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 274 km round trip from Cyangugu - roughly 7 h 44 in the saddle. It goes by way of Nyungwe National Park, Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata and back through Nyungwe National Park. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,200 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. Much of it runs through woodland.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 64 km this is Rwanda Congo Nile Scenic Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
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 is where the day begins. 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.
Nyungwe National Park comes up about 64 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 137 km into the recorded legs you reach Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata. Next is back through Nyungwe National Park.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Nyungwe National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Nyungwe National Park, late in the day. Next is 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 at Cyamudongo Natural Forest. That is the ride.
Cyamudongo Natural Forest → Nyungwe National Park is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Nyungwe National Park → Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata is 73 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata → back through Nyungwe National Park is 74 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Nyungwe National Park → Cyamudongo Natural Forest is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.