We decided to spend a few days of Ramadan in a different city this year – something we always wanted to do. We checked Dullstroom and  Bergville but ended up in the place that never disappoints – Durban!

Part of the objective of the trip was to try out different masajids to experience Durban taraweeh. At this point it is worth mentioning that the title of this blog came as a result of a conversation between Khariunnisa and her friend Fatima Asmal where she called us “Taraweeh Loafers” and we quite liked it 😉

What follows is a brief description of our experiences at each of the Taraweeh venues visited:

La Mercy Masjid – 13 July ’14 / 15 Ramadan 1435

5 minutes from Umdloti,  was our Taraweeh venue tonight. We would only reach Umdloti an hour after Iftaar so a quick search to find the closest masjid yielded in a phone call to the listed contact for this masjid to find out if there was place for women to follow Taraweeh. Yes upstairs was the answer. So we reach our accommodation quickly prepare for Taraweeh and leave.

Approaching the masjid,  the usual dread overcame us and thoughts of where the ladies entrance would be and will there be strange looks from the locals seeing a  woman here for Taraweeh entered our minds. The stress quickly dissipated as we saw the ladies entrance just next to the the men’s – no #sideentrance

We parted ways,  I went I  read my Esha while the pre taraweeh Tafseer went on. After my fardh salaah, messaged @khairunnisakhan  to see of she was fine,  and the response was “yes and I can see the imam” with a smiley.

The imam had a good sense of humour,  there were duas and duroods after every 2 raka’ah and chilled crowd. Very nice first taraweeh in Durban! Alhamdulillah and JazakAllah La Mercy Masjid

Sometime after we met, we decided to go on a journey – an epic (at least by our standards) overland journey. As the years went by  we slowly continued planning for it but as life goes and responsibilities piled up and it got pushed the bottom shelf of our priority list many times over.

Then suddenly in mid 2013, through the grace of Allah, it jumped out the bottom shelf and placed itself on the desk for planning to begin.

Step 1 – Find a car! We needed the right vehicle to take us on this journey. So after long (and typical) Defender vs Cruiser research we agreed that the Cruiser was the right option. The search began… after much search and little looking this piece of brilliant Japanese machinery caught our eyes and our hearts.

We purchased and started researching options for overland preparation.

Enter Paul…

A colleague at Farhaan’s new job hears about our plans and mentions his friend from the UK who used to build expedition vehicles there! – Alhamdulillah!

So we meet Paul Marsh, have a few meetings and are on our way to putting down a list of requirements. He agrees to project manage the build of the vehicle due to his knowledge, experience and contacts in the industry. A few more meetings with Paul and we decide (due to Paul’s location) that we will send our car to him in Cape Town and do the build there.

January 2014 – Awning and Bullbar is installed

Feb 2014 – We took the Cruiser down to Cape Town and dropped it off with Paul.

Next Step – Paul takes the Cruiser to the “Land Cruiser Whisperer” Johan from JB Autos to do full mechanical look over due to it being second hand.

From there to Alucab to install our EeziAwn tent which was sent down from Joburg…

Now to conduct Test 1.0 – mechanical, Tent and Awning – in the next post…

We often heard about the kindness of strangers from other Overlanders and got experience it firsthand in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The drive from the border town of Moyale to Addis Ababa took 3 days. It started off with a very stressful border crossing on Ethiopian side – more on this in an upcoming blog post.

By the time border formalities were completed, it was almost 5pm but we did not want to spend the night here. We decided to push on and see how far we get. A few kilometres or good tar road later, the very familiar light brown gravel showed itself in the distance and we braced ourselves for another day of slow going.

We heard of these but did not imagine we would be privy to it. Until Addis, after a really hectic night having driven like 14 hours, sleeping awfully late and spending way too much of our budget out of desperation we walked onto the road checking out of our hotel and met Brook. He came to speak to us, ended up inviting us into his home for the next few days, showed us around, helped us out and left us completely overwhelmed by his kindness. All he wants in return is for us to “pay it forward” so in his words…”awesome!”

If you like me have been sabotaged by Microsoft’s latest Windows 10 Creator Update and you own a HP laptop, you maybe finding it frustratingly difficult to restart your laptop in Safe Mode so that you can troubleshoot your problem.

After trying many times I figured it out. Here goes:

1. Restart your laptop
2. Press Escape multiple repeatedly as soon as it start to boot up
3. Then you will be provided with the HP startup options
4. Choose the option that says Boot Device Options (F9)
5. Highlight “Notebook Hard Drive”
6. Press Enter