Crossing The Equator – One Time Too Many?

 

Judith Gold, sister of TDA Founder Henry Gold, is currently cycling the 2024 Tour d’Afrique from Kigali to Cape Town. In this piece, she looks back at her experience crossing…and recrossing…one of the world’s great dividing lines.

As loyal followers of TDA Global Cycling will know, the 2024 Tour d’Afrique had to rejig its traditional route to skip over Sudan and Ethiopia. Instead, we got to bike in Rwanda and Uganda and so had the pleasure of many new experiences that were not available on the usual ride. One of these is the numerous crossings of the equator.

The equator is one of those classic things that travellers like to tick off their list. Yes, it may be important to cartographers, and especially to navigators in days past (before Ride With GPS, haha), but really, what is the imaginary line that separates the earth into the north and south to us, everyday people, who like to bike, other than a photo op? Imagine our surprise when we experienced several crossings of this historic marker.

Our first crossing was in a long (about 4 hours) ferry ride on Lake Victoria. Unfortunately the day was bleak, with rather intense rain, and the majority of riders were packed like sardines in the belly of the ferry. It was actually fun, as we got to intimately know our fellow Ugandan passengers including details of their daily lives while exchanging stories and showing photos of our loved ones. We did not, however, mark the crossing of the equator. Not only was it raining hard, but any movement on the ferry was restricted by the large crowd and leaving your seat meant you got to stand the rest of the way. No problem, we knew there would be another crossing. But we did not appreciate just how many.

The second time was epic. It was during stage 23, cycling from Koriema to Nakuru, in Kenya, and we lunched at zero latitude. Very cool! Many of the riders made sure they got a video of themselves riding right under the equator sign, several times! A feeling of a real sense of accomplishment. Another milestone on this amazing journey. But just the very next day, on a ride from Nakuru to our Bush camp at Matura, we got to cross the equator two, or maybe three times. We are still debating this, as we ended the ride on our rest day in the town of Nanyuki, in the North hemisphere somehow, when we should have been in the Southern Hemisphere. Clearly one of our crossing was on either of the two long segments on dirt roads, where the road authority did not go to the trouble of marking this most important of passages.

Nanyuki is an attractive town, best known as the place to organize safaris to see the last surviving northern white rhino in the nearby Ol Pejeta Reserve. It is also directly on the equator and a short walk through town takes one right by yet another sign that announces to the world that one has crossed that imaginary line. The majority of the riders decided that they had enough crossings so they did not bother. In any case, we all crossed it one last time (at least on this trip) on our ride out of Nanyuki to Othaya. I am guessing that no one bothered to stop and take a picture.

All in all, we crossed the equator six times (not counting the crossing in town on our rest day). Maybe 4 more than needed? Even our illustrious tour leader lost count. Maybe TDA Global Cycling should try out a new route, the Equator Ride, snaking along the equator in this part of Africa?

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