After 6 days and 755 km of riding we have the first restday in Luxor. Upon till now the Tour has not yet given me many physical problems, The extra training-sessions I have done the last year really help me. Let’s not get overenthusiastic though, the situation has of course been perfect: a strong tailwind, beautiful tarmac and agreeable temperatures. The situation in (for instance) Sudan will be very different. Some people in the group are fighting all sorts of physical problems, mainly in the region of knees and but.
The past days we have climbed from the Red Sea back to the Nile, today we rode upstream to Luxor. This area is densely populated, along the whole road children where cheering and yelling at us. It felt like being in the Tour de France!
Tomorrow I’ll be visiting the sites in Luxor and taking it easy, after that we’ll be riding in two days to Aswan, where we’ll embark on a ship that will bring us across the Nasser Lake in 18 hours to Wadi Halfa, Sudan. Then the real Tour d’Afrique will start: no hardtop roads, temperatures above 30 degrees, no running water. Internet cafes will not be abundantly available, so I expect that the next blog-entry will be no sooner then the rest day in Dongola, that is on January 28.