Then, one fine morning, Monday the 29th of October to be precise, we packed up our backpacks with our hiking stuff (mercifully the swimming stuff could be left at Archie’s!) and emergency stock of cookies, bread and jam and set out bright (I lie) and early (this is true) in a small, very yellow bus called Fasaha, which was to bring us by early afternoon to Lushoto in the Usambara mountains in the north-east of Tanzania. Driving about four hours on the highway (single lane of course) to Mombo, and then about three hours of dirt road up the mountains, stopping at every little village on the way to wait indefinite periods for passengers, produce, charcoal and chickens until the driver and conductors thought the village had contributed a fair share of flora and fauna to the bus, we finally came in sight of the sweet little town of Lushoto.

In typical Daniel-and-Richa fashion, about five minutes before we reached Lushoto we decided we’d like to stay at the Karibuni Lodge, about 1 km before the town-centre. The guidebooks told us that this lodge was in the middle of a little forest often visited by monkeys. Although unconvinced by the forest story (all we’d seen so far was fields, albeit scenic), we had the bus stop and let us out at this lodge. We found the signboards for Karibuni Lodge and started down the small private dirt road in the indicated direction, when suddenly, there in the middle of the road sat a large monkey with a thick blue-grey pelt, not twenty metres away in front of us! It sprang to the nearest tree-trunk as soon as it spied us, and climbed quick and agile into the branches, where we saw four or five more furballs nestling and looking down at us. They were big, hairy Blue Monkeys, and pretty darn cool! We stood, entranced, watching them for a long while.

In the lodge, we asked for the cheapest lodging – two beds in their “dormitory” which, however, turned out to be empty at the current time, which meant we got a lovely huge 4-bed room, for dorm price!

As soon as we dumped our stuff, we made our way to the town centre to explore. Lushoto is tiny. An idyllic town nestled between high, green mountains. At 1500 metres, there was a fresh mountain wind, and monkeys swung on the branches of high, coniferous trees. We found the town centre to consist of a small, covered market, a couple of houses and huts settled around the market, and a couple of churches. (An interesting thing we didn’t however have time to visit, was the lodgings of the sisters-of-charity-or-something-of-the-sort, where the kindly sisters make banana wine for passers-by with a thirst.) Although research (source: Encyclopedia Britannica, and never mind the citation style!) tells us that roughly one-third of the population of Tanzania practices respectively, Islam, Christianity and animistic beliefs (other than Zanzibar, where a high majority is Muslim), we were told that the population in the Usambaras is roughly 50-50 Muslim and Christian.

After a short walk through the town centre, greeting people and getting smiles of delight at our Swahili greetings, we stopped for a delicious lunch of ugali, beef, beans and greens. Oh, what bliss to be traveling again! Eating ugali, greeting people, speaking Swahili! Much as we love Arusha, and enjoy the comfort of living in an expat balloon there, we were thrilled to have local conversations, greetings, and food, back in our lives!

After lunch we headed to the tourist bureau to look for information on the most dense, dark and dungenous, 3-D, if you will, rainforest we could visit in the area! With one voice the guides recommended the Shagayu forest, on the slopes of a 2100 metre mountain. Not the easiest place on earth to get to – one has to take a bus to a little town called Mtae, however the bus runs just once a day, in the afternoon, and more importantly, there’s only one bus service back from Mtae, leaving daily at 4am! Despite this near-fatal flaw, we decided to take them up on this offer, and after bargaining a good price, we made an appointment to meet a guide at the tourist office to begin our tour early the next morning.

On the way back to the lodge, we decided to explore a couple of new paths, winding through the town and nearby settlements, thereby collecting a floating population of 7-10 kids at any given time, who chattered with us in Swahili, became fans of Daniel’s for life at his realistic elephant imitations, posed for photographs, and giggled and yelled in joy to see themselves inside the camera once the photo had been duly taken and showed around. We’ve tried to cull through the more than 30 photos of cute little kids we have for our post here, so as not to lose your attention…