Fortieth stage

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Migreh is not a village …

It is a market, a place where trucks stop when the drivers are tired, there is a mosque and many small shops, no hotel but only those camp beds I avoided in Doka … it is right like this what would be a journey through Sudan without at least one sleep on these camp beds under the open sky, colored, asymmetric, and I must say that they are quite comfortable … it is from here that I am writing I just hope that it will not rain … I do not know whether or not to take the sleeping bag out and if it rains it will get dry in Egypt …

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Thirty-ninth stage

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Goodbye Ethiopia, welcome Ramadan!

The last 35 kilometers passed quite fast, with the bicycle making strange noises like it usually happens when the day before we catch a lot of water.

Arrived at the border to enter Sudan you pass through a barrier made by a rope, I pass under, a typical Ethiopian Sheppard tells me that he wants to check my luggage … I pay no attention … and I go to the office where they stamp passports … the sheppard runs after me … and repeats the same story … I ask him to show me his card … he has it! We go back again he checks, he asks me if I have a laptop, and who can prove that it is mine … he checks roughly in the panniers and lets me go …

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Thirty-eighth stage

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‘Rain rain go away!’ …

‘Where are you going?’ asks me an old man in smart clothes in front of the pharmacy of Gondar where I am vainly trying to park the bicycle on a muddy road … ‘to the pharmacy, but I do not have the bicycle stand …’ ‘do not worry I will keep it’ … the pharmacist told me that I have eaten ‘poisoned food’ and has given me cyproxin to take every 12 hours … ‘are you travelling alone?’ asks me the old man ‘yes’ … ‘I will pray for you’ …

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Thirty-seventh stage

Click to enlarge“Il fuoco di un camino
non è caldo come il sole del mattino…”

(“The fire of a chimney / isn’t as warm as the morning sun”)

After yesterday rain finally the sun, the departure is hot on a easy road … I do not remember a hot day since Addis …

The buses in Ethiopia have a speaker on the roof, it is nice to hear them come, they are joyful and I think the music also keeps the children away from the road and maybe donkeys and cows too … today my theory that the closer you get to touristic centers the more begging and stupidity increase has today found many practical demonstrations … the stones which were not reaching me for some time have reappeared … one thrown at me by a nice young shepard from a hill was the size of a apple … Continue reading

Thirty-sixth stage

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‘I think I am the first ferenje who stays over for the night here’ I say to the couple escorting me to the hotel with no signpost.

‘Noooo … there was another one in September two years ago …’ they answer … we laughed for five minutes. They kept saying ‘not the first, the second!’ …

There was a drawing on my school book in primary school which pictured slaves building the pyramids, I remember the never ending rows of slaves carrying one stone each. Continue reading

Thirty-fifth stage

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‘Quando ghe nè più, ghe nè a mo!’, is a say from where I come from, which would translate something like when there is nothing left, there is still a lot.

If last night at five, while I was going forth and back from the toilet, somebody would have told me … you will do 94 km I would have laughed … I thought the stomach was a strong point of my poor body … instead some spicy food betrayed me … I had the lucidity to drink salts and to eat some dextrose sweets to have a bit of energy to start again … when the alarm went off at 6,56 I switch it off … I am finally sleeping well … for breakfast I manage to drink some tea in which I put as much sugar as possible and I eat three doughy Enervit cereal bars which Serena gave me in Nairobi and are getting finished …

On the way back from the last trip to the toilet, at 5,11 I receive a message from Giorgia, who says she has woken up with a craving for crackers Doria, myself too I would eat a packet crunchy and with the salt on top I think, neither me nor her will satisfy this craving … the food visions come often on this journey today in a mountain village there is a smell of goat … which made me crave goat cheese … the little one is moving a lot hopefully he will turn …

At the beginning you go down to 1800 meters of Finote Selam, where I stop to take a tea, the waiter, embodied by my guardian angel, brings me without me asking some focaccia bread, which I managed to eat very slowly. Then the uphill starts again slowly slowly until the 2536 of Kosober, a uphill of 13 kilometers is a living death. Immediately after Finote Selam I bought for 2 birr, a plastic bag with a dozen yellow lemons, small, bitter and juicy … at the end I will have only three left … they have a very thin skin I peel then with my teeth and hands and then I chew them in a mouth full … it seems to me that my body appreciates and needs it … as I write I am feeling a bit hungry … let’s hope for the best …

t35Today with energies next to zero I did not take many pictures, I never looked at the altitude, I stopped many times, to buy something to drink, to put oil on the chain, to eat lemons, to speak to people. In a typical mountain village there was a gathering of male farmers waiting for the distribution of fertilizer, I was thirsty and I wanted some water, a young guy went from hut shop to hut shop , at the end he managed to find only a Fanta pineapple, excellent for digestion, I left hime the change as a tip for all the effort he put … 22 kilometers from Kosober I stopped to lubrify the chain, as usual a circle was formed, with elders and younths asking me where I was coming from, where I am going, which nationality I am … tire, chain and paper (map) are also Aramaic words … These stops helped to start again with a smile …

Dembecha N 10° 55’ E 37° 48.333’ – Kosober N 10° 95’ E 36° 93.333

94 km

Thirty-fourth stage

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Today I liked myself!

At 70 km from departure I stopped at the FM International Hotel, where I knew there was a internet point, I ate a fantastic cake, with fresh avocado and mango juice and … two cappuccinos … when I was about to start off again a torrential storm rages … the waiter told me ‘it is better you stay here tonight …’ surely the place was very beautiful … also today I was not feeling too well … but for me 40 km more per day are important … Continue reading

Thirty-second stage

What is this? Spriz … Is it for me? Actually no … but I drank it already …

Departure on a uphill!

Thanks to my two stingy colleagues who did not hide the 200 USD I had asked in the tires, and did not even let me know, I spent much of the morning trying to buy dollars which I will need in Sudan. Changing dollars into birr is very easy, you can do it at all the banks and hotels. Continue reading

Addis Ababa – Bicycle maintenance

Today I am more tired than many other days when I cycle more than 8 hours!

I had to pick up the tires of the bicycle that the others are finished and Giorgia and Serena sent me from Lusaka …

Time 9,30 cargo airport of Addis Ababa, a tour between offices begins, which reminded me of an old Italian movie of the 60s …

Daring I head towards a warehouse, the boss looks at my documents, asks me questions on the trip and keeps me there ten minutes, to then tell me that first of all I have to go the custom. Here an officer opens asking me ‘the document which demonstrates that I am a tourist’, I explain that I am going to London by bicycle and when I crossed the border I was not given anything, nor was I asked to fill in anything. ‘Impossible, without that document you cannot go ahead’. I insist. He asks his secretary, a goose with a miniskirt and porn star red shoes, who speaks better English than him to explain to me. Continue reading