Day 236 / 1
Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 52 / 14889 / 52
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 1200 / 119200 / 1200
After that it was the perfect start, a beautiful quiet smooth road through rolling green hills, spoiled only by the vicious Ugandan speed bumps in every village. I had a few bike races with teens and lots of people, especially children, shouting mzungu and usually waving with a smile. I had forgotten what it's like to be the centre of attention - half nice, half exhausting. There were some half hearted requests for money but they would always back down if I gave them a smile and a sassy reply. A few times people stopped to help with various minor things and I thought they were going to ask for money, but they were actually just being nice and accordingly got a fist bump for their troubles.
I stopped to pick up provisions of a big lurid orange fanta, bananas, an avocado and two giant roasted corn cobs which proved to be a bad investment because they aren't actually nice at all and they take forever to eat because of how chewy they are. I need to get back into the African cycling nutrition game. When I heard the second corn fall off the back of the bike I chose to "not hear" it but got my payback when it turned out it was in fact the bananas that had fallen off.
After 20km of smoothness I turned off the tarmac onto the dirt road into Bwindi and started a climb of 500m net and over 1000m overall, which my body was just not ready for. I had thought about how mentally difficult it would be to get back into full Africa touring mode but hadn't accounted for how physically difficult it would be. A combination of having not ridden a 40+kg bike for 985 days, the altitude (this was all between 2000 and 2500m) and my tip top cycling fitness from September having faded left me hurting and I inched my way along. Initially I was going through villages but after about 15km I went through the gate for the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest national park, which ironically was unmanned and I was able to penetrate it with ease. The scenery immediately became beautiful, a lush hilly forest with lots of mysterious animal noises and the occasional jazzy bird.
Unfortunately by now my brain was totally frazzled and I had a couple of calamities in quick succession. First I noticed that my cleat wasn't engaging properly with the pedal but stupidly chose not to actually, you know, look at the cleat, and just kept going. This strategy went great until there was a little ping and I realised that the cleat had completely disappeared from my shoe. I dropped Maggie and went looking for it but could only find one piece. Finally I had the curious idea that it might be stuck in the pedal, and wouldn't you know it was, albeit minus one part which had mysteriously disappeared but thankfully I carry spares of.
By this point I was totally scrambled and managed a minor crash within a minute, falling to my favourite gremlin of adverse camber. I was going so slowly that there was no real damage to me or Maggie but my ego was bruised; in Part 1 I managed to go over eight months before the only crash. At this per-km crash rate for Part 2 I will crash approximately 140 times before I reach Cape Town. After this I had a stern word with myself and entered survival mode - keep the pedals turning no matter how slowly, if you can't do that push, if you can't do that rest. Repeat until success and/or death.
Once I reached the top of the climb (=success) I was thankfully able to lose all my hard-earned altitude and cruise relatively serenely down towards a village which had several potential campsites. I rocked up at a fancy mzungu lodge place and asked how much to camp; was told $15, made a face, was told $10, offered $8, was told that I could just camp for free (I think) then somehow negotiated myself back up to $10 because I felt bad. I did get a nice pitch, a delicious hot shower, coffee and toast in the morning and loads of popcorn with my beer so I can't really complain.
The only food option at the lodge was a four course set menu for $15, which back in London would be a bargain but in Uganda is absolutely mega. They also didn't have a tv to show the England Senegal World Cup last 16 game later on, so one of the staff kindly walked me back into town and showed me where I could get some cheap eats and watch the game. The meal wasn’t great but it was very carby and cost a mere $2 including a big water. I watched the football in a strange sort of wicker village hall with a bunch of locals who were friendly but spent much of the time arguing passionately about Marcus Rashford. A surprisingly straightforward win for England - I wonder where I will watch them lose to France in the quarters.
*I wasn’t putting the date before which I subsequently realised made it very hard to know exactly when things had happened.
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