From Tanzania With Love

Kingsley Holgate, his fellow adventurers and their fleet of Land Rovers have completed the African leg of their epic humanitarian adventure from Cape Town to Kathmandu. This month, as the Land Rovers head to Istanbul, Turkey in shipping containers, Kingsley muses over the group’s time in Tanzania.

- Kingsley Holgate

Jambo! from Tanzania.

The name Tanzania was created from the words Tanganyika, Zanzibar and Azania, the ancient Greek name for the east coast of Africa. With its friendly Swahili culture, great wildlife and adventure possibilities, ‘TZ’ remains one of our favourite countries in Africa and this journey up its southern coastline, studded with huge groves of baobabs, is certainly no exception.

Gladys Rutihinda allows us to park the expedition Landies and set up camp on the edge of her stretch of beach near Kilwa, where sailing on the Kusi trade wind, fishermen in their small, wooden, cotton-sailed, outrigger type boats called ngalawas bring in fresh fish and octopus while local women harvest seaweed in the vast, clear blue shallows.

The feeling of freedom is as endless as the beaches and in the cool of the afternoon, after a short dhow ride, we find ourselves among the elephantine baobabs and ancient palaces of the island of Kilwa Kisiwani. We wander among the ruins of domed mosques, lonely tombs, high-walled fortifications, gold and ivory storage vaults, grand living rooms, auditoriums, courthouses and even a stone built, open-air swimming pool.

This great medieval city, immortalised as Quiloa in Milton’s Paradise Lost and once thought to be the site of King Solomon’s mythical mines, was described in 1331 by Ibn Battuta (the greatest adventurer of his era) as “one of the most beautiful cities in the world”.