Cycling in Kenya & Tanzania

You never know who you’ll bump into when you’re traveling. “We were just riding around in the middle of nowhere looking for somewhere to stay,” John, from our cycle tour specialists Escape Adventures, says. He was cycling in Kenya on his way across to Tanzania, trying to design the company’s first cycling route. He found himself on land owned by a Maasai family. “We just came across them. We asked if we could camp there,” he said. After all, it would just be for one night on their land. So, they agreed a price.

That was 20 years ago. These cycling trips still return to camp with the same Maasai family now – albeit these days with a small group of adventurous cyclists in tow. Cycling across Kenya and Tanzania seems like an unusual choice – again, it happened by chance: “We weren’t trying to make a tour in a particular place, we were just trying to create a really good bike tour.” John’s family is Kenyan, and his brother has since bought a farm in Tanzania, where you can stay for one night of the vacation. Through a bit of luck, and good local knowledge, the trip was born.

Chance meetings like this have cut out the middle man. “We don’t go to a commercial farm stay or home stay. You won’t find any other group of any sort,” John says. This is peer-to-peer cultural exchange – no umbrella organisations involved, and certainly no Airbnb. Mandy and John are the owners and operators of Escape Adventures. “We feel that people can get a really genuine experience,” Mandy says. “And the host families get a real buzz out of it too,” adds John.

A good way to do a trip across the two countries is to start inland in Kenya’s capital, and finish 16 days later, in Tanzania’s. That’s a long way to cycle – so some of the trip will involve transfers in your support vehicle. This truck comes with you, so you can take a seat in it if you get tired on the hills. It also holds all the camping and cooking equipment you’ll need.

There are lots of nights camping, where you can listen out for the yip of hyenas in the distance as you sit by the campfire after eating a meal prepared using the truck’s cooking stations. Your small camping fee goes to the local community.

You’ll need to be reasonably fit to cycle. Distances can vary each day, from 20km to 105km, on dirt and paved roads, and can be hilly. And of course you have the African sun to contend with, too.