March 28th Day 1
It was a nice day for traveling. I am all excited about the travel to South Africa and Zimbabwe. I have read history, watched movies like Gandhi and followed the cricket teams of South Africa and Zimbabwe for ages. But to see and feel the places it is going to be awesome.
South Africa, the land where Gandhi lived for 21 years between 1903 and 1914 where he developed his political views, ethics and leadership skills.The country also helped shape his destiny and the destiny of India forever. There is Nelson Mandela who fought against apartheid and got freedom for South Africa. South Africa is definitely a haven for history in the making for centuries. It would be an inspiring trip to visit the places where Gandhi and Mandela lived. Mandela, who is 94 and is hospitalized as I write this blog. Hopefully this trip will inspire me more to do the things I have always wanted to do in life.
 Took Bart train around 11 and was in the airport by 12.45. Went through security and met with Brian Hadfield and was ready for boarding.
    Once I knew I was going on the trip to South Africa back in December, I had sent out a mail to the group asking if anyone wanted to join me on my extended trip in South Africa.
 Brian had responded saying he was interested. I was happy that I didn't have to travel alone. We both decided on a travel plan and charted out all the details. The first order of business are the tickets. We spoke to our agent Fran regarding the tickets. She got us a great deal with Lufthansa, the German airline for $1290.  And we get to spend 12 hours in Frankfurt as well. The dates were March 28 - April 17th. It was roughly 3 weeks including travel. now we have to sit down and chart our travels plans. We met twice and discussed the places to visit and things to do.
  Our base will be Johannesburg and we will be traveling from there to the places we want to go. When we asked around everyone suggested that we go to Cape Town. We had no idea about Cape Town and included the city in our travel plans. Little did we know how big of a place Cape Town was.
 The next place of travel has to be something to do with safari and thus came Kruger National Park, one of the best national parks in all of Africa and a great destination for safaris. How do we get to Kruger? We looked up for details and came up with Nelspruit, the airport destination for Kruger.
 We needed one more place to complete our travel. Something big, really big and spectacular. it has got to be Victoria Falls which flows from Zambezi river into Zimbabwe and Zambia.
The places are set and we started looking for routes and airfares within Africa. We got a decent fare of about $900.
We leave on March 28th, and here is the schedule.
March 28th San Francisco
March 29th Frankfurt
Mar 30th - April - 5th Lanseria
April 6th - Joberg
April 7, 8 - Cape Town
April 9, 10, 11 - Nelspruit, Kruger
April 12 - Joberg
April 13, 14 - Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
April 15 - Joberg
April 16 - Leave Joberg
April 17 - Reach San Francisco

Everything is coming together perfectly. I sent out a mail to friends asking for donations and sent out the list from Nicole for things needed at the Orphanage in Refilwe, Lanseria.
Early days pictures of Gandhi in South Africa and Nelson Mandela in a native African dress.