Johannesburg began with a rumour, and the rumour was gold. In 1886, a reef of it was found on the Witwatersrand, and within a decade a tented camp had become a city of mines, offices and shanties, the biggest in southern Africa. It sits on the Highveld at nearly 1,800 metres, which gives it a bright dry climate, cold winter nights and violent summer thunderstorms. Today it is a sprawling metropolis of over two million, with a lot of history to confront.
The Human Rights ride makes the most sense here. Constitution Hill, a former prison complex where Gandhi and Mandela were held, now houses the Constitutional Court, and its courtroom walls are decorated with the stories of ordinary South Africans. The Apartheid Museum, a short way south, is one of the finest museums in Africa, and visitors enter through separate gates marked white and non-white. In Soweto, Vilakazi Street is the only street in the world to have been home to two Nobel Peace Prize winners, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, and the Hector Pieterson memorial recalls the youth uprising of 1976.
About a hundred and twenty kilometres south-west, the Vredefort Dome is the eroded remains of the largest verified meteorite impact on Earth, a crater some two billion years old, listed by UNESCO in 2005. Today it appears as a ring of low hills around a granite core, near the town of Parys on the Vaal River. The ride there is easy, on good roads across farmland and grassland.
Fuel and food are plentiful all over the city, including in Alberton and Edenvale, and workshops for most brands are easy to find. Traffic is heavy at rush hour, and minibus taxis can be unpredictable. Security is a real concern in the city, so park the bike in a secure area, stay alert at traffic lights, and ask your hotel for advice on safe routes. The weather is best in autumn and spring, when days are warm and skies are clear.