Travellin to Dar

I had spent 3 days packing so felt pretty ready to leave. My granddad drove me to the airport in CPH (snowing and 0*c outside) and I checked in my multitude of bags. After all I had to survive maybe two years out of one duffel bag so deciding what to pack and what to leave behind was important. The flight to London was boring and cramped, ended up on one of those overfilled charter aircraft where there is no space left for your knees, but plenty for your imagination and what might go wrong! Landing at Gatwick there was no sign of all the snow they had promised, only drizzle and low cloud. We parked next to an Air “Mugabe” 767 and I felt like I had arrived in Africa already, ha-ha. So I got through the airport and onto the bus to Heathrow, checked in and went shopping. They had 50% sales on Ray-Ban sunglasses so bought myself a pair of aviators; maybe they’ll make my flying better! The flight to Doha was pretty routine, I slept, ate, watched a movie, slept some more. We landed around midnight and I had 8 hours to kill, but it seemed I wasn’t the only one. The airport was packed with people and I struggled to find a place to sit down. Finally, I decided to lie on the floor (I had stolen a blanket and pillow on the plane for this purpose) next to the Muslim prayer room and got some kip. The prayer room wasn’t used so much for praying as it was for sleeping. The thick red carpets were very inviting, but I thought it might look suspect if I moved myself in there so I didn’t. I slept on and off and got up around 6am, managed to check my mail and joined the queue for Dar es Salaam. Somehow on all the flights so far I’d had a whole row of seats to myself. This was also the case this time around, and I settled in for the 6 hour flight to Dar. Taking off from Doha we came straight over the CBD, and I managed to get some nice pics of the skyscrapers and of course all the sand! I slept for a lot of the way and before I knew it, we were landing in Dar. De-boarding and making my way to immigration I got a nasty surprise. I had to pay $150 for a business visa and I had no cash at all on my person. Of course the 2 ATM’s in the terminal were out of order and the change bureau only accepted Mastercard. So, what to do? Luckily I was saved by my boss Peter, who came into the terminal after a while looking for me and helped pay. After 24 hours of travel I had finally arrived!