A Week to spare…Why not Rwanda?

It's taken me a while to jot down some stories from Rwanda on my blog with the budget/strategic planning season at work at full tilt but better late than never i guess.

This January I completed almost four years on my assignment in Liberia and sometimes I wonder if it’s really been that long. Then, I look at the places I have been on this amazing continent and it sort of makes sense.

Rwanda...a tiny country in East-Central Africa

A while ago, a good friend commented “So how many more countries left in Africa?” presumably expecting me to say “Not many”. Fact is that there are 56 countries in Africa after having taken the liberty of including Western Sahara and Somaliland as independent nations. Visitors to this page from Morocco and Somalia might disagree with good reason of their own but this blog is just a vehicle for listing out what I feel through my opinionated views.

As of the end of 2013 my count stood at 16 excluding Nigeria where I spent two nights on separate trips; not enough in my books to claim that I have been there. This means I have been to less that a third of Africa. Doesn't seem a lot at first thought but then the more I think about it the more I feel that it's a pretty decent number. I seriously doubt if I will ever make it to 56 but I can certainly chip away at it and see how far I can really go.

Super clean roads of Kigali

That being said, it was time to chip off another but I had also promised my parent I would be visiting them on my first home leave in 2014. The thought of being in India for over two weeks wasn't exciting though. Sure I love to spend time with family, partying with cousins and catching up with friends but, after a week of being super lazy and eating too much I get bored out of my mind. Seven to eight days seemed more reasonable so I decided to split my home leave with a week for my travel around Africa and then the next for India.

Fresh fruit: Japanese Plum
and Passion Fruit

After having had fleeting encounters with the Western Lowland Gorillas in Gabon and more recently in Cameroon it was as though I was obsessed with having a close encounter with them. Rwanda along with neighboring Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are considered the best countries for close encounters with gorillas. A positive for Rwanda was that it had a very efficient online visa application system contrary to DRC where getting a visa is a nightmare especially for someone from India residing in a country that does not have its diplomatic mission.

And the more mundane bananas

Rwanda also fit the bill perfectly because it was a small enough country to be visited in a week. Apart from its star attraction of being the best place to track the endangered mountain gorilla there are not many top tourist attractions…or so I thought.

Uganda on the other hand seemed fascinating as well but I would be doing it a massive disservice if I visited it for just a week. There seems to be a lot of things to see and do in Uganda but regrettably I will have to leave Uganda for another time…if ever.

Rwandan breakfast with 5 servings of fruits...Perfect!

Silvia, a good friend whom I had met in Ethiopia a couple years ago when we were part of a larger group visiting the volcano of Erta Ale also wanted to see gorillas so we decided to sync our travel plans.

The planning was straight forward with just the flight tickets, online visa application (a welcome break) and the purchase of the Gorilla trekking permit being the only things that needed to be sorted out before I flew out. Since it was such a short journey I didn't carry my tent and sleeping bag and although they are both ultra-light having to carry a little less weight on the back is always welcome.

Rwandan girl

Munching on sugarcane

I got in to Kigali around 2am in the morning and it was a good thing I had my hostel arranged for an airport pickup. The airport was empty and the night a little chilly not surprisingly considering that Kigali sits at an elevation of 1491 meter above sea level. Infact most of this small central African nation sits at a fairly decent altitude.

Silvia had arrived a couple of days earlier and was kind enough to pick up my gorilla trekking permit too so I had no real reason to stick around in the capital the following day. For me it would be a transient night in Kigali trying to pass what remaining hours were left of the night by catching some sleep and then getting out of the capital the next morning towards the town of Musanze.