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Mount Kenya, why are you hiding?
This morning I took it easy because the stage was not long and because in Nanyuki there was a very fast internet connection, like in Milan. I downloaded all the maps of Ethiopia up to Addis Abeba, which Giorgia had prepared for me considering different options, because neither in Zambia nor in Nairobi I found a map of Ethiopia. At the cyber cafè there was no Excel, and not even Word not to pay for the licenses I think, so printing the tables with the kilometers was complicated …
It is less cold than yesterday, the vegetation is always luxurious, it seems to me that the rainy microclimate is being exploited to the max for agriculture.
For the first thirty kilometers the road goes up, the turns are very few, there are some high, and fake, plateaus which take you up to almost 2500 meters, a few kilometers after the Maritati Primary School. It is higher than Pordoi and Bernina, and slightly lower than Stelvio, but there are no mountain huts nor sausage sandwiches, I have to make do, slightly ahead, with a small bakery which makes bread with the wholegrain flour of Kisima, chips made with potatoes of Kisima fried in the canola oil of … Kisima obviously! I get three wholegrain buns and two teas, moreover I steal some chips from the fryer, but I avoid eating them not knowing what the route has left for me …
Mount Kenya where are you? Since the morning the very low clouds do not give me much hope to see it …
The downhill to Isiolo e fantastic, there is also a slight favorable wind, it takes you ages to go up but the descent is a second …
Isiolo seems a border city even though it is very far from it, the Muslim presence can be noticed also by the school uniforms of the girls which have an elegant white veil. When it is about running curious after the musungu on the bicycle religion has no importance.
I go immediately to the road block at the end of the town, three policepeople, two men and a woman, tell me that for the sake of my life it is not advisable to continue alone on the bike, the risk up to Marsabit is high, and medium afterwards, but for the second stretch they say it is better to ask to the police in Marsabit. They advice me to get a bus escorted from within, there will be two policemen who will travel with us, to Moyale. Not that I do not know what it means to find yourself with a Kalashnikov in the face, handled by somebody who thinks that by mugging you their life will change, but having to skip this stretch leaves me bitter in the mouth, also because up to now it is in the ‘bush’ that the journey has been more interesting. The bus to Moyale will leave more or less around ten in the night, and it will arrive more or less around three in the afternoon … I am sure that it will be more tiring than the bicycle …
The search for the bus to Moyale was quite stressful, first I was sworn that the direct bus was not there and that I would have to stop over in Marsabit, then that the route to Moyale had been suppressed, then I had to pay extra for the bicycle, then that the bike would not have fitted, finally … we can put it in the aisle between the seats … or in the luggage boot … at the end I bought the ticket for 1900 shilling, and if everything goes well I will catch the bus tonight, hoping for the well. If it goes bad I will come back here to the Moti Pearl Hotel, where the Kenyan manager of Indian origins Fionze, has given me an excellent logistic support, parking for the bicycle, internet access, … it was my destination when I thought of taking the convoy, but the police told me it is not easy to find a truck, … and Giorgia told me ‘don’t go on a truck carrying food stuff because I read that they are the most attacked’ …
In Nairobi everybody was telling me that the bandits were Somalis, here instead it came up that many are locals, and the police told me also Masai, it comes difficult to me to think of all the Masai I met before with a gun in their hand …
I did not see Mount Kenya … I will have to come back!
I could have stopped here one night, but as my old mentor Belloni, pioneer of auditing in Italy, used to say ‘it is always better to get ahead’, I used to tease all the time when he made me catch the wrong train on the underground just to gain three stops, get off, and wait for the one we were supposed to catch three stops before … but now a bit I understand him … also because the Paralympics are not soo far … so I have to get ahead … what a laugh!
Now i go to catch the bus … if it arrives!
Nanyuki S 0° 01.666’ E 37° 06.666’ – Isiolo S 0° 35.563’ E 37° 58.330’
78 km