Day 261 / 26

Date: 29 December 2022
Sleeping location: Forest 6.045S 30.151E, Tanzania 
Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 72 / 16101 / 1264
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 1100 / 139100 / 21100
Rain: problematic
Day in three words: It gets easier…? 

It’s hard to imagine a day more challenging than this one. It started with me up in the night expelling from both ends, and after that I did not sleep well at all and felt weak in the morning. The holy trinity of sugar, caffeine and paracetamol helped me get up and out but it was not easy and throughout the morning I was barely kept going via regular intake of sugary drinks, bananas and sweet chai. At a lunch stop in a village came two fillips; firstly, I forced down a plate of rice and beans which seemed to settle my stomach and bring me back to life, and secondly I found a nice toilet and demonstrated that my insides were now in a better state. Things were looking up, for about 15 minutes.

As we set off the heavy rain started and it didn’t stop for at least eight hours. Initially we sheltered under a wicker thing in the village with about thirty kids who were desperate to get their pictures taken, but eventually we decided that we had to leave at some point and set off. The first 15km was flat and relatively easy but punctuated by occasional sections where the road had flooded. This got us to the turnoff where I had a very wet goodbye with Charles and Anne-Claire, with me heading back up the rift towards Mpanda and them off to see about a boat down the lake. It was really nice spending time with them, riding with them and learning from them.
 
Things immediately got punchy. First was a river ford now raging from the rain, up to my knees and requiring me to take off Maggie’s panniers and make three trips. Straight after this was a long section so steep it was an effort even to push. This brought me out onto a bit of a plateau where there were houses and then a village; I saw a couple of buildings that I could have asked to camp in but decided to continue as there was still two and a half hours of daylight left. Immediately after this was another raging ford which initially seemed impassable, but a group arrived and crossed it on foot, albeit with some difficulty. One of them grinned and gave a thumbs up when I motioned across, then gave me a hand carrying/dragging Maggie. I’m not sure I could have got across safely without his help. 

After this everything got ridiculously muddy. Some sections were so sticky that I couldn't even push Maggie and instead had to pull her from the front. There were frequent streams, floods and puddles that I had to squelch through on foot. I rode when I could but Maggie's chain was so gummed up with mud that it kept jamming. My rear brake lever came loose and my brake pads wore away so much that they didn’t properly work any more. All was going, no pun intended, swimmingly*, and there appeared to be absolutely nowhere around to camp. At this point concrete floors and some shelter seemed like the only option as the usual packed-dirt yards had all turned to squish in the rain and everything else was thick vegetation or crops. I asked at one of the infrequent sets of houses if I could camp in their yard under a shelter thing, but the woman wasn’t keen and motioned down the road towards...what? She said a word that wasn't on the map. I had no option but to keep going and hope that the mystery word was a village. Close to darkness and with no village in sight I miraculously spied a (relatively) level, flat and dry pitch in the forest**. Any port in a storm, semi-literally. Having seen nobody for half an hour, of course two groups walked past whilst I was setting up and almost certainly spotted me, but they seemed in a hurry to get home and watch Eastenders so I wasn’t disturbed. It was far too wet to cook outside the tent and far too dangerous to cook inside it, so dinner was an avocado. It was still raining when I went to sleep. When people ask of my trip “was it fun” I will refer them to this day.

*During this section I passed 16093km, which is 10,000 miles, but as with kilometre 10,000 (in Ethiopia, pushing the bike in the dark looking for a hotel) I don’t even notice and it’s entirely possible that I was pushing (or in this case, swimming).
**Perhaps the woman was suggesting I go here, and the Swahili for “ level, flat and dry pitch in the forest” is a two syllable word.


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