Beyond the Bike

Wonderful people, careful drivers, and very few hills: after over a month of ‘holiday’ where we cycled only about 200km we needed to make up some miles and Malaysia was the perfect place to do this.  We chose the west coast as it was a shorter distance, better weather and less touristy. In fact, between Malacca and Penang we didn’t see another westerner...

Beyond the Bike in Zimbabwe can be summed up with the following: desperation and hope, education, cricket, rocks, sand, gold mines, lions and rhinos. We only spent a week in Zim which is a great shame as it is such an interesting country but we had to keep moving to make Durban (and the test match for Stu!) for Christmas. 

Kampala (Uganda) to Kigali (Rwanda): 552km; September 13th - 19th.

On Sunday 13th September, we left Kampala accompanied by the KGB (Kampala Group of Bikers), Kasoma (bamboo bike maker) and  his apprentice Khalid. It was such a pleasure to finally meet Kasoma and for him to see his beautiful bike being ridden through Kampala.  Leaving the city was not the nicest ride, mainly due to the sheer number of heavy trucks but we were soon on the open road which undulated wonderfully through the countryside, every hill we went up we then had a similar length descent and thus a rest: my kind of hills!