70 & on the go

Sudha Mahalingam

I have been an unconventional traveller all my life, having begun rather late at 40. Now, at 71, after eight passports, there have been three decades of peregrinations through 70 countries. These include transnational road rallies across 18 countries — among them, Russia, China and Central Asia, deep sea diving in the Galapagos Islands, skydiving in Australia, ballooning in the Great Barrier Reef, trekking to the Everest and Annapurna base camps, hiking in the rainforests of Borneo and Amazon, paragliding in the Himalayas, river-rafting in the Ganges and more. Yet, my wanderlust has not dimmed. My two sons, always very supportive, encourage me to travel without worrying. In recent times, my husband has begun to accompany me on some trips. As he is a worrier, I don’t share all the details of my solo trips, especially the misadventures.

Covid did throw a spanner, but not for long. Last year, Namibia, with its endless deserts, German towns like Windhoek and Swakopmund, and diverse wildlife in one of the largest salt pans on the planet, Etosha, beckoned. I figured the only way I could travel across Namibia and the adjacent Botswana and Victoria Falls would be through another self-drive, but this time with camping thrown in as an added adventure. My 75-year-old husband, who has Parkinson’s and doesn’t drive, would be accompanying me.

Raring for road

• Travel solo as it does not slow you down though it has its own ups and downs.
• Pack a light backpack.
• Stay away from typical tourist itineraries and explore places that aren’t popular or promoted.
• A vegetarian, I never fuss about local foods and often survive on fruits and shakes.
• Eat sensibly, go on daily long walks, plan workouts at the gym for months before treks like the Everest Base Camp.

It wasn’t smooth-sailing though, especially organising a solo drive. No tour operator in Bengaluru had even heard of the African country. The search for a travel agent — for arranging a 4X4 equipped with complete camping gear, bookings in lodges in remote locations, seamless coordination for border crossings — was as tough as the drive itself. I found one in South Africa who agreed to arrange everything, except our visas. With the help of a friend and after several calls to the Namibian and Botswana embassies, we were able to get the visas. Botswana had just introduced e-visas, but there was much to-ing and fro-ing before we could pay online and print out the coveted document. Thankfully, Zimbabwe, in whose jurisdiction lie the mighty Victoria Falls, would issue visas at the land border crossing.

Our vehicle, a manual Nissan Navarra 4X4, that picked us up at Hosea Kutako airport in Windhoek had a tent on top, a battery-operated tyre inflator, tools, refrigerator, primus and gas bottle, picnic furniture, cooking utensils, the works. My Indian driving licence would work in all three countries.

In Windhoek, our first camping experience at Etosha National Park started off with challenges. After a day of driving up and down the salt pan and gawking at elephants, ostriches, zebras, wildebeests, oryxs, springboks, hyenas, rhinos, etc, we reached our camping site by the evening.

If YouTube videos make camping sound romantic, perish the thought. In this desert safari, heaps of sand had to be brushed off at every stop before retrieving anything from the vehicle. Starting the stove in a windy plain and keeping it aflame was another task.

Soon our camping magic began to unravel. It was a struggle to yank down the ladder that opens up the tent on the roof of our 4X4, trudge at night to the restrooms a mile away with the help of a flashlight and climb up the ladder a few times before we could settle down for the night. In most camping grounds, there was not a soul around to ask for help. Hubby often imagined he heard rustling sounds in the bush — perhaps an elephant or a wild boar?

After a few days in Etosha, we headed to the desert country that looked something right out of ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. Shimmering, seductively-shaped dunes, shifting shape with the wind, with an occasional oryx or ostrich silhouetted against the dunes. We did a bit of dune bashing and visited Deadvlei, a wasteland of primal petrified trees claimed by the desert.

Sand, solitude and silence were our constant companions across hundreds of kilometres to the Atlantic coastal town of Swakopmund, established by German colonists in 1892. After the sandy drive, a fancy boat ride to watch a huge congregation of sea lions and a couple of whales was a welcome change. It was back to the sand as we went dune-bashing in a group, hanging on to our dear lives as the driver careened up and down, kicking up clouds of sand that obliterated the sun. The last leg of our journey took us to Katima Mulilo, the border town from where we would head to Chobe in Botswana.

If you ask me if I would do it again, the answer is a resounding yes. Even when I fell sick in Namibia and had to drive 110 miles to the nearest village to see a doctor who gave me antibiotics. But all this is par for the course. Next month, I am going trekking in the Pyrenees mountain range, stretching between Spain and France. I have been training for it as it entails walking up to 18 km a day through the mountainous terrain.

— The writer is an energy economist. Her adventures are available in her book, ‘Travel Gods Must be Crazy’ and on her website www.footlooseindian.com

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