Cycling in Tanzania

It had rained in the night, and we knew it from the first kilometre. Twenty-five kilometres, about fifteen and a half miles, from Moshi to TPC, on a track along the river instead of the road, sugar cane on our left and Kilimanjaro somewhere behind us. We arrived the way you arrive when you do that, covered in mud from the ankles up.

That is what cycling here does to you. You see the country at eye level, you smell it, and you stop where you want to. In a vehicle you drive past it.

A day ride fits into almost any trip

Most people who cycle with us do it for one day, or half a day. That is also what slots in most easily. You do not build your trip around it, you push it in between, before the safari or after it, while you are near Moshi anyway.

Half a day is a couple of hours of riding and you are back around lunchtime. A full day goes further out into the country with a stop on the way. Which of the two fits depends on how the rest of your route runs, and we think that through with you.

Where you ride

The land around Moshi climbs towards Kilimanjaro, and that decides everything about it. Coffee plantations, villages where people are out working the land, sand tracks along rivers, and on a clear morning the mountain standing over you. Later in the day it is usually behind cloud, and that is part of it.

You ride past people, not past nothing. Children who run alongside, women carrying buckets on their heads, men loading a bicycle with more bananas than looks possible. That is exactly why it is worth doing.

You can also cycle inside a national park

Few people know this. In two of Tanzania’s national parks you are allowed to cycle, and we arrange it for you.

Arusha National Park is the better of the two. You ride from Ngongongare to the Momella gate, or the route around the Ngurdoto crater, with a guide along who knows where you stop and where you do not. You are on a bicycle in a park where everybody else is in a vehicle, and you can hear the difference. No engine, just your own wheels.

Kilimanjaro National Park allows it too, on longer routes that run higher up. That is a hard day and a different kind of ride from a morning near Moshi, so we build that one out with you separately.

What comes with it: you register at the gate, a cycling fee is added to the park entry, and children can come from ten years old. We handle the registration and the guide, and all you do is sign your name at the gate.

In the Serengeti and in Tarangire cycling is not permitted, and there you stay in the vehicle. Around Moshi it is allowed everywhere, and that is where most of our guests ride.

E-bike or ordinary bike

Both are available. And the e-bike matters more than it sounds, because it takes the climbing out of the decision.

Anyone who cycles regularly at home will be fine on an ordinary bike. But two people rarely set off at the same level of fitness. On e-bikes a couple rides the same route together, and nobody’s legs decide what the other one gets to see. That is also the answer for anyone over sixty who quietly wants to do this.

How hard it is

That depends on the route and on the weather. The tracks are sand and earth, and after rain they turn slippery. It climbs gently, because you are riding on the flank of a mountain.

An ordinary day ride is manageable for anyone reasonably fit who gets on a bike now and then. You do not need to be a mountain biker. If you want it gentler we shorten the route or put you on an e-bike. If you want it harder, that can be arranged too.

What it is not is an outing you step onto in clean clothes. You get dirty, and with us that counts in your favour.

Several days, if you want more

Multi-day rides are possible as well. Over a few days you ride from the green flanks of Kilimanjaro into the drier savanna, sleeping along the way, and you watch the landscape change under your wheels from bananas and coffee to open plain.

It is a different trip from a day ride. You need the fitness for it and you make the time for it, and it shapes the form of your whole programme. Most people end up choosing one day, and if you want this, we will arrange it.

My ride to TPC

At nine in the morning we collected the bikes. There was a row of them lined up, up to and including a brand new e-mountain bike, and by quarter past ten we rode off.

After an hour one of us got a puncture. Our guide stepped off, handed over his own bike so the group could keep going, patched the tyre, and caught us up again inside twenty minutes. That is the difference between hiring a bike yourself and riding with somebody who knows the country. Twenty minutes gone instead of your whole afternoon.

Two hours and ten minutes in, we reached TPC, the sugar estate with a club attached to it. A shower, clean clothes, and then vegetables deep fried in tempura batter, which was the best thing on the menu that day.

Cycling and safari in the same trip

Cycling and safari do different things, and plenty of our guests do both. In the park you are in a vehicle looking at animals. On a bike you are riding through the ordinary daily life of a country. Most people combine the two around Moshi, before the parks or after them.

If you would rather ride real distances, that is another kind of trip altogether. We have written about that separately, about safari after the Africa Classic.

If you want to know whether a cycling day fits into your trip, let us know and we will look at where it falls best.