Day 294 / 59

Date: 31 January 2023
Sleeping location: Clifftop 15.3492S 35.3323E, Malawi

Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 76 / 18099 / 3262
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 1600 (1200m net gain) / 154900 / 36900
Effort/reward: 100%
Day in three words: Stairway to Heaven

I woke at 5, which was too early but I was feeling a lot better. Not perfect but 80% there. In the dawn light I spotted a waterbuck wandering around outside my window, then later on a monkey spying on me whilst I made some coffee. I was well enough to ride but couldn't come up with a perfect plan of how to approach the next two days, only knowing that I wanted to go to Zomba (60km and 600m of net climb), the Zomba Plateau (30km round trip with 600m of climb/descent) and Blantyre (another 70km). I decided to just set off and see how things went. After getting away from the camp on the "right" dirt road I hit the main tarmac road again and began a climb up a few hundred metres to a gradually undulating road along the bottom of the plateau. It was very impressive, a huge craggy escarpment of cliffs away to the right. I didn't feel like I had a lot of fight in me so I took it easy and saved my energy. 

I got to Zomba with enough time and energy to get up to the plateau that day, and decided to go for it and stay up there, wild camping if possible. In town I quickly stopped to stock up on Malawian panda pops, cheese and fruit, then began the climb proper. From the off it was tough, relentlessly around 10%, but I had a treat to aim for about 100m up, an Italian restaurant called Casa Rossa that had a reputation as pricey but worth it. And it was, so I blew almost half a day's budget on a very authentic and tasty pizza. Here I got chatting to one of the owners, Sylvia, who had moved out here with her partner a decade earlier having become sick of the rat race back in northern Italy. After setting off I had a brainwave almost immediately and turned straight back. As I was coming back this way tomorrow, and the breakfast menu looked nice, could I leave some of my stuff here overnight? Indeed I could. 

Fortified by rest, pizza and a weight reduction of over 10kg the rest of the climb was still tough but much less tough. The road tracked up the side of the plateau and as I rose the view became more and more spectacular, green slopes running down to the vast plain spread out below, with nearby peaks rising up to 400m from it. At the top was a reservoir, then the tarmac stopped and I took a dirt road a short distance to "the Trout Farm" campsite, confusingly no longer a trout farm and apparently barely a campsite either. I'd hoped to fill up my water bag and get a cold drink but there wasn't a cafe and the place was empty until a young woman called Dalitso appeared. She spoke excellent English (with an English accent) and we talked for a bit; she was a little odd and seemed to believe that the trout she had recently reintroduced had been poisoned with mercury by mysterious forces who wanted the land, but was pleasant and helpful and let me fill up my water bag. At one point she asked me, out of context, if I was taking Doxycycline and I thought she said "dog cycling" and started talking about Yoshi, explaining that he was actually a dinosaur from the Mario game series. I'm not sure who was more confused. 

Now I had to navigate some steep, rocky sections up to some waterfalls. With 10kg of water now over the rear wheel Maggie was extremely back-heavy and hard to control, so there was a lot of pushing. The falls were moderately nice but did provide a chance to wash my horribly sweaty face, body and clothes. After this I entered a big cloud and the road levelled out and became less rocky, but there was hidden danger. The surface was a sort of hard packed dirt/clay, shaped into gulleys so there was lots of adverse camber, and in certain, completely random, places a combination of green mould and the moisture from the cloud made it as slippery as ice. My first experience of this was when Maggie suddenly slipped out sideways from under me and I fell onto my right elbow, grazing it up real nice.* Now proceeding very carefully, I continued towards "The Emperor’s Viewpoint" where I hoped to camp. Coming across the track in a few places were huge columns of ants with a clear organisation to them - two sets of ants formed parallel lines to create a sort of "motorway" for the others to proceed along, and ones with massive heads (presumably the soldiers) patrolled the edges of this motorway. 

I got to the viewpoint about 45 minutes before sunset, dreading to find someone, but it was gloriously empty and actually a wonderful camp spot, with a little sheltered area and table for cooking and a nice flat grass area for pitching my tent. I was still in the cloud at this point but was happy enough with finding a proper wild camp spot. Then I went down the short climb to the cliff edge and suddenly the last of the cloud blew up over my head, revealing the most incredible, staggering, amazing, wonderful, superlative-destroying view. Like the one from the climb up but from much higher and spanning almost 180 degrees left to right, a semicircle with a radius of about 50km spread out in front of me, Lake Chilwa with its island all the way through Zomba to the mountains near Blantyre. The clouds stayed away until darkness fell and the lights of Zomba twinkled far below as the sun set orange and pink behind them. I had given a lot to get up here and the universe had rewarded me for it, and that feeling and that view will live long in the memory. 

Malawian Signs Corner

Chris Fish Centre

Karen Food Zone 

Uncle Shadey Tyre Fitter 

The Boyz Place - let's drink 

Winbattle Security & Investigations 

Hair food available 

Maldeco Fisheries - we sell different types of fish

*I'd left my first aid stuff at Casa Rossa so I had to sterilise it with (Cardinal) Richelieu brandy, which hurt like a bastard but was delightfully decadent