Distance: 86.4 km
Ride time: 3:48:57
Average: 22.6 km/h
Max speed: 52.6 km/h
Total: 51998 km
I had felt completely drained for energy as I arrived in Sashamane last night. To some degree due to the 129 kilometers of cycling, but mostly because of the stone throwing kids.
Luckily a good night of sleep always helps, and this morning I was feeling ready to face the challenges once again.
I’m now heading north along a series of lakes in central Ethiopia. The villages continue to appear rather poor, which once again makes cycling challenging. Things got rather crazy when at some point a group of grown up teenagers blocked the road, raised their sticks, asked for money, and then slammed the sticks against the cycling bags as I was passing through.
The strangest thing is that if you ask people who are travelling without bicycles throughout the country, they will recognize nothing of this. Yet, some unexplainable thing happens out there in the villages so that I would leave those places pretty shaken up; one thing is kids throwing small rocks, but the fact that older teenagers now also seem to adopt this kind of behaviour hit me hard.
In Ziway I found a cheap hotel and decided to call it an early day. Once again I’m surprised how people in towns are super friendly, gentle, and respectful – quite the opposite behaviour compared to the kids in the villages. Ethiopia is a complex country. Even writing these blog posts it’s hard to explain the million different feelings I have about this place each day…
Tomorrow I’m expecting another Ethiopian emotional roller coaster.
