When riding slowly and talking to people about their lives, one can learn more than a tourist that flies in, does the Safari (or visit to Lalibela) safely cocooned in a car, and then in a camp or hotel. However, one cannot really learn about the lives of ordinary people as they experience it every day.

I spent the entire day with a very able young man that was walking me through the Kafkaesque nightmare that constitutes the Ethiopian bureaucracy.

When one enters, or exits the country with a Carnet de Passage for a motorcycle, the procedure is very simple. Check the vehicle details against the document, stamp it, and go.

Today, I spent the entire day (it is now 19:15) while a myriad of people at the airport checked my Carnet. This is exactly the same process that takes place at the border. What came in must be the same that goes out. No detail was spared, including spending 2 hours determining whether the 93.5hp that is listed on the manufacturer’s website, is in fact the same as the 95hp listed on the document.

In the end, on the Ethiopian paper that one gets when entering, the official noted that the intended exit post was whatever it is that was written there. The next 3 hours was spent, escalating through 4 layers of hierarchy, what to do. The explanation that the bike was broken, and could not ride to this place, but had to fly home, brook no argument. This bike could not leave.

I decided that sometimes life is too short, and I am sitting at the Lufthansa desk waiting for it to open so I can fly to London. Whether the bike’s release can be negotiated next week is not possible to predict. My sense says no.

Every person I dealt with, including the taxi driver told me how much they hate their country.

And then we don’t have to wonder any more why they are poor. Perhaps they deserve it.

PS but their leader got the Nobel Peace Prize today.

My apologies for the radio silence over the last few days. It has been quite eventful, and internet in Ethiopia is largely a rumour, not fact.

I rode from Lalibela to Mekele in one day. Two distinct parts of the journey. First 120km through country road that is not even on my map or on Google maps. Some tough going, but I rode very slowly on my own. Here are some pictures taken by the main group:

Then rode through some absolutely great roads (built by the Chinese) through one unending mountain curves. Best riding day of the tour.

Then the kicker – 30km from end, on dead straight, perfect road, only grass on both sides. Headlights on bright, indicator on, beginning roll on to overtake 15t or so truck. Truck decides that he wants to stop on opposite side, and turns right in front of me without indicator. Luckily I am still sufficiently far away that I can scrub off 95% of my speed, and just hit his side and bounced off. Not even a skid, and no mark or even soreness on my side.

Only learning I can take – install very very loud horn, and like I do when passing every tuktuk or person in town, honk before overtaking.

Talked with Carin, and between her being spooked, and me being sick of dodging things, I am calling it a day. It’s been a great journey, but rather leave the party a day early rather than a day late.

Bike is on a truck to Addis, I am on a plane, and this afternoon (Friday) I need to go and engage the export system. Not looking forward to the process.

You have been great readers, and I look forward to sharing a ride through North and Central and South America from August next year. Hope you found some of the comments amusing.

Signing off for now.

PS Daniel, I think you cursed it with your comments on my inability to finish a tour 😁 Look forward to catching up.

Lalibela, together with Axum are two world heritage sites, and Lalibela would be the more well known and more visited. Lalibela is famous for its 11 rock hewn churches. They date from the late 12th and early 13th century CE.

The most well known one is the Church of Saint George, carved in the shape of a cross, and which is shown in the first picture above. Pictures of Saint George probably constitute the most well known tourist image of Ethiopia.

The largest one is Bet Medhane Alem, and we were lucky enough that a church service which takes place once per month was taking place during our visit, and that filming was allowed. The second picture is from that service. It is a pity that bandwidth considerations prevent me from uploading the very special video material.

It is worthwhile to talk a little bit about the town and the sites. The sites are a significant pilgrimage location for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, with about 400 000 pilgrims per year (I detected an business opportunity for a foot washing business for the pilgrims when we all had to take our shoes off; the Muslims may have the right idea requiring washing before entering).

Sorry – digressing from the main point I wanted to make.

Internationally, there are only 80 thousand visitors per year to the site, so let’s say 200 per day. Today there could not have been even a third of that. For comparison, Angor Wat receives over a million, Macchu Piccho one point seven million visitors. It is an almost neglected place.

The town itself is not rich, and shows little trickle down from the visitors. One cannot but wonder if a marketing campaign for visitors to Ethiopia, coupled with an investment campaign for the town would not pay off in spades.

Several people asked me about coffee. Ethiopia is the home of the coffee plant as you would know. Fittingly, coffee in the whole world is called coffee or some derivative of it (koffie, cafe, kafe, kohi and so on). Here it is called bona.

The way that it is served here, is that it is prebrewed in a percolator type device called a jebena. When one buys coffee from the lady with the cups on the table in front of her, she will reheat the jebena on a charcoal brazier. Traditionally it is served black, in a cup slightly larger than an espresso cup, and drunk sweet. Coffee beans are normally roasted in a pan and ground on the premises. As a result of the mostly reheated nature of the drink when buying it on the side of the road, it has got too muddy and flat taste for me. On the upside, the beans are well roasted, and I do not have to guard against wincingly acidic light roast espresso like I have to in Melbourne.

Which is a good segue into milk. There are cows everywhere in Ethiopia. Beef forms an important part of several dishes here. Milk and milk products not so much. None of the local meals I have seen feature milk based ingredients. Even the very boutique hotel where I am staying has no butter, cheese or yogurt. Very noticeable.

The quality of the infrastructure in the whole country is poor. Electric generators are standard everywhere, and even drinking water is electrically pumped in hotels. I am practically next to the Blue Nile, and there is a notice that it is a water scarce town. I am sure it is, with little or no water treatment capacity.

Tomorrow I am planning to do two days of riding in one day. The next town is really only a stopover place, and the hotel where we are booked looks awful (to be fair, it’s probably the best in town). Half of the reviews mention no water. I am going to ride to Mekele, the capital of the Tigray region where there are decent hotels, and will wait out a day for the others to arrive.

I am also thinking about how to do Egypt. It is in convoy riding, with a police escort, on dead straight roads in searing heat, followed by absolutely miserable Cairo traffic. The base route goes from Aswan to Luxor, to Red Sea to outskirts of Cairo (nobody is brave enough to ride into center of Cairo with bikes).

My alternative that I am thinking of is to ride to Aswan, put my bike on a truck, take a boat down the Nile to Luxor, and then to fly to Cairo.

Early start this morning. Had a quick breakfast at 6:30 when the hotel opened up, and was on the bike at 7. Really very very beautiful ride, up and down the mountain valleys. It was so nice that I am going to try and coax the internet once more into uploading a few photos. Here we go:

Hotel last night

Some vehicles that did not make the descent

Ride this morning

View from hotel tonight

Ok – that looks like they actually uploaded. The proof will lie in you actually seeing them in the post.The ride was about 300km to the famous Lalibela, home of the rock hewn churches, where we will visit 12 (!) of them in a rest day tomorrow. The road was mostly good with some pieces of awful, and I rode straight through, filling up once while sitting on the bike, and then another time (out of bottles again) as I arrived here at lunchtime.

I am staying at a very very nice hotel for the next two nights that I booked myself. Online search revealed that the one where the tour group is staying retails at $20. I don’t know if this one is worth 10x as much, but I am happy to be here. Great room, good food. Thanks Carin for booking 😄

As you can see from the photos above, both from a riding perspective, and from a Lalibela perspective, Ethiopia continues to serve up scenic delights.There are a couple of topics that I have not had time to write about that you may find interesting.

The first is the Ethiopian obsession with pool. Pull into the tiniest little village for a coffee at a mud stall, and there will be a pool table in a room next to it! Fascinating.

The second is the chewing of Kaat (or Quat). It is a plant that is a mild stimulant, and the leafy shoots of it are chewed. Particularly in the North of Kenya and in the South of Ethiopia it is very popular. People are sitting with bags of it in front of them everywhere, ruminating like bovines. The most Quat obsessed are the Yemenis, where it is estimated at one third of GDP (you did not read that wrong), and the water consumed in the growing of it is destroying their complete water supply.

I also wanted to say a few more things about “students”. I commented before on the migration to Africa of the thought that tertiary education is needed to progress. Well, the number of unemployed 30 year olds that I have spoken to here that are “students” beggars belief. The country would be much better off fixing there property rights or ethnic issues; instead they pretend to educate. Sad stuff.

The standard Ethiopian building is a square single story building made with “wattle and daub”. Or rather “eucalyptus and daub”. A frame is built with eucalyptus poles (see photo) and then covered in clay. It is then equipped with tin roof (without chimney; one sees cooking smoke pouring out frequently and people inside must kill themselves quickly). There are eucalyptus trees from Australia all over Ethiopia, and they grow a special kind that makes a single thin stem (you can see them in the photo behind the cut pile). BTW Australians – the Chinese are muscling in on your trees’ monopoly – I saw bamboo piles as well.

New houses are being built everywhere, and actually a large number of them does not seem occupied. I have scanned the internet to see if there is some major government house building project, but have not been able to discern anything. The housing stock is new in any case.

I have been surprised not to see more Chinese vehicles. I actually saw more Indian pickups than Chinese. I reported before, there are few motorcycles here, they have tuktuks, and India has the market. Toyota has an unassailable position in mini buses, cars and pickups.

Lastly for today – internet. The government has a monopoly on both fixed and wireless, and it shows. Australians, I know you think you have the shittiest government internet monopoly (and granted, it is a piece of shit), but these guys have you beat. Internet and mobile data is beyond belief bad.

THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN PHOTOS BUT THE INTERNET DOES NOT REALLY WORK AND I CANNOT GET THEM UPLOADED

Last night the accommodation was very basic to say the least. My room fronted directly onto the entrance lobby. Given the standard Ethiopian volume, coupled with the fact that it was weekend, it was a very good thing I had custom moulded ear plugs.

The tour group people are very nice, but even given that I have spent as little time with the group as possible, I have kind of run out of things to say and as a result, I planned to stay at another hotel in Bahir Dar, both to be on my own, but also to upgrade the experience (within the bounds possible in Ethiopia of course).

I rode out on my own at 7am, stopping once, briefly for coffee only, then riding to my destination which was only a 250km ride. Even after filling up, and getting my bike washed, I was here at lunchtime.

It was the same riding through unending cultivated green land, crossing the blue Nile and some tributaries. Same impressive cultivation as yesterday, but also, given that every inch down to the river run is planted, coupled with high rainfall, also some spectacular soil erosion. I now know where the Egyptian Nile silt comes from. There were also cows on an almost Mongolian level today, and that is an impressive benchmark to meet.

It was Sunday morning, and little traffic, which was good. The density of tuktuks in the towns was still impressive though. The tuktuks are some Piaggio models (had no idea they were still in this business; they must be made under licence or something). Most of them were Indian Bajajs. Bajaj is the company that owns KTM (the motorcycles that break all the time). I like their tuktuks even less than their motorcycles. You guys that have 1290s may consider a change out; the tuktuks at least seem easy to work on, and they don’t come with the non functioning electronics. 😁

Given that it was Sunday morning, and we are at the epicenter of the Orthodox Church, everyone was on the street draped in white cloth, which seems to be the standard church wear. Some people dodging had to be accomplished as a result.

You may well wonder what Ethiopian cuisine is like. Well – our favorite restaurant at our London home is Ethiopian, so that is a good start. Here, locally, the situation is like that for every ethnic food from a poor country – much better abroad where the ingredients are fresher, more widely available, and better quality. It is fairly monotonous (de-apply vegetarian bias here); there is really only one base taste profile. I am capable of feeding myself, because being a poor country, there are several lentil and bean based meat free dishes (that all taste the same, so it does not matter what you order really).

I also wanted to give you an idea of tourists and the tourism industry here. I am sure we will find a few tourists at Lalibela tomorrow, but for the main part there are zero tourists here. Burma a few years ago had many more, to give you some basis of comparison. Yesterday was the first time I saw a tourist group (one group only, Israeli), and in the hotel where I am staying tonight, there are a few European looking people.

Bahir Dar is the capital of the Amhara ethnic region (south of the former Abyssinian capital Finder); we are in Amharic heartland. It is a town of about 1 million people, so a good size. My hotel where I booked in is the top hotel in town, and it looks really great. Rustic stone, wood etc. Situated right on the lake and great views.

I had a cold shower, and the internet does not work. They had a lunch menu, but some ingredient substitutes were done. The advertised walnuts in the salad were peanuts. The stuffed bell peppers were eggplant and so on.

My one friend Paul has been reading my rants on the lack of title for lands, and the resultant tragedy of the commons. He suggested that I read Hernando De Soto’s
“The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else”, which I have been doing the last days. It has been an eye opener. I have been looking at lack of ownership rights in far too a confined sphere. In Ethiopia it is almost impossible to establish clear ownership rights on anything. Hence, the common lands, don’t invest farming. But, also, why, every other business has no investment, and is untooled, non scalable, affairs. Really worth a read for those of you who want to understand third world growth and economics.

Going to close on this note, and try to post this text only entry. Cross fingers.

THIS POST WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE PHOTOS BUT NO DECENT INTERNET FOR TWO DAYS NOW

This is the time of the year for the Oromo “Passover”, a traditional harvest festival. It is the end of the rainy season here in the northern hemisphere. As a result of the festivities, given especially that it is the party of one specific ethnic group, there has been very heavy police and military presence in Addis.

Sleeping was, therefore, difficult. One am, ongoing chanting. Two am, ongoing chanting. Three am, ongoing chanting. At just after 4, I decided to call it a night and get up, as the plan was to ride out as a group at 6am. They were still reveling when I packed my bike.

Hugo, the tour leader talked one of the traffic cops into escorting us out of the city, and it really worked a charm. I had really looked up against it, given how miserable the entry into the city was. Turned out much better than anticipated, and the exit was really no trouble at all.

I then rode on my own through seemingly endless green cultivated fields. It all seemed like land without title, but the landscape was an intricate patchwork of maintained fields in every share of green. Ethiopia is a beautiful country, and has exceeded my expectations so far.

Interestingly, there were villages, and the farmland was not broken up by individual dwellings. No idea how the individual plot boundaries are maintained. It was evident that the agricultural methods were mostly manual, and low or no fertiliser was used.

There were massive potholes that would have swallowed the whole bike all along the route, but luckily there was very little traffic, so relatively easy to navigate around the divots.

At a stop there was an Orthodox priest sitting in a little shelter, in full regalia. I saw him bless someone, so asked him to do it for me as well. Was a very nice and special experience.

I then rode the most amazing pass I have ever ridden. Horrible, horrible road, but a fabulous 2000m descent to a river, and then a partial ascent on the other side. Very very nice. One of the best things I have ridden. Makes a lot of the “must rides” in western publications very ordinary indeed.

Given the terrible road conditions, and the huge inclines and long descent, the road was littered with vehicles, light and heavy, that had run out of brakes. The light vehicle in the picture had just crashed when I arrived. Given that the vehicles ran out of brakes, one had to ride to anticipate a potential runaway car at every moment when riding.

I have read quite a bit on how Chinese money is being used for infrastructure in Africa, but still have not seen Chinese people on the ground. Rode past some Chinese fabrication shops today, and also a Chinese cement plant.

I got stopped by the police a couple of times. (I have been stopped at least once every day in Ethiopia.) One wanted to look inside my bags, but in the end he was satisfied with looking at my documents. No bribe asked for. There is a lot of armed people all around Ethiopia though.

The armed presence has not been a huge surprise to me. Perhaps this is the opportune moment to talk more about the leadership and form of the Ethiopian state, as this will explain some of the reasons for the militarisation.

Ethiopia has long had an issue between the historically dominant Amhara dating back to Abyssinia, and the numerically dominant Oromo. Think of Abyssinia as a African version of the Habsburg, with Amharic the analogue of German.

Since WW2, there has at times been a low level civil war. The relation between the two ethnicities has always been complicated. The relation with the third most dominant group, the Tigray, has, if anything, been even more fraught. The implemented solution to the friction has been to federalise by ethnicity.

Ethiopia has, therefore, been configured as a regional-ethnically based federation (with Tigrays, Oromos and Amharas as principal constituents). It is not completely unfair to say that some elements resemble an “apartheid” type separate development thinking.

The reform minded prime minister, Abiy Ahmed (Oromo, Evangelical Christian, Amharic wife), is generally internationally seen as good, but has had some challenge to maintain governance in the country as a whole, given its de facto partitioning into ethnic enclaves. He is struggling to maintain the balance between the federalism by ethnicity and a building a unitary state and national identity. It is tough to envisage either a quick, or a complete solution to a set of long-standing relationship issues. It is not clear that he will succeed.

There was no petrol in town. I checked all the service stations on the way in, then stopped a guy on a motorcycle. Mike, my one friend had heavily criticised my previous fuel assaying technique to determine quality of fuel bought on the street (smell and taste), so I decided on a market based solution this time.

I told the guy on the bike that if he shows me where I can buy decent black market fuel, I will fill up his tank as well. The basis for this thinking was the same as eating in a restaurant where the owner also eats: he is unlikely to put crap in his own tank.

Filled up, filled his up, met the others at the hotel. Bike actually ran OK on the fuel; so far, so good. Of course the others had no fuel again. I helped by pointing them in the right direction.

The internet tonight is basically non existent. I have tried to upload my post numerous times without success. You may only get this tomorrow evening.

Some time ago already, I had meant to tell you what money feels and smells like in these poor countries.

Firstly – there are virtually never any coins; they are too expensive to make.

Secondly – no coins and no electronic payment means that every transaction involves paper money.

Thirdly – hygiene and cleanliness is poor, because there is no readily available running water.

The result is that when you receive bank notes, they have a greasy, wet feel to them that does not dry out. I think they are stored in people’s butt cracks.

They also all have the same vaguely brown color. Sometimes the text is completely illegible. The example in the photo above is not a particularly sad specimen.

For those of you that have not been to Ethiopia, which is probably most of you, I suspect that Ethiopia is nothing like you imagine it to be. If your mental image is anything like mine used to be before this trip, it is likely an image of starving Amharic speaking, Orthodox Christian people in a very dry, very poor, desert country.

On one hand, your mental picture would be absolutely correct. There are 110 million Ethiopians living in a country of 1.1 million square kilometers (about the size of France and Spain together). There are indeed lots of kids, with each woman having four on average. People are poor; the GDP per capital is only $770 and on PPP basis $1800.

On the other hand, in reality, it is a country with a high rainfall. The central and western parts are very very rainy indeed. The yellow line cut off is about the London rainfall level. Addis Ababa has 140 rainy days per year, way more than Seattle.

Of course, the people are also living where it rains, as map shows.

Our route so far has taken us just to the East of the maximum rainfall zone. Starting with somewhat dryer savanna in the South, rainfall increased as we rode North, and the pastoralists gave way to farmers. Up to about 150km or so from Addis Ababa, it seemed that it was all commonly held ground with few or no fences. Closer to Addis, I saw some commercial farming and cut flowers for export.

Given the population, the countryside is heavily modified, but there are enough remnants to show that this must once have been spectacular.

The average Ethiopian is not Amharic. The Amharas people are the second largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, after the Oromos, although Amharic is the state language. Amharas are Semitic people, while Oromos are Kushites, and more closely related to the Somalis.

Not all Ethiopians are Christians either. Oromos are about 50% Muslim and 50% Christian, while the Amharas are almost 100% Christian. Overall the country is about 2/3 Christian and 1/3 Muslim. And not all the Christians are Orthodox either; about 1/3 are Protestants.

So – many things you believed about Ethiopia may not be true!

The country is one of the most chaotic I have ever seen. It is a complete free for all. There is crap and debris everywhere. There are really no traffic rule adherence at all. The air pollution from cooking fires was unreal in the evenings. All that biomass that the high rainfall gives is definitely being put to use.

People in the South are very friendly, with the wave index at 200% (they wave at you as you ride past, before you can wave at them).

It’s difficult to describe the life for average people in such a poor country, so let me try and describe life if you are one of the few rich people, by way of a few examples. I had used my one CO2 gas canister to inflate Bill’s tyre, so wanted to replace that today. The only bicycle shops in Addis Ababa sells only cheap Chinese bicycles. No sports shops really. I also wanted to get some hair spray to glue on my motorcycle grips. The only hair product in use locally is olive oil spray (the kind we use for cooking). And I am located in the center of the “modern” Addis.

And then there is the paradoxical. I already mentioned in a previous post about the Italian coffee machine in a country hotel. Two doors down from my hotel, I ate a croissant and a cup of coffee late morning today that would have rated as very good by any standard.

Regrettably, poverty also robs people of their dignity. If one stops, there is a complete scrum, and a lot of asking for money.

We are spending the next 11 days in Ethiopia. Given its unique history there is a lot to see. I am not sure I am going to enjoy the riding.

We have a rest day today, and I am taking the opportunity to get everything spick and span. All my clothes, including bag went to the laundry. I took my helmet apart and washed the lining, and dismantled the visor and fog guard and cleaned it. It was amazing how much red dust I washed and scrubbed out.

My one hand grip on the bike was loose, and becoming a safety hazard. I was able to get to it, and glue it back, without completely having to dismantle the electric heating cabling, which would have been an absolute PITA. I had a nice dry working spot in the garage.

Pulled back grip, ready to glue in. Bike ready to go. Not sure about the owner.

I still have not written a word about Ethiopia, as things just keep on happening.

This morning, I still felt tired from yesterday’s ordeal. Nevertheless, I got up, because that is what one does on a tour. The rest of the group had three falls, two not serious, and one torn rotator cuff, so in absolute terms I was well ahead of the curve.

And then, what an unexpected, good start to the day. The completely ratty hotel had a fully functioning Italian coffee grip set, that was open from 6am, so I started the day with two delicious coffees. Go figure. Breakfast was less auspicious though, and I settled for untoasted white bread, no butter and apricot jam.

The start was the ride was also not completely smooth. We had not refueled the previous evening, given the ordeal. The first couple of garages had no fuel. A bunch of kids came running up with water bottles full of fuel at the third garage, and I decided on the spot to hit the offer of about three times the market price.

Job done on the fuel, it was time to navigate the people. Ethiopia has 110 million people, and at any given moment 100% of them are in the street. The street is a place of commerce, playground, meeting place, coffee shop (add any other social endeavor you care). Nuts.

After a while Bill stopped, and we diagnosed a flat front tyre. Bill had given me complete lip and attitude right at the start of the trip, because I carry so many tools, including tools not for my Honda. Well – it was eat humble pie time for him, as I had all the tools at hand, even for a BMW!

I suggested that instead of standing on the side of the road in the rain, that we go to the traditional house just close by, where we could store our kit as we worked.

Because I only cater for tubeless tyres, I did not have a patch kit (well, I actually had solution and a gator but did not want to waste that on a tube), so we sent the one kid 15km far on a bicycle to the closest town with tube in hand and instructions to get it patched (thank you Google translate for the English to Amharic).

After having plenty of help, actually, way more than we wanted, we were done, and took off again. The whole event was very very sobering. Basic does not begin to describe the life of the folks who helped us. For example, the water we poured in their only container to test the tube for leaks came on the back of a lady in a 20l can from many kilometers away. I donated some money. We have won the birth lottery. Checked my privilege.

I am glad I am a vegetarian, because the meat that Bill and Lori had did not look appealing. The road got steadily worse after a lunch. Actually, in many places, there simply was no road.

The picture below is actually a good bit, because Lori that sits on the back could not take one at the bad stops. Not actually possible to describe how bad. And cars, goats, people and crap everywhere.

I am safely at the hotel. There is extremely loud and bad jazz band in the restaurant, so I am writing this while the others are eating. No sense to try and talk to them in the racket.

Day off tomorrow. I am buggered.

When the internet is bad, my blogging software removes the paragraph breaks. They were there in the previous post. I promise.

Actual image 🙂

We eventually finished border proceedings just after lunch yesterday. We knew that it was not possible to ride the 500km to our next destination, so the plan was to ride 200km, then re-evaluate.

In the meantime, while the others were picking their noses, I asked a local “tour guide” to take me to the unofficial phone shop to see if I could get a SIM. I had smelled that it was going to be an issue to get data with the time going. Cell data is like eating, sleeping, toileting. If you can do it, do it.

Paid some local teenagers that were standing around to get the SIM activated and data loaded. The deal was “no cure, no pay”. They did the job, and for exactly double the amount at the shop (including fees) I had a working phone.

In the meantime the others had packed up and gone, so I set off last. Thank goodness I always insist on having all my stuff (the others carry their documents on truck), because 5 minutes later I was in a road block.

Rode to the meeting point, passing the others. Fueled at just after 100km. For fuel – its like food, data and sleeping. If you can get it, get it. Fueled again at the meeting point, topping up just 4l after first two garages were dry.

The orders arrived, and by now the only station with petrol had run out. I helped negotiate 5l per bike. Of course they had not filled along the way, so were desperately in need.

After a long wait, the tour leader said we were riding to next town, 100km on. I rode behind, filled up at first station, found them at last in town. Still filling up. I had thought that being 4pm with sundown at just after 6pm they would sleep there.

No, they decided to go another 100km. I said goodbye and good luck, and set off, very worried about the light. One never knows. One guy followed me.

The road quickly got very populated (I will write tomorrow about the topology and people). So, at every town, which was very frequent, going was extremely slow riding slowly between masses of people, donkeys, dogs, mopeds and the like.

Not panicking yet, I rode as deliberately as I could, maximising use of daylight. The road got steadily worse. By 5:45pm the light was gone behind the hills, and the road was fast disappearing.

The last 50km was done in absolute dark, on non existent road, potholes feet deep, raining. I had seen nothing like this ever.

After two ask arounds, I found a hotel. The other rider got here 45 minutes later, unharmed. Cold shower, cockroaches, light intermittent; you get the picture. It is a roof.

Posting this now before taking off. More later.

26 hours and counting at the Ethiopian border, with no real end in sight.

Just got rained on as well. The donkey looked pretty disheveled and unhappy as well.

I think we will end up sleeping at the place where we were supposed to sleep last night. It’s only 200km up the road.

I will first go and get a SIM (local government monopoly here, so no roaming), and then set off. Of course this implies that we get through The post some time this afternoon. This is far from a given.

It just started raining really hard again. It’s quite miserable.

More later

Filled up petrol last night, so while the others were filling up, I elected to do a French exit, so that I could ride on my own.

I had checked last night with Henry, the Swiss owner of the camp where we slept if it was safe. His information was that there was some faction fighting between two tribal groups, but that they kept their fighting to themselves. He should know, he arrived with the Catholic Church as aid worker 41 years ago, married Rosanna from Marsabit 33 years ago, and 7 kids later has no intention of ever going back to the gnomes.

Riding pretty well straight North, as on the map below, the decreasing annual precipitation was evident, and the terrain soon resembled a stony desert.

Now, one may think that it is just that it is so dry that nothing grows, but in fact it is goats, donkeys and camels that graze down the vegetation to the root. I passed several fenced in schools, where no animals graze inside the school property and I could compare.

At about the 150km or so mark, the rainfall started increasing again, and a sort of hilly bushveldt returned. As I rode north, the Nilotic Masai people in traditional dress gave way to Kushitic people. The traditional housing of the Masai (think small Mongolian Ger with colorful covering), disappeared, and the housing of the Kushitic people started dominating (think Sotho rondawel). The religion also changed and more and more small mosques made their appearance.

I had to duck quite a few ostriches this morning. They are very stupid things with the traffic. And they are enormous. I also saw some stray impala, a small kudu and a leguan.

I read somewhere that the East African donkeys are under threat.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-africa-china-donkeys-idUSKCN1VQ1FG

Trust me that they are not. There are bloody donkeys everywhere. I am very sick of them. I suspect it I still have weeks of dodging them left.

I am writing this sitting close to the exit border post of Kenia, waiting for the others. I suspect it will be a while still, and even longer for the support truck and longer still for the other truck with the broken down bike.

Lunch was a delicious, huge bowl of rice with vegetables for $1, and I am now enjoying my 10c coffee. I was offered free quat (a mild narcotic that I actually did not know was used here). That is what is in the black bags.

Update:
I eventually left my morning spot with the Somalis, and at about 1:30pm they arrived at the filling station. We checked into a hotel at the border post where I washed my riding gear and took a very hot shower (The shower had only one setting – super hot).

The truck arrived with the broken bike; but in the offloading rush Crichton, the guy with the broken bike forgot his helmet in the pickup that had brought him and his bike. Hugo, who had just asked me for my Carnet de Passage, jumped on his bike to chase him down. So now I cannot clear my bike through the customs until he gets back. This would all have been so much easier if I had just cleared the border on my own.

So, we are stuck here in Marsabit. Yesterday one of the guys got lost, and then his motorcycle broke for good order. The tour leader went back to go and get him, found him, and they slept over at a town about 3 hours south from here.

I find it incredible that one can come on a trip like this, don’t buy local cellphone coverage. Cannot navigate properly. Have no maps. Cannot negotiate with a local to put your broken bike on a truck. Basic survival stuff.

So, we are waiting for them to arrive on the truck that carries the broken motorcycle, then we will depart to the Ethiopian border and see if we can cross and then just sleep across the border. We will at best only do half the distance planned for the day.

The next day is then going to be a very very big one in order to get back to schedule. No problem for me, but it will be interesting to see some of the others.

I am not going to have internet coverage for the rest of the day, and my Google phone will not work in Ethiopia, so I will need to go to a shop and get a local SIM which I am not sure will happen today.

More tomorrow. Let’s cross fingers.

I am happy this is not me.

We had a lovely overnight at the Rhino Watch Camp; German owner that lives in Kenya in the season, so very well run, with good standards. Permanent tents but easily as comfortable as anything we have has so far.

I had arrived before lunch; the rest of the group arrived for lunch, and after lunch we went for a game drive for the rest of the afternoon until the evening meal. There is a rhino sanctuary close by with about 200 white and a few black rhinos. We were not disappointed with plenty of white rhino sighted, including the one on the picture below that had the longest nose horn I had ever seen. Some of the guys also saw a leopard; they are usually very difficult to spot.

I had looked at the weather forecast for the route north that we were riding today, and noted that the afternoon was going to be very hot. Consequently, I rode straight after breakfast, only stopping for petrol once en route, and then again close to the destination. Total distance just over 400km with the route shown on the map below.

The route north first continued through rich and well watered agricultural land, just like yesterday, and then it gradually became drier. Typical dry African savanna was evident from about the 150km mark. Before reaching this, I had ridden through the locus of Kenyan cut flower production, grown under cover. I could not see that they were flowers being grown, but I am pretty sure that that is what it was. Dutch flags everywhere (the flower market at Alkmaar in The Netherlands is the dominant market worldwide). I also know that Kenya is an important exporter to that market. The logistics to get to the market with fresh flowers from central Kenya must be critical. I assume that there must be an airfield somewhere, where they are flown from to Europe.

As we entered the savanna, the scenery, bordered by mountains was just fantastic. What was even better, was that the number of people decreased, and the number of motorcycles, cars and trucks commensurate. The road was good, the temperature moderate, the weather dry, so just perfect. I tried to enjoy it as much as I could, given that we are crossing into Ethiopia tomorrow, which is densely populated, and as a poor country, with everything happening next to the road.

The dominant population also changed from Bantu people to Nilotic pastoralists, and while the savanna canopy looked intact, the overgrazing in some of the commons was terrible again. Interestingly, I saw a lot of camels being raised, and I took a picture of the guy below that was standing close to the road.

We are sleeping at Henry (Swiss, in Kenya for 41 years) and Rosanna’s (local, from Marsabit, the adjoining town) campsite. I knew that it was a camping day, and since I don’t do camping, had called ahead yesterday, and reserved the only bungalow that they have. Plan B was to stay in the local hotel in town, but this proved unnecessary.

Over the last few days, we also encountered a new type of road challenge. These two pictures were taken within 20m of each other. Bit ironic!

I just had a shower, got some hot water from Rosanna at her house, and made coffee. Life is on its rails again. This little creature was in the toilet in my bungalow. It is a pity he cannot tell a story on his journey to my toilet given that it is an extremely dry surrounding area where I find myself.

I expect that the others will only get here late afternoon. Dinner is goat barbeque, but Rosanna will cook some eggs for me. I am not going to want to eat vegetable curry or eggs again for a while after this trip. I should actually not complain; the food situation has not been bad at all to date, and miles better than in Mongolia and Eastern Russia last year.

I do not have any internet at the moment; Henry said that he would switch on the satellite internet, but has not done so yet. Life moves at African time. I do not have any guarantee that the internet will work, so not certain when this entry will actually post.

Another too short ride today just around the corner basically from lake Naivasha. It is 11:30am, and I have already packed down, been to my fixed tent (which is great) and having coffee. This after having made a lengthy stop halfway just to slow things down. Just 200km for the day, far too slow going for me.

When we came in to Naivasha, we entered the Kenyan part of the Great Rift Valley. Even though the escarpment descending into the valley must have been at least 600 or 700m high, the valley is still at over 2000m in altitude.

Today, my ride took me North, and then East into the rift valley. Given its importance in Kenyan colonial history, it is important to say a few words about the valley.

Even though the valley is now just about fully modified, the remnants of the primary cover that are visible, shows that this must have been a veritable Eden in its original state. Very fertile soil, high rainfall and temperate climate given its altitude, makes it no surprise that this is where the colonial immigrants first settled. It is also no surprise that this is the heartland of the agricultural Kikuyu society. Lastly, it is no surprise that the ownership of the valley is what triggered the Mau Mau uprising that we spoke about yesterday.

I may have mentioned before that the white settlers in the different British African colonies fancied themselves (and were) from different social classes depending on the specific colony. Notably, the initial settlers in Kenya profiled as landed gentry. (In Zimbabwe, somewhat later, by contrast, colonialists were dominated by ordinary working people.)

One of the first places to settle was Naivasha, but also a smaller sub valley called Wanjohi. The latter had a rich picking of English, Scottish, but also American and French settlers of status. Given the isolated nature I presume, boredom quickly set in. Drinking, drugtaking, debauchery were all that were available locally for amusement. The exploits were legendary, and sadly resulted in early death, drug overdoses, suicides, homicide and so on for many. For the interested, read “Happy Valley: The Story of the English in Kenya” by Nicholas Best.

In the process of arcing through the valley, I crossed the equator twice, and I took a picture the second time. Note the altitude.

As I rode through the valley, there were a couple of things to note. While the valley was after colonialisation almost totally in the hands of white settlers, the ownership now appears to be mixed.

There is clearly some trust land, under the administration of traditional tribal leadership. I saw some signs for the tribal chief offices, and the land held in common also signaled its presence by its relatively poorer condition.

There is also, equally clearly, some privately owned land, as evidenced by the fencing, and also by several signs that advertised “Plots For Sale” (a plot is a piece of land).

The great agricultural land is broken up into smaller pieces, with dispersed settlement everywhere. A real pity. I saw few, if any large scale endeavors.

Colleges and further education is clearly a local growth industry. They were everywhere. The mind boggles why this level of tertiary education would be required if schools did their job. The education fallacy at work and consuming resources (for newcomers to the blog, read my earlier post on education).

It is also a very conservative society; churches of every denomination all over (Kenya is 85% Christian). Not a good place to be a homosexual. 14 year jail sentence for consensual sex. Other aspects of Kenya reasonably clean on Human Rights Watch.

My bike decided to start cleanly today. My buddy Ian who has an identical bike tells me if they don’t start cleanly, they have dirty air filters. Cleaning air filters on an Africa Twin is a pain in the ass, so I live in denial for the moment.

I remembered that pencils are made of graphite, and I borrowed a stub from reception this morning and did some scrapings into my ignition. Lubricated it really well, and the problem is solved for the moment.

My back tyre is still leaking air. I will examine it again this afternoon to see if there is anything that can be done to ameliorate the situation.

We are going rhino (black and white) watching this afternoon. Looking forward to that. Staying at a great place.

Rhino Watch Lodge
Nyeri, Kenya
+254 711 585497
https://maps.app.goo.gl/KeGwCrbJfrzZ8BAE9

Went and checked the rear this morning. Pressure was down. Soap tested it, and the tyre was not seated correctly. Broke the “bead”, oiled it up and reseated it. Problem seems to be solved. We will see tomorrow morning.

Starting my bike is also a little temperamental, and in addition the ignition switch is gummed up with crap and the key does not want to turn. Hope it is not going to become a show stopper.