Wild life | 16 June 2016

Kenya

As soon as I pulled out of town, I knew I had made a mistake taking on the new Chinese road through the badlands after dark. The route into northern Kenya was still under construction, making it an assault course of bumps, diversions and zigzags between mounds of murram. I made what speed I could in the Cruiser but on a lonely stretch of track I saw the flicker of brake lights up ahead and slowed to a dawdle behind a black city car. I was two minutes into Tannhäuser

’s rousing ‘Pilgrims’ Chorus’ on the stereo up loud and wanted badly to overtake when to my right I saw red sparks and heard the report of a rifle. A bandit ambush! I floored the accelerator and out of the corner of my eye I saw the flash of a second shot. Luckily the black car ahead of me had also sped up so I could go even faster. Just as we got to the bit when the pilgrims sing ‘Hallelujah!’, I hit a massive speed bump and the Cruiser flew high into the air, as in an action movie. For a split second everything inside the vehicle also seemed to achieve zero gravity, with rucksack, phone, half-eaten sandwich and house keys suspended in midair — until the front wheels hit the dirt track with a loud bang. ‘In Ewigkeit!’ sang Wagner’s pilgrims. In eternity! I wondered how the tyres hadn’t burst on impact, falling from such a great height, and miraculously I managed to keep the nose of the car pointed straight on the track. I had no idea what sort of damage I had done to the shocks or if the car had been hit — I wasn’t hit — so I put foot to pedal again and hurtled forwards at one hell of a lick.