A DAY IN MARSABIT...

Marsabit is the Machu Picchu of Kenya. If Kenya had to hide its civilisation from Armageddon, Marsabit is the place they should use...


It is the weirdest, most remote and most difficult place to get to, I have ever been. Most of the 50 000 strong community who live in this 1400 meter high hidden town have never seen what tarmac looks like. To do that they would have to travel 250 km north to the the Ethiopian border or a same amount south until reaching Isiolo (where we are heading next). Both options include this horrible lava rock roads making it extremely difficult. As a matter of fact this whole area is so remote and unreachable, it is hardly mentioned in the travel guide books. My 400 page travel guide about Kenya has 6 lines about Marsabit and a few words about the beautiful volcanoes that surround the city. That"s all... This feels real good, I finally feel like an adventurer, having made it to a place that travel guides have not even discovered yet. Except for the TDA riders who cross this town every year since 2004, very few tourists make it here, and the one who do all have stories to share. On the road we passed 2 Spanish women from San Sebastian on an old Renault Espace heading south. It had taken them 4 days to cross the top section of the desert. We were faster on our bicycles... One of the two was walking in front of the Renault car removing the bigger lava rocks by hand so that it could go forward... Anyway last night, they pulled in front of the Jey Jey hotel where we are staying...

The other foreigners here are all equipped with rough looking 4 x4 's, this included a South African couple going around the world for the past 21 months and now heading back home.

The Jey Jey hotel was one of the 6 lines about Marsabit in my travel guide, it said "Jey Jey lodge is the best and cleanest in town"... he he... "best and cleanest"... Well, I don't wanna see the rest... OK, lets face it Jey Jey is probably the closest thing I have ever been to spending a night in jail. The hotel is a double storey building with a central courtyard and rooms disposed along straight dark and dirty corridors. each room has one small window that opens up to the courtyard. Well, let me rephrase this, my window has been sealed with tape and rotting wire so, it does not open and the amount of dirt on the glass actually makes it look more like a thin brick wall. As I entered the room, I noticed a strong acidic smell, which I thought was the detergent they use to swipe the floors. Unfortunately, I later discovered that the "flavour" was coming from my 5 cm thick bed foam which is supposed to act as a mattress.... It has slept so many dirty human bodies that by now it is impregnated with a strange mix of musk and sweat odours. Almost 2 months into this trip, I have lowered my standards to such a point that I did not even bother worrying about things like bed bugs or other strange diseases that the western world is fantasising about. I just decided that I would add my own body smell to this highly subtitle human made perfume. I even had fun trying to identify what would be the closest perfume to this, and interestingly enough, I came to the conclusion that Kouros from Yves St Laurent was the one...

He he... I must be losing it... Don't worry, apparently after we pass Nairobi, things do get better and the comfort levels on the tour rises to a whooping 2 stars (out of 5).

The Jey Jey hotel is run by Mohamed. As the name gives it away, Mohamed is a full scale Muslim and he makes sure that the voice of Allah is heard in the hotel, not just by placing hand made signage everywhere about "Allah is able here" but also by broadcasting his 5h00 am prayers. Marsabit might not have tarmac, but it has loudspeakers...

It poured with rain the whole night and the air is filled with a thick fog adding to the mystic appeal of this place. I am glad I have a room at Jey Jey, no matter about the smelling mattress, at least there are no leaks in the roof. Of, the shared toilets at the back of the corridor are a bit smelly as well, but that makes them easier to spot at night when the town runs out of electricity... And Jey Jey has a small restaurant where they sell Yogurt! Yes Yogurt! First Yogurt I found on this trip. Big 1 liter pots of chocolate yogurt. I had 2 yesterday already and it tasted so good! I am actually on my way for more just now...

My plan to regain weight has been crushed by difficult riding and little food availability this past 2 weeks, so I have to report even further weight loss. It is now so bad that I can admire pieces of of my skeleton sticking through my flesh... Yesterday at camp on arrival, I took my cycling shirt off and some riders commented that I now looked like coming out of a concentration camp. The good news at Jey Jey is that there are no mirrors, so I cannot frighten myself... I also know that from Nairobi, things will be improving. Previous riders told me exactly this "you will lose weight all the way to Nairobi and then you will start picking up mass from there on as you head south and have access to better food more often. "

The last 2 weeks of the tour have been really hard core. We have had long and difficult riding days and very little access to food, except of course to the one they give us at camp. But to make up for the huge amount of calories we spend each day one would need to eat a lot more than that. And I also find it difficult to eat huge amount of food at a time. I think that my stomach has also shrunk. Some younger riders are all going for a second helping of food at camp, I simply struggle to force down one full plate at night, but then an hour later I am hungry again and by then there nothing to eat. Unfortunately the places we have crossed have so little food for sale. Only the same horrible sweet biscuits everywhere. The last place I found some salty stuff for sale was Khartoum! Since then, there has been nothing serious to stock on. I bought so much in Khartoum, salted peanuts, dry fruits, springles, energy bars and so on, but I run out of that a week ago. I would have never imagine how difficult it would be to find simple things like a packet of dried fruits or even chips. Impossible!

Yesterday's ride was definitely a killer stage. Apparently, based on a rough estimation, less than a third of the riders completed it, so that means only about 25 riders rode the entire stage yesterday. Out of those were of course all the EFI's left. We are actually 13 EFI 's left. 11 guys and 2 women (Gizi and Juliana). Yesterday was definitely the hardest cycling day so far because of the roughness of the terrain. 85 km of lava rock road has an horrible impact on your body. Today is actually the first time I feel crampy on this tour. Dinder was somehow harder because of the convoy delays and all the time wasted under the burning heat of Sudan, but yesterday's stage was far more technical and demanding from a cycling point of view. At one stage it was so bad, the rocks were just everywhere, The bike was jumping in all directions, it was so bad that my knees kept on hitting the frame of the bike, there was irrigation, there was heat, there was loose gravel, sand, the road started climbing and suddenly a strong headwind came to add to our misery.I burst laughing thinking to myself what is next? Are they going to start throwing banana skins at us?

                                                         Simon walking around Marsabit

                          Dana and Aren after the 3 kilometer walk from camp to "Marsabit center"

                                    Always be suspicious when the board promises too much....

                                       The JeyJey hotel where I am staying for the rest day.
                                       The "best in town" according to the Lonely Planet guide...

                                                                 The rules inside my room

                                                  The ceiling of my bedroom (best in town)

                                        The next 6 cycling days information board at camp.

                       Early afternoon, the fog and rain finaly cleared leaving quite a mess in town

                                                                       Bike wash

                                I always recomend to eat first and check the kitchen after in Africa,
                               otherwise you will starve.... This is the kitchen of the restaurant
                               where we had French fries... Not sure if the goat is waiting to be
                               milked or slaughtered... The pan next to the goat is for frying the
                               potatoes.

                                                    Marsabit is a gloomy place when it rains

                           The good news about Marsabit is that it has an Internet cafe which TDA
                           riders have taken over during this rest day...

THE INFAMOUS NORTHERN KENYAN LAVA ROCK DESERT...

Today Gerald spent two hour sending these photos to us, the connection was very slow, so he just went and joined his rider friends for a beer...

                                      Before entering the lava rock desert, we crossed 100 km
                                      of thick bushland filled with camel herds

                                  Camp in the Kenyan bush 85 km south of the Ethiopian border,
                                  tomorrow we will enter the infamous lava rock desert and riders
                                  are nervous at camp tonight.

The camp made the joy of the local village kids and teenagers who browsed around our tents. They were much better behaved than Ethiopian kids. No need for a rope and armed guards here....

                                         Rider resting his wrists after 30 km of lava rock road




At the border post in Moyale, when I told the very friendly officer that we were going to cross the lava rock desert by bicycle, he laughed and his comment was clear "You can't" he simply said... Well, maybe most people can't, but some TDA riders can! Crossing the lava rock desert is like a race within the race at TDA. Riders on cyclocross and road bikes are suffering heavily and mountain bikers shine. Today we just did what is considered to be one of the 3 hardest day of the TDA, an 85 km stretch of pure lava rock desert road mostly made of big lava rocks, lose sand patches and corrugated surface. Nothing nice, add to this a temperature that hits well above the 40 degrees celsius by 10 h00 AM, some heavy headwinds, a 20 km climb and you have our day... About half of the riders did not finish, as a matter of fact many did not even start and got so frighten by the 35 km bit we already did yesterday of that lava rock area. They decided to get on the trucks from camp. The road was so bad that they actually made it to camp after the front riders as the trucks struggled even more than the bikes on these horrible roads.

We have now been riding about 250 km on dirt roads over the last 3 days since we crossed into Kenya. The first 130 km were fine, almost fun, the next 120 were a very different story. We first crossed a thick savanna region mostly populated by nomadic camel and goat farmers with a rich red clay soil and lush bush. Then suddenly we descended into what looked like a giant pan, completely naked of any vegetation and filled with black lava rocks. Only the odd acacia tree would brake the monotony every now and then, but nothing, absolutely nothing grows here. Amazing! The temperature suddenly soars to well above 40 and you feel very small as you drive further into this very hard looking environment. The only birds you see are Vultures and they give you the feeling that YOU are the hunted. They certainly took great interest in evaluating their chances at us, given the snail pace we crossed this desert at...

Our target was the small town of Marsabit situated at the heart of the Volcano national park in the middle of a very beautiful volcano chain. These volcanoes must be very young as they are still perfectly shaped. So today day was aManda day", one of those super hard days which gives extra bonus time to the winner. When you hear "Mando day", you know already, that you are in for a tough one, but the combination of lava rock roads and mando day, was on everybody's mind last night at camp.

Well, hard it was but I still put the Dinder national park ride in Southern Sudan as the hardest day of the tour so far. This would be second. I know that some riders will disagree with me on that one, but remember, I am a mountain biker and that is the kind of terrain I enjoy. And what an incredible experience than to cross this desert on a bicycle! Wao! So Mr officer at the border post, we can and we did!

Volcano crater just before arriving in Marsabit, a small city surrounded by many volcanos in the middle of the lava rock desert where we will spend our rest day.To get here we also had to climb 800 m. It is incredible how within a few kilometers we went from pure lava rock desert to this green lush surroundings.

                                    Gabriele (who is riding Ted's bike today) passing a road kill

                                   Vultures next to the road, not very scared about my presence...

                                   Some even followed me.... I must have been looking weak...

                                                                   Volcanos everywhere

                                            Houps... Luckuly our cycling shoes have thick soles

                                                     I definitely need a shower in Marsabit..

                                  At kilometer 42 we were told that there would be a small village
                                  with a coke stop, hard to believe, but true, there it was and the
                                  owner had a generator which meant COLD cokes! On the picture,
                                  Ruben and Simon

                                      I saw white spots from far away in this lava rock landscape.
                                     As we got closer, it turned out to be white goats...

                       Not much traffic on this 450 km stretch of lava rock road, but the few trucks
                       that pass are very dangerous as they expect us to get off their way and have
                       very bad brakes whilst beeing often overloaded... Pim, here came close to
                       beeing hit a few seconds after I took this photo.

                        Camp in the middle of the lava rock desert with big storms on the horizon

                             Not easy to find a descent spot where to pitch your tent in this desert

                                My Camel Pack with an extra tyre for this section of desert roads
                                and my lucky Lion hanging there with me every day. It was given
                                to me by my wife as a good luck item..

                         Today the choice was simple, if it was not lava rock, it was correguated dirt...

                                            The lava rock desert road is not just a legend....
                                            It is hell and it is on the menu for the next four days....

                                     There are very few trees in this desert and the temperature
                                     is 42 celcius, so we stop at every tree and recover under
                                     the small shade.

                                                                   Lava rock everywhere

                                   The road is made of deep grooves and we often have to switch
                                   between them into the most rideble path, many riders had bad
                                   falls while switching over the lose rocks between the grooves.

                              Kenyan woman at a coke stop (yes there was one bar in this desert!)

KENYAN LANDSCAPES AND PANCAKES...

                                    Gerald got friends helping him to send this story and photos...

We are back on dirt for the next 5 days. This should be really hard, but day one went better than expected. The mountain bikers flew over the 80 km stretch which was mostly corrugated with some lose sand and hard clay in between. I made it to camp before the trucks, in less than 3,5 hours. Not a very difficult stage overall and the 3 weeks training camp we just did on above 2000 meters Ethiopian plateau seemed to pay off. Now that we are back down at 600 meters, we all feel so fit! Incredible...


The northern Kenyan landscapes are spectacular and far less populated than Ethiopia. Children here are well behaved and also much better dressed than in Ethiopia. The adults are also easier to communicate with. Their English is good here and they all seem to know where Cape Town is. So when they ask us where we are going, we can now proudly answer "Cape Town" which definitely impresses the Kenyans. Ambiance at camp tonight is really good, the air is hot and humid whilst big thunderstorm clouds are gathering in the sky. The kids from the local village are around, but their behaviour is so different from Ethiopian kids. Instead of staring at us and asking for money, they are playing and having fun around our tents exited by our presence, but acting like any European kid would. They are waving at us and politely saying "Jumbo" which is "hello" in Swahili.

We are in the middle of nowhere here, but it feels real good and even the little shop along the road next to camp has a friendly owner. He sells home made Chapatis, the Kenyan version of pancakes. they were so good and so fresh that I was intrigued by this and asked to see how they make them. He told me that his wife was about to prepare more since the TDA rider bought every single one he had. Ina small room filled with smoke behind his shop, I witnessed (and photographed) the preparation of the Chapatis. Quite a lot of work actually, but a really delicious result and for details see the photos. The price for one is 20 Shillings, about 20 euro cents.

More rain is definitely on the way as a warm and humid air is blowing into my tent as I am writing this. We are only 400 km from the equator, so it is kind of normal, I suppose...

I managed to send the pictures earlier with my international roaming data sim card and the connection only worked from one spot in the middle of the road. Local young men knew about this and they took me to the exact spot. One rider passing by toof a picture of the scene and gave it to me.

                                                The local village chiefs in deep meditation

                                  TDA is back on dirt.Today's 80km were actually relatively easy.
                                  It will get a lot more difficult soon.

                                                 Children from the village next to our camp

                                                                 The local football pitch

                                           We use whatever water we find to wash ourselves

                                          Camp in the beautiful Northern Kenyan landscapes

                                         Riders chilling at the local shop next to camp where
                                         you can purchase warm cokes

                                        They cook the Chapatis on the fire but instead of frying
                                        one at a time, they add one on top of each other and
                                        keep on flipping the pile around, keeping the chapatis
                                       already cooked warm and moist!

                                                     Chapatis are rolled like a tart base

                                                     Cutting the thick paste into small rolls

                                   The thick Chapati paste is first flatten into one big giant base

                                                        The kids from the chapati maker

                                       First the woman prepare the Chapati paste with a mixture
                                      of flower, oil water and sugar, almost like our pancakes,
                                      but they keep it very thick like a pizza paste.

                            
                                          The chapatis are delicious, especially when eaten warm.
                                          They taste just like thick pancakes.