Warsaw to Kilimanjaro via Istanbul

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I left school and went to the airport on Friday the 13th of February and left on Turkish airlines from Warsaw to Istanbul. The layover was very long so I got a Turkish visa so that I would have most of a day to tour around Istanbul. I arrived in Istanbul on Friday evening and left the airport to sleep in a hotel in central Istanbul for that night.

The next day (Saturday 14th of Februrary) I had time to do the basic sightseeing around Istanbul. I won't spend much time discussing the sights in Istanbul but I visited the Grand Bazaar, Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia. Around Istanbul, I managed to see two birds that were I hadn't seen since I left Saudi Arabia in the middle of last year. They were laughing doves and alexandrine parakeets.
Around three that afternoon, after the tour around Istanbul, I headed back to the airport for the overnight flight to Kilimanjaro which was another Turkish airlines flight.



I landed in Kilimajaro International Airport in the very early morning (around 1 AM), of course it was still dark but still half asleep, I got my first experience of Tanzania. I climbed down the stairs of the plane and was smacked in the face by the humidity. Though even more so than the humidity was the rain. It was chucking it down seriously hard and fast so I ran across the tarmac of the airport and to the gate. There were no buses here, so I had to go as quickly as I could so as not to get soaked. I got really wet from the rain falling from the air and also from the puddles on the ground with water being kicked up by the other passengers running into the terminal. I was worried that in the terminal, I would become cold because most airports in hot countries are very heavily air conditioned but not so in Kilimanjaro.



The cooling involved fans that just blew hot air onto your heads and I was soon sweating to death in the coats that I was wearing on the plane. I took of all of my layers down to a T-shirt and trousers and despite it being the middle of the night, I was still hot.
I then had the stand in line ready to pick up a Tanzanian visa which is just 50 US dollars and you show up and give it to an immigration officer who scribbles something in your passport then another person stamps it.



I liked the general feel of Kilimanjaro airport. It had the opposite feel of a sterile white environment that most airports (at least most international ones) have and had wooded floorboards and even a few stray cats running around.
I then picked up my bag and was picked up to be taken to the camp that I was staying in. It was completely dark but on the way, I saw my first Tanzanian animal of many, which was a jackal running across the road in front of the minibus.
I got to the camp at around 3 AM and crawled into my tent, trying not to wake up two people who were sharing the same (large) tent as me. Fully aware that I would have to be up for breakfast at 8 the next morning - in only 5 hours time - I went straight to sleep in my sleeping bag.

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