Namibia, beautiful and brutal. This is why we ride.

Riding the Tour D’Afrique, days 103 to 114, Windhoek to South Africa Border

Distance Cycled: 10,316km

Meters Climbed: 52,487m

Time on Bike: 398:18:31

Time in Truck: 00:00:00

From where I’m writing this post, I can see our final destination. On the opposite bank of the Orange river is South Africa. For the first time the end actually seems tangible and naturally my thoughts turn to how I’ll feel once this incredible adventure ends. There will undoubtedly be elation and relief and excitement about seeing family and friends again, who have literally and figuratively felt so distant for so long. I speculate there will also be a sadness and a trepidation as in just over a week I’ll have to enter the real world again! But I’ll leave any more reflection for a later post as there’s plenty enough to say about last couple of weeks in Namibia.

Dirt roads in the Namib

We started with a couple of days off in the Namibian capital, Windhoek, which is located in beautiful setting, surrounded by mountains on all sides. On first impressions it felt like we had now left Africa behind. The city centre is full of modern shopping malls, office blocks and clean, tree-lined streets. There is even a choice of well stocked bike shops. The traffic, for a capital city, is also eerily calm. In fact, the whole CBD just feels like leafy suburbia. Ever the intrepid travellers, Ed and I were not content to accept that this was all there was to the city and set off in search of the ‘real’ Windhoek. We took one of the hundreds of taxis that swarm the city to the outskirts of town to an area called Katutura. Incidentally, we learned later that if you ask the driver what the price is, you will be charged any multiple of the actual, standardised, price (about 80p!) - they can see the naive tourist a mile off! Visually, Katutura was very similar to any other black African area of a city, with corrugated tin-roofed bars and shops, antisocially loud music and (usually drunk) locals attaching themselves to you as unofficial tour guides. The key difference was that this time we told directly by every one of our ‘tour guides’ that we were not entirely safe here as white people. This served as a reminder of the chequered history of this part of the world, as with Namibia previously being a protectorate of the Republic of South Africa, the dark arm of Apartheid extended here too. In fact it is the remnants of this brutal policy that explain the stark contrast of the CBD with Katutura. Katutura was where the black population were forcibly to move to, with it being illegal for them to live in central area, or to even enter without a work permit. Katutura in the Herero language translates as “The place where people do not want to live”.

Climbing on a rare bit of paved road

The difficulty of the riding section ahead was evident from the first day back on the bike, hitting the dirt roads almost immediately and, having left the Botswanan flatlands behind, had some significant elevation changes to content with. In some ways it was a reminder of the first day out of Nairobi, refreshed and excited to be exercising the climbing muscles once again after long, long days on the flat. We were also heading into the Namib desert, so the temperatures rose and the scenery turned from bush-land to an awesome, barren, moonscape. Even more so than Botswana, Namibia is utterly devoid of people which added to the feeling of peaceful isolation.

Fish river canyon, second in size only to the grand canyon

Cycling on this sort of terrain, though, is really tough. Your whole body is shaken and jarred by the corrugation, every one of your contact points with the bike is in pain (particularly on the seat!), sweat is constantly dripping into your eyes and your legs are screaming from the previous three and half months of abuse. But then the landscape opens up. An endless vista of jagged mountains and sandy desert or scorched grassland with oryx and zebra running across the road in front of you and suddenly all the pain is so worth it. In many ways this summarises the motivation for cycling across a continent and to cycle every inch of it. Precisely because it is hard, the rewards are all the more satisfying.

Top of the Spreetshoogte pass

In the middle of the section we were treated to a rest day at Sossusvlei; a bone-dry, petrified mud-pan in the middle of the largest dune sea on the world. Sitting on top of “dune 45” for both sunset and then sunrise was truly majestic, and really has to be seen to be believed.

Hiddenvlei, Sossusvlei national park

Dune 45, Sossusvlei national park

Back in Zambia, a Shona park ranger, on hearing that we would be travelling through Namibia, described it as providing “‘muti’ for the soul”. ‘Muti’ translating roughly as medicine. This is not the sort of platitude that I would normally entertain, and at the time it passed me by. Now sitting at the end of our two week stint across Namibia, I think I see his point. For Namibia defies superlatives. Incredible, awe-inspiring, breathtaking do not do the landscape justice. Nevermind experiencing these visuals whilst high on the endorphin rush of pushing yourself to physical limits over punishing, sandy, corrugated roads, over mountain passes and in searing desert heat. There is not a phrase that comes to mind that can adequately describe the experience. Beautiful. Brutal. Cycling in Namibia gives you muti indeed.