From Malaba

I ride out of Busia while it is still dark, to see the sun rise from the road over my first morning in Uganda. The air is fresh and cool and the road deserted. As the sky begins to pale I can see the stout forms of circular huts and tall straight palms emerging from the shadowy flats. Silhouettes move slowly between the shacks and the first fires of the day are being lit. Soon the sky lightens and distant mists gleam before the rising sun, coating the horizon the colour of frozen honey. Above clouds drift softly over the low forests and beyond, unfurling and collapsing like giant rose petals released into the breeze.

I ride on west, heading for Jinja, through soaking paddi fields which line the road and cover the land as far as I can see. Men are already in the fields, picking at bright green stalks and sifting through the muddy water. Cormorants and slender long-legged birds with sharp beaks stand in the shallows and peck below the surface. I ride fast on the cool flat road and pass pools full of floating white lilies. As I come nearer to Jinja, the road rises and drops across little hills, and all along the tar people sit in front of huts watching the cars pass and stirring pots and laying washing out to dry on the grass.

By lunchtime I am in Jinja; the source of the Nile. I spend a night camping out of town at Bujagali and watch the wild rapids rush towards the north. There is a giant storm and I stand beneath a slanting corrugated orning, with heavy drops beating the ground at my feet, and watch the river turn red as soil flows from the steep banks. In Jinja town I wander up the main street and four old men in flowing cream cloaks, with long grey beards and wrinkled yellow faces, lead me down a side road. They tell me they are from Egypt and smile and speak in Arabic and nod their heads and point to the sky and I am bemused. There is a young black man with them, who I only notice now, dressed all in white, with a red shemagh draped loosely around his neck. He stares straight into my eyes as he speaks, translating the crowd of prophecies and proverbs that flow from the old men’s mouths.

The lead cleric looks at me kindly and says ‘La ilaha illa allah.’ The young black man says: ‘There is no God but God.’ The lead cleric looks at the floor and slowly raises his head and extends a finger to the sky and talks at me in words I cannot understand. The young black man’s words follow softly behind: ‘Can man make the sun?’ They all shake their heads earnestly. ‘Can man make the moon?’ They pause for me to consider. ‘Can man make the stars?’ One of the old men has his hand on my chest and they stare at my face and all shake their heads and smile serenely. They invite me to the mosque and I say I must go. ‘Before you go, you must take a Muslim name.’ They begin to list names at me and I stop them at Hassam. ‘So’ the old man says in his first English words, ‘next time, when I shall see you across the road in Cairo, I shall shout out “Hello, Hassam” and you will answer, and we shall greet.’ I smile and shake his hand and wander off into the bright sunshine.

From Jinja I ride 145km to Mbale in the north-west. I start late and the equator sun burns high and hot in the cloudless sky. The land is green all around and when I leave the main road I can see nothing but maize and plantain trees and collections of four or five mud huts with conical roofs, thatched elegantly in layered circles that narrow as they rise above the fields. Kids slashing at grasses with worn machetes shout out to their brothers and sisters to watch me pass. The land becomes swampy as I head north and tall reeds with flowers like peacock feathers crowd both sides of the elevated road. I stop in a roadside bar at Tirinji and a woman in smart clothes asks where I am going. She tells me, in Mbale, I will find lots of my brothers and sisters from London, America, Japan. As I approach town, I can see long metal antennae cluttering the sky with angles, and two-storey cement blocks, rising above the rice fields, at the foot of the purple rock-face of the Wanale Ridge.

The next morning I ride 50km up to Sipii, a little town in the foothills of Mount Elgon. The final 10km is a continuous steep climb. The road latches onto the mushrooming hillside and winds and bends up relentless slopes. I grind my way up past collapsing adobe huts, held together with winding tree branches. Kids pour out of the low door frames and rush to the road past chickens and goats and mothers, who sit serenely tending to pots by the fire. They shout and whoop and slap the back of the slow moving bike and look in wonder at the weak bedraggled white man, clambering towards the sun.

I am almost falling now and my thick wheels will barely turn. The sweat is pouring from my temples, stinging my bloodshot eyes. Women call out from the roadside: ‘You are tired, muzungu, come and rest here. You must rest.’ I smile and try to suppress the deep pants that shake my whole torso. For the first time in 8000km I get off and push. I stare, defeated, at the land dropping from the roadside precipice. The clutter of huts and livestock and screaming children melt into the vast flats that roll out to meet the western sky below. I pull my legs onto the pedals and ride again and soon I am forced to push once more. At last I can hear the crashing falls of water that rush from the highland rivers around Sipii and I know I am close and I ride the final bend to a campsite in the village.

I spend the afternoon roaming the muddy hillside paths in the driving rain to look at the waterfalls up close. I walk through plots of head-high maize, past old women, carrying huge sacks of cut grasses, who scuttle nimbly up the steep hillside tracks, while I slip and slide past, my legs covered in greasy red earth from earlier falls. Everyone is huddled in huts peering out of dark doorways at the storm. At the base of the biggest fall, water cascades down a sheer ochre rock-face and foams and froths in a rocky pool below.

Back at the campsite I stare out into the night across the ravine. There isn’t a single light burning, though there must be a thousand huts spread across the valley. I freewheel down the same slope the next morning, in quarter of an hour, and ride 100km across the flats through Mbale and Tororo, and just after midday I am back across the border in Kenya.