Across Africa On The Tour d’Afrique Cycling Expedition: Kenya

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 cycling through Kenya.

We have now completed cycling through Kenya. Our first rest stop in the country, after an intense 5 days of riding from Entebbe – through mountains, on dirt roads, in fishermen’s boats and on local trucks – was in Eldoret, the town where Kenyan runners and cyclists train. It was home for the recent Chicago marathon champion and world record holder, Kiptum, who died in a tragic car crash a week before we arrived.

Surprisingly, at least to me, there was a huge difference upon entering Kenya. We saw many industrial farms, greenhouses, and evidence of industry. Sadly, there was virtually none of that in the parts of Uganda we biked, save for one Chinese industrial park. The roads in Kenya are less busy, houses set a bit further off the road and a lot fewer adults and children milling about and the majority of women are in modern dress. The land is also dryer, though still green, and we passed the occasional cactus and acacia tree, but no giraffes (they feed on the acacia). The land turned very green soon thereafter, as we entered the Great Rift Valley. An amazing ride, even among the many amazing rides we have already had.

Another highlight were the numerous crossing of the equator, which I have already written about, as we snaked our way east from Uganda before turning south towards Nairobi. It’s just one of those things one likes to tick off one’s list, but we crossed it so many times that many of us lost count. A fellow cyclist, after she read the blog, reminded me that I forgot two crossings during our trip to see to the chimp sanctuary in Lake Victoria. As I said, we lost count…

The scenery in Kenya was impressive. It truly is a beautiful country (at least the part we cycled). It’s surreal sometimes to be the only cyclist on an empty long road, as the vast majority of the other cyclists are way ahead of me. I have to remind myself how amazing this really is. And it’s also remarkable how safe it feels. Especially when one considers that the interior of Africa was a completely mystery only 150 years ago.

We had two rest days in Nairobi, a vast and very busy city. We (Gonzalo and myself, and some of the other riders) took the opportunity to visit the Giraffe Sanctuary to see and feed the Rothchild Giraffes, which were nearly extinct before their numbers started to rise due to the work of the sanctuary. There are now close to a 1000 of these.

We also had a short game drive in the Nairobi National park, where we saw lots of game and visited the Sheldrick Elephant Nursery, watching orphan baby elephants being bottled fed and frolic. An interesting book about the founding of the nursery is Love, Life, and Elephants, an African Love Story, by Daphne Sheldrick. But perhaps the best part of the visit to Nairobi was the many interesting conversations we had with Uber drivers. The majority are university graduates who cannot get jobs making a decent living. They work 14-15 hour days. We spoke to several finance/accounting majors. Some lost their jobs during COVID and indicated that these jobs are unlikely to come back. Many complained of recent increases in taxes and how life was getting harder and harder. It was difficult not to put on our IMF hats and start dissecting the economy. Talk of debt was everywhere!