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.
From Kibuye it runs 331 km to Kibuye; allow about 8 h 47 of riding. It goes by way of Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata, Nyungwe National Park and back through Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,200 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
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 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.
Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata comes up about 78 km into the recorded legs. Next is Nyungwe National Park.
Nyungwe is one of the oldest rainforests in Africa, a mountain forest spread over the ridges of south-western Rwanda between Lake Kivu and the Burundi border. It is high, wet and green in a way that makes the rest of the world feel dry: tree ferns taller than a house, orchids on the branches, mist pouring through the valleys in the morning, and the sound of water everywhere. The ridges here form part of the great divide between the Congo and Nile basins, and Rwanda proudly claims one of the remotest sources of the Nile in these hills.
Read the complete Nyungwe National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 151 km into the recorded legs you reach Nyungwe National Park. Next is back through Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata, 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 → Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata is 78 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata → Nyungwe National Park is 73 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Nyungwe National Park → back through Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata is 101 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata → Bisesero is 78 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.