After a week in Cape Town, we planned to fly down to Johannesburg, get a self drive car from airport and head to Kruger national park.
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South Africa was always in ‘To visit’ list for me. I am not sure when the dream to visit the country was born, I guess it was since South Africa was there in news and history alike while growing up.
In geography books as part of Cape of good hope, in history books as the place where MK Gandhi turned in to Mahatma Gandhi, then in news related to one of the most influential leaders in our lifetime – Nelson Mandela’s struggle against apartheid, on Indian passports which had specific mention that its valid for visit to all countries apart from South Africa, as India was not recognizing the apartheid government.
Writing in Apartheid museum mentioning about role India played
How India was one of the vocal opponents to South Africa being part of International cricket council and how SA were banned for 21 years till 1991. Also when the ban was revoked, India – South Africa ODI will become the first international match they will play past ban.
Anti Apartheid poster urging for boycott of South African Cricket
Then later, when I used to spend insane amount of time watching TV as a youngster glued to National Geographic & Discovery channel, was fascinated about the wildlife of that country and its neighbor’s.
So around start of 2024 when we were finalizing on vacation plans for this year, we thought of finalizing on South Africa. When this plan was discussed with few friends and relatives, my sister in law mentioned that they (SIL, brother in law and niece) were also interested in visiting South Africa. However, they are settled in Canada, meaning the school vacation is in August. Hence we decide to shift the trip timing to August instead of March / April as earlier thought of.
Itinerary:
Below is the plan that we had made, however the actual day wise plan was slightly different in Cape Town based on weather conditions of each day:
We plan a trip over 2 weeks time. Our first location will be Cape Town, due to the legendary unpredictable weather there, we decide to have ample additional time there and hence keep 1 week to roam around there.
We were to reach Cape Town on a Saturday, SIL and family will be reaching only on the Wednesday after that, so till that time we will stay at a Airbnb near city center, try to cover most places as possible. Prior to others joining, we planned to rent a car, move to a bigger space on east coast of Cape Town and then have a relaxed itenary past that.
Plus since we will be meeting SIL and family after a while, we wanted to have a relaxed trip so that we get to spend some time with them too instead of being on the move always.
After a week in Cape Town, we planned to fly down to Johannesburg, get a self drive car from airport and head to Kruger national park. After spending 4 days there, we will return to Johannesburg, spend 2 days sightseeing there and then travel back to India.
Visa & flight bookings:
For Indian passport holders, there is E Visa facility available. However, the website has a mind of its own and the approvals are erratic and not guaranteed. Visa chargers are nil for Indian passport holders though, hence thought of trying out the E Visa option since we have few months till the trip. If that doesn’t work out, the back up plan was to go via consulate.
There is a 600+ page thread on TripAdvisor related to the issues faced by people with this E visa website. There is a murmur to have Visa on arrival for Indian passport holders, it may take a while, but till that happens, its a pain to get visa done.
Luckily for us, the visa got approved exactly 1 month after we applied. The validity was for 2 months and with multiple entry.
Flight:
Surprisingly, for all the historical connections, there is no direct flights between any city in India to South Africa.
Based on our travel time, we were having broadly 3 options:
- Connecting flight via any of the 3 middle east Asian giants (Emirates, Qatar, Etihad)
- Connecting flight of Kenya airways (Mumbai & Bangalore)
- Connecting flight of Ethiopian airways (Mumbai & Bangalore)
We decided to take the 3rd option of Ethiopian airways since this has the shortest transit travel and transit time.
For return, we booked Johannesburg – Bangalore of Etihad airways. Since Johannesburg is a bigger town, there are more flight options from there compared to Cape Town, also its slightly cheaper since J’Berg is a slightly shorter flight than Cape Town.
However, during booking I made a deviation from my usual rule of only booking directly from airline sites since my card payment was not working in the Ethiopian airways site. Later I made out that the reason was since the daily international limit was set low for my card by me, I just had to increase it and try again. However, in the hurry to close the booking, I thought of checking in any aggregator sites – in this case, found the same flight in Clear trip. Since Ethiopian airways is part of Star Alliance along with Air India, this flight is displayed as an Air India code share.
Fast forward to 2 days before our trip, I try to do web check-in and is confused to find that only our first leg of the flight Bangalore – Addis Ababa is only displayed, there is no mention of Addis Ababa – Cape Town mentioned anywhere.
Call up Clear trip and check, they ask to check with Air India. Air India customer care checked and mentioned that the connecting flight has got changed. While I had booked, the connecting flight was to start at 07.30 AM from Addis Ababa, however since June this fight now starts at 08.15 AM, basically a 45 mins change in timing, which is fine, just that my transit time gets longer a bit.
However, on top of the change in timing, Ethiopian airways also changed the flight number. For some reason, update to new flight number didn’t happen automatically to our PNR and hence was showing only the first leg of the flight.
Air India customer care person mentioned to me that since the flight linking to PNR has to be done from the Ethiopian airways side, it has to be done at time of check-in since there is no way they can update the same.
Hence I visited airport a day before the trip and checked with the Ethiopian airways booking office there, they were equally clueless on how to deal with this. However, they mentioned that my connecting flight details are shown in their system, hence they will be able to print boarding pass with the new flight number. Not fully convinced, but with no way out, we decide to try our luck on the day of the trip.
03-Aug-24:
Reached airport, went to check-in counter, they look up the PNR and is able to find the booking till Cape Town, however they are unable to print boarding pass till there. Confused, they ask us to wait and contact their helpdesk. Around an hour pass and they call us back, try printing boarding pass again. However, this time, our baggage tags come with destination as Cape Town, but boarding pass for first leg only is getting printed. Again some discussion and calls happen, finally they mention that they are unable to update the new flight number from here since they are a third party group (not Ethiopian airways employees) hence this has to be done from the transit helpdesk at Addis Ababa. With no other option available, we decide to try our luck.
If this was in any other airline / country, we would not have been much concerned, the worst is, one day will have to spend in airport till the alternative flight is arranged. However, issue with being in Ethiopia for more than 12 hours is that the yellow fever vaccine rule kicks in. That means, South Africa will treat it as a stay instead of transit and will require yellow fever vaccine certificate for clearing immigration.
Anyways, we reached Addis Ababa, head to helpdesk, the person there also is not able to update the flight details, thankfully, he calls up someone on phone and is able to sort it out in few minutes. Got the boarding pass and soon find out that our flight is overbooked already and few who came after us had to wait at gate hoping they are able to get seats in place of any cancellations.
Flight from Bangalore to Addis Ababa was for 5.30 hours and was operated by a B-787 aircraft.
We land at Addis Ababa at around 05.00 AM, however its drizzling and is dark outside. The airport is fairly large, with lot many connecting flights to neighboring countries operating out of there.
The airport has a very functional design, nothing fancy. It was fairly busy, however not crowded.
There are considerable number of Chinese nationals who are using this airport, so much so, that there is a helpdesk counter specifically for Chinese national. Also, the airport mostly was funded by Chinese, look at the signboards which has Mandarin texts.
Our onward flight, a B787
We push off on time, but there are a bunch of flights in line to take off. This adds to around 15 mins of delay.
We get glimpse of Addis Ababa from the air, its a fairly large city. We had a plan of stopping over for a day on our way back initially. However decided to drop it for a later time due to time constraints.
Since this entire trip was done at a relaxed itenary, I am NOT going by a day by day account. Instead will go based on each location.
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