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CYCLISTAARON GOES TO AFRICA

Exploring Tanzania

ross Maasai LandStory and photos by Aaron Teasdale

I wasn’t sure why the spear-wieldingMaasai warrior had suddenly broken into asprint and started chasing me down theremote Tanzanian road. Nor did I under-stand what his high-pitched cry meant, butsomehow it didn’t sound like, “Wait,intrepid cyclist, you’ve dropped your mini-pump!” Young Maasai warriors have his-torically proven their bravery by spearingand killing wild lions, and I could only hopethis whippersnapper wasn’t aiming toestablish a new tradition by felling a cyclingCaucasoid. It was only our first day of rid-ing, but as the sandy track and intenseequatorial heat slowed me to the pace of adrugged tree sloth, I was certainly easierthan the average lion to skewer with a spear.

“So, Dave,” I asked my guide and rid-ing companion a short while later, aftermanaging to outdistance my pursuer, “Gota shield I can borrow?”

Dave— a longtime explorer of Maasaicountry, and owner and chief guide of

Adventure Sports and Leisure, Tanzania’sonly dedicated mountain bike company,—assured me that conflicts with Maasai wererare and we chalked the overzealous war-rior’s actions up to youthful showboating. Iacted nonchalant about the whole thing, asif getting chased by tribal warriors hap-pened all the time on my rides. Which, ofcourse, it didn’t, and which is exactly whyI’d come to Tanzania: to experience thewilds of Africa, our world’s primeval other-world. This is the ancient birthplace ofhumanity, where people still live in tribes,where enormous animals of every striperoam free, and, as I was discovering, onehell of a place to ride a bicycle.

Unexpectedly invited by friends to jointhem on safari, I’d chiseled out two weeksfrom the responsibilities of home and camehere determined to suck the marrow out ofmy fourteen days on the Dark Continent.Wanting off trodden paths and into thebush, I skipped out when my friends went

to climb tourist-riddled Mount Kilimanjaroand joined up with Dave instead.

“Everyone comes to Tanzania forsafari and Kilimanjaro, but there’s all thisincredible cycling that nobody even knowsabout, ” Dave told me. “There’s so muchhere to explore.”

Home of the fabled Serengeti, north-ern Tanzania spills across a vast savannahand grassland plateau that is studded withvolcanoes and deeply cleaved by the conti-nent-shearing Great Rift Valley. Weplanned a six-day cycling circumnavigation(with a Land Rover assist) of the rarely-traveled tribal lands and wild country sur-rounding the Crater Highlands, a complexof mostly dormant volcanoes with the greatNgorongoro Crater, once a mountain high-er than Kilimanjaro, at its center. This isMaasai Land, an area Europeans dared notexplore until a century ago. Long feared fortheir skill and ferocity as warriors, Maasaipermeate the landscape here, and for the

When cyclists and giraffes meet. A herd of wary giants size up a new species on the floor of the Great Rift Valley.

12 ADVENTURE CYCL IST MAY 2007 ADVENTURECYCL ING.ORG

next week we too would call it home.It didn’t take long for Maasai, dressed

in their resplendent red togas called shukas,to gather near us as we ate a lunch of pan-fried bread and Coca-Cola on that first dayof riding. This would happen whenever wepaused from pedaling on the trip; no mat-ter how remote our location, or how longit had been since we’d last seen them,Maasai would appear and gather — kids,mothers, spear-carrying warriors— stand-ing near us but apart, intensely curious butwith dignified restraint. The warriors inparticular carried themselves with a lan-guid nobility, but were always quick torespond to our greetings with waves andwide, luminous smiles. One even let metry a few throws of his spear, whichinstilled fear in the hearts of exactly no oneand, unsurprisingly, won me no invita-tions to join in the next lion hunt.

The afternoon led us along rockyroads and braiding Maasai livestock trails,through a world of arid savanna, profuselythorned acacia trees, and distant greenmountains floating on every horizon.Though not in the same zoo-without-cages density as in the national parks ofthe safari, strange animals and oversizedbirds were frequently in view. Zebras hud-dled in the shade of diminutive acacias.Terrier-sized deer called dik diks dartedaway as we passed. Bustards, huge carniv-orous ground-dwelling birds, stalked thelandscape like small dinosaurs.

As afternoon faded and Africa tiltedaway from the sun, we pedaled on throughgolden light. Nowhere in the valleys,mountains, and huge sweeps of landaround us were there any marks ofhumanity save an occasional thatch hut. Inthe distance, Maasai tended their cattle,and the dusky blue shapes of ostriches andzebra moved across low hills. In thesprawling valley bottom to our side, rose-colored Lake Engaruka reflected sunsethues while massive volcanoes, vaultinginto perfect cones, spiked the horizon.Then, as I rode a short ways behind thegroup, whether from dust in the air or thebeauty and wonder of it all, Africa broughta mist of tears to my eyes.

Just when darkness truly fell, wereached camp. Joseph, the driver of Dave’s

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retrofitted tank of a Land Rover, had ourpalatial canvas tents already set up, includ-ing, I was delighted to discover, a small tentjust for showering. Exhausted, I blissfullyrinsed the day’s dust away under the wink-ing African stars.

Lions roared that night, somewhere inthe savannah nearby. Or so I was told.Unaccustomed to the heat, I was too busysleeping off my first African coma to hearthem. I didn’t hear the hyenas that cameinto our camp either, but fortunately I’dbrought my shoes inside the tent after Davewarned me that hyenas like to chew themand coiled snakes like to adopt them asbungalows. It was the kind of warning youdon’t need to hear twice.

Our morning routine was quicklyestablished: I stumbled out of my tent aftereveryone else was up, usually to the sight of

Julius, Dave’s colorful Rastafarian assistantbike guide, lubing the chains and cleaningthe bikes of dust and sand. Then I ploppeddown in one of the wooden folding chairs atthe small wooden dining table whereDave’s cook served tea and breakfast. It wasa muchmore civilized style of camping thanI was used to, and I imagined it very British.Of course, I wasn’t used to eight-foot-tallostriches casually strolling by while I atebreakfast either, but there they were, theirperiscope necks snaking high above theirenormous, profusely feathered bodies. It did-n’t take long to get comfortably used to both.

The last member of our tribe wasLouise Hill, a fine-art painter and avidcyclist with the soft-spoken toughness of awoman raised in Africa. Both she and Davewere of British ancestry but were born inEast Africa, and both had lived for a time in

England only to return to make their livesin Tanzania.

Our collective goal for the second daywas simple: cross the Great Rift Valley.One of the planet’s greatest continentalfractures, it’s formed by a separation of theearth’s tectonic plates and is literally split-ting Africa apart. Home to the oldesthominid fossils yet found, it’s here thatman-apes first began walking upright mil-lions of years ago. The guiding landmarkfor our crossing was the western RiftWall’s 1,500-foot escarpment, clearly visi-ble twenty miles across an open valley ofacacia scrub and wildlife of undeterminedvarieties.With no roads or trails, we wouldride cross-country.

Fortunately, the desiccated soil waspleasantly firm as we set out, leaving usonly to dodge acacia and the occasional bus-

“Hey dude, seen any lions lately?” Julius greets a Sonjo tribesman and dodges burrros while riding into a Sonjo village.


tard on the hunt. Then, minutes after set-ting out, we saw them: giraffes. A herd oftwenty or more, moving across an openplain a few hundred yards ahead of us. Wewere heading straight for them.

Now, having never actually ridden abicycle into a herd of giraffes, I was unsureof the proper protocol. Were these 3,500-pound ungulates bicycle-friendly? As weemerged into a half-mile-wide, giraffe-filledclearing, two dozen of the world’s longestnecks rotated their lofty heads toward usand stared. With a nonchalant grace, theEiffel Towers of the animal kingdom driftedaside as we pedaled through. Two young

Maasai boys leading a herd of goats into theclearing took no notice of the giraffes, as wemight ignore deer on suburban lawns, andsilently returned my wave as we passed.

With no trail to follow, we crossed therest of the valley by weaving between ter-mite mounds and spear-tip acacia thornsunder a blast-furnace sun. Ever-presentdust tornados spiraled sand and soil sky-ward into the valley around us. As my lipscracked and gradually turned to sandstone,I found two remarkable feathers that madeeverything worth it: one from the tail of anostrich and the other from the wing of abustard. I lashed the two-and-a-half-foot-

long bustard feather to the side of my back-pack, which somehow made me feel moreadventurous and explorer-like, and kept riding.

As we drew closer to the valley’s farside, foot and cattle paths began appearing,then a scattering of bomas. The homesteadof a single polygamous Maasai family, aboma is a collection of huts constructed ofacacia sticks and termite-mound mud sur-rounding a central acacia-branch corral.The Maasai are a people of cattle — theylive exclusively off their stock’s milk, blood,and, occasionally, meat — and the thornyacacia corrals serve to keep their preciousanimals, their lifeblood, protected from East

Nuts & Bolts: Tanzania

Why here:

Twice the size of California,

Tanzania is the largest country

in East Africa. Poor but peace-

ful, fully one quarter of its land

is under some form of protec-

tion. Head out from one of

Tanzania’s few cities and you’ll

find a countryside of bucolic

small farms and sprawling

national parks, which are some

of the most wildlife rich in

Africa. The cycling may be

rough, but there’s no finer velo-

adventure in world.

When to go:

July through October is the dry

season in northern Tanzania. It’s

hot, but the best time for cycling.

How to get there:

The city of Arusha is the nerve-

center of northern Tanzania and

where Dave Armon is based.

The nearby Kilimanjaro Airport

is convenient, though it’s often

much cheaper to fly to Nairobi,

Kenya, and take the five-hour

bus trip south to Arusha.

Money:

Tanzanian Shillings are the

country’s currency. Don’t bother

trying to use American dollars

or traveler’s checks. Several

ATMs in Arusha are your best

bet for augmenting your cash

stash.

Health:

You’ll need some needles poked

in you before you go, plus

malaria pills. Check www.cdc.

gov/travel/vaccinat.htm to sort

out your needs. The dry season

is hot and lions can eat you, but

riding in Tanzania is probably still

safer than your commute to work.

Resources:

The Tree Where Man Was Bornby Peter Mathieson is a deeply

informative look at the region,

it’s ecology, and history.

The Worlds of a Maasai Warriorby Tepilit Ole Saitoti is a fascina-

tion look at Maasai culture from

the inside.

Contacts:

Tanzanian Tourist Board:

www.tanzaniatouristboard.com

Dave Armon is an excellent

guide, with deep knowledge of

the area’s fauna and flora, and

has good rapport with the

Maasai. His Selela Forest Camp

comes highly recommended. He

can also arrange safaris and

climbs of Kilimanjaro. Adventure

Sports and Leisure: www.ad

sportleisure.com. Tanzania

Biking: www.tanzaniabiking.com.

To see some of Louise Hill’s

wonderful paintings of the

Tanzanian people and country-

side go to www.louisehill.net.

TANZANIA

ZAIRE

ANGOLA

SUDAN

ETHIOPIA

KENYA

MOZAMBIQUEZAMBIA

SOMALIA


Africa’s profusion of predators.As Dave pointed out, “The Maasai

don’t need much and don’t want much —just a good knife, a good pair of shoes, anda couple pieces of cloth.”

Nearing the base of the Rift wall therewere more and more of them — womenwalking along the path-turned-sandy-road,children running to us from their huts,warriors patrolling in pairs. I always wavedand, if they were close enough, called out ahearty “jambo!,” and they invariablyreturned my greeting and flashed lion-sizedsmiles. As we rode, Dave and Louise talkedmore about Maasai culture and casuallymentioned that some of them rode bikes.

“Maasai ride bikes?” I blurted, eyesopening wide. It seemed too great a thing tobe true.

I told Dave that I would love, love, apicture of a Maasia on a bike — “If I couldget only one picture for the rest of my trip,”I said, “that would be it.”

That afternoon we reached the Maasaivillage of Selela, where a decade earlier Daveand his wife had lived for a year as mission-aries. Perhaps not coincidentally, moderni-ty had established a beachhead there, witha few cinder-block buildings and severalhundred residents, an unusually large pop-ulation for a Maasai village. Dave had estab-lished an exclusive camp not far away, shar-ing its proceeds in an effort to convince thevillagers to preserve the riverine forest sur-rounding it.

“Okay now,” Dave said, after ridingfrom the village and stopping the four of usas at the edge of a wall of dark, toweringtrees, “there are elephants and buffalo inthis forest, so we’ll have to be alert.” Thenhe reviewed the giant-angry-mammal-defense strategies with us: get charged byan elephant, keep a tree, preferably a bigtree, between you and the elephant. Getcharged by a buffalo, lie flat on the groundand hope it jumps over you.

Surprisingly, andmuch tomy joy, theylet me lead. Clearly, I’d impressed themwith my wilderness and bike-riding savvy.Who better then Aaron, African adventur-er extraordinaire, to take the lead throughthe elephant- and buffalo-infested forest?Somehow it didn’t occur to me until after-wards that I was also serving as a convenientand eager surly-beast buffer for everyone else.

In the trees, the world changed fromthe lion-colored plains of the previous twodays into a verdant forest-world, wherebaboons and blue monkeys cackled andleapt from branch to branch overhead as werode. A patch of mud showed fresh, crater-like tracks. Weaving between giant tentac-ular fig trees and hopping across smallstreams, I replayed Dave’s advice — ele-phant: big trees; buffalo: lie and pray. Theair was electric, every twist in the trail tin-gling with possibility, every deep-throatedbark of a baboon urging me forward underthe living canopy.

Into a wild forest. The trick is knowing which trees are big enough to stop charging elephants.

“We’re here,” Dave called out entire-ly too soon, as we emerged into a smallclearing where a freshly hewn footpathclimbed to a spread of canvas tents at thefoot of the Rift escarpment itself. Each tenthad its own bed and a gravity-fed, canvas-walled shower area. A wooden dining tableat the base of a gigantic baobob tree and aneighboring fire ring overlooking the clear-ing and elephant forest below. It was likeour own boma, without the cowpie smell.

The morning of our departure fromthe Selela Forest Camp, after a deliciouslyrelaxed rest day of long woods walks andbird watching, I was awakened by themag-nificent orchestration of a million birdsongs. Chirps, whistles, trills, coos, hoots,and warbles symphanized into an avianwall of sound and the finest waking alarmI could imagine.

Piling into the Land Rover, Josephpiloted us up the Rift Valley wall itself,along the rim of the famed NgorongoroCrater, and down the other side of theCrater Highlands to Serengeti NationalPark. Just before entering the Park itself,we turned onto a faint doubletrack thatclosely paralleled its boundary and cut astraight path along the Serengeti’s perfect-ly flat grassland.

“Now we’re going into some real wildcountry,” Dave said with relish. “Wemight have lions visiting us tonight.”

As predicted, a great pride of lionscame in the dark of night and encircled ourcamp, moving slowly, silently, the cots inour tents offering us up like platters. Iwatched them skulk and sniff and then…I was awakened by Dave telling me it was

time to go. The dream had felt so intense-ly, almost supernaturally real that I want-ed to search the camp perimeter for tracks,but there was no time — today we rodethe Serengeti.

Aiming to avoid the day’s inevitablescalding heat, we set out on the bikesshortly after sunrise (and our requisitemorning tea) to ride along the northeastedge of the 35,000-square-mile SerengetiPlain. I scanned the tan soil that passedunder our tires for paw and hoof prints as

our narrow doubletrack road merged witha more-defined, well-traveled dirt track. Itled us upwards as the sere shortgrassplains gave way to rolling hills dotted withacacia and we climbed and descended forhours in an undulating cruise along theSerengeti’s perimeter. The highpointsdelivered panoramic views of the expansebelow and the long, acacia-speckled hillsthat reached out across the plain like sleep-ing cheetahs.

“It’s like a sea,” Louise said quietly, as


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smiled and said, “Getting out in theAfrican bush is my favorite thing to do. Ilove to just sit and look out over it, to lis-ten to it, to smell it.”

Then it hit me for the first time likean unwelcome revelation — this was mylast night sleeping out in Tanzania. Afterseeing only each other, tribesman intogas, and otherworldly wildlife for thelast week, tomorrow we would return tothe city, and I would board a plane filledwith clean people in clean clothes and goback to western civilization, where no onecarries spears and my dreams are free oflions. Here in the Rift Valley and on theplains above, the Maasai will herd theircattle, lions will move in for the kill, andvultures will sit in waiting. Life in Africa— the savagery, the grace, the wanderingbloodthirsty beautiful life — will go on.

Dave told me I’d have to come backto see the great wildebeest migration onthe Serengeti. Louise said my family waswelcome to stay at her farm anytime. Itoldmy new friends I hoped I could returnsomeday, and then my mind flashed backover the last week and all the things we’dexperienced and learned, the things youcan only learn in Africa — like how tokeep hyenas from eating your shoes, howto escape charging elephants, and thatgiraffes really are bicycle-friendly. Then Ithought about the Maasai who’d chasedme on the first day and it occurred to methat maybe he’d just wanted to go for aride. After all, they may be living simply asherders and spear-wielding nomads in thisuntamed land, but the other thing we’dlearned, and maybe the best thing, wasthat even Maasai warriors love a gooddownhill.

Aaron Teasdale keeps his bustard and ostrich feath-ers on display in his living room in Missoula,Montana, where they will soon be joined by aframed picture of a Maasai warrior on a bicycle. Heis deputy editor of this magazine.

continued from page 19

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is published nine times each year bythe Adventure Cycling Association,a nonprofit service organization forrecreational bicyclists. Individualmembership costs $35 yearly to U.S.addresses and includes a subscriptionto Adventure Cyclist, a copy of TheCyclists’ Yellow Pages, and discountson Adventure Cycling maps. Theentire contents of Adventure Cyclist arecopyrighted by Adventure Cyclist andmay not be reproduced in whole or inpart without written permission fromAdventure Cyclist. All rights reserved.

Our CoverCycling along the base of Ol DoinyoLengai, an active volcano in a remotecorner of Tanzania. Photo by AaronTeasdale.

(left) Sharing a rare patch of shadewith Maasai warriors.

How toReachUsTo join, change your address, orinquire about your membership:

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Headquarters:Adventure Cycling Association150 E. PineMissoula, MT 59802

05:2007contentsMay 2007 · Volume 34 Number 5 · www.adventurecycling.org

ACROSS MAASAI LAND by Aaron TeasdaleTanzania is renowned for its oversized wildlife, epic national parks, towering volcanoes,and colorful tribal culture. But what’s it like to ride through? Aaron went to find out.

CYCLING MAINE’S ACADIA NATIONAL PARK by Cindy RossEnjoy classic New England countryside while cycling along car-free carriage paths.

CYCLING INTO CHRISTINA’S WORLD by Susan WeaverThe author explores the landscapes and culture of Andrew Wyeth’s Maine.

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CYCLESENSE / John SchubertIs riding fast worth it?

TRAVELS WITHWILLIE / Willie WeirMake home your land of adventure.

CYCLISTS’ KITCHEN / Nancy ClarkNutritional advice cyclists can use.

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