I’m coming around another of the countless turns in the road, walking my bike uphill on failing legs, when I realize that a muscular male baboon is blocking the way ahead of me, looking increasingly angry as I trudge towards him. My vision is tunneled to a single point on the asphalt ahead, my mind fully consumed with speculation on whether enough of the ice in my last water bottle has melted to take another sip. I’ve failed to notice myself walking into a full family of baboons occupying the wooded ridge on both sides of the road, now surrounding me. In my fatigue I am running on pure instinct and, dropping the bike, grab a stick to shake at the baboon. He grudgingly makes way, and I congratulate myself for quick thinking before my thoughts turn back to the water bottle. But the next day, as I reflect on the completed ride, I realize that he likely moved not because of the stick but because he sensed me as an animal in desperation. Going up that hill, I was way past my mental and physical limit, moving forward simply because I needed to.
I moved to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, in November. By my second week, I had bought a bike. It was not a new bike, though; nor a well-preserved used bike; nor, really, a single bike at all. Because Zambia is landlocked with many barriers to efficient imports and has little manufacturing, new bikes and new parts are hard to find and expensive. This is no barrier to Lusaka bike mechanics, though. Operating out of roadside stalls made of wood and corrugated metal, they are in my opinion the best in the world.
I spotted the bike on a drive around town, and knew I had to have it. It had a red Gary Fisher frame, a mountain-bike tire on the rear wheel and a pavement tire on the front, and a brand-new set of gears recovered from another bike. I visited the stall three times to test the bike and lay the groundwork for what I knew would be an epic bargaining session. I rode away from the stall after the fourth visit on my new bike, having spent all of the money in my wallet- 1,340 Kwacha (~134 USD at the time). Worth every Ngwee.
By Christmastime I had grown to love the bike, riding it all throughout Lusaka: the bustling markets downtown; the beautiful, peaceful, privileged Kabulonga neighborhood where I lived with other foreigners and rich Zambians; the informal settlements sprawling up the hillsides of the national forest abutting the city. I knew I needed to take it out on a longer ride. I had also had the chance to do one or two weekend trips through the countryside by car, and was itching to experience the same in the open air, at the pace of life, on a bike.
So I plotted my course. Starting on Christmas Eve, I would ride 198 km south from Lusaka, which sits on a plateau, down into the fertile Kafue river valley, up and over the green hills of the Zambezi escarpment, across a stretch of parched plains, and finally to the shores of Lake Kariba, the huge reservoir that forms the Zambia-Zimbabwe border. Much of the route went through sparsely populated areas, and there was no obvious place to spend a night. So I would bring a tent; but I wondered if I could do the whole thing in a day, a retrospectively hilarious idea. Even more laughably in retrospect, I then planned to bike the same route back, this time mostly uphill.
As the day of the ride approached, I made preparations. Another incredible mechanic bolted on a rear rack and sold me some handlebar extensions, which I tried to soften with painter’s tape. I packed up my tent, a change of clothes, and some water in a backpack, tossed on a waterproof cover, and tied the bundle to the rack with a long string. It looed stable enough. The night before, I set up the whole apparatus in my apartment and, mostly out of sheer excitement, carbo-loaded by finishing four bottles of Zambia’s national beer, Mosi.
Shortly after dawn I was riding south from the downtown roundabouts of Lusaka, passing a crowded terminal where passengers board packed minibuses to destinations in the southern part of the country. I was feeling lucky to be on a bike, master of my own fate, rather than squashed into a bus when I noticed some of the passengers waving at me. I waved back, happy to see such friendliness. Then I realized that the waves were becoming insistent, panicked. Just in time I turned to see that my pack was mostly off the rear rack, threatening to fall off on the road and foul the gears up with the string. Close one. I sheepishly re-tied the load as hundreds of bus passengers watched in amused curiosity.
Then it was smooth sailing, 50km to the Kafue river by late morning. My legs and lungs felt good, the bike performed admirably, and the Zambian countryside showered me with immense beauty and welcome. I passed countless roadside fruit stands, sweet yellow mangoes and brilliant red tomatoes stacked in perfect pyramids, presided over by mothers dressed in fine clothes and surrounded by playing kids. I overtook a young guy carrying a huge tin on his rusty one-speed bike, and as I crested a ridge of land with the utter perfection of the green Zambian hills laid out below me, he bombed by me on the downhill, flashing a huge grin and letting out a loud Whoop! When I eventually caught back up to him, he told me that he was carrying 20 litres of milk in the tin. He makes the same trip, bringing the milk up dirt roads from his rural village to sell in town, on most days. A true bicycle traveler.
I felt so good that I took a detour from the main paved highway through some hills on a washed-out dirt road, getting a feel for life in the countryside. The hills were dotted with maize fields and occasional villages where everyone was hanging out at the shop with the biggest boom box and the best shade tree out front. I shared the rough road with guys hauling five-foot bundles of charcoal on the back of 30-year-old bikes, rambunctious kids shouting "Howahyou" like an incantation, and, once or twice, a dusty sedan packed to the brim with passengers heroically navigating the ruts at 10 km/hr. The little interactions were the best part: an old man jokingly haggled for your bike, a woman sold me 50 cents of tomatoes wrapped up with the utmost care in a plastic bag. A young guy getting off a night shift at the nearby Chinese mine biked next to me for a few minutes, and I could almost imagine I was him, going home to my wife and kids and nshima and a life that's so close yet so far from the malls of Lusaka.
I stopped at the river to buy some more water and once again fix my rigged-up pack. This time I foraged for some sticks to support the edges of the pack hanging off the rack, winding the string through them for an unorthodox yet foolproof rig.
I began muscling the bike up into the hills of the Zambezi Escarpment. In this sparsely populated range, people sell petrol in plastic jugs by the side of the road, and the economic activity is driven by smallholder farming and charcoal logging. Faced by my first real hills of the trip, I quickly began to tire. It was summer in southern Africa and the noon sun was cruel. Somewhere in the hills, I hit three milestones for the first but far from the last time of the trip. First, I stopped for a break and crumpled to the ground when dismounting, not expecting my legs to be as useless as they were. Second, I pissed a shade of orange; and third, I asked people I saw to give or sell me water, but they had none to spare. I passed a rushing cataract the color of mud and likely full of parasitical life-forms; a few kilometres later, cursed myself for not stopping there to cool down by immersing my body in the water.
My breaks became more frequent and longer, and I often lay out fully in the dirt, too tired to sit. Near the point of giving up, I arrived at the main divide of the escarpment, the start of a long downhill stretch. Six or seven trucks were stopped, the drivers smoking and relieving themselves on the road to ready their nerves for the hill. Zambia is a country of plains and gentle hills, and this downhill is perhaps the most vicious in the country, with a new truck wrecking itself each week. I could not hold back my joy as I whizzed down the hill, caution thrown to the wind, screaming with excitement and fear, probably unable to stop myself if a truck came around the corner. At several point I was able to see the Zambezi River, over 40km away, and felt that there was no way I could fail to reach my destination. I covered 10km in what felt like no time at all, and added a few more off the raw fumes of delight I had accumulated on the hill.
Reality soon set back in, as I found myself in the drier, hotter land below the hills. I had about 10km more before reaching the turnoff to Lake Kariba, and found myself unable to pedal at all and worryingly unable to regulate my body temperature. Even when I took breaks below the many ancient, venerable baobab trees by the road, often speaking with local kids from nearby villages who were delighted to have such an alien visitor in their midst, I was breathing hard and feeling flushed with heat. I needed to call it a day soon, but there was simply nowhere to stop and camp, as everywhere near the road was close to a small hamlet or two.
I pushed on, walking rather than pedaling my bike except on downhills. With the sun setting, near my limits, I made it to the turnoff and the great relief of the roadside stalls there, where I bought ice-cold water, a Fanta, and delicious strips of roasted goat meat. Happiness flooded into me with the water, and I bantered with the goat-meat seller, learning how to say “Bike,” “Goat,” and “You are a good man” in the Tonga language of southern Zambia.
I called him a good man and rode off into the evening, hoping to soon find an isolated place to camp. Still exhausted, I went into the wood too early and, as I lay there, heard approaching sounds of people and animals. I tried to hide myself and the bike in brush, but quickly realized I would be found, so changed my strategy to act confident as a large group of teenage boys walked by me, bringing the cows home for the night. I cannot guess what they thought of me at the time, a disheveled foreigner on their land. I smiled, greeted them, and got back on the road. Half an hour later, rain started to fall and I pitched the tent almost by the roadside, finally getting some rest as I nibbled on my dinner of stale pitas and peanut butter.
I had made about 138km on the first day; only 60 left for tomorrow, almost all on a flat. I resolved to wake before dawn and get to Kariba before noon.
My plan worked for about 20km, but then the physical toll of the previous day caught up to me with a vengeance. My legs were made of wood, my fingers and lips parched of all moisture, and my glutes rubbed raw in a way that only long-distance cyclists can understand. I was passing through the impoverished, parched flatlands that became populated when engineers built the Kariba dam, creating Lake Kariba and flooding out the people that used to live in the Zambezi river valley. The landscape was broken only by baobabs, subsistence villages, men selling jagged chunks of amethyst they’d lugged down from the surrounding hills, herds of lazy goats on the road, infrequent fellow travelers on rusty one-speed bikes, and even less frequent expensive safari cars headed to Kariba for a weekend at the lake.
Hot and thirsty on the bike, I felt a great sadness and remorse for the people of the plains who live in this heat and rarely get anything cold to drink. I wondered why I was doing this to myself when I didn’t have to, when these people would do anything for a shot at my cushy life in Lusaka; and I had no answer, other than that by moving through this land at the pace and heat of life instead of in an air-conditioned car, I was learning something that I could not learn in any other way.
I bought water at every chance I got, and drained the bottles quickly. In Lusitu, the district capital that is just a widening of the road with cement shops painted to advertise mobile network companies, I bought four bottles including one that was frozen solid. I did not know that this would be my last chance for water before Kariba. I kept moving, and with each kilometre getting harder I started to walk the uphills. But I was getting close to Kariba, and saw a squiggly line on the map which I assumed could only be a downhill to the lake, which I knew was lower than the flat I was riding through. The green plain stretched all around me, and though near my limit, I felt in control.
Then I came into an open field and found that I was dead wrong: I was looking at a mountain, seeing the road wind up its side. I looked back at the map more closely, and estimated that I had about 10km of steep uphill to push through. I inquired in a small shop at the base of the hill for water. The shopkeeper handed me a fizzy lime soda.
“No, water.” I implored him with my eyes and tried to mime thirst.
“Water.” He pointed back at the soda and nodded. I was on my own with my remaining half bottle, plus the bottle of ice.
And now we are back on the hill that started this story. I have enough energy in me to walk five minutes at a time, which is also enough for the ice to melt a little and give me a tiny sip of the coldest, most life-giving water I could ever imagine. One or two trucks pass me and it occurs to me that I could hitchhike, but the effort of human interaction seems unimaginable. No one else is walking or cycling on the road, except for the baboons. My arms are so tired that I lay my chest on the handlebars and try to shove the bike forward with my torso. The hills around me are stunning, with lush greenery and isolated groups of huts, and once in a while, a tantalizing glimpse of Kariba itself. If I can get there.
Suddenly, the trees open and the road curves around a ridge, and the glistening spectacle of Kariba is laid out below me. I can see the road winding down to it, downhill the whole way, and as I sit under the tree to admire it I have to hold back a tear or two. There it is, the objective of my self-imposed misery. I get back on the bike for the last time and cruise down with reckless abandon, swerving around potholes and minibuses, covering as much ground in a minute as I have in the previous hour. As I near the lake, the human warmth of Siavonga town pulls me in- I see a young boys’ soccer game, a roadside pool hall, a market selling fresh fish and fried caterpillars. I make it to a lodge, utterly shattered, and somehow convince them that I am the same person who emailed them from my professional address to book a camping spot.
My next move is to order a hard cider, and the feeling of that going down is as close as I will ever come to tasting the nectar of the gods. On Christmas evening, I put my feet up and watch the sun set over Kariba, the greatest present I could imagine.
I take the next day to hobble around the town and lake, feeling like a gladiator who has survived battle. On the next I wake up and understand that I am obviously in no shape to bike back to Lusaka, so I ask around to see if any trucks or trailers are headed to Lusaka that day. I learn that they all left by 4am to catch the opening of the morning market in the city, and decide to try my luck with a regular minibus, trusting the ingenuity of the driver to find a way to bring the bike.
He proves me right. We set off back up the hill to Lusaka with the bike tied with string to the back windscreen-wiper, bumping the back of the bus every time we hit a pothole. I feel bad to relegate this glorious, patched-together machine to such a position after it handled 198km with no trouble whatsoever; but it has lasted longer than I have, and as we drive up over the escarpment I am incredibly thankful not to be on a bike.
I get off at the bus terminal, and bike through the markets and streets that form the rhythm of Lusaka life back to the peace and ease of Kabulonga. I have done it, and have nothing to say to people when they ask why. For a tiny bit of time, the road was my life, and I was one with the bike. And this is enough.
(MH, Delhi, July 2020)
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