CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 448 km round trip from Kibuye - roughly 7 h 07 in the saddle. On the way it passes Cyamudongo Natural Forest, Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata and back through Cyamudongo Natural Forest. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,150 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 108 km this is Rwanda Congo Nile Scenic Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Bisesero is a place where the story is carried by the hills themselves. In April 1994, in the first weeks of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, thousands of people from the surrounding area fled to the steep, wooded ridges of Bisesero, above Lake Kivu, and held out for weeks against armed attackers with sticks, stones and whatever they could find. They were eventually overwhelmed, and tens of thousands were killed in the area, in one of the worst massacres of the genocide. Today a memorial site stands on the hillside, with mass graves and a small museum, and survivors and guides are on hand to explain what happened.
Read the complete Bisesero write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bisesero is where the day begins. Next is Cyamudongo Natural Forest.
In the far southwest corner of Rwanda, the land drops toward Lake Kivu and the Ruzizi river, and the green hills here are mostly tea, banana and small farms. Cyamudongo is the exception: a patch of natural forest, a few hundred hectares at most, standing as an island of tall trees in the middle of cultivation. It is separated from the great Nyungwe forest by a belt of farmland, yet it still shelters a small population of chimpanzees, along with other primates and a remarkable range of birds and butterflies.
Read the complete Cyamudongo Natural Forest write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cyamudongo Natural Forest comes up about 108 km into the recorded legs. Next is Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata.
This is a place to arrive quietly. Both belong to the group of four genocide memorials, Nyamata, Murambi, Gisozi in Kigali and Bisesero, that UNESCO inscribed on the World Heritage list in 2023, recognising them as places of remembrance of the genocide against the Tutsi, in which some eight hundred thousand to a million people were murdered in about a hundred days.
Read the complete Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 223 km into the recorded legs you reach Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata. Next is back through Cyamudongo Natural Forest.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cyamudongo Natural Forest write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cyamudongo Natural Forest, late in the day. Next is Bisesero.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bisesero write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Bisesero. That is the ride.
Bisesero → Cyamudongo Natural Forest is 108 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Cyamudongo Natural Forest → Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata is 115 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata → back through Cyamudongo Natural Forest is 121 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Cyamudongo Natural Forest → Bisesero is 103 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.