The Infamous Northern Kenya

Day One

I have been hearing about the infamous Northern Kenya since I signed up for this tour last year, so today I finally got my first taste of what this place has to offer. This is the most remote stretch of the bike ride that we will do. It feels very very remote, maybe due to the fact that the roads are not paved, or just the small numbers of people and vehicles on the road. Every once in a while you would see a soldier dressed in military fatigues come out of the bush next to the road. In 2008 this stretch was too dangerous so the riders had to fly over. We got lucky ( I guess depending on how you look at it) that we get to ride it! Today was supposed to be the easy day of the four unpaved, which it was, luckily. We got lucky because we have Dinder to compare everything to at this point and Dinder (I reckon) was much harder than today was. Tomorrow is supposed to be the beginning of the difficult roads. I have to prepare myself. It will be a double bike short day, this is my strategy to prevent saddle sores when there will clearly be some seriously bad roads and one pair of bike shorts will not even begin to protect my butt. Next, I have decided to tape my forearms to prevent the swollen painful arms I had the last time. I am well prepared now having been through Dinder, I have traded my 32mm tires for 2.1 inch mountain bike tires, my thudbuster seatpost for a little bit of suspension. The infamous washboard, unpaved, lava rock roads are very beautiful to look at however they were never designed to be used by bikes or vehicles for that matter, the trucks have just as hard of a time to maneuver over the roads as us. The trucks are able to drive approximately 10-12km/hr, so just about as fast as the bikes. Kenya is gorgeous so far, with mountains in the distance and savanna in the forefront.

We are entering the areas where animals are likely to be seen. Today we saw baboons, tomorrow there is the chance of seeing giraffes in the wild which would be very very cool. The weather is getting warm again, which is good and bad. It is sticky humid hot now though. It makes sleeping somewhat difficult. There are also starting to be a lot of bugs of all sorts and we get “snake warnings” at camp now so that we don’t go out to dig a hole at night and get a snake surprise.

Day Two

Started out “easy”, and then after lunch became a Northern Kenyan Road (see below). There were hundreds of large millipedes walking across the road today. I had to stop and pick one up and get a picture with it to show my nephews. They were the same kind of millipedes that they have at the bug zoo. Oh yeah, we didn’t see any giraffes either. 

Day Three

Close your eyes for a minute; now imagine the worst road you can think of off the top of your head (this is a hard activity for people that live in the city). Next, cover this road in loose lava rock (from the size of small gravel to grapefruit size) add some loose deep sand and deep tire ruts, the occasional thick clay and kilometers and kilometers of washboard corrugation and then imagine the temperature hovering around 40C with 45% humidity and now imagine that you are riding this on a touring bike with no shocks instead of a mountain bike- Welcome to Northern Kenya. It is some of the most difficult riding that I have ever done in my life. It requires an insane amount of patience and a crazy amount of concentration or you will come off your bike. Several people took spills today, mainly just scrapes and cuts but luckily, no real big accidents. Today was our mando riding day for Northern Kenya, 88km. When push comes to shove, today is the kind of day that shows you what you are made of. At last night’s rider meeting, Kelsey announced that today’s riding day would be one of the three hardest days on tour. This morning, 16 riders, got on the trucks without even getting on their bikes. I was excited to get the chance to try the infamous riding and just push as hard as I could and if worse came to worse I would get on the truck. The morning was slow and I was riding alone. Time seemed to go on forever and it was really really hot, My face was sweating from the time I left the camp. By the time I got to lunch, several more people were on the truck. The afternoon was spent riding with Rick and then we were joined by Dave (who I rode Dinder with) and Laura. It was so hot that I could feel my skin burning. I actually even got blisters, I kept putting sunscreen on but it didn’t help. The day just seemed to go on and on and on. After lunch we came on a bunch of riders sitting under trees along the route waiting for the lunch truck to pick them up. As the day heated up it was very tempting to get on the truck. That is the difficult part of this trip, it is entirely you vs. you. There is always a truck you can get on eventually if you want to, but it is hard for stubborn people like me, I would rather take my time and eventually get to camp then to quit and have to deal with my own anger about that. Also we are here to ride across Africa on our bikes, not the trucks. I can only really get on the truck when I am not feeling well. By the time we rolled into camp at 6:30pm we were four of the last riders to make it to camp. Out of the 61 riders, 31 riders finished the mando day today. I am sore and really tired but really glad that I did it. We are now at our rest day in Marsibit, Kenya. Then we have two more days of unpaved Northern Kenya roads before we reach Isiolo and are on our way to Nairobi. In 9 days we will arrive in Arusha, the half way point for distance and time of the trip. Crazy to think that I have almost ridden halfway across Africa already. Crazy.