Sudan and Ethiopian Update

Greetings and thanks for checking back in on Modernspinsta! It was a tough few weeks in Ethiopia with respect to emails and blogging. And a special thanks to Jen, the ghost blogger for helping me out with the photo update! I hope to post more photos shortly.

I am in Kenya now - sitting in my tent and it is pouring rain - we have been getting quite a bit of rain lately. Before talking about Kenya though I would like to recap what happened at the end of Sudan and in Ethiopia. My last real blog was in Khartoum, Sudan and that feels like a lifetime ago. I am sorry that I have not been able to keep up with the daily updates including number of kms on the bike etc....it just became impossible.

When the tour left Khartoum we had 7 days of riding which was our longest stretch without a rest day. I was sick after Khartoum which made the two 160km back to back days tough. The Dinder National Park experience (which many of you have read about on the TDA blog) made for the toughest riding to date. We were all looking forward to riding terrain never tested by the Tour before but as soon as we hit Dinder we knew it wasn't going to be fun! The day before Dinder was mostly off road in remote Sudan and despite the hard riding I did love travelling through the tiny villages. I think I mentioned it in a photo caption - remote Sudan feels like the place where time stood still. Homes are made of grass and mud and people live the simplest of lives. It was really amazing to see and it put my whole life in perspective! The Dinder Experience or Experiment took us to the national park which hasn't been open for years so the "road"is not a road at all and the distance decided by the TDA staff was just too ambitious. I lost my EFI status (Every Fabulous Inch or replace Fabulous with the other F word) that day and I have to say I wasn't sad to see it go. There is a lot of pressure among the riders to ride every kilometre no matter what - illness, injury, crap terrain and that day there was what has been called an "EFI massacre". Over two thirds of the riders ended up on trucks and even the best riders didn't make it to camp until almost dark. In Dinder I had to ask myself the 4 important questions I ask myself each day - 1) Am I having fun? 2) Am I loving the cycling? 3) Do I feel safe? 4) Can I make it to camp before dark? On that day there was a resounding NO to every question and I pulled myself off the road and found a police truck to climb into. That is the only time I have had 4 NOs to those questions - in fact I usually can say YES to all those questions but not on the Dinder day. TDA apologized for what was a disastrous day and they will certainly reconsider the route for next year - live and learn. Dinder was the end of Sudan for us and despite the tough days of riding I still look back on Sudan and think how much I loved that country - what a treat to be able to visit it by bike!

When we crossed the border into Ethiopia the sense that "this place is going to be very different than Sudan" was immediate. There were hills instead of desert and those hills turned into mountains. And there were LOTS of people. There are apparently over 81 million people in Ethiopia - yeah that's a lot of people! The Tour spends 3 weeks in Ethiopia - that is the longest time spent in any one country and it is probably the most challenging country to ride. The hill climbs were super tough (but I loved them!) and there were people everywhere which meant you are never alone. In Ethiopia there's no such thing as a quiet ride. We are not quite sure how it ever got started by there were two things that were said to us all day, everyday - "YOU, YOU, YOU" and "Where are you go?". Those are the two things that we heard from morning to night. May I never hear those phrases again - seriously!

The Ethiopian people were curious and most were friendly but some were not. I think I can safely say that ALL riders experienced some kind problem on the road - personally I had rocks hurled at me at high speeds, I was spit on, I was yelled at and I was grabbed on my bike. Other riders were hit with sticks and kicked. My friend Rick had to have stitches in his arm after one of many rock incidences. I don't want to make out that all Ethiopians hurled abuse and rocks at us because they did not but those that did certainly left a bad impression and upset many riders. At the end of the day I just tried to take it all in stride. We are westerners on bikes and that meant that we saw Ethiopia from the road each day and the fact is that life in that country is hard. Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world and sometimes the poverty was overwhelming. I can only imagine what we must have looked like to the Ethiopians that we passed by each day - I kind of felt like we were a travelling circus - people on nice bikes, setting up perimeters at lunch and around our camps and living in tents! Ethiopia was challenging for sure but Laura probably said it best when we left Ethiopia - she said something to the effect of "I may have had some rocks thrown at me but I didn't get as many rocks as I did smiles - 2 million smiles" and it is true there was lots of smiles too!

I still have not processed my Ethiopian experience yet - I think it will take some time. I was sick through much of Ethiopia which made everything harder but I loved descending the Blue Nile Gorge for 20km and then climbing another 20km up the other side. I loved the mountains and the 5 days south of Addis Ababa. The climbs were incredible and the scenery was spectacular. Nothing has been more mentally challenging for me personally than those 3 weeks in Ethiopia but it was all worth it (okay maybe not the stomach craps and all that comes with Ethiopian illness). Ethiopia taught me a lot about myself - about patience and recognizing my privilege. I didn't forget for one moment just how fortune I am and what it means to be Canadian. I am lucky and I know it!

We left Ethiopia 4 days ago and I look forward to getting back on track with my blog and updating often. I can't wait to get back to describing my rides too!

More to come from Kenya!

Jx