Since Jinja, I’ve been cycling on my wide knobby mountain biking tires. They are a bit tiresome on good tar, but give me a good grip when it’s muddy. “At least I don’t have any punctures,” I keep comforting myself when pushing my heavy bike on perfect roads. Some other riders have been busy fixing punctures...
Day 46: Camping during rainy season simply sucks

For the first time this morning, we’ve had to take down our tents during heavy rain. It had started raining as soon as our alarm clocks went off, and wouldn’t stop until after the last ones of us had reached the next camp. So far, so good. With a bit of proper organization and...
Day 45: Don’t resist medication that helps

The antibiotics had done the trick and killed my diarrhea overnight. I was no longer feeling sick in the morning, just low on energy. No surprise—I hadn’t slept properly in days, and not eaten much the past 48 hours. “Alex, how are you today?” Tallis asked as I poured myself some hot water in...
Day 44: One photo says more than a thousand words

We’ve been bused out of Kampala today, followed by a ferry ride to an island. This is because of the crazy traffic near Kampala. There wouldn’t have been any reasonable option for us to cycle that stretch. However, most of us liked that opportunity to rest and close our eyes. In my case, I...
Day 43: Thrive on adversity

I was the last one to take down my tent this morning. “You’ve slept in today,” Paul was surprised, used to me normally being one of the first riders up. “Didn’t sleep all night,” I commented briefly. That last half hour of snoozing was probably the best sleep I had gotten all night. “What would you...
Day 42: Rest days are meant for resting

We went on a boat trip to the source of the White Nile this morning. Afterwards, most of us wanted to go to Jinja town to obtain a local SIM card and to buy some essentials including water (which is always ridiculously expensive at our camps). We negotiated with our boat drivers to bring us...
Day 41: Trust, but verify

We’ve been crossing the border from Kenya into Uganda this morning. The procedure was relatively smooth, only the sheer number of riders in our own group to blame for any waiting times. The immigration office for Kenya and Uganda was in the same building aside of the road. Afterwards, we passed by a police...
Day 40: Don’t mess with nature’s ecosystems, or it will come back to haunt us

As mentioned yesterday, our camp last night was directly at Lake Victoria. However, “don’t expect to see the lake”, Tallis had warned us already, “they’ve had an invasion of water hyacinths.” In the morning when I went to the shore, I saw it for myself: The entire lake covered by water hyacinths, as far...
Day 39: Watch where you put up your tent!

We’ve been camping directly at Lake Victoria today. When we arrived at camp, the whiteboard announced that we could camp anywhere we liked, but were recommended not to put up our tents underneath the so-called sausage trees (to avoid potential injuries from falling sausages). So we all tried to find shady spots underneath the...
Day 38: Good stories deserve to be told, over and over again

“I’ve had a great day today,” Muzz would tell everyone at camp, “the best day so far. I’ve had a woman chase me for 10km!” “How come?” we all would ask. “I had a chat with this woman while I stopped when it rained. She was there with her four children. . . . I...