Road Trip Day 8 - Kano, Zaria, Kaduna

After some fun in Kano it was time again to hit the road. It was pleasantly surprising to find through the North that things were not as bad as everyone down in Lagos always made out. There's always a risk of things flaring up anywhere in Nigeria - even Africa for that matter - but we had no problems at all. If anything, the police in Kano were really helpfull and gave us directions and stuff all the time without hastle. In Lagos you don't stop to talk to a cop unless you really really have to (or you're stupid...)

So we hit the road for the short 3hr drive down to kaduna, stopping at a small city called Zaria for lunch. As usual on the road you get to see all sorts of fun stuff. Whilst the scenery is not much to behold, the people are always up to something.

Drying peppers on the freeway (people were whizzing past well over 100kph)


Fruit and veg heading for the south - no wonder it's all squashed by the time it gets to Lagos with a bunch of hitchhikers sitting on top...

This kind young man was offering good luck chickens to passers by. I prefer my drive through chicken to be deep fried with eleven herbs and spices... oh well.

To escape being sold by the side of the road, weaver birds create massive fortifications up in trees so that you can't catch them

We stopped in at Zaria which is another old capital like Kano and the emir is supposed to have a really palace. Unfortunately for us it was Saturday, and though we had a go at asking, the emir didn't take visitors on the weekend so we just got to stare from the outside - funky little pad

The emirs psychedelic palace

the markets in Zaria

Like all the other old cities up here, Zaria was once a walled city. Amazingly some of the original mud brick wall survives, despite the locals doing absolutely nothing to protect theses fragile structures that are pushing 500 years. This one had in fact become a small goat-holding area.

Another hour or so down the road and we came to kaduna, our stop for the night. Kaduna is not really famous for anything (apart from it having one of the four oil refineries in Nigeria that don't work anymore... yeah? don't ask. The fancy English bloke who used to run this neck of the woods - Lord lugard - apparently still has his original house here. However, as they are now using it for the house of Reps here you can't get near the place without a lot of hastle. So we just checked into our Hotel the Gloria Moria (great name!! I'm assuming they were going for Maria but rhyming with Gloria...) I tell you, you never get sick of the strange looks people give you when you turn up as a white person and want to stay at their hotel - as though whities surely would only ever want to stay at a $400 an Hilton or something? By now we were all knackered from 8 days of driving around so after the usual chicken and rice and a quick bucket shower it was off to bed.

the view from the Gloria Moria on Sunday Morning