April 25, 2025 to April 29, 2025
Day 205-209: Kibale - Kigali
A short ride from Kibale (around 20km) is the Uganda/Rwanda border. Crossing the border was not an issue (once we worked out where we were staying in Kigali…). The road follows a river valley. This was clearly the most direct and probably the least climbing route to Kigali.
A few things changed when crossing the border. We’re now riding on the right-hand side. The road is perfect – edged, most of the time gutters, and smooth asphalt. It’s extremely clean – no rubbish, the road gutters are clean, the grass beside the road is neatly edged. There are flowering plants planted beside the road (and weeded by hand). There are almost no cars. A few trucks a day. A few motorcycles. Most of the road traffic is single speed bicycles. It is steep. The road we followed was very well laid out, following the riverbed, but we did have to climb a pass between river valleys, and we chose to go a little further up for the one night we spent on the road. But there is no getting away from steep roads – the part of Rwanda we saw is entirely deep valleys, and hence steep hills everywhere. Which makes it strange that we’ve left behind hordes of motorbikes in Uganda, for quite steep roads and bicycles. Bicycles used (as far as we can see) mostly as passenger vehicles.
We really didn’t see much of Rwanda. Kigali and 130km of the main road from Uganda and that’s it.
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And the contrast to the main city, Kigali, is stark. The roads in Kigali are clogged with traffic – cars, piles of low powered motorbikes. Even electric motorbikes. Although we may have had a very unusual experience of the country. The day after we entered, we rode into Kigali. When we arrived there were traffic lights, but no cars. Really. None. We saw three police cars and maybe 5 civilian cars in about an hour of looking around the city. Completely deserted. Perfect riding. We had no idea why at the time and it was extremely strange and more than a little unnerving. It turned out we arrived on the last Saturday of the month – until midday, the locals participate in mandatory volunteering to clean the country (link to wiki). It sounds like a great idea, and the country and city are unlike anything else we’ve seen in Africa (or much of the world). But we didn’t see that many people working (the few we saw were in uniform and looked like they were paid to be cleaning). We did see a few people cleaning the roadside gutter on the road in. It gave us the weirdest experience of any city. Riding into a modern city on perfect, yet completely deserted, roads. If there is to be a zombie apocalypse, we’ll know what its going to look like.
The volunteering / public holiday made finding something to eat for lunch challenging as well. All the shops were shut. Everything – except pharmacies. We haven’t seen this in Africa. On Sunday, Friday, Christmas Day, New Years, Easter – there is a slowdown, but commerce doesn’t stop like this. We found one small shop that had some snacks and then… waited. About midday a few cafés opened. And then a few pedestrians appeared. A short while later the city came back to life, although muted compared to a weekday.
The rest of the week we didn’t venture far from the house of the amazing WarmShowers host we stayed with. But when we did, the city looked more like we expected – bustling with cars and motorbikes. But a very weird way to arrive!
Our WarmShowers hosts looked after us for a couple of days and helped us out a lot (from providing bike boxes in a city that doesn’t seem to do boxes to entertaining us, helping us with directions and dropping us at the airport!). When we weren’t packing the bikes away into tiny bike boxes (who knew you can fit the huge bikes we have into kids bike boxes – it’s just a matter of dismantling more and more until they fit), or packing our bags for the plane, we were talking about bike trips (and all sorts of other topics, including playing with a cool Lego trainset…). The family had cycled form Europe to Japan the year before and were only a few months into living in Kigali, so their trip and stories were still quite fresh. Imagine riding across the world with two kids under ten, who both rode their own bikes! They had just moved into their new home and it looks like there are still a few things to learn (including having a thief steal almost everything that wasn’t nailed down from just outside their bedroom window - including a car battery and charger - on the morning of our departure). Wonder where the security guard was… It wasn’t until we were in the airport that we thought about it and realised our, unlocked, bikes were right next to everything that was stolen. It was bad enough for the family, but that might have upset our plans a bit if they’d taken our bikes as well. We dodged a bullet there.
We didn’t want to jinx ourselves by mentioning this out loud, but we’ve managed to cycle through the wet season by fearing the rain and hiding when it looked threatening. And didn’t get rained on while riding the bike.
Now we’re in the process of a massive cheat of about 4000 km. Flying from Kigali to Athens.
This ends the Africa leg of the tip. A bit over 10,000 km. 94,800 vertical meters (according to the GPS – but I suspect it lies to make you feel better about the day – let’s call it 10 times up Everest).
We’ve had far more flats that I would expect. Most of these are small bits of wire from shredded truck tyres that even the very heavy and otherwise very good Schwalbe tyres can’t keep out. Only two punctures from acacia thorns (I was scared of these before we started, but it’s 5mm long pieces of thin wire that are the real villain). Stephen had 17 flats (14 rear, 3 front); Cath had 8 (7 rear, one front). Out of the 4 wheels, guess which is – by far – the hardest to work on… We also wore out both chains, chainrings and sprockets – but although they’re completely worn out, they’re still just going (we’re still carrying the spares we had shipped to Tanzania). And we broke one of the screws in the Rohloff external shifting box. And Cath’s bottom bracket has been on life support for a month. But all up, I think we got away pretty lightly for seven months in Africa. Fingers crossed for a similar outcome in Europe!
Today's ride: 130 km (81 miles)
Total: 10,090 km (6,266 miles)
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