March 23, 2025 to March 30, 2025
Day 172-179: Gilgil – Uganda Border
We made it to Nakuru the next day, only about 45km on the main road. Lots of trucks and hence lots of diesel fumes. We needed a couple of days off in Nakuru to make some plans – or rather, buy some tickets to fix some plans. We now have a flight ticket from Africa to Europe, and a rough plan for the next half a year. And a rougher plan for the months following that. That’s enough planning for now.
Leaving Nakuru we left the main road and took a “B” class road (the B4 if you’re interested). We’re sticking to B and C class roads for the meantime. The rainy season has started. While this drops the temperature, provides some nice cloud cover, and increases the humidity, it makes a lot of the gravel roads significantly more challenging. Think: deep soft mud. More of a challenge than is necessary, so we’ll stick to asphalt for the next month or so (rainy season is all of April). The A roads seem to be good for trucks, and hence bad for us.
Our B road turned into a C road. It took us three days, but the next 180km was relatively low traffic, great roads and some great views. We rode to the western edge of the rift valley and climbed out of the valley. The views from the top of the escarpment were much more dramatic than the eastern edge of the valley.
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It was fortuitous that we were at the edge of the escarpment close to the end of the day. We started asking around for a place to camp. One guy asked us where our long bike was. A little confused at the time, we worked out that he meant the tandem bike of a couple who had passed through a month earlier (who Cath is in contact with on WhatsApp). After a few tries, a security guard let us into the grounds of a hotel that had been closed since Corona times (~ 5 years already!). We perched our tent on the porch of one of the chalets with a spectacular view. We were 1300m above the valley. The escarpment is steep enough that it looks like a cliff. That must be something like what it looks like to fly…
We had plans to ride along the edge of the escarpment to Iten, then back down the other side of the range – but when we woke it was to a pea-soup fog. Not much point riding further and with more elevation in the cold fog, so we took the direct way toward Eldoret. Good choice because we basically had a free ride – rolling most of the way into town (50 km at 20 km/h). Eldoret is a big place, although nothing much to see after finding food and a supermarket and a bakery, but we got stuck there for a night. Lucky as a storm rolled through and it rained all night.
Leaving Eldoret we needed to take a short section of the A104 – another A road and too many trucks. We turned off shortly afterwards onto the B14 which didn’t fit the pattern we’d come to expect. This B road didn’t have a wide shoulder (or any shoulder in some places) and had quite a bit of traffic heading toward Kitale (with us). We only got pushed off the road a few times. The drivers are generally considerate enough in their own way. They just expect motorbikes to get out of the way and cyclists with panniers look just like a motorbike. The saving grace is the traffic moves slowly and is looking out for all sorts of hazards (donkeys, cows, potholes, cyclists…) so it doesn’t feel too bad.
Kitale has a bad vibe - more people hassling us for money, in a more aggressive manner than we’d encountered in Kenya. Drugs perhaps – don’t know. Shame, because it’s the last town we’ll see in Kenya. The room was pretty cheap, and we’ve realised we’ve stayed in cheap hotels or guest houses almost every night in Kenya. The time we needed to camp because there was nothing around, we ended up paying about the same as we’ve paid for a simple room. This is just our reality in Kenya – we couldn’t make free camping work like it can in other countries – we feel like walking bags of cash.
The route from Kitale was to go around Mt Elgon – on the border of Kenya and Uganda. We weren’t sure that the road was paved, but it turned out the road is completely amazing. New road (has to be less than a couple of years old). Wide shoulder. The vehicle traffic stopped almost completely at Kitale, and it was just us, a bunch of motorbikes and some tractors. And some potentially amazing views of the massive Mt Elgon. “Potentially” because it’s the wet season and the top of the mountain was in cloud. But still impressive. And a great road. If only all the roads in Africa (or the world!) were as good as this. The amazing road continued over the border into Uganda. Hopefully it keeps this up – if it does it might be hard to pry us out of Uganda (even if we have a flight to Europe….)
Today's ride: 353 km (219 miles)
Total: 8,935 km (5,549 miles)
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