From Dar Es Salaam

When I first arrived in Tanzania I had planned to take the western road to Rwanda, along the shore of Lake Tanganyika, via Kigoma. But the rains have come late this year and the road is closed; impassable with thick mud and impromptu rivers. So I had ridden east to Iringa, planning to head north to Dodoma and then to cut back on myself and head north west to Rwanda, across the Wembere Swamps and the dusty north-western plains past Nzega. I am in a little café in Iringa staring at the map. It is a long detour. A huge > across the heart of Tanzania and the road will be desolate. I must stock up with food and water here.

A young guy pulls up a chair next to me and looks down at the map, which is splayed out beneath a mug of black tea on the wobbly table. I show him where I will go and he shakes his head solemnly and tells me I must not go this way. When I tell him I am on a bicycle, alone, he becomes more animated. He says there are bad men with guns on the north western road. Bandits from Rwanda. It is already late afternoon and I had planned to leave early the next morning. I ask him how he knows this and he says he is from Nzega. He knows the road well. I walk into a little tour company across the street and ask the travel agent about the route. He says the same. The road is dangerous. I must carry on east and reach Rwanda via Uganda.

I think back to when I met Jean-Claude in Livingstone, Zambia. He was scrawny and weathered with skin like burnished leather and thin grey hair. He told me how when he couldn’t get a visa to ride through Angola he had bicycled 2000 km across western Congo. He would not have been put off by the hearsay of a couple of local guys. By the remote prospect of trouble. I tell myself I will go on as planned and then change my mind. I know in daylight, riding, the warnings will fade in the sunshine. I know when I am camping on the dark roadside the spectre of trouble will rise out of the shadows and make me lonely and scared. I look at the map again and draw a line east to Dar Es Salaam. 400 km of main highway; of guesthouses and passing trucks and occasional road-trippers waving from battered Land Rovers. I will go to Dar and then north to Kenya, and across Uganda to Rwanda.

The next morning I rejoin the Tanzam highway and set off towards the eastern shoreline. It is a beautiful day. The wind flows lightly on my back while the sun climbs quickly above the receding bank of eastern cloud. After a long winding descent the road stretches out through the flat Tanzanian prairies, across miles of Khaki grasses and wide topped acacias, which spread out across the horizon in every direction, broken only by the occasional hump of a freestanding green hill that protrudes gently out of the bush. Soon the foothills of the Udzunga Mountains flank the road to the south and I am passing through a great valley filled with thousands of baobab trees. Those nearest the road loom powerfully out of the dust, casting tangled patches of shade on the flat tar. The upper branches flow from the stout trunks like locks of frozen hair, towering above the dried mud shacks that are dotted through the forest. I camp in the valley on the bank of the Ruaha River. In the moonlight the trees grow larger, their silhouettes bearing down from the starry sky, shrouding the valley floor in ghostly shadows.

I take two days to ride the 190 km to Morogoro across the Uluguru Hills and on through Mikumi National Park. On the roadside lime green cactuses and half built brick houses are interspersed amongst the bright fields of sunflowers and endless maize. Maasai in red and purple robes, with gapping round holes in their ear lobes, lead small herds of cattle through the scrub with tall staffs. Shortly after leaving Mikumi I ride past a sign marking the entrance to the Park. The bustle of passing bicycles and droning scooters and running children has stopped and the road feels very empty. I quicken my pace and scour the grasses for signs of animals. After 20 km I reach a small hut and am stopped by a warden. He tells me cycling in the Park is strictly prohibited, but, in this instance, as I have got this far, as my bicycle is strong, I may go on. As I pedal off he shouts that he will pray I do not encounter any lion or buffalo. The grasses are high and little pools of stagnant water sit in muddy enclaves off the road. The noise of the chain whirring as I ride startles a warthog who bursts from the grass towards the bush. A small herd of buffalo are sitting beneath a tree to my left. My eyes are fixed on them as I pass but they take no notice. After 50 km I make it out of the Park and reach Morogoro by lunchtime.

I leave Morogoro heading for Chimala, from where I will ride to Dar. There is a tall escarpment running parallel to the south. Frail trees are perched on its narrow ridge above a thick band of light cloud. The road is busier as I head east and it starts to rain. Lorries trundle past whipping up dark highway water from under their heavy wheels. It is muggy in Chimala and the rain has churned the verge into a thick brown paste. I sit down in a truckers bar and watch cradle shaped pens full of chickens being loaded onto a bus. The bar girls pull up chairs and sit staring at me while I write. I slowly list the countries I have passed through and they laugh and poke my legs and point at the bicycle behind. The sit with me for hours saying words I cannot understand and laughing with instinctive friendliness. When I come back later to eat, they are watching a trashy American sitcom called ‘Shades of Sin’ although none of them speak a word of English.

The next day I reach Dar Es Salaam in the late morning and dart through the chaos of the city’s choking roads. Combi’s cut me up and I swerve and brake and swear my head off and the driver looks perplexed and hits the side of the van through the window and honks his horn and then a gap in the traffic opens up and we both potter off into the smog. Swirls of dust rise from the wake of the rushing cars and I squint in the grime, dripping with sweat. Outside a Pepsi stand a guy strangles a dog with both hands; yelps and howls carry desperately across the roaring traffic and while I watch the man giggling I ride into a deep pothole and nearly come off. After hours of muddling my way through the city I arrive at the calm leafy driveway of the house I will stay at for the weekend.

From Iringa

I rest up in Tukuyu for a couple of days after leaving hospital. In the mornings I go with Luka to the little market at Kibisi village to buy food for the day. Chickens run across the dusty path and young guys with dreadlocks and massive sunglasses come up and ask if I’m feeling better. We stop at a little stall selling vegetables and dried fish. An old woman, wearing a bright sarong printed with Barack Obama’s face amidst a sea of Stars and Stripes, sits behind the low wooden table and we pick out tomatoes, peas, and potatoes from little wicker bowls. Off the main path kids run around in the dirt sucking on sugar cane and chasing crickets, which they pick up with tiny hands and stuff into little plastic bottles.

After two days here I ride north through the Mbeya Mountains. A dense grey fog clings to the hilltops, smothering the forest in cloud, and leaving tiny water droplets on the hairs of my arms and legs. The cloud thickens as I get higher and a chilly mountain breeze flows swiftly against me on the steep ascent. The road descends dramatically out of the mist and after a few minutes free-wheeling the air is clear and the sun bathes the rolling valley fields before me in bright light.

I check into a motel in Mbeya and have a hot shower for the first time in weeks. A call to prayer from the nearby mosque makes its way across the little motel courtyard as I head into town to get some food. I sit outside a little Indian cafe and order some rice. While I eat a shadow falls on the white plastic table in front of me and I look up at a tall white guy with a neat brown moustache, smiling down on me. He is wearing a faded denim shirt and jeans and there is a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. He grins and asks me what I am doing here in a thick American accent and I think I see him twitch slightly. He nods knowingly when I tell him and laughs and lights a second cigarette with the dying end of the last. He is standing with one hand resting on a chair and starts to talk, as if addressing a large crowd:

“Me, well, I started in South America. Went to twelve countries. Yes! Didn’t visit the other four: cause there’s nothing fucking there.” He hits the table with a flat palm and laughs and his head jerks back awkwardly. “Well, everybody tells me: Paul, you gonna have trouble Paul. Watch your back Paul. It’s not like home Paul! – I ain’t had so much a sniff a trouble. Only this one time, down in Panama, you know. Guys tried to jump me. Little Bastards! Nothing to me though – I’m a federal marine. Yes! Showed em where to go. You bet.” He jumps around like a jack-in-the-box and his moustache jerks involuntarily to the left. “You know South America’s great for a good time. And I like to have a good time me. Paul sure likes to have a gooooood time. Yes! The cocaine – you know?” He bends over and presses his forefinger against his nostril and snorts elaborately just above the table, before jolting back to an upright position. “Well, where was I? Oh yeah. I got bit by a spider the other day. You see here?” He points to a mark on his neck. “Blew up like a fucking balloon. So I go to the local doc. He tells me a fly bit an infected cow, the spider ate the fly, and then bit me, and I got the cow infection. Yes! I tore my room apart when I got back, found three of the little bastards. Squashed em all. Yes!” He slams the table again and I laugh and he starts laughing and sways slightly. My food is cold now and I get up to leave, wondering if there are other guys washed up in dusty end-of the-world towns all over, living off military pensions in empty motels.

I leave very early the next morning and ride 190km to Makambako. It heats up as I come down from the highlands and the thick green forests thin; the trees fading gradually into swaying yellow grasses and the lush green leaves browning as I ride into the stumpy autumnal scrub of the lowland slopes. There is a faint breeze and when I stop I can hear the light orange leaves crinkle softly under the deep blue sky.

From Makambako I ride over rounded hills to a small farm just past Mafinga. The wind blows heavily towards me, whipping rain into my face and weighing me down as I churn the pedals through the swirling air. Ahead a cluster of black crows peck at an enormous python that lies severed on the wet asphalt. They scatter as I ride past, clumsily beating their wings as they hop awkwardly into flight. I get a room at the farm and Mark, who runs the place, gives me a huge chicken curry for lunch. He tells me he used to work on the railways in Buckinghamshire, but has been here for ten years now. He speaks softly about his life in Tanzania and his eyes sparkle gently when I tell him about my ride. As we talk his past journeys gradually unfold. He tells me quietly about the time he walked coast to coast across Canada, the length of New Zealand a few years later, and from Norway to Gibraltar. He tells me he plans to walk the coast of Great Britain next year. He says he has lost touch with England. How last time he was back it was all Jade Goody and X Factor. He says he needs to reconnect with home. He says England is there somewhere. It has to be. He knows he’ll find it: in the little fishing villages and the windy Cumbrian hillsides.

After supper Mark asks if I want to watch the football. It is the Champions League final and it’s good to watch the game on a sofa with a cold beer, huddled between some of the guesthouse workers. I have a cooked breakfast with a pot of tea when I get up and enjoy the short ride to Iringa in the morning sunshine.

From Tukuyu

From Nkhata Bay it is a steep climb from the flats along the lake up to Mzuzu at the top of the Nyika Plateau to the west. The climb is slow and I keep stopping to catch my breath and end up talking to farmers on the roadside about their harvests and my bicycle. After 3 hours I reach the top of the escarpment and look back at the hillsides rippling across the surrounding valleys in great flowing patchworks of thick green forest and loose red earth. I spend the night at a hostel and get drunk with Gerard, the Swiss owner. He sits behind the wooden bar tapping his fingers to Duke Ellington, peering out between his Panama hat and Hunter S. Thompson glasses. We talk about Paris, and his life before in Lausanne, and I wonder how he ended up here but never think to ask.

The next morning I set off late and ride 90 km north across the forested plateau before the road rises abruptly and clambers up over the eastern lip of the escarpment for 6 km. The pedals barely respond to my weight and I crawl up past broken-down-lorry after broken-down-lorry for what seems like hours. At the highest point the weariness in my legs melts away as I stare down at the tumbling slope before me. The road winds steeply back down to the lake and I can see miles and miles of blue shoreline and thousands of tiny thatch huts, hundreds of metres below, scattered like straw thimbles on an endless green carpet. The descent is breathtaking and I glide, teeth bared like a madman, through the rush of oncoming air. People wave and point and I'm too scarred to take my hands off the bars and hurtle towards the lake at 60 km an hour. I camp at Chitimba, on the lakeside, where I meet up with Christian, an Austrian guy, and we make a plan to hike the 15 km up to the old Scottish mission at Livingstonia, the following morning.

We set off while the sun is hidden behind the low Tanzanian cliffs across the lake and soon leave the rocky road that snakes up the hillside and follow little tracks up the forested slope. We scramble over loose rock and bare tree roots, brushing against the flat overhanging leaves. Christian is dressed like a mountaineer and tells me grand stories about ascents in Kyrgyzstan and the Andes, while I stumble behind in shoes full of holes and torn swimming trunks. As the escarpment flattens out we take muddy paths through fields of tea and tall silver birch trees and get lost and ask the way and eventually arrive at the cool hilltop town.

A wide dusty avenue runs through the centre of Livingstonia, leading past shady verandas draped with hanging gardens overflowing from rusty corrugated roofs and broad whitewashed buildings housing hospitals, schools, technical colleges, and a university. Enormous grey barked bluegum trees shade the road and we amble slowly to the house of the mission founder, Dr Robert Laws. The pale stone house is now a little museum, full of old photos, and trays of ancient butterflies, and other odds and ends. In one of the cabinets there is a tatty sheet of paper telling a story about the mission fifty years ago. It tells how in 1959, during Malawi’s struggle for independence, violence broke out across the country. The government, worried about the safety of the white missionaries, sent a message telling the missionaries to write a ‘V’ on the lawn outside the house if they wished to be evacuated, or an ‘I’ if they wished to remain where they were. The missionaries wanted to show that in Livingstonia whites and blacks were living happily together, even when all around things were falling apart. The government plane flew over the following morning to find these words whitewashed on the lawn: “For Christ is our peace who hath made both one and hath broken down the middle wall of partition around us” (Ephesians 2 v 4). I am standing in front of the drab wooden cabinet staring at the faded black and white text, thinking it is a beautiful story.

We camp near Livingstonia and walk down to Chitimba the next morning, trudging into the rising sun. I take two days to ride from Chitimba to the Tukuyu, a town 50 km north of the Tanzanian border, spending a night at Karonga on the way. Leaving Malawi the road is flat and the surrounding land overgrown and wet. Little streams run through the thick grass, trickling towards the road and forming a layer bog on the verge. There are naked kids playing in the muddy water and I hear the incessant gurgling of frogs as I ride past.

Crossing the border the road climbs into the Rungwe hills. Rows of tea and cocoa and coffee are etched delicately into the steep slopes and the valley floors are crammed full of tall green banana plants. I continue climbing into the misty hills until I reach Tukuyu, where I camp at a little place run by local musicians. In the night I wake up shivering and run through the field to a hole in the ground and stoop, my teeth chattering and my whole body convulsing. In the morning I rise drowsily from my tent and stumble through the grey dawn looking around at kids walking to school through the misty groves of avocado trees. I ask Luka, who works here, about a doctor and he takes me to the local hospital.

The doctor tells me I must stay here and I lie down in a white room and stare at the buzzing tube of fluorescent light on the pale ceiling. There is a drip in my arm and I can hear women singing gospel music, carrying in the wind from across the hills. Through the day doctors come and go. The first tells me I have malaria and giardia, another that he is not sure: probably something from the water. Luka brings me tea and porridge and oranges and washes my soiled clothes and sits with me for hours as I lie dazed, retching. When he leaves, nurses bustle around the bed and chatter in Swahili and smile kindly and ask about my condition, while I lie, curled up under layers of blankets, feverish, and weeping like a lost boy in a strange dream. Luka keeps coming with food and gradually my stomach calms down and the fever cools. After a couple of days I go back to the camp, anxious to get back on the road.

From Nkhata Bay

I head east from Lilongwe, riding quickly into the surrounding countryside and on towards the lake. The road winds over shallow green hills, past clusters of small red brick huts, popping out of the hillsides amongst the wilting maize and broad leaved banana plants. Each time I stop, searching for the lake in the distance, small crowds of villagers emerge from the fields onto the roadside and stare and laugh and shout ‘where you go, muzungu?’ There is a cool breeze and fine puffs of white cloud grow and fade as they drift across the path of the morning sun. I freewheel for long stretches, my eyes glued to the eastern horizon, my bike rattling unsteadily past grubby pick-us carting huge crowds of Malawians, all on top of each other, to Salima, a big lakeside town.
I reach Salima, 110 km from Lilongwe, by lunchtime and wheel my bike through the little market to a bar playing loud music. An old man wearing a bright red truckers cap with ‘I Love Jesus’ on the front is tapping his cane to Peter Andre’s ‘Mysterious Girl’. I ask him the way to the shore and he points east: Straight, Straight, Straight to the lake my friend. The next morning I set off up the lake. As I push my bike through the deep sand to the road a little girl runs up to me clasping a cold bottle of water. She hands it to me and runs shyly away. I take a long drink and head north along the highway.

The road runs through the fertile lowlands that lie between the lake and the high Nyika escarpment that looms to the west. I cross single track bridges that ford the little rivers running from the western highlands. Women and young kids are standing in the reeds washing clothes and men are fishing in dug-out canoes where the streams widen as they meet the lake. There are people everywhere. Fishermen dangling fresh chambo in my face, women drying out cassava fruit in the sun, young guys on bikes trying to race with me, old men sitting in the shade watching it all pan out.

From the road the lake comes in and out of view, over the lips of gentle hills and through the gaps between honey blossomed trees. I ride while the morning sun is still low above the faint outline of Mozambique across the calm water. I camp at inlets along the water: at a pottery in Nkhotakota, a little resort at Ngala Bay, a sprawling water-front campsite at Kande Beach. At Kande I chat with the English owner about life in Malawi. He tells me how people are content growing what they need to eat on their little plots. He says people are very poor here. He says the schools, the prisons, the hospitals are full to the brim and falling down. He tells me about a time he was admitted to the local hospital at Chinteche for malaria: ‘The place is chaos. There are turkeys in the wards. Turkeys. Where they come from I’ll never know. You could walk 500km to Blantyre and not see a turkey. Go to Chinteche hospital and they’re clucking about between the beds. Mind you its not as bad as Nkhata Bay. They’ve got a resident baboon there, pinching food from unconscious patients and medicines from the nurses’ pockets.’ I tell him a story a German doctor told me about Lilongwe District Hospital: there was a power cut in the night and the duty nurse forgot to turn the generator on. The respirators had no power. The following morning she came into work and found her whole ward dead.

I leave Kande the next day with only 70 km to reach Nkhata Bay, where I will spend a few days not riding. The road leaves the shore and passes beneath the shadows of the tall Visara Forest. The Laba trees give way abruptly to a sprawling tea plantation. Workers in baggy sun hats wander through the neat rows of green plants with machetes. I ride past and take a long winding downhill to the deep blue bay. I have ridden 4600km to get here, across deserts and dusty plains, early mornings in the driving rain, whole skies of tumbling black clouds, mile after mile of dark tar creeping over great forested hillsides. I get off the bike under the high sun and walk across the hot flat rocks, over the frail pink petals of a little flower overhanging the water’s edge, down collapsing wooden steps, across a gently rocking dug-out canoe, and into the cool lake water.