How long is the ideal holiday?

A week, two, one month? Who has all that time for a holiday when there is the constant hustle of modern life?

What if you can pack in a holiday into one long weekend and still do more than most people get to accomplish in a lifetime? And since you can cram so much in, why not repeat as many times as you can.

Holidaying in Nigeria is hard, no glossing over it. Roads are not all good, information about holiday places is scarce and may be out of date when you get to your destination, but, the rewards are so high one should not even think of not doing it.

Take an adventure holiday in Nigeria and you will be hooked, before you know it, you will become the evangelist at the office/party/gathering and can not just wait for your next getaway.

I went hiking across Obudu Mountains in April 2018, we stayed on some trails and sometimes went off trail, it was three days of hard hiking, fun and fantastic camping with some of the best landscapes in the world.

The Sankwala mountain range is at the South-eastern corner of Nigeria and the mountains run into Cameroon where it rises to become the Bamenda Mountain range, going North East, it merges into the Taraba mountain range which has the highest peak in Nigeria (Obudu is second). Elevations are from 1400m up to the 1800m.

The 3 days trail exploration started on Saturday, starting off from a hotel in the village next to the mountain resort, we headed west towards our first target of the day, a waterfall, nestled in a deep valley. Just 1km into the hike and my knees were not happy at all, hmmm, what could be the problem?

I have been on point with my weight workout and reasonably fit, aha, going down was the problem, where is my trekking stick? Stick sorted and it was ok from there forward. We made the waterfall in good time, doing down was not easy though, quite steep and we went off the trail to cut right to the rocky outcropping at the top of the fall.

An early break for a meal and brief rest then we forded the stream that was the source of the fall and headed up to the next ridge. My first real climb and the sweat was flowing freely, this was a good test of my backpack (10kg load and 2kg camera kit). We made it to the next ridge and then it was a long stretch to our next rest point by a cattle holding.

Water taste so sweet when you are boiling and really really need every drop. Campsite identified and we left our packs with the herder-person, then headed to summit the big one, 1750m and it appeared to be the highest peak in the range. The middle section was a tough one but without our packs, it was not just head down, leg in front of the other until we made the summit

Then the weather gods turned against us and the clouds rolled in. Ok, that done and dusted, time to go down, well, that was the plan but the rain had other plans, cold water started coming down right close to a herders hut. No one at home but we invited ourselves in and waited out the worst of the rain

Headed down and made it back to camp in good light.

Camping right by a stream had its privileges, lots of water, nice and cool. Dinner was by the campfire, then the rain started up again and drove us back into the tents. Good reason to have an early night, and head down and drift off……

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