I’ve heard people say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. At least it’s bloody paved. The road we’ve just spent the last 3 days on (between Moyale and Marsabit (both in Kenya)) may not have lead to hell, but one could be excused for thinking so. Unintentionally, I can now say that I know exactly what it’s like to cycle across the moon, with temperatures akin to those you would find on the sun. Imagine this if you will: picture those scorching hot 40+ degree days we occasionally get in Victoria through summer. You know the ones where you don’t normally dare leave the air conditioned comfort of your home, except to make a daring dash across to a 7/11 for a large slurpie and the 30 minutes of relief it brings you? Well, increase that temperature by a few degrees. Now, picture the worst rocky, gravel and sandy road you’ve ever driven on. Actually, no, imagine a beach and cover that beach with every large rock you’ve ever seen in your life. Now imagine that rocky, sandy beach had corrugation and ruts, the whole way along it for 400kms. Now take your 40-50 degree weather, and imagine cycling along that sandy, rocky, corrugated and rutted road on the biggest, heaviest and most awkward bicycle you can find, for 4 days, at a little over walking pace (average speed of 10km/h). Well, that’s been our own personal hell for the last 3 days. But we did it, and in hindsight, I have NO idea how we survived with body, mind and bikes still intact. I have never felt a bigger sense of accomplishment in my life.
I’ll wind it back a little bit from my last blog post. We spent the 3 days from Arba Minch to the border of Ethiopia (Moyale) without anything overly exciting happening. Of note was the baboons we saw about 10kms riding out from Arba Minch, which was quite exciting. About 5 or so literally ran across the road in front of us and continued on crashing through the vegetation away from us. They were quite big and I hazard a guess that they would have stood about 4 or so feet high. That definitely piqued the excitement amongst us.
We rode from Arba Minch to a town called Mega from one mountain, through a valley, and into Konso which was perched ontop of a hill. It was by far our longest day having left Arba Minch at about 8am and arriving into Konso around 9pm that evening, having only covered about 120kms on account of the off-road conditions (which paled in significance to the route we’d take from Moyale a few days later). Konso was a very dodgy town and we struggled to find somewhere to stay that a) had sufficient beds for us all, and b) wasn’t crawling with prostitutes. At one point, Wade & Shane were cautioned by a local that Konso wasn’t really a safe town and they probably shouldn’t be walking around town (they were getting dinner). The rest of the night was spent in the confines of our rooms.
The following day was my birthday and I awoke to find a party hat, chocolates and a note left at my room’s door which was a great way to start the day. I’ve never spent birthday abroad and away from family so the gesture was greatly appreciated. The day past quite normally but I was fortunate enough to receive a few calls from home and loved ones.
Fast-forward to our ride into Moyale, which was filled with a little bit of anticipation on account of the Australian Government’s recently revised “Do Not Travel” warnings for the area due to the tribal conflicts erupting there in the week prior. I’m not up to date with the news, but as I understand it, 40 locals were killed in these clashes just a week or two prior. We passed from Ethiopian customs, through Kenyan customs in record time: less than 30 minutes. The ‘no-mans-land” buffer zone between the two borders was quite hilarious as the Ethiopia’s a right-hand-drive country and Kenya’s the opposite, so between the two, you have this chaotic scene where over a 50m stretch, you’ve got to switch lanes with a bunch of other cars, trucks, busses and bikes. And there’s no system either- you just fight for your place. Kenya’s immigration and customs offices were a perfect demonstration of efficiency, and air conditioning, as compared to Ethiopia’s where the official honestly looked as though he’d just woken up, half thrown a shirt on and proceeded to fumble his way through the whole process in an office which was no less hotter than your average pizza oven. Kenya’s immigration was air conditioned, the very helpful, polite and efficient official had definitely not just woken up and we were in & out in less than 10 minutes.
Being that there’s certain amounts of unrest in northern Kenya, we’d arranged an escort (the gun-wielding type, not the other type) for the first few days of our riding. We set straight off to the police station to meet the Inspector and get things arranged for our early morning departure. The efficient, kind and welcoming experience we’d had at Kenya’s customs continued at the police station as we met both the Inspector and his deputy and spent an hour or so going over our route and plans for the 4-5 following days. They were more than happy to oblige. We left the meeting under the impression that 4 officers would be waiting to escort us from Moyale the following morning at 7am. What we awoke to was a small army. There were 8 fully armed ”police” sitting in the back of a troop carrier, each with machine guns, hand grenades, rocket propelled grenades and enough ammunition to honestly conduct a small war. Our arrogance levels increased immediately. Though these guys were officially police, their job doesn’t involve the sort of basic policing that goes on in Australia (i.e issuing infringements, breaking up fights, eating donuts etc etc). These guys spend a hell of a lot of time in armed conflict with Ethiopians coming across the border and smuggling guns and weapons through to Nairobi. And they were all young: no one older than 25 and all with the kind of gaze and mentality you normally see in men much older. They seemed hardened though very professional guys who were ready for action and they were all literally there to keep us safe over the coming days. I asked a few whether they’d been in battle and used some of the scary amounts of weaponry they were carrying. “All the time” was their response. Again, these guys aren’t ordinay police. They were as curious of us as we were of them and they were all the most kind, humble and friendly people I think I’ve ever met in my life. More than once we were told that “we’re here to protect you” and we all got the impression there was nothing we couldn’t ask for that they wouldn’t be more than happy to do (except my suggestion that if any kids throw rocks at us, they were to “take them out”). So they sat in their troop carrier, 50 metres behind us all day. We stopped for lunch, they stopped for lunch and ate with us. I felt bad as we ate our mangos, fresh bread rolls with fresh tomato, biscuits and mango juice, while they ate army rations of dried biscuits and tins of corned beef. They didn’t complain though.
That night were stayed 80kms from Moyale in a roadside town called Sololo; which didn’t consist of much more than some roadside restaurants and an actual township 7kms off the main road, down a sandy, dirt road. We stayed in the police/army camp, with a few of the police, in these little circular tin sheds that would have been no bigger than bigger than 3 metres across and consisted of nothing more than 1 bed and a small handful of personal belongings. This is where we met Arthur, a police man, who was our age and had been stationed there for 1 year and about 8 months. He has a wife in Nairobi (about 800+ kms away) who he sees every few months when he has leave to go and visit her. There is NOTHING in this police camp other than about 5 of these tin sheds, an outside toilet and a shower. When they’re not working, they literally just sit around camp (doing what, I don’t know). Arthur was so proud of his immaculate little shed. He brought us in for tea and told us all about his family. We kept trying to steer the conversation towards his job and the conflicts he’s been involved in, but he was more interested to talk about life in Kenya, Australia and show us photos of his couch, microwave and other odds and ends in Kenya. He explained that he had just joined the police (after an 18 month induction and training process) and this was his first posting. I asked him if he wished he was posted somewhere else (he lived in a tin shed for crying out loud) to which he replied “why would I wish that? My accommodation is great and I’ve got a great opportunity”. It just shows you what we (I?) take for granted. He probably makes less in a year than I do in a day, but he couldn’t have been a more welcoming and generous host and I think i’ll always remember the brief time I spent with Arthur in his camp.
Later than night, I awoke to hyenas howling VERY close to mine & Gavan’s tin shed which had the door open (it was really hot). In a state of panic, I closed the door, satisfied that I’d saved both our lives from the blood thirst pack of hyenas closing in for the kill. I asked Arthur about them the following morning to which his blasé response was “oh they come every night to drink from the damn (which was about 30m away)”. Arthur probably eats hyenas for breakfast.
So we set out on day two of our highway to hell with a different bunch of escorts; who I can confidently say don’t understand the meaning of “escort”. They immediately raced past us and waiting for us 20km down the road. We caught up, they raced off. This continued all day. Fortunately, we rode all morning without incident to a new “state” in Kenya and our next police escort for that afternoon (police from one state can’t escort into another state). We discovered that our new escorts couldn’t come with us as their one and only 4WD had broken down. They decided to send 2 men, with all of our food and water, 35km ahead on a civilian truck that was just passing through, to a guarded communications facility where they would wait for us and we could camp with them for the night. Again, the police were 2 young, kind, friendly and very humble guys who stayed up the whole night “guarding” us in the fenced and locked compound while we slept on the roof, jus t in our sleeping bags, under the most incredible star display i’ve ever seen. It was by far the most surreal experience I’ve had on this journey. The weather that night was like a hot, hot, hot summer night, so we all loved the opportunity and experience of sleeping, literally, under the stars on a roof in the absolute middle of nowhere. Still without an escort the following morning (and under the strict assurance that we would be perfectly safe), we made the final push down the highway to hell en-route to Marsabit, but not before I asked whether I could grab their guns and pose for some photos. Thankfully they were more than willing to oblige and I got the one photo I’d been craving for the last 3 days.
The last day brought a lot of wildlife. I almost ran over a big snake that slithered across my path. I later found out that said snake is “VERY venomous”. I spent the next few hours on code-red snake alert . That was up until we all saw a hyena about 30m ahead of us. I never knew they were so big and bulky. Think ‘small cow’. Thankfully, the hyena took off and didn’t come back. I spent the balance of the day on code red hyena alert, with snakes a distant memory.
So in nutshell, that’s been our last week. We knew the last 3 days were going to be hard, but not as hard as they were. I’m proud we all made it and survived that very brutal and remote stretch and am very thankful we had the chance to (at times) share some time with the young members of the Kenyan police/army. It’s definitely something i’ll never forget. So far Kenya’s quickly becoming my favourite country of the 4 we’ve been into so far. The people are incredibly friendly and kind and strangely humble. Perhaps it’s also the fact that the majority of people seem to have a strong grasp on English and we are able to communicate perfectly with them. Up until now, this hasn’t been possible in Egypt, Sudan or Ethiopia.
We have a day off in Marsabit tomorrow- with nothing of significance to do. I plan to literally and figuratively recharge my batteries and, as I always tend to do on days off, eat an unhealthy amount of food while searching for thick shakes (what’s with these thick shake cravings??).
All’s going great- we’re all healthy, happy and banding together to get ourselves through the tough times. I’m having the time of my life and still feel that I’m very lucky to be a part of this journey with these guys.
In about 1 week’s time we’ll be entering Nairobi which will be approximately 5,500kms travelled since we left. This marks both the halfway point in time and distance, which I find very hard to believe. Thankfully, as I understand it, we won’t have to travel down any roads which even compare to what we’re just spent 3 days slogging it out on...... I’m personally ok if I never ride another gravel road again.
I’ll wind it back a little bit from my last blog post. We spent the 3 days from Arba Minch to the border of Ethiopia (Moyale) without anything overly exciting happening. Of note was the baboons we saw about 10kms riding out from Arba Minch, which was quite exciting. About 5 or so literally ran across the road in front of us and continued on crashing through the vegetation away from us. They were quite big and I hazard a guess that they would have stood about 4 or so feet high. That definitely piqued the excitement amongst us.
We rode from Arba Minch to a town called Mega from one mountain, through a valley, and into Konso which was perched ontop of a hill. It was by far our longest day having left Arba Minch at about 8am and arriving into Konso around 9pm that evening, having only covered about 120kms on account of the off-road conditions (which paled in significance to the route we’d take from Moyale a few days later). Konso was a very dodgy town and we struggled to find somewhere to stay that a) had sufficient beds for us all, and b) wasn’t crawling with prostitutes. At one point, Wade & Shane were cautioned by a local that Konso wasn’t really a safe town and they probably shouldn’t be walking around town (they were getting dinner). The rest of the night was spent in the confines of our rooms.
The following day was my birthday and I awoke to find a party hat, chocolates and a note left at my room’s door which was a great way to start the day. I’ve never spent birthday abroad and away from family so the gesture was greatly appreciated. The day past quite normally but I was fortunate enough to receive a few calls from home and loved ones.
Fast-forward to our ride into Moyale, which was filled with a little bit of anticipation on account of the Australian Government’s recently revised “Do Not Travel” warnings for the area due to the tribal conflicts erupting there in the week prior. I’m not up to date with the news, but as I understand it, 40 locals were killed in these clashes just a week or two prior. We passed from Ethiopian customs, through Kenyan customs in record time: less than 30 minutes. The ‘no-mans-land” buffer zone between the two borders was quite hilarious as the Ethiopia’s a right-hand-drive country and Kenya’s the opposite, so between the two, you have this chaotic scene where over a 50m stretch, you’ve got to switch lanes with a bunch of other cars, trucks, busses and bikes. And there’s no system either- you just fight for your place. Kenya’s immigration and customs offices were a perfect demonstration of efficiency, and air conditioning, as compared to Ethiopia’s where the official honestly looked as though he’d just woken up, half thrown a shirt on and proceeded to fumble his way through the whole process in an office which was no less hotter than your average pizza oven. Kenya’s immigration was air conditioned, the very helpful, polite and efficient official had definitely not just woken up and we were in & out in less than 10 minutes.
Being that there’s certain amounts of unrest in northern Kenya, we’d arranged an escort (the gun-wielding type, not the other type) for the first few days of our riding. We set straight off to the police station to meet the Inspector and get things arranged for our early morning departure. The efficient, kind and welcoming experience we’d had at Kenya’s customs continued at the police station as we met both the Inspector and his deputy and spent an hour or so going over our route and plans for the 4-5 following days. They were more than happy to oblige. We left the meeting under the impression that 4 officers would be waiting to escort us from Moyale the following morning at 7am. What we awoke to was a small army. There were 8 fully armed ”police” sitting in the back of a troop carrier, each with machine guns, hand grenades, rocket propelled grenades and enough ammunition to honestly conduct a small war. Our arrogance levels increased immediately. Though these guys were officially police, their job doesn’t involve the sort of basic policing that goes on in Australia (i.e issuing infringements, breaking up fights, eating donuts etc etc). These guys spend a hell of a lot of time in armed conflict with Ethiopians coming across the border and smuggling guns and weapons through to Nairobi. And they were all young: no one older than 25 and all with the kind of gaze and mentality you normally see in men much older. They seemed hardened though very professional guys who were ready for action and they were all literally there to keep us safe over the coming days. I asked a few whether they’d been in battle and used some of the scary amounts of weaponry they were carrying. “All the time” was their response. Again, these guys aren’t ordinay police. They were as curious of us as we were of them and they were all the most kind, humble and friendly people I think I’ve ever met in my life. More than once we were told that “we’re here to protect you” and we all got the impression there was nothing we couldn’t ask for that they wouldn’t be more than happy to do (except my suggestion that if any kids throw rocks at us, they were to “take them out”). So they sat in their troop carrier, 50 metres behind us all day. We stopped for lunch, they stopped for lunch and ate with us. I felt bad as we ate our mangos, fresh bread rolls with fresh tomato, biscuits and mango juice, while they ate army rations of dried biscuits and tins of corned beef. They didn’t complain though.
That night were stayed 80kms from Moyale in a roadside town called Sololo; which didn’t consist of much more than some roadside restaurants and an actual township 7kms off the main road, down a sandy, dirt road. We stayed in the police/army camp, with a few of the police, in these little circular tin sheds that would have been no bigger than bigger than 3 metres across and consisted of nothing more than 1 bed and a small handful of personal belongings. This is where we met Arthur, a police man, who was our age and had been stationed there for 1 year and about 8 months. He has a wife in Nairobi (about 800+ kms away) who he sees every few months when he has leave to go and visit her. There is NOTHING in this police camp other than about 5 of these tin sheds, an outside toilet and a shower. When they’re not working, they literally just sit around camp (doing what, I don’t know). Arthur was so proud of his immaculate little shed. He brought us in for tea and told us all about his family. We kept trying to steer the conversation towards his job and the conflicts he’s been involved in, but he was more interested to talk about life in Kenya, Australia and show us photos of his couch, microwave and other odds and ends in Kenya. He explained that he had just joined the police (after an 18 month induction and training process) and this was his first posting. I asked him if he wished he was posted somewhere else (he lived in a tin shed for crying out loud) to which he replied “why would I wish that? My accommodation is great and I’ve got a great opportunity”. It just shows you what we (I?) take for granted. He probably makes less in a year than I do in a day, but he couldn’t have been a more welcoming and generous host and I think i’ll always remember the brief time I spent with Arthur in his camp.
Later than night, I awoke to hyenas howling VERY close to mine & Gavan’s tin shed which had the door open (it was really hot). In a state of panic, I closed the door, satisfied that I’d saved both our lives from the blood thirst pack of hyenas closing in for the kill. I asked Arthur about them the following morning to which his blasé response was “oh they come every night to drink from the damn (which was about 30m away)”. Arthur probably eats hyenas for breakfast.
So we set out on day two of our highway to hell with a different bunch of escorts; who I can confidently say don’t understand the meaning of “escort”. They immediately raced past us and waiting for us 20km down the road. We caught up, they raced off. This continued all day. Fortunately, we rode all morning without incident to a new “state” in Kenya and our next police escort for that afternoon (police from one state can’t escort into another state). We discovered that our new escorts couldn’t come with us as their one and only 4WD had broken down. They decided to send 2 men, with all of our food and water, 35km ahead on a civilian truck that was just passing through, to a guarded communications facility where they would wait for us and we could camp with them for the night. Again, the police were 2 young, kind, friendly and very humble guys who stayed up the whole night “guarding” us in the fenced and locked compound while we slept on the roof, jus t in our sleeping bags, under the most incredible star display i’ve ever seen. It was by far the most surreal experience I’ve had on this journey. The weather that night was like a hot, hot, hot summer night, so we all loved the opportunity and experience of sleeping, literally, under the stars on a roof in the absolute middle of nowhere. Still without an escort the following morning (and under the strict assurance that we would be perfectly safe), we made the final push down the highway to hell en-route to Marsabit, but not before I asked whether I could grab their guns and pose for some photos. Thankfully they were more than willing to oblige and I got the one photo I’d been craving for the last 3 days.
The last day brought a lot of wildlife. I almost ran over a big snake that slithered across my path. I later found out that said snake is “VERY venomous”. I spent the next few hours on code-red snake alert . That was up until we all saw a hyena about 30m ahead of us. I never knew they were so big and bulky. Think ‘small cow’. Thankfully, the hyena took off and didn’t come back. I spent the balance of the day on code red hyena alert, with snakes a distant memory.
So in nutshell, that’s been our last week. We knew the last 3 days were going to be hard, but not as hard as they were. I’m proud we all made it and survived that very brutal and remote stretch and am very thankful we had the chance to (at times) share some time with the young members of the Kenyan police/army. It’s definitely something i’ll never forget. So far Kenya’s quickly becoming my favourite country of the 4 we’ve been into so far. The people are incredibly friendly and kind and strangely humble. Perhaps it’s also the fact that the majority of people seem to have a strong grasp on English and we are able to communicate perfectly with them. Up until now, this hasn’t been possible in Egypt, Sudan or Ethiopia.
We have a day off in Marsabit tomorrow- with nothing of significance to do. I plan to literally and figuratively recharge my batteries and, as I always tend to do on days off, eat an unhealthy amount of food while searching for thick shakes (what’s with these thick shake cravings??).
All’s going great- we’re all healthy, happy and banding together to get ourselves through the tough times. I’m having the time of my life and still feel that I’m very lucky to be a part of this journey with these guys.
In about 1 week’s time we’ll be entering Nairobi which will be approximately 5,500kms travelled since we left. This marks both the halfway point in time and distance, which I find very hard to believe. Thankfully, as I understand it, we won’t have to travel down any roads which even compare to what we’re just spent 3 days slogging it out on...... I’m personally ok if I never ride another gravel road again.
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