Nkile - The Place That Doesn't Exist on Google Maps

Lake Nyasa, no Google maps, beautiful nature, falling in love, invitations, improvement through projects, special welcome, splendid views, fresh fish and mangoes, lots of mangoes, Sunday service, not so relaxing afternoons on the lake, visiting the fishing village, daily life situations, Baobab trees and swarm of school kids

Nkile truly is beautiful, in and out. It's hard to put it all into words but let me try.

So Nkile is located on Lake Nyasa, also known as Lake Malawi. Nkile is about a 1.5 - hours' drive from Mbinga and can't be found on Google Maps.

Already the drive itself was very beautiful. Hills covered in lush green meadows and trees, small villages scattered all around, locals socialising together, kids walking home from school or playing around their home.

I've barely been in the country for 2 days and I already fell in love with it! 😍

Gina and I were invited to Nkile by Silverius, a pastor Gina met during her last travels to Tanzania. He actually built up this town and community together with the locals and their story is absolutely amazing! They constantly improve their community and lives by different projects. You can read more about these projects in this post right here. Yes, there's a way to support them too! 🙂

As soon as we arrived into town kids came and run after the car to welcome us. They were so excited to meet new mzungus (aka white people). It was cute actually, I've never received a special treatment like this. 😉

From our guest rooms we had the most splendid view directly over Lake Nyasa, sometimes even seeing Malawi on the other side if the mist on the horizon would clear a bit.

Our meals always consisted of freshly caught fish from the lake and so many fresh fruits! Especially the mangoes. Okay, real talk right now: I've never seen so many different mangoes in my life! Back home we only get the big ones and even when I was in Cuba I didn't see that many.

According to Google, there are over 1000 types of mango and only about 30 are available to the European market! Although my guess is that those 30 types look more or less the same. You might get the drift that mango is actually my favourite fruit! 😁

Back to Nkile! Not only did we get to enjoy the local food but also their hospitality. The people were so very welcoming and happy to see us. We attended the Sunday service and soon the whole village knew about their new visitors.

In the afternoons we would go to the Lake for a swim, our thoughts about relaxing a bit on the beach were thrown out the window pretty fast though. As soon as the local kids saw us we got swarmed. They demanded every bit of attention from us and we played endlessly with them. Although they were very cute and funny, it was somewhat draining. I mean, how long can you deal with at least 5 kids hanging on to you? 😅

The second morning we got up extra early to visit the fishing village. Again, we were overwhelmed with the local's hospitality and kindness. We actually came home with 14 gifted fish! It was amazing to be able to observe the locals interacting with each other. The fishermen coming back from their night excursions, how they dealt and sold their fish, the kids observing the adults, mom's carrying their babies on their backs and people just mingling and talking to each other.

The whole scene was a very unique experience and I just love these situations! In daily life situations like this is where I get to have the most authentic experiences and it amazes me every single time!

Also, have you ever seen a Baobab tree this big!? We look so small next to it. And while we admired this huge natural beauty, school kids observed us and pressed themselves on to the windows of the school to steal a glance at us. I even took out my drone to fly there and suddenly we got swarmed by kids from every direction, I didn't even see it coming! Seeing something weird flying around being controlled by a mzungu (foreigner) must have been spectacular and not an every day sight. I literally felt like I was amidst a beehive! 😁

So I fell in love with Tanzania already on my first few days there and it only got better over the weeks! 🥰

Sabbu ❤️