Holistic Systems

It’s been a pretty manic 6 weeks.

In addition to working pretty hard, I’ve been organising lots of details for the Tour d’Afrique trip.

• Visas – www.sudan-embassy.co.uk and www.ethioembassy.org.uk
• Bicycle spares – www.wiggle.co.uk and www.merlin-cycles.co.uk
• Flights – www.opodo.co.uk
• Hotel – www.cataracthotels.com
• Serious travel insurance – www.statravel.co.uk
• Vaccinnations -1 down, lots to go …

With only about 6 weeks to go, it’s all starting to seem very real. I’ve just got to the point of having enough free time to start my charity fundraising.

Building this blog to help with fundraising and publicity has taken a lot of my free time.

If you’re reading this :- please donate   !!

I haven’t been doing enough training by along way, so it’s going to be hard when I get to Africa. I’ve still got lots of things to sort out for the trip. More bike spares, a video camera, either a solar charger or a dynamo and some means of comfortably carrying 3 litres of water.

eek !

I thought you might be interested to know when the scheduled rest days are in the forthcoming Tour d’Afrique 2009. By implication, all the other days are very much not rest days.

Start – 10th Jan 2009 Cairo

Egypt
Friday January 16th Luxor

Sudan
Sunday January 25th Dongola
Friday January 30th Khartoum

Ethiopia
Friday February 6th Gondor
Monday February 9th Bahir Dar
Sunday February 15th Addis Ababa
Friday February 20th Arba Minch

Kenya
Saturday February 28th Marsabit
Saturday March 7th Nairobi

Tanzania
Tuesday March 10th Arusha
Wednesday March 11th Arusha
Thursday March 12th Arusha
Friday March 20th Iringa

Malawi
Thursday March 26th Chitimba Beach
Wednesday April 1st Lilongwe

Zambia
Tuesday April 7th Lusaka
Saturday April 11th Victoria Falls
Sunday April 12th Victoria Falls

Botswana
Saturday April 18th Maun

Namibia
Friday April 24th Windhoek
Wednesday April 29th Sossusvlei
Sunday May 3rd Felix Unite

End – 9th May 2009 Capetown

Well, I’ve been in Cairo for about 5 days now and I’ve done all the usual touristy stuff like visit the museum, the pyramids and the Mohammed Ali mosque. All very interesting, but for me half the fun is just being in Cairo and marvelling at the seemingly bizarre chaos of it all.

The traffic is amazingly bad as are the traffic fumes which are literally choking. Crossing the road is an excellent high stakes game of skill and daring where you simply step in front of the slower moving cars that you think might stop or swerve around you.

People in Cairo are the friendliest people I’ve come across and many times people shout “Welcome to Cairo” as they drive or walk past. They are also very “commercially minded” (to say the least) and I’ve been introduced to a number of clever if highly dubious and persistent sales techniques.

Westerners stand out from the crowd and are considered fair game for any number of schemes designed to part you from your cash. All the “scams” are done with good humour and I haven’t once felt remotely threatened.

In some areas (the pyramids, downtown) we were bombarded with requests from taxi drivers, shop keepers and random people wanting to take you to a shop elsewhere. Purely from a time point of view  it’s best to be friendly but keep walking. You could easily be asked if you want a taxi 10 times in 30 metres.

One of the highlights of these first fews days (apart from crossing the roads) was going inside the Great Pyramid at Gizza. Inside the pyramid it’s suprisingly warm and you need to climb maybe 200 feet up a very steep, very narrow, low ceiling tunnel to reach the pharohs burial chamber. The burial chamber is a rectangular room about 5m long x 4m wide x 3m high made from black stone. At one end of the burial chamber is the remains of a sarcophagus made from the same black stone.

Today may have been one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

Myself and about 40 other Tour d’Afrique riders took a short 25K cycle trip through the outskirts of Cairo to visit the Sakara pyramids.

I must admit to being daunted by the prospect of cycling in the absolutely insane Cairo traffic however Cairo drivers are far, far more considerate than British drivers despite the chaos. I was also a little paranoid about becoming the first person to fall off

For the entire 25K, people at the side of the road were utterly amazed. Most waved, some called out “welcome” or “hello”, children ran out of houses and some literally stood open mouthed with surprise. Kids were “high 5-ing” the riders as we passed and some shouting for us to give them money. The areas we passed through were clearly very poor by our standards but the people seemed happy and simply amazed to see us.

Considering how overtly wealthy we all looked compared to these people as we cycled through their streets, you might expect there to be some kind of resentment, however the feeling I got from everyone I saw was “wow, go for it !!”.