“It’s sporty,” says Tom Bodkin, our guide and the mastermind behind the trip, describing the next day’s descent, a full 1000m plunge down the side of a rock-strewn gorge to the valley floor below. I’m sharing end-of-day beers with the rest of our group, pro riders Sarah Leishman and Kamil Tatarkovic, videographer Devin Schmitt, writer Aaron Gulley and Giro marketing honcho Dain Zaffke, at the most spectacular campground in which I’ve ever pitched a tent.

“It’s like he’s saying: “If you sign up, shut up!” but to the tune of a lullaby.”

Perched precipitously on the edge of an abyss, we look across a deep ravine at the 4200 metre high peak that kicked our arses on our first day of riding. We’re glad it’s behind us, but apart from the lung-beatings we’ve been dealt, so far most of the footpaths and mule tracks we’ve followed have been challenging but mostly rideable. Mostly. But now a few days in and tired, we’re reading between the lines of Bodkin’s ambiguous trail description. By the sound of it tomorrow’s beast of a downhill may wield the hammer blow for morale, or worse.

Bodkin organised an Afghanistan mountain bike trip, which I photographed in 2013. On it I got to see how this ex-army captain has learnt to use spin to maintain morale amongst his “troops”, be they camouflaged paratroopers or eager adventure tourists. He curates his words to encourage his co-adventurers to look at every challenge as life-affirming and just part of the adventure. It’s like he’s saying: “If you sign up, shut up!” but to the tune of a lullaby.

We emerge from the descent physically, mentally and in some cases emotionally exhausted, and roll out onto the banks of a river. It’s February, the height of the dry season and most of the rivers we’ve encountered are little more than shallow trickles of dubiously-tinted water. Dry, hot weather has made our river crossings easy, but it’s stolen our baths too.

But now on our fifth day, with grime worked deep into our pores, we have found a river that spills over ledges and pools deeply between boulders to form the perfect bathing spot. And the locals know it too. We shed dust-encrusted jerseys among villagers who are elbow deep in laundry, surrounded by kids whose heads are a foaming mass of soap. Our bathroom is quite the hive of activity.

“Skirting a vast plateau we scatter cliff-dwelling Gelada baboons while enormous raptors circle effortlessly upwards until finally, like tiny fading ink blots, they’re absorbed into an enormous cloudless sky.”

For eight days we pedal a dog-leg route across the Simien Mountains National Park, accompanied by our support team and half a dozen gear-carrying mules, a caravan that can’t escape attention in every village we pass through. Each night we don duvet jackets to combat the near-freezing night temperatures and illuminated by head torches we eat our way through a spread of local dishes that lay siege to our taste buds. The lentil wat (stew) is well received by all, but the rancid, sourdough injera bread wins fewer hearts in yet another round of the sensory overload that is Ethiopia. Here, it seems, everything is an assault on the senses.

We wind our way between towering pinnacles of rock, and traverse wild, open hillsides, velvet with swaying golden grass. Skirting a vast plateau we scatter cliff-dwelling Gelada baboons while enormous raptors circle effortlessly upwards until finally, like tiny fading ink blots, they’re absorbed into an enormous cloudless sky. Every village we pass through sheds its cargo of kids, in hand-me down clothes and shoes three sizes too big, who run excitedly alongside us or try to help push our bikes up impossibly steep climbs. We’ve become a circus of excitement and chatter and there is no escape from this barrage, not even when we arrive at our daily ad-hoc campgrounds situated on village football fields and schoolyards.

Aside from the repeated risk of going over the bars to tumble down a vertical mountainside, we never feel unsafe. In fact the most likely incident to befall tourists would be being buried by inquisitive kids at one of our campgrounds. It’s something that Molla and Sewnett prevent by energetically waving two-metre long bamboo sticks.

This theatrical show of crowd control is an obvious game of cat and mouse as cheeky kids test our scouts’ limits of tolerance and our scouts respond by sternly brandishing the long sticks while trying to hide their grins.

Playtime aside, as with all expeditions ours has an objective, to scale Ethiopia’s highest mountain, the 4543 metre-high peak of Ras Dajen, with bikes. The challenge comes early in the itinerary and on day three we find ourselves puffing up the long, arduous 4×4 track that runs like a surgical scar across the shoulder of this hunchback peak.

We pause at the pass to catch our breath for a good half hour before riding onto a singletrack that leads us towards the summit. The last fifty metres to the top are more rock climbing than riding and with cleats scrabbling for grip on the rocks, we sling bikes onto our backs for the final clamber up to the outcrop that is the top of Ethiopia.

Having an objective, I’m told, is what defines an expedition but now sitting on Ras Dashen’s naked, oxygen-starved summit I can’t help wonder if ours is a little convenient (if “convenient” is the right word for riding at this altitude). People climb mountains regularly, and many climb mountains with bikes. We’re no pioneers.

Certainly we’re not the first to scale Ras Dashen on bikes, but despite following in the tyre tracks of two other bike teams, the sight of mountain bikers in villages that have dotted this landscape since the sixth century is still a novelty. The excitement we bring is half our reward, the rest is what we take away from the experience.

As a couple of kids haul themselves up to the summit, each armed with a crate of electric-orange coloured sodas to sell, I begin to realise what the true objective of our expedition is and, for me at least, it has little to do with the calorific spend of scaling a mountain. It has little to do with the endorphin rush of loose descents or comparing the virtues of tubes against tubeless tyres.

DO IT YOURSELF:

Getting There:

Ethiopian Airlines has return flights from £566 and taking your bike as excess baggage costs £62 each way. See ethiopianairlines.com

Guides & Route Planning:

Having explored the route with Dan Milner, Tom Bodkin’s company Secret Compass now offers the itinerary. See secretcompass.com for details.

Preparation & Safety:

To ride in the Simien Mountains you’ll need a decent level of fitness, a very real thirst for adventure and a sense of humour. With 7280m of ascent (and more descent) the riding is tough but the rewards are plentiful.

The 8-day expedition offered every year by Secret Compass takes place in the dry season between October and March. Daytime temperatures can be 30C+ but drop to 0C at night at the high campgrounds so pack both sunscreen and a three-season sleeping bag.

The riding is technical so a 150mm travel bike will help keep you out of trouble, and bike shoes with outsoles good for hiking will help keep you moving when trouble gets the upper hand.

Head here to read the rest of Mpora’s March Origins issue 

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