Taking the highway

I'd decided overnight that going west would be an ongoing scramble to get there and then back to Nairobi. I'd get to Rwanda and Uganda another time without so many other destinations in play. It was also good to have Mingi to ride with for at least some of the next few weeks, after so much time on my own. Staying on the T1 (SH1) is the most direct approach to Dar es Salaam, but would prove to be one of the least enjoyable. The single lane carriageway is a truckfest and reminiscent of the Zambian days. It may have been better to bus or train. But I'm doing it anyway, it seems. Leaving Uyole in the morning involved several long lines of truck convoys crawling along as they navigated the road condition and the various road police checkpoints, which seemed more of a tax collecting event. Fortunately, it cleared up more after a few km. The shoulder comes and goes, but the constant aggressive truck passing is exhausting. Very much dog eat dog behaviour. No doubt responsible for the many crashes evidenced by truck wrecks pushed off the road onto the verge. Most of them are half stripped the remainder being worked over by several mechanics stripping salvageable parts. We split the original 110km into 2 parts reflecting a long period of riding both of us had been doing and avoiding a zero day in less interesting village settings. So Chimala became our overnight stop after 60 km of largely downhill.Read more