ADVENTURE » ZAMBEZI from my handlebar, and a small action cam sits ready in my frame bag. This is how I will capture the next 600 kilometres, riding in the middle of the group.
The idea for this trip comes from Jared Cave: a South African ranger and guide with his own agency. I know him from an earlier shoot. In the evening, we sit with him by the river, a beer on the table, a map next to it. While his finger traces the route, Victoria Falls, the big lake, the ferry, the Lower Zambezi Valley, Lusaka at the end, the hippos scream from the water nearby. As if they want a say.
“ The Zambezi is our eternal partner on this journey,” says Jared. Indeed, the river will never leave us. Sometimes it’ s a neighbour, sometimes a border, sometimes a threat.
Speaking of hippos: next to the crocodiles, they are the biggest risk along the river, especially at dusk, Jared explains during the safety briefing. A ton of animal, and the menu is nothing but grass.“ Just grass,” says Jared.“ And gravel riders,” I say. Jared grins.“ Grass and gravel riders.”
The next morning we pack the bikes and roll through Victoria Falls, colourful, touristy, souvenir shop after souvenir shop. At the bridge between Zimbabwe and Zambia we get a day permit: a slip of paper, once across the border and back, plus the best view of the falls you can get by bike. Next to us, the trucks are backed up for hundreds of metres. Anyone who wants to cross here in a vehicle waits for hours. We show our slips and roll through. It’ s the first time on this trip that the bicycle opens a door for us. And it won’ t be the last.
But for the first kilometres of this trip, we don’ t ride at all. We paddle.
The oh-shit line
Instead of getting on the bikes, we first get into a boat. We cover the first 20 or so kilometres of this tour on the Zambezi itself, in the Batoka Gorge below the falls. We scramble 200 metres down by foot, and there it is: an ageing raft with a rowing rig that looks like it has lived several lives. Gerhard, who used to work as a rafting guide, gives it a professional once-over.“ Back home, this thing would never pass inspection.” The safety briefing lives up to the boat. The guide points at the gray line strung around the raft.“ This is our safety line,” he says.“ But you guys call it the oh-shit line. Whenever you see a huge wave, you hold onto that line.” You can’ t sum up a briefing any shorter.
We put in at rapid number 11, and it’ s whitewater down to number 24, class 4 to 5. Luckily, the Zambezi is a pool-drop river: after every roaring step comes a calm pool where anyone who goes overboard gets collected. When things get serious, the guide just screams,“ Hold on! Hold on!”, and we throw ourselves onto the floor of the boat and grip the line. Three hours later, we are soaked, shaken, and complete: nobody went overboard.“ It was wild but really cool,” Tina says on shore.“ Then again, I had plenty of strong men around me.”
We scramble the 200 metres back up the gorge, saddle the bikes, and ride the last five kilometres to a lodge in the middle of the wilderness. Dinner is cooked outside, the shower is cold and, by the campfire, Jared talks us through the next day. It sounds harmless: 95 kilometres, barely any climbing. But it will turn out to be one of the hardest days of the whole trip.
The map says it’ s bad
Jared knows the road to Deka.“ Even the map says‘ bad’,” he remarks drily.“ Bad gravel.” The map is being polite. What counts as a road here is washboard for long stretches: hard ripples that turn the bike into a jackhammer. After two hours my hands hurt, then my wrists, then my back. I‘ m glad I have my suspension fork and my 50mm tyres; the others have neither. At some point, I change the display on my bike computer so I can’ t see the kilometres anymore. Some things you just don’ t need to know.
We can barely talk, we ride in single file, everyone grinding out the kilometres on their own, at 25 to 30 degrees Celsius. And still the mood stays surprisingly light. It helps that Jared has taught us how to find the line out here: follow the tracks of the locals. They ride Buffalo Bikes, heavy singlespeeds without suspension, and they instinctively find the smoothest strip of the road.“ They’ re not always right, but they’ re almost, almost always right,” says Jared.
Five kilometres before the finish, there is a bar, but no electricity. The beer is as warm as the afternoon. We drink it anyway.“ My shoulder is killing me,” says Gerhard, who has never spent this long on a gravel bike. At the finish, the news: there was a fire at the lodge we booked. But the owners have made a plan, organised another place, and sent their kitchen crew ahead. When we arrive, right on the Zambezi, dinner is already underway. The breakdown turns into an upgrade with a sunset. Africa can do that.
The next day starts at a well where women pump water for their vegetable fields. We try to help and understand pretty quickly why you need your whole body weight for it. The women take great delight in our struggle, and Tina takes photos with them. Then we saddle up again and grind out kilometres, over sand roads and bridges, until a village bar appears in the afternoon. There we are challenged to a game of pool, one dollar for four games. We lose the first one, gift the winners the remaining three, and get back in the saddle. On the last kilometres of the day, hundreds of schoolkids run alongside us in flip-flops. And keep up with ease.
Half-speed ahead
In Mlibizi, the ferry across Lake Kariba is waiting. The lake itself is a giant: dammed in the late 1950s, it remains the largest reservoir in the world by volume. The ferry across is its own chapter of Africa: it runs once a week, takes about a dozen cars, and at night, its dining room turns into a dormitory where bench seats become beds. On board are mostly South African tourists on overland trips, plus a married couple from Germany, travelling by bike like us.“ How long have you been on the road?” they want to know.“ Five days. And you?”“ Since June 2024.”( And we thought we were the adventurers on board.)
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