It’s just before dawn in Kenya’s Maasai Mara, situated along the Great Rift Valley in the southwest of the country—one of the most iconic wildlife safari destinations on earth. As wild animals begin to awaken in their grassy nooks across the bush, more than a hundred cyclists have been up for hours in preparation for Stage 2 of the 2023 Migration Gravel Race (MGR). Over four days in June, competitors from East Africa and the rest of the world ride 416 miles over more than 26,000 feet of elevation across fickle terrain. Along the way, they will negotiate flooded paths, demanding mountainous climbs, and roving roadblocks in the form of goats and cattle.
In the muted plum-colored light, the camp is humming with activity: riders filling water packs, checking tire pressures, and hoping for a day devoid of punctures. Last night and this morning the race is hosted in the Maji Moto Maasai Cultural Camp by the camp’s founder, Salaton Ole Ntutu, a respected chief and community leader. The previous evening’s welcome ceremony—including a traditional dance around a fire—feels like the distant past. Only the savanna knows what surprises are in store today. Minutes before 6:00 a.m., the starting line is crowded. For 26-year-old Lydia Iglesias, hailing from northern Spain’s Val d’Aran in the Pyrenees, it’s her first time on the African continent. “I can’t imagine a better way to discover a country than with my bike,” she says. “Stages are so long, you get to see a lot of beautiful landscapes, wild animals, see a different culture.”
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She describes herself as someone used to rough conditions, and has raced other major gravel events, including UNBOUND in Kansas, The Rift in Iceland, and The Traka in Spain. But to Iglesias, the MGR belongs in a league of its own. Each day is a whirlwind of new challenges—potholes, rocks, steep climbs, singletrack, river crossings, and loads of mud. “Sleeping in tents between stages was also challenging for the ‘performance,’” she says.
“The MGR is not only about the race, it’s about the people you get to know, over a really intense four days,” says Iglesias. “The most surprising thing for me was the atmosphere—it was amazing to ride while all those kids were looking at us, cheering and smiling like they do. I will never forget those kids!”
When most Americans think of Kenya, safaris and the annual wildebeest migration likely come to mind. But since 2020, the MGR has been reshaping that perception. Set in the heart of Maasailand, the race is crafted so that local Maasai community members have a role in every part of the event, including providing logistics, first aid, and emotional support to riders—and designing the route itself.
This collaborative effort counters ingrained ideas that a place like the Maasai Mara (which earns its county, Narok, more than 60 percent of its annual revenue) exists largely for foreigners to catch glimpses of the Big Five: lion, leopard, rhino, elephant, and Cape buffalo—while local people blend into the backdrop. “The MGR is thinking about the people, how to create employment,” says Salaton. He hires members from his community to set up camp for riders each day and as boda boda (motorbike) drivers, who closely monitor every participant’s movement throughout each stage.
Every year, the MGR route is painstakingly mapped out by several Maasai stakeholders, including Savage Wilderness, Kenya’s biggest outdoor guiding company, and Team Amani, a Kenyan gravel cycling team that also hosts the race.
The fences that demarcate the Mara’s boundaries are constantly in flux, as per shifting community agreements. That means that the route must change as well. It’s no small feat, says James Savage, the managing director of Savage Wilderness. The organizers spend a lot of time paying respects to community elders and negotiating permission, as is the custom when obtaining access from traditionally communal lands.
The demarcation of these lands into private subdivisions is a legacy of the colonial British government, a situation mirrored in countless other places throughout Kenya. Under colonial rule, the country’s national parks and reserves were initially established as private conservancies. Special attention was paid to the country’s wild spaces since it was essentially a white settlers’ frontier—an outback where British colonizers enjoyed luxuries such as massive mansions with English-style gardens. They built game lodges in places like the Maasai Mara, using tourism income to finance their administrative control.
When Kenya gained its independence in 1963, power imbalances from the colonial legacy—such as British rights to land ownership—were grandfathered in by the nascent national government. Fifteen years ago, after finally receiving title deeds to the ancestral lands where his forebears lived and died, Salaton dedicated 200 acres in Maji Moto (which means “warm water” in Kiswahili) to wildlife and conservation, and established a community school.
With the MGR, Salaton says, “It’s bringing together women and men for ceremonies, some hailing from the border with Tanzania and the heart of MaaLand [in central Kenya],” he says. “It’s returning an appreciation for our nomadic customs and communal land.”
Mikel Delagrange, an American who has lived in East Africa for years and worked as a human-rights lawyer for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees based out of East Jerusalem, cofounded Team Amani with the late Sule Kangangi. (Kangangi died after a crash during the Vermont Overland gravel race in August 2022.) They had a very specific vision—to provide opportunities for athletes in the region, in the specific ways that they need and crave. “To join, you have to be fast, demonstrate resilience, and have a certain amount of world savviness,” says Delagrange. Team Amani was born from the initiative to diversify the field of international professional racing and provide opportunities in a region almost entirely overlooked by the cycling world.
Members get coaching on technical aspects of training, along with advice on nutrition, how to liaise with sponsors, and tips for racing and traveling internationally. Many members of Team Amani come from under-resourced backgrounds; international races are often their first opportunity to travel abroad. Gravel trumps road racing in East Africa in terms of popularity and abundance of terrain. And as the racing discipline took off around the world, Kangangi and Delagrange decided it was time to bring foreign racers and top-level competition to the African continent, instead of the “resource-intensive approach” of sending riders to Europe for a pressure-packed road audition, says Delagrange. Issues with traveling to the West—unfamiliar territory, homesickness, visa issues—make it difficult for African riders to succeed. The Amani approach would provide a chance for regional athletes to train and compete on their home turf.
In addition to MGR, the 2023 Amani gravel series included the one-day Safari Gravel Race, a UCI Gravel World Series qualifier set in Hell’s Gate National Park, the inspiration for The Lion King; and Evolution, a semi-supported two-stage race through Tanzania to the coast. The MGR is sandwiched between those events, all within the span of two weeks in June.
Delagrange describes Amani’s gravel series as existing “all in one ecosystem.” The races are hosted by Amani and serve the singular purpose of creating opportunities for East African cyclists. “Riders’ success [in Amani] can inspire other kids who look up to them for a potential career [in racing],” he says.
Yet Delagrange remains hyperaware of the space he operates in. Although the organization is driven by passion, that in itself is not enough, he says. He believes that a persisting, futile brand of sentimentality in the international development industry reinforces age-old, disproportionate power dynamics, conveniently overlooking the West’s ineffectual presence in certain regions. “Exchanges in ‘development’ should be based on mutual respect or interest, not on the outdated notion that the Global South needs saving by well-meaning people in the West,” he tells me at a hilly water station on Stage 2 of the race. Riders battling seemingly boundless flumes of dust under the harsh equatorial sun pull in for brief seconds, dirt clinging to every pore and eyelash, before zooming off again. “The world is overrun by sentimentality,” he adds. “It’s the last thing we need.”
As the MGR continues to scale up, it helps demonstrate to local Maasai communities the intrinsic economic value that their land holds. The gravel races are also becoming an avenue to recruit new Team Amani members.
Salim Kipkemboi, 25, a member of Team Amani, is proud that this first international gravel race in East Africa is facilitating unique cultural exchanges for foreigners and locals alike. “When you’re bringing in 50 cyclists from outside who are keen to interact with and help locals, it’s helpful to the country overall,” he says. Plus, he adds, “It’s true of any sport, especially endurance ones—you can only be as good as the people you race and train against.”
It’s not just the healthy competition that helps up the game for East African riders, says 26-year-old Ndung’u Wa Keiya, an MGR participant from Limuru, the misty land of tea estates just outside Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. He believes that information sharing is a crucial part of the equation, whether it’s learning how to train every day without getting injured, how to recover from long events, or how to plan your race nutrition. “When international racers come, it’s a good chance for us to learn these aspects of the sport from them,” he says. He’s talking about riders like Australian Lachlan Morton of UCI WorldTeam EF Education–EasyPost, and former pro road racer Mattia De Marchi from Italy. Keiya says when they show up, they are always open to exchanging ideas and information.
Keiya grew up outside Nairobi and has competed in every MGR since its conception. He began training in 2016 after joining Kenyan Riders, a road cycling team based out of rural central Kenya. “I used to ride my bike to school and would just feel so relaxed,” he says, as we sit with cups of chai at Maji Moto Lodge after Stage 1. The weather has gone from hot to chilly in a matter of minutes. The sky has opened up, dumping sheets of rain across the parched savanna—Kenya is only just leaving behind three arduous years of drought. “I realized that this thing is giving me happiness—why can’t I do it full-time?”
After some coaxing, Keiya convinced his parents that he wouldn’t attend university, and would instead give gravel racing his all. For five years, he trained in the highlands of Iten in central Kenya, internationally acclaimed for its marathon runners. He performed well in the 2022 Commonwealth Games in the United Kingdom, and in the African Continental Championships in Namibia. “It took some time for my parents to accept that this is what I want to do,” he says. “[Now] they’re happy with the person I’ve become because of my career, not just what I’ve accomplished. They see that I’ve become responsible, self-driven.” For the first two MGRs, injuries and suboptimal bikes obstructed Keiya’s success. Last year, he noticed that there was a leveling up among the competitors. But for himself, he knew he needed something a bit extra—a link, as he describes, required for him to reach the pro level.
I ask him if he knew what that link is. “Now, it’s just time,” he says. Amani has provided opportunities for aspiring athletes like himself that didn’t exist before. Since he made the decision eight years ago to pursue gravel racing seriously, Keiya has approached his training with unwavering dedication. “When you ask life for something, life has a way of testing you to see if you’re worthy,” he says. “It will measure you in ways you can’t understand.”
Each year, in each race, Keiya says he discovers something different. “One thing I’ve learned is that no matter how well-prepared you are, you can never be fully prepared,” he says. “The only thing you need is a proper mindset, then you can do anything. You have to leave everything on the bike, and I have the privilege to do that.”
Keiya tells me about a tense moment during Stage 1. There were only two cyclists ahead of him, and for quite some time, he kept pace with the Italian rider, De Marchi. Together, they rode past Maasai village life: women gathering water from boreholes and children en route to school. They flew alongside miles of barbed-wire fences bifurcating the savanna landscape—that curious mix between farmland and wild bush—past seasonal streams, young herder boys chiding their goats to make way for the riders. After a while, Keiya realized that he was doing it, he was keeping up with the former professional cyclist. He felt relief, joy—and even more determination. These races allow me to see how far away I am from the big guys, he says. “This year I’m closer, and I’m really happy about that.”
Keiya ultimately placed 12th overall in the men’s category at MGR, and earned a podium finish at Evolution the following week. And in November, he finally earned a spot on Team Amani at their selection camp in Iten. He no longer has to struggle to make ends meet, ask friends to chip in to cover race entry fees. He’s already excited about sharing his experiences with other young guys. “It can be in any discipline, not just cycling—I want to show them it’s possible, that it has to do with your mindset and what you want in life,” he told me a few weeks after the MGR.
As for a place on Team Amani, it’s something he’s wanted for so long, and now it all feels a bit surreal. “This kind of opportunity and assurance, that when I go to a big race, things will be taken care of—that’s what I’ve been looking for all my life,” he says.
Participation in the MGR requires a short application, where aspiring racers are asked to share their adventure resume and motivation for taking part. Pearly Spevere is a spunky Zimbabwean American who came with her husband, Steven, from Rifle, Colorado. They’re both here for the pure joy of it. “Some folks, they’re here to win,” she tells me. “We’re not. We’re here to learn something new and to support East African riders.”
She says she feels humbled to be here. “I see the MGR as designed to elevate Team Amani. That’s what it really is about.” That’s not necessarily Delagrange’s goal for MGR. “It’s great that some people see MGR this way,” he says. “But they don’t have to. All they have to do is come and be here.”
As the riders trickle in after Stage 2, the race mechanics are hard at work—washing bikes, switching tubes to tubeless for the uninitiated, lubing chains, and checking for the inevitable wear and tear that 150-plus kilometers does to a bike each day. Twenty-three-year-old Kevin Kariuki is busy washing myriad coats of dust and mud from every single bike. (“Kariuki, like John Kariuki of Team Amani, who won MGR in 2022?” I quip. He grins. They’re not related.)
This Kariuki has a running background and is an aspiring gravel cyclist who plans to compete in the MGR himself in 2024. Working as a mechanic at the MGR has exposed him to a range of new technologies—wireless shifting, aerodynamic features, advanced bike computers—in gravel racing, which he says has been particularly eye-opening for him. “Almost all international riders had power meters on their bikes,” he says. “These guys are challenging us to better ourselves in the sport, but also appreciate the nature we have in Kenya more.”
“Getting to see what the race looks like was great,” Kariuki continues. “And not just because I’m a professional bike mechanic now! It will help me with my own training in the tracks of the Maasai Mara.”
As the dust settles at the end of the day, the mess of cyclists mill about, sharing adventures and describing the animals they encountered, from cows to giraffes. That’s another thing unique to the MGR—it’s designed to encourage intermingling since everyone stays in the same kinds of tents, eats the same meals. In the little downtime they have, distinct pockets of people emerge—the chatty, the exhausted, the insular.
Team Amani is huddled for a recap of the stage while members of the media from all over the world occupy two whole rows of the dining tables.
The tantalizing aromas of fragrant curries, beef stew, and chapati (Kenyan flatbread) that the support crew is preparing float overhead. It’s dinnertime. Everyone is hungry.
