Top Ten Epic Bike Rides

The Rift Valley seen from the sky (ALZ)

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There's a great cleft in the world that runs through or near some of the most extreme places on the planet. I have never heard of this cleft having been run from end to end, but I still imagine that it would be a mountain-bike trip to end all trips. Starting at the heart of the Middle East, the Jordan Valley's Jordan River drops to the Dead Sea and the lowest point on the earth. From there it winds across the Negev Desert on the Israeli-Jordanian border, plunges into the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea, rises back to the surface along the Eritrean Coast, slices across the uplifted Ethiopian Plateau, and resolves into Kenya's famous Rift Valley. Sure, politics have placed large portions of this ride off-limits to travel, but the day the Horn of Africa is accessible to all is the day you will find me on my bike on the mountain ride of a lifetime.

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