Let’s start with my introduction:
After our Iceland road trip in 2017, we were looking for our next trip(albeit in budget). We zeroed in on Namibia, however the cost as well as visa complications became a deterrent and so when an international flight sale came in for Yatra, we booked tickets to Johannesburg in a jiffy.
BTW, link to the mini travelogue for Iceland:
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/travel...nd-66-n-5.html
Tickets were booked in December,2017 for travel dates in July,2018. So the long wait began.
In between, we did lot of bookings/re bookings/cancellations and finally the itinerary was finalized.
It had to be self-drive, the cheapest possible cars were booked through Avis(booked Bidvest at first but later Avis gave a better deal, so changed).
Visa was done through VFS, Calcutta. Tickets booked through yatra.com, accommodations were booked through booking.com.
Finally it was the last week of July and we reached Mumbai airport with our two bags, one full of packaged food and the other with clothes and knick knacks only to be told that our Air Seychelles flight to Johannesburg has been cancelled!!
After some hiccups they finally put us on an Ethiopian Airlines flight via Addis Ababa. However that meant that we would reach Johannesburg around 1.5 hrs late from our original schedule and that also meant driving around 350km to Nelspruit on our first day in Africa in the dark!
So we reached Johannesburg, picked up our car from Avis(located in the airport complex itself) , entered GPS co-ordinates and set off for Nelspruit at around 4PM. The car was a Hyundai i10(1.1). It seriously lacked power and was struggling to push on slopes in 4th-5th gear. Took some time to get used to it when everyone was driving above 120Kmph on the highway.
Anyway after some struggle and nervous moments we finally reached our accommodation in Nelspruit at 10PM in the night. It was called Panorama Guest Farm.
Photo is from next day as it was pitch black by then.
Panorama Route:
Woke up early, we followed IST again as we did in Iceland, as it helps to evade crowd.
First stop was Lone creek Falls. We were the first visitors of the day:
Then we visited the three falls Mac Mac, Lisbon and Berlin.
Finally, the highlight of this route,THE BLYDE RIVER CANYON:
On our way back we visited God’s Window and Bourke’s potholes:
Roads were great for most part except for the one that goes to Lone Creek. Had massive potholes.
Since we were more into landscapes and not interested in wildlife we left Nelspruit the next day. For those interested (I guess all), you can use Nelspruit as base for Kruger.
Next day we drove to the town of Harrismith(~500km drive), which we used as base for Golden Gate National park, Thendele(Amphitheatre peak) and Cathedral Peak hikes. They were all within 100 km from Harrismith.
Some photos:
After 4 days we set out early in the morning back to Johannesburg for our flight to Cape Town. Returning the car was easy and we returned it with a full tank and got a clean chit from the inspector.(I probably returned it cleaner than what I got, since I always carry a microfiber cloth with me along with a Jopasu duster and clean the rental car before returning). The 1.1 L engine was trash though.
Cape Town onwards to be continued…..