We started at dawn and the first thing you do is to register at a gate. The authorities make lists of the people using the road. Before the change of government four years ago, people tell us that the area was infested by bandits. If you travelled here, you got an armed soldier and you could only travel in convoy. No matter how we looked, we couldn’t see one single bandit. Lukas remarked what we all felt: "At least we could have seen one small bandit!“ Everybody feels better after an adrenaline kick. Travellers often exaggerate their experiences and then stories like these about the road between Moyale and Isiolo are born.

The roads were nice with the bikes today, and bad for the cars. What we felt is best described with this photo of Lukas.

The people living here don’t seem to belong to any nation. They are nomads and live like the Lapps at home did, before they all had snowmobiles and cars.

I personally like watching the older women, with their weather-worn faces and find them beautiful. Trying to take a photo of them is like pulling a cat’s tail. After my 20th stop to ask permission finally one young lady dared to stay and gave me this photo.

With this terrain you can count on punctures, not always easy to fix. Small damages can be repaired with the kits from BMW or Wunderlich. If the rock has torn a 4cm long gap like this one, it can’t be fixed. I plugged it with five sets and we actually managed 80kms until we changed the tyre.

Lukas is on express pace the whole way sofar and he usually manages to establish contact with people until the rest of us turn up. This nomad had 200 cows in a desert of nothing, no vegetation at all. What they survived on, I have no idea. I don’t know how they communicated, but when I arrived the two seemed to have agreed on the general questions in life.

Returns with the stubbornness of an idiot about the enormous beauty of this landscape and that it is constantly changing. We are now between the Equator and the first latitude.