a hot and dusty days ride found us at gedaref, a town at the end of the tarmac heading east towards ethiopia. as usual our bikes were attracting quite a lot of attention so the priority was to get them off the street. typically the only hotel in town had lost their keys to the lock up but the owner suggested we might like to ride up his steps into the hotel entrance. tough as our bikes may look, we laughed and tried to explain that getting 300kgs of machine up a significantly steep flight of steps was not an option. but to this he countered, "motorbike do before" and that was it, the overlanding motorbike gauntlet had been thrown down! probably some pro on a flash KTM, but we were game.

a metal door was fetched from somewhere and placed as a ramp up the first two steps, and before we knew it people had stopped the traffic (now creating an enormous disturbance and drawing a massive crowd) and were standing back waiting for the mad white men to try something crazy. determined not to let them down, we lined up our XTZs on the otherside of the street and had nervous words with each other, this could be painful.

there was a lot of noise and even more black smoke, but the locals looked rather disappointed that we made it and only blew out the valve from dougs now very flat front tyre. the crowd dispersing, we felt victorious and checked into the hotel.