Cycling The Globe

Distance: 145.3 km
Ride time: 7:02:40
Average: 20.6 km/h
Max speed: 37.1 km/h
Total: 45957 km

A long 145 kilometer cycling day made possible by the fact that the day started with 80 km of descend. Only lost 300 meters of altitude, but since there was no wind it was enough to keep the speed up.

I’m now very much in the northern part of the country. Yet, there is still some 800 km to the border with Zambia. Namibia is a huge country!

Once again heading into a remote area of the country, I was bringing quite a bit of food and water. At midday the temperature was getting close to 40, and even though I wanted to put in a good distance, I thought it was best to stop for a couple of hours during the midday heat.

I found a nice tree next to a cattle trough. There was even a tank with fresh water coming in – a great chance to get some water to drink that was colder than what I had in my bottles. It tasted great!

After 120 kilometers I reached the entry gate to the Mangetti National Park. There was a camp site, but after waiting for 5 minutes at the closed gate nobody showed up. I thought I would just continue a bit further then.

The friendly people at the gate let me through without problems – I guess that means that there are not too many wild lions running around this park? 🙂

And then something unexpected happened. I was suddenly passing village after village of very simple huts with plenty of people living in them. So far in Namibia, people have been living in small towns that typically have been 100 kilometers apart. In between there would be absolutely nothing. I think this is going to change now…

The people in the simple villages were smiling and waving, and I felt happy to be sharing the road with something else than cattle for a chance.

All the people did however mean that I had to continue cycling to get to an area that was slightly less inhabited. There I could finally hide my bike between some bushes and put up my tent unseen.

I’m looking forward to see if the villages will continue tomorrow. This part of Namibia is not as remote as I would have thought looking at my map…