After spending a week in Cape Town, we planned to fly to Johannesburg and rent a self-driving car from the airport to head to Kruger National Park.
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South Africa has always been on my bucket list. I’m not sure when my dream of visiting this country began, but it probably started when I was a kid, when South Africa was featured in the news and in history.
Geography books refer to it as part of the Cape of Good Hope, history books refer to it as the site of MK Gandhi’s devotion to Mahatma Gandhi, and one of the most influential leaders of our lifetime, Nelson Mandela, as part of the apartheid Pictured on the Indian passport with news related to the struggle of. The document specifically stated that visits to all countries except South Africa were valid because India does not recognize the apartheid government.
Writing about India’s role in the apartheid museum
Why India was vocally opposed to South Africa joining the International Cricket Council and why SA was banned for 21 years until 1991. Also, once the ban is lifted, the India vs South Africa ODI will be the first international match to be played in the past. Prohibited.
Anti-apartheid poster urging boycott of South African cricket
Later, as I spent insane hours watching television as a youngster glued to National Geographic and the Discovery Channel, I became fascinated with the wildlife of the country and its neighbors.
So, around the beginning of 2024, when I was finalizing my vacation plans for this year, I decided to finalize South Africa. When this plan was discussed with several friends and relatives, my sister-in-law mentioned that they (SIL, brother-in-law, and niece) were also interested in visiting South Africa. However, since they are settled in Canada, their school holidays will be in August. Therefore, we decided to change the timing of our trip to August instead of March/April as we had previously thought.
itinerary:Below is the plan we made, but your actual plan for your day in Cape Town will vary slightly based on daily weather conditions.
I’m planning a trip for more than 2 weeks. Our first location is Cape Town. Cape Town has legendary unpredictable weather, so we decided to give ourselves plenty of time and set aside a week to roam around there.
We were scheduled to arrive in Cape Town on Saturday, but our SIL and family will only arrive on Wednesday after that, so until then we’ll be staying in an Airbnb near the city center and trying to cover as much ground as possible. I will try my best. Before anyone else joined us, we were planning on renting a car, moving to a larger location on the east coast of Cape Town, and then doing a relaxing trip.
Plus, it’s been a while since I’ve seen my SIL and family, so I wanted a relaxing trip to spend time with them instead of moving around all the time.
After spending a week in Cape Town, we were scheduled to fly to Johannesburg and take a self-driving car from the airport to Kruger National Park. After spending 4 days there, we will return to Johannesburg and spend 2 days sightseeing before returning to India.
Visa and flight reservations:
Indian passport holders can avail the E-visa facility. However, websites have a mind of their own and approvals are unstable and not guaranteed. However, there is no visa charger for Indian passport holders. So, with a few months left until my trip, I thought I’d try out the E-visa option. The fallback plan if that didn’t work was to go through the consulate.
south africa visa link
TripAdvisor has over 600 pages of threads related to issues faced by people with E-visa websites. There are rumors that Indian passport holders will get a visa on arrival. It may take some time, but until that happens, getting a visa is a hassle.
Luckily, my visa was approved just a month after I applied. The expiration date was 2 months and multiple entries were possible.
flight:
Surprisingly, despite such historical connections, there are no direct flights between any city in India and South Africa.
There were three main options based on travel time.
Connecting flight via one of the three major Middle East Asian airlines (Emirate, Qatar, Etihad) Connecting flight with Kenya Airways (Mumbai & Bangalore) Connecting flight with Ethiopian Airlines (Mumbai & Bangalore)
I decided to go with the third option, which was Ethiopian Airlines, which had the shortest travel time and layover time.
On my way back, I booked a flight from Johannesburg to Bangalore with Etihad Airways. Johannesburg is a larger town, so there are more options for flights from there than Cape Town, and J’Berg is a slightly shorter flight than Cape Town, so it’s a bit cheaper.
However, when making the reservation, card payments did not work on the Ethiopian Airlines site, deviating from the usual rule of only booking directly through the airline’s site. I later found out that the reason was because I had a low daily international limit on my card, so I had to increase the limit and try again. But in a hurry to close the reservation, I thought of checking in on an aggregator site. In this case, I found the same flight on Clear Trip. Ethiopian Airlines is a member of Star Alliance along with Air India, so this flight will be listed as an Air India codeshare.
Fast forward 2 days before my trip and I try to do web check-in, but I’m confused to find that it only shows the first leg of the Bangalore-Addis Ababa flight and nowhere is Addis Ababa-Cape Town mentioned. I did. .
I called Cleartrip to check and they told me to check with Air India. Air India customer care confirmed that my connecting flight had been changed. When I was booking, my connecting flight was scheduled to depart at 7:30am from Addis Ababa, but since June, this match has been scheduled to start at 8:15am, so basically the timing has changed. will be changed by 45 minutes. This is fine, but it just adds to the layover time.
However, in addition to changing the timing, Ethiopian Airlines also changed the flight number. For some reason, PNR didn’t automatically update to the new flight number, so it was only showing the first leg of the flight.
The Air India customer care representative told me that there is no way to update the flight link to PNR as it has to be done from the Ethiopian Airlines side, so it has to be done at check-in.
So I visited the airport the day before my trip and checked with the Ethiopian Airlines reservations office there and they were equally clueless on how to deal with this. However, I was told that my connecting flight details would be displayed in the system and I could print a boarding pass with the new flight number. I’m not completely convinced, but since there’s no exit, I decide to try my luck on the day of the trip.
August 3, 24:
I arrived at the airport, went to the check-in counter, looked up the PNR and was able to find a reservation to Cape Town, but I couldn’t print my boarding pass until there. Confused, they asked us to wait and then contact the help desk. You’ll receive a call back in an hour or so to try printing your boarding pass again. However, this time the baggage tag says the destination is Cape Town, but the boarding pass is only printed for the first leg. Again some discussion and phone calls occurred and finally they decided that since they are a third party group (not employees of Ethiopian Airlines) they cannot update the new flight number from here, so this is from Addis Ababa. I mentioned that I had to do it through the transit help desk. With no other option, I decided to try my luck.
If this had been on any other airline or country, I wouldn’t have worried so much, but worst case scenario, you’ll have to spend a day at the airport until a replacement flight is arranged. However, the problem with staying in Ethiopia for more than 12 hours is that yellow fever vaccination rules apply. This means South Africa will treat this as a stay rather than a transit and will require proof of yellow fever vaccination at immigration.
Anyway, we arrived in Addis Ababa and headed to the help desk. The representative there was also unable to update my flight details, but thankfully I got someone on the phone and was able to resolve it within minutes. As soon as we got our boarding passes, we found out that our flight was already overbooked and most of the people who came after us had to wait at the gate in hopes of getting a seat instead of canceling. I had to.
The flight time from Bangalore to Addis Ababa was 5 hours and 30 minutes and the aircraft was operated by a B-787.
We arrive in Addis Ababa around 5am, but it’s raining lightly and it’s pitch black outside. The airport is quite large and has many connecting flights to neighboring countries.
The airport has a very functional design, nothing fancy. It was quite crowded, but not crowded.
This airport has a large number of Chinese users, and even has a help desk counter specifically for Chinese people. Also, this airport is primarily funded by the Chinese, so look out for the signs with Mandarin characters.
Flight to B787
We left on time, but there were a lot of planes lined up to take off. This will cause a delay of approximately 15 minutes.
You can catch a glimpse of Addis Ababa from the sky, and it’s a pretty big city. Originally, I had planned to stop by for a day on my way home. However, due to time constraints, we decided to postpone it until the next time.
This whole trip was a relaxed itinerary, so we weren’t just going from day to day. Instead, move based on their respective locations.
For more BHPian comments, insights, and more, keep reading BHPian mpksuhas’ South Africa travelogue.
