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I wanted to wake up early, but not that early! The prolonged call to prayer of the muezzin at 5 in the morning, amplified by pretty powerful speakers, coming from a mosque near the River Camp Lodge ruined my last hour of sleep.
Before starting off I withdrew from a bank almost right on the border line, then a bought a sim card for the phone, which here is bought still easily without the need to show any document or personal data, this time I bought Orange, in Tanzania Vodacom, in Malawi Airtel in Zambia I have MTN … I try to please a bit everybody … the truth is I buy the first one I find when I enter a country, I also have my Italian Blackberry which I use to send the posts to Giorgia when I am in places with no internet, that is almost always. The mobile phone has changed the way of communication in Africa, it is accessible to everybody and I have seen Masais with a mobile phone case next to the dagger … moreover they also go on 
motorbikes almost always with only one hand since, because of the wind, with the other they have to hold the dress still …
A pasta alla carbonara like the one of yesterday can only be found abroad, the only thing vaguely resembling the original was the yellowish color. In that disaster though the pasta, tagliolini, was not bad and the quantity for a Sumo wrestler allowed me to adequately recharge of carbohydrates. It may have been this, it may have been the friendly wind, it may have been the new Chinese hub (how long will it last?), it may have been the gravel cure but today I was going really strong … also because I absolutely did not want to reach Nairobi in the dark.
On the road the first 135 km were marked one after the other, one on the right and one on the left, like in the well organized marathons! At the beginning very few cars, Masai, herds of cattle and donkeys and a multitude of flowers, ‘bellflowers’ white and purple. Twenty five kilometers where the downhill was prevailing on the uphill, then the road started going up with a slight slope until about the ninetieth kilometer where the road stabilized and the landscape too started changing, from the prairie, to the big fenced farms, in the suburbs of Nairobi where there are, and are rising, real big towns like Kitengela. Where I saw some real Ape-taxi from Piaggio.
At about thirty kilometers from Nairobi the Namanga road, from where I was coming from, merges into the Mombasa road, a two lane freeway. I asked the driver of a stuck truck if I could go in and he told me ‘no problem’. The entrance is like the one of our highways. The road traffic rules a bit different. There are people who cross it running, like many froggers. You can overtake where you want. A minibus can stop on the emergency lane, where I was proceeding with all senses alerted to the max, to load and offload people, people coming out of the factories. I had the certainty that I could pass through there when a policeman greeted me happily, with thumbs up in approval. This evening my guardian angel was called Ernest, one of the 5 cyclists I saw on the ‘freeway’, I cycled together the last forty minutes, talking a little because the situation did not allow it, he asked me if I was going to London as an athlete …
Tomorrow I have to do my Visa for Sudan, it will be the first day without bicycle from the 15th June, they asked me a letter from the Italian Embassy and the photocopy of the credit card!?!
Namanga S 2° 55.209’ E 36° 78.389’ – Nairobi S 1° 29.206’ E 36°82.194’
161 km