Day 57 Friday March 8 Babati to Singida

by Henry

167 km, 1765 m elevation gain, temperature 28°C. 

Because there will be a lot of climbing today, in addition to heat, we are starting the day with breakfast scheduled 15 minutes earlier.


For most of the morning, we got closer and closer to Mount Hanang. It is the fourth highest peak in Tanzania, but only because the three peaks of Mount Kilimanjaro are counted separately.


A closer view of Mount Hanang. 

We had smooth tarmac, good shoulders, and tailwind for most of the morning.  Through the towns, there is a standard speed limit of 50 km/h, but there isn’t a posted speed limit in the open country. This road ferried many cars and buses traveling at a high rate of speed. I would estimate many were traveling in excess of 140 km/h. There were also a lot of semi-trucks, some of which gave us clearance, but others did not.

The morning was challenging because of a tough climb in the first 20 km, right out of the gate. We endured another day of lots of hilly ups and downs before getting to lunch at 86 km.


Our lunch setting with a view of the mountain.

The road was not as good in the afternoon, with fairly rough chip seal and numerous potholes that we had to dodge.


Each country has their variation of speed bumps to slow down traffic, especially heading downhill. The ones in Tanzania are especially hard for bikers, as they put four of these bone and bum rattling bumps close together. There are usually six sets of these speed bumps spaced about 50 m apart.  If we are lucky, we can ride where the speed bumps have been somewhat flattened in the driving lane by vehicles passing over them, but we cannot always count on that. We certainly can’t get in the driving lane if a car or truck is approaching from behind. 

We also passed cornfield after cornfield today, rivaling what we would see in the Midwest.


We saw more and more of these rock formations (kopjes) as the afternoon progressed.

We had a long descent towards the end of the day before entering the town of Singida, which was a pretty large town. We camped on the grounds of Regency Hotel & Resort, on the shore of Lake Singida.

It was a long riding day. We were told that last year some riders did not arrive at camp until 6 PM. This year the last rider arrived about 4:30 PM.