After our slightly hairy escape from Egypt, the following week’s travelling through Sudan was a breeze. Friendly people, beautiful desert bush-camping and a refreshing lack of riot police and tear gas. Despite a tense night spent envisioning tribal disembowellment ceremonies which turned out to be wind in the tent flaps, we felt we might be at last getting the hang of this overland business.
Crossing into Ethiopia the land changed and with it the people. Suddenly we began to experience “Faranji Frenzy”. This is a recognised cultural phenomenon in Ethiopia and involves everybody, from the very poor to the quite well off, going totally mental when they see a white person – Faranji – and shouting “You, you, you, you, you, you” loudly and repeatedly at them and demanding money/pens/plastic bottles until the Faranji legs it cursing Geldof, Bono and all the other do-gooding bastards who have turned this beautiful country into a nation of aggressive beggars.
When the Faranji is in a moving vehicle, the local person has to be more inventive. Requests for money are therefore made by the holding up of fingers to indicate the amount requested – this means some fast moving fingers with 15 birr (about 1 dollar) being the preferred amount. Many children have heard that tribal dancing is enjoyed by Faranji. This means most children randomly booty dancing on the highway at the approach of every Land Rover. GF took to rave dancing back at them from his driver’s seat, which didn’t go down well and led to some pretty fucked off little mites.
However, aside from the really rather impolite financial demands, Ethiopia is an incredibly beautiful country, steeped in the culture of ancient civilizations. In rural areas time seems to have stood still for centuries, with oxen still being used to thresh corn and electricity unheard of outside major towns and sometimes within them as well. Though,by the way, they did know it was Christmas time, they have their own branch of Christianity with special bits of the bible that no-one else has, so take that Bono.
Ethiopia also has the best food of the whole trip so far – carpet pancake and hot unidentified meat. Plus perfect macchiatos everywhere, courtesy of a brief period of Italian colonel rule, which goes a long way to making up for their scant tarmac roads, unreliable water and electricity supplies and lack of other mod cons.
As we travelled down through Ethiopia we began to make plans for our crossing into Northern Kenya, the worst piece of driving in the whole London to Cape Town itinerary. There are basically two choices – the main route which is paved from Addis Ababa to the Kenya border, and thereafter 400 miles of rocks and corrugations known as the “Road of Stones”, or an entirely off road route down through South West Ethiopia past Lake Turkana in Kenya. The former is the more commonly taken route and is tough but at least well used so in the event of breakdown help can easily be found. The latter is completely isolated and not recommended. You can see where this is going, can’t you.
PB has to be held completely responsible for the trail of stupidity that led to us finally deciding to take the Lake Turkana route. Though the Internet is partly to blame, it told us it was fine too. Well, that’s not entirely true. Some bits of the Internet told us it was a stupid idea, but there was perhaps some selective reading going on.
Anyway, all the blogs were clear. Don’t do the Lake Turkana route with only one car, it’s too isolated and if you break down/drown in quicksand no-one will hear your screams. Neither of us wanted to be stuck alone together in the desert deciding who should die first so the other could feed on their emaciated corpse. So when we arrived in Addis and set up camp at Wim’s Holland House overland camp, we had one mission: find a sucker to come with us to Turkana so we didn’t have to be Alone.
As luck would have it, the very next camper, a South African by the name of Willem, was heading down to Kenya and choosing which route to use. Through a combination of begging, bribery and alcohol we persuaded him to come with us on our off road adventure, Result. Now, even if Tuppence didn’t make it we’d be able to catch a ride back to civilization in Willem’s lovely Landcruiser. He also sounded like he knew one side of a sandladder from the other, had a a tyre compressor and generally appeared far less likely to get stuck in the desert with cannibalism the only option for survival than us.
Delighted with our new found companion we set about the necessary preparations for the trip. Paying a man about a year’s average Ethiopian salary to guide us through the Addis traffic and avoid getting stuck in cul-de-sacs besieged by five year olds intent on acquiring hard plastics, we applied for our Kenyan visas and then headed to the Customs HQ to get our carnets stamped which the Internet had told us would be a mere formality. Turned out this was the first of the Internet’s Lies about Lake Turkana. The customs man told us that the Omerate route was closed and it was not possible to exit the country that way.
Now, a couple of months ago, a man in an Official Government Capacity telling us we couldn’t do something would have stopped is in our tracks. But having spent a great deal of time interpretative dancing for customs official we’d somewhat lost our fear of them and given that governments seem to fall at the drop of a tear gas canister these days, we figured all was not lost. A call to the RAC confirmed our car passport just needed to be stamped into Kenya and not out of Ethiopia. And we couldn’t see what use an exit stamp in our passports was either way. So… as long as there wasn’t anyone at the actual border to stop us crossing, as the Internet said there wasn’t… we had nothing to lose…. Had we? When we went to collect our Kenyan visas Willem just had a quick chat with the Kenyan Vice-Consul to check THEY had no problem with us entering their country this way. The nice man said that he’d really rather we went the main road way but it was not impossible to take our desired route. In a spirit which I can only describe in retrospect as total madness, we decided that was enough for us. We were still ON.
All that was left to do was buy five days worth of food and water and a spare tank’s worth of fuel and we’d be off (we’re not kidding about this route being remote – 1000km off road without a shop let alone a petrol station. I really can’t remember why this ever seemed like a good idea).
In preparation for our trip the next morning we headed to a nearby Total garage with Willem to have our nipples greased, a new concept for us essentially giving Tuppence’s knobbly bits a good lubing. Sipping what we thought would be our last ten macchiatos of our time in Ethiopia, things were just about ready for something to go wrong, which they promptly did. Firstly the mechanic snapped the bolt holding our fuel filter on to the car, which was a bit of a blow as we didn’t have a spare. Secondly Willem noticed a massive crack in his rear suspension. Which is not a good thing. With heavy sighs we sat down to wait for someone to find us a new bolt and Willem went off to the Big Bad Repair Shop, which was closed due to the Bank Holiday.
Eventually we got a new bolt but Willem had to wait until the next morning before someone could look at his car, which we hoped just needed a quick weld or whatever and would be ok. Unfortunately the suspension man said it needed two or three days heavy labour. We set off South, all alone, hoping that it would be two days in which case Willem would join us. But beyond that he’d have to hot foot it to Nairobi by the sane route in order to meet some friends and we would be all All By Ourselves again.
As we headed down to Southern Ethiopia we discussed what we would do if Willem couldn’t join us. Still take the Lake Turkana road, even though no-one on the Internet had done it on their own and it sounded a tiny bit scary? Not to mention that it involved an illegal border crossing? Or do what everyone else did and just drive down on the big, well-used, if slightly bumpy Main Road. By the time we reached Arba Minch and discovered Willem definitely wouldn’t be joining us, total insanity had set in, plus we’d already driven for seven hours down a road that was supposed to be paved but in fact wasn’t, leading to some moonlit river fordings and general unpleasantness and therefore we were disinclined to turn back. So far in in blood etc…
Thus we continued through the Lower Omo Valley, which is a bit of a mental place. It’s home to hundreds of different tribes, who all dress funny and look weird. This has led to a huge tourist industry springing up, whereby busloads of Faranji are brought in every day to see the Mursi/Hamer/whatever tribe dance for them so they can take pictures. This seems undignified to us so we’d decided not to visit any of the “traditional villages” or see any of the “tribal dancing”. Turns out that whilst some of this business is put on for the tourists, the further south you go, and the further away from anything resembling tarmac, the more surrounded by the tribes you are anyway. With our usual cultural sensitivity we weren’t really sure which ones, other than that the ladies looked like Dwayne Dibley and the men wear skirts and carry very large guns. The whole gun thing put a bit of an edge of the Faranji frenzy business but thankfully it was mostly the children doing the begging at this point, their heavily armed elders having better things to do like shooting stuff.
Stopping only briefly to visit some crocodiles and hippos, we powered on down through Konso, where a seasoned pair of Italian Ethiopian residents stopped us getting ripped off by moneychangers and told us about some glue to hold the car together. When they found out what route we were planning and how clearly totally clueless we were about anything they gave us their phone number to call for help… though when we told them we didn’t have a satellite phone they clearly thought there was no way we were making it through this alive. We were beginning to agree with them and the tension was beginning to show.
The last night before the border we camped in the car park of a posh lodge in Turmi, and discovered that a mere 300km of off road had caused one of the footplates of the car to fall off. Fucksticks, this didn’t bode well. Taking it all in our stride we dealt with the situation in the most mature fashion, by turning on each other and having a falling out about whether we could glue the bloody thing back on again or not. Harmony was restored when an emergency supply of Roger Freeman’s cable ties was discovered and a repair was fashioned by PB who had developed a taste for scrambling around under the car covered in oil and pretending to be Charlene in Neighbours.
The next morning we set out into the unknown. 50km of sand road without another vehicle in sight brought us to the turn off for the border. Now we were no longer following what you could call a road, merely a faint track across the bush. I have to confess that at this point I really started shitting it. What the fuck did we think we were doing? Heading off into arid desert, solely reliant for our survival on a 15 year old Land Rover Discovery, a make and model well known in 4x4 circles for being a bit crap. We calmed ourselves by reading aloud from the 4x4 driving manual which we’d just remembered we had with us, slightly late in the day… Which was a good thing as it told us how to turn the 4x4 capability on, which certainly helped a bit in the thickening sand.
The countryside we were driving through was covered in scrappy desert vegetation, punctuated by dry river beds which we had to power through with some momentum to avoid getting stuck in the middle. We didn’t have a tyre compressor so hadn’t been able to deflate them like you’re supposed to… All we passed for the next hour or so were the strange tribal hamlets, composed of dome like huts fashioned from sticks, plastics and pieces of corrugated iron, their inhabitants given to either staring at us in disbelief or running after us demanding money, which at this point had become rather reassuring. If they knew about begging off white people here, we couldn’t be that far from civilization.
Gary informed us we were approaching the border, and we hadn’t broken down or anything yet, so it was all going quite well. Then we saw a barrier across the road. Oh dear. This wasn’t supposed to be there. That bastard Internet had lied again. We hadn’t got any of the right paperwork to exit the country and the policeman running towards us didn’t look like he had a carnet stamp in his hand. With the knowledge that being turned back meant around 600km of sand roads to retrace our steps and get to the official border crossing, PB screamed at GF to just drive round the border and scarper… GF being a well brought up young man, unused to fleeing from the cops, hesitated, waiting to greet the irate policeman and discover what he wished to communicate to us. But then the insistent voice of PB spurred him on. Swinging Tuppence through her enormous turning circle he took her round the barrier and screeched off into the barren desert beyond as the policeman shook his fist at our retreating backs.
Our jubilation at crossing the border was long-lasting as we reached the fabled Lake Turkana, passing a Kenyan village with a sign advertising ludicrously inflated “beach fees”. Surely if the locals were adept at ripping off passing Mzungu then this route couldn’t be anywhere near as remote as we’d been led to believe. By the time we’d reached Illeret, the first mapped village on the way south, registered with the police and been surrounded by a heart warming group of Mzungu chanting, pen-begging small people we thought the worst was over and we were home and dry. Which turned out to be a load of bollocks but we enjoyed it while it lasted.
As it was but 2pm by this point we decided to crack on through Siboloi National Park to get to the Koobi Fora research station where we could camp for the night. We’d been warned that the track through the park could be a bit heavy going if it had rained, but Robert the Catholic missionary in Illeret, probably high on a few too many Hail Mary’s, told us that the road was dry and “easy”.
Yeah thanks Father Robert. We were about 5km into the park, on an almost non-existent track about 40 miles from the nearest hint of civilization, when we reached our first major dry river bed crossing. Eyeing the thick sand but with no real idea what to do about it we headed across… and promptly got stuck in the sand with Tuppence not going anywhere but down. As we got out of the car into the 40 degree heat and surveyed the hole she was in, the calculations started. If we couldn’t get the car out, we were 40 miles from Ileret and another 40km from the research base, which meant an 8 hour walk… which in the heat probably wouldn’t do much good, but if we waited till dark then presumably the zombies would get us…
We consulted the driving book which told us that low transfer diff lock was good in situations like this. Being unable to get the shovel off as it was rusted to the roofrack we dug out Tuppences wheels with our bare hands. After a few tense wheel spins GF was able to reverse out of the river bed and back onto the bank. Woohoo.
This did, however, leave us with the slight problem of how we were going to get across the river. Hmm. We’d seen another track go off to the left a few kms back so decided to turn back and try that way instead. Which seemed like a great idea, until the tracks ran out. Gary when consulted professed no knowledge of where the fuck we were, and then we got stuck again. This time it seemed a little more serious as all Tuppence’s wheels were stuck in deep holes. Diff lock doesn’t work unless at least one axle is on firm ground. Oops. As GF’s best efforts to shift her failed, she sank further and further into the sand…
I should point out at this juncture that this situation is of no concern to your experienced overland person. These types, many of whom we had met along the way, know how to do this properly. They’ve customised their vehicles with their own bare hands, adding extra suspension, clearance, long range fuel tanks, blah blah, and have read the manual and worked out what all the buttons do. They’ve spent years preparing for their Cairo to Cape Town trip. In contrast we bought Tuppence off a bloke two weeks before we were due to depart and had to phone the previous owner about every twenty minutes to find out what all the different levers were for. We’d even had to pay a man to change our oil for us, which in the Overland world is like paying another man to have sex with your wife. If anyone else with an ounce of overland experience had been in this situation, they’d have been fine, they’d have fired up their special turbo thrusters wotsits and been out of there . But because numbskull Buckle and her selective internet reading there was no-one to help us, just the howling wind and a few vague recollections that sand ladders were to be put under the wheels.
So we set about unloading everything from the car – 40 litres of fuel, 40 litres of water, a crocodile outfit and a pith helmet, not to mention a box full of spare parts that we had no idea what to do with and some camping equipmen that we couldn’t work properly either. We took out the sand ladders, once again dug the wheels out with our hands and placed them under the back wheels. GF got back into the car, switched on all the helpful looking buttons and reversed her back onto the sandladders and out of the massive hole she was in. Woo hoo. Fearful that the surrounding sand was too soft for stopping he hightailed it across to some scrubland and stopped. We were free. But we also had to carry 80 litres of fluid and all our possessions a couple of hundred yards. By the time Tuppence and her cargo were reunited we were drenched in sweat, shaking with tension and in no fit state for continuing the journey. But due to the Freeman doctrine of not turning back we couldn’t return to the road, even if we could be sure of finding it again. We had to go onwards.
And onwards we went, getting out of the vehicle at each river crossing and anxiously scouting the environment. Successful river crossing after successful river crossing followed until we were getting pretty cocky. Too easy. Then the land changed from nice soft sand to big, hard, volcanic rocks which shifted and tumbled beneath Tuppence’s wheels causing large, anxiety inducing banging sounds. We were still miles from anywhere and a puncture at this juncture would have been… well something that doesn’t end in –uncture.
At last, after a rocky assent that seemed sure to take out the clutch, tyres, axles and all sense of hope we set eyes on the research camp. A mere half hour and one sand sticking later we were home and dry. Or at least, we’d found some other people and a safe place to set up camp. As we made dinner and downed copious quantities of soothing vodka we assured each other that that had to be the worst of it. From here we only had to get to Longalanyi, 200km away and after that it was sure to be plain sailing. Only another 600km to go and we’d be back on tar, the lovely tar of which we had begun to have alluring dreams… As an amazing orange moon rose and provided the perfect backdrop to the stunning Jade Sea of Lake Turkana we thought it was all gravy from here. Which turned out to be complete bollocks but we enjoyed it while it lasted.
The next morning we breakfasted and packed up in high spirits. Which lasted until we got stuck in sand 20 yards outside the camp and had to have several goes at getting out of it whilst the camp staff watched in amusement. Nevertheless we continued through the park in happy mood, even detouring for an hour to find some non-existent crocodiles.
As we left the park we thought we’d really finished all the bad driving, as we were returning to a road which had a number – the C2 – which surely meant some kind of maintenance. No such luck. The road was probably the worst piece of driving we’d done so far as we proceeded for 8 hours through thick lava rock fields and isolated stretches of desert with only the odd camel herd for company. The worst part of it wasn’t the ominous sounding noises coming from the car as rock after rock hit the undercarriage, or the howling wind which blew dust through the car, it was the knowledge that as the hours passed we did not see a single other vehicle… we really were alone in the world.
As we got closer to Loyangalani, the signs of human habitation began to cheer us, though the road got a whole lot worse, littered as it was by bigger and bigger rocks that cheese grated the tyres and hurled us to and throw within the vehicle. Longalani when it came was a relief of sorts but did nothing to alleviate the feeling that we were at the end of the world. It’s a tiny desert oasis, with a few brick buildings and some of the palm and stick huts that house the Turkana tribespeople – colourful and highly odorned, but strange looking and a bit scary - who share the town with a few other locals, all of whom seemed to be completely off their faces on glue.
Nevertheless it had a campsite with clean water and electricity, which was nice but expensive. We’d only had 25 dollars in Kenya shillings and after paying for the two night’s camping we had only 400 shillings – about £4 – left, and we were two days drive from the nearest bank. As we filled up the tank with our extra diesel, spilling it mostly down ourselves, we realised we’d used far more than calculated wading through the sand and climbing the rocks. Even if we could find some black market diesel we didn’t have any money to pay for it…. But by now we absolutely must be over the worst of the driving… apart from the 30 miles of rocks just out of town described by the locals as the worst bit of driving yet… After a quick chat with a completely insane American woman who seemed to be trying to beg a lift back to civilization with us we cooked a reassuring chilli and went to bed, to be lulled to sleep but the diesel fumes wafting through our nostrils.
The next morning PB tried to have a walk down to the lake which we’d come such a long and arduous way to see, but the local glue-sniffers and their persistent tat selling drove us back. By now we just wanted to get out of here. As we set off across the rocks, indeed the worst yet, GF could hold back no more. First he railed against the Internet, which had told us that this was a fine route to do alone. Secondly the lake itself got it in the neck. Life changing sight? Seen better at Windermere. Clearly three days of only PB and the mentally ill to talk to had taken its toll. But then we spied a car in the distance, the first moving vehicle we’d seen since we left Ethiopia. And they had a rooftent. They were our overland brethren. Greeting the two Dutch occupants of said car as if they were brothers, joy in our hearts, we began what can only be described as outright lying about our experiences. How was the trip? They asked. Fine! We replied. Great! What an adventure. Full of total shit, we perpetuated the Turkana myth some more. Well, we couldn’t admit to being wusses who’d spent the last three days scared out of our minds, could we.
But our troubles weren’t over yet. The Dutchies informed us that the road to Maralal, the next major town and our salvation as we’d hoped, was terrible and we’d be much better off heading down another way to Isiolo. Which seemed like a great idea except we didn’t have enough fuel to get anywhere near there at current rates of consumption and there was nowhere else to buy it on the way. Plus we wouldn’t get to Isiolo till the following day and we had only 400 shillings left – not enough to pay for a campsite for the night. We drove on to South Horr hoping that someone there would take dollars, but discovered that we didn’t have enough shillings to stay there and that they didn’t have black market diesel as we hoped. Bad road or not, we’d have to head to Maralal. But as we exited South Horr and hit another road of steep rocks, we realised we didn’t have it in us to go further this way, and nor did Tuppence and her ripped up tyres. We’d have to take the easy road and hope we could beg, steal, borrow some diesel from somewhere along the way.
Thus we turned round to head to Laisamis, which we couldn’t hope to reach before dark and didn’t seem to have anywhere to stay, but lay on a sandy road with no rocks. As we drove through the countryside Samburu tribespeople appeared from nowhere to wave at us in the usual begging way. Or was it? Actually a lot of them seemed to be smiling and they appeared to maybe just want a lift. Giving a highly decorated young man a ride to the next village, we realised that in this part of the world the tribespeople seemed almost friendly. And then we saw a campsite which seemed nice and didn’t necessitate driving through the dark to an unknown location. And cost only 300 shillings, within budget. Plus the local Samburu woman who ran it said there was a Catholic Mission which might sell us diesel for dollars. Result. And then a helicopter flew overhead. Not quite so remote after all.
As we cooked up a curry that evening the American development worker who had set up the campsite came over to talk to us and told us that Comic Relief were filming just across the way, which meant their generator would be keeping us awake that night. We’d thought we were in the middle of nowhere but in fact Dermot O’Chuffing Leary was a matter of metres away keeping us awake by charging his Ipod.
Laura told us that there was a shortcut to the blessed tarmac that we could take in the morning and that we’d be reunited with our preferred road covering within 3 hours. So long as it hadn’t rained. She then proceeded to head off to a meeting with her lead donor, which led to an hour or so of loud shouting, which combined with Dermot and his gang waking us at 5am with their helicopter reshoots led to an entertaining if not quite restful night.
The following morning we visited a Samburu income generating project run by Laura and then headed off for our drive. The ground became damper and damper as the skies darkened with rainclouds. If it pissed it down, we were going to be buggered, as the holes in the road from other stuck cars showed. And we couldn’t turn back as we were down to the red bit on the fuel gauge. The tribespeople had become aggressive again, probably because despite a downfall a week previously the region was suffering a serious droughts and many were starving. Thankfully the rain held off… and as we drove, coasting on fumes, through a tiny Samburu village we saw it… the tarmac. Gregg got out to kiss the ground as we praised all the Gods we don’t believe in that we’d made it through this foolhardy venture unscathed (apart from Tuppence, who had to have several hundred quid spent on her before she was fit again…).
