But oh boy, was it worth it. A 1950s-style lodge with log walls and a tin roof, a wide porch, tyres painted white and embedded into the ground. Beyond the buildings against the trees was the most magnificent waterhole. Clouds massed overhead, great wreaths of them reflected in the water. Banks of grasslands carried the slope, and beyond the lake these great swathes of trees. I stopped the bike and the smile just got wider. They were wandering amid the shallows. Oh my god. I’d ridden my bike to the elephants.
There was a family of them in the shallows on the far side of the waterhole. A squabble broke out among the youngsters and the adults came in, mum and dad, we could hear their bellows echo across the landscape.
When it got dark the elephants wandered around the lake and came right up to the restaurant. We crawled on our stomachs to get closer without spooking them. That hundred and fifty miles of shit road had been worth every jar of the teeth, every curse for which I’d apologised. This was Africa, and I was lying in the grass with wild elephants a couple of yards away.
I could have stayed for days. There wasn’t time, of course, and first thing in the morning we were on the road again, the really grim stuff now; big rocks and heavy dirt that kept the front wheel wobbling. I ignored it and carried on, standing tall and keeping relaxed, thinking about the village ahead where we hoped to meet the Samburu people.
CHARLEY: We were into the red dirt again; heading south towards the Losai National Park. Sudan and Ethiopia had been vast countries where we’d taken protracted routes. We were cutting across the north-western corner of Kenya, though, and taking less time. We passed old and bent women carrying huge bundles of wood. The sights were different and yet similar to what we’d seen in Ethiopia and it amazed me to see what these people had to do every day of their lives.
I could hear Ewan muttering into the radio. ‘The red dust. Oh well, soft hands, lean back and power on through.’
Claudio came off right in front of me, he was there one minute, down the next and I almost hit him. As it was I had to lay my bike down. Classic case of riding too close when I spent my life reminding the other guys that we mustn’t do that: a case of do as I say, not as I do. Clouds was really pissed off: ‘Really,’ he said. ‘I don’t like this sand. I hate it. Fucking hell, I never know what to do.’
‘Just keep the power on,’ I told him.
‘I did that.’ He gesticulated at the massive rut where he’d fallen.
‘The wheel got caught in there, Clouds,’ I told him. ‘Locked the front and when you tried to power on it flipped you off.’
He went down again shortly afterwards. The sand was deep now: Fesh fesh, like red talcum powder, so loose it was almost like riding on liquid.
We hit better roads finally and stopped for a breather. Ewan considered the open savannah, rolling hills in the distance and acacia trees spreading their bows to offer a little shade. ‘I’m riding along wondering what I’d do if a lion came after me,’ he said. ‘I mean, they hunt like that, don’t they. Stalk a gazelle, sweep round then come charging up from behind. How do we know they’re not doing that with us – a massive great lioness bearing down on the bikes?’ He made a face. ‘Still, I suppose that would be the way to go, from behind so you wouldn’t know much about it.’
The Samburu village was temporary. We met the chief, a man wearing the traditional red robes of his people, a sash over one shoulder similar in style to the Masai. It was hard to age him, late forties, early fifties perhaps; people out here have a hard life so he could have been a lot younger. He wore a woollen hat and told us that the tribe had come together from various villages for a special ceremony; they were in the process of putting up their huts, made from a dome-shaped framework of poles covered by animal skins.
We asked the chief what the ceremony was and he told us that seventy young men were going to be circumcised. There was no anaesthetic and the boys must show no emotion, no twitch of an eye or curl of a toe whatsoever. The chief explained how the foreskin is cut in four places then peeled…well anyway, it sounded about as painful as it gets. He told us, with no hint of amusement, that his son was in the ceremony and if he so much as made a sound he’d kill him. Even now we don’t know if he was joking.
We asked him if it would be possible to camp with them. He seemed to think about that for a while, then left us and, gathering the elders, wandered over to the animal corral and discussed it. It was the tribe at work, a real community and after a while the chief came back and said we could camp, only not in the village. He indicated an area about a hundred yards off. He asked us if we had a doctor with us. As part of the deal he wanted Dai to take a look at his wife: she’d given birth yesterday and wasn’t doing so well.
The village was buzzing with children, camels, donkeys: all you could hear was the bleating of young goats – they were kept in a covered pen separate from their mothers because that kept the mothers from wandering off.
Naked children were running around; little tots with shaved heads. The women wore the same red shawls as the men and many of them had weighted earrings that stretched the skin of their ear lobes. Both the men and women wore masses of brightly coloured necklaces and looked much like the Masai we’d seen near Kilimanjaro. We found out the two peoples were related and, as with the Masai, livestock was the Samburu livelihood. They were semi-nomadic and they kept cattle, donkeys, camels and goats. Their main food was milk: sometimes they mixed it with blood. Thank God for those voices in my teeth. Eh?
EWAN: Dai came out of the chief’s tent and told us his wife would be fine. She was quite young, had bled heavily during the birth and had been suffering some stomach pains because of it. But he’d asked the other women if this was normal for her and having watched her give birth to three other children, they said it was. The placenta was out and the uterus retracted so nothing major was wrong. Dai gave her multi-vitamins, some iron tablets and paracetamol for the pain. She was the chief’s second wife, and he had six other children with his first one. Sitting in his other tent he told us he was thinking of getting a third wife and Charley piped up that Ollie would beat him if he asked her even for a second wife.
The dome-shaped hut wasn’t quite completed yet and the chief’s first wife told us that it took about four days from start to finish. We sat on mats made from interwoven reeds and there were all sorts of things hanging in there – halters for donkeys, leather panniers; there was nothing man-made at all.
Now that Dai had been seen with his bag and stethoscope he was much in demand. Amongst his patients one young guy was coughing white sputum created by wood smoke and it gave him breathing problems. Dai listened to his chest and gave him an inhaler he had in the pack.
I was in my element; elephants last night and now these people. This was the Africa I’d dreamt we’d get to see. Goats bleating, donkeys, camels, young warriors, very cool, carrying sticks and spears. Hundreds of kids running around, everyone wanting to talk to us: it was marvellous. I wandered among the livestock; donkeys who were tethered by their nostrils. At night all the animals were secured inside thorn bush corrals to stop hyenas or lions getting at them. The people seemed pretty well fed considering their diet of milk and blood; apparently they only ate meat on special occasions such as rites of passage ceremonies like circumcision. It made my eyes water just to think about it.
We spent the night just a little way off and I sat outside my tent listening to the animal noises; donkeys and camels, the little fatty bloaty sheep we’d seen – sheep with fatty tails like the geep in Ethiopia only these ones had goitres to go with it. I watched the sun go down and exchanged a glance with Charley.
‘Just another fucking perfect African sunset, Charley.’
That was our line, like Sarah Miles all bitter and twisted in White Mischief.
We’d had a few such sunsets and since we’d had our chat in Addis everything seemed to have clicked on a gear. I even felt better about the dirt, I was following Charley’s advice and it was easier: parts of today I’d actually enjo
yed the riding.
In the morning we said our goodbyes and one old man in traditional robes and a chewed looking baseball cap kept hugging us. He waved us off and we hit the road once more.
Heading towards the equator the road was very dusty, and just when I thought I really was enjoying myself we hit more deep sand. This was worse than anything we’d seen: we’d been warned about gravel but not this; you could stir it, it was that soft. The bikes were all over the place; even Charley was finding it hard to cope. Great red clouds kicked up and in three miles we had ten separate incidents. I saw Claudio go down and my front end shook, the handlebars almost wrenched from my grasp. A couple of tribesman wandered across the road in front of us, carrying a stick apiece and a spear. They looked on vaguely as we struggled to get the bikes upright.
‘I don’t like sand, Ewan,’ Clouds was saying. ‘No matter what Charley says nothing works. Nothing works when you’re riding in sand.’
Tell me about it, I thought.
A few yards further and he was off again. I was off. Then Claudio fell again. Jesus, I thought, how many fucking miles have we got of this stuff?
Finally we hit the scrub and it was a joy to see hard gravel, big stones; feel the sudden jarring of washboard. I thought I hated the gravel, but that fesh fesh: it was worse than anything we’d encountered in Sudan.
We rode for a few miles on washboard and then the real drama began. Mud, no, not mud. A river crossing: actually it wasn’t a river so much as a swamp. The road petered into nothing but brush and bushes, thorns that would impale you. I could smell the water first and then I saw it. There was a river of sorts blocking our path ahead. Not deep, but blood red and cushioned by great banks of mud that had water courses of their own, ponds, puddles, mush, swampy little lakes. It was hard to see where the narrowest point was.
This was really challenging. At first I couldn’t see a way through and thought we’d have to go back through the deep red sand the way we’d come. It wasn’t happening, there was no way; not after making it this far. Charley and I wandered indistinguishable paths trying to figure out a way across.
The trucks arrived and even our fixer seemed perturbed. Scratching his head he considered the landscape. ‘I think we can get the cars over,’ he said, ‘but the motorbikes?’
We took a walk, leaving the four-wheelers to consider their options while we tried to find a simpler way. We found a handsome young kid with a spear over his shoulder, chewing a stick; bare-chested he was tending his cattle. We asked him about suitable spots and he pointed us off to the right.
On investigation it was about as good as we’d seen: a potential crossing that came at the water along ruts there were quite solid; little mosaic squares of mud with ridges where the sun had cracked them. The water was very shallow; the mud not too deep. Prodding around with sticks we figured that with help, we could get the bikes over.
‘We should move one of the trucks first,’ Russ suggested, ‘and that way we can thread the winch round the forks and drag the bikes over.’
Charley disagreed. ‘Let the bikes go first,’ he said. ‘We’ll walk them over. If the trucks go they’ll churn up the bottom and we’ll never get across.’
It was agreed. Charley and I played stone, paper, scissors and he won. With him guiding the throttle and clutch; me and two of the soldiers assisting, we wheeled his bike across the ruts into the soft stuff. In gear with the engine running we half drove, half pushed it through the water and up the far bank. Dry land, we’d made it and celebrated in the traditional style with much yelling and whooping and throwing of imaginary hats in the air. With Charley’s bike safely on her side stand with the savannah stretching ahead, we went back for my bike and finally Claudio’s. This was boys’ own stuff now and with the first job done I had time to do a few things to my bike while the others set about thinking what to do with the trucks. The fixer tried to get his across first and it got well and truly stuck, listing badly in the mud, dirty brown water up to the door.
They decided to get our two trucks across and worry about the fixer’s afterwards: drive hard and fast and get as far as they could, then fix the winch line to a fairly inadequate looking tree and haul the last bit. Once they were both safely on the other side we could attach the fixer’s truck to both winches and haul him out.
Russ went first, really gunning the engine with Jim Foster knee deep in water alongside. He got a good distance but grounded in the mushy stuff and Jim attached the winch to the tree. I looked on from behind the big camera, thoroughly professional yet somehow never managed to capture a single frame.
We hauled the truck out then it was David’s turn. He took a massive run up and steamed into the water. He almost made it, got to the far bank and half up it before the wheels dug in. Winch attached he was out and half an hour later so was the fixer. We were covered in mud and grime, water and slime, but it was high fives and lots of whooping as we realised we’d overcome the most difficult natural challenge on the trip thus far.
CHARLEY: We were still full of it fourteen miles later when Claudio’s shock absorber went again. I couldn’t believe it – two BMW shocks and both had blown their oil seals. Professionals now, Ewan and I had it changed in ten minutes: even Claudio was impressed.
A few miles later the shock went again. Two in one day, three in two days: it was uncanny.
We fixed it again; alas we didn’t break the ten minute record but I was thanking God for Addis and the chance we’d had to regroup. We hadn’t had to replace a single shock absorber on Long Way Round and here we were with three in two days: five so far in total.
I loved it all, though: perhaps the hardest day, certainly the most challenging, and yet for me maybe the most rewarding. No matter what the road had thrown at us – sand and shit, gravel and rock – we’d dealt with it. And just when we thought it was getting easier, a swamp that masqueraded as a river.
Ewan pulled over, yelling at me across the radio. They’d been fixed when we took those three days off in Addis Ababa. ‘Charley, zebras; wild zebras.’ He slapped his tank. ‘My brothers and sisters. Look.’
There was a small herd by the side of the road that paused to take a look at us.
‘I had no idea they were so big,’ Ewan said.
‘I don’t remember their ears being that long, either.’
He laughed. ‘Maybe they’re the long eared kind.’
The following morning we finally met Lola. You’ve been wondering, I know you have. Some Kenyan goddess, olive skinned and…
We took time out at a wildlife park and from the back of a jeep saw eland, impala, giraffe and white rhino. This was open country covered in green thorn bushes and yellow grass where I imagined lion or leopard lurking. Acacia trees offered a hint of shade and rocks jutted in piles of stones and massive distant cliffs. There was one enormous rhino, I mean huge, about thirty feet from the truck and Ewan was gobsmacked. ‘I can’t believe how long his horn is,’ he said. ‘I’ve only seen those stumpy little nubs but that’s a huge long one.’
‘Massive,’ I echoed.
And there she was, square-faced with not even so much as a little nub of a horn. Lola the baby black rhinoceros being fed by a ranger from a two litre bottle. She was the sweetest thing you’ve ever seen, sucking away, long lashes across her eyes, skin all wrinkly and tough like an elephant. She looked old already.
She was actually only fifty-six days old and her mother was blind and couldn’t look after her. The same mother had had five other calves and hadn’t been able to look after any of them either. It didn’t seem to stop her hanging out with the guy rhinos, though.
There were two rangers taking care of Lola twenty-four hours a day. They fed her a bottle of milk every three hours. The guy we spoke to rolled out a blanket at night and slept with her. He would be by her side every day for the next three to seven years until she decided she didn’t need him any more and wandered into the bush. Ewan and I took turns to feed her and she sucked noisily until all the milk was gon
e. After that she’d get really frisky and even though she was little she could knock you down. I took the odd whack and I tried to imagine being charged by an adult – you’d be in pieces. The guide told us that the rhino population was increasing. There had been some really bad poaching about ten years ago, but the park held a hundred rhinos now and forty-eight of those were the endangered black variety. After her food and a bit of a play Lola crashed out – she lay on her side flicking her tail in the dust while Ewan stroked her chin.
‘No, mate,’ I said, catching the look in his eye. ‘We’ve already earmarked a donkey sanctuary. I don’t think even Eve would stand for a rhino.’
We were on tarmac when we made it to the equator. With everything that had happened I’d forgotten it was in Kenya that we’d cross to the southern hemisphere. We were two thousand metres above sea level and twenty metres north of the line we tested the theory. Yep, water went down the plughole clockwise. Striding south we tried the experiment again. No question it was anticlockwise. At the very point of the equator it went straight down. So now I knew for certain, it’s exactly how they say it is so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Staying the night at a small hotel in Nkuru I realised we were only half an hour from some friends I’ve known for years. Rod and Claire Jones; they own a beautiful place on the shores of Lake Naivasha: I couldn’t ride past their door without popping in for a cup of tea.
EWAN: It was an amazing place and gave us a taste of another kind of Africa – one perhaps we might not have experienced. Claire’s family had been in Kenya for generations and their lodge was exquisite. This was a hint of colonial Africa; a wide veranda and savage skies, the lake at the bottom of the garden. Claire keeps a small plane and she treated us to the most spectacular fly-past. We were in the air more than an hour and didn’t once climb above seventy feet. Skimming across the wave tops, we saw hippo sleeping in the shallows, water buffalo, white-headed eagles skating the surface for fish. Everywhere the world was green, water plentiful – very different from the drier region we had just passed through.
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