Cycling The 6

A motley peloton and the Carretera Austral

2011-12-24T16:57:00.003Z

Backpackers heaved off their weighty packs, exchanged tales of testing bus rides, skimmed through Lonely Planets and made plans. I sat and watched them gloomily, still waiting and still glum because I was still here. As each group came and left I remained in the hostel, hostage by virtue of a swollen knee. Two Polish bikers arrived and they were stuck here too. Their tent had undergone some mini disaster and they were waiting for the Argentinian snail mail to cough up new parts. At least now my life had a focus. I knew that I had to get out of here before the Poles. The race was on. Every day I peeked tentatively under the covers and studied, stretched, flexed and massaged my knee. After a week I decided I could no longer risk postmen, big parcels and jubilant Polish faces. I had to get out of here.

I began cycling out of town, uneasy and unsure, but after the sameness of the plains in the far south Patagonia began flaunting it´s tail feathers, I was entering the realm of the Andes, the longest chain of mountains on earth and my majestic companion for the majority of South America. The Patagonian peaks are a lot smaller in stature than their cousins up north but formidable nonetheless, they glared at me from afar, daring me closer.

I soon joined forces with Vincent, a 27 year old Frenchman who carried his luggage in a slick, egg shaped, perfect white trailer. No corners, just curves and a hatch for access. It looked like space age technology. A French flag stood proud and sturdy and in the breeze towards the rear. That evening I found myself rough camping with three other cyclists, we were all travelling north and all planning an audacious adventure across a remote border post into Chile. Alongside Vincent and myself was Tim, a conspicuous Dutchman, tall with refulgent yellow panniers, a luminous yellow jacket and an equally luminous grin. The most notable part of Tim´s plan was the absence of one. He claimed no solid time line, direction or schedule. Instead he would simply ride vaguely Northward through South America whilst his money lasted. For Tim this was an insouciant jaunt where the best plan was no plan. The last member of our motley posse was Michel, a sixty two year old Frenchman with the wiry appearance of someone for whom travelling by bicycle has been habit for decades.

The team

The next morning we set off early to avoid that gusty menace characteristic of Patagonia. The four of us performed a ballet, tucked into slip streams, shuffling and re-ordering, buoyant and giddy to be riding as a unit. We swept into El Chaiten as condors swooped and glided in elliptical circuits above, the midday sun cast their shadows down to earth, they darted across the ragged terrain like sinister predacious beasts. The knobbly white facade of snowy crags and peaks dominated more and more of my gaze until we were all cowering under their prestigious glint. The sheer granite cliffs of Fitzroy took precedence over the rest, it stood aloof and self important in centre stage, flouting its juts and angles in the glare of summer sun. Mountaineers packed into the town seeking the rare weather window to make a summit attempt, a technically tough climb and a vicious micro-climate make tackling Fitzroy the preserve of only the most experienced climbers. We knew a few bits and pieces about the route ahead, some rough facts gathered from other riders we met coming South. This would be adventure cycling at it's truest, with all its tests, trials and hopefully, triumphs.

Thirty km rough road. Probably very windy.
First boat - leaves at 5pm daily (unless very windy)
Camp the other side of the lake
Very Tough Stretch - 22 km, most is unridable. Carry bikes and panniers through rivers, swamp etc
Second boat, leaves twice a week - don´t miss it. Nowhere to get food.

Tim and I set out together into violent gales. My weather meter clocked wind speeds of 60 and 70 miles an hour, Beaufort ten, almost hurricane force. We abandoned pedalling but found it tough to even stand in the face of the gale. The road surface became airborne and the stinging particles drove into our faces, it would be a "sand blasting" in the desert, this was a "dust whooping". Huge ethereal columns of dust surged upwards from the road and raced towards us. The clouds overhead tore across the sky as if someone had pressed fast forward. Luckily the shape of the land began to provide some shelter from the wind, we could ride again and made enough progress to ensure we wouldn't miss the boat. On arrival a local man gave us the grim news - "El Barco" he explained was "Kaput".

This was normal, he divulged, the boat usually breaks down a few times a week. The others arrived and I explained, we were all aware what this could mean. No boat today meant we risked missing the second boat which departed only twice per week. I watched Vincent digesting the news, he shook his head and sighed his frustration. Tim's grin was replaced by a troubled frown, he muttered profanities in Dutch. My attention shifted to the 62 year old Frenchman, his eyes met mine, he shrugged, grabbed an invisible Senorita and began dancing through the pelting rain with his imaginary girlfriend whilst singing ´La Bamba´. At least we were all in this together. Four more cyclists then arrived, two Brits, a Spaniard and a Romanian, we all began sniffing around for information. At the last minute a van arrived and it seemed, the boat´s captain. Relief spread through the party. We were leaving tonight after all.

From left Andre, Tim, Vincent and Nick

Eight cyclists

Sunlight flooded our free campsite on the lake shore and one by one I watched as another head peered out of canvas, eyes admired the pristine lake and then tentatively glanced at the hills and the daunting prospect upwards. A few of us braved the chill for a quick dip in the glacial melt waters of the lake. A few Argentine backpackers gathered and pointed towards the bobbing bodies in the water, "Mira!... Europeans!" they gasped as if we were exotic creatures. Now we set off through the trees. Over the next five hours we pushed and dragged our loaded bikes through dense bush on narrow tracks and through thick mud, hoisted them over huge dead tree trunks, carried them on our shoulders whilst wading through rivers knee high in water, hauled them up impossibly steep slopes and edged over slippy tree trunks traversing turbulent rivers below. A Slovenian trekker amongst us was the only one to have travelled this route before. He was finding it tough to disguise his glee at our painstaking passage.

"Are we past the worst bit yet?" Came a hopeful voice

"No no no. Of course not!" replied the Slovenian with mischief in his eyes. He paused for dramatic effect and to ruminate over this fact

"You haven't even reached the first swamp yet! And then of course there's the huge climb to the pass, oh and the river with no bridge, and the second swamp and... "

I had to cut him off before more unwelcome details emerged "... and then the dark forest of death and the valley of the doomed, but you should reach Mordor by sundown"

Perhaps it was because we were new friends and there was some male bonding going on, or perhaps it was simply out of necessity but at times our journey seemed interspersed with moments that belonged to melodramatic war films. Every so often weary legs would lose their footing, another cyclist would arrive at their comrade's aid, hauling the fallen to their feet and returning to action. In between the groans of effort and dismay emanating from our inching party and the scraping of panniers and rattling of racks came odd music of strange birds, siren-like calls echoed through the forest. Heads low, shoulders hunched, faces wearing the strain but with underlying resolve we moved onwards. It seemed improbable that there would be anything marking the border crossing out here but as we edged over the crest of another hill the words "Bienvenidos a Chile" slowly rose up to meet triumphant yet jaded eyes. There was nothing else here of course, but the sign meant everything. We summoned the energy to pose for the obligatory group shot under the sign, munched biscuits, gulped down water and descended. I passed two cyclists coming up and had to fight the urge to tell them to watch out for "The First Swamp". After another icy dip in another lake the much heralded boat arrived to take us to Villa O'Higgins and the very beginning of the infamous Carretera Austral.

In Villa O'Higgins Tim and I headed off together before the chasing pack. We were both meeting friends in Bariloche for Christmas and so had to make quick ground. I had a dirty secret - the deadline felt good. It's a romantic notion I can't fully claim to enjoy - taking off into the wild without deadlines, schedules, routine or constriction. In a life without structure I can't resist creating some. Tim and I were a good team and rode at a similar pace. Tim was a racing road cyclist in his previous life, competing in La Marmotte in the Alps amongst others. On tarmac climbs he would power past me as I span a slower ascent, but on rough roads the tables were turned and the figure of the tall Dutchman would slowly diminish in my side mirror. Of the many lessons Africa imparted, riding fast for hours on bad roads was a prominent one. Cycling at speed meant of course that when we hit supermarkets the result was carnage. Five minutes after passing through the checkout we would both be sprawled on a bench or just the ground, only metres from the exit and surrounded by empty family packets of crisps and chocolate wrappers with beer cans in hand. On at least one occasion we failed even to make it outside the store before descending into gluttonous scoffage.

Serendipity comes with the territory on the Careterra and usually it's easier riding with a buddy but I am sure Tim´s tendency to tempt fate didn't always help us on our way. He would emerge from his tent in the morning declaring ´Today will be perfect, I can feel it!´. An hour later, in fierce gales and pelting rain his attention would turn to the graded road ´God this road is great! I bet it stays like this for ages!´. After an hour of bouncing over washboard-like terrain and skidding and sliding over tennis ball sized rocks I would shoot daggers his direction as he sealed our destiny ´Well it has been tough today Steve, but it can't get any worse tomorrow´.

The Carretera Austral was Pinochet's baby, a rough road connecting the southern settlements of Chile, swinging through thick forests, fjords, glaciers and steep mountains. More than 10,000 Chilean soldiers helped construct the road, many lost their lives in the process. It stretches for over a thousand kilometres and seems to slip perfectly into this pocket of Patagonian wilderness. The Carretera is also something of a bottleneck, cyclists invariably choose this path over the windy and dull alternative through Argentina. It's the first thread on a spider web and afterwards a multitude of different options branch off, scattering cyclists to different corners of the continent. The route is hardly ever flat, the ups and downs though serve to satisfy every cyclist's inner masochist. The dips, rises and curves of the roller-coaster make every minute a different one and every corner and crest reveals a new view. Sometimes it felt like I had cycled through a portal, suddenly transported to another distant place on the planet. The road veered around emerald lakes, courted deep blue rivers, bounded over the foothills of glistening, snowy giants and then floundered deep into moist, mossy, deciduous green. Black faced Ibis cawed and Kites and Hawks languidly glided overhead. Some of this won't last. HidroAysén is a controversial mega project that aims to build five hydroelectric power plants in Chile's Aysen Region. Two on the Baker River and three on the Pascua River. The project is estimated to flood 14,579 acres of natural reserves. But for us, for now, we could immerse ourselves in nature and we embraced it, cooking over campfires, drinking straight from glacial streams and jumping into icy lakes when we felt the urge.

Some of this was familiar, I had cycled the length of the Carretera twelve years ago, as a nineteen year old punk on my Gap year. Then it was April, blustery and colder than now. But there was actually a lot I had forgotten, it made me worry about how much of my world tour I will be able to recall in my dotage. Now it was summer and there were definitely many more cyclists than I remember, and Patagonia was in bloom - lupins painted the surroundings with scintillating, uncompromising hue, the air was thick with the scent of pine and pollen. Only one thing spoilt the party - December and January are months for what locals refer to as the "Tabano" - a biting breed of horsefly. Every day they tracked me up the hills, feeding on me in my weakest moments.

Me and my brother in 2000, Carretera Austral, Chile

2011

Vincent was maybe a day or so behind us, the young French cyclist with curiously hairless legs. It had emerged that Vincent had taken to shaving his legs, reasons for which could only be guessed at. A popular theory was that his girlfriend urged him to and that he relented. Tim and I of course were unable to let this lie and it became an ongoing jibe on the Carretera. We often met cyclists travelling in the other direction and we were unable to resist passing them messages to relay to Vincent behind us
´We love your shiny legs´
´you´ve missed a bit´
Sometimes we´d hand them a razor to pass on when they came past him, along with the message
´in case you run out of wax´.

This region was cyclist central and every day I rode past a blur of riders taking on the hillocks and troughs. I came across the Lycra clad Speedsters and the ponderous meanderers. I met those on two week breaks from work, others on epic trans-continental expeditions and a few who had pedalled down from Alaska. I came across the super-lightweight and the unprepared and overloaded. I ran into solo riders, couples on tandems, threesomes and cyclists from twenty five different nations (that's right, I´ve been counting), the cycling-mad French topping the league table. I met trundling pensioners and a couple with a three year old toddler in a trailer attached to Dad's bike. I met the enthralled, the absorbed and the defeated, a few looked ready for a bus ride home.

In a small, inauspicious village along the Careterra was a Casa De Ciclistas. These refuges can be found throughout South America, they are homes whom the owners have opened solely for passing cyclists to spend the night. No money changes hands and nothing is expected in return. There were ten riders sharing the space that evening, we all relished the free shower, the bed and the good company. Hundreds of others have passed through over the years, their scribbles, sketches, cards and photos were crammed inside the guest book. Some wrote poems, one had added an altitude map of the road ahead. There were numerous messages of gratitude to the owner as well as addresses of blogs and websites. Up to eighteen had stayed here on a single night last year. We all crammed inside, loaded bikes were stacked up against each other in the open plan living room, people rummaged for pots and pans, pasta simmered away, stiff limbs were stretched, journals were scribbled in. We shared food, stories, tips and time. Maps were studied and discussed, our futures just lines and dots, soon a picture, later a memory, one of many. Tomorrow we would all leave, the house will be empty again until the late afternoon when more weary bodies in mud splattered Lycra shuffle inside. A few days later Tim and I camped under a bridge to shelter from the rain. We obviously weren't the first to take cover here either. On the concrete bridge supports other cyclists had drawn simple sketches of loaded cyclists riding through a mountainous backdrop. Like primitive cave paintings by hunter gatherers they had documented their presence for others to see.

The Carretera stunned and challenged us all over the next couple of weeks. Tim and I rode through nasty bouts of gastroenteritis, the Spaniard's chain snapped twice, Michel's bike would suffer a major technical problem and he would have to hitch hike north, the Tabano seemed to have a particular taste for Romanians and of course Vincent had to endure constant taunts about his shiny, hairless legs from cyclists coming in the other direction.

The next bit, strangely, I remember in detail from my time here twelve years ago. Queulat - a lush rain forest decorating the Patagonian Andes in which waterfalls drape from virtually every cliff face. The Queulat icecap and associated glaciers lie high and deep amongst the peaks. It rained of course, it usually does, some parts have 4000 mm of rainfall annually and over 300 days of rain per year. In 1766, the Jesuit Father José García Alsue explored the area searching for The City of Caesars, a mythical and enchanted city which was purported as having mountains of pure gold and diamond. Instead he found Queulat and almost certainly got a drenching for his trouble, though for me there really was mystery here and slowly it all began to come back to me. The roadside was as dense as I remembered with understories of bamboos and ferns and every vista dominated by evergreen trees and the huge exotic leaves of Chilean rhubarb, two metres in girth. I remembered too the sudden, sullen, all-encompassing envelope on entering the forest, I remembered the ashen clouds loitering unnaturally low, waist high to mountains and ephemeral rainbows. I remembered how the waterfalls looked like twine, tethering a huge unsullied white tarp of snow to mountain tops. And I remembered the all pervasive sounds of moiling water, the trickle and gush of a thousand creeks, rivers, brooks and streams.

My 25,000 km milestone in the murk

Soon afterwards we crossed the Chile - Argentine border for the fourth time. On Christmas day we pedalled still, along the lakeside the inhabitants of nearby Bariloche were coming out to cook meat on barbecues, drink wine, play music and swim. I made my deadline and was reunited with old friends I hadn't seen in almost two years after a twenty day mission with just one day off my bicycle. So I'm resting over Christmas and the New Year and then I set off north once again through Argentina towards Mendoza and Salta. A volcano spewing ash might make things tricky but as Tim would say "Its only a volcano. What could possibly go wrong?"

Finally... I need a new IPOD this Christmas so if you feel like helping me out by way of a belated Christmas present, even though I got you precisely zip this year, please check out the right hand column of this blog where you should find a blue button where you can donate just three pounds to help me get some music back in my life.

Have a great New Year

The end of the world and beyond

2011-11-28T12:14:00.001Z

Cape Town shimmered and blushed like dying embers of a camp fire as I said my silent goodbye to her in the pre-dawn glow. It had felt good to have had a brief stomping ground and a familiar place to roam although once again I had to say goodbye to new friends and itchy feet was an understatement, the urge to move again for those last few weeks was unshakable. In all I had spent three and a half months in the city, living and working in a backpacker´s hostel, waiting out the alternative, the callously bitter winter of Southern Patagonia. My African sun tan had long since faded and the beer belly was making a come back. I´m six whole kilograms heftier thanks in no small part to Castle Lager, regular braais (barbecues), indulgent days and hedonistic nights in the city.

Halloween in Cape Town

I perused my Spanish phrasebook for the first time on the flight to Buenos Aires. On arrival the Argentinian customs official poked curiously around my bike box, I attempted to explain that I was cycling around the world. The look of confusion etched onto the official´s face told me that my cramming hadn´t worked, although I couldn´t be sure if he had failed to understand my ropey Spanglish or just the concept. Maybe ropey doesn´t quite cover it, the only response I heard for days was “como?”. It began to feel like I was in a Fawlty Towers sketch surrounded by Manuels, but really I´m the idiot.

Buenos Aires was a city that demanded my attention, no matter how much I felt a burning urge to fly south and get cycling, and it had it immediately. I meandered through the streets of the new city, map-less, aimless and carefree, now one of my favourite pursuits, and couldn´t help admire the dapper Argentinians. You can sit in the centre of Buenos Aires for hours and people watch and it´s just one big parade of Adonises with not a blemish for hours. No prominent noses, no flapping ears and despite the long history of Irish and Welsh migration to Argentinian soil people´s eyes are a shockingly conventional distance apart. God bless the watered down gene pool. Half the population of Argentina if transported anywhere else in the world would be courted by model agencies and photographed for glossy magazines. Most of them of course know this, the girls mince through town, swaggering and strutting and playing up to the audience. Confronted by all these stunning ladies there was only one thing to do. I started learning Spanish in earnest.

I studied the dictionary daily whilst staying with an Irish friend Sarah and her lively posse who were all busy living, loving and learning Buenos Aires. A Spanish disaster was imminent when Sarah asked me to pick up some strawberries from the local Supermercado. I entered the shop only to realise I had forgotten the Spanish for "strawberries". I did however recall the word for "red" which led me to a regrettable decision - miming a strawberry. An audience of bemused customers and staff gathered and after an awkward few minutes, several tomatoes and a red pepper later, the store keeper delivered me what I was after. If things don´t get better then I may forget about learning Spanish completely and concentrate instead on my fruit impressions. I can already master a particularly convincing lemon.

I spent hours strolling through the streets basking in the creative buzz coursing through Buenos Aires, a city where artists, musicians, bohemians and performers clamour for attention. Eye contact is important in Argentina and most people speak more with their eyes than I am used to coming from London where intentional eye contact on public transport could leave you liable for prosecution for Grievous Bodily Harm. It is also an undeniably sexy city - tango dancing, the luscious Spanish accent, the patent good looks, all that eyeball love and public shows of affection abound. But exchanging my bike for a tandem not really an option and with no space for a Latino senorita on my bicycle I left Buenos Aires and flew south to the wild Land Of Fire - Tierra Del Fuego, further North the vast lonely windy plains of the Patagonian Pampas unfolded for miles.

As we made the approach to Ushuaia the plane dipped in low over dramatic snow encrusted peaks, so low that tourists and locals alikebegan to fidget nervously in their seats, the elderly man next to me clutched the hand of an angst-ridden backpacker on the other side in an effort to reassure. The plane seemed to lurch and pitch suddenly downwards as it flew a heart-thumpingly minuscule distance over the Southern Ocean, but just as it looked like we were about to land in the sea a runway appeared out of nowhere and we touched down at latitude 55 degrees South. Ushuaia - "the end of the world" - is the most Southerly city on earth and closer to the South Pole than it is to Argentina´s northern border with Bolivia. I had arrived in early summer, the snow line sat just fifty metres or so above the city and there were around eighteen straight hours of sunlight each day. Night is slow to materialise here, the sun lazily edges towards the horizon and remnants of day remain for hours after it sinks and before the brief gloom descends.

From now on my front wheel would be pointing vaguely North until I reached the top of Alaska and could go no further, perhaps around twenty months from now. Panniers packed I realised that my gear was much heavier than I had planned for and I rode out of Ushuaia with an impending sense of doom - where had all this extra weight come from? But within the hour I was sporting the sort of excessively broad grin that makes you suspect someone is mad or on drugs or both. I was chuffed to be cycling again, it was as simple as that. The tortuous road swung through a forested valley presided over by imposing and ominous snow capped peaks. Automatically I scanned the trees for monkeys and then remembered I wasn´t in Africa anymore. Melt water tumbled down sheer cliff faces collecting in the mountain streams hidden under the green coat of conifer. The weather was as flighty as my mood with polar shifts from bright sunshine to rain, hail and gale force wind. The unique fauna of the island made a fleeting appearance. Beavers, birds of prey and Patagonian fox observed me briefly from afar and then made off into the smattering of eery lime green trees with long spindly wisps of moss draping from the stunted branches. In the twilight I could imagine those ghoulish trees animated, creeping onto the road to carry me off into the murk. The end of my first day of my new venture north was spent with a young family who invited me in off the road to join them for an "asado" - a barbecue Argentinian style - and the kind offer of a bed for the night.

One inescapable trial for the long distance cyclist is the occasional grapple with boredom. After Tierra Del Fuego came The Pampas, the seemingly limitless empty plains which have all the ingredients for a dull day - flat, bleak, featureless and uninspiring terrain. Add in a vicious headwind and desolation and boredom is inevitable. If you are reading this from the stale interior of an office on a rainy morning in the UK then I apologise. I know I have no right to complain but I wanted to try to illustrate the price you pay for being too stubborn to take a lift. Some places in the world are simply too dull and boring for anyone to want cycle through. This was probably one of them. Eventually a bend in the road, excitement builds only to evaporate as bleak uniformity stretches out to infinity and the road returns to it´s undeviating course. Everything´s been put in place just to taunt me. I ignore the speedometer but the roadside kilometre stones serve as a painful reminder of my leaden crawl. The constant motion of oil pumpjacks in the fields - up down, up down, up down, adds to the sense of drudgery and my building lassitude. Most of the time I manage to let my mind visit weird and wonderful places but there are times when stubbornly it refuses to shift beyond the mundane monotony of the present, and for times like these I try anything to escape, or to at least avoid clock watching. I strive to remember all the places I slept in a country I passed through seven months ago. I try to recall all the causes of Chronic Renal Failure. I do innumerable calculations involving hours, kilometres and average speeds. I ask myself questions I could never know the answer to (Does Argentinian Patagonia have more guanacos than people? Answer, after three hours of deliberation - not sure) and more recently I have taken to conjugating Spanish verbs although my imagination sometimes then flits to unlikely scenarios involving beautiful and lonely Chilean farm girls.

In the last couple of weeks I have run into lots of fellow cyclists, almost as many as I met in the whole of the African continent, including a breed who to me will always remain an enigma. Head low, back almost horizontal, maximum two panniers and eyes scanning the trailing asphalt, nervously stealing fleeting glances at the odometer. It´s The Speedster. Over the last few years Speedsters have become as ubiquitous in this world as drunk British nineteen year olds on Gap Years. This entity seems to exist only on busy highways and dreary parts of the world, never on rough roads, never in those wild places. When we do cross paths the conversation follows a predictable pattern, often beginning with “So how many kilometres have you come?” Followed swiftly by “And how long did that take?”

Cue furrowed brow, mental arithmetic is in progress as The Speedster tries to calculate exactly how many more kilometres they cover per month than you do. Perhaps I´m verging on being one of those conceited know-it-alls, the type of irritating traveller who seems convinced they are exploring the world in a superior way than most, but to me it doesn´t make sense. The bicycle is the best medium to explore a country in detail, why race through? To see a lot but to experience little? To any Speedsters out there who may be reading this I have a few suggestions to make life easier. First off - a urinary catheter, to obliterate the need for all those time wasting toilet stops. A straw into your mouth connected to a huge hat containing carbo-rich liquidised mush, the kind of stuff NASA gives to it´s astronauts. And lastly, a tiny video camera on the handlebars recording everything that occurs outside your twenty degree visual field. That way if something interesting happens to your left or right there´s no need to turn your head, creating drag and sacrificing velocity. Just watch it on tape afterwards from the comfort of your own home whilst you tell your friends and family how amazing the experience was, although you wish that puncture on the N2 hadn´t dented your November average. And next time we meet - have some empathy, please. We´re not all like you, so lets not talk in numbers. Tell me a good story instead.

There´s a reason why so few people inhabit these southern lands, why the birds fly so low over the ground, why there are so few trees and why the ones that do exist bend out of the ground at bizarre tangents. El Viento - The Roaring 40s - the famously imposing Patagonian Wind. It´s the wind, not the hills nor the rain that is the real nemesis of the cycle tourer. These southern latitudes are amongst the windiest places on earth. I happen to be riding through them against the prevailing winds in November, the windiest month of the year. The cool air rushes across from the Pacific, sweeping over the glaciers and ice fields of Chile and then icy and unchallenged rages across the open plains of the Argentine Pampas. When it blows there is nothing to break the attack and nowhere to hide, aside from the tubular storm drains which run beneath the road, the same drains in which I hid from the merciless midday sun in the Sahara a year ago. It´s inside these I gulp down strong coffee and ready myself for another blasting. These are conditions, which if they occured back home, the media would issue severe weather warnings about days in advance and then document the destructive aftermath on the front pages. In Patagonia, this is business as usual.

As I rode across the Pampas the reputable wind bore it´s teeth day after day, my weather meter displayed constant wind speeds of forty miles per hour with gusts up to sixty. Again and again I found myself suddenly lying prostrate in the dust, tangled up in bicycle and panniers after being blasted off the road by yet another punchy gust. On days like these seven kilometres per hour was the best I could expect. It´s common to see cyclists pushing their bikes through these extremes on the Pampas, not able to ride, not worth the effort or just too disheartened to bother. So it´s coffee, music, scream frustration into the windswept void and then keep on pedalling. I opened my handlebar bag to retrieve a snack but the muscular arm of the wind wrenched several items out, sending them skyward. Collect, curse and continue. The howl is sonorous, angry and unyielding. Less a force of nature, now an animated being in my mind conspiring with the road to test my resolve and hinder my passage north. Occasionally I pass Refugios and small empty shacks by the road, but these are often used as toilets by passing motorists. Hundreds of miles of nothing and the truckers have to shit in the only retreat Patagonia has to offer. Brave the stench or brave the cold and the gale.

24th of November 2011 was a washout. I´ve had a few, and I´ll have some more. Days that stand out for all the wrong reasons and usually due to a mixture of circumstance, misfortune and misjudgement. Freezing my arse off trying to traverse the French Alps in mid winter. High fever, headache, vomiting and diarrhoea after a dodgy kebab in Egypt. Or the perfect storm of crap that descended on Nyomi and I in Tanzania, a catalogue of disasters including nine punctures in three hours, two broken bike pumps, a measly thirty kilometres and a drenching in a thunder storm. The 24th of November 2011 makes the list. Here goes my tale of woe...

I wake up with a start to the groan and murmur of the wind, the shudder and flap of my tent. As I pack up my gear I make a School Boy Error - I forget to weigh down my brand new tent as I unpeg. In an instant the wind heaves it into the air, transporting it expeditiously across the pampas, skimming over gorse and then snatching it again, throwing it into another broad loop. I give chase for almost two hundred metres, the tent appears static at last, only a few metres and a fence separate us, I attempt to hurdle the obstacle, my trailing leg clips the wire sending me crashing into earth and gorse. I shriek from pain in my knee and blood starts to ooze from my shin. I get up and limp across to retrieve my overly mobile home only to find two holes ripped into the outer lining. I bellow profanities into the wind but count myself a little fortunate, at least I actually have the tent, things could be worse. It´s not long until they are. The headwind is unrelenting and I trundle along despondently at six kilometres an hour. I cover my face with my Buff and put on my IPOD, at least I have music to wile away the hours. By 2.30 pm my speedo reads 31 km. At last the road abandons the plains and drops over the lip of a wide valley. The wind keeps up it´s torment but I´m grateful for the downhill. After an eight kilometre descent I notice my IPOD is no longer attached to my handlebar bag, the wind must have ripped through the leather attachment. Slowly I backtrack up the valley. At the very top I spot the IPOD, and then to my dismay note the dusty tread marks on the case and the smashed screen. Someone has driven over it. I pedal off delirious with rage and frustration and now thirsty as well, the slow progress and backtracking has left me waterless. Eventually I reach a small farmstead, my knee delivers shooting pain on every turn of the pedals and I have no choice but to rest here. I knock on the farmhouse door and explain to the farmer in Spanish my problems, I tell him about the strong wind, about my sore knee and about my need for a little water. He looks straight back into my eyes, slowly the corners of his mouth begin to curl up, soon his whole face is contorted and creased and beaming back at me, he holds his arms aloft and in loud English bellows "WELCOME TO PATAGONIA!" before erupting into belly clutching fits of mirth.

So the end result of November 24th 2011 was a broken tent, a broken IPOD, a broken knee, a broken spirit and 45 kilometres further Northwest. Not a great outcome. The next day the knee was twice the size than the day before so I rode the 40 km to El Calefate at a snail´s pace and it´s here I´ve been stuck for the last week, held up in a Backpackers with an ice pack on the swollen joint, growing steadily more impatient and frustrated. There´s now one Spanish word I will never forget - El Viento - etched onto my memory forever through hard won kilometres and the horrifying recollection of my tent doing aerial acrobatics across the Argentine Pampas.

Next up is an unusual and adventurous border crossing into Chile, the renowned Carretera Austral, some of which I have ridden before, a few zigzags and hopefully back into Argentina with a rough plan to reach Bariloche for the New Year, but only if my knee behaves.

I also wanted to let everyone know about the new page on Facebook - check out the box below, get liking it and sharing it and I´ll keep everyone updated...

Cycling The 6 Equipment Reviews 2011

2011-11-09T15:29:00.000Z

I've been honest, I promise. Yes, some of my gear is sponsored and yes, of course I have a vested interest in promoting the freebies, but on this trip I only approached sponsors who are at the top of their game and I refused kit that I suspected wasn't up to the job. I haven't included anything in the lists that follow that didn't work extremely well in some of the tough and varied conditions I experienced en route. This is a breakdown of what worked and what didn't, what I really needed and what I could have done without. It's in no particular order. Hopefully it will be useful for anyone planning their own cycle tour, expedition or outdoor adventure. There´s a full kit list on my website here.

Top ten kit list
(items which cost less than £50)

1. A Buff

How do you describe a Buff? Maybe ´Multifunctional headgear´ covers it. I used it in a variety of extreme conditions and I reckon I have worn it in every possible fashion (see the video below) including the 'Driving Miss Daisy'. It stopped me accruing ice crystals in my beard in the Alps, it turned into a sweat band in the Middle East and saved my eyes and nostrils from a sandy oblivion during a sand storm in Sudan. One word of warning though... don't walk into an Albanian bank wearing a Buff as a full face mask as I did, you will inadvertently terrorize all the staff.

2. Incognito insect repellent

Cyclists are a vulnerable bunch when it comes to mosquito bites and the diseases they carry. It's fair to say that as an absolute minimum, a bout of malaria would have really pissed me off. I found Incognito - a non DEET based repellent and gave it a go. Whilst riding through the malarial zones in sub-Saharan Africa it has been incredibly effective and I've been malaria free. Plus it makes you smell like lemons, which after cycling 150 km can only be a bonus. You can get some here

3. P20 Suncream

This is more of an essential item in my book. Once a day application is all you need - you can sweat buckets, shower or swim and it stays on. No grease, no shine and its fast gaining popularity. After only one application you can cycle 150 km through the Sahara under the scornful, merciless sun and no beetroot hue afterwards. Could this be the end of red and white striped Brits abroad?

4. Endura Hummvee 3/4 shorts and trousers

It´s a bold statement I know, but I reckon Endura make the best cycling clothing out there. I rode in these almost every day. Loads of pockets with zips, stretch panels and side zipped ventilation. And they look cool, which of course is very important when you're completely on your own for days at a time in the middle of a desert.

5. Craghoppers base t-shirt

I alternated between two of these t-shirts whilst cycling through Africa and both look almost brand new today. They cost less than a tenner and are made from moisture-wicking polyester which keeps you dry and not caked in sweat. Bargain.

Craghoppers Base t-shirt and Endura 3/4 shorts

6. The Nomad Expedition Poncho

Its all about multi-functionality when you're gram saving to avoid chugging too slowly up those hills. Yes it's a poncho but I also used it as a tarp and a ground sheet. It got me through the wet season and anything that copes with tropical rain in Tanzania must be worthy of a place in this top ten. Find it here

7.   Seal skinz socks

The Sealskinz range of waterproof socks keep your feet warm and dry even in the worst weather conditions and definitely worth investing in if you´re planning a journey through a wet climate. Unique patented technology - find out more here

8.   Moleskine journal

A symbol of contemporary nomadism. These are the ultimate, classic, smartest notebooks, used by the legendary explorers and artists of yesteryear. I'm particularly fond of trying to convince strangers that they are actually made from mole's skin. The Moleskine is where my blog begins and where my book, if I ever write one, will be spawned from. There are several different varieties. I use the large ruled hardback which has loads of pages, little pockets for all the scrap paper I scribble disjointed ideas down on and a reward section at the front. More info here

9.   Park MTB-3 Multitool

I've had many bad experiences with multitools. They often fall apart on me or I end up hurling them at something hard in frustration, and then they fall apart on me. But this robust little gizmo has everything you'd need and expect from a multitool, it's really durable and comes completely apart which is important because you need the Allen keys to operate the chain tool, most other multitool makers forget about this. When you dismantle it you have two tyre levers too. It includes various hex wrenches, spoke wrenches and screwdrivers, a bottle opener, a pedal wrench and a serrated knife.

10. Sea to Summit Sleeping bag liner

Washing a sleeping bag is a hassle so these save you the trouble - you just wash the liner. They also keep you even warmer on cold nights. There are various versions including silk and cotton. You can get some here.

Top ten kit list
(items that cost more than £50)

1. The Santos Travelmaster bicycle

I bought Belinda, my bicycle, knowing I needed to spend enough money to guarantee a solid, trusty steed. She hasn't let me down. Santos allow you to do a complete custom build, so you choose each part of the bike from a range of different components. You choose the frame colour and type of metal, the accessories, the brakes, the chain, the pedals, the rims... everything. This freedom of choice and high quality of the parts doesn't come cheap but I reckon it's worth the price tag and would certainly favour a Santos over, for example, a Thorn - another popular touring bike in the UK. The bike came with a Rohloff hub - a device which contains 14 internal gears and holds a solid reputation - most long distance cyclists I came across have one. I wanted a bike that was durable and easy to fix. Mine has a steel frame and isn't light - perhaps weighing around 20kg - but it's as heavy as it needs to be and will hopefully last me the five years I plan to be cycling. It came with a Brooks saddle, a handlebar mounted compass, a very strong kickstand and a dynamo hub.

I have ridden thousands of miles in relative comfort thanks to Alasdair at MSG Bikes who does an ergonomic bike fitting which is unique to him and not available anywhere else. Their slogan "it's not all about the bike is right.¨ Check them out here

2. 160 GB IPOD

Is this the largest music memory of all portable MP3 players? I don't rightly know but that's got to be the main draw. 160 GB = about 40,000 songs. That's over 110 days and nights of listening continuously until you reach the end of the track list. I have almost 30,000 on mine so I doubt I´ll ever get bored. Yes Itunes is annoying and makes accessibility difficult but it still has to be head, shoulders, knees and toes above the other MP3 players out there.

3. Leatherman Wave

Fix your bike with it, open tins with it, cut up mangos with it, open beer bottles with it, trim your beard with it, scratch your arse with it... not all of the leatherman's functions are in the instruction booklet but that's only because the list is endless. The Wave is the most popular Leatherman and includes a tough pair of pliers, sharp blades and hacksaws, scissors, can opener and more. It's one solid sexy beast and well worth investing in.

4.   Ortlieb Panniers

Out of the 26 cycle tourers I met between London and Cape Town almost all of them had Ortliebs, and there must be a reason. Immensely durable, watertight and suitably voluminous for starters. They are an obvious choice for most.

5.   Tubus racks

In South America I was once flung far from my saddle when a cheap aluminium rack suddenly bent and jammed into my spokes, obliterating several of them and leaving me rackless with a sore arse in a ditch. So it's fair to say I did my research this time round, make way for the Tubus. The concensus seems to be that these are the strongest racks out there and well worth the investment, unless you have a penchant for mud in your face and the taste of blood.

6.   Schwalbe tyres

I did almost 16,000 km on my front Schwalbe Extreme, that's the distance from London to Tanzania. This is another brand the long distance cyclists stick to like glue. Overwhelmingly more popular than the competitors, some cyclists complain of forgetting how to fix a puncture after fitting them. I have the Schwalbe Dureme on now, they might sound like a brand of condom but they do the job and I suppose if either bursts you're going to have a pretty bad day.

7.   Terra Nova Superlite Solar tent

Camping in thick snow, the Alps

Some would argue that equipment is overrated, that people take off into the wilderness all the time with cheap bits and do fine, but if there's one piece of kit you definitely don't want to skimp on it's your tent. It's your home afterall. I have camped for over 200 nights in my tent so far. In the desert, in the wet season, in gale force winds and in thick snow (see right) and my Terra Nova is still going strong, still water tight and the poles are still fracture free. The design is great too, there's loads of room inside, 2 doors and porches and if its hot you can just pitch the freestanding inner. It weighs a miniscule 2.4 kg and for me it was the best choice I could have made. Terra Nova have actually stopped producing the Solar but the Superlite Voyager is a similar price and just as good with a similar design. Be careful with the zips though... treat them well and they'll do the same for you.

8. Exped Downmat

Down and air is the combo gives you the warmest night's sleep. These sleeping mats are also much more comfortable than a thermorest or a simple roll mat. Check them out here.

9. Shimano SD66 SPD sandals

Tough sandals you can cycle in, with cleats if you need them. I wore them almost every day I was in Africa and they lasted me all the way. You can pick up a pair from Madison here.

10. Business cards

Not just a good way to avoid constantly writing down your email address to people you meet en route on scraps of paper which inevitably get lost but also a good way to promote a blog or website. I´m tired of explaining my route around the world so I have a map on the back of the cards so I can just show people instead.

Absolute essentials

Never leave home without...
Padded Lycra
A couple of good books

Kit I wish I'd brought...

A side mirror
A descent multifuel stove - such as the Primus Omnifuel
Two litre water bottle holders for the bike (still can't find any)
A decent travel pillow - the key to a good night's sleep
Presents for people / thank you cards - maybe some photos from home
A half decent netbook
A decent dry bag for the rack to keep everything together, such as this one pictured from Overboard Africa...

Some kit I wish I had left behind...

MSR stove (I had one, it is now floating around the crocodile infested waters of the Okovango river in Botswana. Good riddance.)
Self sticking puncture repair patches - good for a race when you have to repair punctures quickly but not for touring. They all eventually fail.
Cleats - still not sure if these were behind my knee injury but I no longer take the risk
My crap bike pump without a pressure gauge, always have a gauge.
Tubes with Presta valves - You will never find replacements outside Europe, go instead with Schroeder valves which are also handy because if your pumps breaks, and it will, you can re-inflate at petrol stations

3 things I would never skimp on...

1. Tent
2. Sleeping bag
3. Tyres

So a quick update - I´m currently in Argentina and about to begin the next leg of the journey - The Americas. It will be around 18 months from here to Alaska. Cant wait to get started. My knee has been a problem of late but the MRI scan in Cape Town was better than I had anticipated and the knee has improved a fair bit since, so on I go. More stories from the road very soon.

Musings on... Africa

2011-09-26T11:01:00.001+01:00

"All I know is that every time I go to Africa, I am shaken to my core"
- Stephen Lewis

Inadvertently I had picked a very good time to visit the African landmass. The first black American president, whose family had roots in Africa, had been voted into office. Africa's first football world cup was a resounding success and I made it through North Africa before the Arab Spring had sprung. I wanted to share with you a few thoughts and ideas about Africa - the money, the politics, the people, life now and in the future. I've only really scratched the surface in Africa, I know that. If I'd stayed anywhere for more than my usual fleeting few days then maybe I would have a unearthed a better understanding of the living, breathing continent I enjoyed so much. But nevertheless, there were things I mused over whilst riding, the beguiling and the frustrating, the propitious and the inspiring. I hope you'll use the comments section below to voice your opinion too.

NGOs and charities in Africa

It sometimes felt that people always wanted something from you in some parts of Africa. In Tanzania children asked for pens, in Namibia it was sweets and in Ethiopia, money. In Western Africa I've heard that people ask for 'un cadeau'. I was asked to help get people VISAs, to help find them a job or to get them an English wife (occasionally I offered Nyomi). The image conjured is that of a Dickensian figure dishing out gold sovereigns to street children from the saddle of a Penny Farthing, it seemed to me absurd that people expected me to lavish them in gifts and money. I often wondered whether parents actually instruct their children.

'Remember... if you ever see a white man on a bicycle be sure to ask for money, they are very rich and will surely offer up everything they own.'

These aren't the poorest of the poor I'm talking about. These are people who at the very least have their basic needs met, so where did this culture of entitlement come from?

I couldn't help notice that the places where we were most approached for money or pens or food were the countries most in debt to foreign charities. It's not hard to make the connection. The hand out culture may have evolved simply because people are used to having things handed to them.

I often met travelers who liked to direct diatribes at the work of foreign NGOs in Africa. It's a fashionable opinion which people would inevitably justify by quoting parts of Paul Thoreau's book 'Dark Star Safari'. I often argued to the contrary but have to admit that I accept there have been real problems in the way aid has historically been provided in Africa. There seems little doubt to me that feeling sorry for Africa's poor has in many ways been disastrous. It's undermined people's confidence in their ability to help themselves. Surely we should be inspiring the poor to act, not dishing out unqualified handouts? People moan about the 'tick box' way some NGOs operate, more concerned with keeping the donors at home happy than in doing what's right for the local communities. People also complain that NGOs don't cooperate, that several continue in a unilateral way to fix a problem that countless others are also working on. African governments do rely on NGOs, but you could argue that in reality they are leaning on them. NGOs are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They have to be apolitical and impartial in order to work where they are most needed but by doing so are they unconsciously supporting corrupt regimes? There's also the problem that a large proportion of the money donated to NGOs ends up in the source country, most seeps back through tax and other means, and if it does remain in the developing nation whose hands does it fall into? What's more is that billions of pounds has been pumped into Africa yet many would argue that it looks as though little progress has been made.

Progress of course is relative. What would have happened had NGOs not intervened in Africa? The HIV epidemic has devastated Africa and it's impact shouldn't be underestimated. Without the intervention rates would be even higher and perhaps economically Africa would actually have regressed. I knew the numbers. I knew that parts of Malawi and South Africa had HIV rates approaching 25% and in Maun, Botswana around 50% of the women aged between 30 and 35 were HIV positive, but walking into a Kenyan hospital clinic, looking at the faces of the infected patients, too many to sit down, waiting in hallways and queuing outside, was a real shock. It was clear that in the evolutionary arms race between man and microbes the HIV retrovirus was kicking our arse.

Generalising is never sensible and the fact is you can't tar all NGOs providing aid in Africa with the same brush but there are still too many examples of where NGOs are involved in ridiculous projects. I met a girl in Tanzania who told me she worked for an NGO who helped fit more fuel efficient stoves to homes in villages. She proudly told me that the NGO reduces CO2 emissions by 75%. Privately I wondered just how many stoves they would have to fit in order to blot out the carbon footprint of an NGO that flies it's volunteers out to Africa and then drives them around the villages in Land Cruisers. I later found out that the villagers were still using their old stoves anyway. It's an example of well meaning people not thinking straight and it's not the only one.

But there seems to me little doubt that a huge amount of good has been achieved over the last few decades, the benefits are often just not as visible. Mass vaccination campaigns carried out using money from foreign charities have driven down the rates of many infectious diseases, bringing some to near extinction. Child vaccination programmes have driven down deaths from Measles in Africa by 91%. Governments would never had been able to support these campaigns financially and millions of lives have been saved. Clean water has also contributed to the rising quality of life amongst Africans and rapid action in the case of natural disasters is vital in vulnerable communities. Over 290 million mosquito nets have been delivered to Africa and the impact on malaria rates is clear.

There has also been a change in direction of late, some charities and NGOs have shifted their attention to focus on sustainability, on Africans helping Africans and on making a long term benefit. I witnessed the cooperation between NGOs when I visited Merlin projects and it made me proud to have chosen Merlin as my charity of choice. Merlin of course offers help after emergencies, a different kettle of fish and a less controversial initiative. Training and supporting local health workers is central to everything Merlin does, from grassroots on-the-job supervision of rural health workers to establishing national training schools for midwives. This way, they help to create lasting change. They also have a campaign called ' Hands up for Health Workers ' which is all about calling on world leaders to ensure health workers in crisis countries are trained, equipped, paid, supported and protected. Merlin for me exemplify true energy, true action and true contribution in the areas of greatest need.

NGOs have to put out a message that they are the best people to sort out the problem. But of course NGOs do make mistakes, the key question for me is whether they are learning from them. Again there has been a change of direction. I came across this site recently. It's dedicated to NGOs putting their hands up and admitting failures and by publicly sharing them not as shameful acts, but as important lessons – NGOs are contributing to a culture in development where failure is recognized as essential to success.

The cynics rarely put forward positive solutions to the problems Africa would face without NGOs being involved, they would rather just moan about the problems foreign aid brings with it. Its easy to criticise, harder to offer positive solutions. The future of Africa no doubt lies in Africa helping itself. That is something I think both the cynics and the humanitarians would agree on.

The Chinese and Africa

In Ethiopia children shouted 'China!' over when they saw me approach. The only foreigners many had ever had contact with were Chinese, it followed that we too must be from China. The Chinese are busy in Africa. They built the smooth tarmac I cycled along in Sudan, they are involved in large scale construction throughout the continent including the Malawian presidential palace. I was shocked to discover that to build the palace the Chinese had shipped over hundreds of prisoners. Free labour all to keep the giant machine moving. I could imagine the long line of prisoners waiting for their work detail...

'You... laundry room. You... metal work. You... One year of hard labour in Malawi'.

China is Africa’s biggest trading partner and buys more than one-third of its oil from the continent. More Chinese have probably come to Africa in the past ten years than Europeans in the past 400. Its money has paid for many facilities and improved infrastructure but still the Chinese are viewed with mixed feelings by many of the Africans I met. The first complaint is that their work is not always of good quailty, roads have been literally washed away and Chinese built buildings have fallen down. They also have a reputation for caring little for local sensibilities although it's true that China has boosted employment in Africa and made basic goods affordable.

Opposition parties, especially in southern Africa, frequently argue against Chinese investment and Chinese “exploitation” . In the past two years China has given more loans to poor countries, mainly in Africa, than the World Bank. From 2005-10 about 14% of China’s investment abroad found its way to sub-Saharan Africa however most loans and payments are “tied” and the recipient must spend the money with Chinese companies. With no competition, favoured firms get away with delivering bad roads and overpriced hospitals. Creditors and donors often set the wrong priorities.

Is this all colonialism via the back door? Is China hoarding African resources? China clearly would like to secure sources of fuel for one. Africans are embracing new opportunities but are beginning to understand the many pitfalls.

Rwanda - the genocide and beyond

You can't visit Rwanda without the 'g' word creeping into your consciousness and you can sense the heavy weight that still sits on the nation 17 years on. I looked at the older people and I couldn't help but wonder what part they had to play in the events of those three murderous months of 1994 - perpetrator? victim? bystander? opponent? And Rwanda, a country of broad grins, waving children and immense hospitality was the last place in the world I could imagine a genocide taking place, it's almost impossible to imagine the horrors perpetrated by Rwandans. Rwanda - the good and bad of human nature, condensed.

The international community were slow in helping, pulling out NATO and leaving Rwanda to it's fate. The responsibility too falls at the feet of the colonialists, dividing up the nation based upon physical characteristics, in essence creating the hutus and the tutsis and the seeds of genocide. But for me blaming the Belgians is like blaming the abusive parents of a serial killer for the killing spree. In the end it's the Rwandans themselves that carried out the atrocities, who are guilty and many of whom are paying the price, Rwandan jails are chockablock.

What's interesting is the state of Rwanda today. There has been a huge change for the better over the last 15 years. In East Africa Rwanda stands out and is not plagued by some of the problems facing it's neighbours. Corruption has been clamped down on in a serious and far from hesitant fashion. Posters all over the country encourage people to report it. It's clean - no roadside rubbish dumps, litter free streets in the capital and a zero tolerance policy to those that dump. Plastic bags are illegal, they will confiscate them from you at the border. The roads are in great condition too. During the 2000s the government replaced the flag, anthem, and constitution, re-drew the local authority boundaries, and the country joined the East African Community and the Commonwealth of Nations. Rwanda's economy and tourist numbers grew rapidly during the decade, and the country's Human Development Index grew by 3.3%, the largest increase of any country. Rwanda also can boast more women in parliament than any country in the entire world.

Are Africans happy?

We only hear about the horror stories from Africa. The crime, the war, the disease and the corruption. It would be easy to assume Africa was continent of helpless victims or selfish malcontents. Yet the Africans I met were so often smiling and laughing, not just surviving, but enjoying life. Were they happy and satisfied with their lot? Enter the world of happiness economics. Clearly happiness is subjective and difficult to compare across cultures but that doesn't mean people haven't tried. After basic needs have been met, and the vast majority of the people I met in Africa would fall into this category, it's relative rather than absolute income levels which seem to influence wellbeing. I did meet the very poor communities coping with hunger and with drought but the majority were successfully eeking out a subsistance way of life and more. Other factors are clearly important as well such as feeling in control of your life and having options and choices. One study on the subject concluded that up to the GDP of Portugal 'life satisfaction' does increase, but above the GDP of Portugal there is little difference. Why? One theory has been labelled the 'hedonistic treadmill' - aspirations increase with income. The gulf is probably important too. Whilst apartheid is history in South Africa the divisions are still immense and it remains a country of the have and the have nots, a developed nation where only 15% of the population pay tax and unemployment is at 25%.

Corruption

I remember a small boy in Malawi asking me once what was the best job in the UK. I didnt know how to answer him, obviously the best job for one is not the best for another. But curious I asked him the same question. 'A politican' came the response.

The Malawian president seems to exemplify the issue. Like most African leaders he started out overwhelmingly popular. Then he started giving the highest jobs to people from his own tribe. He became embroiled in corruption allegations including the purchasing of a 13.2 million dollar private jet. So he clamped down on the media. Journalists who don't tow the line are victimised or arrested. More and more of the educated middle class leave the country, not keen to be working for a corrupt government. If he gets voted out but clings to power this would be the typical African story. Whilst I was there a British diplomat said that the president was 'ever more autocratic and intolerant of criticism'. True to form the president gave the diplomat 36 hours to leave Malawi.

Corruption of course is still rife all over the continent but it seems to me facile to tut, shake your head in disapproval and and say how terrible it all is. It helps to remember that corruption is on a much grander scale in the US, the UK and Western Europe. Only here it's legal. Bankers gamble with our money and the divide between rich and poor worldwide is ever increasing.

The future

One thing that surprised me in Africa was the sheer number of people we came across. I had assumed Africa to be a lot less populated than I found it to be. You think you've found a quiet little spot for lunch, suddenly three or four heads pop up from the bushes. Before long most of the village has heard about you and there is a curious circle of faces. The people I met in Africa were the reason I loved the continent as much as I did but the impact of the population growth is easily apparent. We consume, we waste, we spoil and we fight because more and more of us are living closer and closer together. The rate of population growth must be one of the most important issues facing Africa and our planet today.

But it's with great trepidation that I admit to harboring a rosy picture of Africa's tomorrow. People have been optimistic before and people have been proved wrong. But I do believe things are looking up. Time magazine recently published 'ten ideas changing the world right now' - Business in Africa was number six on the list. The growth rates of Tanzania and Rwanda are in excess of 6% a year and seven out of the ten fastest growing economies in the world are African countries. Fairtrade is on the increase. Once Burundi abolished school fees 99% of the children enrolled in school. I can't help feeling that at least some of Africa's problems stem from it's public image. Africa is 54 diverse countries and is full of incredable landscapes and natural beauty but above all Africa is men and women, and as the African proverb goes 'Tomorrow is pregnant and no-one knows what she will give birth to'.

Finally I leave you with a map. The most widely used map today is the Mercator projection map which was originally created for navigation across the seas. The Northern Hemisphere has a significant size bias. This distortion poses a significant limitation for any use other than navigation. Check out how big Africa really is... China, Japan, India, The US and most of Europe can all fit inside. It's time we started to see Africa differently and in more than just the physical sense.

Statistics

2011-08-23T11:32:00.002+01:00

I recorded various bits of useful and useless information as I traveled, mostly out of boredom but also because I thought that someone planning a similar trip to mine could benefit from some numbers. I made a note of the finances to remind myself how much I'm spending or rather to remind myself how much I need to stop spending, and I noted down where I slept each night. Here you go....

The bare facts

London to the Cape Town

23,215 km / 14,425 miles

27 Countries in 3 continents

1 year and 4 months on the road

Route and distances

Route: UK, France, Switzerland, Monaco, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa.

Europe (London to Istanbul)
5010 km over 4 months

The Middle East (Istanbul to Cairo)
3236 km over 2 and a half months

Africa (Cairo to Cape Town)
14,969 km over 9 months

Paved roads - 20,933 km
Unpaved - 2282 km (mostly in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Namibia)

Top altitude - 3050 metres - north of Addis Abeba, Ethiopia

Top speed - 75 km/hr (coming into Iskenderun, Turkey)

Biggest climb
The shores of the Dead Sea to the King's highway, Jordan.
From 400 below sea level to 1300 metres above
Continuous ascent for 55 km and 1700 vertical metres
(although this is nothing compared to what's coming up in South America)

Longest distance cycled in one day - 209 km
Southern Namibia to the South African border (strong tailwind and lots of Cadbury's Dairy Milk)

Shortest distance in one full day of cycling - 47 km
The remote Turkana region of Northern Kenya (lots of sand and lots of pushing)

Highest average speed over a day - 28.5 km/hr, Namibia
Lowest average speed over a day - 7.4 km/hr, Kenya

Longest stay in one place - 23 days - Istanbul

Accommodation

'Other' included churches, schools, hospitals, police stations, monasteries, convents, derelict castles, catholic missions, tourist information centres, rough on the beach, in a water storage tank, in the research facility of a crocodile farm and in the shed of a water buffalo (after the tenant was evicted).

Bike bits

Punctures - 113
How did this happen! OK, OK... it deserves an explanation - first of all I was under-inflating my back tyre towards the start of the trip, the pump had no gauge on it, so the tubes ruptured by the valve. It took me a while to figure out the cause. The replacement Chinese made tubes were so bad they often exploded whilst I was pumping them up before I'd got them to the right pressure and they never lasted very long. I got more punctures on the rough roads and some from thorns and the metal wire that comes from shredded truck tyres, both are all over the roads in Africa. I started off using the self-sticking puncture patches that don't require glue, these all eventually failed and I ended up repairing punctures I'd fixed weeks before.

Tyres - 8
I changed my front Schwalbe whilst I was still in the UK and could still get a replacement when a large nail pieced it after just 20 km in the outskirts of London. It goes to show Schwalbe tyres aren't invincible. I didn't get another puncture for over 5000 km. My front Schwalbe Extreme lasted an impressive 15,793 km from London to Tanzania. The back tyres tended to last about half this distance. Occasionally I had to use local tyres whilst I waited for new Schwalbe ones, they didn't last long.

Chains - 3
1. KMC Gold (titanium - nitride anti-corrosion) : lasted 14,490 km
2. Sram : lasted 7187 km
3. Cheap local one : lasted 1538 km

Brake pads - 6 sets
Rohloff Hubs - 2
Bike pumps - 6 (thank you China)

Spokes - All intact - No replacements required

Finances

I'm sure people develop a sort of selective memory when it comes to expenses and underestimate how much they spend. I recorded everything except that of my biggest expense - food - as it would have got far too complicated. Clearly I could have been more thrifty but whilst I could happily sleep anywhere, I could never really bring myself to spend less on food. Dinner was too important and I wasn't going to eat instant noodles every night.

The medical expenses relate to the expensive MRI I needed on my knee in Greece.
The card charges and commission I paid for changing money came to a painful £341.50, but what can you do?
I spent £956 on accommodation, not too bad over 16 months and I slept for free 60% of the time.
I didn't have a laptop with me so I had to use internet cafes. Wifi is everywhere these days and as you can see, I could have bought a laptop for the amount I spent on the net. A large proportion of this expense was because I uploaded photos onto Flickr which took time and money but which gave me piece of mind.
The costs incurred for 'tourism' included entrance to national parks, museums, sights of interest, transport around cities, activities and tours.
A note on VISAs... All VISAs were obtainable on the border with the exception of VISAs for Syria, Sudan and Ethiopia which had to be obtained in advance. Free entry / free VISAs included all of Europe (except Turkey), Rwanda, Malawi, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa
Cost of the other VISAs:
Turkey - £10
Kenya - £16
Jordan - £18 (includes departure tax)
Ethiopia - £19
Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia - all £31 each
Syria - £37 (includes departure tax)
Sudan - £107 (includes letter of intent from British embassy, VISA and registration fee)

Total on VISAs - £310

Most expensive countries
Obviously France and Italy come out top. Then Namibia and to a slightly lesser degree South Africa. Tourism was especially expensive relative to the cost of living in Jordan and Botswana.

Cheapest countries
Uganda, Ethiopia and rural Kenya and Tanzania were probably the cheapest parts. In Europe it was Albania.

Climate

Lowest temperature - Minus 19°C
2000 metres up, Corps, mid-winter in the Alps, France

Highest temperature - 56.5°C
I recorded this in sunlight, Omo Valley, Ethiopia
(note that the temperatures used on our weather forecasts are taken in the shade not in direct sunlight, although the shade temperature was still likely to be in the high 40s)

Other

Highest body weight - 80 kg before departure (due to my training regime of pasties and beer)
Lowest body weight - 65 kg Ethiopia (due to all the crazy children and all the crazy mountains)
Books read - 20
Most days without a shower - 8
Largest amount of Dairy Milk Chocolate consumed in one sitting - 450 grams

Crashes - 2
Me verses motorbike in Uganda
Tyre blow out on a downhill in Tanzania

Cycle tourers I met en route - 24
Six were English, four were German, four were Swizz and the rest were a mixed bunch. About half were riding the length of Africa.

Worst book I've seen in a hotel book exchange
'Candida infection: Could a yeast infection be your problem?' - Turkey

People always ask me 'what was the best bit?' Well these are five of my favourite memories...

1. My 30th birthday in Syria when a large extended family took me in and threw me an impromptu party
2. Free wheeling at over 40 km/hr on the flat for hours and covering 209 km in a day all with the aid of a magnificent tail wind, Namibia
3. Grabbing on to the back of lorries and being pushed uphill by a large group of giggling children, Ethiopia
4. Partying hard on the shores of Lake Malawi
5. Offroading through the Ethiopian wilderness

And in the name of balance - Five terrifying near misses...

1. Band of youths with sticks surround our tent and demand money in the middle of the night, Egypt
2. Accidentally picking up a Black Widow spider, South Africa
3. Collision with a motorbike, Uganda
4. Mob of children throwing stones and stealing our gear, Ethiopia
5. Pack of farm dogs trying to sink their teeth into my legs, Greece

Please vote...
Some of my favourite photos...

Syria

Egypt

Sudan

Rwanda

Namibia

France

Croatia

Jordan

Egypt

Ethiopia

Kenya

Zambia

South Africa

And finally - here's a video of the Milestones. Turn up your computer volume and if you like it then you know what to do.. like it, +1 it, share it and help me get it out there...

Day 265 - Guardian of the South

2011-07-23T11:32:00.000+01:00

The Northern Cape province of South Africa was a series of striking and tranquil tableaus with robust mountains and winding valleys and bright wild flowers beginning to bloom. As we moved south, homing in on Cape Town, we encountered more humbling South African generosity. It came first from yet another stranger who handed us yet another 100 Rand bill so that we could buy some lunch. A few days later a white van pulled up and a sack of 36 large oranges was unloaded into my hands through the open window, ‘for energy!’ shouted the driver. We were already carrying some ourselves so we now had 48 oranges to eat in three days. Nyomi began adding orange juice to her pasta sauce.

Further south we hit the vineyards of the Western Cape and then the Atlantic coast. We were growing impatient for the finish line. ‘Cape Town’ - two words that mean much more to us than another big city and a stop over, Cape Town is the podium, it represents a mission accomplished and a challenge surpassed. For the last sixteen months it has felt like a distant dream, a fairy tale city, and even now it felt as far away as ever. On our last day, Nelson Mandela’s birthday, we battled down the highway against the wind. During lunch a car pulled up and the driver felt the need to issue us a word of warning

‘Cape Town?… guys you know that it's at least 50km from here? Very far on a bicycle’.

We both laughed, he didn’t get the joke. Soon afterwards another car pulled up.

‘Where are you guys staying in Cape Town? You have to come to mine. I have a city house and a beach house. I’ll give you the keys. Which one takes your fancy?’

This was a ludicrous situation. I was dirty, windswept, cold, hungry and tired and now suddenly I was standing on the roadside giving serious consideration as to whether I wanted to retire to the city house or the beach house. We opted for the city pad, our new friend Paul drew us a map and we pedaled off again with renewed vigor. Table Mountain, the ‘Guardian of the South’, faded into view, it was more imposing and grand than I had imagined. Cape Town’s drivers honked and waved their encouragement. Soon we found ourselves in the Central Business District and I caught sight of a board advertising the day’s specials outside a restaurant. ‘Egyptian Koshary’. We had to stop. This was our favourite meal in Egypt at the very start of our African journey. It must be a sign. I got chatting to the waiter; he was Malawian and hailed from our favourite hangout, Nkata Bay. We quickly discovered we knew all the same people, including his cousin. The strange coincidences were mounting up but things were about to get even more surreal. First a transvestite walked past our table glammed up in a fluffy pink cardigan, a miniskirt, plentiful lipstick and numerous sequins. He winked at us and pouted as he passed by. An elderly man then approached us with a guitar and began a serenade. Bemused, we ate our fill and cycled to Paul and Kirstin’s pretty Victorian town house, situated right at the base of Table Mountain itself.

There was one more piece of the jigsaw; no journey across Africa would be complete without reaching the Cape of Good Hope, the most South Westerly point on the continent. So the next day we were off again, stopping on our way at Paul and Kirstin’s beach house and then meeting up with Jill, Sean, Megan and Andrew, a family we’d run into days before on the coast. They took us out for tasty fish and chips and we stayed the night before making the final push to Cape Point. On the way we rode along Chapman’s Peak Drive, a road of 114 curves which hugs the near vertical face of a mountain for 10 km along the coast and it was here we came past a road cyclist who waved us down.

‘Hey are you that doctor that’s cycling around the world?’

‘I am!’ I answered, astonished

‘Hey and are you that girl that fell over?’

‘I am.’ Grumbled Nyomi, dispondent

Glenn was recently back from a tour through Namibia. He had heard about us whilst he was there but we’d never met. The end of our trip was becoming as full of bizarre twists and turns as our road to Cape Point and our entire journey through Africa. We came across road signs warning of baboons, penguins, tortoise and then golfers. En masse the last must be a real menace with their outlandish fashion sense and flagrant disregard for good taste. The last section had a couple of climbs, we powered up with legs that were born in the Ethiopian highlands. The headwind was brisk but it was a gentle breeze compared to the gales on top of Rwandan hills. The sun beat down on us but it had nothing on the formidable heat of the Sahara. Every road, every path and every track leading up to this point had made our lives easier and our bodies more resilient. Finally after 23,215 kilometres, 26 international boundaries, one year and four months on the road, 265 days in Africa and a farcical puncture count yet to be tallied, we rode into the Cape of Good Hope. The end of our journey wasn’t quite as I had envisaged. There was no champagne, there were no dancing girls, there wasn’t even a little man I had assumed would follow us around playing ‘Chariots of fire’ from a stereo. Our celebration was low key, it involved a hug, some of those iconic shots at the Cape and of course, lots of oranges.

It was only as I turned tail and began to ride back down the road we had just come from that it really struck me. We were retracing our steps because the road had ended, and so had Africa. We could go no further except in loops and repetitions. I stared out to the Western horizon and remembered how I had stared out to the Eastern horizon many months before on a boat bound for France. Already my mind flitted away to distant lands, skimming over the surface of the sea to the next adventure. The Americas.

I have reveled in the last 16 months for many, many reasons. Living outside, all the exercise and all the unfamiliar faces and places have conspired to make me feel more alive than ever. I’ve relished the unpredictability, of having no clue where I’ll be sleeping that evening, the buzz of carrying everything I need in my panniers and the freedom that I know I’ll never have again. There have been so few big decisions to make and those that come up can be mulled over and meditated on. I am no longer caught up in the tide of rapid decisions and consequences that inevitably comes with life in the city. It’s a good feeling.

Our bedrooms have been a strange and diverse mix. Most often I have collapsed into a tent set up by the road, in campsites, on farms, in villages or even on sheer cliff edges. I've pitched in thick snow, heavy rain, strong wind and many times under starry skies. But we have also slept in churches, schools, hospitals, police stations, traditional huts, in the shed of a water buffalo and in the research facility on a crocodile farm. I have so many warm and enduring memories from Africa. I remember the magnificent vistas, the thick forests, the empty deserts, the towering mountains and the rolling hills, but no landscape was as vivid, colourful or inspiring as the people we met along the way. It’s the extraordinary generosity of people that has helped us through and it was the people of Africa who have encouraged us more than anything else. We’ve never been refused water and hospitality has become the default in every single country we have passed. People have helped without being asked and without expecting anything in return. People, men and women like Sugnet and Pierre in Namibia who fed us terrific food and let us rest up for a whole week. People, like the Turkana tribesmen who helped me find the right track when I was lost in the desert. People, like the team of engineers who plucked us out of a fierce thunder storm during the wet season in Tanzania. People, like the Ethiopian children who pushed us up the hills. There are far too many others to mention. I have lost count of the number of drivers who have stopped their cars to hand us food or drink or just to say well done. It has been people right to the end that have helped us through and we’re grateful to Paul, Kirstin, Jill and Sean who all gave us a place to stay, rest and celebrate in Cape Town.

But the person I am most in debt to is Nyomi who I have spent about half the time since I left England riding alongside. It's been great to have someone to share Africa with, someone to exchange those fleeting glances that say 'are you getting this?' At first it wasn’t easy, riding alone had probably made me a bit self-absorbed and self-obsessed with no one else to consider and I had to adjust. Yes she can be irritating, yes she can be loud, especially in the mornings, and yes she can be overwhelmingly flatulent, especially after onions, but she was always determined, constantly positive and unashamedly eccentric with a knack of making me laugh when I didn’t feel like laughing. Most of all Nyomi is a people’s person and in Africa, the most human of all continents, that made her one of the best partners in crime I could wish for on this stage of my journey. Without Nyomi it would have been a very different adventure, tougher probably, more peaceful definitely but certainly a lot, lot more boring. I will miss her, although I’m secretly glad her ukulele will be on a plane back to England and that I bottled my urge to use it as kindling for the campfire.

So have we changed? Has Africa left an indelible mark? Here's a before and after, you can judge for yourself...

Egypt…

South Africa…

So what’s next? For the Americas my timing has to be right. Southern Argentina is a chilly place this time of year and in order to hit Alaska in the summer time (more bears, less frostbite) I have three months to kill, three months I’ll spend mostly in Cape Town, and there’s a lot to do. My bike, blog and website will all be getting a make over, Nyomi’s family are coming to visit next week followed by mine a month later, I have to cadge a lift in a boat going to South America for some time in late October, I will be doing radio and newspaper interviews and a couple of public talks about my journey, I will begin another push for equipment sponsors, there’s the rugby world cup to watch on tele and at the end of September I travel to Malawi to DJ at the Lake of Stars Festival. I also plan to do some road cycling around the Cape Peninsula with some local cyclists as well as taking off on my bike once again to explore the Garden Route, the Wild Coast and possibly to climb a holy grail for mountain bikers – the legendary Sani Pass – the route from South Africa into the landlocked mountain kingdom of Lesotho (details to come). This blog will also continue and over the next three months you can expect the following posts…

Statistics – every stat from the last sixteen months that you could conceivably want to know and lots that you don’t

An Equipment Top Ten – A round up and review of some of the great gear I’ve used so far

'Musings on… Africa' – a few impressions about life, money and politics

Stories from of any cycling I manage to fit in around South Africa and Lesotho

Having reached this milestone I thought now might be a good time to ask for some sponsorship. Click here to go to my Justgiving page, every penny donated goes to the medical aid charity Merlin. To browse the best 250 odd images from the last sixteen months copy and paste this link into your browser for a slide show (you'll need flash player)... http://www.flickr.com/photos/cyclingthe6/sets/72157626055646576/show/

Finally I have to mention my left knee. I have kept quiet since the surgery 18,000 km ago, I didn’t want to hex it. When I came home after only five months I was heartbroken and when I returned to Istanbul I fretted over the fate of my knee for weeks, worried the injury would recur and end my ride. My knee ached a little after long days until about Uganda, but now it feels great. Another job for my growing to do list... thank you cards to my surgeon, my physio and the nursing staff on the ward at St Thomas’ Hospital.

It's usually only the bad news in Africa that makes our newspaper headlines, the disease, the conflict, the corruption, the poverty and the crime. It is a continent portrayed in the media as being either full of victims or a selfish, dangerous place, full of criminals and malcontents. Having cycled it's length that's not how I see it. I can't help feeling that some of Africa's problems stem from its public image. When people ask me 'what was the best bit?' I find it hard to answer. The best bits all involved people, but there are far too many to mention.

Deserts and desserts

2011-07-12T11:30:00.002+01:00

Something didn't feel right. We were in Swakopmund, a small Namibian town on the Atlantic coast, it has a one way system and a bicycle lane. I noticed that people walked small dogs, there were lots of grand houses as well as a 'Super Spar' supermarket and even a few fat people. Once I saw someone running, and not after a wayward goat, but for pleasure. This wasn't Africa. This was Europe. It looked like someone had surgically removed part of Germany, airlifted it to Africa and stitched it into place.

After a two minute conversation with a total stranger at the Malawi / Zambia border two months before Nyomi was handed a business card and an invitation 'Give us a call when you get to Swakop, you guys are welcome to come and stay with us'. We arrived and made contact. Signet, Pierre and Willy... A fantastically hospitable Namibian family who night after night cooked us great food and introduced us to Braai, barbecue Afrikaans style. We stayed for an action packed week which included sand-boarding, a German festival, taking a boat out to a seal reserve, visiting a snake park and then to top it all off Nyomi jumped out of a plane at 10,000 feet.
We left Swakopmund well rested, keen to continue. The coastal road was where the dry Namib desert met the sea. On our first night we pitched our tents on a huge granite mound which rose of the sand. We watched the sea fog roll in behind us, consuming the land and enveloping our passage east in a mysterious shroud. I had missed the desert, the clear skies, the emptiness and the fact that you never have to think about where to pitch your tent. But I had made a school boy error. On our way out of Swakopmund I asked a local guy where I could next find some water 'what about here?' I had innocently suggested, pointing to a small dot on my map. 'Yes' came the rapid reply. I've been traveling in Africa long enough to have known better. I'd been sucked in by a phenomenon known as 'The African Yes'. Whilst people are often eager to help they don't always understand the question thus reverting to the default response of 'Yes'. We were waterless in the Namib Desert, the dot on the map was a mountain, not a village. If I'd had my suspicions about the African Yes I might have put it to the test...

'Can we get water at this village?'
'Yes'
'Can I get a double Bourbon on the rocks at this village?'
'Yes'
What's your name?'
'Yes'
Do you believe Elvis is alive and well?'
'Yes'
'Who would win in a fight - a penguin or a badger?'
'Yes'
'What's the opposite of yes?'
'Yes'
'Do you know the meaning of life?'
'Yes'
'What is it?'
'Yes'

As always it was locals, this time motorists, who came to our aid and filled our bottles. We pushed on to the sprawling metropolis aptly named Solitaire. I found it amazing that a place that consists only of a petrol station, a lodge and a bakery had found its name onto road signs advertising it's existence one hundred kilometres away, but this was Namibia after all. It's the bakery I was interested in. Even before we had arrived into Namibia I had heard rumours about a bakery in the middle of the desert run by a legendary figure known as Moose. People assured me that this bakery was home to The Best Apple Pie in Namibia. I was so lost in pastry-based fantasies that I had got well ahead of Nyomi on that sandy track leading to Solitaire. A car stopped beside me 'your friend's hurt' said the driver 'she crashed'. I pedaled back to the accident site; Nyomi was flat out staring vacantly upwards and complaining about her leg. I looked her over, it would be big bruise but probably no lasting damage, although clearly she couldn't ride today. She hitched a lift with her bike, I arranged to meet her in Solitaire. But when I arrived I faced a short lived dilemma...

Check to see if Nyomi's OK
The Best Apple Pie in Namibia
Check Nyomi
Best Apple Pie
Nyomi
Apple Pie
Ny... PIE PIE PIE PIE PIE PIE PIE

My conscious mind could barely recollect who Nyomi was, I had to find Moose, thankfully he wasn't hard to find. Moose had the physique you'd expect of a man who'd been baking apple pie in the middle of the Namib desert since 1992. His pies were evidently so good that pretty soon he was going to need to stop looking at pastries and start looking for a good cardiovascular surgeon. He was closing shop when I arrived

'I've only got Apple pie left' said Moose
'That's all I need Moose. Tell me, is it the Best in Namibia?'
'Well it's the best in town'

Moose had been selling apple pie to travellers for years. Solitaire is remote but also relatively close to the huge red sand dunes at Sossusvlei, Namibia's premier tourist attraction, relatively being the all important word. This meant that the bakery was adventurer central and Moose had met them all. He'd met people who'd arrived in black London taxis, in double decker buses and a Chinese man who arrived on foot. From China. He'd met a Dutch cyclist whose journey dwarfs mine; he was on his third circumnavigation of the globe by bicycle. Not much impressed Moose these days. I checked on Nyomi, she said she felt fine. I didn't. I'd overdone it on apple pie. The next day we continued to the famous dunes, for the last section we left our bikes at the campsite and got a lift with a French family - mum, dad and three children aged 3, 6 and 10. They were traveling around the world for two years in a converted fire engine. Check them out... http://www.chamaco.fr/.

We got out of the truck just before sunrise and climbed 'Dune 45'. The world abruptly became a computer screen saver. Only two colours existed in this peculiar and angular world - the blue of the sky and the fierce orange of the sand. But I couldn't help feel a bit shortchanged. The appeal of the desert, for me at least, is the lonely serenity, the space and the silence. I found myself amongst a hoard of hysterical Overlanders trying to get a photo of their mates doing star jumps. And then there's the helicopters, ever-present in sites of natural beauty because there's rich people and money to be made. It all began to feel less like a wilderness and more like a theme park. But despite the chaos, this was the desert at it's most luminescent and stark. A photographer's paradise.

We got moving again and ran into another family, the third to take us in the last week. Mike, Carol and their four kids fed us more braai, beer and information about our increasingly chilly route through South Africa. We were out of the tropics now and this was winter time. My Buff has gone from sweatband to neck warmer, woolly hats and gloves have been unearthed from the ‘pannier of doom’. The mornings are what a British weatherman might describe as ‘fresh’ or ‘crisp’, what I’d call XXXXXXX cold. My body’s confused; it had been stuck in a perpetual summer. I realise I’m a bit like a farmer in that I’m always talking or thinking about the weather. But I suppose that’s because, like a farmer, I’m always in it and it matters. A downpour or a headwind can really spoil my day. Nyomi's eccentric appearance had reached new heights. In the chilly mornings she would emerge from an ice covered tent wearing everything she owned, including socks on her hands. The human cocoon would pedal off looking somewhere between Kenny from Southpark and the Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters. As the day gets warmer she sheds layers until she's stripped down to a pair of lycra shorts over lycra leggings, a vest top and a headband. In three hours she goes from Eskimo to aerobics instructor. If she continues this commitment to increasingly deranged fashion statements once she goes home next month it will only be a matter of time until she is pounced on by six orderlies and forcibly injected with anti-psychotic drugs.

We zigzagged through Namibia on dirt roads, occasionally happening upon dusty backwaters and end of the road towns where I always expected to find fresh fruit and veg and where I was always disappointed. I still hadn't learnt to lower my expectations. A shop with 'mega' or 'hyper' in the title might sell crisps and nuts, a 'supermarket' - some penny sweets, and in a 'retail outlet' there might be a couple of empty shelves, occasionally a front door, never anything for retail and sometimes a sign saying 'back after lunch' that a neighbour tells you has been up for three days. Finally we got back to tarmac and were heading south once again. It felt good to be facing Cape Town, our noses pointed south, or my nose at least, Nyomi's was hidden under buff headwear, neck warmers and polo-necks. We were heading to a town called Keetmanshoop. It didn't sound much like a town to me, it sounded more like a lesser known member of the Wu Tang Clan. Nyomi's family arrives into Cape Town at the end of the month so we had to push on quickly down the B1. We were interviewed in Swakopmund for a national Namibian newspaper after which the reporter happened to mention the 'B1 Butcher'. That's right, Namibia had it's very own serial killer. But it's OK, the reporter reassured me 'we think he's dead', 'you think?', 'yeah, someone died and, well, it might be him'. Great. Keetmanshoop was a good venue for our day off, we explored the Quivertree forest, the quirky rock formations at the Giant's Playground and then fed some captive cheetahs.

Quiver trees

Once again we were on the receiving end of warnings from passers by, South Africa was apparently crime-ridden and full of those ubiquitous 'Bad People'. It was clear we were closing in on our final African nation when I saw this sign in the window of a bakery...

So back onto the B1 but still 210 km from the South African border. We'd never make it in one day. The ups and downs of life are more pronounced when you’re always moving. I get excited about little things and banalities – smooth tarmac, a meal I didn’t have to pay for, a shop selling cheese, another cycle tourer, a tailwind, a strange insect on the road, a quirky road sign. I was about to get really excited. An hour after starting out through the Southern Namib desert the raging northerly wind hit gale force. It was so strong we found ourselves freewheeling on the flat at 40km/hr, giggling and screaming like children. We were swept off the desert plateu and descended to the Orange River marking the border. That day I broke two records - the first was the greatest number of kilometres I have cycled in one day and the second was the most days I have gone without a shower. It was an unfortunate that both records coincided, after a hearty 209 km and 8 days without a shower I 'hummed' (Nyomi's words). In the border town I gave everyone a wide birth, everyone except the petrol station attendant who tried to charge me ten Namibian Dollars for use of a cold shower. Curiously the fee was quickly wavered.

At last we were in South Africa, only 120 km to the next town, Spingbok, we'd easily make it. But we'd used up all our good karma, first hills, then flies, then punctures, then a headwind, then pointless squabbles bourne of frustration impeded our progress. At first the landscape reminded me of Sinai in Egypt, a dead world of rocky outcrops, crags, boulders, scree and beige. The land grew a touch greener and I recollected my time in Western Greece and Central Anatolia. I have cycled so many roads that de ja vu is almost a daily occurrence. A sudden suspicion that I've ridden this road before, the sun is in the same position in the sky, the landscape looks eerily familiar. If I think hard enough I can work out which road in which country it reminds me of.

South Africa

We made it to Springbok. Whilst strolling around town a guy leaned out of a green Golf GTI, jeered and then shouted me over. He wore huge sunglasses and an off kilter baseball cap. Perhaps he was one of these Bad People. I cautiously approached, he fired out some questions and I replied, telling him briefly about my journey before saying farewell. A minute later he bounded down the street after us and thrust a 100 Rand bill into Nyomi's hand 'Have fun in South Africa' he said smiling. South Africa may have one of the highest murder rates in the world but perhaps it also has one of the highest getting-handed-money-by-complete-strangers rates as well.

The gift came at a good time. South Africa and Namibia are more expensive than anywhere I've passed through since Western Europe. Most travellers spend the majority of their funds on accommodation and ‘tourist’ activities. We spend little on these, as a proportion of our budget much, much more goes on food. Here are Steve and Nyomi’s ten ways to save money (Nyomi’s the really thrifty one, I could be more frugal were it not for the twin vices of beer and chocolate).

1. Have a ‘quick look’ around a five star hotel and then steal the toilet paper. A special thank you to The Livingstone in Zambia. My saddle sore arse got the five star treatment it deserves.

2. Rough camp. It’s easy to free camp in the bush but we also ask at police stations, schools, churches and hospitals when we get to towns, even when there’s a perfectly good campsite or hostel around the corner. When you have to stay in a guesthouse never choose one with 'oasis', view' or 'resort' in the title. I'm sure each adds 50% to your bill.

3. Don’t buy new books… use hostel book swaps. You will occasionally find a gem but be prepared to sift through the rubbish. In one Turkish book exchange, next to an autobiography by Richard Hammond, I actually found a self-help guide to genital herpes. It was good to see it in the same vicinity as the autobiography though, I can think of many similarities between Richard Hammond and genital herpes, but I can’t help wondering what they swapped it for. Did they saunter off with a smug grin and War and Peace tucked under their arm?

4. Internet… in Europe you can ask a student. If you’re lucky they’ll lend you a card or password and you can use the university computers. In Africa you just have to cough up at internet cafes.

5. http://www.couchsurfing.org/. We love it.

6. Repair, don’t replace. Africans are much better than we are in the wasteful west. My shorts are a patchwork quilt. Hole in your tyre? Just put a piece of old tyre inside to plug the gap.

7. Always wash your own clothes. Scrub, rinse, black water down the drain, scrub, rinse, black, scrub, rinse, black, scrub, rinse, oh that’ll do.

8. Avoid other tourists and their hangouts. Eat with the locals.

9. Haggle, trade things, shop around, let people buy you beer.

10. If it’s free… go to town

Unfortunately I don't own a laptop, I have to use internet cafes to write this blog. Internet's not cheap in South Africa so this post and the next few will cost a fair bit. I could cut down on food and eat less to save money but let's face it, there are few images more bleak or farcical than a grown man in baggy lycra. So instead, if you want you can help contribute to the cost of this blog by donating three quid... just click on the blue 'Support' button in the right hand column and at the top of this blog, underneath the map. Bar The Apocolypse, my next post will come from Cape Town, the end of my African odyssey.

Where the wild things are

2011-06-23T13:28:00.003+01:00

Recently it’s been more about the people than the wildlife, but the next thousand kilometres would flip the script, if I was going to have close encounters with roadside beasts, Botswana, I was assured, would be the venue. Nyomi and I get on well most of the time but we get up together, we eat together, we cycle together, we rest together and now we needed a break from being together. When we squabble it's only ever over trivialities. Classic battles over the last few months have included ‘Stop eating so many aubergines!’, ‘Those better not be your socks in the food pannier!’ and ‘I can’t believe you didn’t eat that chapatti!’

We parted ways in Livingstone; Ny would ride the Caprivi strip in Namibia whilst I cycled a loop through Botswana. We’d meet again in three weeks’ time. Botswana is a country the size of France with a population of two million, all manner of toothsome fauna and more elephants than you can shake a baobab at (around 150,000 roam around the Botswanan bush). Young men in Zambia on hearing my plan to ride through Botswana alone, uttered a phrase I would hear much too often over the next few weeks, an unsettling question for anyone, especially when it occurs to you that you don't have a good answer.

“But what will you do about all the lions?”

But I had yet to enter Botswana and the bush is not to the only place you can find wildlife in Africa, the border towns are full of it. I warm to most people I meet at the borders as much as I welcome weeping saddle sores. There are all kinds of shady characters, tricksters, crooks, petty thieves, gangsters and opportunists. Their job is to make some money from the unwary, yours is to remain on the ball and not to get stung. The border crossing was a ferry ride across the river. A sign on board gave a list of things you needed to do once debarked, including directions to customs and immigration, it ended with ‘to complete these formalities a guide, ‘agent’ or third party is not required.’ The word ‘not’ had been scratched out, presumably by a moody middleman not wanting the placard to curtail his business. If you need to change money these guys know all the tricks. They give you phoney rates of exchange and usually work in a cartel so everyone has been briefed to tell you the same wacky rate. They use their own calculator and often ‘forget’ a zero, aiming to cheat you by a factor of ten. They hurry and hassle you into changing notes quickly hoping you’ll make a mistake. They sometimes even take your money, claim it’s not authentic, switch it for an actual fake and hand it back to you, pocketing your genuine dollar bills. Changing money at this border was made harder by the fact that the Zambian Kwatcha is the eighth least valuable currency in the world, there are around eight thousand to the pound, and in Zambian terms I was a millionaire. But I’m getting used to African borders and I have developed a strategy to get me through which involves choosing one guy and shouting ‘Everyone else please piss off. I’m dealing with this guy ONLY!’ The ‘please’ is optional. If they are particularly in my face I add ‘you bloodsucking XXXXXX’ (choose from one or more derogatory terms of abuse). It helps to be calm, assertive and always generous with your expletives.

Most people have an out-dated image of Africa where wild animals terrorise villages and jump out at unsuspecting travellers all the time. In fact most big game and any creature that could pose a risk to the livestock has long since been killed or rounded up and left to roam in the national parks, not so in Botswana, a country teaming with beasts. I soon came across a sign with the caution ‘beware of animals’. Couldn’t they be more specific? Did they mean the cutesy, diminutive, cud chewing kind or the sever your jugular and nibble on your spleen variety? I intermittently glanced fearful and expectant into the bush wondering what was about to leap out of the undergrowth, Bambi or Scar? Crouching lions morphed into ant hills as I nervously edged towards them. I jumped at a rustle in the bushes only for a hornbill to emerge and flutter away. A quick-fire nervy internal monologue began in an effort to reassure myself ‘A hornbill! Just a hornbill! That’s an animal! That must be what the sign meant! No lions here, just birds and OH JESUS WHAT’S THAT!’ Just ahead three elephants were stripping the green from a tree. I crossed to the other side and tried to slip by unnoticed but they startled, fortunately they ran away from me and the road. Presumably I had scared them off with my whimpering demeanour and expression of unsullied terror.

A Hornbill

After sixty kilometres I passed the only pedestrian I’d seen all day. I pulled over for a chat. He was a farmer with a rifle slung over his shoulder and this had been his home for many years.

‘I’m surprised you travel in this way’ he muttered, frowning, gesturing towards my bicycle and taking a long stride backward as if it was harbouring a contagious disease.
‘Why?’ was the obvious question.
‘The wild animals here are many. Many, many, many. I never leave home without a gun. Lions live here. I saw some last week’

Why was it only now that I could see the holes in my original plan? Rough camping, alone, in a sparsely populated part of the African bush, in lion country with no weapon aside from the two inch blade on my Leatherman was starting to look like a crap idea. Luckily after one hundred kilometres I came across a campsite. But I knew there were no other campsites or even small villages for the two hundred kilometres after this one so I decided to quiz the owner.

‘What wildlife do you have around here?’
‘Everything mate’
‘Lions?’
‘Lots. We hear them almost every night. I’ve seen some cyclists pass this way. So far I’ve not heard of any being attacked’

The inflection on the ‘so far’ made it clear she had decided that lion verses cyclist was imminent. Luckily she told me there were some workmen one hundred kilometres south who were helping build the roads. They had a bush camp and, I hoped, something more useful than a Leatherman if a pride of hungry lions came round for dinner. Maybe I should camp with them. As I walked back to my tent a sound rose out of the bush, ‘uuuuuh-huuumph’ repeated again and again, becoming softer and slowly fading into silence. An unmistakable sound. Lions were calling through the night. I'm camping with them.

Later that night, ensconced inside my tent and sleeping bag, I thought about what she’d said. I was excited about tomorrow. This was a real adventure. I hadn’t felt like this since the struggle through the remote badlands of northern Kenya. Now I was alone, experiences more intense, the world a more intimidating place to roam. This wild region was how I imagined Africa to be. It was the Africa of dense scrub and limitless grassy savannah. It was the Africa untouched by cultivation and human hand. It was the Africa of wild beasts. It was the lonely, exhilarating, terrifying side of the Dark Continent. I was frightened. I was enthralled.

I adopted a new strategy. If lions were around I would be off the road by evening, not nightfall as usual, but the next day I fought against an unyielding headwind. With thirty kilometres to go I passed through a game-proof electric fence surrounding a farm but ten kilometres later I was out the other side, there was a paucity of traffic now and I soon found myself riding through the shadowy bush, this was definitely lion hunting time. Finally I made it to the road camp, they were happy and surprised to have a visitor, I was happy and surprised to have made it. The next day was a free cycling safari. I saw a variety of big and small antelopes, vervet monkeys, warthogs, more elephants and hornbills, various birds of prey, buffalo, ostrich, black-backed jackals and not a sniff of a lion. On a vehicle safari the animals don’t often appear very wild especially when surrounded by twenty tourists, each intent on manoeuvring their expensive zoom lens into the lion’s mug. But this was much better, no tour guide, no glass windows, nobody else around at all. The scrub was so thick that often I didn’t see the wildlife until I was nearly face to face. That was the case with one of the elephants I came across, a huge solitary bull. This time he stood his ground and it was me who did the running away. I have seen some freaky creatures during the last year… scorpions in the Sahara, seven foot crocodiles in Ethiopian lakes, a Giant Crab Spider lurking in an Egyptian toilet, but the next one would beat them all hands down. In the grass by the road I caught a glimpse of something slithering. Something big. Something very big. I realise I may have watched one too many nature programmes with Steve Irwin type presenters bounding around after dangerous reptiles because when I spotted it I wasn’t content to watch from a distance, instead my instinct shouted 'charge into the bush after it!'. The snake was maybe two metres in length and had alternating black and gold bands. Later I ID’d it as a Snouted Cobra, a species which boasts neurotoxic venom and a potentially fatal bite. After this close encounter I saw a lot more snakes, some road kill, others very alive. I counted over ten Puff Adders, the snake responsible for more human deaths in Africa than any other. Twice I came close to what I assumed to be pieces of old car tyre only to find them suddenly move, transform and rise up into a striking pose, I did wide loops around them. For the next few weeks I also did wide loops around pieces of old car tyre. On the way into Nata I met a local guy on a bike, he had a huge dead vulture slumped across the back wheel. Blithely and with obvious pride he announced he had beaten it to death with a piece of wood. He was taking it home for dinner.

Dinner

A Puff Adder

A large Snouted Cobra

A bush baby, caught by a guy in the campsite. It was delicious, especially when we added a couple of kittens and a puppy to the shish kebab.

A dead Honey Badger

Ostrich

The same dots on my map which in Zambia represented large bustling market towns in Botswana now denoted two dilapidated houses and a petrol station. On my way to Maun a car pulled up, the window came down and an accented voice hailing from the North East of England came forth. ‘Hello pal. Come to Gweta Lodge when you pass through. I’ll buy you a beer’ and with that he was gone. The next day I checked in on the stranger, Terry is a character probably best left to be described in the book, not the blog. He did buy me that beer, in fact one turned into two which turned into four which turned into eight. By the eighth or nineth beer it had been decided, I was sleeping in a cabin in his lodge and eating with the staff. If they had a free seat in a vehicle the next day I could go out to the salt pans, unfortunately there wasn’t room so I moved on but with good memories to take on my journey south.

I reached the tourist haven of Maun but couldn’t afford to go out on the Okavango Delta, Botswana offered little I could afford. Most of its revenue comes from diamonds and tourists and in the case of tourism it opts for a policy of ‘low volume, high cost’. Luxury lodges on the salt pans cost 1400 US dollars a night or in simple speak ‘crazy money’. Botswana is not really a backpacker destination unless you happen to be wearing a bandanna, a sarong or crazy pantaloons and have a mummy and daddy that throw ludicrous amounts of money your way to help fund your gap year all because what they really want is you out of the house for a while. Couples and bands of overlanders set out on boats from various lodges for a ‘booze cruise’. If you were going to name a boat for the purpose of taking pissheads out at sunset, what would you call it? I want to hug the person who came up with this…

‘Cirrhosis of the River’

After leaving Maun I saw a number of Herero women, a group of people originally from Namibia. They were adorned in huge dresses derived from the style of Victorian era German missionaries. Enormous crinoline is worn over a series of petticoats as well as a horn shaped hat. But after these colourful characters faded away Botswana got boring. It might be a succinct description but it was 400km of straight roads, flat terrain, no wildlife, nobody to talk to and nothing to inspire interest. Generally it went something like this…

Bush… cow… bush… goat… bush… cow… bush… goat… bush… cow… bush… goat… bush… cow… bush… goat…ice cream parlour… cow…naked lady… goat… human-sized bottle of cold beer

Stop cycling, slap in the face, and resume… Bush… cow… bush… goat…

In fact the only thing to break the monotony was the odd dog chase. Since the menacing mutts of Eastern Europe I’ve had it easy, dogs in Africa are underfed, scrawny and timid, less intent on attacking strangers than on finding their next scrap of food. But Botswanan farms were home to territorial hounds and once again it’s game on.

On my last night in Botswana I saw a sign for a Crocodile Farm and decided to investigate. They warned me of hippos outside the perimeter and so offered to let me stay in their research facility. I was a bit more concerned about meeting a stray crocodile ‘Oh that’s just snappy, don’t mind him, he’s like one of the family. Snappy no! What have I told you about chewing on the guests’ To keep the hippos at bay the farm was surrounded by a tall electric fence. I’ve fallen asleep to a variety of sounds in the bush, some obscure and many terrifying, but none quite as comical as hippos intermittently being electrocuted.

The next day I had made it to the Namibian border and I was relieved, especially since not one of the immigration officials bore even the slightest resemblance to a bush, a cow or a goat. I filled in the usual forms and wrote ‘professional daydreamer’ under occupation. I don’t write doctor anymore. It feels a bit fraudulent, I probably won’t practice medicine for several years and besides you always risk an American tourist in the queue behind you reading the form and then suddenly recalling that curious blue spot on their ass and ‘would you mind having a quick look at it for me?’. A cyclist? No. That implies I’m some sort of athlete. An adventurer maybe? Too pretentious. What do I do most of the time besides cycling? I’m a professional daydreamer. My old maths teacher was right after all.

Strangely at this border there were no touts or middlemen to be found and I soon learnt why. My route into Namibia passed immediately through a national park and once again there was that disconcerting query, first from immigration officials and then from customs “But what will you do about all the lions?” Despite my half-hearted pleas to ride unaccompanied it was unanimously decided that it was too dangerous, they made a good case. The lions had to cross the road to get to the Okavango River on the other side. They were frequently sighted chilling on the road. On top of that there were no cars whatsoever. I waited and eventually a truck arrived. There was space in the back for my bike but the guy could see I wanted to ride. For twenty kilometres he trailed me as I cycled through the national park. Once again plenty elephant, no lion. I had made it through lion country unmauled and lets face it, it’s a good brag.

In Namibia I stopped at a campsite and I was chuffed to find three friends I’d made in Zambia ten days before. Distances are vast in Africa and I realised that I had almost ridden the equivalent of Land’s End to John ’O Groats since we’d last been together. I was looking forward to hanging out with them on my day off. I asked what they had planned. ..

‘We’re going to rent some bikes and go on a little ride. You want to come with?’
‘Errrrrm… no thanks. Knock yourselves out.’

I set up my stove to cook lunch, pulled out my lighter, sparked it and watched with horror as the whole stove and fuel bottle went up in flames. The bottle was full of petrol. I threw water over it but the blaze continued. Panicking and convinced that the outcome would involve a huge fireball and a surgeon removing metal shards from my face, I took a short run up and punted the entire burning mess into the crocodile infested waters of the Okavango River. No more stove. Luckily in Northern Namibia stoves weren’t really necessary, the surrounding countryside was full of deadwood. I stopped early to collect it and cooked my dinner African style over open fires, sometimes I needed some solitude and I’d camp in the bush, sometimes I needed company and I’d ask to camp in the villages. Maybe I’d stay with the locals more if it wasn’t for the guilt that inevitably follows. It’s a guilt that every Westerner feels when they spend time with anyone eking out a subsistence way of life. My tent looks out of place standing next to mud huts with thatched roofs. We sit around a fire, a fire they lit to keep me warm using wood they collected and chopped up in my honour. I prepare to cook. As I unload each ingredient from my pannier I’m uncomfortably aware that nobody in my company could afford any of them. So I cook more than I need and offer it round. But the adults won’t take it; surplus grub goes to the children. I eat pasta with a sauce of fresh vegetables and beef stock, they munch away at a maize-based porridge. The young men talk about their dreams and their hopes for the future, of leaving Namibia, of getting a job, of finding a life somewhere else, maybe Europe, maybe America. I think about how improbable their dreams sound. I say nothing. I feel guilty. I zip myself into a four season sleeping bag and wonder how they keep warm through the night. The next day I thank everyone. I’m grateful for permission to camp, for water, for the fire, but most of all for the guilt, it reminds me that I’m lucky to have a life of almost limitless options, choices and possibilities. I sometimes run into smug travellers who like to brag about how they can live on less than ten dollars a day. It’s not so impressive when you find out that over one billion people live on less than a dollar a day and over half the world’s population live on less than two dollars fifty. Ten dollars is lavish.

I soon passed the ‘red line’, a fence separating northern Namibia from the rest. It was originally erected in the sixties as an animal infection control mechanism. Farms south of the line are mainly white commercial farmers, north is mostly black communal farmers. There was a small shop and petrol station by the fence. Two chirpy shop assistants approached me and began a rapid and bewildering inquisition.

‘Where are you from?’
‘England’
‘Do you come from Hollywood?’
'No. That’s in America.’
‘Is there green grass in England?’
‘Yes. Lots’
‘What about maize?’
‘Some’
‘What about game parks?’
‘Erm, not many’
‘What about wild elephants?’
‘No’
‘NO WILD ELEPHANTS!’ WHEYY! (They took a while to get over the shock).’ Why do you travel by bicycle?’
‘For an adventure’
‘Will the government in your country pay you money when you return?’
‘No’
‘Do you write for a newspaper?’
‘No. I write on the internet’
‘Can you take our photo and put it on this internet?’

Ladies and Gentlemen, because Tracy gave me five dollars off my bill, I give you Tracy and Louise…

I rode through the north playing catch up with Nyomi who was few days ahead. In the hills to the west I could see a fire raging, my first impression was that it was a controlled burn started by a farmer but as it got closer I started to guess that if someone was once at the helm, they had long since abandoned ship. This was now a wildfire and it was raging out of control through the dry scrub, wheedled and cajoled onwards by the wind. I watched the wall of flames move quickly across the land consuming power lines. It was almost encroaching on the road, my road, up ahead. A railway line lay between the road and the blaze, I thought it might buffer the inferno but I watched the flames jump the tracks and ignite the scrub on the other side in seconds. Animals raced out of the bush across the road to escape, birds, lizards, crickets and even two kudu hurtled across my path. I pedalled hard envisioning a Namibian policeman having to identify my pile of cinders by the factory number on a smouldering Rohloff hub. I came across a lodge, men were busy hosing down the thatched roof. A bit optimistic. I thought. If the fire gets there, you’re toast. The flames reached the road just behind me but I was out of danger.

It has to be said, I wasn’t coping well without Nyomi. I was cooking the same amount of food each evening and scoffing it all to myself. I had upped my Dairy Milk chocolate intake to three bars a day. I was showering less than I probably should. I was worried that very soon I would be found slumped by the roadside, clad only in a pair of grubby, torn Lycra shorts, slurring profanities at strangers, surrounded by pizza crusts, fruit and nut bars and empty bottles of cheap Namibian cider. I needed Nyomi back in my life. I finally found her with two couch-surfers, Anthony and Jules, British physiotherapists working in Namibia with VSO. They put us up and even let us borrow their car so we could explore Etosha National Park. Namibia seemed to have more than its fair share of enticing attractions… ancient dinosaur footprints, three hundred and fifty metre high sand dunes, the infamous skeleton coast and the world’s largest meteorite. I decided to give the last one a miss. Apparently it was just a rock and wasn’t going to live up to my expectations. No ethereal green glow, no extra-terrestrial runes carved onto its surface.

A Painted Agama Lizard

A large Skink

A recently deceased lizard, killed by a puff adder which did a runner

A bird of prey in Etosha. Not sure what it is... any ideas please leave in the comments section below. It could do a 360 head twist so maybe some sort of owl???

A Secretary Bird, Etosha

The day after we moved on Nyomi was up before me. She was sporting lycra shorts, cycling gloves, a helmet and a look that said ‘you best be ready for some hardcore cycling?’ We loaded up with over twenty litres of water for our plan was to off-road through the Erongo hills. The scenery was spectacular and there’s nothing in life more cathartic than the crunch of gravel underneath your tyres when you’re riding fast down a graded road. When I eventually make it back to the UK I might have to record that sound and play it at night just so I can get to sleep. Perhaps after I reach Cape Town and Nyomi’s gone home I should also have a recording of her shrill ululations on repeat…

‘Stop eating so many aubergines! Stop eating so many aubergines! Stop eating so many aubergines!’

I’ll drift into a blissful slumber.

We were aiming for Spitzkoppe, a mountain that rises out of the desert, a mountain that is surrounded by tired clichés by tired Lonely Planet travel writers ‘The Matterhorn of Africa’, ‘the Ayres Rock of Africa’. We watched the peak gradually rise up out of the jade desert scrub, hour by hour it became more imposing, more of it filled my field of vision every time I glanced up from the sandy track. We lost the race, the sun made it to the horizon before we hit the mountain. The next morning, as we approached from the east, the sun behind us dyed the western sky a pale blue and Spitzkoppe a rosy hue. By lunch the image and the colours were sharper, sanguine swords of granite reached up to pierce the sapphire sky. After we'd strolled around the mountain it was a straight run to Swakopmund, a town on the Atlantic coast where we planned to have a deserved break. We were steaming in. It was the perfect storm – a strong tailwind, a descent of about a thousand vertical metres, old skool jungle on my IPOD and by ten o'clock AM I had consumed over eight times the Recommended Daily Allowance of glucose in the form of Cadbury’s Daily Milk chocolate. We covered one hundred and ten kilometres in three and a half hours.

So next we ride south through the Namib desert, past Fish River Canyon (The ‘Grand Canyon of Africa’, thank you Lonely Planet) and finally into South Africa. If you liked this post hit the new google +1 button below.

Let's go clubbing

2011-05-23T09:40:00.000+01:00

I asked a local guy what we could do on or around Lake Malawi, he assured me it offered tourist activities galore...

'Well you can snorkel and scuba dive, windsurf, feed a fish eagle, cliff jump, go on a fishing trip, canoe, club baboons...'

'Wait stop. What was that last one?'

Yep, that's right, I was informed Malawi is one of the last places you can legally pay to go out and club baboons to death. Hmmm, it didn't sound like a barrel of laughs, I can't really see the appeal. I wondered what type of character goes baboon clubbing. Can it be something many people are interested in? Could 'baboon clubbing' ever find its way onto someone's Curriculum Vitae under 'other interests'? Would it ever come up in a job interview?...

'So Mr Jones, we're very impressed with your experience. Now tell us a little about what you like to do outside work'

'Well I like to read, I'm a big fan of travel literature. I watch my son Johnny play football on Saturdays, I go to church and I play squash twice a week. Oh and every so often I club baboons'

'I'm sorry?'

'It's sort of a blood sport, great for relieving stress. We catch them in big nets and then bludgeon them to death.

Errrm Mr Jones?...

Sometimes I bring my family along too. You should see the look of excitement on little Johnny's face when we catch a big male baboon and batter it into a bloody, writhing pulp...'

'MR JONES PLEASE!... We'll, erm... we'll let you know'

On one of my last mornings in Malawi I woke up next to a gorgeous Malawian girl, pondering both whether it would be so bad to stay in Malawi a little longer and how on earth I had managed to coax this beauty back to my place, my place consisting of a tent with a broken air bed, a rich variety of ever-present arthropods and the far from alluring aroma of sweaty cyclist. I had some breakfast in the hostel and noticed that someone had inscribed a message in large chalk letters on the blackboard...

'BIN LADEN IS DEAD! (but we're not sure. It might be Bon Jovi)'

Riding and relaxing along the shores of the lake felt a bit self-indulgent, this was hedonism when compared to life before Malawi. But Zambia had the cure for our Malawi holiday hangover... The Great East Road beckoned. I said goodbye to anonymous Malawian girl and pawed over my now redundant map. Won't be needing that. It was sent into one of the many deep dark recesses of the 'pannier of doom', a place full of all the stuff we need to carry but rarely use. I knew what I needed to know. Lilongwe to Lusaka, seven hundred and fifty kilometres, no left turns, no right turns, plenty of hills and just a sprinkling of villages en route. We set off early, Nyomi and I and our bicycles, Belinda and Dave (Ny has belated decided to christen her bike Dave because 'everybody's got a mate called Dave'. You can't argue with that).

Camping in a Zambian village

At the end of our second day in Zambia we ran into another cyclist at a guesthouse who was also traveling in our direction. Yves was a forty year old Belgian, skinny, bald and sporting a pointed goatee beard. He had sellotaped empty multicoloured packets of noodles to every inch of his bicycle frame. Imagine Ming the Merciless swapping his spaceship for a bicycle after taking a large and very potent cocktail of psychedelic drugs. I liked his style. Nyomi obviously felt some subconscious urge to compete with this glib attire. She had recently washed her underwear and so she attached each item of negligee to the back of her bicycle to dry in the sunshine. She rode off expressionless, unperturbed and unconcerned in spite of the many chuckling Zambians. It looked like a mannequin had done a runner from a department store with half the lingerie section. I rode off despondently, depressed about my relatively bland and understated appearance, professing to do something about it.

Once the Great East road would have been a test but we were noticeably fitter now, we breezed up the hills and covered 140 km a day to Lusaka. Witchcraft is alive and well in Zambia and along the way I could often hear drumming from the ceremonies conducted by witch doctors in the villages. Even in the Zambian capital Lusaka there were posters and adverts abound. I was given one pamphlet for a traditional healer who claimed to help a panoply of different people from the bewitched to the insane and the infertile. His instruction was to come with two small stones and 20,000 Zambian Kwatcha, the local currency. An equally bizarre piece of advice followed...

'If you come for treatment, don't eat any fish'

He also claimed to help people win the lottery, get job promotions and pass exams as well as a special service of 'chasing away the Tokoloshe', the Tokoloshe is a dwarf-like water sprite, considered a mischievous and evil spirit in zulu mythology. On a more disconcerting tip he also offered to help women with cancer and people with HIV. I have to admit that I share some of the same opinions about homeopathy and herbal medicine as Dara O'Briain...

After Lusaka we pushed west towards Livingstone. On one night we slept on the floor of a church, I woke in the early hours with a start. An insect of some variety had decided my ear was a cosy place to spend the night. Somehow it had managed to work its way deep into my auditory canal and it was a stale mate. It couldn't find its way out and I couldn't evict the intruder. Every minute scratch and wiggle was thunderous. It was probably freaking out when confronted by the overcrowded insect necropolis of my inner ear. Whilst cycling bugs seem to get into every orifice. My retina has also become a cemetery for suicidal insects and I'm sure there are a few survivors in there somewhere, floating around and feasting on my aqueous humour.

It started with a sound. A low pitched sonorous rumble and then a fleeting glimpse, through the trees. I wondered if I would ever truly appreciate a waterfall again after Victoria Falls, the rumbling giantess that eclipses all others. The falls is the result of the mighty Zambezi river, almost two kilometres in girth, hurling itself off a hundred metre high cliff, collecting again after a frothy white oblivion. It's the largest sheet of falling water in the world, and now, during the wet season, even more water crashed over it's rim than usual. Huge fingers of spray danced a nimble jig through the air and as we approached water began to strike us from every direction. The misty mask obscuring the falls added to the intrigue, every so often a patch would fade and behind the waterfall's spectacular rim would come into view. We circled the falls from the Zambian side, a sign read 'If you walk across the lip of the falls, watch out for sudden water bursts'. No skulls and crossbones, no authoritative demands or mandates, just a message that equates to 'Do it if you want, but try not to die'.

We relaxed for a while in Livingstone. Where there are tourists, there are touts. The ones here were selling 'one trillion Zimbabwean dollar' bank notes, relics of Zimbabwe's days of hyperinflation. But Zim is not on our itinery. Next Nyomi and I seperate briefly once again, I plan to ride a thousand kilometre loop through Botswana, around the Okavango Delta and through the Makgadikgadi salt pans. Nyomi will take a shorter passage via the Caprivi strip in Namibia, we will meet again in a couple of weeks.

We bumped into lots of fellow travelers in Livingstone, as usual they had questions about cycling, how far we cycle, why we cycle. People ask me what do I do all day. Do I get bored? Sometimes, yes, but there are always ways to occupy your mind and lift your spirits. I leave you with an extract from the blog of a fellow cyclist. My life has become similar...

"What do I do all day? Well, many things really. In addition to the obvious, I also have a habit of thinking of a particular family member or friend and dwelling on my experiences with them. Sometimes I even talk to them. I also constantly analyze and re-analyze my life and find ways, and there are many, to try to improve my general disposition and future direction. Many times, I sing. I wonder why my pointer finger toe is longer than my thumb toe. I often search the side of the road for anything salvageable. I eat. I read. I stop to scribble down ideas. I pee. I apply sunscreen. I, depending, remove or add layers of clothing. I chat with curious drivers. I repair flat tires or change out broken spokes. I listen to music. I take pictures. I write letters. I make to do lists (an unshakeable habit). I choose career paths and then quit. I re-live days of my youth, both the good and bad. I explain things to people that aren’t there and they finally understand. I think of things I should have said but didn’t. I, depending, laugh, cry, or am neutral in regards to certain memories. I try to remember where I slept seventeen nights ago. I look at the picture of my family that I have in a clear piece of plastic on top of my handlebar bag and am thankful. I look at maps and decide. I exchange fleeting pleasantries with people. I think about the future. I dwell on the past. I am surprised at the present. I remember things I’ve forgotten to do and add them to those to do lists. I grow my beard. I miss people. And, I watch the amazing scenery unfold. All in all, it makes for quite a full day."

The warm heart of Africa

2011-04-30T11:27:00.001+01:00

Tanzania

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” - Winston Churchill

I no longer run for cover when the sky blackens, when the thunder booms or when electricity lights up the gloom. It's when the locals head inside that I know we're about to get a soaking. That night in Western Tanzania the road threading through the murk was empty and when the rain began it was more intense and ferocious than I have ever seen. With no cover nearby we plowed on, smothered in green ponchos, grimacing against the deluge. Lightning sparked every second and sheets of rainfall blasted the tarmac. It became impossible to hear anything over the rain's deafening patter and my eyes welled up. Water must be getting in somewhere. A turbulent torrent of water gushed by the road's edge. A pick-up stopped, the driver addressed us in a German accent and offered a lift. The next town was at least twenty five kilometres away he told us. We declined and waved him on. The bombardment continued, water permeated my poncho. I didn't think we'd make the town before dark, equally I couldn't imagine pitching a tent without creating an indoor swimming pool. I blotted out any thoughts of how we'd see through the night, our only task now to cycle and hopefully towards somewhere or something better. The German in the pick-up returned after half an hour. He was giving us another chance to change our minds. He worked for Strabag, a German company building the roads in this part of Tanzania. Their compound was twenty kilometres up ahead. I looked at Nyomi and knew she was getting into that truck before she had said anything. My turn to decide. I shouted to the driver through a crack in the truck window.

'Thanks but I'll be OK'
'Get in. These are extreme conditions. Its very dangerous' he bellowed back
'I'm sorry I can't. I know it's a bit crazy'
'It's very crazy! You are very crazy!'
'Tell me why it's dangerous?'
'The lightning. The trucks. The dark. The bandits. You shouldn't camp here. We close this road at night. Vehicles get hijacked.'
'Nyomi's coming with you. I'll meet you there'
'Your friend is safe with us. I hope you make it. There will be a cup of tea waiting for you when you arrive. Good luck'

He hadn't convinced me. No way bandits would be out in this. I'll pull off the road when a truck comes. The lightning? I'll take my chances. They pulled away and not for the first time I wondered whether pride, ego and blind optimism were leading me down a path I didn't want to be on. But I had one thing to get me through... the thought of that big cup of warm tea. That's all I needed to muster the strength for the twenty five kilometre dash. Soon I was alone and immersed in the deep blackness of nightfall in the African bush, but the rain slowly cleared and forty five minutes later I reached the compound. I had envisioned a small hut, perhaps, I thought, I could sleep on the floor, and I could almost taste the warm milky tea. I entered a very different world to the one of my imagination. The compound appeared to be more like a small town. I saw the German at the gate.

'Hi. Where's Nyomi?'
'Oh she'll probably be in your chalet'
'Our ch... our what?'
'Yeah your chalet. Or if not then maybe at the bar'
'The baaa?'
'The bar. Over there, you see? Between the swimming pool and that tennis court.'

I couldn't be sure how I had met my end but perhaps it was a lightning strike, perhaps it was a speeding truck.

'We can wash your clothes and you can eat in the restaurant over there. Oh and we're having a party tomorrow night. There will be a big barbecue with loads of kebabs and the bar's free. Just help yourself to a beer whenever you want.'

Who's going to tell my poor mum

'We also have table tennis, table football, darts, a gym. Take a break. You guys need it.'

Then I saw a beaming Nyomi. This was real. In the middle of rural Tanzania we had come across the equivalent of Centre Parks. The compound had been built for the multinational team of engineers and it would be grounded after their three year contract was up. We retired to the warmth of our chalet. There's nothing like washing with a cold bucket of cold water every third day to make you appreciate the next warm shower. I grinned at Nyomi.

'Oh my god. Score!'
'Yeah! Shall I put the kettle on?'
We both laughed heartily

Milestones...

We were cutting a diagonal across Tanzania from the Rwandan border, aiming for capital Dodoma, and I was in pain. I had developed a nasty tendonitis of my right wrist, I could feel the swollen tendons crunching beneath the skin. It was the result of the repetitive use of the grip shift on my bike (and not what Nyomi liked to insinuate). Late one night we found ourselves without a spot to camp with a broken stove. We were escorted to a nearby village by some local men where a large family let us use their charcoal burning cooker. The children were dirty, clad in tatty rags and covered in flies. One three year old held a large machete. Nobody in Tanzania seems to think giving a toddler a large sharp pointy thing isn't the brightest idea. They were evidently poor but welcomed us into their community without asking for a thing and without suspicion or a second thought. It was not the last act of kindness we would experience over the next few weeks. The hills gradually transformed into grassy savannah, pastoralists replaced arable farmers and shawls and sticks characteristic of the Masai tribe were visible once again. In Dodoma Nyomi and I parted ways. She wanted a break in Zanzibar, I'd been there eight years ago during an overland trip I had taken through East Africa so we agreed to meet again in one week's time in Mbeya near the Malawian border. Goodbye Nyomi, goodbye tarmac, karibou rural Tanzania and solitude. I probably needed it. My route south was again peppered with strangers helping me out at every turn. One night a group of nuns took me into their convent and fed me pasta and coffee before giving me a bed for the night. A Estonian motorcyclist stopped and invited me to join him and some mates for wine and pizza before again letting me crash. Then a British guy called Mark stopped me on the road to hand me fruit juice and nuts. Later that day I arrived at the campsite I had told him I was planning to stay at and the manager came out to greet me.

'You don't need your tent'
'What?'
'Put it away. You're staying in the lodge tonight. And you're having dinner. And breakfast tomorrow. A friend has you covered'
'Mark?'
'You got it!'

Me and the Sisters of the Holy Family

The Tanzanian sense of humour

Cycling through Malawi feels a bit like I'd imagine it would feel to bung on a santa outfit on Christmas Eve and charge into a room full of excitable five year olds. The feel good factor for riding through one of the most densely populated countries on earth is massive and I think maybe equal in measure only to Rwanda. Our mere presence, the white face and the loaded bicycle, was enough to induce wide smiles in almost everyone who spotted us ride by. I spent so much time reciprocating that by the end of the day my face would ache. Malawi felt like one big village rather than a collection of many and there were more bicycles here than any where else I've been, many transporting hauls of fish or several chickens or up to four people or occasionally a couple of bound and bleating goats. It must be the easiest country in Africa for the cyclist. It's nice and flat along the lake, it's full of campsites, resorts and backpacker hangouts, there are water pumps and boreholes every five or ten kilometres, the main roads are perfect tarmac with hardly any traffic and the helpful Malawians often speak good English. If you have a three week holiday on the cards... go cycling in Malawi. We swung towards the lake and drifted past piles of drying fish, then through woodland and past crops of casava, we tried to avoid the expensive resorts choosing instead to rough camp by schools or hospitals or police stations.

Even in Africa, a musical continent, Malawi stands out. Sound systems blare from every bar and every cafe in every village, women sing to the babies on their backs, men sing when they drink Chibuku, children grab your hand and burst into song and teenagers sing into light bulbs mimicking microphones. To me Malawian women look more stereotypically African than most. Usually one baby will be wrapped by cloth to her front suckling on a breast, another is sometimes wrapped to her back, in one hand she holds a colourful umbrella to protect from the heat of the day and on her head will be some variety of package, anything from a bulky sack of maize, firewood, some food, a full bucket of water or even just a pair of shoes. On one day in Malawi I stopped to fill up my water bottle at a pump. There were some young children playing at their mother's feet when I arrived. They looked up and reacted immediately. One screamed and fled panic stricken into the bush. Three more rushed behind their mothers, their terror filled eyes peeped out at me from behind their mother's kangas. All of them had burst into tears. The mums found all this hysterical but their laughter did nothing to allay the children's fears. We'd seen this reaction once before in Sudan. I was probably the first white person the kids had ever seen.

One of the many quirks of Malawi is that the young men, especially those in and around the tourist spots, give themselves strange and wonderful English nicknames. I'd hear conversations like this one...

'Hey have you seen Lazer or Fortune?'
'Nah. There's a party tonight though. Chicken & Peas is coming'
'Cool. How about Lucky Coconut?'
'Not sure. He'll probably be hanging out with Happy and Mr Spanner'

I'd like to say something a bit more profound about my experience in this part of Malawi. I'd like to make some comments on the local culture and traditions or perhaps make some observations about the national psyche. I'd like to, but I can't. Once we hit the lake I was introduced to XXX, a scanderlously cheap brand of rum sold in thirty mililitre sachets and after this point Malawi gets a little out of focus. There were defintiely lots of backpackers, I think there were parties and I have heard only rumours of our mock breakdancing, skinny dipping and other antics.

Like most of the capital cities in the sweltering tropics Lilongwe sits in the hills, over a thousand metres up. We climbed up from the lake shore and were riding through a small village when we sighted two figures in the road ahead. They were running towards us, grunting and growling in unison. As they got closer I felt a sudden chill when I caught sight of their wretched and bedraggled appearance. They were clad in muddy rags, their faces were under cloth and completely hidden from view. In each hand they carried machetes which they waved erratically and with vigour. They resembled how the undead might be depicted in a Hollywood blockbuster. Children scattered as they came close. I turned to a local man beside me.

'Whats going on?'
'This is Chewa culture'
'Is it a game?'
He laughed loudly. This wasn't a game.
'They want money' he said

Even the adults around looked genuinely afraid. I have since learnt that these were 'Gule' - young men dressed as ancestral spirits, members of a secret society. Gule are considered to be in ‘animal state’ when they are dressed in such attire, and are not to be approached. If one has the misfortune of passing a Gule on the road, traditional behaviour consists of dropping a few coins for the Gule – never handing them the money directly for fear they will grab you and take you to the cemetery for ritual purposes. Generally, villagers believe it is best to avoid Gule, in their animal or ancestral state, they are unpredictable.

The theme of this post has been hospitality, although really that's been the theme of my entire journey so far. In every country I have passed through there has been at least one act of generosity from a stranger who expects nothing in return. I have never been refused water and only very rarely a place to camp. This month has been a outpouring of hospitality from ex-pats and locals, from men and women, from the young and old, from the rich and poor. When we arrive into Cape Town I know that a lot of people had a hand in getting me there, there will be lots of people to thank.

This week I received an email that had my memory drifting back to a golden evening in the desert of Northern Sudan and another act of kindness. It was the end of a long day. We had covered over 150 km and the light was fading when three quad bikes zoomed past us. They stopped up ahead. It was Val, Jamie and Kris, three young Australians on a mission to break the Guinness World Record for the longest ever journey by quad bike. They invited us to camp with them and waited for us up ahead. We turned off into the sand and spent the evening chatting and sharing food. This week I received the news that in Malawi Val had collided with a vehicle traveling on the wrong side of the road, the car was being pursued by police. He was seriously injured in the crash and airlifted to Johannesburg. Very tragically Val died on the flight. Val, Jamie and Kris were just some of the people who have helped us on our journey and I remember Val's generosity, enthusiasm and passion for adventure. The other member of the 'Quad Squad' will continue in Val's memory.

Kris from 'Quad Squad'

The City of Seven Hills and Le Pays de Mille Collines

2011-03-21T13:25:00.001Z

Next week I pass a milestone... its been one year on the road, one year riding my bike and one year away from my friends, my family and my home. My bike has scrappy ribbons of electrical tape holding together the handlebar grip, there are scratches on the frame and tie wraps sit where long lost pannier clips should be. She wears the marks and scrapes of that year on the road, so do I. The contours of my legs have changed, I'm thinner, there are two small scars on my left knee following keyhole surgery and my hairstyle is bordering on full blown mullet. I can recall the word for 'thank you' in a dozen languages. I have memories from three continents, twenty one countries and hundreds of busy highways, quiet country lanes and baron tracks. I know that being one year in means that I'm still less than a quarter of my way through the journey, it's a scary thought and one I try not to indulge in. The big picture is always terrifying, unfathomable, infinitely difficult, impossible. I think only of the present or the next few places ahead, occasionally I allow my imagination to drift to Cape Town, but I never let it creep away beyond Africa. I don't know how I'll feel about this life in another year or in two or three. It's impossible to know. Perhaps I'll be tired of moving, tired of not knowing where I'll sleep and tired of always being immersed in the unfamiliar. Perhaps it will still feel fresh and exciting. I'll stick to thinking in small chunks.

We crossed into Uganda whilst the country was in the midst of elections. People warned us to be careful, there had been many claims of election rigging and boxes of pre-ticked ballot papers had been discovered. We were worried about protests or an an uprising and perhaps violence. The incumbent has been in power for almost 30 years, as the populace went to the polls he mobilised the army and riot police which we saw almost everywhere we went, perhaps not the actions expected of a leader of a true democratic nation. Jinja was our first stop, the origin of the white Nile and an area well known for white water rafting. I side stepped thoughts of my budget and we both spent a day contending with the grade five rapids.

After Jinja it was Kampala, 'the city of seven hills' and one of my favourites so far. Wondering her streets is hassle-free and safe and it's one of the best party cities in Africa. She's busy, vibrant, welcoming, lively, Ugandan. In Kampala Nyomi's new skinhead style had been attracting some attention. A Ugandan girl asked after her name and then retorted

'Nyomi? So you're a boy with a girl's name?'

Nyomi laughed it off but when a Kampala taxi driver leaned out of the window and bellowed 'Hey look, it's Wayne Rooney!' she lost the plot a little and gave him two fingers, which was the appropriate response for the society loathing anarchist she now resembles.

Between parties we zoomed around Kampala on 'boda bodas' or motorbike taxis. It's often three on a bike and there's rarely a helmet, some journeys can be quite hairy. One took me on a back route through Kampala, he zoomed down alleyways in the dark, over old railway tracks, through the slums and backstreets where groups of children huddled around small fires and cooked goat's meat and liver. The driver played a jaunty brand of Ugandan pop music loud from the bike's speakers. A sign sat on the front of the bike and declared 'born lucky'. I had heard that around five boda boda drivers die every day in Kampala. I couldn't help imagining a macabre scenario... the aftermath of a horrific accident in which I lay trapped in the burning wreckage of the crash. The jaunty music was still playing from the stereo but at a lower pitch and the drivers bloody corpse lay motionless next to the 'born lucky' sign.

We rode towards Fort Portal, the gateway to several of Uganda's national parks. I loved riding west, in the morning the sun warmed our backs and in the evening we rode towards the setting sun but then again tropical rain eventually caught us up. We found ourselves in another sudden hail storm after hours of warm sunshine. I took my sandals off so I could get some waterproofs on, the ground was hot, almost too hot to stand on in bare feet, yet hail fell all around us. Soon a dense silvery mist started to rise off the quickly cooling tarmac and the road became a spooky ethereal serpent winding through the jungle.

After three days we sighted the majestic Rwenzori mountains in the distance. Their immense looming silhoutte, vast compared to the surrounding hills, had an almost menacing air. The illusion was that they were moving towards us and not the other way around. Finally we arrived in Fort Portal and it was here we got our first taste of African wildlife up close. We were on our way to visit a swamp and nature reserve and were walking the six kilometres down a quiet track through a forest to the main gate. I heard some rustling in the bushes up ahead. Then, from just ten metres away, a large female African elephant stepped out in front of us and paused. We were both suddenly still and silent, waiting for the mock charge which never came. She slowly trundled off into the bushes and then from behind her two baby elephants emerged from the undergrowth. I snatched for my camera. Snap.

There was a lot to do around Fort Portal, we swam in crater lakes, went in search of Columbus Monkeys and ran into a group of brits from an NGO called 'Cricket without boundaries' who coach cricket to kids in Uganda. We took half a day to join them and get involved, it was hours of fun and games with a big group of rowdy children and I loved it. That evening we heard music coming from the hills behind our hostel. Determined to find the party we took a bee line towards the source of the sound. After an hour of trudging through the dark, through banana plantations and people's gardens, we stumbled onto a field full of young Uganadans twisting, grinding and gyrating to home grown hiphop emanating from a large outdoor sound system. It was a free rave put on following the elections and we joined them and danced all night long on that field.

Cricket Without Boundaries

We rode through the foothills of the Rwenzoris, up and down, up and down, up and down. Sweaty, breathless and always hungry but moved by the sensational landscape. We cycled into Queen Elizabeth National Park, there was nobody to stop us. It was an eerie experience, I knew that lions, hyenas, leopards, buffalos, hippos and elephants all lived here, we were riding through their back garden without protection. When we set up camp Ny had a face-off with a hungry warthog and during the night a hippo passed right next to my tent, I could hear it breathing and stomping as it grazed. The next day we decided to save the ten dollars it cost for a nature walk and go off on our own without the mandatory armed guard. Our DIY approach may not have been an altogether sensible escapade but it was free and exhilarating.

A hippo shambles into camp

Nyomi verses warthog

A Flame Tree

We rolled on through Uganda, past papyrus filled swamp, dense jungle with bright green algae filled pools of stagnant water, verdant savannah and then back into the undulating banana and tea plantations which cover great swathes of the country, the occasional flame tree lit up the surroundings. Excited children would quickly encircle us when we stopped to eat, gorping and giggling. We munched on jack fruit and in the evening 'matoke', cooked plantains. After 110 kilometres of hills I was riding down the last one of the day, along a rough clay track two kilometres from Lake Bunyonyi and our campsite. Nyomi was riding just ahead when I spotted a motorcyclist coming towards us. He swerved past Nyomi putting himself directly into my path. I gripped my brakes and skidded as he continued to speed towards me.

He sees me, he'll turn or stop
He sees me, he'll turn or stop
He must see...

It was a head on collision. I was almost stationary on impact, he had hardly applied the brakes. I remember being catapulted off my bike and landing a few metres away on the roadside. The motorbike careered off a near vertical forested verge and the driver was flung over the vehicle. I caught sight of the end of his trajectory, his body arced several metres through the air before smashing into a pine tree and landing a long way down the slope. The crash was followed by the sort of deep silence that always seems to follow sudden accidents. Stunned I tried to work out if I was injured. There was a bloody laceration to my left shin but it looked superficial. My right thigh was painful but I stood up and the leg took my weight. I could hear the driver moaning but his body remained still. A bunch of young Ugandan men appeared and helped to get the driver and bike back onto the road, a task of many hands and much effort. I examined the driver. Unusually he had been wearing a helmet. He was alert but in pain. There was a boggy swelling over his left knee but he could flex it and weight bare. The motorbike had sustained some damage, both wing mirrors and the speed dial were in pieces. Then came the accusations. The surrounding band of local men decided quickly I was to blame despite not one of them having witnessed the crash. Perhaps this was because the driver had come off worse than me, perhaps because I'm a 'mzungu', a white man, and they saw pound signs. Usually the young men who drive boda bodas borrow heavily to cover the cost of the bike and repay the debt over time with money from the fares. I doubted he could cover the cost the damage and he also needed money to get to hospital and for treatment. They never have insurance. In the UK paying money after an accident is to admit liability. In Uganda you just pay up, regardless of who's to blame. If I had not I feared the group of men would quickly transform into an angry mob, so we debated a price and I paid. I don't know why he didn't stop, he had plenty of time to react to me, but obviously things could have been a lot worse for both of us. I was just lucky to get out of there with a few cuts and bruises and a dent in my budget.

After a couple of days we reached Rwanda, 'the country of a thousand hills'. It was as lush and green as its neighbour and the steep hills here were terraced for farming giving the country an extraordinary look and feel. The children were just as startled to see us and as we rode towards the capital Kigali they ran alongside laughing and asking questions like 'How is Queen Elizabeth?' In Kigali we met up with some Irish mates to celebrate St Paddy's day and set off once again into the wet. In April we will be traveling through Tanzania, a month in which 400mm of rain is expected to fall, eight times that of London.

In the twelve months I've been cycling I know I could have covered more ground and I know I could be closer to Cape Town. Riding through Rwanda and Uganda was a loop I didn't have to do, but I have never wanted to take the shortest or the easiest path. Loops are prettier than straight lines. So far we've met three cyclists aiming to ride the length of Africa in four months, many others are striving to break the world record for cycling around the globe. By setting a time limit you beef up the challenge but sacrifice something more important - the adventure. You may see a lot, but you experience little. The times I have felt most alive have not been on busy highways but on those rough tracks on the very edge of civilization, in those wild places. The times I've most enjoyed have been when I've taken up offers of hospitality from local people, offers which would have to be declined by the speed freaks. It's a shame that we seem to have entered an era of fast and furious expeditions and adventures. Leave speed to the athletes. Explorers and adventurers of the past and present are rarely blessed with special powers or skills, they are often simply able to make the sacrifices needed to live and experience things that others cannot or will not. Take the dusty track, not the highway, or as Ralph Waldo Emerson said 'Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.' Here's to more loops, detours, baron tracks and adventure. Here's to four more years on my bicycle.

Finally something of the ridiculous... Only in Uganda...

The people of the grey bull

2011-02-26T15:22:00.000Z

Celebrating 14,000 km, Western Kenya

They watched. A hundred eyes were trained on me as I entered a room packed full of Turkana women, each cradling a child in their arms. They were adorned in huge colourful necklaces and wore trademark Mohican style haircuts. In their gaze I saw mixed impressions. Wariness, curiosity, hope. This was one of Merlin’s outreach projects, the medical aid charity I’m raising funds for, and these sentient eyes belonged to the mothers and children directly affected by their work. Two nurses were weighing, measuring and vaccinating the infants and they dished out nutritional supplements along the way. So far this morning five children had been deemed to be suffering from severe malnutrition, some of these may also be suffering from the affects of co-existing disease such as HIV or tuberculosis. They would be transferred by Merlin to the Stabilisation Unit in the nearest hospital at Lodwar.

Everything about this remote Northwest province of Kenya appeared tough and unforgiving. Tough to live here, tough to survive here and tough to provide healthcare to the inhabitants, the bold and ambitious task taken on by Merlin amongst others. The region is roughly the size of Scotland, with a tenth of the population. The Turkana are nomadic pastoralists, put down a medical clinic and chances are they won’t be around for long to use it. Merlin understand that you usually have to go to them. The area is intensely hot and arid, no rain fell at all during the short wet season this year. The longer the current drought rages on, the further they travel in search of greener earth, sometimes crossing international boundaries. When water is available it goes to the goats first, without them there’s no milk and no food. The Turkana, like other tribes, often cut the necks of the goats, mix the blood with milk and drink it.

Merlin work to strengthen the capacity of remote clinics in Turkana and on day two I was able to visit one and learn something of the success stories. The last epidemic of measles was in 2002, others may well have been prevented by Merlin’s attention to mass vaccination programmes. Medicines, staff, training and equipment are all essential and there seemed to be even more Merlin could do here with more funds and resources. On my third day I visited the local hospital in Lodwar and met children suffering diseases and conditions rarely encountered in the Western hospitals I trained in, tropical disease just another in the long list of burdens facing the population. I met a severely stunted five year old with visceral leishmaniasis, or Kala Azar, a parasitic infection I’d only ever read about in medical textbooks. Another had a snake bite, it was the forth bite from a carpet viper they had seen so far this year. Cases of polio do come in, but I was told that by the time patients present the disease is usually very advanced and sufferers often die or are left with permanent paralysis. One bay was devoted to the severely malnourished babies. They were oedematous, quiet and meek in their mother’s arms.

I have often read Merlin’s aims and objectives, one in particular I had recited several times in interviews with the press…

‘Merlin help those communities in greatest need.’

Now I was looking right into the heart of this need, staring it down. The Turkana are tough and resilient people coping with poverty, disease, drought, malnutrition, occasional conflict and an unforgiving environment and they are a group vulnerable for all those reasons. These are people living on the brink and if no rain falls in the wet season this year they will fall, Merlin will do their best to catch them. Having seen Merlin’s efforts firsthand I left Lodwar in no doubt that their work here is essential to the health and wellbeing of the Turkana and that the money raised through my journey was going right to where they said it would, to a community in great, great need.

The Merlin staff were the first to offer me a stern warning of the security situation on my road ahead. I was planning to travel through a region in which the Turkana and Pukot tribes were fighting. I reasoned that as long as I wasn’t wearing my ‘I heart turkana’ t-shirt or singing traditional Pukot shanties I would be OK as fighting between the tribes rarely affects tourists, unless you’re unlucky enough to get caught in the crossfire. I worried more when I was told banditry was also common around these parts. I rode into Lokichar and a local man asked me which direction I was heading, to which I told him south. He immediately warned me not to continue by bike and told me that bandits plied this route, bandits who would take everything, including my bicycle. Then I came across a French couple in a Land Cruiser. They told me of another cyclist they had met recently who had taken a lift from this point for fear of armed thieves ahead. They urged me not to continue. As I rode out of Lokichar it was the policeman’s turn to offer me advice. He told me of how a lorry had been hijacked twenty kilometres from here on this very road by armed men. ‘Was this recently?’ I asked, ‘Yesterday’ came the reply. I explained to him that I did have concerns and that locals had told me the bandits would take everything, including my bike. ‘No no no’ he said. ‘They won’t take your bike. But they will take your money. And that IPOD. And your clothes. And probably some food and water. Do you have a camera?’
‘I do’
‘And that too’.

I left town and began my journey across the boundary between Turkana and Pukot territory. I wondered if I was also crossing another boundary, the hazy line that lies between the adventurous and the foolhardy. Then came warning number six, a truck stopped and the driver leaned out of the window, his face said what the hell do you think you’re doing?
‘You’ll be killed’ he said finally ‘bandits are everywhere’.

I’ve grown numb to warnings of ‘bad people’, if I’d heeded every one I wouldn’t have made it past Greater London. But this was different. There comes a point when you can’t stop ignoring people telling you that you are about to get robbed and murdered. I pushed my bike onto that heavy truck with an even heavier heart. I planned to take the lift for just one hundred kilometres, a distance I could comfortably cover in one day, but I couldn’t shake the overwhelming feeling of defeat. But then at least I’m not dead, as almost everyone has told me since. When we pulled away I very quickly realised I had jumped into the wrong vehicle. The driver was an unhinged nutter. The journey along the pothole-laden, ungraded road with a speed freak behind the wheel was an hour and a half of my life I’d rather forget. I tried to hold my bike upright whilst protecting myself from smashing into the metal roll cage which was the only feature of the interior of the truck. Seatbelts were as absent as my drivers ambition to use the brakes. I constantly smashed my head and shoulders into the metal and sprained everything sprainable in my neck. If five Pukot bandits had given me a solid pasting I doubted they would have done a better job than I was getting in the back of this truck. We overtook many vehicles, none came past us. Another passenger pointed out the popular ambush points along the road and mentioned that there were more tribal warriors around today than usual, I felt slightly better about my decision but one thought resonated through my bruised and bouncing cranium…

If I die here, in this truck, I’m going to look like a right idiot

I imagined people chatting at my funeral ‘I know, I know, it’s very sad. And to think, he wasn’t really cycling around the world at all’.

I was dropped off at a campsite which smelt of mushrooms and which had a large group of endemic monkeys scampering around the tents. Every so often they would get into a loud and viscious fight, I watched them, thought of the tribes fighting nearby and decided evolution wasn't all that it's cracked up to be. Back on my bike I started out riding through undulating hills, through tea planatations and in and out of luscious green valleys. When I arrived into one town a young Kenyan lad ran out in front of me and started cleaning my bike with an old rag. When he was done he yelled ‘Go go go!’ and patted me on the back. I cycled off feeling a little like a Formula One racing driver at a pit stop.

I carry my life around on my bicycle and there’s little room for luxuries. I have begun to get attached to the few possessions I own. I recently christened one of my inner tubes ‘Old Patchy’ after the 25 odd repair jobs he’s been through. On my way to Nairobi came the sudden and unsettling realisation that I may have befriended an inner tube. For anyone worried about my mental state I must stress that I’ve never had a (full) conversation with Old Patchy and I didn’t shed a tear when he eventually headed for the dustbin.

I continued south through the Kenyan countryside and picked up a curious smell. A nice smell. A great smell. Not just one, a host of different scents mixed together, but the combination familiar and now unmistakable. It was the smell of home. They say your sense of smell is the strongest link to your past, Kenya filled me with nostalgia and I realised suddenly that this was now the longest I have ever been away from home. The smell was from my childhood, of plants and flowers with names I’ve never known. Rain fell for almost the first time since I left Europe behind me six months ago and the countryside began to smell even more like the England I remember. It was still raining as I crossed the equator, a line I expect to ride through another five times before I get back to England. The rain was cool, refreshing, copious and welcome. You never miss the rain until it’s gone. There were numerous other small similarities to home, many probably relics of Kenya’s colonial past. Money is colloquially referred to as ‘bob’, people (are supposed to) drive on the left, electrical sockets have three pins, even the traffic police uniforms look strikingly similar to ours and tea always, always comes with milk. Judging by the boozy aroma emanating from virtually every Kenyan male that approached us, Kenya also has an alcohol problem to rival that of the UK.

There is a lot to like about Kenya. Most of all I like that every Kenyan is the proud owner of a preternaturally wide smile and that every Kenyan holds an obligation to show it off whenever they greet anyone. The children laugh and giggle when they see me approach, a very different reaction to that of those little sadistic anarchists in Ethiopia. I finally arrived into Nairobi at the start of February, slightly ruffled by numerous close skirmishes with Kenyan drivers, the worst I’ve seen in Africa (but not the world, sorry Syria, nobody's stealing your crown). The first thing I noticed was the obvious wealth on display in the capital. Turkana was a world away, the gulf immense. In a country still plagued by corruption it made me angry to see how money never seems to filter down to those most in need. Kenya’s also a country more outwardly religious than most. Gospel music drifts through Nairobi’s streets and avenues, it’s slums are full of churches and signs on public transport command ‘No Preaching’. When I visited an HIV clinic in the west of the country the nurses all sat down to pray for the patients before they started work and every so often a beaming young Kenyan would put their arm around my shoulder and utter that brave opening gambit ‘Do you believe in Jesus?’

In Nairobi I was reunited with Nyomi after a month apart, a month during which she had hiked 5000 metres up Mount Kenya with her boyfriend, we swapped tales of our separate adventures. I looked at her bike and noticed that a catapult now sat tethered to the handlebars. I pointed at it and raised my palms skyward in question. ‘For the monkeys!’ she declared with bright eyes and a winsome grin. I won’t deny we needed the break from each other, but it felt good to be cycling together again. Earlier on in our African adventure Nyomi's dreadlocks and the sign which sat on the front of her handlebar bag emblazoned with the words 'I DON'T BRAKE FOR ANYONE' had given her a bizarre and unique appearance. Her look often made me chuckle, I loved the sharp contrast between 'friendly hippy' and 'violent sociopath'. When we met up again Nyomi had decided that enough was enough and those dreads had to go. She shaved her head - grade 1 - raging sociopath. At least drivers will think twice about cutting us up in future. I'm trying hard to encourage her to invest in some fake gold teeth and a studded leather neck collar.

In Nairobi I visited the Merlin team based there and stayed with John, an expat and another seasoned cycle tourer. After the well needed break Nyomi and I set off, travelling west towards Uganda. My journal entry from Thursday Febuary 17th reads simply ‘washout’. Some days just are, nothing you can do, nothing you can prepare for and no level of positive thinking will change that.

6.15 am – Wake up in my tent. We had camped with the police in the outskirts of a small town. I tell Nyomi I’m excited about the day ahead, my first day riding through Masai country. I’m optimistic we’ll cover a good 140 km before sunset.

7 am – Tent down, bike packed, mango consumed, police thanked.

7.01 am – Attempt to pump up back tyre. Pump breaks and air escapes from tyre.

8 am – Multiple attempts to fix pump using gaffa tape, o-rings and my leatherman eventually fail

8.01 am – Punch air, throw pump around petulantly, curse everything

8.10 am – Wander into town. Can't find any bike pumps for sale but manage to get tyre re-inflated

9.15 am – Set off

9.25 am – Puncture

9.30 am – I repair it, cycle a ten kilometres on Nyomi’s bike into town and back to get tyre re-inflated

9.50 am – Return with tyre

9.51 am – Realise I have another slow puncture. I repair another tube and this time Ny cycles back into town with the wheel to get tyre re-inflated

10.15 am - Ny returns with inflated tyre

10.20 am – Realise Ny now has a puncture

10.30 am – Fix Ny’s puncture and inflate tyre with our other pump (the one that only works with the valves on Ny’s bike)

10.45 am – Nyomi’s pump breaks. Tyre not fully inflated but we cycle off anyway

11.15 am – Nyomi gets a puncture. We fix it and re-inflate the tyre by screwing together parts of the two broken pumps

12 pm – We lose a bolt in the sand and spend half an hour searching for it

12.30 – We sit down for lunch. Ny sits on an ant’s nest, I sit on a thorn bush.

13.30 – We set off again

15.30 – Thunder, lightning and heavy downpour. We get a soaking.

16.00 – We agree to officially class the day as a washout and a right-off. We’ve covered 26 km all day.

16.30 – We find a cheap hostel and decide to focus on tomorrow. As I lift up my bicycle to get it over the step the back wheel falls off. I’d forgotten to tighten it back on again after I fixed my last puncture. Crowd of onlookers laugh. So do I.

In the tropics when the rain settles and the sun shines once more, the land becomes caked in a damp, glistening, refulgent glow. There’s the foliant blaze of wet vegetation, the splendent gold of the yellow fever trees and the tiny brilliant scarlet dots of Masai people working in the fields. We pushed west with the infamous Masai Mara game reserve lying to our left and stretching out to the horizon and together we sang.

‘I see clearly now the rain has gone. I can see all obstacles in my way. Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind. It’s gonna be a (ny) bright, (me) bright, (together) bright sun-shining day!’

It was two days out from Nairobi when I noticed a portentous concrescence of dark grey clouds, almost black, overhead. There was a sudden disquieting groan, as if the sky above were being tortured. Each clap of thunder soon became indistinguishable from the last, a constant rumble echoed through the dimming light and quickening breeze. Within seconds the sky opened its dark underbelly and hail fired down upon us. We scrambled for raincoats and with no shelter nearby we hunched double over our bikes and covered our ears as the large hailstones smashed into our heads and backs, stinging as they made impact. After ten minutes the hail had turned to rain and we began to pedal onwards. It rained for the last days we spent in Nairobi and for almost every day since. Not the steady drizzle of Blighty but tropical rain, rain preceded by warm sunshine and then abrupt and torrential. It usually persists until sunset which is a sudden eclipse unlike the sunset of northern latitudes. I know the familiar pattern will only get more familiar, this is just the start of the big wet season which reaches its peak for us in April when we ride through Rwandan rainforest and then Tanzanian savannah.

After three days on the road (discounting the ‘washout’) we reached Kisii and met up with Merlin once again with a plan to visit projects in the area. Kisii was the polar opposite of Turkana - densely populated, wet and green with abundant food and water. The main problems being tackled here were HIV, tuberculosis and malaria. We visited a HIV clinic, the pure numbers involved incomprehensible. The hospital was heaving and it was easy to see how and why HIV infection in Africa is so often referred to as an epidemic. This one centre had an HIV positive population of 10,000 under it's care. Some experiences with patients as a health care worker will always stay with you, indelible recollections of the good and the bad. For me the first and only time I have had to give a patient a positive diagnosis of HIV infection is one. In an instant I gained insight into the deep psychosocial trauma of HIV. Here in Kenya nurses counselled small groups of patients about to start on treatment and I didn't envy their task but I could see how vital education, advice and support would be, and the groups also functioned to show people that they weren't alone, that other people were suffering too, or in Kenya's case, lots and lots of other people.

On the road west we passed villages just five or ten kilometres from the place of Barrick Obama's grandmother's home. The young men here described Obama as 'our brother', the pride was palpable. For a small fee you could visit Obama's grandmother, she is now a popular tourist attraction. I waved goodbye to the last of the smiling Kenyans and crossed the border into Uganda.

Most people if they were pushed to describe my journey with a single adjective would probably choose ‘absurd’. I agree. And during my absurd adventure I know that at times I will closely scrutinise my own motivation. I wonder what I’m looking for, what I’m trying to achieve and ask myself why, again and again and again. Watching Merlin at work has been a huge boost for me and I feel privileged to have had the chance to see what most fundraisers don’t get the chance to – to look into the faces of the people whose lives have been changed, in big or small ways, by the donors at home who have sponsored my journey. It was worth seeing, if only because it makes me feel that describing my ride as ‘absurd’ doesn’t quite cover it. It gives some meaning to what can sometimes feel meaningless. In the tough times ahead I will try to remember that. In Turkana and Kisii I witnessed firsthand the need, the progess and the potential. I urge anyone moved to make a donation to Merlin to do so here. I hope I have shown that every penny is needed and that every penny will be spent wisely to help communities like the Turkana, 'the people of the grey bull', people who have the odds stacked squarely against them. Thanks for your support…

http://www.justgiving.com/cyclingthe6

Me and the Merlin team celebrating my 13,000 km milestone in Lodwar, Turkana.

In Nairobi I also found the time to add tags to all my images on Flickr, an online photo sharing service. To see a list of my tags click here, to see photos arranged in sets by country click here and to see a chronological slideshow of some of the best images from my ride so far click here.

Frontier passage and the Jade Sea

2011-01-31T10:59:00.003Z

“An adventure is never an adventure when it is happening. Challenging experiences need time to ferment and an adventure is simply physical and emotional discomfort recollected in tranquility” – Tim Cahill

The variety in culture, language and tradition is abundantly clear in Ethiopia. We heard the word used for ‘white person’ change four times as we traveled south through areas using different regional dialects. For just three or four towns and villages the women wore their hair in wavy bops, the traditional style of their ethnic group, and just as quickly as it appeared, it was gone. For a few more towns the children began a bizarre dance routine when they saw us approach, quickly knocking their knees together, and like all the other curiosities it soon petered out and we never saw those strange dancing children again, but I loved Ethiopia all the more for it. The Ethiopian children south of Addis kept up their demands for money, to which I replied by asking them for pens, or for pens, to which I then asked them for money. These weren’t poor children, they were boisterous chancers who would often throw stones or pretend to ram large sticks into our spokes as we rode past and I was getting fed up with their baleful antics.

We rode towards a lakeside town called Arba Minch, mountains to our right and vast banana plantations to our left. Baboons surveyed us suspiciously from the road ahead and then scampered off to feast on the fruit nearby. Young children from the villages tried optimistically to sell us live chickens. We would usually arrive into a village together and leave in a peloton, anyone in the vicinity with a bicycle would hop on to follow us out and for several kilometers past.

‘You ride from England!?’
‘Yeshalla!’ we would reply. Amharic for ‘anything’s possible!’.

When we arrived into the town it was Ethiopian Christmas, which fell on January 7th. Most of Arba Minch was drunk, including the policeman who stopped me in the road. I was cycling on the left, in Ethiopia nobody paid much attention to which side of the road you were on, but the inebriated copper was having none of it. He looked unsteady and clumsy and sported an unnerving malevolent sneer, I immediately sensed trouble. ‘This is the wrong side of the road!’ he bellowed. ‘Of course, I’m very sorry’ I replied and began moving to the other side. ‘Stop there!’ he yelled. ‘Don’t go anywhere! I’m talking to you!’ I was now in the centre of the road and a queue of vehicles was building up on either side of me. ‘Don’t you know this is the wrong side of the road? This is very bad news. I am a policeman! Bad news! Bad news!’ I apologized and edged away. Drunk officials are a dangerous breed and all too prevalent in Africa.

Arba Minch sat by a lake famous for huge crocodiles, hippos and birdlife. We ventured out on a boat in search of the crocs and came across several five metre long specimens sunning themselves on the lake shore, mouths agape and motionless they stared out at the water with an ancient fire behind their bright green lambent eyes. Just ten metres away I watched a local fisherman standing thigh deep in the lake humming a tune to himself, oblivious or indifferent to any apparent peril. Our guide informed us that every year around five fishermen go missing, presumed eaten by hungry crocodiles who have become increasingly ravenous as their main food source is in decline with the lake being over-fished. It seemed to me quite an effective but cruel self regulating system for the crocodiles to then eat the fishermen.

Afterwards we went out in search of ‘tej’, a locally brewed honey wine gulped down voraciously by Ethiopians out of glass vials similar to the ones I used in my chemistry lessons at school. When I entered the tej bar my first impression was that some sort of scientific experiment had gone very acutely and horribly wrong. In the dim light I could make out the glass vials, many were smashed and a viscid yellow goo spilled from them onto the tables and the floor. Men were slumped around the room, semi-conscious and drooling, some mumbling incoherently. One man glowered in my direction, he was cradling a vial of tej in his left hand and an AK47 assault rifle in his right. Bees flew in erratic and haphazard loops around the room and some floated in the vials. Tej’s cunningly benign taste hides a potent kick that takes full effect when you attempt anything more ambitious than ordering more tej. This includes trying to stand up, having a conversation and then a little later, maintaining eye contact.

The arid, thinly populated badlands of Northern Kenya are without doubt the most dangerous parts I would travel through on my passage to Cape Town. It’s a large area which borders southern Sudan and Uganda in the west and Somalia in the East, it’s poorly administered and in many parts essentially lawless. It’s a region of tribal warriors, nomads and the notorious and ruthless ‘Shifta’, local bandits who don’t hesitate in taking lives. The main ‘Moyale Road’ that runs for 500 km has for some time been considered shifta territory. Armed guards are stationed on overland trucks and buses traversing this route and in Khartoum we met a truck driver who had been shot through the windscreen of his vehicle on this road just one month before, the bullet had entered and exited his right shoulder. I guessed rough camping here would be courting with extreme danger and friends and fellow cyclists alike warned me to abandon any hubris and take a lift if it didn’t appear safe. I wanted more than anything to ride all the way to Cape Town without resorting to cadging lifts in buses or trucks. It’s often hard to sort the scare stories and myth from the facts, even so I knew I had enough information to make a simple choice - not to ride the Moyale road. Despondently I surveyed my map and something caught my eye, a faint line in the crease of the page, well west of the Moyale Road, and it looked to cross the border into Kenya. This new option passed close to southern Sudan and skirted the shores of lake Turkana, ‘The Jade Sea’, an active volcanic region and the world’s largest desert lake. I did some online research but information was hard to come by. I discovered there were no customs or immigration on the Kenyan side of the border. The Lonely Planet and other guide books didn’t even see fit to mention crossing here as a possibility. All I had to go on was a few threads from online forums and a couple of isolated blog reports from the precious few adventurous souls who had decided to tackle the Lake Turkana route, and fewer still had attempted it on a bicycle. Although bandits may be more scarce the route was not without its own unique challenges. This is the very edge of civilization, due largely to a highly inhospitable environment, a combination of extremely high temperatures, virtually no rain and ferocious winds year round. It’s a desolate wilderness and if things went wrong out here there would be little support, many of the sandy tracks snaking through the region saw no vehicles for a week or more. Good maps of the area were non-existent and without a GPS navigation would be tough. There were also very few water points meaning I would have to carry up to twenty litres on my bike as well as a large quantity of food. I heard stories of inter-tribal conflict across the region and of lions drinking at the lake and carpet vipers common underfoot. I knew that the decision to ride or to get a lift had to be an individual one for myself and Nyomi. With her boyfriend paying her a visit in Nairobi, for Ny the decision was an easy one and she planned to hop on a bus at Konso. With the prospect of climatic extremes, arduous cycling, desolation, vulnerability, warring tribes and fierce beasts for me too the decision was easy. I started to make preparations for the ride straight away.

‘Sudden, violent storms are frequent. Nile crocodiles are found in great abundance on the flats. The rocky shores are home to scorpions and carpet vipers’ - Wikipaedia

‘We were going to die. I was sure of it now. When the next vehicle passed, they'd find my decaying corpse under an acacia. Eric was putting up a more positive front, though I caught him furrowing his brow every time he snuck a look at the compass. We obviously weren't headed in the right direction.’ – Amaya Williams,world cyclist, http://www.worldbiking.info/

‘In 25 tours and almost 30,000 km of touring I would rate those days as some of the toughest. Hot, barren, and kinda vulnerable are the words that come to mind.’ - Thorn tree forum.

‘You'll find animals (there are lions too, not only elephants) and rocks and sand. You'll push a lot. The tribes fight very often.’ - Thorn tree forum.

I gathered as much information as I could from local tour guides whom I judged may know something of the area. ‘You want my advice?’ said one ‘Don’t do it. It’s too tough’. I heard ‘don’t’, ‘can’t’, ‘wouldn’t’ and ‘shouldn’t’ and with each admonition a childish stubborn urge in me flourished and I felt compelled to give it a crack. I also found out that Merlin, the medical aid charity I’m raising funds for, have a base in the Turkana district. They operate throughout the region and this was an opportunity to visit them en route and witness their work firsthand.

Konso felt like the precipice, the last place to stock up, the last paved roads and the last town of any descent size before I leapt into an unknown abyss. It’s also where I waved goodbye to Nyomi as she sat on the back of a bus bound for Kenya. I purchased a litre of Ethiopian honey, half a kilo of peanuts, half a kilo of porridge oats, lots of rice, pasta and biscuits and got my bike ready. Before I reached the lake I would ride through the Omo valley, an area famous for the colourful local tribes, often dubbed ‘a human museum’. Some tourists fork out some petty cash for photos of the tribes. On my way through it was sad to see so many tribal people abandoning their traditional way of life to stand by the roadside in an effort to blag money for photos from passing tourists, tourists who generally contribute little to the local community and spend their money in far away countries with distant tour operators.

The descent into the Omo valley was magnificent, from the highlands I saw great plains stretching out beneath me, dust devils sprang to life in the distance, raced across the flats, slowly languished and then dissolved back into the desert. As I coasted down hill two women rushed out to greet me. They were topless with ocre coloured hair, goat skin skirts and were decorated in cowries, copper bracelets and wore the marks of scarification – I recognized them as members of the Hamer tribe. They seemed to find me as fascinating as I found them. They had children in tow who were clearly suffering from the effects of severe malnutrition. When they turned to leave I noticed large scars on their backs, marks from ritual flagellation, a long tradition in Hamer society. I continued to descend to the hot river basin. The temperature was consistently in the high 40’s and in the sun I recorded 56.5 degrees Celcius. I was now drinking eleven litres of water per day.

In one small South Omo village I was stunned to encounter another cyclist and a true veteran of the game. Hans was Swizz, 48 years old and had clocked up over 60,000 km in Africa, traversing the continent 3 times by bicycle, and had ridden over 200,000 km worldwide. ‘I’ll die on my bike’ he assured me. He had a habit of bellowing every word and swore profusely, our conversation resembled a sergeant dishing out a set of commands to a fresh army recruit, but his instruction was invaluable. Amazingly he had just ridden the Lake Turkana route and he seemed just as surprised as me to have found someone else willing to ride the same path. He wasted no time in detailing how treacherous and precarious the journey would be, and from an old-timer his words carried extra weight. As he described the route ahead and traced his finger across my map he would intermittently stop in mid flow, grab my thigh, fix my gaze and yell ‘IF YOU MISS THIS TURN YOU WILL DEFINITELY DIE!’ and then soon after ‘IF YOU DON’T TAKE 20 LITRES OF WATER HERE YOU WILL DEFINITELY DIE!’ and finally ‘IF YOU CAMP HERE YOU WILL DEFINITELY DIE!’.
‘Alright, alright. I’m definitely going to die.’
‘It’s serious! Death is serious!’
‘I know, I know! Thank you’

Appropriately the sign that marked the last Ethiopian town before the border said ‘Welcome. Value your life’. Here I loaded my bike onto a dug out canoe and crossed the Omo river. On the opposing bank was a faint track and my route to Kenya. The Swizz cyclist had assured me that on this section it was impossible to get lost and I resented him telling me that. For some people it’s never impossible to get lost, and I happen to be one of them. Inevitably I ended up riding in circles, recurrently returning to the same dead goat, but on each lap I had accumulated a slightly larger group of naked tribal children following behind. Eventually a tribesman guided me to the right path. The headwind was biting and the sand underneath my tyres meant that I had to get off and push my bike more often than I could ride it. Twenty kilometres took me over three hours to cover but slowly I left the people and tin huts behind and I was riding solo through the empty desert following a faint track which frequently deteriorated to the point of non-existence and then reappeared somewhere up ahead. I persevered and eventually reached a remote police outpost. They topped me up with murky water from the river and I headed off again, pushing my bike through the sand, a bike which now carried fifteen litres of water and weighed as much as I did. I abandoned the sandy track and continued off-road, keeping the track to my left and just in view. The thorny desert scrub meant numerous punctures. In the fading light and after hours of struggling I arrived at a remote catholic mission in the Ilemi Triangle: a literal no-man’s-land between Kenya, Ethiopia and Sudan which is territory disputed by all three. The priest welcomed me.

‘Well done, you’ve made it through the most volatile region’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The Turkana and the Dassenach tribes are at war. We lost sixty lives here last year’
‘I had no idea’
‘I bet you’re glad you didn’t’ he said

I pitched my tent and discovered a small carpet viper slithering inconspicuously nearby. It made a retreat when I pelted it with stones but I slept restlessly knowing that the zip to my tent inner was broken and that it had to remain open through the night. The next day I spent two hours repairing the numerous slow punctures in my cheap Chinese made inner tubes, the last two I had left. I pushed off again but slowly my house of cards began to tumble down. First the pump to my stove broke irreparably meaning I couldn’t cook any of my food. Then the fuel for my now useless stove leaked inside my pannier leaving my remaining snacks with a petrol-y aftertaste. Then I realized I was probably on the wrong sandy track. Then my brakes seized up. Then more punctures, then more pushing through the sand and then finally a local tribesman demanded a bottle of water which I felt compelled to hand over after realizing this was a command and not a question, reinforced by his menacing tone and ready rifle. It was a bad day at the office times a thousand. But just when I was starting to abandon all hope that I could complete this section by bike, my luck changed once again. It started with a faint sound of a car engine and then the first vehicles I’d seen since crossing the Omo river, four French couples in 4 by 4s, the same group I had met days before in Ethiopia. It had taken me a day and a half to cover what had taken them an hour. They topped me up with water and checked their GPS – I was just seven kilometres from an alternative track which branched off and took me on a longer route through the mountains, but which was hopefully an easier option. The rocky road ended up being almost as tough as the sand, the stones were loose and again the track often disappeared altogether. It ran through a gorge, Turkana tribesmen watched me from the cliffs above. I needed to get to the town marked on my map before nightfall and as the light faded I was sure the characters above looked familiar. My mind overflowed with dark paranoid speculation. Were they following me from up there on the cliffs? Were they waiting for darkness to fall? Fuelled by the adrenaline of fear I pedaled furiously and arrived into the small town completely exhausted where I happened upon another catholic mission which had a bed for me and a small charcoal burning stove on which to cook.

The next day I pulled out my repair kit to fix my third puncture of the morning and to my horror found that my tube of glue had leaked. There was none left. That was it. It was all over. Only one or two vehicles passed down this road per day and there wasn’t a settlement marked on my map for 150 km, I’d have to hop on the next truck, whichever direction it was heading. I was gutted that such a trivial problem such as a loose lid on a tube of glue had killed my dream of making it by bicycle. But the next vehicle happened to be a motorbike. I explained my predicament and the driver told me that there was a village nearby, ten kilometres from here but off the main road. He offered to ride there and check for the glue and in an hour he was back with what I needed. I thanked him rapaciously and carried on to yet another catholic mission and a small impoverished community of Turkana people. The indigence here was striking. Their cattle were dying, no rain had fallen in the wet season this year and the temporary shacks which they called home looked ready to disintegrate at any given moment. The roofs were constructed out of the cardboard from boxes of US food aid. I was covering only fifty kilometres per day now and the next was the toughest yet. Gale force winds came from over the lake and slowed my progress to walking pace. In the distance a haze hung over the hills the way smog hangs over a city. I guessed that it was a sandstorm and I was heading right into it’s maw. Soon I was engulfed, my senses obliterated, eyes, nose, mouth and ears full of sand. I was completely disorientated in the murk. I pushed my bike on through the storm and finally reached yet another catholic mission and then some beautiful, glorious tarmac. For two more days I pedaled, each turn was a huge effort in my weary and underfed state. At last I arrived into Merlin’s base at Lodwar to a warm welcome from the staff at the compound. I’ve made it, I told myself. I’ve made it. I’ve made it.

Suicidal goats and helping hands

2010-12-28T05:55:00.003Z

Ethiopia was country number eighteen and immediately more incomprehensible than the rest right from the start. In Ethiopia the year is 2003 not 2010, they run on their own calendar. In Ethiopia nine o’clock is not 9 am but nine hours after the sun rises. In Ethiopia there are eighty-four indigenous languages, although most speak the ancient language of Amharic with it's own unintelligible script. In Ethiopia there are just two medical doctors per 100,000 people. But beyond the bewildering it's a country full of immense promise for the cyclist. There’s a tasty variety of food, a welcome change after a month of the bean-based foole of Sudan. There is a lower cost of living than perhaps any country I will visit over my five years on the road. Ethiopia also boasts great beers, prodigious mountains, palpitation inducing coffee and rumour had it, the most beautiful girls in all of Africa.

I woke early on my first morning in Ethiopia, smothered in a wonky mosquito net and instantly aware of the deafening medley of animal sounds. Ethiopia is a land brimming with both people and livestock and it played a very different theme tune to the hushed stillness of Sudan. It was as if each creature was competing with the next. It was ‘Old MacDonald Has A Farm’ at 300 beats per minute, without the lyrics but with guest vocals from an array of anonymous beasts. We packed up and cycled east towards Gondar but on the way I continued to struggle with stomach pains and diarrheoa, farting profusely into my slip stream. From behind rang loud profanities as Nyomi cussed with colour and gusto.

After two and a half thousand kilometres with barely an incline to test our quads we spied our first mountains. It felt as though we were at sea and a vicious storm was brewing. The hills rolled in like great waves, each one more foreboding than the last. I had my mountain legs, and the vivid memories of obtaining them, but Nyomi had yet to earn hers and Ethiopia offers a unique test to the uninitiated. We edged slowly toward a tough ascent into the Ethiopian highlands, a continuous climb of seventeen kilometres and over one thousand vertical metres. We arrived at a small settlement which marked the beginning of the pass up into the mountains and stocked up on local food and water before I issued Nyomi with a scandalously patronizing pep talk about mountains being bigger in your head than in reality. As with every Ethiopian village we came to we were quickly surrounded by a hoard of children and suddenly I realized that bits of our kit were missing from the pocket of my handlebar bag. We tried every tactic to earn the return of our possessions, demanding, pleading and offering money without success. “The thief runs very fast” was the message from onlookers. We gave up and started up the steep side of the mountain. I was angry, at us for leaving the items on show but mostly at the thief in the crowd. I began to hear cries and shrieks from behind. When I turned to look I could see that Nyomi was being chased by another great seething mob of kids.

They’re at it again

But I noticed that she was sporting a broad grin and it was then I started to understand. They were pushing her up the hill. The idea caught on and soon I had my own group, tiny hands pressing against my racks and panniers and propelling me upwards. It went on for several kilometers and soon we were high enough to get staggering view of the village in the valley far below. They giggled and cheered as they pushed with impressive stamina. At six years old there’s no way I could have run for several kilometres up a steep mountain pushing a fat man uphill on a bicycle. I started to see how the best distance runners in world hail from these parts. The children’s gift could not have come at a better time. Soon the theft was a distant memory. What Ethiopia takes, it also gives back. This, I’m sure, will end up being one of my most enduring and heartwarming memories of Africa and worth more than couple of bits of kit. I realize of course that the image of a group of small, poor, exhausted, black African children pushing a white Englishman uphill on a bicycle is a disconcerting one. Some would say that it even has colonial undertones. I guess you just had to be there.

After the children gradually peeled off we powered on unaided, thighs like pistons, doing battle with the mountain and waging war on gravity. I could see the determination and resolve in Nyomi’s face and I knew that this mountain, or any other, would not beat her. Towards the upper reaches a slow chugging truck crept past me and a man sitting on top flashed me a grin and then clenched and unclenched his fist. I instantly understood his message, he was inviting me to latch on. I had heard of cyclists in Africa grabbing onto the back of slow moving trucks to get up hills and I’d always wanted to try. Cheating? Maybe. But my arse was still firmly on the saddle and I’m in this for the experience. I raced after the truck and grabbed a wire jutting out of the back. It took a few moments to steady my weighty bike, then I relaxed my arm and I was coasting upwards. I abandoned my free ride after a passenger leaned out of the window and told me to let go. The irony wasn’t lost on me. The hefty Englishman who had just been pushed uphill by small children was being told to let go of the 15 tonne lorry as evidently he was slowing it down too much.

The very young children who shepherd the livestock in Ethiopia were so fascinated by us that they would often forget their role and instead turn and gorp as we rode by. Their animals, now without direction or guidance, would shamble into the road in front of us and there were frequent near misses. I wondered how much a donkey would cost to replace, it seemed that bowling into one face first and at high velocity was inevitable. And if it was an ox, I knew who’d be coming off worse. But it is the goats that inhabit western Ethiopia who are the hardest to avoid. In this part of the world they seem to have lost any inherent will to live. With an air of departing resignation they wait until the last moment as I zoom down a hill and then, in a manner I assume they share with the depressed man who steps in front of a train, they step directly into my path. They make eye contact with me and await their fate whilst I screech to a halt with just milimetres to spare. Perhaps the survival instinct in the goats of Western Ethiopia has been bred out of them intentionally. After all it would be quite useful for a community who slaughter thousands of goats if the goats didn’t really want to live in the first place. On top of dodging all the animals, life became even more difficult after discovering that the rumours were true, the women in Ethiopia are indeed stunningly beautiful. They often took my eye, and on the downhill this occasionally led to near fatal losses of concentration.

We arrived into Gondar in the north of the country and roamed the streets, taking in the sights and smells of the new city. We were invited into one family’s home, a grubby dingy shack where ten or twelve slept together. They were all drunk on ‘tela’, a homebrewed wheat beer, including the six, seven and eight year olds. Before we left a friendly local Rastafarian finished off Nyomi’s rudimentary dreadlocks and we had our first taste of Khat, a local plant with a strong unpleasant bitter taste that gives you a hit somewhere between strong coffee and amphetamines. Confident that I have put myself through worse in the pursuit of pleasure, we munched as much as we could tolerate and went out dancing all night.

Continuing south we decided on a 270 km unpaved road which would shave off perhaps 100 km from our route, it was a mistake with welcome consequences. The cycling was a grueling slog by any standards. I’d forgotten how hard rough roads can be, on us and on the bikes. But it was the same old trade, the more off the beaten track you are prepared to venture the greater the reward. People in this rural region were more surprised and more welcoming than usual. On one evening as the light faded and we still hadn’t found somewhere to camp, a local farmer and his family invited us in to sleep. We all shared food and he pulled out an animal hide for me to sleep on. During the night I sensed small creatures crawling over my skin, I brushed them aside, intent on rest. In the morning I could see the critters with clarity. The fleas were everywhere. Over the next two days red, intensely itchy lesions covered my back, stomach, shoulders, neck, legs and arms. Nyomi stayed free of bites, but on the same day she managed to lose her glasses and come down with a nasty bilateral conjunctivitis. She had to ride without lenses or glasses, and during our lunch break she squinted and pointed to our left ‘ohhhh, look at that school and all the children’, she was gesturing towards a small group of three donkeys and a goat.

The attention we receive in Ethiopia is unparalleled; it ranges from curious and friendly to overwhelming hysteria. Everywhere we are observed with intense scrutiny by dozens of faces. Even going to the toilet in Ethiopia is an unavoidable public spectacle. The faces pop up from long grass, from behind trees, from donkey carts. Faces with bright, unblinking eyes everywhere we turn. We wild camped a few times but each night was a restless one, we talked in hushed tones, terrified of triggering the ‘faranji’ alarm. If discovered, word would quickly spread and the village would all come out to have a look, and in all likelihood, to watch us sleep. Unfortunately the theft in the lowlands was not to be the last. Every so often a youngster would try their luck and bread, jumpers and others bits vanished from our bikes. Lets be honest, it’s hard to stay angry at a small Ethiopian child who steals bread from your bicycle, but we soon learnt that anything not firmly stashed away in a pannier was fair game and in Ethiopia, homeland of the infamous Haile Gebre Sellassie and other giants of distance running, the thief always runs faster than you do.

Ethiopians like to shout, usually one word and usually over and over. Here’s a few common ones and how we dealt with them…

“YOU YOU YOU!”
Ahhhh the ‘You’ game. Child shouts ‘you’ repeatedly until you look at them. Child wins. Don’t look and you risk a volley of stones. As you can see it’s a bit boring and there’s only ever one winner. And it’s never you.

“MONEY MONEY MONEY!”
‘Give me money!’, ‘Give give give!’ or sometimes the beautifully presumptive ‘bring me my money!’
We never give money to children, for all the obvious reasons.

“FARANJI! FARANJI! FARANJI!” (translates as ‘foreigner’)
To this our choice response was ‘Absouja’ (‘Ethiopian’ in Amharic) which you can also shout whilst pointing back if you like.

“PEN PEN PEN, GIMME PEN”
There are lots of better things to give – time, knowledge, help with English or just a little entertainment – silly dances routines and animal impressions do best.

“Where are you go?”
Don’t be fooled, this isn’t really a question. Very few listen to your answer, but even if they do they will often repeat the same line at a higher volume. I rotated my answers through ‘Timbuktoo’, ‘Basingstoke’; ‘The moon’, ‘anywhere’ and ‘nowhere’ but this got boring fairly fast.

“CHINA!”
Why do the children think we’re Chinese? The Chinese are building roads throughout Africa in return for cheap petroleum. The Chinese are the only foreign visitors some children ever see and so to them, it’s logical that we must also be from China.

The ratio of adults to children is very obviously skewed in Ethiopia. It’s not uncommon for families to have fifteen or sixteen children. The average life expectancy is just 45 years so children are everywhere with relatively few adults to exert authority. When huge numbers of children chase us chanting ‘YOU YOU YOU’, brandishing large sticks and throwing stones it can feel a bit like you’ve stumbled into an African ‘Lord Of The Flies’. Add to this that the school uniform is usually coloured overalls making the children look like escaped convicts and Ethiopia can be a daunting place to venture. On the downhill in Ethiopia I’d learnt that the animals don’t move out of the way for a cyclist, whereas the people usually do. So from now on when I see that line of silhouettes I steady my handlebars, narrow my field of vision, build up some velocity and take aim for the smallest people-shaped shadows I can find.

We pushed south and neared Addis Abeba, cycling to over three thousand metres above sea level and through vast golden arable plains, coniferous forest and then areas of short grazed green grass with solitary exotic looking trees dotted over the landscape, we could have been riding though the grounds of a stately home or a golf course rather than rural Africa. Lorries passed by with a singular lively but soon-to-be-dead goat tethered to the top. The Ethiopian version of a pack lunch. We tackled the infamous Blue Nile Gorge, an even bigger ascent than the climb into the highlands two weeks before. It was particularly testing for Nyomi who frequently had to capitulate and join in with my double handed high fives and accompanying ‘huhhh!’ in an American football style which I frequently insisted on. On Christmas day we sang Christmas carols loudly and out of tune as we cycled into the Ethiopian capital. We wished people Merry Christmas in Amharic only to hear ‘Yes. Now bring me my money.’ I gorged myself with food and alcohol, safe in the knowledge that I needed the calories. My weight has dropped to just 65 kg, I have lost 15 kg since Istanbul. Christmas is a reminder of the old and familiar and it did have me pining for home a little. I tried my best to bury a futile yearning for country pubs, chip butties and chocolate hobnobs.

Ethiopia wears a dreamlike air of the exotic. My preconceived mental image of African huts and villagers is set firmly in the grassy savannah, not amidst the mountains, and perhaps it’s this juxtaposition that contributes to this aura. Perhaps it’s also the brightly coloured exotic birds dipping and diving over herds of livestock in the fields or the young children with Mohicans and other strange haircuts who chase our bikes and shriek with excitement. Perhaps it’s the rich soundscape in the early evening, shepherds whistling, people yelling, strange birds twittering and whips on the hides of oxen. Perhaps it’s the palpable optimism of the Ethiopian people, they’ve never had it so good after coming through years of oppression, the cruel communist ‘red terror’ regime and devastating famine. But I think that above all it’s that Ethiopia is full of something that makes travelling there completely exhilarating – the unexpected. That’s why, of the eighteen countries I have passed through on my bicycle so far, Ethiopia, with it’s extraordinary atmosphere and unexpected sights and dramas around every corner, is my favourite of all.

If anyone feels inclined to make a Christmas donation to my charity Merlin please visit my justgiving page http//:www.justgiving.com/cyclingthe6. The adventure continues next through the lawless tribal borderlands of Ethiopia and Kenya, skirting the shores of Lake Turkana, a desolate wilderness where lions, crocodiles and carpet vipers roam.

The Nubian way

2010-12-02T08:18:00.000Z

My 10,000 km milestone in the Sudanese Sahara

It is prohibited to cross the Egypt-Sudan border on land, and no paved roads connect the two countries, so a boat across Lake Nasser was our only option. We boarded the boat after stumbling through hours of beguiling bureaucratic chaos and paying an array of equally befuddling taxes. We settled on the top deck with a small band of foreigners. Each of us expectant, cheery and full of intrigue about the new lands waiting beyond the water. This felt like how you should enter a new African country. By night and by boat. Crossing a vast wild lake gave our entry a surreptitious and mysterious edge. We were past Aswan high dam where the densely populated Egyptian Nile ends and where crocodiles roam.

The boat was due to leave at noon. The sun had long since set by the time we were underway. I had already adjusted to African time. No matter how fast we cycled, I knew Africa would never change her pace for us. Four hundred souls crowded on board, many with all their worldly goods. It was a tight squeeze, people slept in the life boats, in the gangways and on every inch of the ship, above and below deck. Our small group hailed from northern latitudes, we were two Canadians, one Swede and two Brits. The other passengers on board were a mix of Egyptians and Sudanese. The five of us stood out all the more in our shorts and t-shirts. The remaining three hundred and ninety five looked ready to tackle a Siberian winter. Mummified in an array of thick over-garments, they observed us with the look of wonder and concern that most people reserve for the very, very drunk.

When I reel off the list of the places I will travel through, a select few are guaranteed to provoke a sharp intake of breath and raised eyebrows; places perceived to be too hostile for the cyclist, either due to climatic extremes, conflict, crime or political unrest. Amongst them northern Alaska, Colombia and of course the Sudan. In my mind the name invoked images of war and danger and violent disorder. However the north and the east of Sudan are relatively safe places for independent travel, not just safe relative to the rest of Sudan but safe relative to the rest of Africa and the rest of the world. The rate of violent crime is vanishing low. Islam is the predominant unifying force here, as opposed to the tribalism of the south where warring factions compete for power and oil revenues. Sharia law was implemented in 1983. We were arriving at a historic moment. In January there is to be a referendum to decide whether the country divides, north from south. An exodus of people was flowing to the south where the original inhabitants had fled from conflict years before. Frightened by the prospect of a divided nation they were returning home and we saw them en masse traveling the roads leading towards Khartoum.

The reputation of the Nubian people indigenous to northern Sudan precedes them. Cyclists I had met talked of unparalleled hospitality from these generous and kind-hearted desert dwellers who frequently take in and feed weary travelers. A Nubian man on the ship's deck welcomed me to Sudan. The festival of Eid was upon us and I was worried about the availability of food if shops throughout Sudan were shut for the three day public holiday. "Don't worry" he told me "if you are hungry just knock on someone's door. Anyone's door. They will feed you. It is the Nubian way".

We debarked and loaded up with supplies and almost twenty litres of water. The contingency supply was a wise move. We started out through the desert and after 50 kilometres there were no signs of people, no water points and no buildings in sight. Just sand and rock under the formidable Saharan sun. At 70 and 100 kilometres still nothing, it wasn't until we'd ridden almost 150 km could we refill and rehydrate. Even so the desert was a welcome friend after Egypt's Nile valley, often congested and cramped. The Saharan silence was a penetrating, piercing silence that I have lived in only once before, a decade ago when I rode through Patagonia. It's a silence so complete and unsullied that it almost has volume. A muffled scream in the open blankness of the Sahara. It becomes even more profound at night or when there's a lull in the wind, insects scuttling under the tent can sound like huge machines. With the serene solitude comes a filament of vulnerability, something I've always been drawn to, and the essence of a good adventure. We wild camped at night, unaware at this point of the stories of travelers ravaged by hyenas and wolves nearby. Later I heard Nubian men recount these tales with great enthusiasm. Local folklaw or fact? I can't be sure. Little wildlife exists in this region, but when I greeted these accounts with a dubious frown I was assured a motorcyclist had been hunted, mauled and killed by a hyena just two years before. If I wanted they would take me to his BMW motorbike, still by the roadside. I declined their offer, choosing blissful semi-ignorance.

During our breaks for lunch or for a snack we wriggled into the shady shelter of the ubiquitous tubular drains that ran beneath the road. Aside from the infrequent Acacia trees, these were the only sanctuary and retreat from the scornful, merciless Saharan sun. Eventually we were reunited with the Nile. The verdant cloak of riverside pastures had been ripped from her, she appeared naked against the desert backdrop. The heat was intense and oppressive. In the whole of 2010 this area of Sudan had received just ten minutes of light rainfall and on one day in June this year the temperature had been recorded at 49.6 degrees Celcius (121 F) in the shade. In the sun we recorded a high of 48 degrees Celcius (118 F) and this was winter. We drank the murky turbid water from clay pots by the road with fingers crossed after our filter gave up the ghost, hoping that it had been drawn from a well and hadn't been lifted straight from the Nile.

Lunch time in the drainage tunnels

It was goodbye to the delicious melon flavoured Fanta of Egypt and hello to feta cheese in a carton, equally good but without the flagrant Egyptian over-charging. There were lots more welcome small differences. Sudan is still Arab but has a slightly different dialect of Arabic, the temperature is even hotter here, there are slightly different customs but outwardly it was the manner and attitude of the Sudanese that contrasted most sharply. They appeared conservative, demure and polite as opposed to the gregarious, voluminous and excitable Egyptians.

When Eid came Nubians did feed us and when Eid was over they fed us some more. I enjoyed these meals. Typically Nyomi and I would split up, women and men dining in separate parts of the home. The women wore bright colourful robes with floral motifs and, if married, henna adorned their hands and feet in elaborate swirls and curlicues. The men were clad in white robes and the white prayer cap or taqiyah, their lower lips bulging with clumps of moist tobacco. Occasionally I would see Nubians with scars on their cheeks. Facial scarification is a Sudanese tradition, many ethnic groups and tribes have their own mark of distinction. We would greet with a hand on the shoulder followed by a shake of the hand. Eating was also done with our hands and was a velocious flurry of food snatching. Conversation was impossible if you wanted any nourishment. Sometimes they would give us food to take away, often completely unsuitable for carriage on the bikes such as huge raw joints of lamb, but as the man said, that is 'the Nubian way'.

After eating we got the chance to practice our less than pigeon Arabic. On one occasion an elderly man thought it prudent to warn us of the 'dangerous people and thieves' we'd find in Africa after we left Sudan. It all sounded a bit familiar. In Eastern Europe it was the Turks who were demonised as bandits and thugs. I encountered nothing but the greatest hospitality in Turkey, but whilst there I often heard of how the neighbouring Arabs would slice me up and rob me blind if I wasn't careful. In the Middle East I found many good-natured and generous characters who went out of their way to help me. Now in Sudan I was getting the same old warning. I wondered if every community harbors a dark paranoia of their neighbour.

Nyomi and Nubian women having lunch

As we continued through the desert I began to feel a bit uneasy. We were coasting along with a swift tailwind, my knee felt sturdy, people were friendly, there was no snow, no chasing dogs, no insects, no mountains, no police, no bandits. Cycling through Africa shouldn't be this easy. Something had to give and that something was Belinda, my bicycle.

Before I left for South America ten years ago I was worse than useless when it came to bicycle maintenance and repair. Over the following five months of riding, when every sub-standard component on our cheap bikes fell off, cracked or shattered, I never really improved. Every time I went near a bicycle with some tools and optimistic intent I would invariably do more harm than good, initially through my own incompetence and then later when I lost my temper with the tarnished machine. The result was that I developed a sort of phobia of tools and bicycles, a bit inconvenient if you harbor dreams of cycling around the world. So I before I left from London I did the fantastic Cycle Systems Academy (City and Guild) bike repair course which gave me loads of skills and confidence sorely needed. More or less every component on my Santos Travelmaster bike is serviceable by the road. One vital part that I had no intention of going near was the infamous Rohloff hub. Without getting too technical the Rohloff hub is an internal gear mechanism, which means there's no derailleur to faff with. It allows me to switch between fourteen gears. Ninety percent of serious cycle tourers have one. It adds almost a thousand pounds to the cost of the bike and has been on the market for twelve years. Rumour had it there has never been a mechanical failure. It is revered, respected, allegedly indestructible and is a very complex feat of German engineering.

It felt like a small puncture. I looked back. Tyre looked OK. Then I noticed the spoke flapping in the breeze. A broken spoke could easily be replaced but on closer inspection I saw the real extent of the problem. Inexplicably a piece of metal had spontaneously fallen off the Rohloff shell, the part where the spokes attach to. There was no way I could re-attach the spoke by the road and by the look of it I would need a new hub and with it I would have to deal with a whole world of problems. I was wary in my ability to build a wheel strong enough to take me to Cape Town but I also knew that whatever I did, I had to do it fast. My Sudanese VISA expired in three weeks. I had to pedal onwards to the next sizable town, Dongola, 50 km away. We were still 500 km from the capital Khartoum. The wheel became more and more untrue as I rode, dancing an erratic shimmy every turn. Now Sudan, once vivid, new and exhilarating was the last place in the world I wanted to be and the broken hub was beginning to look like an almost insurmountable problem. That night my mind was in turmoil. How could this happen? Every obstacle, every option, every possible outcome and consequence tumbled through my imagination in my semi-conscious doze.

The next day we arrived in Dongola. I photographed the damage, emailed bicycle experts in the UK and went on the hunt for the best bush mechanic in town, or failing that any guy with a drill or a welding iron. I kept hearing the same mechanic's name and after three days, with some help, I'd tracked him down. I was particularly lucky. He had the kit to weld aluminum, a rare skill, and he set to work welding a piece of metal to the hub and re-tensioning my wayward spoke. He worked with attention and skill and when he was done I almost hugged him. The weld had strengthened my hub, my resolve and my hope that I can complete my journey across six continents without using other forms of transport, aside from boats across those watery stretches. It's an absurd, ridiculous and petty ambition I know, but never-the-less it remains somehow important to me. I waited to hear from mechanics at home and in the meantime we delved into Sudanese life, frequently being invited for meals as well as attending two wedding parties and taking a dip in the cool waters of the Nile.

Word came that Santos and Rohloff had teamed up to ship a whole new wheel and hub to Khartoum. I have since learned that the incidence of this type of hub failure is approximately one in five thousand. Karma owes me one. We set out for Khartoum but yet another problem re-surfaced. The widest inner tubes available locally were too slim for my new back tyre which I fitted in Cairo. Unable to fully inflate the tyre, the tube could move around inside and pressure was applied to the valve when I used the breaks. The tubes had been rupturing again and again, right by the valve. Only just out of Dongola and another tube was heading for the bin. I had to reduce the internal size of my tyre. "Socks!" I announced "We need socks!". I stuffed nine socks into the tyre and inflated the tube and rode on with no more problems. If my plan had failed I knew I had no more socks left to add, but I was ready to ride 'commando' if it got me to Khartoum.

We continued, sweaty and sockless, our progress marred by those problems ubiquitous to travel in Africa; oppressive heat, insects and dodgy bowels. Our protracted symptoms were perhaps consistent with the parasitic infection Giardia from the muddied water we'd binged on. We kept up our spirits by riding side by side, talking of life in England, shared friends and past experiences, the good and the bad. The desert sand was an ochre sea with a million ripples over the surface. The limitless terrain was dotted with thorny bushes and prodigious termite mounds and occasionally the sky would appear on the earth, a desert mirage, the exhausted desert traveler's nemesis. We passed huge trains of camels, one hundred and fifty strong, loping through the desert. They were being taken through the Sahara from Southern Sudan to Birqash, a large camel market in Egypt where they would be sold for meat. The ancient camel route north was named after the time it takes for them to arrive, the 'forty-day road'.

A termite mound

A rare patch of shade

Camels on the 'forty day road'

On our approach to Khartoum I passed my 10,000 km milestone and then wrote another to do list. The first task was a cathartic throw away...

"Go on a gram-saving mission. Get rid of anything and everything we don't use. Be MILITANT".

We chucked away a load of clothes and a few luxuries. Shampoo and deodorant were surplus accessories we could also afford to ditch. We might smell funky but that's the price you pay to get quicker up those hills.

It wasn't my ingenuity or resourcefulness and it wasn't good fortune that helped me solve the problem with my bike. It was people. The Nubian mechanic, the Korean family who found him for me, the bicycle experts in the UK, especially Cycle Systems Academy and MSG bikes, Rohloff and my bike sponsor Santos. Thank you all. Next stop will be Christmas in Ethiopia after we tackle the first proper mountains Africa has to offer. Afterwards we get much more off the beaten track by skirting the shores of Lake Turkana, a desolate wilderness and tribal area in the borderlands of Kenya and Ethiopia where few cyclists dare to venture and where lions, crocodiles and carpet vipers roam. We'll need strong legs, strong wills and probably a lot more socks.

Nyomi riding a ridge in the desert

Lucky, lucky gits

2010-11-11T07:41:00.002Z

It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,

Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream,

And times and things, as in that vision, seem

Keeping along it their eternal stands,--

Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands

That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme

Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam,

The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.

Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong,

As of a world left empty of its throng,

And the void weighs on us; and then we wake,

And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along

'Twixt villages, and think how we shall take

Our own calm journey on for human sake.

'The Nile'

James Henry Leigh Hunt.

I greeted Nyomi at the airport. It was good to see her beaming, familiar face. After a beer and some catching up I had a look through her gear, I was curious as to what kit she had put together to aid us on our trans-African passage. The first item to emerge from her box was a small guitar shaped bag. Nyomi had brought a ukulele on a bike ride across Africa. Now, feeling a little nervous about her judgment, I sifted through the remaining gear wondering if I'd find coat hangers and hot water bottles, but instead I found she had managed to get a bunch of high quality cycling kit from several companies as sponsorship. We had very little to buy in Cairo and quite a lot to send back to the UK. I was however more than a little suspicious of the Eurohike tent option. My fears were confirmed when I read the following words printed on the bag...

"A budget priced tent for sheltered summer use aimed at youngsters seeking their first camping adventure, perhaps in the back garden".

Summer use! Back Garden! Nowhere did it mention wild camping for nine months in the toughest and most unforgiving continent on earth. We bought another. I realised though that the ukulele was a nice touch. Not wanting to be outdone I hot footed it to a local music shop and purchased not one, but two, fine harmonicas. We have started up a traveling band. Neither of us have any clue about how to play either instrument and what's more we have nobody to teach us and no text to learn from. But we do have time and enthusiasm. Surely that's all we really need. We need a name for our traveling band. Please leave suggestions in the comments section below.

In Cairo we made our final preparations for the road ahead and explored the city on foot. Our first task was to secure VISAs for Sudan and Ethiopia. The Sudanese required a 'letter of intent' from the British embassy. We collected the letter, which was actually a letter stating that the British Embassy do not issue 'letters of intent'. It cost 30 quid for the privilege on top of the one hundred US dollars for the Sudanese VISA. We visited the pyramids with an Australian fine dining chef called Damian who was about to start running across Africa. We decided against taking a camel ride even if getting around the pyramids, according to the touts, "is very far on foot". In the evenings we chilled out in Al-Azhar park, chatting with young Egyptians and contemplating how young life here contrasts with our own in England. We were having fun but I was keen to get going. Cairo can be a hard place to find peace. In a crowded city of twenty million arguments can quickly erupt between locals, the barmy din of car horns and voluminous touts permeates every moment and mosquitoes and smog hang in the air. Perhaps it was a reaction to the surrounding chaos but I realised we were undergoing a subtle transformation. Ny started dreading her hair. My beard was making a comeback. We ate falafel and smoked shisha. I practiced the harmonica. We talked about how to sleep for free in Cairo. If we had continued in this hippie-esque vain we may have ended up dancing naked around central Cairo with flowers in our hair, so I was relieved when finally our panniers were packed and we knew the location of every spoon, every pair of socks and every spare spoke. The Nile would be our guiding companion for the next two thousand kilometres. We would shadow her twists and turns. The prevailing wind is brisk and blows reliably towards the south. Surely at least the cycling would be easy along her flat fertile flood plain, although I suspected our ride along the mighty river, like most things in Africa, would not be that straight forward.

Sunset over Cairo

The Nile, Cairo

We were off, a curious, grinning, two-person peloton. At first we weaved our way through the industrial outskirts and through the grimy detritus caste aside by Cairo's burgeoning population. Little by little the traffic thinned and settlements became punctuated with greenery and pastures. The dusty road became an avenue lined with palm trees, prickly pear and sugar cane. Grey herons flew high over our heads and excitable ten year olds whooshed past our shoulders on motorbikes shouting "weeeeeeeeeelcoooooommmmeee!". I took a long look at Nyomi. She sat proudly aloft her heavily laden touring bike wearing a large green rimmed hat. Two dreadlocks protruded from under the rim and were at right angles to her head. A piece of luminous yellow and green twine was tied into her hair. She had several spring onions and a large cucumber strapped under the bungees on the back of her bike and a ukulele was strapped to her back. On the front of her bike tied to the handlebar bag was a bright yellow metal plate emblazoned with the words "I DON'T BRAKE FOR ANYONE'. I realised at that moment that the question was not whether we were ready for Africa, but whether Africa was ready for Nyomi.

On our second evening we turned off the main road, found a nice patch of grass to camp and were soon surrounded by cheerful, tittering, curious faces watching us keenly as we ate and then erected the tents. We felt, above all, safe and secure here. But the night of Halloween was drawing in, all those friendly faces soon disappeared behind the locked doors of their homes and our situation changed. The sound of motorbikes zooming close by kept me from slumber. A group of seventeen and eighteen year olds approached the tent. I poked my head out to explain we needed some sleep. They skulked away out of sight. Then, a little later I heard some scuffling at the tent porch, a quick count and a pannier was missing. I went outside and found them rifling through Nyomi's clothes. They saw me and quickly retreated but I had a feeling they'd be back so I sat vigil outside the tent. Again they came, now more aggressive, demanding money and making threats, again I ushered them away. I mentally sorted through our options and was left short changed. Again they came back but now with additions to the party, four or five more lads, two brandishing large sticks. They had upped the ante, diplomacy had failed and I had some very quick decisions to make. I had some CS gas and a knife in my tent. Adding either to the mix could only make things worse. Then I spied two figures walking down the road. Perhaps they would help us. I shouted for Nyomi to run over and enlist their help whilst I tried to stop the group raiding our stuff. The two lads got involved, pushing the boys back and shouting with menace. It was brave thing to do. Our assistants cant have been much older then those in the group. Slowly the group dispersed. An old man appeared after hearing the commotion. He introduced me to his friend, a lean, grim character clad in a long brown robe and with a full beard. He lit a fire close to our tent and placed a foot long curved knife on his lap. He would act as our protector and bodyguard through the night. We paid him some baksheesh for his trouble the following day.

The next day I knew we had to metaphorically, as well as physically, get back on the bike so we found another village to rough camp in the evening and this time it was a much less restless night's sleep. We were welcomed by a large extended family. We sat munching on sugar cane with the children and a cow was milked so that we had something to drink. Nyomi rode around on a donkey to everyone's delight and amusement. We watched the sun set over the palm trees, sat around a fire and then when bed time came the villagers moved a water buffalo from it's shed so we could sleep there.

A sugar cane snack

A man and woman living and traveling together for nine months, but not as boyfriend and girlfriend, is a concept that would be completely lost on most people in Islamic Egypt. So to prevent confusion, to ward off the attentions of Egypt's many many leering romantics and to make life easier we pretend we are married and Nyomi wears a ring. Now that I have a cycling buddy to consider I have had to adapt after my slightly self-absorbed and solitary life before Cairo. I was glad Nyomi had done some training in the UK before she left and she has had no trouble on our first days on the road, easily keeping pace. What's even more impressive has been her ability to match me mouthful for mouthful at breakfast, lunch and dinner. In Egypt we have the perfect leg fuel... Koshary. It's a mixture of pasta, rice, tomato sauce, dried onions, garlic sauce, chick peas and chilli sauce. Tasty, loads of carbs, dirt cheap and available in every town and on virtually every street.

Egyptian children are a curious bunch and often seize the chance to chat away in English although sometimes the conversation doesn't exactly flow...

"What is your name?"
"Stephen"
"What is your name?"
"Stephen"
"What is your name?" (now shouting)
"Stephen"
"Like Stee-fen Gerrard?" (there's no 'v' sound in Arabic)
"Yes like Stephen Gerrard"
"Like Stone Cold Steef Austin?"
"Yes"

Of all the Stephen's in all the world it's not Steven Speilberg, Stephen King or even Professor Stephen Hawking but the WWF wrestler 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin who is my most well known namesake.

A few days after setting out the police escort arrived that I had been dreading and soon it started to wind me up. They tailed us for four days during which we had to use hotels where we would find them waiting again for us the following morning. As I write this blog there's a policeman over my shoulder staring at the screen, although I don't think he speaks much English. WE DON'T NEED A POLICE ESCORT. No reaction. It's not just the constant hum from behind my back wheel as they trail my bicycle but the fact that they dictate when you can stop for a rest or for food. Inevitably they say "not now. In five kilometres" and this always means fifteen. On the third day I had a flat and it was a good excuse to stop for a while but the police wanted me to fix it immediately and move on. The policeman pointed to the long grass nearby and did an impression of a sniper taking a shot. Unimpressed with this ludicrous exaggeration Nyomi and I began a lie down protest by the road. The police predictably went bizerk and clearly didn't know how to handle this novel situation. They telephoned a senior officer for advice. I can only imagine how the conversation went...

"Hi Sir. We have an, erm, situation"
"Yes?"
"There's two English cyclists lying down by the road"
"Have they had an accident?"
"No Sir"
"Are they sick"
"No Sir"
"Well what is it then?"

"They just won't move Sir"

Although some grated, most of the police I met were friendly and of course only doing their job, and when they drove in front and sounded the siren as we rode into town I couldn't help feeling quite presidential. They were also helpful when I had to stop to fix a puncture and a mob of children descended. They began helping me change the tyre but their hands were everywhere and I noticed a few sniffing around my handlebar bag. The cheap inner tube had completely ruptured, the split ran right through the words 'made in China'. With the flat fixed I readied to go but realised my speedometer was missing. I erupted into a loud tirade, after a few minutes the speedo was returned but they wanted money for their 'find'. At this point a policeman appeared and doled out a few clouts to the nearest youngsters who quickly scarpered.

During that evening I started to feel sick and the next day was the first on my journey where I have been physically unable to ride. I had a blistering headache, rigors, severe diarrhoea and my temperature intermittently spiked to 39 degrees. We rested up in a shabby hotel whilst I self medicated from my pannier pharmacy ('borrowed' from my hospital) and winged to Nyomi. But the next day we pressed on. Eventually we cruised into Luxor at the end of a healthy one hundred and forty five kilometre day. Shower, koshary, feet up, beer.

We hadn't seen another tourist over the seven hundred kilometres we'd ridden from Cairo, but Luxor was packed full of backpackers. At the infamous Valley of the Kings I watched tour bus after tour bus arrive with amusement. Out piled elderly American and French package tourists. Clearly they had all been given some sort of instruction by the on board tour guide.

"Right Gentlemen, yank those shorts up to your armpits and lets see those pale wrinkly legs. Ladies, get those big golf hats on. Now everyone... cameras ready and I want to see those mouths open and eyes up towards the sky. Remember what I told you, don't walk, shuffle."

The last stage through Egypt was Luxor to Aswan at which point we planned to take a ferry across lake Nasser to Sudan. The road south to Aswan was lined by flowering plants of effulgent hue, beyond them crops of oil palm, cabbages and sugar cane. Traffic at last was sparse but there were more police around than usual, and for Egypt that's a lot. Susan Mubarak, the wife of the president, was visiting a village nearby.

In Aswan we took a ride in a felucca along the Nile and made the necessary adjustments for the next stage. Chunkier tyres for the less salubrious terrain ahead, stashes of cash hidden around our panniers (it would be maybe two months until the next ATM) and new maps. On Saturday we take a ferry across the lake to Sudan and then I have a feeling that life's about to get a little less comfortable. My next post will come from Khartoum.

I leave you with a few words regarding our journey I received recently via email from a good friend...

"The pair of you are about to set off into the most frustrating, dangerous, incomprehensible continent on earth. It is also the most life-affirming, the most human, and arguably the most beautiful. You lucky, lucky gits."

Already much of those words ring true. The cycling has been easy but even so it's been a tough start to our African epic. We've been sick, we've been threatened and we've been robbed but we've also been surprised, inspired and often overwhelmed. Already we have stories. I can't imagine how many more we'll have to tell in Cape Town. There's no doubt in my mind that we are lucky, lucky gits.

Here are some stats...

0 - number of Killer Nile Crocodiles, deadly snakes or walking mummified undead spotted so far

1 - number of shisha pipes knocked over in Cafes

2 - number of times Nyomi has fallen off her bike blaming the toe clips

3 - metric tonnes of koshary consumed

4 - number of marriage proposals from Egyptian men to Nyomi

5 - number of English pounds required for a hotel, slap up dinner and beer in Egypt

6 - number of dreadlocks in Nyomi's barnet

7 - an insufficient number of policeman to move two tired cyclists

8 - number of times we've crossed the Nile

9 - number of ruptured inner tubes over the last thousand kilometres

10 - our 'skankiness level' on arrival to Aswan (on a scale of one to five)

I leave Egypt with many striking images ingrained on my memory. Here are a few we caught on camera...

A Great Egret

The police helping me mend another puncture

Never leave your children with this woman

A young family who took us in for the night on our way to Aswan

A felucca on the Nile (but not one of the many sponsored by McDonald's which actually do have the golden arches logo on the sails)

This was the 'bike shop' we were directed to. Four guys and a box of tools camped out on the street corner.

The promise of Africa

2010-10-19T11:38:00.305+01:00

An egyptian 'hill'. Scary, white knuckle stuff.

An Egyptian traffic jam

How to confuse another tourist whilst cycling around the world...

"So where are you from?"

"I'm from England"

"Oh great. And where have you come from?"

"From England"

"No no. I mean where have you cycled from?"

"From England"

"Oh wow. (pregnant pause). That's a long way. How long did that take?"

"Around six months"

"No kidding! And where are you heading?"

"Back to England"

"How long will that take?"
"Around four and a half years"

I had a few conversations along these lines in Dahab. It made me chuckle, but reminded me that after clocking up eight thousand kilometres I'm still only one tenth of my way around the world. My days by the Red Sea were spent indulging in nice activities like snorkeling in lagoons, eating nice hot food, drinking nice cold beer, having a nice chat with nice new friends and occasionally having a nice quiet siesta. It didn't feel right. It was only six days but a guilty feeling descended like a curtain, and with it an urge to push on. I kept poring over my map and the route inland across Sinai. More hills. I had a debt to pay and those mountains were calling it in. I reminded myself that hills are just like all those cold showers. The thought is always worse than the experience. This would be the last vertical test until the highlands of Ethiopia, maybe 2000 kilometres away. Until then the theme would be Red Sea coast, Nile valley and Sahara desert. Dahab was a great place for a break, but there were few solitary travelers here, everyone seemed to be part of a group. I started to miss home. Recently whenever I'm feeling a bit nostalgic something quickly crops up to put a smile back on my face. Sometimes all it takes is a tailwind or an exotic creature in the road, sometimes some local hospitality or if I'm lucky it's meeting another cycle tourer. On my way inland across Sinai, whilst my mind wondered about the people I'd left behind in England, I met two.

The first was Nils, a German guy who'd taken off on his bike at the ripe old age of sixty six. I realise now that our conversation would probably have sounded strange to anyone else if they happened to be listening in. Two strangers met in the road and covered, in quick succession, altitude, kilograms of gear, prevailing wind directions and then the pros and cons of Rohloff hubs. I happened upon a pilgrim whilst riding through Turkey perhaps a month or so ago. A sunny, gregarious character from Austria called Martin who was walking from his homeland to Jerusalem. Amazingly Nils had run into him too, in Serbia. I waved goodbye to Nils who was just finishing his tour and then tried to ignore taxi drivers who frequently stopped to offer me a lift. I thought it was fairly obvious that I had put at least some time and consideration into my chosen method of transport, but they tried their luck anyway. I asked a couple if they wanted to ditch their taxis and find bicycles. They didn't get what I was on about. I'd picked up one of those water spray bottles they use in hairdressers whilst I was in Dahab. I intermittently soaked my face to escape the heat and I liked it resting in my bottle holder. It contributed nicely to my increasingly bizarre appearance. The police at the numerous check points found it hilarious. I think every cyclist should have one. Also great for washing up, brushing teeth and for a very limited "shower".

Nils

The second cyclist was Rob. A Brit who'd cycled all the way from Capetown, he'd made it in seven months despite more then a couple of chunky loops and detours. He was heading to Istanbul. We greedily traded information, the road ahead for the road behind. He probably knew a bit about my future and I of his. His tales inflamed my curiosity. These encounters with cyclists coming the other direction, more then any guide book or web search, help shape my decisions about the route ahead. Rob was full of useful tidbits. Here's his entertaining blog. Cycle tourers met so far... It's England 2, Germany 1.

Rob

I moved north, flanked by desert and sporadic red sea resorts. On my way I gave myself indigestion by eating my weight in various life-giving health foods, mostly pot noodles and family sized packs of kebab flavoured crisps. I love the Middle East, not least for those crisps, but some things I won't miss. Mainly people's inability to queue properly but also the fact that you have to barter for every commodity. I expect to haggle for gifts in the Souqs of Damascus or Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, but when you get to an Egyptian pharmacy and have to negotiate the price of six Rennie and a toothbrush you begin to wish things just came with a price tag.

Cycling through desert can be an uninspiring effort. After Sinai it was a stale, stagnant, unchanging landscape. Only the odd dead White Stalk and red or green stripes of mineral deposits in the rocks roused my interest. Nothing but the bare beige backdrop to stare at. To me camels always look glum and a little bemused. Stick twenty in a lorry, with their heads poking out of the top, and drive it fast through the desert and they look quite comical, but that was all that broke the monotony. Only one thing to do then. Three cups of coffee, some new school breaks on the IPOD, switch off that internal monologue and get cracking. At the end of the day is when the desert really shines, the nights and evenings are magnificent. The bleached blandness of the day diminishes with the light. Shadows rise, colours sharpen, contours look to twist and morph. With few settlements, no light pollution and dependably clear skies, the cosmos fluoresces in all it's glory. During the desert nights I could easily make out the hazy streak of the Milky Way, luminescent planets, star clusters and even the faint haze of Andromeda, our neighbouring galaxy, three million light years away.

I ran out of food again after consuming the edible dregs from the deep recesses of my pannier. After fifty kilometres and still no breakfast I spied a coastal resort, and then once inside to my delight, and their imminent regret, an all you can eat breakfast buffet. French and Italian tourists picked at the salads and cereals. I went to town. When I piled my plate as high as I could manage, for the third time, a few olives bounced away under the table. The bill then quickly arrived without me asking for it. I stuffed two hard boiled eggs into my pockets, paid and made for the exit, ignoring the disgruntled looking staff. I felt no shame. This is not the first time, and it will not be the last time, that I take a few liberties with buffet carts.

I was cycling on the only two inner tubes I had left and it was making me nervous. The valves on the only ones available to buy in the Middle East didn't fit through the holes in my rims. I hoped things would hold up until Cairo but of course the inevitable happened, a sudden 'woooooosh' and on examination a split, right where the valve comes off the tube. I hadn't glimpsed a bike shop since Amman, over one thousand kilometres behind me. When my inner tube ruptured I was fifty metres from one. They didn't have the right tube, but of course in Egypt my problem was not a problem. If the tube didn't fit, the young mechanic would make it fit. He swiftly removed the tyre, chucked away my tube, grabbed some pliers and set to work widening the hole in my rim. Within ten minutes he had solved the problem, inflated the new tube and replaced the tyre, adjusted my brakes and refused payment. It took me longer to persuade him to at least take some money for the tube than it did for him to fix it. In the end I could only convince him to take the Egyptian equivalent of about two quid sterling.

I cracked on, hungry for Cairo, munching up the kilometres and trying to ignore the Egyptian stripped down, minimalist approach to motoring (who needs lanes, indicators, brakes, mirrors or eyes). Eventually I made it. I've spent about six months on the road, it would have been five were it not for that troublesome knee. I expected the hectic in Cairo, so sunnies off, headphones out and game face on. I needed all my senses. Time to embrace the chaos, forget the rules and above all, commit to every move and turn. This time I quite enjoyed it.

Cairo... the old and the new

When I first found out Nyomi might want to join me I asked her to choose a country. I didn't expect her to answer "Africa", but I'm glad she did. She arrives today and we have a lot to do in Cairo, on top of all the sights, smells, sounds and tastes of the city to sample. So what are my hopes and fears for the roads ahead through 'the dark continent'? There are many. I'm not looking forward to the police escort we'll get in Egypt from Cairo to Aswan. Egypt's boys in white insist on trailing cyclists if you choose to ride down the Nile valley. Rob had them in tow for four days. I guess they don't care much for independent travelers. They prefer tour groups, where you're told what to look at and then escorted to the gift shop. Many a cyclist has also recounted tales of the stone throwing hoards of children in Northern Ethiopia. I don't know if anyone knows for sure why they do it. Perhaps it's perceived as bad luck to see a traveler on their turf, perhaps it's just youthful mischief, either way many cyclists I have spoken to warn of sporadic attacks along this route. The road through Northern Kenya is notorious, a rough lumpy hot bed of ups and downs. Hundreds of kilometres of what amounts to back to back speed bumps, and then for us a few weeks of difficulty walking in a normal fashion. Ethiopia and Rwanda have some hefty inclines to deal with, and of course I also sometimes worry about having all of our stuff nicked. The temptation's obvious. In Africa our bikes are worth a fortune, but it's unlikely that I will pass through anywhere on my five year expedition that has a higher rate of bike theft than my prosperous home town of Oxford.

Malaria is one that sometimes hits cyclists. It is a particular risk when you're outside all day, but we have tactics to deploy. Obviously covering up and avoiding bites in the first place, good mosquito repellent (and I have some), nets at night and prophylaxis. Many don't bother, complaining the tablets are "not natural", that they're not 100% effective or that they have side effects. Personally I couldn't give a mosquito's arse about the first, the second is true, although surely you should try what you can to reduce the risk, and the third? Well malaria has side effects too. Off the top of my head... haemolytic anaemia, liver and kidney failure and occasionally death. Whilst I've never seen a patient who has developed side effects to anti-malarials severe enough to warrant a hospital admission, I have been involved in the care of quite a few patients with malaria, including one who subsequently died on the Intensive Care Unit. Some had taken prophylaxis, but most had not. We also carry a malaria self test kit and some Quinine for treatment of Falciparum malaria if all else fails. Finally there are those wild beasts of Africa. If Nyomi and Steve disappear without trace and only their camera is recovered, the last photo may just show grins of the purest gorgonzola and edam, the pair oblivious to the pride of lions in the corner of the image and just over their shoulders....

The geographer George Kimble put it aptly when he said that the darkest thing about Africa has always been our ignorance of it. In the next chapter of the saga I hope to learn something of the continent through the people we come across on the road. I hope to visit some of Merlin's projects. I hope the journey is as exciting as it has been up until now. I hope my knee continues to fair well. I hope our journey's hard and I hope it hurts and then I hope to sit on the beach at Capetown, beside Belinda and Nyomi, and know that we conquered Africa together and that all the sweat and tears and saddle sores and long days and bumpy roads and dodgy bowels and aching limbs and homesick times were worth it. Steve and Nyomi! Nyomi and Steve! Team Ny-eve! Hang on, that doesn't quite sound right.

Every thousand kilometres I cycle I stop, write the distance on whatever comes to hand and take a photo. The idea is to put together a collection of eighty images for every thousand of the eighty thousand kilometres I expect to pedal. So far I have written in the sand, in stone, in the ice on my tent or just on a piece of card. Here are the first eight of these milestones...

Fresh-faced in the French countryside
Blog posts:
The beginning

On the Italian Riviera
Blog posts:
Lesson one

Getting a soaking in Croatia
Blog posts:
Reggae, rain and a dodgy beard

A frosty morning in Macedonia
Blog posts:
Paranoia and pesky pooches
Heartbreak

Back on the bike after knee surgery, Istanbul
Blog posts:
The humble fare
Recovery, japery and some summer shenanigans

South of Cappadocia, Turkey. I carved the numbers into the soft tufa rock
Blog posts:
Meltdown

North of Amman, Jordan
Blog posts:
Ain't no valley low enough
Doctor, soldier, vagrant, priest

The Sahara desert, Sinai peninsula, Egypt.

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