Nairobi to Kisumu – Thursday August 2nd

At 6am I was wide awake after a good sleep and wanted to get on the road early. However when I looked out the window there was a very heavy fog outside so I decided to hold back for a couple of hours until it would burn off.

I loaded up Simba and then had some breakfast. A South African news channel was on in the background reporting from Zimbabwe and I noted that I must keep an eye on the political situation there over the next couple of weeks. If the violence escalates then I might have to change my route a bit.

The clock read 10,083km at the start of this adventure and I wondered what it would be when it returned to Ireland.

The fog cleared by 9am and off I went into the African morning. It took about an hour just to get out of Nairobi and that was using the southern bypass and not even going into the city. After Istanbul it has the worst traffic of any city I have ever ridden in.

It wasn’t too bad from then on, mostly lorries and combi vans heading towards the Ugandan border. At least half of them belched out thick black smoke from burnt oil and it was a good thing that I had remembered to pack my bandana.

I stopped for petrol after a couple of hours and was not encouraged to hear the attendant’s view that it would take two days to reach Kisumu on a motorbike. I passed through several towns and villages where there was just dirt and mayhem everywhere. Some of them literally resembled a rubbish dump but I guess that people adapt to an environment and that this sort of existence is just a way of life.

I turned west off the main northbound road soon after Nakuru and the landscape almost immediately changed. It became more hilly and everywhere was green and agricultural.

There were tea plantations everywhere and people were hard at work gathering this nationally important commodity. I have never been to this part of Kenya before and it really is beautiful.

Simba never fails to arouse curiosity whenever I pull over and even when you think that you are in an isolated area kids just appear out of nowhere.

The ride to Kisumu took over six and half hours with very few stops and the roads had been fine until I got to the city itself. The last few kilometres was a difficult run of potholes and tarless road past one of the slum areas of the city.

The Airbnb host was there to welcome me and once I got everything unpacked the first thing I did was to immediately jump into the shower. It had been 31 degrees at midday and I needed it.

I asked about where I might get some food and she very kindly volunteered to drive me to a restaurant where I had a gorgeous piece of local fish which was probably caught in the lake that day.

Fishing on Lake Victoria is very important to the local economy but these guys take their lives in their hands as the hippos don’t take kindly to being disturbed.

We drove back through one of the slums and this is were you see poverty at it’s most stark. These are like open scars being left to fester with very little being done to heal them. The open sewers reminded me of the “flying bags” at the last slum that I visited with Kerrie on the previous African trip in Nairobi. Yet people living here have no choice but to adapt and forage on.

Once back to the Airbnb I was glad to hit the hay as I was a bit weary after my first day back on the road. It was a very nice room with a very clever curtain style mosquito net around the bed so no feeding time for the local mozzies tonight….