Day 274 / 39

Date: 11 January 2023
Sleeping location: Club Marina, Karonga, Malawi
Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 101 / 16989 / 2152
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 800 / 146500 / 28500
Forecast: Scorchio!*
Day in three words: Warm and storm

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV9q_KdtQfc

We were all awoken by a man playing loud religious music at 5.45am, but it was at least light by that point (the clocks went back an hour when we crossed the border, which I am unhappy about) so it just acted as a weird and slightly-too-early alarm clock. The profile today was some rolling hills followed by a long and gradual series of descents to Lake Malawi 800m below, and we set off into a light headwind that was like someone’s finger in your chest - it’s not going to cause too much resistance, but it’s annoying and it’s going to slow you down.

At morning break we stopped for chai and were watched by some cute shy kids. I gave them a bit of popcorn, which they were initially skeptical of, but once the first one made a move they swiftly nibbled away at it. Malawi seems poorer than Tanzania but neater, and with more of a sense of community - bigger villages have things like libraries and women’s forums.** Shortly after our break we dropped down from the farmland of the last week or so into rugged and mostly empty shrub forest, which was something of a surprise in such a densely populated country. Indeed, we were so caught out by this that we had to scrape together a picnic as there were no villages with places to buy food, and C&AC ran out of water so I had to donate a litre of mine. There were probably loads of cool animals in there, but all I saw was some kind of disco grasshopper, a dead 2ft monitor lizard and a snail half as big as my hand. 

Soon came the familiar “absence of anything this high ahead” feeling of the land dropping away into a rift valley, and the start of a long and gradual descent that was kind of a disappointment due to the headwind making it difficult to pick up any real speed. It got hotter and hotter until it was just hot, and as the sun had been beating down all day we were pretty tired, it became a slog and I also ran out of water. Salvation came in the form of a small village with people selling cold soda, water and ice pops out of coolers, although the water and ice pops were made of unpurified borehole water so we sadly had to decline them.

In Karonga, marvelling/despairing about the heat, we went to a supermarket which was hot, confusing and disappointing, although it did have some nice bits including a massive bag of ground coffee that arrived just in time to save me from resorting to instant. Anne-Claire waited outside with the bikes and was approached by a man selling honey, so she bought two bottles, only to find that Charles and I had both bought a bottle of honey inside and we now had about a kilo and a half of honey between us. I can’t look a bee in the eye right now.

We’d identified a hotel from ioverlander but it appeared to have gone swiftly downhill since the last checkin (in 2018) and like the supermarket it was hot, confusing and disappointing, but at this point we were too tired to go elsewhere. The AC in my room was cold for about 30 seconds before it started pumping out warm air, the backup fan had the wrong plug for the sockets, then when I rigged it up with my adaptor it just decided not to work anyway, and the lakeside setting had been spoiled by the installation of a massive water treatment plant. Dinner was quite tasty though. Around bedtime a HUGE storm rolled over, with rain so loud I couldn’t hear the TV show I was watching, sheet lightning almost constant and forked lightning hitting periodically with a crack that sounded like the sky was breaking apart. Not the most relaxing way to wind down before bed, but great entertainment.

Malawian Signs Corner

Excell Stationery - live a difference

Mwamwitu Anything Goes Down South Electronics 

Christ In You Ministry 

To Know Me Is To Love Me Rasta Shop

Sugar Bee Poultry 

A truck previously used for the supply of “horse and dog food” in Kettering

**It is possible that they had these things in Tanzania and the signs were in Swahili so I didn’t understand them, but generally signs for that kind of thing were in English or English and Swahili