Big beautiful mango trees lined the roads wherever there was human settlement
We crossed the powerfully flowing Kagera River to enter Tanzania from Rwanda under a stormy downpour. No worries that we we had overstayed our visa for Rwanda by 2 days, or that we didn’t have a booking for a hotel or know where we would be staying throughout our visit. Karibuni Tanzania! Welcome to Tanzania. While the never ending hills of Uganda and Rwanda did not end as abruptly as we had been envisioning for the previous days while panting up the 1000th slope of Rwanda, they did slowly subside over the next days. The landscape got drier once again, Swahili returned as the most commonly spoken language, and we cycled through miles and miles of bushland. We had missed being in a Swahili-majority speaking country, and had been looking forward to it since having left Kenya a month ago to head South West through Uganda and Rwanda, around the massive Lake Victoria. The language here, however, as we were told by both Kenyans and Tanzanians, was in its purer form than the Kenyan flavour. Very few people spoke English unlike in Kenya, so we were quickly challenged to pick up more phrases. For example ‘je Una ndizi?’ (Do you have bananas?) or ‘je tunaweza maji baridi tafadali’ (can we please have some cold water). Maji baridi is our drug of choice these days and something we crave almost as much as a crunchy salad on the long hard days of dirt roads. As has been the case for quite a few stretches that we’ve done, particularly the main highway through-routes that connect countries, our most common companions on the road are trucks. Most often fuel trucks and container trucks, as well as those ones with an unknown load strapped down under a big blue tarpaulin. They are generally quite conscientious of us, and often give us a big smile and thumbs up and hoot at us (which gives us a fright no matter how often it happens), but it becomes quite mentally exhausting having 20 tons of metal roaring past 1 metre away from your bike every few minutes. The unpleasant mental visualisations of being squashed by a truck are unavoidable and can put one in a bit of a downer mood. We become quite focused on things which we wouldn’t normally have considered before going on a bicycle trip. For example the quality of the shoulder (if it’s full of potholes you are forced to stay on the road and hope that the traffic goes around you, or just get nowhere slowly the whole day if you play it ultra safe). Or which direction the wind is coming from; throughout Tanzania we were primarily cycling head-on into the wind, or it greeted us from the front-left. We would have discussions about whether we would rather face constant slow uphills or constant wind, and we agreed that uphill is preferable, wind sucks your energy and your soul throughout the day and is just noisy as well.
On our first day of cycling in Tanzania we both felt good and strong, we covered 70kms with about 800m elevation gain. My rear wheel had a big wheel wobble, essentially it was slightly egg shaped and I didn’t have the expertise to round it myself by adjusting the spoke tension, so we found 2 different ‘baiskeli fundis’ (bicycle mechanics) who could eventually mainly get it circular again. I had spent many hours fixing, worrying about and travelling back and forth to different mechanics because of my rear wheel issues of breaking spokes (and the small spine-jarring bumps that don’t allow you to fully enjoy the downhills), so I was very happy to have a decent shaped wheel again. We noticed again how so many people really go out of their way to help us out. We had originally asked a group of guys if we could buy some cooking water from them, and after helping us out with that, one of them left what he was doing to show us where the bicycle mechanics were a couple blocks away, and helped us with translation with the mechanic. He waited with us for about an hour, and then also showed us where we could buy some more veggies for the night. All without a hassle and with a big smile. We wild-camped under some tall trees for the first time in a while since it was so challenging to do so in Rwanda, and were happy to be where we were. Even though we had driven through Tanzania in 2007 with our family when Emma was 13 and I was 11, we had not visited the West of the country, which is where we would be cycling down. This part of the country is remote, dry and full of bush. We realised that our 2 route options for driving South would involve lots of dirt road, so we opted for the more inland route which would avoid Katavi National Park. We had heard from other cyclist friends ahead of us that the Tsetse flies in Katavi NP were unbearable, so we decided to give it a skip.
Charcoal is big business in rural Tanzania, as it provides a good opportunity to earn an income given the vast areas of woodland, and because charcoal is a preferred and very common fuel used for cooking (it produces less smoke than cooking directly on wood, fits well into the clay cookstoves and burns for long and hot). So for a few nights we camped in clearings in the bush which were old charcoal-smouldering sites. Once we camped in such a clearing and had quite a heavy smoky smell the whole evening and night, and the next morning we saw there was a big smouldering pile only about 50m away from us. We met quite a few charcoal makers and wood cutters, who were all very hard working people; we noticed that even on Saturdays and Sundays they would already be chopping would or tending to their charcoal fires as we were waking up with the sunrise. Often they would be a bit surprised to see us camping there in the morning but then greet us in a friendly way and continue with their work. We also stayed for 2 nights in small guesthouses in towns, which would cost 20,000 TZ Shillings for a decent room and en suite bathroom (the equivalent of 8 Euros for the 2 of us), which allowed us to do clothes washing, have a shower (even a bucket shower of cold water felt fantastic) and charge up some devices.
Banana buying
One night while camping out in the bushes in a charcoal clearing, we made a pretty delicious meal of Udon noodles (which we had happily found in Kigali and carried until now) and a tomato based sauce with peanut butter and ginger and soy sauce (found in Kampala), and avocado on top. With lemon juice. We realised that it had been many weeks since we had cooked a dinner that wasn’t rice or pasta with a tomato based sauce’ but we were still stoked to have this slightly exotic flavour combination. Unfortunately, something went wrong with Emma’s stomach and she was quite sick that night. Which was strange because we had eaten exactly the same food and drank the same water. Perhaps it was a bug she had contracted from touching some dirty money. The next morning, after a heroic effort at cycling a few kms uphill and into the wind, despite feeling very nauseas and weak, we decided to take a rest in the shade of some thorn trees, have a rehydrate sachet, and make a plan. We decided that pulling over a truck and asking for a lift to Tabora wasn’t the worst idea. Tabora was the biggest town in Western Central Tanzania, our destination for the night where we had planned to take a rest day and stock up for the next stretch of the journey.
We pushed our bikes up next to the road, and were ready for a long wait for the appropriate truck to stop and give us a lift. 5 minutes, and only 2 trucks later, a medium sized truck with an empty carriage space stopped and 2 men got out and without even asking us where we were going, started helping us load up the bikes and luggage. They couldn’t speak much English but it was no problem at all for them that they had to squeeze up and sacrifice quite a lot of their physical comfort to accommodate us in the front. It was an enjoyable experience, being much higher up off the road than usual and cruising along at 60km/h, gliding over the speed bumps which would normally have rattled us. I at least enjoyed the experience, but Emma wasn’t feeling too great, so she rather closed her eyes and tried to sleep. But she was stung by a bee which had flown into the window, to add salt to the wound. At one point the driver abruptly stopped the truck and tried to explain why the other man was getting out and walking away. We drove another 1.5km past a police check point and then pulled over again to wait for the other guy to catch up with us. We then established that only 3 people were allowed in the front of the truck so he had walked all the way around the police checkpoint, no problem. But then we were stopped twice more at other police checkpoints but the driver just got out and spoke to them and again no problem. After they dropped us in town we cycled the last few kilometers to where we would be staying, our 3rd full-on Christian accommodation of the trip! It was a seemingly massive hostel with 3 floors and probably over 80 rooms, with the Church and Archbishop’s residence on the one side next door and the Nazareth Canteen on the other side. And just next to the Canteen were a string of bars and clubs which would blast their music seemingly directly into our eardrums every evening until 3 or 4am.
Lunch break
There was Wi-fi at this accommodation, so we were pretty lazy and aside from doing necessary admin and clothes-washing etc, we even watched some Netflix which was a real treat. Emma was still feeling weak and the stomach situation went up and downhill, so we ended up staying 3 nights as it was quite cheap. Normally when staying more than 1 night in a town, we only venture out to buy some groceries and check out the town a little bit. We have discussed this a fair amount amongst one another, but the social norms in most African towns we have visited of staring unapologetically are quite different to what we are used to South Africa or Europe. While we do understand that not many Mzungus (white people) pass through these areas, and we really don’t mind when wide-eyed kids do it, it can be quite intense when most of the adults do the same. Especially when we can also clearly tell that they are talking about us with no shame right in front of us (the word mzungu has quite a distinctive ring to it). So it doesn’t feel suuuuper restful being the constant centre of attention when just walking out to buy some groceries. We have both agreed that this is something we are looking forward to about being back in SA or Europe, not constantly sticking out like a sore thumb. The majority of the time when we then make eye contact and greet the person in Swahili who is staring, they seem to snap out of it a bit and give us a big surprised smile and greeting in return.
The day after Tabora we managed 80kms despite Emma still not feeling fully recovered. For me it was one of my favourite days of cycling in a while, the roads were beautifully smooth and empty, the people really friendly and there were many massive mango trees next to the road. We knew that there was a very long stretch of very rough dirt coming up which had taken some previous cyclists 2 weeks to get through, but I felt able to consciously just enjoy that day and not think ahead to the next days which we knew were going to be tough. We found a great camp spot about 1km off the main road with big open grassy patches and some beautiful big trees surrounding us. The sunset was golden, the wind was still and we made a big fire because there was plenty of dry wood around and we felt like having a fire, and we made a solid pasta dinner.
So priveleged to be in such beautful spaces
The next morning we savoured the last 15kms of tar road before turning off at Ipole to hit the dirt. 20kms in we came across a town and confirmed with a guy there who sold us some fuel for our cooker, that this would be the last option to buy food and water for the next 110km. I had checked Google Earth and indeed literally the only thing for that next stretch was bush and 1 or 2 small patches of field. This was a fairly daunting thought, given the possibilities of breaking spokes again, especially because we would be carrying a lot of weight in water and food and because the corrugations and rocks would be extra harsh on the bikes. So we stocked up on 14L of water and some extra food and did another 30kms before finding a spot with short grass amongst all the long grass to set up camp. We had came across a man pushing his bike towards us that afternoon who had a flat tyre but no pump, he seemed pretty happy when we lent him our pump and he could continue homewards. We were slightly concerned about bushfires that evening, because that afternoon we had passed a big one which didn’t seem controlled. But the wind died down and we slept well in the quiet.
Bushfire
Alone with the insects
The next morning we enjoyed 20kms of beautiful landscape, grassy plains spotted with small lakes and at least 3 pairs of fish eagles at any moment watching from the trees next to the lakes or circling and crying from high above. The birdlife was spectacular, and only a few trucks passed us. Then we noticed an interesting looking species of fly or two landing on our clothes and hands and giving us a bite. Hmm, it seemed like one of our fears was being confirmed, and the morning turned South. We changed into longer clothing, and removed any blue clothes from sight, as this was apparently the favourite colour of Tsetse flies. There was some variation in the number of flies that started following and biting us, but the general trend was upwards. We soon realised that we couldn’t stop cycling, because when we did they would take full advantage of us; we were ripe for the taking. We tried speeding up; the dirt road was rough, so we couldn’t go more than max 20km/h, at which speed they seemed to just cruise along with us easily. They would trail along in our wake, taking their leisurely time, and then swoop in for a snack when they felt like it. Emma’s lower back which had only 1 layer of clothing on was her prime targeted spot, and my hands for some reason were mine. I even put on 2 layers of cycling gloves and their painful bites still somehow managed to regularly penetrate this. After 20kms of these conditions, we had to stop to take a break. We parked our bikes, ran off into the bush to a flat spot, and I frantically set up my tent in which to hide. I had caught one and was slightly disgusted by its bloated bright red belly full of blood. Emma discovered that a few minutes after one stopped moving, they did start to leave one alone. We think that while on our bicycles we resembled bovine-like moving objects, in some ways similar to their normal prey of buffalo and cows, through whose skin they can bite. After boiling away in my tent for a short lunch-break we upped our defences, put on more layers, and got some techno music going, believing that the frequency would maybe scare them away, as well as motivate us to keep going. The swarms only intensified. A few kilometres further, the road quality deteriorated even further into a rocky mess, and we started hitting some hills which slowed us down and made us even more sitting-duck-like. What made it worse and almost pushed us over the edge were the few busses that came hurtling towards us and forced us off the road into the thick sand, kicking large clouds of dust into our faces and killing all of our little momentum and faith in bus drivers. We were feeling quite desperate and exhausted at this point, but there was not much we could do aside from rattle on over the rocks and swat away the biting creatures as they landed. Being vegan, it was an unusual feeling to be so grimly satisfied at killing another animal. But killing them was difficult. Their reaction time was super fast, and even after a full on slap they seemed to fly off unscathed, like super-charged, steroid-pumped, armoured horseflies. No matter how fast we cycled, they would swarm after us seemingly without even breaking a sweat. Finally after 50kms of cycling through this hellish territory for about 5 hours, their numbers started to subside. We saw a few huts, and then a settlement which was mining gold, at which we could buy some water because we had been running very low. We used our last energy to push our bikes up a hill off the road, and set up camp amongst some trees dotted with large quartz crystals and a view over the bush we had just come from, the setting sun making it seem golden and vast and harmless. Exhausted, we had a water bottle shower, cooked some food and hit the sack. The day had seriously tested our mental and physical endurance, but we had gotten through it despite feeling as if it would never end. And these were some of the lessons sinking in.
Beautiful morning ride, little did we know what the afternoon would hold.
Excuse the language; this is a small snippet of the Tsetse fly day, you can see them sitting so relaxed on my handlebar bag.
The next stretch to Rungwa, which lay at a T-junction and was a sort of mid-point on the dirt was relatively uneventful and we enjoyed the lack of flying predators and the decent quality gravel. We stayed at a small guesthouse, where the water in the buckets that we used for showering and washing our clothes was blackish-grey. We only realised the next morning that it must have been from the ash and burnt field and grasses which we had smelt and seen the day before. We got some rice and beans (surprise surprise) for dinner at the local restaurant and met an interesting man who worked for a human-wildlife conflict organisation in the area. He knew the area and the people very well as he had grown up there, and his job was to do outreach with local farmers and teach them some methods for how to interact with elephants and lions specifically that threatened their crops and livestock. Rungwa town was bordering a massive group of connected game reserves including the Rungwa Game Reserve, which was largely unfenced and primarily used by tourists for hunting. So there was lots of human-wildlife interaction, and a largely negative sentiment towards wildlife from local farmers, as elephants could destroy their entire year’s crop of maize or dig up their whole patch of potatoes and put them in economic ruin for the rest of the year. These are of course also dangerous animals and there was regular violent conflict. At the moment, there is no proper solution to this problem, but the organisation he was working for would manage small financial compensations from the government if local crops were destroyed. Their aim was primarily to protect the local elephant populations. We would intermittently come up against the strange phenomena of tourist hunting and all that is involved. It is both championed as the only financially viable conservation method in wilderness unsuited for photographic tourism, but also harshly criticised for how ethically problematic, distorted and perverse the whole trophy-hunting industry by predominantly rich Americans is. This is an ongoing and nuanced debate, and an interesting read is “The Big Conservation Lie” by John Mbaria and Mordecai Ogada. They lay down the arguments against hunting and the conventional use of protected areas as the main method of conservation (as opposed to harnessing indigenous knowledge which hardly ever receives the deserved credit for managing biodiversity in Africa for millennia before colonialism), specifically focussing on Kenya, which currently does not allow trophy hunting.
Breakfast a few minutes after sunrise
We could only cover 37kms the next day, and this was probably the worst road we had driven on. A full day of corrugations and rocks interspersed with deep sand patches. Early in the afternoon we decided to stop and camp because we started seeing a few of the dreaded Tsetse flies again and mentally couldn’t face them at that stage of the day and didn’t want to camp in their territory. Instead, that afternoon we had swarms of the small annoying flies (nimiti) that we had encountered in Sudan that hovered around your face and dive bombed your eye balls for no apparent reason, so we made a fire, put green vegetation on it and stood in the smoke to try and escape them. Fun day. We were trying to get into the tents as soon as possible after dark, the thought of being out in remote and central Tanzania (the country which hosts about 15.000 lions or 1/3 to 1/2 of the worlds total population) keeping us on our toes. That day I had seen a decent sized snake slithering up to me on the road but then heading off into the bushes, and that night when I got out of my tent to pee stark naked and barefoot aside from my headtorch, I had come across a scorpion cruising around. We had seen surprisingly few snakes and scorpions so it was cool but also a reminder to keep the eyes open.
Pole Pole = 'Slowly' in Swahili (or perhaps just be a warning about the pole?)
Lovely corrugations
The next morning’s cycle was smoother than usual and the Tsetse flies did not reappear to our relief so we were feeling good. But the road deteriorated into a glorified sandpit after lunch and we slipped and slid around for the rest of the day. Still better than being rattled by rocks and corrugations! We fixed Emmas aluminium front rack which had snapped now in 2 places, with a combination of rubber tubing, drilling a new hole through the aluminium with my pocket knife, and a pipe clamp. This small success, combined with the fact that we had completed 260km of dirt and only had 160km to go gave us a moral boost and we continued with renewed energy. The short diary entry I have for the next day was “Sandy road again today, running low on cash but made a good sweet potato, kale and peanut butter tomato-sauce for dinner. Camped under a tree on very crunchy leaves.” The next day was perhaps the worst day of road quality (yes, again) on the trip so far. Extremely rocky with sand patches that swallowed our heavy bikes with their relatively narrow tyres. But, after 45kms of this, the tar road appeared magically, a full 50km earlier than we expected and oof it felt fabulous to roll onto that black artificial surface. We stayed at a small guesthouse in Makongolosi that night and had a beer to celebrate completing the long stretch of dirt which felt like it was unlikely to ever end. It felt good to have a shower after 5 days without, and charge up our devices. We called Mama that night because it was her birthday and there was actually decent reception!
Sometimes one must push
We did some quick maths that night and worked out we had perhaps 6000kms left until we reached Cape Town. If we averaged 50kms per day factoring in the rest days, we could cover that distance in about 4 months, meaning we might reach there mid-November to December (which was a few months earlier than we had anticipated). Of course plans are only plans, so we will see how things go. The main factors that are putting some time pressure on us are financial and weather patterns. We are running over budget at the moment, even though we have been trying to live as cheaply as possible. Unforeseen costs creep up (we spent more on bike repairs and spares for example), and the budget we had originally set ourselves was in fact very optimistic. The weather factor is essentially just trying to avoid cycling in the mid-summer heat of the Namib desert, which might become unbearable, as well as the Northern Cape in South Africa and the Karoo when we are cycling through Prince Albert on the home stretch.
We had a final big mountain to cross before getting to Mbeya, so we battled head on into the wind for 2 days doing about 1000m climbing per day, but appreciated being back up at elevation. One morning I woke up in time to see the full moon setting over the horizon just as the sun was rising over the opposite horizon. We are still trying to work out the patterns of the moon, it’s surprisingly complicated. Temperatures dropped, and we had fantastic views out over the plains and sped down the other side of the mountain pass to enter the biggest city we would be visiting in Tanzania. We stayed at a very cheap guesthouse (under 4 euros for a room for 2 of us), and refreshed ourselves with an ice cold (non-bucket!) shower. We bought lots of fruit which we had been missing for the previous weeks, and even treated ourselves to a coffee from a cafe that used an espresso machine and had wifi. Leaving Mbeya was unpleasant as there were constant trucks and busses and cars, and no shoulder. The tar road also tended to have quite deep ruts where the vehicles tyres drove on, and the small space next to that would therefore be sloped and bumpy and potholed. We often had to veer off the road as the busses coming towards us would overtake and just flash their lights to tell us to move. There were 2 big traffic jams due to accidents, and at one of them everyone had decided to follow a small farm track parallel to the road to get around the accident scene, but then more people got stuck on that small road. Luckily we could just bypass them. There was a massive crane parked in the middle of the highway that was attempting to place the trailer of a truck back onto the front of the truck, however that particular situation had come about. We have noticed that with less stringent traffic rules, people do tend to make a plan and also look out for others. The same as how it often felt relatively safe cycling in big chaotic cities like Cairo or Nairobi because there were so many other random moving objects on the road that drivers were attuned to looking out for non-cars.
Last big, beautiful push up to Mbeya in the Tanzanian Highlands
We crossed into Zambia at Tunduma border the next day, and managed the entire process in less than 1 hour! After having read accounts online of people taking 5 or even 7 hours to get through with their cars, we were pleasantly surprised. Didn’t even need to get our bags x-rayed as with most other border crossings, or pay for visas. We bought new SIM cards and an expensive naartjie (mandarin/tangerine) imported from South Africa, and got on our way. After 10kms of very rough roadworks we hit some of the smoothest road of our trip so far, wide enough for 3 trucks comfortably, which meant we could relax much more. This was the first taste of the Great North Road we would be following for the next 1000kms straight South West into the heart of Zambia.
Emma's cracked seat post clamp getting some welding treatment
Rice-to-beans ratio
Tanzania had been at times challenging, but fantastic; the people welcoming, the food cheap and tasty, we had the opportunity to practice our Swahili, and the big open landscapes left us mentally refreshed.
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