Preparations for this year’s edition of the annual tourism expedition, the Tour de Tuli, have started in Beit Bridge.

The cycling event will be held between 2 and 7 August in the Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area (TFCA), a vast safari land jointly shared by Zimbabwe, South Africa and Botswana. The event offers mountain bikers an opportunity to pass through the megapark.

Local Parks and Wildlife Management Authority spokesperson Ms Caroline Washaya-Moyo says this year the event will attract more than 320 international cyclists. The event is being organised by different stakeholders from the three hosting countries.

She adds that the main objective of the programme is to raise funds for Children in the Wilderness and to ensure its sustainability, as well as marketing the Greater Mapungubwe TFCA to the international market. “We also want to promote the use of non-designated border crossing points to enhance regional tourism development and decongest the Beit Bridge Border Post.”

The preparations task team met in Beit Bridge on 6 June, together with the Children in the Wilderness of Southern Africa, the event organisers. “We also visited the routes to be used by the cyclists and are satisfied with progress made so far,” she adds.

Washaya-Moyo says the participants are drawn from South Africa, Britain, Italy, Switzerland, the United States of America, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Botswana, Japan, Australia, Denmark and Zimbabwe. “The programme has the full support of the governments of the three participating countries.”  She says that efforts are under way to engage local business players and service providers, so that they also participate in the event.

“We are looking forward to a successful event, banking on the success of the last four events. Hopefully this year, the event will be better and even bigger.”

“The cyclists will start from Limpopo Airfield in South Africa before proceeding to the Northern Tuli Game Reserve in Botswana where they will spend two nights. They will then cross the Shashe River into Zimbabwe's Maramani
communal lands. They will spend a night at the Maramani Community Camp Site after which they will visit the Fly Camp in Nottingham Estate, before crossing into South Africa’s Mapungubwe National Park, where they will wind up the tour,” she says.