between heaven and earth
This place looks like a postcard from childhood – slightly faded, but still gleaming. Tanzania and Zanzibar are a spectacle of nature, where the slow steps of elephants mingle with the rapid flutter of flamingo wings.
On one side, the vast savannas of the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater – majestic, almost supernatural, with a silence deeper than noise. On the other – Zanzibar: the intricate streets of Stone Town, where history hides beneath the white paint of houses.
This is the birthplace of the legend of Freddie “Mercury”. The museum in Stone Town is a tribute to his voice, but there are also drums on the beach, rhythmic limbo, the laughter of people, and the quiet rustle of palms. The locals are open, warm, and full of life.
Zanzibar tastes of mandazi from a basket, grilled fish with sugarcane and ginger spices. The beaches are soft as velvet, full of colorful kitesurfers’ kites and windsurfers’ sails. Coconuts cool your hands, the sun warms your shoulders, and sunsets with fire shows and limbo dancing look more cinematic than real. You can lie under a white canopy, with a book, listen to the wind, and forget about the world.
You can swim by boat at dawn, fish, and also scuba dive at the reefs, where the fish are colored like pastel sketches. Visit private islands, watch monkeys and elephants in their natural habitat. Walk through spice farms, drink clove and cinnamon tea, sleep in beds with ocean views and an infinity pool.
And when the hustle and bustle tires you, you can sit in a small eatery on a bumpy street, where people carry buckets, and a cow calmly strolls through the middle of the road – as if time flows differently here.
On Kilimanjaro – the sacred mountain piercing the clouds – you can climb with guides, sleeping in tents along the way. For a suitable fee, anyone can take this path to see how the sky truly touches the earth.
On Prison Island live giant tortoises – calm and majestic, with a wise gaze slower than time.
And yet, sometimes you feel something is missing. Zanzibar will forever remain for me a symbol of this perverse truth – that even in a fairytale landscape, amidst beautiful moments, you can feel as if you are in a cage. That beauty does not always soothe. And that even when you have everything, you can have nothing.
It’s also a place of bugs and mosquitoes, with whom you share a bed, but also mornings smelling of fresh air. Here, local artists paint pictures, and every glance out the window tells a different story. Time flows quietly, softly, slowly.
Tanzania and Zanzibar – a space for encounters. Of art and silence. Of savanna and ocean. Of emptiness and fullness.
