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These last few days since my previous update have been extremely tough, another test, another beguilement of my reason as I trundle along from destination to destination. They have each, preeminently of course, come with a great sense of achievement, meeting many inspiring people along the road as well as the scenery, provoking huge beauty as I reach for the X on my map. This current epoch, since I last wrote something down, has been characterised by ascents up sloping and towering mountains. The Greek Philosopher Heraclitus theorised that the road up and the road down is one and the same; I would have to disagree from my own recent experiences.
Since I last put my thoughts to print, I have travelled almost 800KMs, had just one puncture (seven now all together), had my first proper night in the tent, crossed from Tanzania to Malawi and had the onset of chaffing. After my crash and the resulting restart; both, mentally and physically. It hasn’t stopped me. I was eager get back in the saddle and find the vanishing point on the horizon. My extensive rehab regime, of eating cake with my leg up coupled with my final night of reality with the kind hosting of Jo Mayers. She provided a sublime curry; together with everything else made the first morning a difficult psychological battle. Blessed with good signal, I was helped by Voltaire as I re-listened to his Candide. Candide’s blinding optimism in spite of pitiless bad luck and awful decision making seemed easily relatable. I coughed out a few short breathless laughs as I took on the roads around the Soa Hill Forest Reserve, the rice paddies and the busy road from Iringa to Mbeya. That first morning, after the restart, I took my stitches out with my bare hands and then used them to floss my teeth, like Ed Stafford - I am thriving not just surviving.
In my last write up, I think I mentioned about my, then record, a near vertical climb of 1500feet in a morning; I can now top that… As I have now done about three 1500 METRE ascents in 3 days. One by foot and the others by my now trusty steed. The first of these climbs was on the road after Mbeya and the South-Western ledge of Tanzania before Malawi. I passed through the city looking for an ATM and a kiosk for credit on my phone, Mbeya is a bustling place filled with the contrasting scores of motorbike taxis that loaf on the roadside. It served its purpose as a relief station before the day’s long rise ahead.
The views have been from another world. Think Land Before Time. Hills on top hills with trees ruling as kings, the vegetation is greener, deeper, richer and rolls on and on. It has been breathtaking, not only due to the herculean effort to get up those Pangean hills. Energy sapping and a heat-clinging climb, as I go against angles so acute that trucks slowed to a crawl around me as they ground their way up. This allowed me to cling on and be hauled up much more elegantly then my own puffing, but self-sufficient attempt. At first, I thought that I would be paying for my lift with the front row of my teeth, but after dodging some potholes and just keeping my grip - I tagged alongside like a pilot fish to a great whale. This happened a couple times and gratefully took some of the sting out of the ascent.
As I rhythmically pulsed up each contour without any assistance, each town I passed grew cooler and cooler, each of these settlements had their own identifying agricultural crop. I went through tobacco village, tomato hamlet, tomacco town, carrot town and then finally a cabbage outpost (Malawian tomatoes are wow.). Cabbage town or scuma-town had scores of men with their cabbages beside them and as the buses arrived they would shove them through the windows to their customers. It was a lively place, lots of laughter as I bemusedly had my final chipsie-mayai of Tanzania - at one point a cabbage boy was chased out of town by another. Then just before I set off, for the great pleasure of going down hill to the border, I heard that another cyclist had come through this town a day earlier. Like the many other rumours I had heard of fellow, prevaricate, saddle bound travellers; again, it looked like we had passed each other like ships in the night.
I met and conquered the border the next day early in the morning and was just sitting outside the visa HQ pondering on the WhatsApp group (mentioned in last edition) and how the group was now 60 people strong - all cyclists, all in Africa - when lo and behold! I hear my name shouted back across from Tanzania. A blonde Dane with a bike looking much more suited for the African roads then mine appeared. For the record, I have been loving all the waving, smiling and greeting from my temperamental roadside fan club of Kenyans and then Tanzanians, but this has come with limited communication. So to have a chance of sharing my trailblazing tales while hearing Daniel’s, has been a timely change.
Daniel started in his hometown in Denmark 30kms from the border with Germany and having gone through Palestine and Israel had travelled over 9000 kms to get to Malawi. That night I first struck camp and clapped eyes on the flat bottomed beauty that Is Lake Malawi.
Daniel is an interesting person, having been convicted for 3 years in the making, smuggling and selling of Mephemphitemine across the border in Germany. An Arian Jesse Pinkman. Danish prison sounded pretty relaxed, as he was given a bicycle and permission to cycle out through a forest each day to learn his trade as a blacksmith. Sounds much like the open prison of Holleslay Bay in Suffolk coined Holiday Bay and made famous by one infamous inmate named Jeffrey Archer. After tinned baked beans and peaches for supper, I awoke the next morning smacking my teeth together with a great sense of satisfaction, just as a wspider landed on my head - barely spoiling the moment (pictured). My tent is not comfortable, looks more like something abandoned on the last day of a festival and I can only fit in it if I lie diagonally across, however, not to be effete and as a neophyte happy camper I have nothing to complain about.
Daniel and I said goodbye the next day as he pushed on to a small village where he had arranged to stay with a local there and I wanted to visit the missionary settlement of Livingstonia. Setup by Presbyterian Scots in the wave of missionaries after Dr. Livingstone’s death in the latish 19th Century. It has since achieved relative success within the region with a thriving University for Malawians. The only issue with getting to this place you have to trek up a 1500 metre mud path. So, I left my bike at the bottom with a Dutch guy called Eddie and I climbed up, helped by a local simpleton called Django (the D is silent) - who showed the shortcuts that steeply cut across the winding paths up to the mission. He had an 11th toe, either for grip or for luck, I do not know. The settlement was put on top of the mountain as a way to escape the disease carrying mosquitos, three times the Scots made attacks up the enormous, dirty and great African hill to escape Malaria and only after the third attempt did they get high enough to avoid any more insect carried diseases. I can see why it took three goes at it, as I made my climb in 4 and a bit hours. My blood coagulating, I thought of the great advice for ‘in the tropics one must before everything keep calm’ as Django asked for more money at the top. It was a crumbly old place, steeped in history with a heavy looking bell that had been shipped all the way from Scotland, now resting like a sepulchre in the centre of town (the bell famously had fallen and broken once it arrived in the town and sits as a monument to the feat of getting it up there in the first place) this as well as the small shops with curious names like ‘Let’s go shop now’, ‘Mrs Binda Right Price’ and the tiniest of all called ‘Abraham’s Shopping Centre’. It was well worth the pilgrimage as I stayed in a treehouse tent on stilts right on the edges of the steep hills and later, I was to hear that Daniel was robbed in his village. A lucky escape or presbyterian providence? Anyway, I have since met another cyclist called Richard - in Nkhata Bay, a Swede, who looks like a castaway/homeless Bjorn Bork. He drives ferries from Sweden to Germany. He is very Swedish and with his accent pronounces rain, Alex and dreams - ‘wain’, ‘Alvex’ and ‘dweams’.
The next day, I made my third climb in as many days, back up the same stretch of mountain - Mt Chimbe, which looks like Rio DeJaneiro without the sprawl of humans. It was a merciless crawl up, as I left late, having had to get down from Livingstonia and the Mushroom Farm Lodge (tent on stilts) I had stayed at; the sun was up and my Chelsea shirt went from royal blue to a deep navy. Once at the top, I was a somnambulist and struggling to get myself back down the other side from Chitamba Bay towards the large city of Mzuzu just 130kms away, just when a French couple on a motorbike stopped to say hello. They had ravelled from Namibia and had the guile to ask if I was hot - I said bon voyage sardonically and carried on dripping from my chin.
I have been asked by one avid reader on how I am coping with this mental and physical battle, churning out the kilometres like a steamboat up the Congo. So far it has been mostly music and the odd podcast when signal is there. For me and many others, music has sound tracked my life and living life on shuffle you get a cheap boost of energy when something decent comes on. So now, let me take you into my garden shed of music. I will give you a dose of my musical appetite and an anecdote - I recommend plugging in some headphones and taking your time with this.
Music and the road go together like coffee and cream - smooth, revitalising, a pair that compliment and harmonises with each other in a swirling palliative liquid. At the very start I tried leaving Nairobi like a Tarantino film, as my new chain grated and made dodgy noises as it slowly became in-synced with my new Japanese steeled cassette - the first hill was an amateur display, but I did it in style to this one - Little Green Bag, George Baker Selection. It can be anything that hits the spot, as a song perfectly matches your mood, landscape or whim. This can be a deeply personal and seminal song like Forever Young by Bob Dylan or Zorbing by Stornaway; causing a a different, but familiar feeling of another salty drip roll down my face; for instance I pushed through the long and flat roads between Namanga and Arusha in the North of Tanzania, as Giraffe cantered away from my own renditions. Or, it can be the voice of Charles Bradley giving me my dose of Sunday blues, as I cycled through sheets of tropical rain with just my ski jacket for protection, as I steamed along towards the town of Babati (just before my accident) - I could sing the blues after some of the recent climbs and ‘Heartaches and Pain’ has so far been the least of it.
Another from my shuffle’s greatest hits, has to be Graham Nash’s Better Days - just when I crested a tough hill south of Nairobi past Karioja this one burst out from my headphones. Put this one and let it spin all the way. Powerful. Occasionally, if I want to be transported back to the green pastures of England with its wooly inhabitants or reminded of City of Newcastle Golf Club - I’ll be shown the way back by Ralph Vaughn Williams’ Lark Ascending. Suddenly the hills of North Malawi are the shires of England and I am warmed to think of those dark satanic mills. Only two days ago as I write this, I made the arduous pursuit towards Mzuzu after the large and sweaty climb up Mt Chimbe (french couple incident…), I was 20kms from the city and dusk had been and gone, leaving a dirty, yellow and low hanging tropical Moon like a dipping lantern given too much slack. I was truly racing with all my lights on, as well as a head torch abound my head. I rarely engage and go into full racing position, hands interlocked with the ram’s horns handle bars, but this was the time. I was flying trying to beat what was left of the light. 25kms/hr, 30kms/hr, to 35kms/hr - hammer and tongs stuff, just when this dark and stormy one spun on the selector - Collisions, Bredren. Phwoar. Now, with Gibson sadly going into administration and for those of my readership who enjoy a heavy, classic rift - this has been my sleeper in my rift valley playlist: Paperhouse, Can. Great song and band. While I am here - my winner of 2017 was Mount Kimbie, Marilyn. Now, for a little something African, which has to be beamed out from the sound waves of the steamy and jungly Malawi, especially now, as I sit Lakeside enjoying a Sea Breeze and a paddle. It’s got to be the great Salif Keita and his Maddan (the original of an overplayed mix). Salif is not only one of Malawi’s great musicians, but has a story and a half. Born rich, an equivalent of an aristocrat in Malawi, as well as an Albino; he gave it all up and left his family and stature to be a long suffering, people serving musician.
So there you have it - a brief relief for those back home curious of my tales of the tropics as I descend further towards Mr Kurtz. I am currently Jack ashore, sitting in a traveller town of Nkhata Bay which is full of tepid, supercilious and overweight backpackers. It seems wherever there is a spot of natural beauty and it’s cheap, they flock and multiply as well as pile on the pounds as they binge eat, smoke and drink talking about all the countries they have been to. ‘You have to go to Tel Aviv.’ They all seem to walk very slowly, play the guitar or ukulele over their paunch and one tried to sing. Still nothing on Will Monroe’s a capella ‘Whistle’.
The road beckons. Out