Rhino Charge

What's Rhino Charge? As far as I can tell it involves racing 4x4s around the Kenyan countryside in order to save the environment. Or something. It's Africa's toughest off-road event. Every year it's held in a different part of the country, somewhere pretty remote, and 60 teams drive round checkpoints, while we spectators cheer them on. It lasts for a long weekend, camping out in the Rift Valley overnight. The team with the lowest mileage to complete the course wins. I think. To be honest, the racing was pretty much a secondary concern, the first being making sure that the beer in the cooler stays cold the whole day (on a related note, dry ice = amazing).

This year Rhino Charge was held near Lake Magadi, a couple of hours to the south of Nairobi. A few of us met up on Saturday morning to drive down in convoy, packed up the car (I was quickly removed from packing duty) and set off.

The drive down was reasonably eventful, including one hungover/carsick passenger, two stolen mobile phones and a brief encounter with a rather disgruntled cyclist. Still, we made it down to the Lake and headed off-road towards the campsite.

I've never driven properly off-road before. It's fun! The area we were in was incredibly hot and dusty, and as you're driving every now and then you hit a bank of soft sand which engulfs the car in a wave, and you can't see anything for a few seconds. I just kept on going, honking my horn in the hope that if there was a tree in my way it would move it sharpish.

The next day was the race itself. We chose a spot where the cars were supposed to pass through, tried to huddle under a tree for shade (it was blisteringly hot), and waited for the cars.

This team in pink spent about 40 minutes digging out of that hole, but as it's not the time that counts, but the distance, it didn't matter. I think they were the eventual winners. It was all pretty exciting.

Though the most amusing part was the Masai wandering past, clearly wondering what on earth we were doing on their land driving in this ridiculous terrain.

Watching the racing is pretty fun, but once you've seen a couple of massive 4x4s drive up a hill, you've kind of seen them all. The best part is being out in the middle of the Rift Valley, miles from any form of civilisation (apart from the Masai), in a part of the country you would never normally encounter.