It was December, during the first year of COVID restrictions, and travelling anywhere felt complicated. My dear friend Pankaj, who lives in Mumbai, and I still wanted to get away. We planned a route through Dubai and Kenya to Tanzania, carrying only hand luggage so we could make our connections without collecting checked bags or crossing immigration during transit.
Even getting there felt like part of the adventure.
When we landed, we were startled by the crowds. There seemed to be Russian tourists everywhere. We had spent months being told to avoid people, and suddenly we were surrounded by them. Pankaj and I decided we would keep our masks on. Then we got into a cab and noticed people looking at us as though we were the strange ones. It was an unsettling start to a trip that soon became one of my favourites.
We stayed in Nungwi, a village in the north of Zanzibar. I have never seen so many shades of water in one place. Close to shore it was clear; farther out it shifted through greens and blues I didn’t have names for. After months of restrictions and worry, sitting by that beach felt like an enormous break.
A few days later, we traded the beach for a safari and stayed in camps to keep the trip within budget. The outings are called game drives. We would leave at around six in the morning, come back for breakfast, then head out again. Some days we did two or three drives.
I kept thinking each sighting would be the highlight, and then something else would appear. Lions, leopards, elephants, zebras, rhinos—the wildlife was extraordinary. Being out there, watching animals move through their own landscape, was worth every early start.
The anxiety returned when it was time to fly home. We needed a negative COVID test to travel, and after all the people we had been around, Pankaj and I were nervous. The testing process we encountered in Tanzania didn’t give me much confidence; it seemed remarkably easy to come away with a negative report. I had no way of knowing what had happened behind the scenes.
Dubai required another test. That one felt very real to me. For the next 24 hours, I imagined being stuck there with a positive result. Then my report arrived: negative.
I still laugh when I think about that trip with Pankaj. It began with hand luggage and a complicated route, took us from Zanzibar’s blue water to early mornings on safari, and ended with me staring at a test result in Dubai. What a way to travel.