Africa Solo by Mark Beaumont

Author:Mark Beaumont
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473526952
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2016-05-18T16:00:00+00:00

Day 18: Gedeb to Camo

At just gone 6 a.m., at first light, I set off, determined to make better miles. The rain had stopped in the night and standing water had partially drained away, leaving the mud denser, but it was a long way from drying up. The atmosphere was muggy and damp so pulling on my wet kit had been very unpleasant, but preferable to packing it away and putting on dry kit that would quickly get wet. Only one small stall was open, as far as I could see, just before the road climbed out of town, and there I stocked up on biscuits for the road ahead. The cappuccino-flavoured ones were proving to be my favourites in Ethiopia, followed by chocolate, but they were the very cheap sandwich type: dry, tasteless packages designed to last unchanged for years. Still, it was pretty much the only food I could find for long stretches and I ate ten packets that day.

It proved to be an amazing day of contrasts, starting in thick jungle, descending through forests, and ending in arid terrain. In mid-morning I was passing families of baboons playing on the roadside, and by lunchtime had reached a camel market. The contrasts and hurdles along the way made it feel a very long day, and certainly I eked out every mile possible before nightfall. That still made for a fairly unimpressive total of 121 miles, but considering the total had been 50 miles by 1 p.m., it felt like a triumph.

The first two hours were the slowest, again including stretches where I had to walk, at one point carrying the bike over unrideable rocky construction sites. There were very few vehicles on the road, but a constant stream of people. Endless kids shrieked at me, and if not answered they would repeat ‘YOU, YOU, where you go?’ an octave higher. There was a new call as well: ‘China, China, CHINA, CHINA!’ I guessed the Chinese who built these roads were the only outsiders some of these teenagers had seen a lot of, so perhaps they thought of all foreigners as Chinese.

One group of boys saw me coming on a slow rocky uphill section and with more confidence than most came into the road from the verge, shouting at me before I had reached them. Then, as I got within a few metres, one stepped forward and pulled his fist back. It may have been an act of bravado in front of mates, but I was at the end of my patience and hammered my pedals forward, accelerating straight at him, shoving my open palm into his face. It was undoubtedly the best hand-off of my life, which isn’t saying much given my woeful schoolboy rugby career. The teenager stumbled back and his mates exploded in jeering, but no one ran after me. If they had wanted to catch me, I couldn’t go that fast. It was a stupid thing to have done. But I didn’t feel at all bad afterwards.

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