Rwanda is not a country you simply travel through; it is a country you encounter, feel, and experience.

A Journey That Tells Your Story

There are journeys we tell stories about, and others that tell our story for us. I have just returned from fifteen days in Rwanda. I arrived ahead of the group to prepare for the participants’ arrival, then spent the ten days of GravelUp’s very first trip through these lands riding alongside them. I already know that I have not come back quite the same person.

I had been told about the “Land of a Thousand Hills”. I expected to find beautiful landscapes. Instead, I discovered a people, a history, a light, a collection of scents, and a whole different way of experiencing the world. A country that has endured unimaginable horror and, thirty years later, stands tall with a dignity that commands respect.

On a bike, you cannot simply skim over things. You climb every hill through the strength of your own legs, breathe in every scent, and meet every gaze. Perhaps that is why, kilometre after kilometre, I came to understand that Rwanda is not a country you simply travel through. It is a country you encounter, feel and experience.

Kigali, Between Hills and Remembrance

It all begins in Kigali. A capital city nestled among lush green hills, rolling as far as the eye can see beneath ever-changing skies. The streets are clean and orderly, lined with trees. Motorcycle taxis weave their way through the terraced neighbourhoods, while greenery spills out everywhere, as if the city had been designed in the heart of a garden.

But before getting on our bikes, we needed to understand. We stepped inside the Kigali Genocide Memorial. I will never forget the silence. In 1994, over the course of around one hundred days, the genocide against the Tutsi claimed the lives of nearly one million people. Family photographs, clothes, names, personal testimonies: everything is there, laid bare. You leave this place deeply shaken, almost breathless.

And then you step back out into the light of Kigali. You pass children laughing, people greeting you with a warm, smiling “Muraho”. This is when you begin to understand just how far the country has come. What Rwanda has achieved since then — its reconstruction, reconciliation and fierce determination to move forward together — is truly extraordinary. This visit gave everything that followed a deeper meaning. Every smile we encountered afterwards carried a little more weight.

Along the Red Dirt Tracks

From the very first kilometres, Rwanda captivated all our senses. First came the eucalyptus forests, their intoxicating, minty, resinous scent enveloping us at every turn. We rode in their shade, breathing deeply, as if taking part in an open-air wellness retreat.

Then came the tracks. Endless red dirt roads, plunging down one hillside only to climb another. The striking red of the laterite soil against the vivid green of the crops is the image of Rwanda that will stay with me forever. Beneath our tyres, the earth crunched, rose in fine clouds of dust and clung to our calves. A dream playground for gravel riding.

Then came the tea plantations: carpets of almost unreal green, following every contour of the landscape. Among the rows, women tea pickers in colourful wrap skirts worked with swift, confident movements, baskets strapped to their backs as they gathered the leaves. They looked up as we passed, and their smiles were worth every rest stop in the world.

And then there were the showers. Brief, sudden, tropical downpours. The sky opens up, and you either take shelter for a few minutes beneath a corrugated iron roof or keep riding through the warm rain. Then the sun returns, and the earth releases everything it holds: the rich scent of humus, eucalyptus, flowers and wet trails. After every shower, the fragrances seemed to intensify. Everywhere, lush banana trees unfurled their broad, glossy leaves, as if trying to hold on to the last drops of rain.

The People of the Hills

What strikes you about Rwanda is that its hills are never empty. They are alive. Everywhere, farmers work the land with hoes, even on the steepest slopes, carved into terraces with seemingly endless patience. Every plot is cultivated, every square metre helps feed someone.

And then there are the young boys on bicycles. Heavy, indestructible bikes, loaded beyond imagination. Bundles of sugar cane, sacks of cassava and sweet potatoes, bunches of bananas, crates of avocados, mangoes and pineapples, bundles of firewood sticking out more than a metre on either side. On the climbs, they push their loads uphill with sheer strength. On the descents, they fly down with barely any brakes.

Riding our lightweight gravel bikes, we felt almost humbled. They are the real cyclists of Rwanda.

And then there are the children. As soon as they spotted us, schoolchildren in their uniforms would drop everything and run alongside us along the tracks, laughing, shouting “Muzungu!”, reaching out for a high five. Some followed us for hundreds of metres, barefoot in the red dust, faster than us on the climbs. These are moments no photograph can ever truly capture. You have to experience them.

« Rwanda is not a country you simply travel through. It is a country you encounter, feel and experience. »

At the Foot of Giants

Then the landscape began to take on a whole new scale. Great lakes appeared, silver sheets of water nestled between the hills, dotted with tiny islands and bordered by cultivated land reaching right down to the shore.

And behind them, silhouetted against the sky, stood the five giant volcanoes of Volcanoes National Park: Karisimbi, Bisoke, Sabyinyo, Gahinga and Muhabura. Towering silhouettes, often crowned with clouds, watching over the region like sentinels. Riding towards them, watching them grow larger with every turn of the pedals, is an extraordinary feeling.

And then came that morning. The hike through the bamboo forest, the humid air, the trackers moving silently ahead, machetes in hand. And suddenly, with a rustle of leaves, there they were. Mountain gorillas. An entire family, just a few metres away. A massive, unruffled silverback. Females chewing on stems. Young gorillas playing, rolling around and watching us with an almost human curiosity.

Just one hour with them. One hour, but outside of time. Meeting a gorilla's gaze makes you feel both incredibly small and profoundly connected to all living things. I don't think anyone in our group spoke during the walk back down.

Lake Kivu, A Moment of Calm After the Effort

After the volcanoes, the trail led us to Lake Kivu. A vast expanse of calm water, bordered by hills plunging into the blue, hidden coves and green-covered peninsulas. After days of climbing and riding through red dust, arriving at the lakeshore felt like a kind of liberation.

Here, everything seems to breathe a sense of tranquillity. Bougainvillea spills over garden walls in cascades of fuchsia, orange and white. In the evening, the scent of jasmine drifts through the warm air. And everywhere, thousands of birds in every colour imaginable: kingfishers, metallic-hued sunbirds, egrets and cormorants. A constant concert from sunrise to sunset.

But the moment I will remember most is dawn. Sitting by the water with a coffee in hand, I watched the wooden fishing boats returning to shore. These are the remarkable boats joined together by long poles, which have spent the night fishing by lantern light. The fishermen row in rhythm, sometimes singing, as the mist slowly rises from the lake. A scene of simple, almost timeless beauty.

The Flavours of the Journey

A journey is also something you experience around the table. Along the shores of Lake Kivu, we devoured plates of fried sambaza, tiny crispy lake fish eaten whole with your fingers, and grilled tilapia, simply prepared, with wonderfully tender flesh. The taste of the lake, quite simply.

Every morning, breakfast was a feast: incredibly sweet pineapple, juicy mangoes, papayas, passion fruit and little sweet bananas. And to accompany it, Arabica coffee from the plantations overlooking Lake Kivu. An extraordinary coffee: smooth, fruity and full-bodied, grown on the very hills we had just climbed. Drinking it here, overlooking the lake, has a flavour I doubt I will ever find anywhere else.

And in the evening, after a long day in the saddle, nothing could beat an ice-cold Virunga or Mutzig beer, shared among us as we relived the day's adventures. Heavy legs, skin still covered in red dust, hearts full.

Murakoze cyane, Rwanda. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.