September 30, 2025.
That night, I boarded my first flight out of India. I was leaving from Bhubaneswar, travelling through Mumbai and heading towards Dar es Salaam - Tanzania, for my first international work experience as a geologist.
At that time, Tanzania was simply a country I was going to for work. One year later, it had become one of the most memorable chapters of my life.
First, where is Tanzania?
Something I realised very quickly was that many people around me didn’t know much about Tanzania. I had to explain that Tanzania is a country in East Africa, one of the 54 countries of the African continent.
And it isn’t just one culture or one language. Tanzania has more than 120 ethnic groups with Kiswahili serving as the common language across the country alongside many local languages and English.
For me, that diversity was not something I read about online. I experienced a small part of it myself.
My first days in Tanzania
My first stop was Dar es Salaam, where I spent my first week. The first few days were about simply trying to understand this new place. The airport, roads, hotels, food, people and the rhythm of everyday life were all new to me.
I visited places around Dar es Salaam and slowly began getting comfortable in my new surroundings. At the time, I didn’t know how different my life was going to become once I left the city.
My first impressions of Tanzania began here.
My first glimpse of Tanzania’s Indian Ocean coastline.
A favourite place to slow down after everything felt new.
A beautiful sunset captured
From the city to the field
My work took me to the Mbeya Region, where I worked as a geologist. For anyone unfamiliar with the job, a geologist essentially studies rocks, minerals and geological structures to understand what may be present beneath the ground and identify areas that could contain valuable mineral resources.
This meant that my workplace was often not an office. It was the field. Mountains, rocks, streams, villages, dusty tracks and long off-road journeys became part of my everyday life. For a geologist, it was an incredible classroom.
Living in Ileya Village, Ifwenkenya
Around Mbeya, I stayed in a village called Ileya. This was when Tanzania stopped feeling like a foreign country I was visiting and started feeling like a place where I was actually living.
I spent time with local people, experienced their daily life, tried their food and learned small pieces of their culture. I remember learning simple Swahili words like:
Habari? - How are you?
Poa! - Fine
Asante - Thank you
I tried local food, tried their dance moves and songs. There were challenges. Even simple things that I had always taken for granted in India could be difficult to find in a remote area. But those experiences taught me to adapt.
Tanzania through a geologist’s eyes
One of the most special parts of the experience was seeing Tanzania through my profession. I photographed rocks, mineralisation, mountains and geological landscapes while working in the field.
At the same time, I explored local businesses, added a few missing places, corrected many details and helped make them more visible and useful on Google Maps. I genuinely loved contributing along the way. It was special to combine my profession, my curiosity for new places and my passion for helping others discover them.
There were difficult days, but there were also moments when standing in the middle of a remote landscape, surrounded by geology, reminded me why I chose this profession in the first place. It was not just a job site. It was a completely different geological environment to learn from. Sometimes getting to the workplace was an adventure by itself.
Some roads were rough. The views made up for them.
The Tanzania I still haven’t seen
One year may sound like a long time, but Tanzania is huge! There were so many amazing places I wanted to visit but couldn’t, mainly because of work and field schedules.
Now, as I move on to my next chapter, I’m leaving Tanzania with a list of places I still want to explore. I’m sure I’ll return someday and visit them for myself. I’d also suggest my fellow Local Guides take a look at these places and consider adding Tanzania to your travel list.
Mount Kilimanjaro.
Zanzibar and Stone Town.
Serengeti.
Ngorongoro.
Arusha.
Tarangire.
Lake Manyara.
Nyerere National Park.
Mikumi.
They are still on my list. Maybe that’s one reason I don’t feel like my Tanzanian story is completely finished. Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar are probably the two I regret missing the most.
PEOPLE >>>>>> PLACES
Places gave me photographs. People gave me memories. The biggest memories, however are not only about places. They are about people. I met colleagues, local communities, friends and people I probably would never have met if I had stayed in India.
My friend Swedy, kunuva and many others became part of this chapter of my life. Looking at my photographs now, I don’t only remember where they were taken. I remember who was standing beside me.
THE END
My Tanzanian experience wasn’t perfect. There were struggles with food, infrastructure, transportation, money and simply adapting to life so far away from home. There were days I missed India. There were days when the field work and travelling were exhausting. But perhaps that is exactly why the memories mean so much. It wasn’t a holiday. It was life.
This is the Tanzania that existed behind my Google Maps contributions. Not the Tanzania from a tourism brochure.
1 YEAR. Hundreds of photographs. One chapter I’ll never forget.
Asante sana, Tanzania 
One of the reasons I enjoyed documenting Tanzania was that Google Maps became my little record of everyday life there. From airports and beaches to restaurants, bus stands, churches, hotels, roads and places I encountered during my travels, my Maps contributions became a visual diary of these one year.
Looking back at them now, I realise I wasn’t just adding places to a map. I was documenting a chapter of my life.
Really glad you liked it..