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.
It goes by way of Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata, Nyamata and back through Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,150 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. Long stretches are under trees.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 83 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 of Rwanda, a small patch of forest surrounded by tea plantations is home to one of the most charming wildlife encounters in Africa. Gisakura forest lies on the western edge of Nyungwe National Park, near the tea estate that shares its name, and a large troop of Ruwenzori colobus monkeys lives there, black and white with long tails and flowing capes of fur. Watching them leap through the canopy, sometimes in groups of dozens, is a joy. The forest is a remnant of the great montane rainforest that once covered these mountains, isolated now by the tea fields.
Read the complete Gisakura Natural Forest write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Gisakura Natural Forest 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 83 km into the recorded legs. Next is Nyamata.
The church at Nyamata is a plain brick building with a corrugated iron roof, and what it holds is the memory of one of the worst weeks of the twentieth century. In April 1994, during the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, thousands of people from the surrounding villages took refuge in the church, as they had in earlier waves of violence, assuming that a house of God would protect them. It did not. Killers entered with grenades, machetes and clubs, and in the days that followed some ten thousand people died in and around the church. Today it is a memorial. The clothes of the victims lie in piles on the pews, the altar cloth is still stained, and in an underground vault the remains of tens of thousands from the district are kept in coffins and on shelves.
Read the complete Nyamata write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 193 km into the recorded legs you reach Nyamata. 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 Gisakura Natural Forest.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Gisakura Natural Forest write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Gisakura Natural Forest. That is the ride.
Gisakura Natural Forest → Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata is 83 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata → Nyamata is 110 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Nyamata → back through Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata is 110 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata → Gisakura Natural Forest is 83 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.