Fundraising status: 2701,05€ or 24% reached, a massive thank for the one contributing, unfortunately I will soon have biked more kilometres than raise funds and I need your support to change this trend. Please support lessons for life, any contribution is highly welcome ! If needed, the link is here
Stage 20: Khartoum to Rufaa
KM: 136.7 km
HM: 150 m
Time: 4:59 minutes
Flat tires: 0
Liter of water: 4.5 + 1 sprite and 1 guava juice
Strava link
Stage 21: Rufaa to Bush camp
KM: 138.4
HM: 194 m
Time: 4:48 minutes
Flat tires: 0
Liter of water: 5 + 2 tea and 4 sprite
Strava link
After two well deserved rest days in the surrounding of Khartoum, it was time for us to sit again on the saddle to face this very challenging fifth section!
Unfortunately, due to an upset stomach, the night before stage 20 was quite busy and I therefore did not start the day in the best condition. (to be honest, at home I would not have used my bike at all) Anyway, we started our day in the suburb of Khartoum and had to ride through the early traffic morning to leave the city. The first part of the ride was not physically hard but the heavy traffic and a quite poor road surface made it quite challenging. The second part of the day, after lunch (@km 68) was rather easy and smooth as the traffic slow down and the road surface improved slightly. And after 136 km we reached our camp in Rufaa, in the middle of the bush were the locals enjoyed observing our funny caravan.
The next day started with a lovely breakfast taken under the heavy smoke produced by a neighbouring factory producing god knows what ;-). After this lovely smoky moment we started our day as usual with a beautiful rising sun. Despite the continuous stomach issues, this day went rather smoothly, going from one coke stop to the other, seeing the very long queue of cars and trucks waiting to get a few drops of oil, enjoying the fantastic Sudanese hospitality and having fun with the other riders. Reaching the last 30 km of this section, we saw a quite significant change of landscape and architecture. After a few weeks of biking in an Arabic world, I could finally smell the taste of sub-Saharan Africa, some canopy trees can be seen and savanna and fields are slowly replacing the sand and rocks we saw during the last weeks. And i saw my first wild animal, a baboon ;-).
Stage 22: Bush camp to Al Qadarif
KM: 133.47 km
HM: 291 m
Time: 5:20 minutes
Flat tires: 0
Liter of water: 6 + 1 coffee, 3 tea and 2 sprites
Strava link
Stage 23: Al Qadarif to Metema
KM: 148.2
HM: 548 m
Time: 5:50 minutes
Flat tires: 2
Liter of water: 5 + 4 tea, 1 cofee, 1 sprite and 2 Mango juice
Strava link
Our third day of this section started in a fantastic environment, biking through some small hills, then through kilometres of golden fields. As I was still not feeling very well, I kept on biking on a very relaxed pace and enjoyed the scenery and each and every possible coke stop as hydration was again a topic due to temperatures reaching again the 40°. The main event of the day was that at our arrival in Al Qadarif, a local “entrepreneur” had the great idea to organize a “bucket” shower, which means that we were finally able to wash ourselves with some water. An amazing moment indeed!
Stage 23 was our last day in Sudan and the first 55 km of this stage went extremely well, I enjoyed again the change of scenery as we had to climb some first small hills and bike through very lively village. The night before, the TDA team warned us that the road would be quite bad on that day and I had to wait till km 55 to understand what they meant. As of that moment, I had to drive like an absolute drunk biker, going right and left, avoiding potholes and upcoming cars. Not a light exercise for the body (my shoulders suffered quite a lot), but quite fun to be honest. On that stretch I had the chance to meet a Camel owner and his 1000 camels (at least), this was quite a funny meeting, specially when he showed me his sword ;-). These bad conditions lasted till km 106 when the surface suddenly changed to smooth like silk (who knows why), based on that the rest of the day should have been smooth and warm (we reached again the 42°) with some coke stops to stay hydrated and enjoying the beautiful African landscape. Unfortunately my tires decided to change that situation and I got a big thorn in my tyre for my puncture N°6 and my new inner tube lasted 1 km for puncture n°7! I’m therefore still the puncture leader of the tour ;-). Despite this issues, Nick and I finished this stage in the beautiful light of the end of the day and reached the camp shortly before 5:00 listening to some classical music thanks to Nick boombox.
This section was supposed to have two more stages, bringing us to Gondar in Ethiopia, unfortunately due to some political unrest, the Ethiopian army forbid us to ride these highly awaited 200 km of climbing. We therefore passed the border in Metema and boarded in a few buses, driving in a convoy under military escort till Gondar. Despite the frustration of not being allowed to ride these first stage of climbing, seeing burned car and houses and crossing many people holding machine guns along the road, the decision of not riding these two stages was definitely the correct one. Better safe than sorry! And we will get enough climb in the coming weeks.
Sectional riders
As we’ve now finished the first official TDA section which is from Cairo to Khartoum, we had a few change in our group as some sectional riders left us and some other joined us. Therefore let me explain what are the sectional riders and what we are doing with them.
Actually it is quite simple, in a TDA tour you have two kind of riders, the permanent one like me being crazy enough (or having enough time) to do the full tour and some other riders, which are joining for one or two sections.
The sectional riders are therefore changing regularly as some are leaving while some new one are joining us. as these guys are new, they have a few disadvantages like having to build our tents every night, washing our laundry and so on..
Joke aside, the sectional riders are mostly misused in two ways.
1: Before joining the tour, they are often contacted to smuggle some spare part for the permanent riders as it is more or less impossible to find spare part in Africa (I might have to order a suitcase of inner tube soon).
2: When finishing their sections, they are stripped. Anything which can be used by the permanent riders will be asked and negotiated. Batteries, tent pegs, tent, headlamp, inner tubes (yes it is an obsession) and even liver and legs will be negotiated and traded, which means that if lucky the sectional rider will go back home with a few clothes and his bike (hopefully).
As we still have quite some sections to do, if any of you is still interested, you can have an overview of the remaining sections here
And here we are, after 2688 km, 7129 hm and 95 hours and 53 minutes on the bike, the fift section is over! And my body and stomach are again/still doing well, I can consider myself as quite lucky so far!
Sixth section will be a very short one with only two days of riding till Bahir Dar and finally some small climbing.
And last but not least there is a new gallery here
Fred
Tes parents
16 Feb 2019Quel plaisir de découvrir toutes les péripéties de ton voyage! Continue sur ta lancée 💪😙