While biking in Bujumbura's hills on my trusty Specialized mountain bike, I've been trying to keep track of where I go and how I got there. And since I enjoy making an amateur map now and then, and because I also enjoy sharing information that helps others discover a place, I'm posting my most recently updated amateur map of Bujumbura hill biking.
(If you want a closer look, this posted photo being too small to see much, email me or leave a comment and I will send you a bigger jpeg file that you can enlarge for particulars. The red print gives times to major ride points, starting from the city.)
Since I like to climb, on most of my rides I pick an entry point and ride up into the hills outside Bujumbura. For doing distance, and seeing lots of countryside, I have biked the paved national routes to both Bugarama and Ijenda. Both take about three hours (almost all of it a fairly tough slog up), and aren't too bad with traffic, though the road to Bugarama is definitely the busier of the two. Along the way you can admire the local bicyclists hurtling past you, as they either cling to the back of a truck going up or turn their bicycle into a truck bringing huge mounds of bananas down.
My map shows both of these paved routes, and the hill area in between them. The most interesting riding from Bujumbura is, I think, in this in-between hill area, which is most easily and centrally accessed by taking the loop road up through Kiriri then continuing past Chez Vaya and on up to the hillside university. At the university the paved road turns to dirt and leads to hours of exploring on rural roads.
Though there are lots of single-track type trails visible on the hillsides, most of them are un-rideable: these are walking paths and are too steep or too sketchy to bike. The adventurer can find some sections of doable single-track, however.
For the best single-track ride available from Bujumbura, instead of continuing past Chez Vaya toward the university, turn left just before the restaurant. When the paved road ends, break free onto a dirt track that increasingly looks more like a hiking trail and less like a dirt road. There's one big dip of a bridge that's fun to ride and then a couple of 'portages' (have to carry your bike across a ravine) as you wind up the side of a canyon, cross the main streambed, then double back to climb the opposite slope.
Entering a small town you reach a dirt road. From here you can drift back down to the city. Or, to continue the ride, go uphill on the dirt road for maybe five minutes. Just past a right-hand bend, turn left on a fairly obvious trail that cuts across a ridge-slope rising in front of you. From here you are following an old water channel. When arriving at a trail intersection, always choose the way that continues gradually uphill with the climbing ridge on your right and the valley opening on your left. On this section there are numerous 'portages' as well where you will need to carry your bike across a ravine, but there's enough open trail in between to make the ride worth it. After about an hour the trail ends at a dirt road, as shown on the map. You can do this trail either uphill or down, taking the dirt road one way if you wish to make a loop.
If you are a downhill fan, a technically proficient rider can have fun checking out numerous trails off the road up above the university, with varying degrees of steepness and technicality available. Drop off the road into the valley to the left on whatever rideable track you can find, then meet up with the 'Chez Vaya/water channel trail,' that I just described, to get back to town.
When trail-riding outside Bujumbura, always take care for pedestrians: remember the trails are there for the locals to get from place to place. You are a guest on their foot-highway.
And if you are an ingenious explorer, I'm sure you'll have more rides to add to my map in no time.
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