From Busia

I have been off the bike for over two weeks waiting for my visa, and I am jumpy as I swerve and dash through Nairobi’s morning traffic. My mind is already turning to where I will spend the night; thoughts that before the lay-up wouldn’t have bugged me. The uncertainty of the road ahead makes me sad.

I am heading west on the road to Uganda and soon after leaving the city I am climbing through the lower folds of the Rift Valley’s eastern edge, past empty fields towards distant hills. The sky is pale and blue and fine wisps of smoky cloud flutter across the horizon. The road is quieter here and I can see Lake Naivasha gleaming calmly and Mount Longonot rising from the flat valley floor. The descent into the valley is long and fast and I glide quickly through the breeze. Along the valley floor murky yellow grasses stretch out towards the southern hills beneath billowing Candelabra trees and lonely corrugated shacks. After a few miles the road climbs again and the pedals grind reluctantly as I make my way slowly up and up the oncoming hills. The sun is strong now and I pull into a little motel at a town called Gilgil and spend the afternoon reading in the shade.

The next day I rejoin the highway and ride 160km to Kericho. It is just light as I set off and the dull grey forms of far-away hills fade into the soft dawn sky as I descend towards Nakuru. I pass lakes, and tall, sprawling acacias, and little villages of brick houses with metal roofs. Children in smart green uniforms wave as they walk to school and dalla-dallas and rumbling trucks rush past me on the worn asphalt. I stop for a plate of beef and ugali at a little junction town. Across the road women scrub clothes in plastic buckets amongst a cluster of faded white tents. I ask a guy in the café why they are living in tents. He says they lost their homes in the violence in 2007. They have lived like this since. I turn off the highway and climb across the highlands towards Kericho. The road is flanked by deep green fields of tea; sprawling, well kept plantations that fan out over the smooth hills in endless, orderly rows. Amongst the fields I pass big estates made up of little white rectangular houses, where the workers live. They are all identical, with two front windows and a wooden door between, planted like blocks of lego in the trimmed grasses. The road is full of holes and I slowly rattle across the potted tar under the afternoon sun, reaching Kericho at three.

I ride out of town at dawn and young women are already picking tea in the fields off the road. They stand above the short plants, like statues in the smoky mist, watching me pedal past. The air is cold and toddlers sit outside huts wrapped up in woolly hats and puffy jackets while their mothers boil up ugali in thick black pots over smouldering wood. I stop on a little bridge above a fast running stream and watch the sun rise over the tall forests that grow on the highest slopes around Kericho. I think that if I am riding towards Kisumu, and Uganda, the sun sould be rising behind me, not to the left. I ask a passer-by where this road goes to. He says Kisii, a town to the south. I have taken the wrong road. I take out the map and decide to carry on to Kisii and ride to Kisumu the following day. The road is quiet and the highlands beautiful, but it means a 150km detour.

I climb up, and freewheel down, hill after hill past steep sloping fields of maize and tea. On the roadside men sit chipping at blocks of stone with hammers and call out at me: ‘Sah, Sah, where to? Where from? How far? Some of them get up and shout: ‘Yes you can! Yes you can!’ with their hands raised above their heads. The hills grow steeper as the midday sun reaches its hottest and I am covered in sweat as I ride into Kisii. It is market day and large women lie in the dust under umbrellas behind piles of fruit.

The next day, after a couple of hours riding from Kisii, I emerge from the hills and the green lowlands unfurl before me, from the shores of Lake Victoria to a distant escarpment in the east. I can see for miles in every direction and it is a good feeling to ride across the open expanses, past little mud huts, through the swampy flats. It is Sunday and clapping and singing and a preacher’s booming voice carry to the road from a little white church. There are women sitting under trees selling yams in buckets. They will sit like this till dusk and I wonder if anyone will stop to buy yams today. As I near Kisumu a young guy runs after me shouting: ‘It is you. It is you. I read you in the newspaper. You are the one who rides his bicycle around the world. And now you are here in Kenya.’ I tell I am not and he looks disappointed. He says that guy must be very strong. It is quiet when I ride into Kisumu. On the main street bums sit on a corner flipping coins and drinking whisky. They peer at me riding past with junky eyes that look out above puffy cheeks. I see them later bedding down in a derelict stone building with no roof.

From Kisumu it is 120 km to Busia, just across the Ugandan border. On the way I stop for a drink at a village off the highway, called Sidindi. An old man sits on the step next to me. I give him a sandwich and he tells me this is the Luo region. He says Obama’s grandfather resides just a few kilometers behind here. He says Obama himself came to the region. He says that on the day of the election in the US, the village also put on an election. They made ballot boxes, one for Obama, and one for McCain. The whole village voted. Obama got all the votes and McCain got none.

The road is flat and by lunchtime I am crossing the border. The customs officer stares at me and asks why I am so dirty. I tell her it is dusty and I am on a bicycle. She tells me to make sure I take a bath and change my clothes. Busia is full of people rushing back and forth; everyone sweating and in a hurry. I ride a couple of kilometers to the edge of town and sit writing under a tree. As the sun goes down the insects start to roar and bats swoop between the trees.

From Chogoria

My bicycle is in Nairobi and my passport in London and I am in the back of a dalla dalla on the way to the foot of Mount Kenya. We race across the hills, past towns and fields and rivers, and I want to stop and look at all, but we are already past and through the little plastic window it is all tinged with grey. I am with David, who will guide me up the mountain, and we arrive in Nanyuki, from where we will start the trek, in the afternoon. We get a plate of barbecued mutton and ugali in a huge diner and people shout out countries at me as I walk through the tables: Guatemala, Israel, Spain. On the road outside a British Army van passes and David tells me there is a base nearby. He says the soldiers do good for the town. He says at weekends the soldiers come in from the bush, and have beers, and make African babies.

In the morning we set off early and walk up a rocky 4 x 4 track that climbs gently through the grassy foothills. A dense fog covers the hilltops and the gangly stalks of giant heather, bald and singed black by a forest fire, rise statically from the swaying elephant grasses. As we get higher we clamber across rocky streams, crisp water bubbling just below our boots. I kneel down and drink from my hands. We stop at a hut after hiking 9 km and boil a chicken which we eat with fried onion and carrot.

We are up before sunrise and follow a thin path over the thick spines of swelling ridges and walk down into soft valleys carpeted in damp yellow moss that squelches beneath our feet. The sky is very clear and currents of cool air sweep across the valley floor making the feathers of the tall lobelia plants shiver in the pale sunlight. We take a rest by a stream and I look up and watch the fickle mountain mists drift apart to reveal the towering spires of the summit brushing against the crystal sky far ahead. Huge swathes of the slopes just below the peak have given way leaving a frail membrane of scree trickling towards the valley. As we get higher the grasses disappear and we make our way through barren slopes of dust. Mountain rats and rock hyraxes scuttle amongst the pebbles and rosette flowered lobelia stick out of the rocky ground like triffids on a martian moon.

We reach the hut where we will sleep long before dark and sit around a barrel of burning wood clutching streaming cups of tea. By dusk frail flakes of snow crowd the icy air and a veil of fog has fallen on the twin peaks above us. The vague form of the mountain top looms heavily in the gloomy sky; a great mass of volcanic rock peering out from the mist like a lost cathedral. David tells me how the people who lived at the base of the mountain believed the mountain to be a God. When there was no rain the elders would walk to this point and pray. When they came down the rain would come.

We wake at three to make the summit by sunrise. It is bitterly cold when David and I begin the final 3 km ascent. We clamber up the scree, slipping, and then grasping for solid rock, guided by the faint light of our head-torches. Above shooting stars drop from the sky like pieces of crumbling candy. We take regular breaks and lean against boulders, breathless. As we get higher the air thins and the darkness begins to recede, unmasking the hazy silhouette of the approaching summit. Soon we are scrambling up the final few metres of frosted rock and I am looking out at the young sun igniting the eastern sky in a thin field of ochre light. I look down from the mass of jagged brown rock at boulders and dust cascading towards an enormous tide of thick white cloud. There is a glacier sitting in a hollow to the south and crater lakes reflecting the brightening sky scattered amongst the crumbling slopes beneath us. David is sitting quietly on a rock, with a faint smile on his face, watching me try to take it all in.

On the way down we slip on the scree and I try to run down the steep bits and lose my balance and then tread timidly until the slope begins to flatten. We pass calm green lakes that from the peak shimmered like little pearls, half buried in the rubble, but now we see them wide and deep. We stop and share a bar of chocolate that I saved and have a smoke with the sun warming our faces. As we descend further the lobelia begin to sprout from the rocks and soon they are all around us. The ground is soft and murky yellow now and thin streams of water trickle quietly through the boggy soil. Two tall shoulders of rock rise sharply on either side of the gorge ahead, swallowing the falling green valley in darkness. We follow the lip of the gorge on the eastern side and I stare over the edge at the valley dropping abruptly and a torrent of water cascading over the rocky crest towards the grassy floor.

My legs are tired now and David is limping; we trudge slowly through the heather with our packs, like two hobbits in an empty world. The wind is picking up and I stop to take a photograph of a small red flower clinging to the craggy cliff edge. I wonder if it will blow off and where the little red petals would carry to in the wind. We have been walking for ten hours now and my feet are sore. I bought my boots second hand at a market in the slums and they are wearing the skin off my heels. I am happy to sit down when we stop for lunch and we build a little fire and boil a pot of noddles and some tea. We lie back with our heads resting on our packs, blowing smoke into the air. I ask David about his life in Nairobi. He says he lives in a single room with his wife and son. He has electricity, but life is hard. He says some people in Nairobi are very rich. There are even men who pay $500 to stay in a hotel. Just for one night. And in coffee shops in the city people pay $2 for a little cup of coffee. He shakes his head in disbelief.

We eat and get up wearily and walk for another few hours to camp, where we sleep, exhausted. The next morning we hike the final 20 km to Chogoria. We walk through a bamboo forest; the glare from the low sun filters through the crowded spines of wood, splintering shards of bright light across the path ahead. Elephants have trampled many of the trees and the narrow stalks lie crushed on the path. We stop to look at some leopard tracks, stooping over the shallow imprints, and tracing little circles in the dust with twigs. David tells me how the Masai carry the dying into the forests near here. When people are very sick they are led here and left for three days. If they are still alive after that time they are taken back to the village. But there are many wild animals in the forests. They will eat the dying. We emerge from the forest and out into fields of tea and coffee and pineapples sown into steep green slopes. There are women with baskets slung over their backs picking there way through the crops and more and more people everywhere as we arrive in Chogoria.

From Nairobi

Leaving Moshi the sky is dull. Light rain trickles from the heavy clouds and all around the land is swamped is grey. It is Sunday and the roads are quiet; the little highway towns waking slowly as I pass. A dense fog hangs stubbornly in the still air, hiding Kilimanjaro and a hundred beautiful views behind a drab curtain of impenetrable mist. I slip into a daze and soon I am nearing Arusha. From a village just out of town a long procession snakes its way slowly across the road. There are young kids at the front clapping and swaying, shuffling to slow rhythm of the march. Behind nuns in blue habits shepherd them along and women in their Sunday best sing hymns which carry through the crowd and drift into the surrounding fields. I stop to let the long line cross the highway before riding onto Arusha. The town is bigger than I had expected and hustlers chase me through the streets shouting about safaris and best-deal-hotels.

From Arusha it is 120 km to the Kenyan border. The road is being re-tarred and a relentless wind drives thick clouds of dirt across the rough track. The dust clings to the grasses and bushes to my left smothering them in a lifeless carpet of ashen dirt. To my right Chinese workers wearing clean white masks sit in rollers preparing the new highway. On the sections of completed road I speed along the smooth surface through the silent dry plains. I can see Masai roaming through the wilderness with great herds of horned cattle. Lonely Acacias and Buffalo Thorns stand out on the horizon and above it all Kilimanjaro looms above the clouds like a giant from another world.

As I near the border a Masai stops me and asks for a dollar. He looks a great warrior holding his spear, his beautiful robes billowing in the wild wind. It makes me sad that he asks. I camp over the border and head north on the road to Nairobi the next day. The air is cold and damp and all around the lowland slopes are covered in empty Savannah grasses. I ride quickly, using the momentum from each downward slope to propel me over the next. As I rise over the shallow lip of another small hill I see a dalla-dalla reversing towards me. We are already close and the little bus is still reversing. The driver hasn’t seen me and it is too late now. I swerve to the right as far as I can and the back smacks my leg and I fall to the ground.

I stand up and look at the saddlebags strewn across the roadside and the bike lying calmly on the gravel. I turn and stare at the bus still slowly reversing. It is packed with bewildered faces staring at the lunatic beginning to run towards them. Blood is streaming from my leg and I am screaming at the driver. He slowly stops and I wrench his door open and haul him from his seat. I cannot believe he didn’t stop. That he was reversing that fast. That my bike might be bust. I am pinning him against the bus and shouting in his face. He keeps saying sorry, that he didn’t see.

There are people all around us now telling me to calm down; kind eyes and peaceful hands trying to cool the spoilt rage of the melodramatic Muzungu. Kind eyes saying accidents happen. The bike can be fixed. The driver didn’t mean it. And above, all worse things happen. I look around at the corrugated shacks that line this section of the road. I feel ashamed. I step back and walk over to my bike. The back wheel won’t turn and the the frame is bent. I take out an allen key and begin to adjust the brakes and realign the wheel. Everyone is trying to help, bashing the frame back into shape, and after half an hour the wheel is turning again and I pedal off northwards.

I spend the night in a little Muslim guesthouse in Kajiado. It is the World Cup and I watch the England game with the owner, drinking sugary tea. From Kajaido it is only 80 km to Nairobi and by mid morning I am riding on a three lane highway past tall mirrored buildings and outlet stores and billboards advertising financial solutions. There are women in high heels and pencil skirts talking on mobiles and new Mercedes Benzes speeding towards the skyscrapers on the horizon. I head downtown and find a backpackers.

I go to the Ethiopian Embassy the next day to get my visa. I am sitting in a little waiting room when I hear a call to get in. There is a man sitting behind a desk with his arms folded across his tie. I hand him my passport and begin to explain my journey. He tells me it is not possible to get a visa. I must fly to Addis and get one at the airport. I explain that I have ridden a bicycle from Cape Town, riding every mile. He says it is not possible to get a visa. I must fly to Addis and get one at the airport. I stare at the flag on his desk and think that there is always a flag nearby in these situations. I mumble that I don’t understand and he looks at me sternly and tells me it is not for me to understand. That is the Ethiopian Regulations. They make sense. He tells me to get out. I wander back towards my hostel down a long avenue of high-walled compounds, wondering what to do. I decide to send my passport to London and get an agency to arrange the visa from there. It means two weeks in Nairobi. It is a fun city and I will climb Mount Kenya while I wait.

From Moshi

The streets of Dar are wet and muddy the day I arrive and my torn clothes are covered in dirt by the time I wheel my bike up to the gates of Bob and Judy’s house. The security guard looks curiously at me, and hesitates, before checking if I should be allowed in. There is a Canadian flag blowing reassuringly on a tall white pole at the end of the lawn and a few hundred yards behind, Tanzania’s eastern shores meet the Indian Ocean. The family, whom I had never met, invites me to stay for as long as I like. There is a golden retriever lying quietly in the hallway and Western newspapers are laid out neatly on a coffee table. I stay here for the weekend and sleep in a double bed and eat family meals with a napkin on my lap. On the Saturday I go with them to the yacht club and on Sunday to a charity sale where I say hello to the same smiling faces I saw at the club the day before.

Since the first day of the ride, almost three months ago, when I found a pack of sandwiches and a note from the guesthouse owner, resting on my saddlebag, I have been met with the kindness of strangers. In villages in Namibia, Botswana, and Zambia I have been given food and water and a place to sleep. Along the roads people have stopped to give me cold drinks. And here in Dar I am welcomed by strangers as if I am an old friend.

After a few days rest the road beckons and I head north along the coast to Bagamoyo. It is a short ride and I arrive in the little seafront town early in the day. The tide is out and beached dhows rest on the sand amongst torn nets and bright plastic bags that billow across the cluttered shore. Fires are smouldering beneath rickety corrugated shelters in the little market off the beach. Women stoop over pans of spitting oil and the smell of dried fish clings to the humid air. An ancient carpenter chips at a block of dark wood in a shaded corner. He is very thin and his brown skin clings tightly to the lean fibres of his tensed arm as he brings the axe down onto the wood. I buy a woolly hat from an old woman; it will be cold when I ride into the northern mountains around Kilimanjaro.

From Bagamoyo the tar stops and I ride a dirt track 70 km to Msata. The rains have washed much of the earth away and my bicycle clatters painfully over the exposed rocks that jut out of the dust. Where the road dips, deep pools of water have collected and I must get off and wade with my bike, muddy water swilling around my ankles. The sun is strong and the going slow. It takes six hours to reach Msata, where I get a big plate of goat and rice and a cold Coke. From Msata I ride north on the highway to Mbwewe. There is a guesthouse here and I spend a couple of hours fixing my bike beside the bed in the dark room.

Later I sit in the bar, where people stare at me sullenly over bottles of warm beer. The barman pulls a chair up next to me. He tells me his name is William and that he grew up in Tabora, in Western Tanzania. He has a cropped head of short wiry hair that recedes from his gaunt face and he smiles placidly as he talks. He tells me that he went to primary school till he was seven. That his parents were very poor and so died when he was young. That he came here to make a business. He used to sell charcoal here, for ten years: “Now I must work here, at the bar. Yes. It is because I am weak, you see. Too weak to work on my business. I am a victim, am victim of HIV, you see. Yes.” He nods meekly and I am silent. “Tanzania government, they have not enough money to help us, the victims. To bring us the foods and the drugs. But NGOs, you understand, NGOs from Europe, they want to help us. Yes.” He is speaking very softly and smiles when he looks up. “They want to bring us the monies so we can have the foods and the drugs. Yes. But they do not bring straight to us, the victims. They bring to the district leaders, you understand, to give to us. The NGOs they want the foods and the drugs to come to us. Yes. But the district leaders, they are a thief. They keep the monies and they are rich. We, the victims, do not get the foods and the drugs.” We are sitting side by side on plastic chairs as dusk falls on the little bar. I stare ahead and ask him when he found out he was sick. He says three months ago. We both go quiet and he jumps up to bring a drink to a guy shouting at him from the table opposite.

From Mbwewe I take three days to ride the 400 km to Moshi. I pull out of the guesthouse while the air is grey and I can see the shimmering glow of the first fires of the day being lit across the surrounding hills. For a couple of hours it is cool and a thin mist hangs over the road. In the east the dusky forms of the Usambara Mountains hide the rising sun; a pale yellow light filters through the cloud above them bathing the craggy hilltops in an angelic glow, as if plumes of stardust were drifting from the rocks towards the sky.

Between the road and the hills the land is lush and green and women are working in the fields. The road is full of potholes and coaches speed past forcing me onto the grassy verge. At Segera I am stopped at a roadblock and the policeman asks me how I find the condition of Tanzania. He beams when I tell him it is great. The roads good. The people friendly. National pride wells up in him and spreads across his plump face in a broad grin. I sleep at Korogwe and ride 160 km to Same the next day. The land dries up as I go further north; the fields of yellow-faced sunflowers and healthy maize give way to vast plains of dusty red earth. There are deep groves running through the dying soil, the scars of heavy rains that remain etched in the burning land. It is very flat and a battered sign warns of strong winds. I pass by row upon row of cotton plants and speed across the flats with a rushing wind behind me. I stay at Same and ride 100 km, past the Pare Mountains, to Moshi the next morning.

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.