Road trip to Lake Victoria

Our road trip to Lake Victoria started on Thursday (October 19th, 2023) with a day delay. After being dependent on public transport over the last six months, we once again longed for more individuality. For this reason we decided to rent an off-road car and explore Tanzania on our own. Madlin is still not 100 percent recovered, but due to the vastness of Tanzania it was time to leave. To take Madlin's condition into account, we decided to only drive a short distance to Morogoro on the first day. Because of the many speed hills and heavy traffic, this turned out to be a good decision. Instead of the estimated four hours, we needed over five hours (yes, an average of 40 km/h 😁) to cover the 200 km. Hakuna Matata!

After Madlin survived the first day well, we decided to drive 500 km to Singida on the second day. Google predicted a time of eight hours for this, but it took us 9 1/2. Madlin didn't get through that day quite so well and got her temperature back in the evening. One problem we faced when planning the route was that there were very few accommodation options along the route that we could find online. We were able to book even less because most of the time there was no contact information. So we booked accommodation with shared bathrooms through Airbnb. When we arrived we were pleasantly surprised because we had our own bathroom and even had dinner cooked 😁.

Today the last section of the route to Mwanza on Lake Victoria started. This day presented the greatest challenges for us. After four hours we got into a traffic jam and the police waved all vehicles to the side of the road. Cars and motorcycles were even waved onto an adjacent dirt road. After standing on the dirt road for 20 minutes, we found an English-speaking man who explained to us that there had been an accident in front of us. Now the question arises as to whether we wait until the scene of the accident has been cleared or whether we take a detour of 1 1/2 hours. We decided to follow the off-road vehicles and continue on the dirt road next to the highway. We finally came to a stop just a few meters from the scene of the accident. The sight was terrifying! After a few minutes a lane was opened and the chaos really began 😵‍💫😬. In this one lane, trucks and buses from both directions tried to pass the accident site at the same time, which brought it to a standstill again. After a short consultation with the fire department, some of whom were on duty in jeans and flip flops, we were able to drive along the embankment past the accident site thanks to our off-road vehicle. After we had lost almost an hour here, Google sent us on a "shortcut". Instead of the highway we drove on a gravel road and lost another twenty minutes 🙈. After all, on this day we say our first wild animals in Africa - a pack of wild monkeys. In total we were on the road for 9 1/2 hours today and only reached Lake Victoria in the dark.

Google calculates a travel time of 18 1/2 hours for the distance of 1130 km. With a detour and full closure, it took us 24 hours to complete the route.

During this time we were able to gain a lot of impressions of Tanzania. What we found most impressive was the varied landscape, which changed about every 50 km.