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James Sturz

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Once a year Johannesburg-based Wilderness Safaris organizes its Tour de Tuli, a 300-kilometer (186-mile), four-day MTB ride through the Tuli Block of southern Africa, connecting Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Unlike other multi-stage tours through Africa—or elsewhere around the world—this one is supported by three separate governments, with makeshift border crossings along riverbanks (you’ll need to keep your Ziploc-ed passport tucked inside your jersey, alongside your energy chews). Capped at 350 riders, plus 150 support staff, the tour fills up fast once it opens for registration each year in late November. Last August, I joined a team led by Russel Friedman, one of Wilderness Safaris’s founding partners and chairman of Children in the Wilderness, the educational program Wilderness operates in the communities outside its camps in seven southern African countries. The ride is its chief fundraiser. The course was mostly ancient elephant trails, single tracks across sprawls of loose stones, Moab-style steep cliffs and ridges, forests of swollen baobabs, fever trees and thorny bush—plus lots of hills and sand, and hills of sand—through a pristine 3,000-square-mile tract that’s normally inaccessible to the public. Friedman broke his back mountain-biking last year, and yet at 65 he still rode me into the dust—of which there was plenty. It was the hardest multi-stage ride I’ve ever been on, but when you’re with some 300-plus South Africans (plus cyclists from another dozen countries), one thing’s for sure: at the end of the day you don’t drink alone. Photo: There are lots of ways to go on safari in Africa. By mountain bike is one of them. Fortunately, the riders, not the predators, were the only ones in “attack position.”
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5 Nights, 4 Days, 3 Countries, 1 Mountain Bike

Once a year, Johannesburg-based Wilderness Safaris organizes its Tour de Tuli, a 300-kilometer (186-mile), four-day MTB ride through the Tuli Block of southern Africa, connecting Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.

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