From Maun

Leaving Ghanzi I catch glimpses of the sun, already blazing yellow, through the gaps between the buildings and the trees that line the road north. It is later than I usually set off and the wind is already flowing towards me. I am heading north-east on the A3, 110 km across the Kobe Pan, towards a village called Kuke, which I know as nothing more than a dot on the map. After a long ride under the scorching Kalahari sun I turn off onto a sandy track, which winds through circular wooden huts. I ask a group of women, who are giggling under a tree, whether I can get water here. They point me to a wooden pen in the midst of a throng of people. There are young men thrashing donkeys wildly and women pushing rickety wheelbarrows loaded high with tanks of water. I wheel my bike across a dusty football pitch, flanked with leafy camelthorn trees, and queue up for water. A young girl runs up to me, grabs the bottles from my hands and fills them. A crowd of children has gathered around me and more and more approach. They laugh at my shorts, my straggly beard, and the streaks of sun-cream and salt that are smeared across my flushed cheeks.

While I sit in the shade and take a long drink, the children sit on the logs beside me and the branches above. They stare expectantly and chat loudly in clicks, the language of the San Bushmen. I take some photographs and they tussle with each other to get in front of the lens, posing like action movie heroes. The light fades and gradually the children disperse, leaving me eating a tin of beans next to three young boys who sit watching me, smiling in silence. Across the village, children are chasing horses, which are rampaging wildly through the dust under the bright full moon. I get into my tent, tired, but feeling lucky to be here and I awake before day breaks to try to reach Maun by nightfall.

Maun lies at the southern end of the Okavango Delta, 170 km from Kuke, in the north-western corner of Botswana. I cycle the same road up and as I approach the delta, the grasses and acacias, which have flanked my ride since Windhoek, gradually become interspersed with a variety of taller trees and flat leaved bushes. The thicker foliage restricts my horizon to the banks of the road and I stare blankly ahead, pedaling hard. The road rises gently for a few hundred metres and as I reach the shallow summit the landscape opens up before my eyes. To the east there are seven hills with deep green slopes. There are huge sycamore fig trees standing tall in the endless expanse of green grasses. I can see black vultures flapping their wings clumsily in the low sky just ahead and single huts set back from the road, with brightly coloured clothes hanging from lines tied to fence posts. I ride on passing occasional villages for another 50 km, reaching the outskirts of Maun by 5 in afternoon.

In Maun I follow signs to The Old Bridge Lodge, weaving my way between taxis, scattering goats and donkeys onto the roadside, and grubby LandRovers piled high with fuel tanks and camping equipment. It is dusk by the time I wheel my bicycle under the thatch roof of the Old Bridge’s open bar. It has started to pour with rain and I haven’t slept in a bed for over three weeks; fortunately I get the last room. It is Wednesday night and I will stay here until Saturday, when Guy, a friend from London, flies to Maun to join me on the ride to Lusaka.

The lodge rests on the banks of the Okavango River and from the lawn I can see the seldom used old bridge. The bridge is formed by a bank of earth interspersed with heavy logs, all bound together by free growing grasses and the exposed roots of Jackleberry trees. From a distance it looks to have forded the river of its own accord. On the low roots nearest the water, old men sit, casting fishing lines gently in the clam pool below. Back in the bar a group of ex-pats, perched on tall stools, drink cans of beer and shots of Jagermeister. They all live in Maun now: David, who owns the place, John, a semi-retired safari pilot, and Thomas, a German guy, who arrived here by bicycle eight years ago and never left. John tells me this is his favourite sundowner place, although it is not yet midday. They talk about how high the river has got, the storms they have seen, close shaves with game, planes, lightening. The end of the bar goes silent for a moment and John looks across the room, laughing. Its Good Friday… No Bunnies... No fucking eggs… What kind of operation is this? Another round of Castles I think…

On Saturday I ride to meet Guy at the airport. We will take a trip out on the delta on Monday and ride east towards Nata on Wednesday morning. We take a speed boat under the old bridge into the Okavango, north towards Chief’s Island, where there is a small camp. David, and his girlfriend Helena, are going to dismantle the camp and have let us tag along with them. We follow a broad channel that flows through high reeds and flat green lilies with little white flowers. In the islands dotted throughout the wide body of water there are elephant and giraffe wandering peacefully amongst the fig trees and termite mounds. We share sandwiches and cans of beer and watch fish eagles flying above the reeds. As we approach the entrance to the Moremi reserve the channel opens up into a wide lagoon. Staring into the surface of the still water, I can see the shapes of the clouds above shifting slightly as they drift through the pale blue sky.

At the camp we play petanque beneath a pack of shrieking baboons and just before sunset we take the boat out and go fishing. Guy catches a bream and I watch the sun falling beneath the trees in the horizon, flushing the whole sky pink. In the morning we take a mokoro canoe through the shallows. Tiny frogs leap from the reeds onto the tip of the canoe and golden web spiders run across my arms. It starts to rain and we head back to the island where we pack up camp and eat a huge cooked breakfast, before heading back to Maun.