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, 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. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
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.
Nyamata 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 110 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 183 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 Nyamata.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Nyamata write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Nyamata. That is the ride.
Nyamata → Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata is 110 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
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 102 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Memorial sites of the Genocide: Nyamata → Nyamata is 110 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.