cooking soft-boiled eggs in the parilka.

* *Ok, I just have to say here that I cannot begin to imagine what the comments are going to be like on this post, so please keep it clean. And yes, yes I do appreciate the extreme absurdity of the whole thing. But I'm telling you, we all agreed it was really nice.

*** Katherine says there's a phrase in Russian used to describe someone annoying who won't go away. You say they "stick to you like a banya leaf".

**** This might also be partly due to the fact that it was a VERY long day. We'd arrived in Novgorod after getting an overnight train from Moscow, which was very cool. I slept quite well on the train, but train sleep only goes so far. Once at the hotel I waited for the cafe to open so I could have breakfast, then went back to bed for 2 more hours that morning. The group reconvened at noon for a walking tour around Novgorod, then I found an internet cafe for a while, bought some breakfast supplies, went for an 8km run and had a beer and a bag of chips before we finally met up again to get the taxis to the banya. It's no wonder I was feeling a bit done in.

Bonus Gratuitous Photo of Random Lenin Monument: Because I've been in Russia for a week now, and haven't posted any Lenin monument photos yet, so I'm surprised I haven't been officially reprimanded. This is the weirdest one I've encountered - tucked into the woods on the side of the road, next to a path I ran along in Moscow. Nothing nearby, no indication as to why it might be there. Actually, there may have been an indication, but it was likely in Russian. Regardless, it was odd, and not, at the same time.

Suzdal, vodka and a much needed nap

What a different thing it is to be in a group. For about two months now I've been mostly on my own. Sure I've met people and I've been with family and I've hung around with single-serving friends in hostels and I've had runs and drinks with hashers. But I've always been essentially on my own a lot of the time. Now I'm with this tour group and it's been a complete change, and one that's been mostly great so far.

The gang, at the Novgorod Kremlin

Having a guide all the time is really good too. It's a nice break not having to worry about finding a room for the night, or figuring out how to get from point A to point B, or arranging tours. We've got a group leader - Katherine - and she shepherds us around and translates things and answers questions and tries to keep all eleven of us in line. And she does it all wearing strappy high heels, which is frankly astonishing, but not at all unusual over here.

Being with a group also makes it easier to try new things. For instance, I probably would never have interacted with this fantastic woman in Suzdal who was selling berries and pickles by the side of the path if I hadn't been with other people who dove right in. So I had a nice homemade pickle for a mere 10 Rubles.

The pickle-selling babushka

Seeing Suzdal was nice, and we did the traditional touristy things - mostly looking at Russian Orthodox churches, which I'm sure I could do on my own, but is more fun with a guide and a group.

Painted icons at one of the churches in Suzdal. Russian Orthodox church walls are completely covered in paintings like this, and I mean completely. (Sorry about the flare from the window, but my tiny camera, or possibly my tiny brain, is not able to compensate for this kind of thing. Helpful hints are welcome.)

Being on an organized tour also means I can get to places and see and do things that I would never be able to do on my own. For instance, in Suzdal we went for a dinner at a real Russian house, cooked by a real Russian woman, assisted by her daughter, sitting at a big table in the kitchen.

Here's the gang, on the second course (a creamy fish stew served in a clay pot).

And here's the main course, a potato casserole-ish thing and a big meatball

Our hostess was Lena, who poured the first round of vodka shots almost as soon as we sat down, so really it was all her fault. I guess it's downright rude to have people over and not offer them vodka. We had ours chased by a slice of lemon sprinkled with pepper, which is apparently traditional and kind of helped it go down better. And kept it going down better because before the meal was over there were three more rounds of shots, some of which were done by balancing the shot glass on the back of the hand (I was only partially successful at this technique, at least on my fourth shot, but it's vaguely possible I may not have been at the top of my game at that point). We left dinner and staggered back to our beautiful guest house where we had the whole place to ourselves. On the way we stopped to stock up on more vodka and beer and chips and chocolate and bags of little dried fish, which are beer snacks.

Steve's weird food for Russia - dried kalimari. There were also tiny dried anchovies.

Things deteriorated quickly when we got back*, though I did manage to completely dominate at Bananagrams, a sort of free-form speed Scrabble game, despite being somewhat hammered. (Funny, no one's asked me to play again since...) I believe I staggered to bed around 1:00 am or 2:00 am. I do know that when I woke up the next morning I was in a state of, er... significant discomfort. Let's just say that it turns out that vodka in lavish amounts does nothing for my stomach. We had breakfast back with Lena, who plied the boys with a hair-of-the-dog shot of vodka along with the omelets and blini, but I was definitely not interested in that. In fact, I was silently praying for death.

The mini-bus trip from Suzdal back to the city of Vladimir was also not great for my stomach, so by the time we arrived I was ready to skip the mandatory tour of more Russian Orthodox churches and pay any amount of money to secure a bed for a few hours. Luckily one of my colleagues, an Australian guy who was feeling approximately as fragile as I was, headed off to the park across the street for a nap on the grass under a tree. I jumped at that chance, and spent a couple of hours snoozing, which helped matters immensely. When we woke up we found a MacDonald's / Burger King knock-off (in fact, is was actually called MakKing) that had burgers and fries and coke and free wifi. So, when we rejoined the group for the bus back into Moscow I was feeling approximately human again.

And you know something? I haven't had a shot of vodka since.

* Karen - the mix of 40th birthday party music in my iTunes was a hit with most everyone in the group, except for Sam, who spent quite a bit of time scrolling through my library declaring, "You have the worst music collection ever". Luckily, it was done in a diverting Aussie accent. Also, he's the one who ended up dancing with a guitar not long after, and who remembers virtually nothing of the night. We have many excellent photos of Sam, so if he gets snippy about my music again, Facebook awaits.

A Package Deal

One thing I'm planning for some more exotic destinations is to sign on for a package tour or two (as I mentioned here). There are a lot of companies out there who offer small group "adventure travel" tours, and my impression is that these are not your standard ABC* kinds of affairs (*Another Bloody Castle). They seem to cater to more independent travelers - people who want to see the big sites, but also want to have a bit more "authentic" travel experience, maybe getting off the beaten path onto a slightly-less-beaten path.


There are a lot of companies out there with very similar offerings, and they all put out enticing colour brochures brimming with elephant rides and jungle cruises and panda bear sanctuaries and cooking classes and all manner of other off-beat and interesting ways to see the world. Tours range from 3 days to 146 or more (the long trips usually string together a bunch of shorter itineraries). Locations range from Antarctica to St. Petersburg, but they all have a few things in common:

1. They all advertise small groups - usually around 10-12, rarely more than 20.
2. They offer a few levels of travel: more expensive/comfy/private, cheaper/rougher/camp-and-cook-for-yourself, and somewhere in between. I think I'm an in-between. Or maybe cheap 'n' rough.
3. They mostly all ding you for a "local payment" in US dollars, on top of the cost of the tour. Most also charge a single supplement if you're traveling alone and want a single-occupancy room. (I suspect my traveling life will be plagued by "single supplements". Curses!) Some include admission fees to the sites in the package, many don't. Some get you to throw in to a "kitty" for group food costs.
   
4. Transport in usually by local bus or train, with more exotic modes thrown in to spice things up (donkey, camel, elephant, ferry, felucca etc...). Some have custom-designed vehicles that you live and travel in (see below).
   
5. You're on your own for most meals, though breakfast is often included. Or, with tours of the cheap 'n' rough camping type, you end up cooking meals as a group.
   
6. Despite hitting a lot of sites they claim you still get free time to do your own exploring.

(Ok, I'm lying a bit when I say that these companies are basically all the same. I went to an evening seminar a few weeks ago that highlighted 4 different companies and there's actually quite a bit of difference between the "more expensive/comfy/private" and the "cheaper/rougher/camp-and-cook-for-yourself". For instance, Trek Holidays offers 8 days of "comfort camping" in Tanzania for a mere $3,285.00, or $410.63 per day. This includes private campsites with double beds and mattresses, duvets and pillows, ensuite facilities in your tent, all meals, and optional hot air balloon rides - and that's not even getting into their "spa-fari" options. On the other hand, Dragoman offers a 14 day trip from Nairobi to Zanzibar in basically the same area. They provide tents, but you bring your own sleeping bag and mat. Everyone in the group pitches in with camp chores, including the cooking. There are no ensuite facilities, but the price for 14 days is $1990.00, or $142.14 per day. While Trek sounds nice, Dragoman fits my budget much better.)

This kind of travel is appealing to me for a few reasons. First, I think that sometimes it will be nice to have the minutiae of travel taken care of for me - no worrying about finding a place to sleep when I hit a new town, and no stressing over how to get from point A to point B. Second, I'm doing this whole trip on my own, so I think it would be nice to have a built-in social group sometimes. Finally, there are some places on my list that are going to be more challenging than others (Africa, India, China...), and I think being on an organized tour for at least part of the time will help me get the lay of the land so I can be a bit more comfortable about striking off on my own once the tour is complete.

So far I've got shiny brochures from at least six different companies: GAP Adventures, Imaginative Traveller, Gecko's Grassroots Adventures, Tucan Travel, Dragoman and Intrepid. The big problem seems to be choosing between them. Tucan comes highly recommended for South America, and they have fancy customized yellow buses that look pretty comfy. Dragoman also have custom vehicles - Mercedes Benz trucks, and specialize in the cheap 'n' rough style I mentioned above. Otherwise, there doesn't seem to be much to choose between. I'd be grateful for comments from anyone with experience in this kind of travel, especially if you can comment on any of these particular companies.

Here are some of the locations/tours I'm considering. These are all with Imaginative Traveller, but every company offers something very similar in each of these areas:

The Jordan and Egypt Adventure
China Explored
Essential Peru
Classic India
Kenya Highlights


The big problem right now is that I'm spoiled for choice - even if I were restricted to just one or two companies, the number of different tours available from each of them is staggering. The Imaginative Traveller brochure alone is 243 pages long! And when you consider the other companies, to, well, how can I possibly weigh the merits of the IT Rajasthan Explorer tour with the GAP Rajasthan Adventure and the Gecko Rajasthan at a Glance? It's all a bit overwhelming at this point, like so much else about this whole adventure. Overwhelming, but also pretty exciting.