Stage 4 - From Nairobi to Iringa

Before leaving Nairobi, I presented some more bicycles as part of the Tour d’Afrique Foundation. Some children from a local Maasai school, who were to receive some of the bicycles, performed dances and poems to the riders. Other people to benefit from the bicycles were local womens’ groups who use them to transport goods from village to village, creating a line of trade, and a charity called “Wheels of Africa”, which campaigns for research and medicine for Kenya’s second biggest killer disease; - not AIDS, not Malaria, not Tuberculosis, but cancer…

The Maasai Steppe took the cyclists from Kenya into Tanzania. I marvelled at the magnificent mountains that grace the border – Kilimanjaro, and the less well-known Mount Meru. Every day I passed through Maasai villages, with the people wearing the distinctive red check wraps and carrying spears and sticks to herd their cattle and goats. The modern Maasai youth now rides a bicycle, instead of walking, and balances his spear on the handlebars, along with his mobile phone.

The rains came in Tanzania to soften the dirt road that I cycled for six days. I had two startling encounters with wildlife. Firstly, struggling up a steep hill in a jungle-like rainforest, I cam across a male baboon, the size of a small elephant. He roared his disapproval at my slow pace, and without needing a second invitation, I cranked it up a gear and climbed that hill quicker than you could say “Alpe d’Huez”. Fortunately, the baboon decided not to follow!

Two days later, on a dry sandy lane, a huge silver-green Cobra snake chose the wrong moment to cross the road. I had time to scream but not to brake, and ran clean over its tail. You generally don’t want to upset a Cobra in that way. I didn’t hang around to offer my apologies.

In Tanzania, I took a safer and more controlled wildlife-viewing option, making a three-day safari to the Ngoro Ngoro Crater and the Serengeti Park. I was fortunate to have a front seat view of a family of Cheetah making a kill of a gazelle. David Attenborough, eat your heart out.

People have asked me how the Tour d’Afrique works, and how it is possible to keep 50 hungry active cyclists happy in food, lodging and amenities for 17 weeks. I have included some photos on my site for this section to show some of the tour’s routines.

** Two huge overland trucks support the tour – affectionately known as the lunch truck and the dinner truck. They relay for camp to camp and the crew prepares food, using the supply of kitchen utensils kept inside them. We are fortunate to have an outstanding cook on board, who has an interest not only in cooking per se, but also in the sourcing of local varieties of food, spices, fruits and meats. Variety is the key and James hits the mark every time.

** The trucks contain 60 wooden lockers – one for each person on the tour. The rules are strict. All your own equipment has to fit in your locker. It can be a tight squeeze and encourages frugality.

** With such a large group travelling through so many countries, health and hygiene in number one importance. Hands, water bottles and dishes all have to be washed frequently in specially treated or bleached water. Where water was scarce – as in the Sudanese desert – one truck carried an extra thousand litres of water in a trailer. On an average day, the tour will use 700 litres to drink, wash and cook.

** It’s fairly impossible for a rider to get lost. Daily directions to the next camp are given at a riders’ meeting and one member of staff cycles as “sweep” each day to shepherd any stragglers.

** At the end of a long hot ride, is the sight everyone wants to see – the camp. There are no hard and fast rules. Camp is wherever the tour can find to lay its weary head. So far, that has been on a desert road, a football pitch, in a forest, school grounds, a quarry, a dry river bed, a grotto, at the side of a river, a canal, a lake, in the grounds of a hotel, a motel, on lava rock, sand, long grass, at a Baptist seminary, and occasionally, and wonderfully, at an official campsite. With a bar. And hot showers. Mmm, bliss…..

On the Maasai Steppe there was rain, mud, dirt, rocks, snakes, thorns and 566 miles of cycling, but no punctures…..