Indian visa in hand, I boarded my flight to Mumbai without any incidents. I had a hotel booked that was about a 10 minute walk to the airport, so I ignored all the taxi touts and started on my way. Unfortunately, it was dark, there were no sidewalks and it was unclear if I could actually make it my hotel on foot, so I flagged down a tuk tuk. We agreed on a price and I hopped in. At which point it was clear that he had no idea where my hotel was, as he kept asking me where it was and what it was near. Finally he pulled out his phone, made me put it in google maps and wanted me to direct him to the hotel. As I was not about to direct him through crazy Indian traffic, I hopped out and found another tuk tuk who knew where the hotel was.

At the hotel I was greeted with a sign saying “prepayments not accepted”. I was a bit dismayed but tried to check in anyway. They proceeded to confirm that the sign was correct; they were no longer accepting prepaid online reservations. When I explained that I had already paid, they told me to contact the booking company and take it up with them. Exasperated, but very tired, I paid for the same room, again. I then headed out to find some tasty Indian dosa for dinner. It took a while, but I finally found what I was looking for. It was delicious. When I went to pay, I handed them a $1000 rupee note, only to be told these notes are no longer accepted. Apparently, this is a real thing. Unfortunately, that was all I had left from my last trip to India, so they allowed me to pay with my credit card.

The next morning, cashless, I walked to the airport. Which was somewhat doable, but I’m certainly glad I didn’t attempt it the night before, with no sidewalks, lots of puddles, and tons of traffic. At least it was close.

When I got to the check in counter for Ethiopian airlines, I was handed a hotel voucher. Apparently, without any notice, my 1.5 hour layover in Addis Ababa had turned into 10. But not overnight. Which would mean my new flight to Johannesburg from Addis would leave at midnight, arriving at 4am. I had a hotel booked in Joburg for the night, as I had another flight to Cape Town booked for 11am. Of course I could not check into my hotel at 4am though.

After a lot of complaining, I was told to complain in Addis when I arrived there. About an hour later they agreed to put me on a morning flight to Cape Town, so I could bypass Joburg, and get a real sleep. They handed me a hotel and food voucher, so I was relatively happy. 

The drive to the hotel was very eventful, and took more than an hour from the airport, due to traffic, after waiting an hour for other passengers to join, then finally leaving, then returning to pick up more passengers. It took so long other passengers complained they would have to head straight back as there flight was at 10pm and it was already 5pm. At one point our driver ran over something on the road, and we had to pull over and extract whatever it was from the wheels of the car. I was quite happy to reach the hotel.

I headed to the restaurant to eat and soon started talking to the only other person there, a guy from London who was born in Ethiopia and visiting. I ended up having a nice night sampling local Ethiopian coffee and beer, before receiving a 5am wake up call for breakfast before we drove back to the airport.

My flight was blissfully uneventful and I arrived in Cape Town around 2pm. Unfortunately, my bags did not. Apparently they had not re-routed my bag. I left the airport with assurances it would be arriving soon and I headed for my hostel, once again, sans luggage.