We left Henry the Swiss in Marsabit in Northern Kenya this morning at 6.30am in order to try get the HELL road complete by Lunchtime. On reflection, and images aside, the accommodation at Henry’s turned out to be warm and comfortable notwithstanding the freezing visit to the outhouse at 3am.
We are just North of the equator at the moment and I don’t know about you, but I have always had the impression that the weather at the equator was always tropical and pretty constant! This is not so. When we were south of the equator we attributed the cold nights to the fact that it was winter, however, the cold has not abated notwithstanding the fact that we are now north. When I say cold, I mean nights of around 10C to 15C, just an interesting observation that I thought I would share.
The Marsabit to Moyale road has lived up to every single iota of its name, in fact, the word “road” is not an adequate description for what this mangled old dinosaur track is! Within the first 50km, Katie and I had a fall (happy now RM?) when trying to ride a wall of volcanic marbles. Fortunately I have no bodily harm other than a bruised leg and ego but Katie unfortunately has a cracked auxiliary fuel tank which is not a major problem because the tank can be isolated but does irritate me when I look at her all scratched up and hurt!!
It took us 7 hours to do 250km which was enormously taxing on the body and bike. This road runs through an ancient desert volcanic plain and is therefore a mixture of round plum size volcanic rocks half a metre deep ((volcanic marbles) that offer no traction whatsoever), thick sand, rugby ball size rocks strewn all over the road, small sharp rocks protruding from the ground and all sorts of other unimaginable things that one would not expect to encounter on a road. On the upside, everybody who has done this road complains about the number of punctures they have had..anything from 1 to 10 along this 250km stretch..we had none between us….Note to people who will travel this road by bike in future..Continental TKC’s, 5mm heavy duty tubes, slime and the right tyre pressures (2.4 in front 2.6 at the rear…hard is better than soft for this road notwithstanding what advice you may get..the Rocks are killers!). The road improves in the last 100km (although not dramatically) of the stretch from Marsabit to Moyale.
We met two French guys riding KTM’s doing a round the world and heading to Cape Town, a Dutch couple on 2 Honda Transalp’s making their way to Johannesburg and a Johannesburger with 2 broken ankles trying to ride this road on a Honda Varedero…fortunately a car came by and took him the rest of the way. There is an amazing comaraderieship between overland travellers that makes you instant friends especially when meeting on a road like this. I hope you guys got to your destination okay.
We eventually got to Moyale at 14h00 and crossed into Ethiopia without too much hassle and tired as we were, we decided to press on to Yabello about 200km further North so that we could complete the trip to Addis Ababa tomorrow.
On route to Yabello we encountered our first slimy bit of African bureaucracy when the Ethiopian “customs police” stopped us and gave us crap in the hope that they could elicit a bribe. After about 30minutes and realising that we were not going to pay but simply comply with their stupid requests, they let us go.
We are spending the night at the Yabello Motel which is a definite step up from Henry’s as we have an en suite bathroom, hot water and finally a shower with more water pressure than the usual trickle that is referred to as a shower in this part of the world.
We are EXHAUSTED but have an incredible sense of accomplishment and achievement after having completed that road. The worst is now behind us.
The start of the Hell “road”!!!
Miles and Miles of Volcanic marbles.
Katie’s war wound of the day!
Arid, stark, empty and hard Beauty.
Dale (on the bike).
Exactly halfway between Marsabit and Moyale.
Not the kind of track you want to do everyday. Imagine 250km of this and more…!
Ancient Volcanic plain.
Notwithstanding the toughness of this environment, there are people that choose to live here.
Water stop on route.
Relief at last!!!
27 July 2013 | Cape To Cairo 2010
July 28, 2013 at 11:50 pm
[…] reports tend to be made to sound worse than it actually is (and I doubt ANYTHING can be worse than Isiolo to Marsabit to Moyale in Kenya) because people tend to make the experience sound more grandiose (or morose in this case), Read […]