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Let’s bring Sauna into Africa

December 2019 - February 2021
South Africa to Germany – at least a try. Read more
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4x4, Camping, Friendship, Nature, Photography, Self discovery, Solo travel, Vacation, Wilderness, Wildlife
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  • Let’s bring Sauna into Africa

    Hooray Hurri Hills

    January 20, 2021 in Kenya ⋅ ⛅ 31 °C

    My topographic index finger guides me north-east into Hurri Hills. Also because I read about it somewhere but I don't remember where. The drive is a climb from 500 m up to 1300 m over very stony, exhausting tracks. Average speed is something around 25 kph. Further up the soil gets ashier, sandier, smother to drive. The wind is still crazy-going and dry but with much nicer temperatures. I have a lunch break in the shade with self-baked walnut bread on wheat-sour-dough basis.
    The Hurris are awesome! It’s a volcanic plateau with these smooth hills scattered all over the place, nice (dry) grass and an astonishing view all round. When you stand on top of the area you just see a ridge from where the elevation drops down to 400/500 m in all directions. After a small hike the chief officer of security of Hurri Hills awaits me at my car and tries to convince me to stay in the safe town. Safe from what exactly? The only threatening element around here is the wind. I continue through the grassy plains towards the sunset in direction of Balesa. Want to find an overnight spot with view down into the valley.    Read more

  • Let’s bring Sauna into Africa
    2

    Ups

    January 21, 2021 in Kenya ⋅ ⛅ 31 °C

    The road gets stony again, all stones are round volcanic projectiles. I speed slightly because it’s just pure fun to drift around with this well-balanced car! But its front ground clearance could be better ... I take an even smaller side road where the tracks are very deep and the mid-ridge is overgrown with grass which is pretty bad because it hides potential stones. Driving next to the track is impossible because of big stones all over the area. Additionally, with the low sun I cannot see anything! This is where I hit a bigger stone with my underbody skidplate. *klong* Hahaaa! Not that my skidplates were not totally bent and scratched anyway, but this stone deforms the 7 mm thick aluminium in a way that it touches my right drive shaft and makes some rattling noise. Shit. In order to not miss the sunset and continue to find a spot for the night I quick-fix the issue by loosening some skidplate screws. But there is no way to escape the wind, no bush, nothing. So I sleep in the open, ashy landscape. The car gets shaken by the wind the whole night. Strange night. I continue at sunrise just to find a quiet corner further down the road in the valley where I have breakfast, drive the car up some stones and begin my bush repair workshop. Both skidplates I unmount and at first try to re-straighten them by using the car’s lifting jack and the car's weight. But the plates are so strong that I just lift the car with the jack without bending the aluminium at all. Damn. The ugly but working solutions is using the big stones around. I align the plates accordingly and with well-aimed hammering of big rocks I can straighten the bent parts. More scratches but very effective! The plates are as straight as they were before I entered Botswana :DRead more

  • Let’s bring Sauna into Africa

    German technology

    January 21, 2021 in Kenya ⋅ ⛅ 35 °C

    Balesa is not on my paper map but I find a lunch (with fresh mango juice!) and a well-engineered solar power plant there which relies mostly on German technology. A friendly technician approaches me and proudly presents the installation and explains everything. A German organisation introduced this experiment here, trained local staff and “wanted to see how it performs”. Now it has been transferred to Kenya Power and the villagers can buy power tokens via their phone. It is competing against Chinese technology in Dukana. At night only 5 % of the battery capacity is drained nowadys. Since 2018 the backup generator was used for maintenance work only. On his smartphone he shows me all statistics in nice graphs. Back in Germany I know one sauna owner who monitors his garden sauna the very same way ;-)Read more

  • Let’s bring Sauna into Africa

    Sele Gublo Pass

    January 22, 2021 in Kenya ⋅ ☁️ 25 °C

    Through Dukana I opt for the “seasonal” track along Ethiopia’s border. It takes me back into mountain area. I like that! For two days I did not meet any other vehicle. Barely any people around, just some herdsmen with camels. Again I am in the right place at the right moment and shortly after crossing the Sele Gublo Pass, before descending into the vast river valley, I turn off the track into the open, stony bush to find a nice wild camping spot at the ridge with a view of the sunset between two hills. After a very peaceful night without wind I get visited by a swarm of friendly wild bees in the morning who drink of the water at my washing place. For over an hour I supply and watch them. They manage to drain the cap of a yoghurt cup within a few minutes. When a bee falls into the pot of water, 1-2 others come to assist. They form a pontoon, move to the side wall and crawl on top of each other in order to continue with their business. Only three old- and weak-looking bees of the few hundreds drawn but the hive lives on. Every single drop matters. Wonderful!Read more

  • Let’s bring Sauna into Africa

    Ileret

    January 22, 2021 in Kenya ⋅ ☁️ 36 °C

    I reach Ileret and its sandy surroundings and with that the final destination of my current trip: Lake Turkana! 42 °C, strong humid wind from the lakeside, a punch in my face. The water is warm, interestingly smelly, slightly salty and has a soapy texture. After having crossed Gabbra territory here the tribe calls itself Dassanach. The cattle is drinking and locals are bathing so obviously no crocodiles around. Hopefully! Anyway, it was an awesome trip up here, so I would categorize an unplanned encounter with a croc as "the real African adventure" and would not have any reason to complain ;-) The locals dry Tilapia, Nile Perch and Catfish in order to export it into the country. The children rip dried chunks off the fish and chew on it like on leather. I park in a dry riverbed under a tree for the night and enjoy the sunset with distant rain. The whole evening and morning I have a crew of local kids around.Read more

  • Let’s bring Sauna into Africa
    2

    Sibiloi National Park

    January 23, 2021 in Kenya ⋅ ⛅ 34 °C

    My next destination on the way south brings me through Sibiloi National Park. The barren landscape with its wild track is fun to drive and gives a real feeling of remoteness. The eroded, endless badlands look like open surface mining. I find fossils all over the place wherever I stop for a second. Interestingly looking sedimental and volcanic stones with various “things” enclosed. I really wonder “how this all got created”. At Koobi Fora research camp there is basically nothing going on but from a ranger I learn a lot about tribal problems and conflicts within the national park. The herdsmen push with their cattle into the national park (coming as far as from Ethiopia) and the wildlife service tries to fight/control that. This also explains why all natives I met in the park were running away from me when usually the opposite happens. In contrast to the Masai of southern territories who live rather in harmony with the nature and at least do not touch the wild game, the local tribes here allegedly are involved in poaching in order to claim land for their cattle. But they say that this northern region is out of governmental influence and that “things are handled differently” up here. I indeed met some shepherds with Kalashnikovs. No need to be bothered. What is more bothering is the huge (small) locust swarm I get to see. While sitting with the dudes in Koobi Fora, “something” starts to rain down on us. Crazy! Immediately all lizards around the buildings and even squirrels run to the field to catch a locust for lunch. Yum Yum. The swarm moves with the wind further north.
    Around Mount Sibiloi I find traces of a petrified forest: 4 million years old trees turned into stone. Fantastic! Being here and inhaling this whole atmosphere lets you seem very tiny and unimportant. People, whatever you are currently caring and bothering about, just stop! Lean back and watch all the things to pass by. Just be nice to each other and enjoy what you call your life. On the long term you, everything, all this is just a moist fart (feuchter Furz)! Love? Money? War? Climate change? Overpopulation? Nature destruction? Ha! Pointless! Either we will exterminate ourselves or the planet will get rid of mankind anyway very soon. Then, after just another few million years and some “tectonic re-adjustments” everything is back to normal. Splendid!    Read more

  • Let’s bring Sauna into Africa

    Inland navigation

    January 24, 2021 in Kenya ⋅ ⛅ 34 °C

    I want to drive the "rough road" along the lake's shore to Loiyangalani in the south. After leaving Sibiloi and being completely sunken into my audio book "The Man-Eaters of Tsavo" I miss the junction and drive 5 km in the wrong direction towards North Horr. Wtf? There was no junction! I head back to where OpenStreetMap (OSM) claims the junction to be and indeed find A BLOODY FOOTPATH splitting from the gravel road. Are you serious? On OSM this is tagged as "secondary road" which is simply wrong and has been already corrected at the time of writing. Ok, let's try it. The problem is that I am running out of diesel. I knew that after Marsabit there would be no filling station and I have one jerrycan left as backup with which I calculated to be able to reach the next station after Loiyangalani but not further! If this path here along the shore turns out to be a dead end, at one certain point I will not be able to turn back to any other populated place where I could find diesel (in plastic bottles). No risk, no fun! Goat milk I will always find around here ...
    So, after 2-3 kilometers the footpath widens slightly and two tracks become barely identifiable with some motorbike footprints. Also there appear stone markings at the sides. But this track has not been used by cars for weeks! And indeed on a hilltop "the road" is blocked by thorny bushes in order to signalise "do not proceed beyond this point". The locals do that to close the roads in case of a landslide or untraversable river, for example. I encountered the latter earlier in my previous mountain exploration but continued and it turned out to be OK because all rivers are dust-dry since mid of January. The last rains were a month ago and so I decide again to drive around this blockade.
    Right decision! It is a wonderfully wild drive, indeed with broad, sandy river crossings. All dry as expected. The low sun is casting warm colours. After around 35 km - while reaching the village of Moite behind the coastal hills - the track gets better and some human beings appear again.    Read more

  • Let’s bring Sauna into Africa

    Along the wild shore

    January 24, 2021 in Kenya ⋅ ☀️ 34 °C

    The track slowly converges with the lake shore. Yellow grass on dark-grey sand creates nice contrasts! For the next 45 km this flat landscape literally drives me crazy because the whole flat section is cut with tiny, perpendicular water drainage channels which means that every 50-200 m I have to switch between 3rd or 2nd and 1st gear to cross a bumpy ditch. I thought to be alone here but finding a calm camping spot turns out to be difficult with many scattered nomadic settlements around. At least I will not have to bother about a diesel shortage because the further south I get the more used the track gets. Wind, flamingos, cattle. At 22:00 still 37 °C. A killer! Did I say that it is windy here?Read more

  • Let’s bring Sauna into Africa

    Loiyangalani

    January 25, 2021 in Kenya ⋅ ☀️ 32 °C

    The guys I met before in Ngurunit recommended to say hello in Loiyangalani and this is where I camp spontaneously at a resort. The town is calm but offers nothing special. It is a boiling pot of all surrounding tribes: Borana, Dassanach, Turkana, Samburu, Gabbra, El Molo, Rendille, Somali. El Molo inhabit just one small bay
    north of Loiyangalani! I still do not get how they all interact but at least they settle peacefully around town.

    At the lodge I meet Jane from Nairobi who stays here for a week and interviews young girls at school and their parents in order to distribute scholarships for poor pupils. She is fundraising and works in conjunction with aid programs. I learn a lot about how the school system works and also respond with many stories about the German one.

    On the street I am randomly asked to marry a girl. But for that I have to bring at least 6 camels into her family! I learn that a camel is worth approximately 120.000 KES which is 900 EUR. Holy banana! Do you remember the pics from Kalacha? For the Gabbra guys it is not uncommon to own a herd of 200-400 camels. They must be millionaires here! But their families have barely anything to eat. How does this work? Apparently this all is just a prestige thing and they rarely sell a camel. For every daughter they can marry away, they aggregate new camels. And in times of severe drought? 90 % of the camels die. Investment in "a better future"? Not of interest. Things here just work differently and we white, snobbish Sesselpupser will never be able to understand. I also learn that the many sheep of the Dassanach north around Ileret are well-adjusted to the hot and dry climate but ... I complained about the wind, right? There is always strong wind here, throughout the whole year. Once these sheep get completely soaked during unusual long and heavy rains and the air cools down a bit, the strong wind just makes them freeze to death over night. All of them.    Read more

  • Let’s bring Sauna into Africa

    36 km left

    January 26, 2021 in Kenya ⋅ ⛅ 30 °C

    So, my gambling was successful and I reached the next filling station on my route from Marsabit via Chalbi Desert, Kalacha, Hurri Hills, Balesa, Dukana, Ileret and Loiyangalani after 927 km, having emptied both jerrycans and with just around 36 km range left. With 127 L diesel in total this results in a consumption of approximately 13.2 L/100 km on pretty rough terrain with only gravel, sand and sharp volcanic rocks. The filling station here belongs to the big new wind farm in Serima. Finally somebody makes use of this wind ... but none of the nearby villages is supplied. All the power is exported to the capital cities and in Loiyangalani you have generators running at night.Read more

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