Singletrack/MTB
Gravel/All-road
Dirt-road Touring
Fat-bike
Lake Malawi Skies
Throughout the six African countries we’ve travelled I have been consistently awestruck with the complex displays of color and clouds that are always swirling and forming in these vast skies. But none have been more dazzling, rich and remarkable than those above the third largest lake in Africa.
We are currently traveling through the Great Rift along the edge of Lake Malawi. There are very few cars here, and a lot of bicycles, which may attribute to unimaginably clear skies that spawn magnificent clouds and incredible skycapes.
The lake itself, the ninth largest in the world, is shared by three countries and is equally magnificent as it is large. Nyasa constantly changes colors from an opaque brown near the mouths of rain swollen rivers to hues of emerald green at its deep rocky cliffs. The surface of the water can be glass calm one minute and as tumultuous as a northern sea the next. There are more species of fish that habitat its waters than any other body of freshwater in the world, including over 1,000 species of cichlids that come in all of the vivid colors of the rainbow.
But the skies are what dominate the landscape as we roll through the rift. Far away clouds take on the golden hue of the dusty soil below; the rainy season spawns off storms that seem to move in every direction and are visible for hundreds of miles; what appear to be plumes of black smoke over the distant water are really swarms of lake flies that take on the form of hazy waterspouts; sunrise illuminates crisp formations of condensation and leftover storms that pommelled the land the night prior. As redundant as the motion seems, my camera keeps tilting upward:
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