The Ilala to Nkhata

Bit of trivia for you: which body of water played host to the first naval battle of WWI?

The answer is Lake Malawi. In 1914, only days after the outbreak of the Great War, the British gunship HMS Guendolin fired her guns on the German vessel Herman von Wesselmann, the former rendering the latter utterly useless.

Nowadays, you won't see anything in the way of European military craft patrolling this massive lake; fishing boats, dhows and the odd barge are much easier spots. However, there does remain one ship that navigates the lake today as often as it did during the colonial days: the Ilala Ferry.

The Ilala carries passengers and cargo on its once-a-week return trip from Monkey Bay in the South to Chitemba in the North. The trip includes 13 stops on both the Malawian and Mozambican shores of the lake. Inasmuch as many of the ports are isolated villages with no road access, the ferry represents the lifeline for many of the lakeshore's inhabitants.

Tickets come in 3 classes. Most tourists and rich locals choose first class, which permits you to stretch out in the pleasant confines of the open-air upper deck. The journey up top is relaxing and peaceful, and includes access to a restaurant and an outdoor bar that sells Kuche Kuche lager for about 75 cents.

But if you dont have the Kwacha for the privilege of climbing the stairs, you can do as the Malawians do and ride economy. It's pretty grim though - the lower deck is a cramped, rat-infested, diesel-choked pileup of human bodies, barnyard animals and sacks of festering cassava. It may be a more authentically African way to travel, but after a few days spent in the bowels of the ship (the whole journey takes 60 hours), you may have dysentery and feel as if you've wound up in a refugee camp. I was more than happy to part with the $60 to ride upstairs.

The Ilala may be slow-going, but it's far less grueling than road travel. Moreover, you have the opportunity to see some very remote villages. Many of the ports are little more than a few huts on a beach, where the baobab trees and lizards outnumber the human population. A few towns, such as Nkhatakata, have Arab-built structures that are leftover from the days of the slave trade.

Each port call is chaotic. Lake Malawi's shores are shallow, and the Ilala cannot dock. Instead, anchor is dropped a few hundred metres out, and people (and animals and luggage and corn and bags of charcoal and sheet metal and logs and and and) are shuttled to-and-fro on life rafts. It's an absolute shambles, but it's a tight operation and is done quickly and efficiently, even if port is reached at 3AM.

For those of us in for the long haul, good times were had. At each stop, we all plummeted from the top deck into the blue waters, a spectacle that seemed to entertain the locals immensely. There was even a filming crew for the show Globetrekkers, which you've probably never heard of since you don't get HBO. I was interviewed on camera. Finally, my big break.

Taking the Ilala was one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had during my time in Africa. I arrived in Nkhata Bay feeling rested and refreshed, which is a significant departure from how I feel after a minibus taxi ride. Example? To reach Monkey Bay from Lilongwe, I had to endure a 9-hour ordeal sitting next to a newborn baby who spent most of its spare time regurgitating freshly-suckled breast milk onto my shorts. Then, during a breakdown, some local village kids stole my water bottle. Rat bastards. I'll take the boat any day.