The Kenya Bike Odyssey
[Music] so [Music] [Music] uh so the trans-kenya bike packing group was really born a couple of years ago back in 2019 i was cycling through africa from cairo to cape town as part of a big around the world trip and over the two months i spent in kenya i was just blown away by how much potential the country has for bike packing and just adventure travel in general because of how good it is i was actually quite surprised to find that no one had yet put together any complete bike packing routes there so two years later with my round-the-world bike trip having been derailed in south america by the pandemic i realized that as a silver lining i now have the perfect opportunity to head back to kenya and to finally make the route happen i persuaded a friend gretchen to come out and join me which she did despite never having been to africa before and we flew into the capital of nairobi with three months to put the route together i was very lucky during my first visit to kenya to have become friends with eric through a talk which i've given in nairobi super nice guy i mean eric is mr cycling in kenya so he runs the best bike shop in nairobi he organises a lot of cycling events around the country he just seems to know everyone and he has such a great knowledge of all the best places to ride a bike so eric was the first person i called once i decided to put the route together we spent a few days planning pouring over maps sketching out where we wanted the route to go and then pretty quickly we'd strapped our gear to the bikes and we were heading out to get started [Music] now is not a very large city so within half an hour from wherever you come out you're out into the farm country and you hit the trails so it's really easy to get out of the city and once you're out of the city it's gearing for the glory of the landscape [Music] planning a long distance cycling route in kenya came with a lot of challenges because the traffic can be really bad on the bigger paved roads to kenya you really want to get off-road onto the dirt roads and trails where it's quieter and usually a lot more beautiful in kenya though the majority of the land is privately owned and things are constantly changing so for finding routes you can't rely at all on the maps or even the satellite images because there's always a good chance the trail you found on the map actually goes through an area that's private and which could be closed off with no way through and things can change incredibly fast in kenya you might have a route that's absolutely fine one week and then next week someone's put up a big fence right across it and completely blocked it off and i mean this actually did happen over the three months that we were in kenya so what we needed to do was not just to put together a route but to put together a route that we were confident would still be possible for years to come and that was easier said than done yeah we had to redo quite a few sections because of that in the end [Music] when you're a cyclist you're far more at equal terms than if you're in a cup and the general population the rural areas they recognize it's different when you approach them in a in a car you you kind of disconnect it and the average dose that goes to kenya airport hotel vehicles national park and then you drive around in the natural park and you drive out back into the city airport back out it's completely insulated from the real thing from really what's on the ground and what people are about what they're doing their daily lives the daily grind the daily pledges so cycling is the best way to actually experience the people [Music] so literally day two out of nairobi during world war ii you have the opportunity to cycle as giraffe running alongside you or zebra it's a real thrill just to get us along see what happens is if you have two or three cyclists getting along together the giraffe will always spot you first and you look like a third of something running along and they don't know why you're running but you're running so they start running and zebra look up and say well if you're out for running we better start running and the buzzer will follow and everybody else will follow and everybody starts running and parallel to your direction will travel they will gallop a lot they are those who are you just loving them it's amazing [Music] so as well as figuring out where to take the roux i really wanted to incorporate as many great campsites and lodges into the project as i could with the potential for days off and side activities i mean it's a tough route and most people are going to need a few weeks to ride it so there have to be some rest days in there too and there are so many incredible places along this route you're going to want to take your time i mean already on day two you've got this gorgeous spot on lake mobasha where you can see hippos and it's just stunningly beautiful and there are you know there's monkeys climbing the trees you're protecting protecting your fruit gretchen got mugged by monkeys twice two or three times they never got my fruit [Music] for the most part you're not allowed to cycle through the national parks in kenya which kind of makes sense when there are lions the exception to that is hell's gate which doesn't have any big cats so you can ride through on a bicycle safari which is quite popular with tourists who rent bikes for it we did take the route through hell's gate just because it's an amazing place but what was really striking for me was that we actually really didn't need to as some of the best wildlife encounters we had were just along the route nowhere in particular nowhere special because all of it is special and the thing i love most about this route is how many out of the way places it takes you to places which you'd never normally see because they're not on any tourist maps and we had quite a few surprises on the roof a great example of that was this place we found on i think day three called earth camp earth camp yeah very special camp uh run by a really lovely japanese guy kaz oh we have a view here wow the highlight there is they have geothermal spas there's a lot of geothermal activity in that area and he's built spas over vents coming up from the ground so you have a 100 natural sauna and yeah i mean what a place [Music] then you we've climbed up to the top of the guru and then down through the forest and there's just nobody there and you get these occasional views out over the lake it's just monkeys yeah right people no people no traffic no traffic just just monkeys [Music] so [Music] so [Music] me [Music] [Music] being able to camp right inside the conservancy there is about as special as it gets i mean you can hear the sounds of the wildlife all around you and you get to wake up to see zebra grazing right next to your campsite it's definitely one of those places that doesn't seem quite real so being able to cycle through soi sambu was for me one of the real highlights of the route [Music] [Music] so [Music] so we were joined for a couple of weeks by another cyclist josh who happened to be in kenya at the same time we were he'd heard about what we were doing and wanted to try joining us as a guinea pig for some of the route so my name is josh i'm from england i'm here in kenya on the trans canadian bike packing route so i'm quite new to bike packing i've come out here it has been challenged but it's really it's been great and such a great way to see so much of the country i suppose in such a short actual time and with the bike you're going to places where i certainly wouldn't ever have gotten to and ever experienced and seen so i've been riding on a gravel bike which is not ideal the reason i'm on that bike however at this point i've managed the route it's been difficult but it's been doable it's been a great sort of physical challenge for myself some of the climbs have been have been epic and really quite proud of getting up them and some of the descent's scary but my favorite thing is that every day you get these breathtaking views like you would normally see in a brochure or you'd see once on a big trip or something you might get one or two of these and it just seems to be every day just huge valleys and the rift valley and these massive lakes and just the profile of the mountains and the variety of appreciation and animals with animals in the monkeys in the morning so for me just the yeah the sheer some epic beauty in the world seems the world seems pretty big out here compared to england compared to many places [Music] from lake bergoria is an easy ride down to magotio which straddles the equator there's a lodge right on the equator line so you can actually sleep with your head in the northern hemisphere and your feet in the southern hemisphere which is pretty cool um in regardsio we also got to meet william who was a massive help in putting the room together and a great friend to have in the country my name is william i'm the chief foreigner for this part of the ballet we've been working the communities to open up this place for adventure so we've got hiking trails biking trails and even four wheel drive we have the equipment running across the area and so it makes it an all year round destination and i would like to say that we welcome all of you to explore discover and enjoy so after crossing the equator the road heads steeply up into the most mountainous section of the whole route the carrier valley forms a kind of subsidiary to the main rift valley which dominates the centre of kenya the route follows the ridge line between these two enormous valleys i mean you're riding along this narrow track with these sheer drops on either side mountains all around you and it's just spectacularly beautiful and it's it's nuts yeah i think for me the kerio valley section was probably my favorite part of the entire room it's just epic [Music] so i think a lot of people have this preconception that kenya is uh quite flat and just desert right savannah and there's lions wandering around and that's kenya but the reality is although there are areas where it's quite flat the majority well certainly the majority of the route which takes place in the rift valley is extremely mountainous so there's a lot of very tough climbs it's constantly up and down it's stunning but it's not easy and it's rough [Music] for josh he turned up on a gravel bike with skinny tires and drop bars and let's just say it's not the ideal bike um let me be clearer don't do this on a gravel bike you kind of struggle josh josh definitely suffered on this route he did but he suffered with a smile yeah josh he was often in pain but he was always smiling i think he had a good time um not ideal not perfect but it's doable and it's just it's well worth it i didn't really know what to expect too much from kenya and the variety would i never would have guessed it's just every sort of 50 kilometers it's a brand new environment [Music] so although the riding is definitely challenging in terms of planning and organizing the route is really easy to follow [Music] like you don't have to think a lot we were always good prepared with water but there's food everywhere so you don't have to carry a lot of food it was a big surprise yeah people are lovely and generous they help you everywhere and you can stop anyone you can stop in anybody's homestead and say i'm tired and i can sleep in your garden tonight and you can't even tell me you're awake you're saying no it's more likely to say i don't sleep in the garden from sleep in the house it's more comfortable and you're you want to exist from sleeping that people generally open their doors and are welcome wherever you are [Music] so one of the best things about kenya is that there'll always be someone who can help if you need it no matter where you are in the country we have this epic descent down to lake baringo it's the best center for the entire route but whereas it was insanely fun for me on a mountain bike poor josh with his skinny tires was really struggling with how long and rough the track was i think his brakes weren't really up to the job he was also suffering from some minor heat stroke as we were there on an especially hot day and by the bottom of the descent he was pretty broken and we still had another hour or two of riding to do for the day it could have been a massive problem but in the end actually it was easy i mean we made it into a village and one of the locals agreed to take josh on his motorbike which was pretty hilarious but it does go to show there's always a solution in kenya people are just so nice i think that getting to know some of them is definitely one of the best things about riding there [Music] lake baringo is a really incredible place and after all the hard climbing in the mountains it's a good spot to take a day off the bike [Music] climate change has taken a huge toll on kenya huge regions of the country have been going through severe drought and famine over the last few years but at the same time water levels in more than two dozen of kenya's lakes have been going up dramatically at lake baringo the water level has risen by as much as 12 meters around 40 feet which is an insane amount causing flooding and entire areas have disappeared so taking a boat out onto the lake is a sobering experience with not just trees underwater but also buildings villages and even schools looking at the trees you can see the water line from the rainy season and it's scary just how high the market's already got climate change is something that i think a lot of people are able to ignore but it's quite literally life and death for people in places like this [Music] [Music] in terms of the roots the rising water levels meant that the track had originally planned to take ended up being completely underwater something i didn't learn until i actually got there luckily we were able to find a route that went around the flooded sections and from there you've got the toughest individual climb of the route back up the escarpment and out of the rift valley towards lake hippia so yeah very tough climb steep bad road very hot but very rewarding as the views are incredible [Music] with the climb out of the way we spent a night camped at the top of the escarpment with the rangers really cool bunch of guys and from there the trans kenya changes completely again as it heads straight out into the endless expanse of la quipia county [Music] so lycipia is the wildest and most remote part of the route and i think it's in many ways the closest to what most people will think of when they think of going on a bike trip through africa it's vast it's rugged it's exciting and it's absolutely filled with wildlife [Music] so lycabia has the second highest density of wildlife in kenya behind only the maasai mara but whereas the mara is super touristy and commercialized lycipia is still relatively untouched so it's an amazing place to head out for a safari [Music] do [Music] the section through lycipia was by far the hardest part of the route to figure out everything in general that made planning in kenya difficult was much more challenging out there there are fewer roads to choose from fewer supply points and private land is a much more sensitive issue with lots of conservancies to take into account the roads also seem to change almost constantly so maps and satellite imaging were often useless and there were also tribal tensions in certain parts that we needed to be aware of so we had to rely heavily on local knowledge to make it work yeah like if he was tough and i was still having to make tweets for that section well after we left kenya but it's so worth the effort i mean that part of the world is just spectacular so i'm really happy that we were able to make it work [Music] [Music] i think uh the last part of the whole track was just like my favorite and there were no people at all like we have seen i think two motorcycles in three days [Music] but that's the thing about kenya it really does have it all over the course of just this one route you get everything from picturesque countrysides to stunning mountains huge lakes incredible forests red desert sands wildlife and then at the end the endless skies and wide open landscapes in lakipia you've got friendly local people and you've also got solitude and remoteness as well i mean don't get me wrong the riding on the route is world class and every single day is jaw-dropping but even putting that aside i've never been anywhere with so much variety and that for me is what makes kenya one of the best places in the world for bike packing it's just like magical you feel like you cycle here and you think like oh you you're the first biker or your first cycle is going there because the people there stop seeing you um it's just it is just really special it's just really great cycling well you know i think a lot of people have a preconception of whatever it is imagining is all about and so they have an apprehension what are the roads doing uh what's the safety on the roads like what's a personal security situation like what's the disease like what's the wild life um all these concerns are very natural as to be expected what is surprising is that people do get here all of that retention is getting kind of triple away and they realize it's actually really good it's actually really really getting hit really easy to get around but just the diversity of landscape is what is so impressive so exciting and so cycle doing quite passion whatever you call it you can't beat canyon [Music] so get a mountain bike and then come come on out and get on it [Music] [Music] [Music] um [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] you
2022-10-21 06:45
