Home » Kenya Ethiopia » Cycle to the Summit Part 15 - Addis Ababa to Nairobi

We visited our first WaterAid projects in Addis Ababa, and saw some impressive progress being made. We then cycled south through rolling hills and past fruit trees at the side of the road. After we crossed into Kenya, we had to hitch a lift on an overland truck for the northern part of the country where there is danger from Somalian bandits. Ruth climbed Mt Kenya, we crossed the equator, and arrived in Nairobi in time to celebrate Toby's birthday at the city campsite.

Cycle to the Summit Part 15 - Addis Ababa to Nairobi

Toby Hammond
2006-06-25 19:58:45

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provisions. We went on a mission in the pouring rain looking for food. We were led to a 'market' by a crowd of about 200 children, which turned out to be one damp woman selling some damp cabbage under a tree. It may not even have been cabbage.
Along the road in a place called Agere Mariam, I stopped for a Pepsi. Not that I'm particularly keen on it, but it's enough of a treat to keep me cycling a few more kilometers.
"Whereareyougo?", asked the girl at the drinks kiosk. (the standard greeting)
"Kenya", I replied
"Why?" she said, genuinely bemused. I couldn't think of a good answer, so I said
"I have come 7,000km from London on a bicycle"
"You are not right", she said.
The hotels in Ethiopia are cheap (around 60p a night) but you don't get many creature comforts for your money. At least, not the sort of the creatures I appreciate - I had mice running over my pillow in the night and loudly scoffing my samosas in the corner of the room. The toilets on several nights featured cockroaches the size of small family cars - so it was probably as well there was no electricity to see properly.
We were excited to see baboons and several tortoise wandering along the road. Owy's cry of a seeing a "reindeer thing" turned out to be a gazelle of some sort. At one point we cycled through clouds of winged termites carried by the wind. The villages are far apart, and billboards indicate many have received foreign development aid. We wonder if the obnoxiousness of kids (still throwing stones at us and demanding money) correlates to foreign aid input? At the side of the road they are selling charcoal from sacks emblazoned "USA wheat - not to be sold or exchanged".
We reached the Kenyan border, but weren't allowed to cycle for the first few hundred kilometers. This is Somalian bandit country. Luckily, an overland truck was passing with a few seats spare, so we hitched a lift with them. All of us were keen to see ...