After graduating from high school, two sisters set off from Kassel with their bikes and tents – their destination: South Africa. They don’t think that’s particularly brave. But after three years, it’s not just the tires that are going flat.
At some point, Hannah Schröder was so fed up with the prejudices that she no longer admitted that they wanted to cycle all the way to the southern tip of Africa. First to Portugal, the then 20-year-old always said, shortly after she and her 19-year-old sister Greta left their children’s bedrooms in Hesse on their bikes on a rainy July day almost three years ago. “Because everyone reacted so negatively when we said we were going to ride to South Africa! Everyone said: ‘No, that’s not possible.’ But one thing was clear: we’ll just keep cycling until we don’t feel like it anymore.”
They haven’t lost their enthusiasm more than 10,000 kilometers further south. By bike, but also by freight train or hitchhiking if necessary, the sisters, now 23 and 22, are making their way along the west coast of Africa, now as far as Cameroon. More than 110,000 people are now watching them on Instagram, where they talk about their adventure almost every day, sometimes beaming, sometimes frustrated, often dusty and sweaty.
Crossing the Sahara in a sandstorm
It’s not about setting a record – other cyclists pass them by while the young women spend months exploring a country or, when their visas are about to expire, ride on a truck. They crossed the Sahara in a sandstorm and the jungle in the rain, dragged bikes and luggage through knee-deep mud and chest-high water, were almost washed into a river by a storm in Guinea and were mistaken for terrorists in the bush at night in northern Ghana by 30 men with guns and machetes.
“That was a moment when we were extremely scared,” says Hannah. “But then it quickly became clear that we weren’t terrorists. We laughed about it with them and they wished us good night and said that next time we should sleep in their village because everything would be safe there. It was a really nice conversation and then they were no longer afraid of who was sleeping in the bush.”
Hannah had malaria three times – Greta was spared, but during the video call with the German Press Agency she was lying in a hotel bed in Nigeria’s capital Abuja with a stomach bug. A hotel is a rare luxury – the young women, who say they only survive on their savings, usually camp wild in fields, ruins or unfinished buildings. In villages they are often allowed to sleep in courtyards or back rooms of shops or are taken under the wing of families.
“We don’t even lock our bikes”
“We already had a lot of faith in humanity, but now this trip has really given us such an incredible amount of faith. We don’t worry anymore,” says Greta. “You always find people who will help you or cheer you up with some little thing.” “We don’t even lock our bikes. We always leave our things outside at night, whether we’re sleeping in villages or in the middle of the wilderness,” adds Hannah. “Nothing has ever gone missing and we’ve been on the road for three years now.”
The sisters came up with the idea of traveling to Africa through stories of their father, who had driven to Ghana by car as a young man. They later got bicycles so they could travel as cheaply as possible and meet lots of people. The two now know every little screw on their bikes, Nulli and Priesemut, named after children’s book characters.
They keep meeting other cyclists. “There are a lot of them in Morocco, but many only go as far as Senegal. I estimate that there are maybe 50 on the road from Senegal to South Africa right now,” says Hannah. As far as she knows, apart from them, there are only two other women travelling alone on the route at the moment. The cyclists are organised via WhatsApp chat. The phenomenon is not an issue for the General German Bicycle Club. “The ADFC is reluctant to recommend long-distance cycling trips for reasons of climate protection,” says a spokeswoman.
Lack of privacy
The sisters are concerned about the sustainability of their trip in a different way. “In the last few months we have had more doubts than ever before. This is mainly because we can no longer live up to our own standards and principles,” they wrote on Instagram. There they not only show the wonderful photos of their trip. Again and again they also talk about the stressful aspects: in addition to the physical exertion, for example, there is also the lack of privacy, as they attract attention and are surrounded everywhere. The girls don’t just want to drive through the countryside – they see their trip as a give and take.
“The biggest thing is simply that we don’t have as much energy anymore. As a result, we can no longer interact with people as we would like, and we need time for ourselves, but we don’t have that either,” explains Greta. “We always try to listen, to learn, not to drive around the country with our eyes closed. We want to perceive and listen to every situation, no matter how difficult it is. That’s the least we can do, to learn from these people and hear what they need, what should change. When that stops, as it is now, when we no longer have the energy for it, then we don’t want to travel any further,” says Hannah.
So now a break is in order: The sisters will leave their bikes in Cameroon over the summer and fly from Douala in Cameroon to Germany at the beginning of June (7 June). This time they will not continue until after the rainy season, around October.
“The countries we’re coming to now are the most unsafe on our trip. And the bikes keep breaking down, we’re just repairing them. It’s so mentally exhausting,” says Hannah. “I think that when we go home and have our safe bed, recharge our social batteries and then come back, we can enjoy the trip again the way we want to enjoy it and travel again the way we want to travel.”