After two nights in Mombasa, we headed south to Diani Beach for the next stop on our journey along the Kenyan coast.
We spent four nights here, staying in a quiet gated community between the beach and the main road, with private access directly onto Diani Beach. Unfortunately, we had quite a lot of rain during our stay, so we didn’t explore as much as we’d originally planned.
We only spent two nights in Mombasa. We weren’t planning to see everything Mombasa has to offer. Instead, we wanted a day to explore the Old Town and get our first taste of coastal Kenya.
We spent two weeks in the city, mostly based in Kimihurura, a leafy, hilly neighbourhood with plenty of cafés, restaurants and places to work. We didn’t try to see everything Kigali has to offer. Instead, we settled into the neighbourhood, worked during the week and explored when we felt like it.
We spent three nights in Doha on our way from Zambia to Nepal, taking advantage of the Qatar Airways Stopover programme to turn our connection into a short trip of its own.
Three days gave us plenty of time to explore Doha’s main sights, wander around Souq Waqif, visit Katara Cultural Village and Mina District, take a dhow boat trip and eat some very good food along the way.
We visited in July, when temperatures reached almost 50°C, so our days looked a little different from how we’d probably plan them during the cooler months. We spent the hottest parts of the day indoors and headed outside later in the afternoon and evening.
When booking our Qatar Airways flights from Lusaka to Kathmandu, we realised we had an easy opportunity to visit another country along the way.
Our route already took us through Doha, and Qatar Airways allows you to book a longer stop in the city through its Qatar Stopover programme. We chose to spend three nights in Qatar before continuing to Nepal.
We were flying Business Class, and when we compared the options, choosing a three-night stopover didn’t change the price of our flights. We simply had to pay for our hotel and what we spent while we were in Doha.
For us, three nights was enough time to explore the city without adding too much time or expense to our journey from Zambia to Nepal.
There was just one thing we hadn’t planned perfectly: we visited in July. And Doha in July is very, very hot.
While staying in Kimihurura, we put together our own self-guided art walk through the area. We took a moto to Niyo Arts Center and then made our way back on foot, stopping at different art spaces along the way.
Windhoek is often treated as little more than the starting point for a trip around Namibia. Most travellers fly in, pick up a rental car or join a tour and head straight for the desert, national parks and dramatic landscapes the country is famous for.
North Sumatra was one of the most varied parts of our Indonesia trip. Within a relatively short distance, we went from trekking through rainforest looking for orangutans to climbing an active volcano for sunrise and relaxing beside the enormous Lake Toba.
Lake Toba was probably the place we connected with least during our time in North Sumatra.
That’s not to say it isn’t beautiful. It absolutely is. The enormous volcanic lake, green hills and traditional Batak villages make this one of the most distinctive landscapes in Indonesia. But after spending five nights on Samosir Island we came away with mixed feelings.
For some reason, the atmosphere just felt a little off to us. We also found people noticeably less friendly than elsewhere we’d travelled in Indonesia, where we’d become so used to incredibly warm and welcoming interactions.
We’re still glad we visited, though. Lake Toba gave us a completely different experience from Bukit Lawang and Berastagi and introduced us to the culture and traditions of the Batak people.
On our Northern Sumatra trip we spent one night in Berastagi, and there was one main reason for stopping here: to climb Mount Sibayak for sunrise.
After several days relaxing in Bukit Lawang, we travelled by taxi through the mountains to Berastagi. The drive itself was beautiful, taking us through the green landscapes of northern Sumatra before reaching the town.
The following morning, we were up long before sunrise and heading towards Mount Sibayak, an active volcano just outside Berastagi.