Day 167-171: Nairobi to Gilgil

March 18, 2025 to March 22, 2025

The road out of Nairobi was busy as we expected. There’s a lot of people living here. The main highway is dirty and full of trucks. And the trucks all like to blow lots of diesel fumes. We had tossed up riding north toward Mt Kenya but have decided to head NW toward the rift valley and more in the direction of Uganda.

We spend most of the day climbing out of Nairobi to the escarpment of the rift valley. Pretty impressive view of the valley.

We took a dirt road down the escarpment past some settlements. The ride took us longer than expect so we were caught short as it got dark. We asked around at a few likely places – were told to try the vocational college further on. So, we did. We thought we’d arranged with the security guard to stay in the school grounds, so spent the rest of the afternoon light talking to the students who happened to be hanging around the school. They were a pretty nice bunch of kids. Common with many interactions with Kenyans, when they find out we’re from Australia (and I guess this could be any country that isn’t Kenya) they want to know how to get there, how we can help them get a visa and whether there are any jobs for them there. Highlights how lucky we are being able to travel at will almost anywhere.

The upshot was the security guard decided he wanted a ‘tip’ that was significantly more than we’d pay for a hotel room (another example of us being ‘walking bags of money’), so we left and tried to find something more welcoming. Of course, we had a flat tyre as well on the few kilometres into the nearest town (great fun fixing a flat on the dirt in the dark!). But it worked out well enough, we pulled into a non-descript (this was about to change) compound with a sign ‘Safari Lodge’. There was a bar (boo! more loud music), a couple of terrible rooms (even below our rather basic standard), and a patch of dirt we could put the tent. We gladly took the dirt (right next to some flashing LED lights) and got ready for terrible night. One last option appeared, a function room that was almost filled with bench seats and had (oddly) red LED lights and a series of call buttons to summon more drinks. We rearranged the furniture and erected the tent in the room. This ended up being great – quiet, clean (inside our tent), out of the rain (which came down most of the night) with a toilet close by. Ended up far better than camping in the school (and a fraction of the price).

Student keen for a chat. Shame we couldn't stay but ended up...

Here...at least we had shelter from the rain

We didn't see the wall art until the next morning

Next morning (once the rain stopped), we headed out, first to eat and then climb Mt Longonot. A volcano with a neat circular crater. The ranger told us that the climb and walk around the rim takes over five hours on average. It is at altitude (~2500m) but not sure what they’re doing – it took us three. Since we started late because we’re allergic to rain, this meant it was mid afternoon when we were ready to start cycling for the day. Too late for us, so we slunk back to the town we stayed last night and decided to stay in the same Safari Lodge. Which was now rather easy to describe as the ‘condom hotel’. Painters had been working at transforming the grey brick wall exterior of the compound into an advert for Kiss Condoms. They used a stencil for the outline, but quite a lot of skill by the painters to hand paint the advert on the wall. Still, it was a quiet place to sleep.

Next stop was part way around Lake Naivasha, which only took 2 hours of riding, but we had to stop in the town of Naivasha on the way to complete some essential jobs: buy a SIM card (can you believe we went almost a week without a phone data connection?!?!), get some more cash (ATMs mysteriously absent since leaving Nairobi), and raid the supermarket (more yoghurt, yum!). We added a bonus item to the list – hiding under a roof as an afternoon storm swept through. We saw more zebra and giraffe just outside of town. It feels like we passed an important threshold today – we did stop to have a look, but didn’t bother to take a photo.

Lake Naivasha is popular for the hippos and camping very close to them. Apparently, there are buffalo as well. The three strands of electric fence seem to keep out the hippos (which we saw plenty of after dusk and some within a few metres), but I doubt the buffalo would be too worried about the fence.

From this camp we planned to ride through a national park and then the rest of the way around the lake. Another change of plan – there’s a rally race ongoing right now the Kenyan Safari Rally. Half of the park was closed while they got ready for one of the stages. So instead of riding through the park, we left the bikes at the entrance and walked a 23km loop. The cliffs were somewhat impressive, and there were a few animals (zebra, giraffe, warthog, gazelle(s), antelope, hartebeest, a lone (lost?) wildebeest, some other unidentified herbivores (now identified as a Common Eland), and a troop of baboons, one of which stole Cath’s lunch), but we’d seen all of this from the side of the road so it was a bit underwhelming. Especially when we had walked 7 km to the start of the track to see the gorge and were accosted to pay another entry fee (walking bags of cash again). The long walk took a lot of the day and hence killed the idea of riding on, so we returned to the campground and set everything up again. Lucky, we did stay another night because this is when we saw the majority of the hippos by the lake.

Further round the lake, just by the side of the road, we saw many giraffe families, some with very young calves (maybe a week old). Oh and zebra, baboons, warthog, gazelles -basically the same set that we’d seen in the (somewhat expensive) national park. We’re now in Gilgil. We were aiming for Nakuru, but when we stopped here for a late lunch, the clouds blew in and it rained for a couple of hours. Being allergic to rain, we pulled into a cheap – but surprisingly clean and comfortable – hotel. Ate, did the daily chores (filtering water for the next day, cleaning whatever clothes we could, finding a shop, fixing the holes in the mosquito net) and tried to catch up on the blog! Photos might have to be added in a few days, when we find a reliable internet connection.

Just on the side of the road, no need to pay the entry fee to the park in the end

Just checking us out with her ~1 week old calf on the right 😍

Today's ride: 185 km (115 miles)
Total: 8,582 km (5,329 miles)

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