Everyone has a story, and everyone's story is interesting in some parts. It's just so much of the time we don't have the time to ask or to listen.
The photo above is a precious one from the trip. It was the end of day 4, at the tented village where we were staying.
I'm wearing someone else's trousers because I don't have appropriate trousers with me, and if I don't put them on, the mosquitoes are going to bite the living daylights out of me.
To my left (right as you look at it) is Whitey (Julius White); to my right (your left as you look at it) is Lawrence, AKA Rastaman.
Lawrence is called Rastaman by Whitey, not by me.
Lawrence was one of the guides on the trip, riding his bike; he didn't really have lots of fancy bike gear of any kind. Most of the timehis water bottle is just a normal bottle of water. He doesn't have clip-inpedals, he wears flat shoes, and he pedals with his feet turned out.
He doesn't look like a cyclist, but he cycles these things all the time, and he rides with the most extraordinary efficiency. He could go all day, every day, if you asked.
And so, I had a conversation with him, and he is a man of few words, but a man with a very bigsmile.
I realised that he did the tours on the bikes, but also took people up Kilimanjaro, so I asked him how many times he thought he'd been to the top of Kilimanjaro. He looked at me and smiled and said, "Over 100."
The trip of a lifetime that people spend years planning, and all the money to do or raise money for charity and sing about it everywhere, and they do it once, and this guy does it for fun week after week, so I went to Julius to ‘Whitey’, our leader. It turns out that he was actually voted the world's best tour guide and received an award and money in London for it, after which he toured around the United Kingdom some years ago.
I asked him how many times he had been up Kilimanjaro; it's over 300.
Whitey has ridden up Kilimanjaro on a mountain bike.
Extraordinary comes in so many different ways; almost everyone has some aspect of it. You just have to seek it out.
Blog Post Number - 4434
Colin Campbell, Chris Barrow, and an intrepid group of dentists will be cycling across the plains of Tanzania from Kilimanjaro in early February 2026. If you would like to support the charity, Bridge to Aid, and this extraordinary challenge, please click here.
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