Maggie's Rambles

Sleeping location: Liz and Paul’s apartment, Kampala, Uganda Distance (km today/total): 6 / 13658 Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 103200  Rebeccas: 0 Day in three words: Kampala week 1 The first of two weeks spent helping at LTCH* and living the high(er) life. It was lovely to have a base and enjoy things like cooking in a proper kitchen and having time to properly sort Maggie out. We were generally at the hearing clinic between roughly 9.30 and 4 and I quickly settled into a daily work/admin/relax routine. Life in Kampala seems to involve a lot of driving, and the traffic is often terrible so an hour or more each day would be lost to sitting in cars. There are traffic lights but at busy periods they’re superseded by traffic police, who often make one side wait for as long as 10 minutes. Everywhere are swarms of motorbike taxis (“boda bodas”) that slip into tiny spaces that may or may not exist and generally cause havoc. Cycling here long term must be incredibly dangerous.

Sleeping location: Liz and Paul’s apartment, Kampala, Uganda Distance (km today/total): 88 / 13652 Estimated climb (m today/total): 900 / 103200  Last riding for: 17 days Day in three words: The Crazy 88 In the night I dreamt that I was impeaching Trump and that my expert questioning got him to shut up for once. I seem to have very strange dreams away from Rebecca. In the morning I got talking to Adrian and Kim, a British/Kenyan couple who were visiting Uganda from Nairobi with their two excitable little boys. They were very friendly and we had a good conversation over coffee. On the offchance I asked them if they knew James Duder, a uni friend who now lives in Nairobi, and they both exclaimed “Duder!” in a very enjoyable way. Turns out they know him pretty well; it’s a small world. As the resort was in a beautiful spot I stuck around for a while as I didn’t have loads of ground to cover to Kampala. The grounds contained the Speke Monument, which proclaimed that John Hanning Spe

Sleeping location: Source of the Nile (camping), Jinja, Uganda Distance (km today/total): 155 / 13564 Estimated climb (m today/total): 1000 / 102300  Legs: possessed Day in three words: Because I can I treated myself to breakfast at the same cafe as I had the beers at the previous day, which was good although neither of my dishes came with the advertised avocado. Neither, in fact, had the rolex the previous day. Perhaps there is an avocado drought in Mbale; there definitely isn’t 40km west, as we will see. I left about 9.30am in the hope of doing a big day and getting through a good chunk of the distance to Kampala. Traffic out of town was busy even though Mbale isn’t really a big place, and I think our Sudan and Ethiopia days of perpetually quiet roads are well and truly over. The difficulty was exacerbated by potholes and people trying to get my attention to say hi, including motorbikes riding alongside me and shouting whilst I was busy trying not to die. Thankfully outside of

Sleeping location: Kaddo Guesthouse, Mbale, Uganda Distance (km today/total): 72 / 13409 Estimated climb (m today/total): 700 / 101300  Slope: deep Day in three words: Falls and descents In the night I dreamt that loads of little children were wandering around my tent, begging and trying to steal things. Though perhaps this wasn’t a dream as in the morning I couldn’t find my Bluetooth speaker. I hadn’t used it since I’d left the last guesthouse so it was difficult to say when it had gone, but if it got nicked at this place it’s partially my own fault for leaving my stuff strewn around everywhere*. Despite the loss it was still a nice place to relax, so I rested my still tired legs over multiple coffees, some tasty breakfast and some blogging. I unpacked and repacked everything and asked the staff to keep an eye out, but by 11am the speaker still hadn’t turned up so I decided to cut my losses and go. The first 15km was seriously up and down, stiff climbs followed by fast descents

Sleeping location: Home of Friends Guesthouse (camping), Kapchorwa, Uganda Distance (km today/total): 51 / 13337 Estimated climb (m today/total): 900 / 100600  New title: astronaut Day in three words: Dirt gonna hurt After munching up some much needed energy in the form of oats and coffee I set off into more of the same as the previous evening, circling Elgon with beautiful views to the right. The road was more of the same dirt, but now steeper and rockier, meaning the cycling was a combination of skiddy technical descents and thigh-straining climbs. Sounds awful but I’m weird so I really enjoyed it. After an hour I arrived in the mythical “forest” though unfortunately it was being enthusiastically cut down. But in between stumps there was still plentiful woodland and meadow and it was very beautiful, with green grass and trees and purple flowering bushes and and rushing water everywhere. After the farce of trying to find somewhere to sleep the previous night it was annoying to

Sleeping location: Guesthouse, unknown village 1.343N 34.694E, Uganda Distance (km today/total): 61 / 13286 Estimated climb (m today/total): 1000 / 99700  Time apparently spent at the Ethiopia/Kenya border: two weeks Day in three words: Ugandan dirt now I slept pretty well despite the amazing number of weird sounds coming from animals I never saw, although I was awoken at one point by the colobus making its weird frog noise. I woke up with the sunrise and lay for a little while staring up through the tent at the trees. During this a tiny yellow bird landed on the tent, and whilst I was marvelling at how wonderful this moment was it did two tiny poos on the fabric. I had breakfast looking out of the tent into the forest and the monkeys whenever they came into view; this took longer than it should have, because I thought my stove was broken and took ages to realise that the fuel bottle just had to be on its side rather than upright. The extra time was ok because this really was a

Sleeping location: Forest 2km E of Endebess, Kenya Distance (km today/total): 95 / 13225 Estimated climb (m today/total): 600 / 98700  Food: TOO MUCH Day in three words: Some monkeying around Finally it was time to leave our little haven, even though we could probably have spent way more time there. Rebecca had to get to Kisumu 115km away so she got away at the relatively sensible time of 9.30am. It was strange and a little sad to say goodbye in the knowledge that we wouldn’t see each other for weeks, having spent almost every day together for the last four months. I had a more relaxed timetable as I was just planning to get past Kitale (75km) and camp whenever, which of course meant that I spent the entire morning faffing, slowly packing and writing a bit of blog with the final Guinness that I didn’t want to waste*. The packing was complicated by the fact that, as expected, I had bought way way way way too much food. I ended up having to rejig things and strap a huge and unwiel

Sleeping location: Denue’s Airbnb, Eldoret, Kenya Distance (km today/total): 7 / 13130 Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 98100  Noises eliminated: 5-10 Day in three words: The lazy goodbye Rebecca and I spent a very relaxed couple of days in our little apartment, doing various jobs but also resting and spending time together before we go our separate ways. After Eldoret Rebecca is heading southwest towards Lake Victoria where she is helping out on a sort of fish farm* on a beautiful island for a couple of weeks. I’m heading northwest for some gnarly dirt road action round Mt Elgon, then back southwest towards Kampala, where I’ll be spending a couple of weeks helping out at IHCC. The airbnb was lovely, it felt like we had a little home of our own and Denue and Pamela were constantly helpful and brought delicious breakfasts each day.  A few things that we did: -Spent some time fiddling with Maggie to get rid of the numerous rattles and squeaks that had appeared and were driv

Sleeping location: Denue’s Airbnb, Eldoret, Kenya Distance (km today/total): 98 / 13123 Estimated climb (m today/total): 1500 / 98100  Ascent: 1150m, 26km, 3hrs45, avg speed 7kph Day in three words: Rift Blast 2 We went for breakfast at the same place as last night’s dinner, but the woman completely misunderstood our order and only brought us half of the stuff on the breakfast menu. Sometimes the fact that everyone speaks English works against us when they only understand half of what we say and assume the rest. The descent was therefore slower due to the limited weight of the food in our stomachs, but it was still fun. The road was smooth with smooth corners, and very fast and fun apart from the usual lethal Kenyan speed bumps. At the bottom we crossed the narrow valley through thick greenery and gradually segued into the Big Climb. The section up to the “shelf” was steep and wiggly but absolutely stunning as we climbed up through more thick vegetation with gushing streams ev

Sleeping location: Divani Hotel, Kabarnet, Kenya Distance (km today/total): 96 / 13025 Estimated climb (m today/total): 1500 / 96600  Descent: 1150m, 26km, 40min, avg speed 39kph Day in three words: Rift Blast 1 Today we absolutely pillaged the buffet and also managed to take away some pocket eggs (the first in ages) and a pocket muffin for the ride. And what a ride it was to be: we were cycling the Great Rift with the majority of our gear off the bikes and stowed in a cupboard in Eldoret. As soon as we set off the bikes felt so different; when you put some power through the pedals you really felt it, and we zoomed up the small hill out of Eldoret. We had to get to the Rift, which was 30km down a quiet smooth road through more rolling hills and English style scenery. Because nothing in Kenya is ever easy we had a raging headwind and a slight uphill to deal with, but we were so overjoyed that it didn’t feel that difficult. On the way into Iten on the edge of the Rift we saw loads

Sleeping location: Wagon Wheel Hotel, Eldoret, Kenya Distance (km today/total): 0 / 12929 Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 95100  Visits to immigration: 3 Day in three words: Wild shopping spree  The hotel had a buffet breakfast, the first in ages, which we enthusiastically ravaged to get our energy up for a day of admin. Kenyan ex-president Joseph Arap Moi died overnight and there was wall to wall coverage in the tv and papers, but I couldn’t stop pronouncing his name in the French way in my head, which led to some interesting headlines like “world sends in tributes to Moi”.  Our first job was to go to the immigration department to finally get stamped into Kenya, as there was no border post on our route from Ethiopia. Nobody seemed sure what to do and we were initially directed to the “Investigation and Prosecution” department. Eventually someone got us the paperwork for a Kenyan visa, but this was no good as we wanted the East Africa visa (which also includes Uganda and

Sleeping location: Wagon Wheel Hotel, Eldoret, Kenya Distance (km today/total): 88 / 12929 Estimated climb (m today/total): 700 / 95100  Feels like: home Day in three words: Six legged cow In the morning we enjoyed a decent hotel breakfast, although didn’t get the chance to try the two different menu items “bread toast” and “toast bread” as neither was available. Then we went back on our route a bit to visit Kitale Nature Conservancy, with an accidental detour down a dirt track followed by the Conservancy not actually being where it was supposed to be. Once located, KNC was a nice quiet bit of park/garden with some domesticated animals roaming free and other (more dangerous) animals in enclosures. We saw: -Lions and hyenas talking to each other, possibly plotting an escape -Tortoises with a 6ft fence in case they tried to escape -Ostriches actually trying to escape by eating their fence, which was only as high as the tortoise fence and they could probably jump over it an

Sleeping location: Alkala Hotel, Kitale, Kenya Distance (km today/total): 56 / 12841 Estimated climb (m today/total): 900 / 94400  STEEP AND MEANDERING ASCEND: 6.5km Day in three words: Grind and bumps We headed off through thickly wooded hills in the morning sunshine. The road gave us a bit of a warm up with a few km of gentle climb, then launched into a tough section of 500m over 6km with no respite from the gradient. We ground our way up slowly but actually it wasn’t too bad, perhaps because I was gobbling dozens of “minty pops” mints for energy. The landscape was very green and beautiful,  with occasional spectacular views back down to the valley floor through the trees, and it  almost felt like Britain at this altitude and with the amount of rain they must get around here. This impression was ruined at one point by the sight of a large “techno lizard” (my name) with a bright blue body and bright orange head. At the top of the climb was a sign for people going the other way

Sleeping location: Guesthouse, Chepareria, Kenya Distance (km today/total): 57 / 12785 Estimated climb (m today/total): 1100 / 93500  Humidity (est): 100% Day in three words: Wet wet wet We were awoken at 2am by raindrops and swiftly scrambled to pull the outer over the tent before it got too heavy, which it soon did, with thunder and lightning pretty close by. In the morning it was still coming down hard so we hid in the tent until it abated. Most of our things had been covered but the rain had been so heavy that it had “bounced” the sandy soil upwards and covered a lot of things. It took ages to clean and dry everything and put the wet tent and tarp away. We set off towards clouded green mountains with intermittent sun, and soon reached the junction where we had to turn off to take the road which would allow us to cycle across the Great Rift Valley, something which had been highly recommended by a couple of other cyclists. At the junctions as a group of guys on motorbikes who

Sleeping location: Bushland 1.57N 35.47E, Kenya Distance (km today/total): 107 / 12728 Estimated climb (m today/total): 500 / 92400  Vegetation change: large Day in three words: Here is tarmac We set off on what was, at long last, a concerted stretch of tarmac. Even though it was a bit bumpy we were so happy to finally have some easy riding. Lokichar’s Wild West vibes continued as we headed through bush/scrubland, but now with added craggy peaks and termite mounds with their long thin chimneys. It was flat or slightly uphill, and for the first time in ages the cycling was easy and enjoyable. In terms of issues, my saddle bodge bolt was still holding, albeit creaking and needing frequent tightens, and I had given up on headphones and was listening to podcasts through the speakers on my phone #antisocial. It’s much easier to interact with people on tarmac (because you don’t have to concentrate as much on bike handling) and it was nice to be able to wave and say hi to people agai

Sleeping location: Naperobe Guesthouse, Lokichar, Kenya Distance (km today/total): 44 / 12621 Estimated climb (m today/total): 200 / 91900  Speed: 8kph Day in three words: WHERE IS TARMAC We were away in decent time but the newly built road quickly ran out and we were pitched onto a horrible rutted muddy rocky sandy puddled road of doom. Progress was very slow and very uncomfortable. At one point the recent floods had collapsed most a bridge and loads of lorries were stuck. This is the Kenyan A1. The scenery was still the uncharacteristically wet and boring desert scrubland and the only thing that kept me sane on this section was realising that I could play podcasts through the speaker of my phone whilst riding. Pretty much everyone we encountered followed a hello with a request for food or money, which makes it feel pointless saying hello or waving to anyone. It took us 5hrs to cover the 40km to Lokichar, which was a quiet one horse desert town with a real Wild West vibe. On

Sleeping location: Scrubland 2.738N 35.649E, Kenya Distance (km today/total): 49 / 12577 Estimated climb (m today/total): 200 / 91700  Problems of various sizes: 4 Day in three words: Lazily leaving town We didn’t actually leave until noon, as a result of staying up so late and having so much food to pack away, by which time it was raining some more. We dashed to leave town before the road became too flooded, only to find that there was a bridge on this section of the river and we needn’t have worried at all. We had earmarked a hotel on the other side as we were both fancying some more R&R and it was still raining, but it turned out to be way out of our price range so instead we just stopped there for a semi luxurious lunch. After ordering a hodgepodge of interesting looking items we were forcibly joined* by a local man named David who then proceeded to bang on about this that and the other for the 75 minutes it took for our food to arrive. He was the sort that loved the sou

Sleeping location: Hotel Chomazone, Lodwar, Kenya Distance (km today/total): 0 / 12528 Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 91500  Time spent awestruck in supermarket: 45 mins Day in three words: Back to comforts After being in the wilderness for almost a week it was very exciting to be in the heaving metropolis (pop: 48,316) of Lodwar. For breakfast we had some exciting new treats of yoghurt and muffins and jam, and Rebecca managed to cover another guest with smoke whilst making coffee (the fuel bottle is down to the dregs and apparently the dregs are very dirty). We both had things to buy, and urban Kenya to explore, so we hit the town eagerly. After getting SIM cards and medicines we found a supermarket bigger than anything we’d seen since Cairo, and wandered around in a daze for 45 minutes before buying absolutely loads*. I was particularly taken with a box of 72 ginger biscuit packets, which of course wouldn’t fit in my panniers and is now strapped to my front rack. I als