I would need twenty blog posts to do this justice. I don’t think I’ll ever quite be able to do it justice.
The travel was, what travel always is.
I got to fly in a fancy seat, but it’s still not great.
You’re tired.
You eat the wrong things.
And then when you arrive at these things there’s a big lead time before the start.
You don’t really know too many people.
Everybody dances around each other.
It’s the calm before the storm.
After we arrived, we travelled for an hour from Kilimanjaro Airport.
We flew around Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru — the two big mountains in the heart of the Serengeti. We landed at the airport and then it was about a sixty‑minute trip to the hotel/lodge where we were staying for the first night before everything began.
We got fitted on bikes. Everybody got together. There was that nervous anticipation, the posturing, the social stuff.
Today we rode around 60km, which doesn’t seem very far.
It’s really not far for me at all, and it was no problem, but it was on really bouncy roads on a very hard mountain bike.
People were nearly falling off; the traffic was crazy — all life is here.
Sometimes it’s a brand-new Audi Q5 passing you on the road. At other times, a massive fifty‑year‑old juggernaut. And then a motorbike with two adults and two babies squeezed between them, no helmets, flying past. Then a cow wandering across the road. It’s insanity.
Passing through the markets and the settlements is absolutely mind‑blowing.
How people live, the way they live, what it looks like compared to the structured society we come from — it’s quite unfathomable. But it exudes happiness everywhere. That’s the thing I’ll remember when I’m reading these things when I’m old.
So many things happened today in such a short period of time, but the two main things I’ll never forget are the following.
We stopped at a school, just for the toilets. There were water stops every so often along the route, set up by the trail guys.
The Headmaster came out and asked if it would be OK for us to meet the children. And Whitey our lead guide, said we didn’t have time. We protested a little, and eventually he agreed.
Then out poured hundreds of African children. Primary school age, desperate to see the “freak show,” so happy, so glad to high‑five, fist‑bump, and shout hello in a language they didn’t understand.
It was utter joy.
You see it on the telly, but you can’t really appreciate it until you’re there.
It was hard to say goodbye and leave.
We rode on for the rest of the day, children at the side of the road so often waving, saying hi, just desperate to see something different, so curious.
And then we reached the Maasai lodge — the hotel/place where we’re staying. We had absolutely no idea what to expect until we cycled up to the car park and saw thirty people in full Maasai dress, singing to welcome us.
They wouldn’t let us in until we drank “blood” so everyone took a drink, and then we entered.
The rooms are traditional huts, upscaled for soft Westerners like us and have a view of Kilimanjaro — the one you see in the picture for this blog. You won’t see the mountain right now because of the clouds, but we’ve seen it all day, and Mount Meru too, we’re cycling between them.
A staggering experience.
It’s almost hard to remember why we’re here.
At the end of the ride today, we had raised £56,000 (£64,000 including Gift Aid)
That money is for the children who ran out of the school. You can’t get a dentist in this part of Tanzania. If and when they have toothache, they sometimes have to walk for days and pay weeks of their parents’ salary to get help.
It’s a drop in the ocean and it will never work, but it’s something.
The JustGiving link is here and the QR code is below:
We’re at £56,000 at the moment and trying to get to £70,000 between the twenty of us ( £80,000+ with Gift Aid)
It won’t solve the problem, but it will do a lot.
If you haven’t managed to click yet, please will you click?
Hopefully see you tomorrow — (Wi‑Fi dependent!)
Blog Post Number - 4428
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.
Thank you for your generosity.