Maggie's Rambles

Sleeping location: Hotel Chomazone, Lodwar, Kenya Distance (km today/total): 61 / 12528 Estimated climb (m today/total): 300 / 91500  Stuck at the river: 3hrs Day in three words: Rain and chaos In the night we were awoken by the sound of running water and I panicked that something was flooding. But in fact it was RAIN, of all things, and in the morning the skies were overcast with occasional showers. After a premium breakfast involving rare treats like mango and yoghurt we set off at a decent time for Lodwar, the first town in Kenya with ATMs and places to buy SIM cards and goodness knows what other luxuries. On the way out I noticed that my snapped saddle tension bolt was now almost tensioned to its absolute limit. The saddle is useless without it so I tried to stabilise things with a zip tie and set off with heart in mouth.  The road to Lodwar was ruined tarmac that was mostly dirt now. It was much quicker than sand but very bumpy and I had to go slow to preserve my s...

Sleeping location: Hotel Eliat, Kalokol, Kenya Distance (km today/total): 29 / 12467 Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 91200  Remaining money: 150 shillings (£1.15) Day in three words: No more sand? The most arresting thing about the morning was the fact that a huge spider had spun a little silk cocoon in one of the pockets of my helmet, and had to be expelled with a puff of air and some terror. Breakfast was biscuits with peanut butter and no coffee because we didn’t have enough water left. It was actually quite difficult to find any water as it was Sunday and most of the already infrequent village shops were closed. I got some from a building site, and also bought an overpriced big bottle of cola which I drank 20% of and secured to my bike, only to discover the next time I stopped that it had fallen off almost immediately. The going was initially very sandy and very hard work, but as the day went on it improved and speeds of up to 15kph were attained - heady heights. We...

Sleeping location: Just S of Kataboi, Kenya Distance (km today/total): 28 / 12438 Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 91200  Water scavenged: 15 litres Day in three words: It never rains... Our sheltered position was good for being hidden but also cut off any potential breezes, so it was insufferably hot in the night and neither of us slept well at all. Back on the “road” progress continued to be very slow and hard. It was either sandy or bumpy or sandy and bumpy, and speeds over 10kph were unheard of. Obviously it was still stupidly hot, and to add to the general sense of difficulty I had an upset stomach and also had some considerable pain in my “saddle interface area”*. We stopped in the first village to pick up some water as we had both exhausted our meagre supplies** in the morning heat. Bottled was essentially unavailable but we managed to buy a 10L jerry can of river water for 30 shillings (25p). Here we also discovered that Kenyans generally just say “bob” instead of...

Sleeping location: Behind palms 3.985N 35.848E, Kenya Distance (km today/total): 24 / 12410 Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 91200  Time spent separated: 4hrs Day in three words: Going cross country  Sven and Anna were the saviours of breakfast today, supplying us with Swedish rye bread and marmalade (such luxuries!) after it transpired that our remaining eggs were also all bad. After they headed off in the direction of Addis we packed up in a relaxed fashion and didn’t leave until 11am. As the “roads” were so bad we decided cut across country and ride/push across open ground, navigating with a combination of maps, gps and the sun. The initial stages were difficult as we had to climb in and out of several dry river beds, and around here we managed to get separated after I stormed ahead a bit too far. I decided it would be easiest to find each other back on the main “road” and navigated myself down some difficult sandy tracks to a small village which I figured Rebecc...

Sleeping location: Spanish Mission, Nariokotome, Kenya (but in a tent this time) Distance (km today/total): 0 / 12386 Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 91200  Markup on the hotel room: 400% Day in three words: Rest for free After the exertions of the previous day I slept like a log despite the heat and lack of fan. The breakfast included in our room price turned out to be a disappointing combination of bad coffee, a single sausage and some dry bread with jam. Then the whole mission experience fell apart as we were informed that the already high price for the room was in fact per person and we were paying an insane 5000 Shillings (£40) between us for a basic room with no fan or AC*. I was feeling like I needed a rest day to tackle the remaining 100km of sand (Rebecca was fine as she is superhuman) so we decided to stay another night, but we said to hell with “to hell with the cost” and went back in the tent. Happily this meant we could still use their facilities throughout...

Sleeping location: Spanish Mission, Nariokotome, Kenya Distance (km today/total): 50 / 12386 Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 91200  Litres drunk whilst riding: 11 Day in three words: Sand is pain We had run out of oats so for breakfast we had pasta with peanut butter and honey, which was unexpectedly delightful. After saying goodbye to Father Andrew, Cosmo and the Silent Man we set off back along the sandy track. Again it was mostly rideable but now had a lot of the ridged washboard sections that are formed by passing cars. These shake the bikes like crazy and soon led to the effective demise of my handlebar bag. Because of its design each bump weakens the internal structure, and as the internal structure weakens it flops around more and more, further weakening the internal structure. This has been going on for the whole trip but this kind of bump is like its kryptonite and finally I had to take it off its bracket and strap it to my front rack. In between the bumps ther...

Sleeping location: Todonyang Mission, Todonyang, Kenya Distance (km today/total): 52 / 12336 Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 91200  Introduction to Kenyan food: goat head and “Army Biscuits” Day in three words: Border or bunker After leaving the hotel we had to head into Omorate to officially stamp out of Ethiopia and pick up some supplies. This was all pretty straightforward and we were on the way by 9am. The road ran across a flat floodplain but there was a nagging headwind, which kept it cool at least but also made the 30km to the border post boring and long when it felt like we had already left Ethiopia. As we went on the land became steadily less marshy and more sandy, which was ominous for the upcoming non-tarmac sections. The road abruptly ended at a very sleepy border post where we had a half hearted bag search and passport check. We were through in 5 minutes and followed a sandy track, still in Ethiopia, then briefly in South Sudan according to Komoot, then bac...

Sleeping location: Hulu Bersu Pension, Omorate, Ethiopia Distance (km today/total): 106 / 12284 Estimated climb (m today/total): 200 / 91200  Price of electricity: 200 Birr (£5) Day in three words: Farewell to Ethiopia In the morning I made coffee outside and was going to have breakfast out there but was forced back into the room by a group of staring locals*. We are so looking forward to having some privacy again, to be able to camp or have a picnic without the whole village turning up to silently stare and/or ask for money. On the way out of town we met a nice Dutchman on an organised tour of Ethiopia, and we had a nice mutual moan about how MUCH Ethiopia is, fittingly whilst a group of children gathered to stare and fiddle with our bikes. We set off back onto a dirt road, but sadly not as nice as the previous day’s, all loose sand and big stones and that horrible bouncy washboard surface. It was again very tropical and we would occasionally see some very tribal looking pe...

Sleeping location: Naughty Guesthouse, Dimeka, Ethiopia Distance (km today/total): 99 / 12178 Estimated climb (m today/total): 1500 / 91000  Recovery chocolates: 4 Day in three words: Much harder/easier In the night Rebecca went out to the loo and accidentally came back to the wrong room, where a man was lying on the bed and told her to “come here”. She declined. In the morning we set off across a wide flat valley with lots of water and frog noises. It was humid and lush and very quiet, apart from the frogs, so there was lots of wildlife about. We saw some beautiful yellow and blue bee eaters, dik diks (little jumping deer), a couple of meerkats, so many butterflies of all colours, and a couple of the things that I previously thought were mongoose but it turns out are “ground squirrels”. At one point I thought my bike was making a squeaking noise but subsequently realised it was a nearby hornbill. We then found a 5m tall termite mound, with a massive chimney and everything, ...

Sleeping location: Woito Lodge, Woito, Ethiopia Distance (km today/total): 75 / 12079 Estimated climb (m today/total): 800 / 89500  Free condoms: 5 Day in three words: Entering the Omo A combination of loud music, toilet trips, mosquitoes, fiddling with the mosquito net and a loud priest chant led to a blank space in my sleep between 3 and 5am, so we ended up sleeping in until 9am and being a bit stressed about getting away in time. I flipped Maggie over to do some work and noticed that both of her tyres are worn through to the blue inner shield thing in several places. I only have one spare tyre and I don’t want to pick favourites, so I’m just going to hope that they last until Kampala where I have some new ones waiting. Out of Konso we had to climb up a massive hill onto a hillside road with great views back down to the plains below. At the top was the Konso cultural museum, which I had wanted to go to until I realised I didn’t really like the Konso people. Their only appa...

Sleeping location: Taro Family Guesthouse, Konso, Ethiopia Distance (km today/total): 92 / 12004 Estimated climb (m today/total): 700 / 88700  Deadly weapons: 2 Day in three words: Children of terror After ploughing through a lot of our mango stash for breakfast we set off at the inexplicably late time of 10am. We’re going to need to get better at early starts once it gets really hot again (which is soon). Out of Arba Minch was a swift descent down a crappy road onto a level but still crappy road, on which we saw more baboons stealing fruit from the nearby plantations. After 10km we saw a sign for Nechisar and a dirt road, so went to see what was what. It turned out that this was the boat departure point, and we would have come here by car on a tour. Being here for free we tried to negotiate a reduced rate boat trip, but couldn’t get the price for 2hrs below £60. Whilst we were making up our minds two American ladies got off a boat, and I went to ask them if it was worth it....

Sleeping location: Forty Springs Hotel, Arba Minch, Ethiopia Distance (km today/total): 0 / 11912 Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 88000  Locking methods lost/broken: 2 Day in three words: ‘keys and hogs After breakfast we went to head out into town to check out the likelihood of getting a tour the next day to the nearby Nechisar National Park, which has all kind of beasties and a big lake with many hippos and crocodiles. But we couldn’t actually leave as the room key had gone missing in the last 15 minutes. We turned the room upside down but didn’t find it, and eventually resorted to locking the door with my cable lock. In town we discovered that trips to Nechisar were expensive (upwards of £60) and you couldn’t go to the savannah bit because there was some tribal warfare going on. We decided to investigate going under our own steam to cut costs, and went for some beers and two different kinds of raw beef. On the way back to the hotel we found a shop that sold fancy foo...

Sleeping location: Forty Springs Hotel, Arba Minch, Ethiopia Distance (km today/total): 129 / 11912 Estimated climb (m today/total): 600 / 88000  Mangoes: infinite Day in three words: Still got it Because we had chosen to stop in Sodo, and perhaps to prove that we could still cycle a long way if, like, we wanted to, you know, we had over 125km to cover to get to our rest day location of Arba Minch. Happily we were about to descend from the highlands for the last time in Ethiopia, meaning that we kicked our ride off with about 40km of steep then gradual downhill, which was very fun (apart from a camouflaged speed bump which gave poor Maggie quite the jolt) and very fast. This took us down through an almost British landscape of grass and bushes towards the distant shining Lake Abaya. We levelled out on a flat quiet road which was near but not by the lake, which closer up was unshining and weirdly red (due to sediments). On the downhill we went through one village with unfrie...

Sleeping location: Semanya Hotel, Sodo, Ethiopia Distance (km today/total): 73 / 11783 Estimated climb (m today/total): 800 / 87400  Human intensity: 11 Day in three words: Pockets of behaviour Incessant mosquito whines and an inexplicably hot room made for a bad night’s sleep for both of us, so we woke up in a bit of a grump. This wasn’t helped by the breakfast in the hotel being confusing and time consuming, and we didn’t end up leaving until 11am. On the way out we stopped to get some restorative cakes from last night’s bakery, and when Rebecca was inside a huge crowd formed around me. Everyone was very nice though, and a man with some English relayed information to the appreciative crowd. I also got to wear one of their big straw hats for some pictures. A kid was wearing a phenomenal jumper which had a picture of a teddy bear and the following phrases dotted around it: -Chocolate bear -So basic gym -7 days for you -Soft simple -Command attention He certainly comman...

Sleeping location: Green Hotel, Alaba Kulito, Ethiopia Distance (km today/total): 75 / 11710 Estimated climb (m today/total): 300 / 86600  Pool: Me 3:0 Rebecca Day in three words: Some funny people We headed out under wonderfully overcast skies, which made a nice change from always having to shield ourselves from the fierce tropical and high altitude sun. On the way out of town was a sign for Radical Stationery Shop, which sounds like it sells things like 2ft erasers and motorised pencils with three ends. The cycling was pretty much the same all day, a flat plain with more wheat fields and scattered trees. Mid morning we took a gamble on a smaller road which was more direct, which worked out well as it was new and nicer than the bigger one, and quiet for both traffic and people. In fact, most of the people all day were friendly and we had hardly any hassle. We had heard stories of “terror” south of Addis but so far it’s nowhere to be seen. The houses are getting more colou...

Sleeping location: Riyad Hotel, Worabe/Gorabee, Ethiopia Distance (km today/total): 92 / 11635 Estimated climb (m today/total): 700 / 86300  Age of the graves: nobody is sure Day in three words: A Flickering Farce The previous day we had clocked that there was a UNESCO world heritage site basically in the middle of Tiya, so after breakfast we went to check it out. The Tiya Stelae Field is a bunch of carved stones (stelae) marking the site of a load of graves. Nobody seems to know how old it is but between 1000 and 700 years is the general consensus. At the empty site we had to seemingly wake some guys up to let us in, and then negotiated the entrance fee. It didn’t feel like they got many visitors. The stones did have some interesting carvings, and a nice man appeared (unrequested) to explain what they meant. He was very enthusiastic, especially when telling us about the phallic and “pointed breasts” symbols*, and at one point he got behind a stone to show us what he would l...

Sleeping location: Something Hotel, Tiya, Ethiopia Distance (km today/total): 88 / 11543 Estimated climb (m today/total): 1000 / 85600  Meals: 5 Day in three words: Out of Addis  As is always the case when we’ve spent a while somewhere our setting off was slow, and as is always the case when this happens I mention it in the blog. Things weren’t (or were) helped by us having two breakfasts, the first in the hotel involving leftover cake and strawberries (and coffee), and the second in a nearby cafe involving eggs and weird very dense fried scone things (and coffee). We didn’t set off for good until almost noon. The route out of Addis was much busier than the one I’d taken on the way in, and perhaps I had previously been lucky with it being Ethiopian Christmas Eve. Despite the masses of traffic and fumes it never felt unsafe; Ethiopians may have some issues with respecting personal space but that doesn’t extend to their driving. Out the other side of the city we entered a...

Sleeping location: Addis Bright/Wim’s Holland House, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Distance (km today/total): 6 / 11455 Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 84600  Tasks completed: many Day in three words: Amongst Admin Ababa Addis was an odd yet kind of alluring city. It’s a weird mixture of Ethiopia and not-Ethiopia, where goats wander dirt streets in the shadow of new skyscrapers, and you can smell sewage outside a fancy art gallery. It had lots of (comparatively) luxurious things and we indulged ourselves in ways that hadn’t been available to us for months. After serving her penance in the hostel Rebecca moved into my guesthouse and enjoyed running water again. The time apart has been really good for us and we are steadily learning how to nurture what is a relatively new relationship in such an intense environment.  After a couple of nights we moved to another guesthouse in another part of town, run by a Dutch guy and famous amongst overlanders (we were staying there at the...

Sleeping location: Addis Bright, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Distance (km today/total): 16 / 11449 Estimated climb (m today/total): 100 / 84600  Diagnosis: “infection” Day in three words: Heal me doctor The insubstantial curtains favoured in Ethiopian hotel rooms meant that I again woke up early, but this was good as it meant I could get to Addis with the majority of the day left. The ride was pretty easy, with one long climb at the start followed by mostly pleasant gradual downhill (annoyingly containing some absolutely lethal speed bumps). On the climb I stopped to watch three hapless men trying to catch a rogue chicken, which was as funny as it sounds. Addis didn’t start to feel like a city until pretty late on and the traffic was surprisingly light the whole way. It was probably the nicest ride into a major city that I’ve done, and it made me wish I’d just done it the night before. For most of the way I was following signs towards “Semen Terminal”, a fact which I present here ...

Sleeping location: Legetafo Central, Legetafo, Ethiopia Distance (km today/total): 114 / 11433 Estimated climb (m today/total): 1000 / 84500  Landscape emulator: Shropshire Day in three words: Stomach of doom Without curtains I got a nice early alarm clock, but after faff and trying, but failing, to convene with Rebecca I didn’t actually leave until 9am. Addis was 130km away but the terrain wasn’t too hilly so it was doable, and Rebecca and I agreed to keep in touch and stop on the outskirts of the city if we didn’t make the centre. I set off into the most boring landscape for ages, low rolling hills through fields of wheat and grass. Nothing was flat but nothing was steep either, so progress was decent but unspectacular. On the way out of DB were a load of runners coming the other way, all of whom seemed to be absolutely nailing it; I’m glad they weren’t going the same way as me as I might have been overtaken quite a lot. There were loads of breweries, including Dashen and ...

Sleeping location: Hotel Sunshin (sic), Debre Birhan, Ethiopia Distance (km today/total): 75 / 11319 Estimated climb (m today/total): 1600 / 83500  Word of the day: Gelada Day in three words: Climb like monkey There were multiple tummy-inflicted nighttime trips to the bathroom and during one I noticed that the toilet was partly discharging out of the shower plug hole, with predictably awful results. By morning it was an absolute state and I felt bad about leaving it that way, but there wasn’t really anything I could do since I, like the person who plumbed the bathroom, am not a plumber. In other strange happenings, I also noticed that my saddle bag was covered in loads of weird hairy caterpillars. I scooped them up and put them outside but when I came to leave they had disappeared. Maybe the local birds had enjoyed a delicious breakfast. I’d spent the night at 2000m but still had to get up 1200m of pretty much constant climb. The first section was unrelentingly hard work wit...