Boris Bikes

Boris Bikes ready to go at Hyde Park

At last- a day without rain. For weeks it seemed as if spending the summer in London was a really bad idea for someone who eshews socks and umbrellas. I am not a fan of weather in general, preferring the bland simplicity of Dubai's perma-sunshine to the chopping and changing of London days, where rain is followed by blinding sun by lowering grey clouds by howling winds. It's July, and finally I am confident that I can go out and not catch a cold. A perfect day to take a Boris bike for a spin.

What is a Boris bike?

Barclay's Bikes, as they are properly called, are clunky upright bikes, built like tanks (23 kg, chain and mud guards, puncture-proof tyres, built-in dynamo, brakes and gears courtesy of Shimano) and liberally labelled with the blue and white logos of Barclay's sponsorship. Boris bikes are named after the London mayor who introduced them in 2010. They are niftily designed to withstand daily punishment by tourists as well as commuters and casual users, with hiring prices cleverly planned to encourage short trips over day-long tours. As an addition to the tube/train/bus network of central London it is to the designer's credit that they are so popular that on a sunny day they are impossible to come by.

Find a station

So how do you use one of these chunky bikes? Where do you pick one up? How do you pay for the ride? As with many activities lately, it all starts with an app. Barclays themselves have designed a very functional iPhone and Android app that looks for docking stations in the vicinity, tells me how many bikes and spaces are available, even lets me plan a ride. At a docking station I can pay for a bike, check the map and dock my bike when I'm finished with my trip.

Barely a bike left...

Card or key?

I am an annual member for £45 per year, so I have a key to quickly free a bike. Before I joined the scheme, I slipped a debit or credit card into the payment point to print out a 5 digit keycode to use on the bike rack's keypad. Having a key has made grabbing a bike so much faster, rather than having to click through the multiple choice screens, accepting terms and conditions, choosing the number of bikes, and receiving the I can be on the bike in seconds.

Planning where to go

The iPhone app lets me plan my trip. I can choose from speedy, steady or quiet route types, and Google map will show me the way. A nifty built-in timer will tell me when my free 30 minutes are up. It would be nice to have turn-by-turn speech instructions, so that I wouldn't have to stop at junctions to check the map or try to memorise the route, and a phone holder in the handlebar would also stop me from getting lost, but built-in GPS units on each bike may be too much to ask for.

Set it up

The bike, for all it's clunkiness, can be adjusted to fit. I set the bike to my preferred height by the numbers on the saddle stalk. There is a holder for a bag welded to the handlebars. No back wheel rack means I can't carry heavy shopping or multiple bags, so I have started to travel light - and avoid wearing trailing scarves or bulky jackets lest I garrotte myself in transit. I check the brakes, pedals and bell and off I go.

The welded bag carrier

Join the Maelstrom

I am ready to join London's crazy traffic. Londoners are more competitive than most other city dwellers I have encountered. While in other countries road traffic can be a free-for-all, a mess of different driving styles like Dubai, hindered by a complete lack of signage like Addis Ababa or just a general flouting of the rules like Nairobi, London has an air of repressed anger funneled into intense competition between the different classes of travellers. Everyone uses and abuses the rules to their own benefit: taxis dash down bus lanes, cyclists run red lights to get the jump on motorised transport, buses squeeze their huge bulks into gaps in the traffic flow. Pedestrians are hyper-alert to any movement around them, as neither the cyclists nor the motorised faction take any prisoners. None of the dreamy jaywalkers of Joburg CBD, if you are walking in London you better have your wits about you.

Throwing a group of amateur cyclists into the mix has interesting results, specially since - unlike other first world cities - London has barely any dedicated bike lanes. Marking yourself out as a Boris biker means labelling yourself ignorant of the unwritten rules of London traffic: every second counts and there is always someone who is willing to overtake you. Don't hope for mercy, because getting there fast is serious business. Boris bikers often dawdle, they may be lost, or vague as to their direction, they are inexperienced cyclists. Their bikes are heavy and unwieldy, so they are slow to react. And the stigma of the Boris biker can not be hidden, it is a blue flag of shame.

The blue flag of shame

One thing I have learnt from the Boris bike scheme is that Londoners are desperate for a new, easier way to get around town. Taxis are expensive, buses slow and the Tube crowded and hot. Commuting by bike is not an option for most Londoners, the distance from their home to the office is just too great and traffic on the main trunk roads into town too dangerous. But for getting round the city you can't beat the bike. I would be reluctant to lock up my bike in public in London, lest it is stolen or removed, but the Boris bikes are designed to be placed in racks rather than used all day. The first thirty minutes of each trip are free, with prices rising steeply for longer journeys, thus discouraging bike hogging. No daytrips along the canal with this scheme, or leaving the bike outside while dashing into a shop, but definitely a quick dash from Oxford Street to Hyde Park for lunch. For casual travellers, or non-Londoners who just want to go for a spin, the system is perfect.

Problems

The bike scheme was intoduced in July 2010. To begin with the fully automated system of hiring and replacing bikes was flaky. The scheme is run by Transport for London, who control all local public transport aspects. But the actual operation of the scheme is outsourced to a private company, and the setup costs heavily sponsored by Barclays. The various layers of management initially resulted in an unreliable process, with people complaining of not being able to hire bikes and being charged random amounts if they did manage to get one. Two years later, and running 8.300 bikes and 15.000 docking stations with a recent expansion eastwards, most complaints relate to the incredible success of the scheme, which regularly results in bikes being unavailable, specially in the West End where pressure comes from Hyde Park tourers and West End party people heading out of Zone 1.

The logistics of the scheme are dazzling: broken bikes need to be identified and fixed (bikes get an inspection on average every two weeks, and numbers of destroyed or stolen bikes barely reach double-digits after two years); bikes need to be relocated to busy areas when a wave of customers have left them stranded in the wrong part of town (the company uses electric vehicles for this so as not to negate the carbon savings from all the cycling); vast numbers of payments have to be processed properly with custom hardware (keys, docking stations) and unreliable humans in the mix.

The future

London's bike scheme is not the first in the world. Many other cities have offered impromptu hire bikes to their population, from Amsterdam to Montreal, many with much superior biking infrastructure, prioritising human-powered traffic over cars. Such is the pressure on transport options in London that any new choice was going to be taken up enthusiastically, by commuters as well as casual users and visitors. The London scheme is simple and effective, now it just needs to bring about a shift in priority towards cycling versus driving. London has shown that this can be done with the success of the congestion charge, gently but firmly forcing car traffic out of the centre of London. If the next step is to pedestrianise the city and focus on good bike routes, London could amost become pleasant to navigate. I am certainly a fan, alreay regretting that I brought my own bike to London with me.

It's National day in Dubai. Watch out on the roads!

The 40th anniversary of it's founding is reason for any country to celebrate. Flags, parties, fireworks... And in Dubai it all happens in the middle of the road. Dubai traffic police is trying to reign things in this year, so the following advice appeared in Gulf News. 

• Follow traffic rules. 
  
• Don't stick posters on car windows that block the view.
  
• Don't stick your head out of windows or dance on the bonnets of you car as this could lead to accidents.
  
• Do not carry more than the number of people usually allowed in a vehicle.
  
• Motorists are strongly urged not to change the colours of their vehicles or tint the windshield beyond the accepted limit.
  
• Don't create chaos on the streets.
  
• Car number plates should not be concealed with decorations and or be spray-painted over.
  
• Motorists should not blow their horns continuously or add devices that increase noise. 
  
• Stopping the vehicle in the middle of the road to talk to others creates traffic jams and should be avoided.
  
• Don't blockade the road with spontaneous parades or celebrations. 

Reading this on the plane made me think that Dubai traffic police may be a little over cautious and pessimistic regarding people's traffic sense, but judging by the behavious I saw on the road this weekend I am glad that they are on the ball. 

Border crossings

Arriving in Europe through the Balkans has meant many many border crossings. One day we had breakfast in Macedonia, coffee on the high plains of the Kosovo and dinner on the coast of Montenegro. Countries have blurred, we barely have time to put our passports away, but we have also crossed plenty of invisible borders: the ‘donkey cart on the road’ border, or the ‘reliable road signs’ border, the ‘clean toilets at roadside petrol stations’ and the ‘no more flatbread’ border. Some we have relished (who doesn’t like a clean toilet), but there are some things I miss in this return to old familiarities. There is a marked distance to strangers now. It’s not that I miss the intense privacy intrusions of Ethiopia or the hassling touts of Egypt, but the easy hospitality of Sudan and the friendly curiosity of almost anywhere we pulled up, the willingness to accept my poor attempt at local language in the Arab world.

One of the concerns I had about this trip has been whether we’d be able to cross all those African borders, whether we’d have to bribe people, whether we’d be refused visas or have our car searched. None of these worries became reality in the end. Border formalities were unfailingly chaotic and inscrutable, took a few hours of standing in the heat wondering what it is about bureaucracy that wins through with even the most relaxed nationalities, but no-one ever showed one bit of interest in the contents of our car or gave us grief about our visas. There was of course the exception of Egypt where at both the incoming border at Aswan and the exit border at Nuweiba the officials displayed complete contempt for any sense of efficiency, courtesy or honesty, but that was a big exception. Now we are in the EU borders have become a part of that memory of strange things we did in Africa. We recently crossed the ‘not having to get out of the car’ border, and now they just are no more until we again leave the safe bosom of our home continent.

European landfall

We have arrived on our home continent. Actually, we have crossed it half way already, in a mad dash to get to central heating and warm showers, i.e. my brother's house. Have a look at the map and you'll see the distances we made in the last three days. Yay for being able to drive in the dark again. I expect the next update to announce our arrival.

Happy new decade!

GPS-less in the Middle East

Oh, how we love Sally, our voluble GPS, who has been guiding us through Africa with the help of Tracks4Africa, Garmin’s East Africa streetmaps and a useful Mac program for route planning called Roadtrip. With the help of Sally we have been able to cross deserts (although Anja and Jörg’s GPX tracks of the new Sudan roads helped a lot), been able to pinpoint those elusive ferry crossings in Kazangula, Dar Es Salaam and points North; and make sure that we always found a camp site every night, even in the wilds of Ethiopia (although for some reason it didn’t list Tim and Kim’s). But the further North we went the sparser T4A got and when we left Egypt, our GPSing finally stopped and we were officially back to paper maps. Unfortunately the Middle East is neither well mapped nor blessed with book stores where a lost traveller might pick up a route book, so we have mostly been relying on the US basemap Sally falls back on when she is as clueless as we are, and the - utterly unsuited to driving - town maps of various Lonely Planets and Rough Guides (the Bradt guides weren’t even in the running as navigation aides, as their maps seem to have been lovingly hand drawn by a casual visitor to the region without access to any of the freely available satellite imagery, i.e. Google maps). This has resulted in a lot of aimless driving round Arab city centres trying to establish where we are, where we are trying to get to and generally being aggravated with each other. Here is an example of our attempt to find the Baron Hotel in Aleppo:

As you can see we took a spiral approach to our destination, in fact we drove past the hotel a few times before we found it, despite asking a variety of extremely helpful but cartographically challenged pedestrians, peering at miniscule street signs in the dark and trying to divine the direction of North by trying to remember where the sun set an hour ago.

So now you know that GPSless driving in foreign countries can lead to frustration, arguments and eventually divorce. Don’t do it!

How low can you go?

Yesterday, while passing the Dead Sea, we reached minus altitude. After a long drive down into one of the wadis feeding the dying Dead Sea (too much water being taken out of the system for irrigation, not enough water going into the Dead Sea to replace the million litres lost every day to evaporation) we achieved -391 meters. It didn’t feel any different from being at sea level, though. Disappointing.

Lost in Cairo

This sign on the way into Cairo should have given us pause for thought. You want to go to Cairo? Sure, all roads lead there, pick a road, any road....

Shame that the GPS co-ordinates for “The Great Pyramids at Giza" on the increasingly unreliable Tracks4Africa map were who knows where, certainly not anywhere near the actual pyramids. So after spinning round the scuzzy suburbs of Cairo’s West Bank we tried following signs for a change.

I think we had just forgotten they exist, as the last reliable road sign we had spotted would have been somewhere around Maun in Botswana.

Long story short, we got there, in the middle of a sand storm. Cairo hazy in the background, pyramids barely visible, we returned looking a lot younger, having been micro-abraded thoroughly.

Leaving Aswan

After two weeks of idling, waiting for the car to catch up with us, it was surprisingly hard to leave Aswan. We had found favourite haunts for dinner, sunset watching and beer drinking, we had made connections: Mahmoud, keeping us up to date with the non-progress of the barge that - Inshallah - would bring our car; Shahad, fellucca captain extraordinaire and his brother Shazy, hospitable Nubians serving karkady (hibiscus tea) on his boat; Mohammed from the Keylany Hotel reception, dispenser of information and correct pricing for all manner of things, and Hamid and his three brothers, wily sellers of tourist tack in the souq, who could also arrange for the sale of anything else required.

Still, the most friendly encounters since we left Sudan took place on our way out of the tourist metropolises of Luxor and Aswan. Attempting to buy bread, we stopped at a falafel cafe in a small village, where my request for “Eish" (my Arabic is obviously coming along in leaps and bounds) resulted in a group discussion by all other customers until we found an English speaker, who, after giving me a big bag of freshly fried bright green falafel, initially refused my attempt at payment, and eventually accepted a few Euros worth of Egyptian Pounds for six flatbreads, 25 falafel and a bag of tomatoes.

Later, looking for crisps and water at a roadside shop near Qena, my miserable Arabic had everyone falling about laughing. The shopkeeper eventually rescued me with stern looks in the direction of his son and daughter, who were wrestling over the privilege of packing my purchases into a bag. For some reason everything I did, pointing to things, getting out my money, even just standing there shrugging my shoulders, made them collapse into heaps of giggles. It still makes me smile now.

We stopped for lunch on a side road, and after convincing the soldiers at the road block - there is a road block at every junction on the Nile Road - that we were not going to get ourselves blown up or machine-gunned on their watch, we ate those lovely falafel with sweet chilli sauce, made all the more tasty by the fact that not one passer-by stopped to stare, and the old man over the road cutting fodder never even threw us a glance. Just as we got ready to leave a young man stopped his donkey cart next to our car and wandered off into a palm grove. He returned a few minutes later with a handful of fresh dates, just picked and thick with honey sweetness, which he offered us, smiling. Asking nothing in return, he got back onto his cart, waved and disappeared.

How to ... Get your car out of customs in Egypt

We managed to extract the car from Egyptian customs, but only after witnessing the most flamboyant display of ineptitude, corruption and disorganisation so far on this trip.

The setting: Aswan’s ferry port, witness to weekly passenger ferries and occasional cargo barges from and to Wadi Halfa in Sudan, and a suburban hellhole complete with sewage repairs and begging children, site of the Aswan traffic police department.

The actors: various overlanders, both amateurs like us and professional drivers of overland trucks; M., the fixer extraordinaire; K., his slow-witted taxi driver (employed by M. only because his uncle is the head of the customs department); a near-blind customs official and assorted policemen on the hunt for baksheesh.

The mission: to convince Egyptian customs, traffic police and various other unmentioned government agents to release nine cars and trucks from the customs zone of the ferry port so that we can bloody well finish our journey.

The backstory: most of us have been waiting to move on for more than two weeks, variously in Aswan, Wadi Halfa and assorted locations in the Sudanese desert. The barge carrying the cars (which runs on a separate schedule from the passenger ferry) was delayed due to Eid, weekends (Fridays) and other unexplained vagaries of Arabic origin. The barge had arrived on Thursday afternoon, complete with five Landrovers, two overland trucks, one MAN truck and a Landcruiser, as well as three dogs. It was now Saturday. Everyone was tense in a different way, everyone wanted to get out of Aswan as soon as possible.

The timeline:

8am - waiting for K. and a second taxi driver to pick us up. Fourteen people sizing each other up at the hotel; I don’t like what I see. Two stroppy Australians and a South African motorbiker who has been heard to call the locals kaffirs. Great.

8.30 - The taxis arrive. We drive to the police station. K. and two members of the group disappear inside with carnets, passports and money. The rest of us get acquainted while leaning on the bonnets of banged-up taxis (ours has done 750,000 km). The Dragoman driver is reading the Daily Express. She must be homesick.

9.30 - The others re-appear, the grand total of their achievements a collection of blank forms in Arabic. We pile back into the cars and take the bumpy road to the port.

10am - Arrival at the ferry port. K. takes the first group through to the offices, while we in the second group are left behind to fend off baksheesh attempts by the gate keeper, who is trying to charge us to pick up our cars.

11am - After a series of phone calls to M. and strong words with the various fixers he sends, we are let into the office as well. We spend an eternity watching the near-blind official painstakingly copying driver names, chassis numbers and registrations from the English forms to the Arabic version. This takes two hours for nine carnets, with multiple breaks for tea and smokes.

12.30 - The barge is now available, sort of. M. has managed to convince the crew that just because the normal pier is blocked by the Minister of Agriculture’s boat (he is returning from a visit to Sudan, and seen speeding off in a very shiny black Merc), we should still be able proceed with unloading. So in order to drive the cars off the barge, we have to manhandle the strangely engine-less craft to shore by all together pulling on a rope, while the captain and his crew shouts encouragement. Taking the trucks and cars off takes a grand total of 15 minutes.

1.30pm - We are still waiting in the port car park for something to happen. M. brings tea. Suddenly a customs official appears, spends 2 minutes peering through the door of each car, asking if we have knives (?!?), and vanishes. Silence returns. We haven’t had lunch. In desperation I spend some time cleaning the fridge and kitchen in our Landrover.

2.30pm - A policeman, ferried in by K. for the occasion, takes rubbings of our chassis and engine numbers before demanding payment for overtime. After collecting E£10 per car he is taken back to town by K. and ennui descends one more.

3pm - We are told to come back tomorrow to complete formalities, as the traffic police has gone home. Aargh!

The denouement: Stuart spent all of Sunday at the traffic police to arrange insurance and registration. He was finally allowed to leave, sporting Egyptian number plates, after yet another official tried to extract a bribe for not doing a proper check. Our fixer, to his credit, called his bluff and told him they’d be happy to unpack the cars so he could do a more thorough search. Luckily the official decided he valued knocking off on time more than the money and let them depart at 4pm.

Sudan Roundup

Sudan was country number 10. We well and truly left Africa and returned to the more familiar bosom of the Arab World. It was pleasant to be somewhere familiar after the sweaty otherness of East Africa and the complete alien culture of Ethiopia. To be honest, we raced through Sudan, despite being given a four week pass. There are no ATMs in Sudan, so we had limited amounts of money to spend, plus we had to catch an earlier ferry than we had planned due to the Eid al Ahra holiday. We entered Sudan halfway upcountry with the Nile, took two long driving days to Khartoum, spend a few days in Khartoum and a few dawdly days more or less following the Nile north to the edge of Lake Nasser, seeking out the remains of the Kushite empire. Then we left on the adventure that is the Wadi Halfa ferry.

From Ethiopia the terrain changed completely. After weeks of cool and populated mountains we were back at 500 m altitude and a landscape that is endlessly flat and monotonously yellow and red. The soil is a fertile dark brown where it is irrigated, vast harvested fields running to the horizon. Northwards desert proper begins, black rockscapes on fine red sand. The Nile winds its way through this barrenness, providing a sweep of green and blue in the monotony. Alongside its water life is possible, endless stretches of habitation reliant on the fields and date farms kept alive by pumps and donkey power. Always within reach of the river, but separate, set into the silence of the sands, temples and pyramids of the Kushite civilisation. Rulers of Nubia and for a while, Egypt, the Kushites left sandblasted ruins which German archaeologists are attempting to rescue before they fade into the desert. Pointy pyramids modelled on Giza (but smaller, steeper and altogether different, as if the blueprints were transmitted by Chinese whispers) erupt by the side of the road along with exquisitely decorated temples proclaiming the superiority of the local kings and queens.

Sudan was big earthenware jugs provided as a public water supply, regular features of the road; low mud brick houses enclosed by decorated walls to keep out wind and sand; heat making the asphalt glassy and reflective like a mirror held up to the scorching sky, oncoming trucks wavering in the mirage, seemingly floating. It was camping in the desert again at last, solitude and stars galore, just as soon as we found a place where we wouldn’t get stuck. It was good roads (built by the Chinese to access Sudan’s natural resources, as in Ethiopia), allowing us to drive all day and make good distance. It was also the worst possible traffic snarl I have ever encountered, proving that Khartoum is up there with Dubai, Nairobi and Chennai, filled with lunatic drivers. Sudan was too short (don’t I say that about all our countries?), but it made a powerful impression.

While the panorama was unchallenging to our desert-proven eyes, our human encounters offered unexpected surprises: There was Ahmed the assured money changer in Wad Madani’s gold souq, dispensing cash and foul with equal aplomb; hospitable Magdi at Wadi Halfa who put us up in his new house for the duration; the casual acquaintance we encountered at the petrol station out of Khartoum, who invited us to stay with him for a few days - another time maybe! Such kindness, such honesty and simple friendliness. After the incessant press of people in East Africa and before the anticipated rapaciousness of the Egyptians, what a breath of fresh air to be treated like friends.

And then there were the variously vehicled overlanders we came across: American cyclists Mary and Greg, the Irish bike riders who insisted on completing their Cairo to Cape (or rather Addis to Cape, then fly back to Addis to cycle to Cairo), the Belgian boys on their way South, eager for GPS co-ordinates and information on road conditions, and fortuitously, on the roadside, Monty the Landrover, whose blog is giving us all the info we need to get through Egypt and onwards. Not to forget the crowd of Algerian footie supporters before and after their victory over Egypt, a nicer group of sober football fans you couldn’t hope to meet.

It feels as if Africa is over, and we are entering a new phase in our journey. We have acquired a new travel companion and decided to brave the Middle East route rather than the ferry to Italy, so the drive onwards will be both longer and more interesting. Of course, as of today we are still carless, so right now we are not going anywhere, but as soon as we do, you will know all about it.

Change of plan

It seems most overlanders go through this: before you start you make a plan. You pore over maps, read guide books, google locations, make top ten lists of places to visit. Then you leave and it all changes anyway. You meet other travellers who tell you about that beach, that park, that camp site you HAVE TO go to. So your route changes a bit and it’s all good. But then comes that moment when you make a mayor change. Like the Irish cyclists we just met who couldn’t get visas for Sudan initially so instead of travelling Ireland to Cape Town they went Addis to Cape, and then, when they could get the Sudan visa in the end, they flew back to Addis to carry on the rest of the way to Ireland the other way around. That’s thinking outside the box.

So long story short, after a lot of back and forth we have cancelled our Tunisia-Italy ferry, have sacked our Libya fixer and have decided to hang a right in Alexandria, travel through Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Greece and the Balkans to Germany. Shouldn’t take too much longer and we have the satisfaction of having done it all by road. Let’s just hope the Balkans in January isn’t that cold (yeah, right).

So if you are interested, the calendar is updated with approximate new dates (you can see the calendar at the bottom of the page). Of course, until we are re-united with our car we have no idea how long we will spend in Egypt, and therefore all dates are highly flexible.

Ethiopia Roundup

Arriving in Ethiopia, after the Marsabit road ordeal, was like returning to the real world from a wild and (potentially) dangerous frontier. On the Ethiopian side of the border there were hotels and tarred roads, and the metropolis of Addis Ababa beckoned. We had not made it to Lake Turkana - another time - but we had got as far as the remote and mysterious land of Abyssinia. And it defied all our expectations. We had heard conflicting views from fellow travellers coming south: it's amazing, beautiful, exotic, with friendly people and delicious food. Or: Ethiopians are horrid, they hate foreigners, stone throwing and pushy begging is the norm. Ok, so everyone either loved or hated Ethiopia, everyone had a strong opinion. What was it going to be for us? From Moyale with its dreary hotel we drove straight up north, not looking left (Omo valley) or right (Bale mountains), and finally stopped at Awassa, a workaday town on the edge of a Rift valley lake. Another few hours hop took us to Lake Langano (there is a sting of lakes following the Rift Valley south), where we finally found a place we wanted to stay for a few days. After getting the car fixed up in Addis Ababa and procuring more cash in preparation for ATM-less Sudan (http://rabbitproductions.blogspot.com/2009/11/more-money-lessons.html) we left for our version of the historic northern loop, and the mystical rock-hewn churches of Lalibela (http://rabbitproductions.blogspot.com/2009/11/lalibela.html). Leaving the Rift Valley behind us for the last time we scaled the highlands to Gonder and a few quiet days at Lake Tana with Tim and Kim (www.timandkimvillage.com).

And that was Ethiopia. We spent almost three weeks, but it felt like days. As it turned out the people were stunningly helpful once we got to talk to them, but if we just stopped by the road to look at the view or dive into a shop, we would be crowded, people staring with no sense of allowing for personal space, and once we did have a stone thrown at us from nowhere, and good shots that the Ethiopians are (they use slingshots to keep the birds out of the fields) they hit one of our new solar panels. So there is a weird disconnect between people who couldn't do enough for us (hello, Global Hotel), people who gave us their insight into Ethiopia (Thanks, Tim and Kim, Getaye, Alex, Zabene, Zegaye, Daniel) and the anonymous stone thrower together with the never-ending phalanx of children shouting "Gimme Money!" Like many other things in Ethiopia, it remains a mystery.

Ethiopia was surprising vistas of mountains, endless hills and valleys covered with fields and grazing; it was eroded volcanic plugs sitting in the midst of fertile lands like squatting giants; it was another beginning for the Nile (the Blue Nile this time) from Lake Tana, which carries 90% of the water that keeps Egypt alive; it was tea coloured lakes languishing placidly in the valley of the Northern Rift, surrounded by nothing much more than silence. Ethiopia was the last we saw of the Rift Valley, a geographical feature we had followed north ever since we arrived at the slice of water that is Lake Malawi, and what a goodbye it was: twisting Italian-built roads took us up and up and up to the cool and windswept highlands, looming mountainsides tamed by the need for farm land with terraces and small irrigation projects, coffee farms with their drying frames, and endless villages along the road, houses fenced by cactus or acacia hedges, herders with goats, donkeys, humpbacked cows, camel caravans and the ever present women carrying water containers from the pump to their homes.


Ethiopia was also surprisingly developed. The road infrastructure was new and well-maintained and where the road was unfinished we saw constant work: graders preparing surfaces for new tar; men and women tightly wrapped against the wind and dust carrying large rocks to the side of the road; diggers far below chomping holes for drainage and culverts - a strange mix of high and low tech. Most of the country seemed electrified, judging by the ever present cables running alongside the roads and into the hills. In fact, when we were in Lalibela, it was a surprise to see the outline of the village by the lamps shining in the windows, a sight we had forgotten since the long-ago days of Namibia. The mobile network is so-so, but considering the remoteness of many places it's amazing it exists at all. Since the internet relies on mobile networks, we were cut off from our web fix for ten days, giving us a nicely disinterested view of the world for a while. We saw school children in uniforms every day (although we found out that schools teach in two shifts, which can't be good for the quality of teaching). As opposed to most of Africa we found that pretty much anywhere had running water, but in keeping with most of Africa, hot water was erratic and water pressure, well let's just say it was not all that.

Ethiopia is unique in Africa: a script with 200 characters that looks like something JRR Tolkien might have invented; octagonal churches topped by elaborate crosses and filled with fantastical frescoes like involved comic book stories; very varied building styles, from huge rondavels to two storey Tukuls, from groups of neat square huts surrounded by high walls with elaborately painted front gates to peaked reed domes topping the central house in a compound, as well as faded Italianate rows of flats and glass fronted skyscrapers in Addis Ababa. Its people, half African, half Arabic with a different look altogether: lighter skinned with angular features, tall and handsome in a new way; a long long history (dating all the way back to King Solomon) intersecting with the empires of Egypt, the rise of Christianity, with Portuguese as well as Indian influences, mentioned by the Greeks and Romans as the faraway land of Punt or Abyssinia. Ethiopia has a palpable identity we have missed in previous countries with their indelible impression of colonialism and not much remembered history before that. Here there is a church that has been keeping records for a thousand years, there are artefacts from former glorious times, there was a royalty until recently that counted its (imaginary, but nevertheless respected) roots from the mystical love affair of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Like Egypt, Iraq and China, there is a pride in having been one of the first great civilisations, and in this case we had the added pleasure in finding a culture that has not been turned into clichés (it's hard to look at Pharaonic culture and not see The Mummy).

Views from the road - Ethiopia

Road kill is rare in Africa - not enough cars - but when it happens at least there is an impressive raptor to clean up the mess.

There’s no escaping it.

Graves are often set next to the road and topped with images of wealth and power to show off the importance of the deceased.

There are places where Haile Selassie is still remembered - this outside the National Museum.

As many women as men are occupied on the many road works to upgrade the failing Italian road infrastructure.

Finally, camels!

A priest soliciting donations.

Someone is having a bad public transport day.

More power from the sun

Supplementing the power supplied by our second battery (to prevent the primary battery from being accidentally run down while charging laptops and such) has been an aim for a while now. We were constantly running into limitations of our admittedly large electricity needs, specially when we were parking up for a few days, so the engine couldn't recharge the additional battery. Our workaround consisted of a combination of incessant searching for mains power (not always easy in countries where even the power supply for locals isn't constant), always charging when on the move, and occasionally running the engine for a half hour when the inverter started beeping. It didn't help that the deep cycle battery was of lower capacity than we would have liked, and, as we later found out, wasn't a sealed unit, so at one point had actually run dry.

Ever since Maun in Botswana we were looking for solar panels to fit to the roof. Finding solar panels is not a problem in Africa per se, as there is a slow and steady development towards self sufficiency with electricity in the face of governments' inability to provide its citizens with a reliable power infrastructure. The problem is getting the right size and capacity to fit a car roof, where most panels are built to supply a household and be propped up on the ground. So we looked again in Lusaka, and in Dar es Salaam, but kind of gave up eventually.

At last, in the unlikely location of an upmarket shopping mall in the embassy district of Nairobi, while looking for a rechargeable torch, we came across a system just small enough and light enough in size and sturdy enough to withstand the bumpy roads, and now we are kitted out with a full 36 W set of three small panels screwed to the lid of one of our roof boxes, plugging into a controller and then into the new deep cycle battery we acquired in Marsabit.

Unfortunately the Ethiopian habit of throwing stones at passing cars meant that two days after finalising the wiring and making the setup work we got hit and cracked the glass cover on one of the panels, reducing our capacity. It's fixable, though, and luckily was the only stone throw we received.

The dreaded Marsabit Rd

Officially it's called the Trans East Africa Highway and while yes, it is in fact in East Africa, and it crosses some of it (from Nairobi in Kenya to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia) it is emphatically not a highway of any kind. It was our only way to points North, so there was no way of avoiding it, but we were not looking forward to it.

Stories we had heard made us dread this part of the journey more than any other, what with the bad condition of the road, the potential for banditry by the local warring tribes (mostly fighting amongst themselves over cattle and land, but still, cross fire...) and the remoteness. We had been told this was the worst road in Africa, averaging 20km/h speed and that if it rained we would surely get bogged down. Some friends recently drove the same way and had to take a soldier armed with a rocket launcher, and then were still stopped at a police checkpoint to wait for an escort of tanks and army trucks. Someone else warned us that a favorite way of holding up cars is to drive a herd of cattle into the road and then threaten the passengers until they give up their valuables. One area we were driving through was actually called the Plains of Darkness, straight from Lord of the Rings, and there were only few villages along the way, but when we did have flat tyre, two cars stopped in quick succession to offer help, and for accommodation we found two lovely spots, Gadissa Lodge in Isiolo and Swiss Henry's camp in Marsabit, as well as getting some help fixing up the car from Mangia's Hardware shop.

A road can get a reputation, and it's not always warranted, and now, after having completed the Marsabit Road and having arrived without incident in Ethiopia, I think that this is one of those traveller stories, a myth of a road that represents the adventure of traveling through Africa by car, that makes even those of us who take the 'easy' route up the East coast (rather than the uncharted and seldom used West coast route with all its unstable countries and even worse infrastructure, where everyone only speaks French) feel as if we are still trail blazers. We have a long list of broken and damaged bits on the car, but really it was an uneventful trip. The one thing no-one had thought to mention to us is the incredible beauty of the landscape and the variety of traditionally living people along the way.

Damages on the Marsabit Rd:

2 eggs - crushed inside a plastic container in the fridge

1 wingnut holding on the high lift jack

2 roof rack brackets - sheared at the welding point

1 tyre including wheel rim - spectacularly blown out and irreparable

1 strawberry yoghurt container - not easy to clean from the fridge, specially combined with raw egg (see above)

2 screws holding the dashboard

1 can of coke, having lost all its fizz mysteriously and having been squished into a square shape on the bottom of the fridge

some paintwork, where the bonnet constantly bounced on the chassis, now padded to minimise the oscillation

Views from the road

Road works. Spreading large rocks across the road is one way to ensure no-one drives on this new stretch. Another popular potion is the paying of green branches instead of using road cones or warning signs. At first we thought that a careless truck had damaged the roadside bushes, until we came around a corner and almost drove into the back of a steam roller.

Candelabra Euphorbia, a completely useless tree as far as I can make out, consisting of a normal tree trunk with a bunch of cacti attached instead of branches. Honey made by bees collecting from these euphorbias is inedible as it burns the mouth and the fruit is poisonous.

Stuart's last conference call with London took place on the side of the road at Bwindi Impenetrable Forest Reserve, amidst banana plantations and small curious village children.

Change of Plan

If anyone actually follows our calendar (at the bottom of this blog page) they will notice that we are in Nairobi, not at Lake Victoria on our way to Rwanda as planned. We are still trying to get to Rwanda, but had to miss out on Olduvai Gorge and the Serengeti due to our repeatedly failing shock absorbers. Very boringly this has happened twice now (previously in Zambia), both times on very bad roads, and we have decided to go to the East African capital of Nairobi, where it is possible to buy anything, to have the suspension looked at. These problems should not occur on a freshly installed system, so we are concerned to get it set up for the much worse roads of Northern Kenya.

Long story short, we are now in Nairobi for a few days and then hope to head off to Maasai Mara and on to Uganda. We will be doing things backwards from the planned route, and will have to retrace our steps later, but this way we are safe - and get to spend some time in a real metropolis again. Yay for cinemas, Apple dealers and broadband internet!

What's wrong with this picture?

That's what I like to see

Parking at the local Landrover dealer in Arusha. Didn't stop the Landcruiser from pulling in later, though.

Roadside checks

There is a lot of talk amongst overlanders about corruption and bribery attempts along the roads. This usually takes place is the form of a speed trap or a police check where something is found missing with the paperwork or the car. We have heard from people who take a special budget of small denomination dollars for the express purpose of paying off bribes, and others who were stopped 8 times in one day in Malawi (we put this down to having South African plates, as South Africans are not very popular in Malawi, for historical reasons). Ever since leaving Botswana we encounter roadside checks multiple times a day, where a couple of uniformed police men and women check on the condition of mini buses, trucks and other local traffic. We are always amazed how these guys get let through, specially considering the condition the vehicles are in most of the time, with back doors tied down by rope and spewing black fumes while inching up the hill due to overloading, but we rarely see anyone pulled over for good. We are often waved through after everyone has had a good look at our strange number plates, the steering wheel on the wrong side and the woman driver, but we have also been stopped for a check on our paperwork. Our papers (driving license, registration, COMESA insurance, temporary import license and carnet) are in a business-looking folder and when we whip it out we are usually given up for a lost cause. No-one so far has asked for money outright, but I suspect that the cops who checked that we carry two warning triangles and that we have a fire extinguisher were secretly hoping that we didn't. Maybe we are dense, on reflection I now suspect that the cop who miserably told me that he hadn't had any breakfast yet was really fishing for a can of coke or a bit of cash. Who knows. Fake speed traps are another apparently popular way to extract some money, so the two times we were stopped for speeding we were very dubious. The first time was in Lusaka, just after we had been subject to a major rip-off by the local laundry, so we were not interested in paying any more money out to a spurious claim. There really was little chance that I had been speeding, as anyone who has driven through Lusaka traffic knows it's not possible to actually clock 80. As the police man came up to us, having flagged us down in the fast lane of the dual carriageway, Stuart - in the back seat - went into outrage overdrive and immediately told the guy that we weren't speeding, we could prove it with our GPS and we would be happy to go to court over it. And by the way, could he please have a complaint form, he would like to make a formal statement. This resulted in a back and forth for a few minutes where the cop claimed we were doing 86 in an 80 zone and anyway, we had probably not slowed down for the hospital zebra crossing earlier. In the end I left my South African address and phone number and left with the information that the police would call me by the end of the week with the court's results... Yesterday we were caught speeding for real, though, and despite arguing that there might not have been a 50 sign (there was, we were just distracted from it by a street seller waving his bunches of maize at us) or that the speed trap machine might be measuring wrong, we had to admit in the end that we had gone to fast. 20000 Tanzanian Shilling (£10/NZ$20) and a proposal of love to Merryl by the traffic cop later we had completed the long process of filling out a receipt - UK addresses are hard to spell - and we were back on our way.