Cairo to Cape Town the ride of a lifetime for Whitefish cyclist

When biking across a continent, to say there are a few bumps along the road is an understatement.  

“It often reached a point where it’s just combat biking,” said Whitefish resident Pam Sbar, when telling the story of her recent expedition across Africa.  

“One thing I’ve learned with travel is that you have a framework – you know what you know – and you have to just blow that up. It quickly falls away... and you have to keep pushing,” Sbar said.  

The cross-continental trip of a lifetime, full of unpredictable terrain, began in Cairo, Egypt, in January and ended in May in South Africa.  

The group of riders Sbar went with averaged 75 miles a day and 5,856 miles total. Roughly 900 of those miles were on gravel. Over the trip, they climbed 248,953 vertical feet. 

“Throughout I just kept thinking, ‘How will I describe this to anyone?’ So, I started keeping a list of words on my phone,” Sbar said.  

Extreme, eye-opening, determination, grit, euphoria, comfort with discomfort, exuberance and exhaustion were just a few of those words.  

But if there’s one thing Sbar hopes people can take away from this story, it’s that “you can do way more than you think you can,” Sbar said.  

“And age is not a limit,” Sbar said, who turned 66 while she was on the trip.  

“I had wanted to do this ride for over a decade, and finally I thought, if not now, when?” Sbar said.  

Sbar's done countless multi-week trips, but her longest hauls before Cairo to Cape Town were two cross-country routes in the U.S.  

Sbar completed a Southern Tier ride, spanning from California to Florida, in 2017, as well as an East Coast trip, spanning from Key West, Florida and ending in Maine at the Canadian border in 2022.  

Sbar grew up in New Jersey and has spent her adult life in Colorado and Montana. She is a retired environmental attorney who began her practice in Washington, D.C.   

"It's all truly ancient history. But you can't separate yourself from your foundation,” Sbar said, who moved to Whitefish with her husband in 2014.  

Since then, Washington, Vancouver, California, Oregon and South Dakota, as well as countries in Europe and Asia have been some starting points for countless other multiweek ventures. 

"I didn't even drive a car until I was in my 30s. And the irony is I didn't ever drive until I was hit by a car while biking. You can't do these kinds of miles without a risk,” Sbar acknowledged.   

Sbar enjoys road biking, but said the ever-changing terrain in Africa more resembles gravel riding at its best.  

Although the Saharan road they began the trip on was asphalt, the landscape was unimaginably vast.  

“As far as the eye could see, it was sand," Sbar said.  

Along the wide-open stretches of sand at the beginning of the trip, turbines of distant wind farms blowing a certain way foretold if the bikers were going to face a headwind.  

They crossed over mountains of desert before coming to the valley of the Nile River. 

"After biking through a tan, lifeless desert, with mountains of sand, there was green. There was vegetation, agriculture and villages," Sbar said. 

But before the bikers could get to the lushest landscapes of the ride, they had to take a flight detour.  

"We had to box our bikes and fly from Egypt to Rwanda, going over Sudan," Sbar said.  

Since erupting in conflict in April 2023, the current Sudanese civil war has killed more than 20,000, injured 33,000, and forced more than 11 million from their homes, with conservative estimates from October 2024.   

Biking through Sudan would have added several weeks of biking to the trip, if it had been safe to do so.   

Sbar said that the support of the touring company she went with, Tour d' Afrique, was crucial for safety.  

"They know the drill. I don't think I would have done this without that level of support," Sbar said.  

The group had a leader, medics and bike mechanics to assist. A van assisted by carrying supplies and stash-bags, so riders only had to carry their daypacks.  

Riders could join for different sections of the ride, while some like Sbar rode the whole way. Throughout the trip, there was a riding team of about 34 to 45.   

Sbar was lucky in that her only medical problem that arose over the four-month trip was treating a painful but tame infection. That, and the sores.  

When you're on a saddle up to eight hours a day, "sore starts out as an adjective and becomes a noun," Sbar said. 

Rwanda, the second most densely populated country in Africa, was "a flow of people," Sbar said, and was a particularly challenging section of the ride.  

The roads were sidewalks. Pedestrians, motorcycles, trucks and minibuses known as matatus all flowed together.  

"I liken it to biking through a pinball machine. You had to be so vigilant," Sbar said.  

The climbing started in earnest in Rwanda. They call it the land of a thousand hills for a reason. 

“Some days you'd have to climb 4,000 feet just to get to lunch. And you just had to do it. And that was my mantra: just keep pushing," Sbar said.  

While some of the roads were in good condition, debris was unpredictable. Sbar said she stopped counting the number of flat tires she got throughout the trip.  

Biking became less of a sport and more of a transport, true to the culture of Rwanda and the other countries.  

“Biking is very much a part of their culture, but it is not for sport or exercise. It is utilitarian. It is supply chain transportation. From that perspective, you’re just another vehicle.”  

Coal, wood and animals were just a few of the things Sbar saw being transported on bikes. 

After months of miles and camping, Sbar said they were damp, dirty and exhausted by the time they reached Uganda.  

But spirits remained high. The camaraderie and energy of the group made all the difference. “You take care of each other. And you keep going.”  

As the group pushed forward, they came to the densely populated city of Narobi. 

They then headed to Tanzania, which was full of wildlife. After a few days off for a safari in Tanzania, there was a seven day stretch of long biking.  

Language wasn’t a barrier to the excitement of meeting new people of other cultures, bringing joy to the longer days.  

“Along the way of those long stretches, the people you meet and see... everybody’s curious about each other,” Sbar said.  

Sbar says she also would often connect with locals in search of a simple Coke – a drink she never touches in the states, but would daydream about during the long, hot miles, with temperatures climbing up the 90s as the trip went on.  

However, Sbar said crossing every border of a country could present a different culture.  

“You cross this imaginary line called a border and life changes. Not that life was easy in any country.  

“We dropped down in elevation from Tanzania into Malawi and it just... everything went away – the cars, the trucks, and for the most part, all they had was bicycles. Our good fortune was bicycles, but that was their bad fortune,” Sbar said.  

Sbar recalls extreme amounts of rain and mud in Malawi, followed by drought with expanses of failed crops in Zambia.  

“You would see small family farm plots. That was their food. And it wasn’t there. And I had the ability to bike through it and leave. That’s fortune.”  

Botswana was even drier, with stand-alone huts and no agriculture in sight.  

Here, the bikers were also on high alert for elephants.  

“It’s called elephant highway for a reason. We were debriefed on elephant safety. If their trunk comes up, their ears are flapping, they can charge. So we stayed mindful.” 

Sbar encountered a single male elephant walking towards her on the road. After thinking she would bike away from the elephant, she realized it was best to face him. Fortunately, the elephant wandered into the bush and she kept pedaling.   

In Namibia, there were days of sand, from washboard to loose piles where bikers had to get off and push.  

From there, they crossed into South Africa, where increasingly westernized infrastructures, complete with reckless shoulder driving, signaled the end of the venture on the horizon.  

“The whole thing was exhilarating. It was extreme.” 

“The biggest lesson is you’re far more capable than you ever thought. Don’t sell yourself short. You hear those words a lot, and you don’t believe it. But they’re true,” Sbar said. 

    A group shot at the pyramids at the start of the Cairo to Cape Town tour. (Photo by TDA Global Cycling)
  

    Evening in Bush Camp in Kenya. (Photo by Justene Wilke)
  

    Heading into camp where giraffes were roaming in Zambia. (Photo by a group rider)
  

    A Google map rendering of the route across Africa created by TDA Global Cycling and shared with riders. (Photo provided by Pam Sbar)