TANZANIA BICYCLE SAFARI - Muddy Roads and Soiled Pants!

(Coming across the stranded passengers from a bus stuck in the mud - Tanzania Jungle)

The thing that really impressed me the most about Burundians, was they’re LOVE for bicycles. This little nation cycles more than the Dutch and seem awfully proud about it, always cleaning their bikes in muddy puddles by the roadside. And the thing that really pissed me off, is that they were even more competitive than me! I’d see them plodding along in the distance ahead……….then, the moment I'd pass…. they'd immediately attempt to re-overtake! "What the Fuck!", I'd think to myself! You could tell they were really going for it too, shoulders bobbing up and down, though always attempting to look relaxed, disguising the grimace and pretending not to have noticed you pass! “Come of if!”, I thought to myself, you've been creeping along for the last mile then your speed triples in a split second! I was having none of it, dropping the gears and re-taking my pole position! My signature move being to pull out the mobile phone and fake a chat as I passed. The problem was however, after a 100 mile day, being involved in an uphill international cycle race was completely exhausting! And, despite their heavy steel gearless African bikes, some of these guys were seriously fit and I was just too competitive to let them have me!

I left Bujumbura in high spirits after partying with the lad working at the hotel reception.  The boss might not have been so impressed that he locked the front door of the hotel the previous evening (trapping all the other guests inside!) so he could hit the local disco with me, though I thought it was exceptional customer service. Back on the Bicicleta I headed south along Lake Tanganyika leaving the city behind me and heading in the direction of Tanzania. Tanganyika was a beast of a lake, nearly a mile deep, the second deepest lake in the world and 2nd largest by volume, stretching all the way from Burundi south to Tanzania and Zambia with the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the west side, its mountains plummeting right into the lake and clearly visible on my right hand side as I pedalled along. A decrepit world war one converted passenger ship, the heroic “MV Liemba” apparently used to set sail from Bujumbura and chug its away along the lake right down to Zambia. Apparently, it was the oldest passenger ferry in the world and was used to rescue fleeing Burundians from the current political crisis.

MV Liemba

Unfortunately, it was frequently hijacked and is now broken down and out of service. If I wasn’t so stuck in my ways and adamant about cycling every inch of the way, it was the one piece of public transport I would have loved to have taken! Heading south, the road hugged the mountainside of the lake shore, and for the first time in weeks, was flat!  It wasn't all plain sailing though, with the heavy rains the earth had tumbled off the steep mountainside and covered big sections of the road meaning lots of pushing.


For some crazy reason there was no border crossing to Tanzania on the flat lake road and instead the road swung a dramatic left at the town of Nyanza Lac and ramped upwards inland back into the giant mountains. The Chinese were to credit for its construction, cheap paper-thin tarmac taking the most direct route regardless of gradient!  Being a Brit, a country that bullishly claimed half of Africa to be its own (former British East Africa), that’s a rich thing to say! Anyway, Considering Tanzania was literally a coupe of miles ahead as the crow flies, this was more than demoralising! My final memory of Burundi on that uphill road was a woman of around my age screaming for her life running uphill away from me. I know I'm ridiculously white, but she must have seriously never seen a non-black person before and thought I was some sort of ghost!! The problem was, on the steep hill she couldn't run any faster than I could pedal, on her left hand side was a mountain and on her right was a huge drop, and I was finding it too amusing to stop and let her get away! If only the Ethiopians found me so scary!

Tanzania

Burundi had been awesome, and from what I saw not the horror story the government and media had portrayed. Maybe that was a good thing, there were zero travellers, this magical country had been all to me. Crossing the border to Tanzania was easy enough, my visa already glued into my passport from the embassy in Kigali, Rwanda. In the short section of no-mans land after departing immigration, a sign directed me across the carriage way to drive on the left, I was back in the British Colonise, all be it a remote part. A tiny understated metal sign being the only welcome to Tanzania.

Before I write any further I have a confession to make.   This last and final part of my journey is written some 6 months after my journeys end in Cape Town. Like most things on my trip, the tablet that I was using to record my adventures fell to pieces and it was hard to get the motivation to finish the blog after I had landed back in the UK. Right this second, 13.13 pm on November 22^nd 2018, I am sitting in a café at my favourite place in the whole of London, Brockwell Lido. I’ve just gone for swim in the 1930’s art deco unheated pool, where todays water temperature can only be described as “fucking freezing” at 7.6 degrees following a minus 1 overnight temperature.  Everyone in that pool this time of year are eccentric fruitcakes. Mainly middle-class hippies 20 years older than myself who despite their hippy appearance ride their bicycles to central London Law offices. After the swim everyone piles into a tiny wooden sauna on the pool side for a chit chat and to prevent the on-set of hypothermia! The conversations, on after-thought, are completely bonkers, “7 degrees Is  a perfect temperature for swimming, it’s just getting about right”, one older bloke with a badger-like beard said. To give you an idea of how cold that is, the sea on the south coast of England only gets down to 12 degrees in winter! Considering two people that week alone had to be wrapped in space blankets after falling unconscious from hypothermia, I’m not sure many would agree with that comment! I certainly enjoyed it though.

The only square being a know-it all well-spoken middle age bloke covered from head to toe in neoprene who insistently  started to lecture  me about the dangers and how its not about the bravado! Of course it is I thought....Bore off! This was a place where wetsuits are frowned upon! Why else would you swim in an unheated outdoor pool in British wintertime!?! “My goal is to push my body to its absolute limits”, I replied, not wanting to entertain the patronising conversation anymore. I think I need to get him a pass for an indoor kids pool!

Anyway, I'm waffling!.....10 lengths later some wicked endorphins were kicking in, my body was purple and had tuned from a tingling freezing sensation to misleadingly feel peculiarly warm. When the hallucinations started creeping in It was my warning to get out! Last year the record low temperature was 2 degrees, a layer of ice had to be broken to enter the water….bring it on! Feeling alive again, back in touch with the elements (as much of the elements as London life allows!) and with several friends telling me to write a book, it felt like the right time to finally finish writing the Pedaling Panther.

So, here we go, Tanzania! The home of the Serengeti, the big 5 and the roof of Africa, the snow-capped 5895 metre volcanic monster known as Kilimanjaro. I wasn’t particularly phased though.  Tanzania was at least seen as domestically stable (for African standards) and is one of Africa’s more touristy destinations. There would not be hypothermia and below 10 freezing temperatures of Alaska, stone throwers of Ethiopia or world’s highest murder rates of El Salvador and Honduras. What I did forget to factor in however, was that this part of Tanzania was a far cry from those celebrity organised tours to Kilimanjaro. I was in the remote west of Tanzania and my little road was heading straight for a remote national park full of deadly animals!

At first everything was going swimmingly, literally. The road descended down from the mountain border with Burundi and re-joined Lake Tanganyika, where I stopped overnight in the picturesque town of Kigoma on the eastern shore of the Lake. The thought of swimming in crystal clear water was one of my cravings throughout my journey and this was not the first time I’ve succumbed to that temptation, dropping hundreds of metres to a lake or ocean to go for a 15-minute dip, only having to climb the very same road at a 10^th the speed the following day to re-join the main road!  Diving into that beautiful (apparently hippo free) water at sunset was not at all regrettable and gave an instant injection of energy into my battered body. Simple pleasures like this cycling the globe  made everything about what I was doing make perfect sense.

Things all of a sudden changed very quickly. It was monsoon season. The fact that the rain was lashing down was one thing I could have dealt with, even with my 10 quid crappy Decathlon rain jacket (never trust the French!) I often found myself soaked to the core and shivering at times, though It wasn’t cold enough to do serious damage. However, the game changed a bit when the Chinese tarmac was replaced with a mud track south of Uvinza. Chaos unfolded. Infrequent but overfilled battered buses pumping out enough toxic black smoke to convince Donald Trump in climate change had compressed the mud track so much it had turned into an African ice rink! It was literally like black ice. I woke up everyday nervous to get on my bicycle. Patches of “brown ice” could not be distinguished from any other part of the road and were often disguised by a thin foil of softer mud on top.

At least once an hour my front tyre would dramatically give way without notice and shoot under the bike, slamming my head and shoulder into the ground with huge force. It would happen in a millionth of a second. With my feet clipped into my pedals there was no way I could react. My pedal choice favored speed over safety, limiting my ability to react and intensifying the crash, as I hit the deck with my feet firmly attached to the pedals! The way it happened reminded me of when I crashed my motorbike on a wet wintery day coming off the motorway slip road. I’d just ridden back from York after visiting some friends from my former University, Lancaster. Like many people who crash, I was almost home as I came off the M69 motorway at my less than inspiring hometown, Hinckley. Braking towards the roundabout at the bottom of the slip road, my front tyre gave way and folded beneath me in a milli-second, leaving me in the middle of a roundabout with the whole weight of my 175kg Buell motorcycle resting on the peg - that was pierced into my ankle! In absolute agony I was in disbelief as the first few cars drove around me watching me screaming pinned onto the tarmac. Africa may have its problems, but that lack of empathy would never have happened here! Luckily, a big lump of a bloke ran over and  impressively lifted the bike straight off me, restoring my faith in British people! Things didn’t get any better when the ambulance and police turned up accusing me of the bike being stolen and having no insurance!

Each time I crashed in Tanzania I became increasingly concerned as I lay face down in the mud, though I kept reminding myself to “have some minerals”. Cycling the world is not for pussies or the faint hearted, and I forced myself to get back in the saddle immediately! Donating my helmet to an Ethiopian man a few weeks before may have been a symbolic moment to mark the end of the stoning, but was not the smartest move on hindsight! It was a good lesson to think twice before ditching my kit. Striking the balance between being light enough to push hard and do the big 100+ mile days yet having adequate equipment and food was a constant battle. Later that day the balance was wrong once again and I found myself in trouble. All my food rations had been consumed and there was no sign of civilisation in sight on the muddy jungle road. You consume huge calories exerting that much energy cycling 12 hour + days and it wasn’t the first time I’ve been caught out. I found myself very quickly going from feeling fine to dizzy and faint headed, a dangerous position to find yourself in, even in civilised countries. On the horizon ahead, I could see a big painted telegraph pylon braking the treeline. Throughout the 3^rd world I’ve often found primitive huts and people living where energy infrastructure breaks miles of nature. Maybe this is because these people are tapping into the power networks enabling them to live more remotely. Luckily this was no exception. More hungry than scared I wobbled over to the mud hut sitting at the base of the pylon and peered my head inside.

To my great relief, three extremely poor but smiley indigenous Africans sat around a fire sheltering from the rain outside. Immediately I felt welcome and didn’t have to ask to be offered some warm food from the black pot sitting on the naked flames. It was a root vegetable I didn’t even recognise, never mind name, but  tasted delicious. How much of that was down to my state of complete starvation I’ll never know! I’ve rushed around the world at break neck speeds, but sitting in that hut was one of those moments I’ll never forget. I had left behind a world of hustle and bustle and obsession to have the latest I phone, I was now sitting in a remote mud hut with indigenous Africans. Eighteen years later my “A” level business lesson was finally making sense, Maslow’s hierarchy of basic needs! We had food, water, warmth and rest, and everyone in that hut including myself were feeling pretty good about it. For that moment, I thought about the people back home, jammed on the tube in London, chasing higher wages whilst mundanely tapping away on computers in concrete offices………..and realised that right now I was living life, I wouldn’t have chosen to be in any other place in the world in that moment than that mud hut!

What was becoming increasingly scary as I progressed south was the fact I was now very much on my tod, busses passing by were becoming increasingly less frequent, down to only a few passes a day. The jungle vegetation became forever denser forming a wall either side of the single-track mud road, imprisoning me a narrow  jungle corridor. This was wild Africa, Big 5 animal country, and I was getting scared. Apprehensively pedalling into the jungle, a family of 10 chimps ran past me. This coupled with unfamiliar sounds from the jungle all around me and unrecognisable animal crossings in the distance ahead started to play havoc with my mind. The bravado was gone and I was no longer my confident intrepid cocky self! Despite the big painful wipe-outs, walking was definitely not an option! The less time spent in this environment the better, I was on the verge of my inner pants becoming the same colour as the road on which I pedalled.

Ahead of me on the horizon was a group of men all standing in the roadway. In many countries this was not a welcome sight, but in Africa, my fear of animals was significantly higher than my fear of man and lots of men represented safety from animals! As I approached the men they just stood staring intensely at me. Moments like this would have scared the crap out of me on my first day on the road. But the confidence you gain after being on the road for months on end becomes invaluable. I had learnt to fake confidence and never show I was scared or intimidated. I  immediately approached the men grinning like a Cheshire cat, looking directly into there eyeballs as I stretched out my hand to shake each of there’s one by one (see pic at beginning of chapter)

A smile is universally contagious all around the world and eventually seemed to do the trick. Especially when pulling a map out, men the world over seem to love maps and hauling around to discuss directions, and this was no exception! These people were stranded because there bus had slipped off the road in the thick mud and were awaiting being rescued.


It may not have been the most luxurious of vehicles, but after 4 continents the bicycle had only once or twice been broken to a stage that it could no longer be pedalled! And even then I could at least push or carry it. It did however offer no protection from Lions, a point reinforced by the men stranded on the road. “Many lions here, very dangerous, you not scared”? “Nah I’m fine” I lied. Rather naively, I was completely clueless to the dangers around me and had done zero research. This is a very stupid way of traveling I realise, but I figured if I were to ask people and be told about the dangers I would be more scared to continue pedalling! Naive bravery was the way I rolled, my only rule was no lifts and I was determined to stick to it at any cost. Though I cant lie, those “Many Lions!” comments had just made everything a LOT more scary!

That night I didn’t want to hang around, my biggest fear was being caught out by the sun set. Big cats would hunt at night and I wanted to camp as close to civilisation as possible. I pumped my legs to get over the hilly jungle terrain no longer feeling the pain from falling down. Literally as the sky tuned black I arrived in the small village I had been gunning it for, the first civilisation in miles. I gave an old lady a tip at the first house I came across and she allowed me to sleep in one of her tiny mud huts. I pitched the inner as a protection from both animals and any creepy crawlies, with vivid memories of waking up outside surrounded by scorpions in Sudan! The hut was barely big enough for me to lye flat, had a gap big enough between the straw roof and mud base for pretty much any animal to climb through and an open-door way wide enough for bariatric patients I had to block with my bicycle. Rationally It was no safer than sleeping on the floor outside! Though if psychologically it gave you the confidence to sleep most the night, then job done!

If the threat of animals that had gone before me was scary, then it was only a warm up for what I was about to encounter, the following day would be one I will never forget! That night I arrived at the village of Sitalike. Compiled of now more than a dozen tin houses and a couple of very basic guest houses, Sitalike sat literally a stones throw from the border of the very remote Katavi animal national park. When I say guesthouses, think more tin hut than travellodge! I knocked on the door of the first, the facilities on offer at this establishment included 4 walls and a dirty bed, though without some of the more exuberant luxuries such as a running water or a shower! I chose to upgrade and selected the second more high end option  complete with a bucket of water to bathe in. Though when normality is a tent the bucket was welcomed with open arms! If nothing more, cycling the world definitely makes you appreciate the simple things in life!

Before checking into the Hilton, I decided to ride my bicycle down the hill to the parks entrance. A few hundred yards after the passing the last tin house the jungle intensified and the road terminated as it flattened out into a bridge crossing. That river signalled the entrance to the Katavi National park. A rusty steel barrier and abandoned wooden hut being the only other acknowledgement I had arrived in a Jungle where man is not numero uno. Other than the sounds of some unfamiliar birds it was eerily quiet. This was no Serengeti, there were no Toyota Land Cruisers zooming around on Safari loaded with affluent American tourists. I’d always craved the road less travelled, but this time it was making me particularly nervous. Right now I was instead wishing for a steady stream of touristy jeeps  to break the deadly silence and frighten away and opportunistic animals! The Katavi National park was anything but touristy, the least visited park in Tanzania, tourism did not exist here, it was essentially a mud track through 4471 square kilometres of animal kingdom!

As the sun began to set I turned around to ride my bicycle back up the hill into the village, seriously shitting myself about what I was considering doing in 12 hours time. By now, everyone knew who I was in the village of Sitalike. A white boy that looks like a grown up Milky Bar kid can’t make 2 passes of a remote African village without becoming famous! I returned to my hotel for a bucket shower and popped out to buy some food from a street vendor, an attractive girl about half my age who was squatting on the dirt floor cooking on an open fire. Dining alfresco on a plastic chair eating some local grub under the bright night stars should have been a great experience, though I couldn’t help but think about being eaten by a lion!  The butterlies flying around my stomach were playing havoc with my mindset and the pedalling panther was beginning to feel like the pedalling pussy cat!  Then, with a mouth full of meat and vegetables, a voice startled me, “What will you do tomorrow!?” Like I wasn’t nervous enough already, a complete stranger who seemed to know both me and my intentions was giving me some serious Goosebumps.  The middle aged local man ressured me further still with his comments of, “many aninals, very dangerous, the park ranger will take your bicycle, no bicycles or motorbikes allowed, are you not scared!?” and more worrying still, “its been raining, lions come to the road when it rains!” It had indeed been raining! Before I knew what was going on other men joined the conversation with even more worrying comments! “I’ll be fine, I’m not scared!” I replied, with the conviction of a Rolf Harris appeal, not even convincing myself never mind the jury!

My mind was in turmoil, was I being a complete pussy by contemplating taking a lift, or was cycling tomorrow morning more suicidal than stupid?! The last few years of my life I’ve made a purposeful effort to take more risks and really thrived off the results. Was this one risk too far, unnecessary stupidity not calculated risk taking? My only rule was, NO LIFTS! Cycling a continent to me should be exactly what it says on the tin, every inch of it. I’d met a handful of cyclists on my round the world journey who self-labelled themselves as having cycled continents. Though whenever I pushed them on the subject of taking lifts found that virtually all had opted for the back seat of a car or bus when the going got tough! Ethiopia being a classic example. How can you brag about cycling the world if you sat on a bus with your bike strapped to the roof for half of it!?  I wasn’t going to be that fraudulent pussy! Since I had left Delhi, the only lift in the whole of Asia, the Americas and Africa up until now was a very short ride in Egypt when the police chief of my escorts ordered his 6 men to throw my bike into the back of a pickup at one of the checkpoints. That was already one too many and was still grinding on my conscience. Though this was a National Park I kept reminding myself, a different league of danger and stupidity to what I’d done before! The fine line between adventurer and idiot had been crossed, yet I was still so tempted!

On my way back to my hotel I saw a middle-aged man sitting outside on a bench, he was the final person I was to speak to that night.  And for the final time I asked, “Is it safe to cycle through the National Park?” …………….“YES!” he replied, “it is safe, the animals will not come to the road”, not quite believing what I was hearing, I probed further, “And may I ask what is your job?” to which the reply was an even more incredible, “A PARK RANGER”!!!! After so much doom and gloom I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing! Was I prepared to ignore everything that had been said before on the strength of a so-called park ranger!? ABSOLUTELY!!!

Ten long hours later after perhaps the worst sleep in the history of mankind the pedalling panther was less than roaring to go! I packed my bike early morning and rolled the short distance downhill to the parks entrance. The rusty barrier was still open next to the empty rangers hut. I waited in silence hoping for the sound of a motorcar, anything to disrupt the deadly silence of the jungle. A couple of old trucks had threatened to pass but disappointingly pulled up and stopped in the village centre. An overladen lorry crawling along at bike speed would have been ideal, but this was wishful thinking even for an optimist like me! Right now I just wanted anything to break the deadly silence of the jungle road and scare away any big cats still out from last nights hunt. I desperately didn’t want to be the first vehicle of the day to make the jungle pass!

The anticipation was gruelling, but then, in the distance I could hear the faint rumble of a motorcar engine in the distance. The rumble grew louder and louder and a small car appeared in the distance! I clipped my shoes into the pedals, began spinning my legs and chased it down like a panther after its pray! The joy was extremely short lived, moments after passing the bridge to officially enter the park, the road which had descended to the river crossing began to climb, and the car disappeared out of sight! As I stared hopelessly ahead into the jungle I was left wondering why I had placed so much faith in following a car, it was gone in 60 seconds and I was riding a bicycle not a motorbike! What a stupid plan!!

I had just had to hope that all the animals were busy deep in the jungle. Though this hope was quickly dashed too! I kid you not, but within a minute of entering the park and hear a huge “ROAR”, turned to my right-hand side and saw 2 hippos in the river no more than 20 metres away from me! Hoping the hungry hippos were a one off, I looked dead ahead and focused my mind on turning the pedals as quickly as possible and blocking out any unfamiliar sounds! Less than a mile later I was surrounded by monkeys on both sides, though these guys were happy to leave the panther in peace. I just couldn’t help but wonder what else was roaming around the Katavi National Park. The numerous green wooden signs on my right hand side stating “DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS!” did my nerves no favours!

“IDIOTIC FIREMAN SELF-TITLED PEDALING PANTHER EATEN BY LION TRYING TO CYCLE THROUGH REMOTE AFRICAN NATIONAL PARK!”

I could already imagine the headlines in the tabloid newspapers! Though by now I was in too deep to turn around, which could have been equally as dangerous anyway. The park was only 35 miles across by road but each minute felt like an hour. At least when I’d cycled through Alaska and the Yukon I’d done some preparation; I had a Bear spray and knew to play dead if I was attacked by a Grizzly Bear and fight back if It was a Black Bear. But right now I’d done no research and was just a clueless idiot! My excuse to myself was that being naive was less scary than being acutely aware of all the dangers! Should I be as quiet as a mouse or make as much noise as possible as I rolled through the jungle?

“CRASH, THUMP, BANG!” Out of nowhere a noise erupted with such titanic force that the ground vibrated around me! My pants were already the same colour as the soil in the split second my head shot to the left to see what had happened. Not a lion, but a huge giraffe towered above me and galloped away crashing through the trees! The vegetation was so dense we had not seen each other despite only being about 3 metres apart, the huge beast seemed to be as startled as me! Unnecessary risk taking it might have been but Jesus Cristo I felt alive!

My only break in that whole game reserve, the longest 35 miles of my life was when 2 men coming the other way parked by the side of the track in an old Land Rover Defender. For once I was able to let my guard down, have an almighty leak and a quick snack. The adrenaline was pumping so hard I don’t think I realised quite how knackered I was.  The sign which marked the end of the national park could not have come quick enough and I let out an almighty yelp as I passed it! Civilisation, tarmac and torrential downpours returned as I approached the Zambian border and briefly sheltered from the rain in Sumbawanga, capital of the Rukwa region. Its name translates as “throw away your witchcraft” as a warning to the barmy spiritual healers who claim they can treat everything from the African sin of homosexuality to deadly diseases for a hefty fee.

Road to Zambia

Nothing is a surprise in Africa, and the main road to the Zambian border was an un-signposted bumpy mud single track branching off the newly paved tarmac. The lack of signage made me overshoot the turn off by several miles,  back on course after a u-turn my speed dropped by 90% as I pedalled and pushed through the muddy bog, making it to the last town in Tanzania, a simple pitstop known Mtai before nightfall. It was a chance to get some supplies and fix my battered bicycle. I chose one of the better guesthouses in town where I got chatting to another guest also passing through. He asked me in which direction I had travelled, somewhat coincidentally he had also taken the same road through the Katavi National Park and reached for his phone to show me some  pics he had taken on that exact same road literally a day before I had passed through. I gasped…………….the road was covered with half a dozen Lions!!! 

Yet another lucky escape and cat life lost! bring on Zambia!