Africa-Cycle

From Istanbul

2010-12-05T02:39:00.000-08:00

The days are short now and up on the plateau it is cold. Today a heavy mass of inky cloud covers the sky over Ankara. I spend a day here and walk to the hilltop where Ataturk is buried. A paved avenue, flanked by stone lions, leads through neatly trimmed lawns to a broad courtyard. Stern faced soldiers parade towards a tall flagpole at the compound’s southern edge; marching in unison, with high strides like John Cleese. There are long lines of school children, many clutching single red roses, being led towards the grand mausoleum at the east of the site. They file between the tall spherical pillars, into the high grey-walled chamber, and on towards the coffin at the end of the room. I stand behind and watch them, walking in pairs, and with tiny hands drop the flowers on the steps before the tomb. Beneath the chamber there are a network of vaults whose walls are covered wıth sprawling war panoramas, showing scenes from long-ago battles with the Greeks. There is rousing national music and taped gunfire and booming speeches, and the children file on by. When I leave, rain is falling and all the grey stone seems forlorn.

In the morning I ride west towards Beypazari. It is a good feeling to pass the last of the tall towers that flank the road from the city, and to stare out at the desolate moors all around. The tar is rougher now and whenever I pass a flock of sheep, the Kangal dogs tear towards me and circle the bicycle, barking and growling. The trees stand out like lonely obelisks above the murky green slopes and the wind sweeps over the vales and fills my ears with a roar like crashing waves.

I pass over a long hillside and into a broad valley. Far ahead hills crowd the horizon and thick quilts of bruised cloud roll across the sky. It is nearing dusk as I ride down to Beypazari; a cluster of old Otoman houses crammed beneath a rocky ridge. Many of the buildings have been smartly done-up wıth clear white facades and dark-wooden framed windows. Others are crumbling; the terracotta roods patched up with tarpaulins and walls of bare wooden splints collapsing inwards.

I continue west to Mudurnu, past a wide flood plain encircled by hills. A shallow trail of brown water runs lazily through a vast liver-coloured marsh of soggy silt. Steep slopes of brown and grey rock rise high from the edges of the plain. From the roadside the rock looks soft like putty; the slopes are heavily creased; folded and knotted like the hide of a crocodile’s back. The land is drier further west and the hillsides speckled with deep green pines. Near the road, isolated humps of bare rock stand amidst the pastures. The rock looks to be peeling and serated circular ridges run across the body of the mounds like chain-saw rims. It is very empty here: the only other life far off flocks of sheep.

I pass Nallıhan, and mountains begin to collect before me. There are villages nestled amidst the hills and long lines of wispy trees set back from the road. A man with a backpack and a staff is walking towards me. He tells me he is walking to Jerusalem. I give him a packet of biscuits and tell what I can of the road behind. He begins to laugh and tells me I must climb over a mountain in a few miles.

Soon I am climbing, and then racing down the other side; the wind rushing towards me, carrying the smell of the pines. I look across and can see the lower hills rising and falling like waves before me. I reach Mudurnu at dusk and leave at first light. It is clear today and I cross the last of the swelling hills and valleys of the Anatolian highlands and soon I am descending from the plateau and I know the journey is near its end. I ride on and on, past Akyazi, past Adapazari, past a sign showing 100 km to İstanbul, and on to İzmit. There are wide roads and tall buildings here and the night air is warm; it seems like days ago that I set off in the frosty dawn from Mudurnu.

The road to İstanbul hugs the northern coast of the Marmara Sea. Off the road there are soot-coated factories and warehouses and noisy truck stops. The spaces between the towns begin to narrow and a cramped clutter of buildings stream together into a single conurbation. I am close now and the traffic roars past. When another road joins the highway I am left floating in the middle lanes; the cars careering past and honking and I look straight ahead. I see the steel frames of the Bosphorous Bridge and weave slowly between the standing traffic towards the first high arch. I hear the blast of a siren and a policeman tells me I cannot ride across the bridge. I turn back and pedal round to Uskudar and soon I am leaning over the railings of a boat, staring at rays of faint sunshine splintering through the grey clouds behind the towering the silhouettes of the Aya Sofya and the Blue Mosque.

From Ankara

2010-11-24T07:59:00.001-08:00

I ride slowly past the tufts of grey rock that rise from the grasslands flanking the road east to Avanos. I pass the cave church at Cavusin; ochre in the morning sunlight, and soon the strange Cappadocian chimneys are behind me. I climb steadily as I head north and a thick blanket of grey cloud forms and sits heavily above the highlands. The land plateaus, and far off I can see tips of black mountains protruding dimly through the fog. By the road a farmer is burning the remnants of his wheat; smoke rises in thin wisps from the fields and the black circles slowly grow as the low flames lap at the retreating stuble.

I stare out at the band of tar reaching out across the plains and look up at the gloomy sky. I hope it doesn’t rain. I see little villages tucked in the hollows of distant hills, and nothing but fields between me and them. I think I would like to follow one of the little tracks that runs off between the fields and camp, but the nights are too cold, and I must reach Kirsehir by dark. I fınd a hotel in town and take a cold shower and put on a big warm jacket and go to a park to write. It is a few hours before dusk and beneath the grey sky the town seems bleak. An old man sits on the bench besides me, and stares at the ground, and runs his prayer beads between his fingers over and over.

The clouds above are black as I ride out of Kirsehir and I know it will rain. Out on the plateau the air rushes in powerful gusts across the highway. I pedal slowly through it, up the shallow hills, and as I race downwards the wheels shake in the wind. I feel unsteady and when the wind bursts across me I think I will fall, and I brake and roll slowly to where the road rises again. And then the climb is harder. Rain begins to trickle from the sky and the square heads of petrol-station signs stand tall and strange between the fields and the clouds. I am forty kilometres from Kirkkale and the rain starts to fall heavily and the wheels kick up streams of murky highway water and the wind drives the spray into my face. The brakes barely hold the wheels now and I must squint to keep the water from my eyes.

The fields sweep across the shallow valleys either side of the road and the sky seems to be sinking; burying the moors in dark. My fingers start to tingle and then I feel them no more, and I pedal on. I look to the side and see an old lady running and stumbling between two big square tents on the roadside. It is strange to see here; I haven’t seen people living this way for a long time. I turn off into town and people raise their heads and stare, huddled beneath gloomy bus shelters. There is a cheap hotel here and I am glad to be inside.

In the morning the rain is pouring down and the wind billows across the treeless moors. I should be racing downwards but the wind holds me back and I must pedal. Ahead I see the road rise up, and curve around a long hill, and disappear above. I clamber up and heavy lorries trundle past and blast their horns and spray gritty water across me. I climb for over an hour and stop to rest and then feel cold and carry on. When the road flattens I stop at a cafeteria and the owner brings me a glass of tea, and then another.

The hillsides outside Ankara are crowded with terracotta-roofed houses, some falling down. Smoke rises from the chimneys and drifts into the streaming rain. In the city pools of water two inches thick sit over the road and hide groves in the tar that I bump heavily over. Cars rush past and send waves lapping against my wheels. As I leave the ringroad the rain stops and faint rays of sunshine pierce the block of grey that has sat above for days. I stop and take off my jacket and head towards Kızılay. There are chain stores and metro stations and new yellow taxis and everyone is dressed for the city. I stop and wheel the bike along the pavement, looking for somewhere to stay. Everyone stares and I look down and see I am wearing swimming trunks and I am covered in grime.

From Goreme

2010-11-20T06:26:00.000-08:00

It is early and beneath the cloudless the sky the air is cold. The metal ends of the handlebars sting my bare hands, and as I exhale my breath forms plumes of condensation. In the morning light the valley floor besides me seems bleak. The soil is hard and bare and the spindly trees silver and lifeless. I stop to put on a pair of gloves and a woolly hat, and ride briskly towards the mountains. I expect to climb, but the road winds flat through the hills, and soon Goksun is far behind. The tarmac is uneven; gravel has been pasted onto the asphalt, and the sharp edges and little gaps between the stones rattle the wheels and slow me down. The sun rises and the mist fades; the fields turn from grey to green and the autumn leaves begin to glow. I take off the hat and gloves and jumper, and my body warms from riding.

There are villages in the hollows between the hills around me. The houses are ramshackle; big squares two stories high, with only the walls of the lower floor plastered. Above the cemented bricks are left bare. Half the windows are glassed; the rest empty frames, and the slanted corrugated roofs are rough with rust. Outside large piles of wood are stacked beneath frail wooden ornings, and rusty tractor parts lie besides rectangular saloons that've been driving since the seventies.

The road climbs up for a long stretch, and although the incline is gentle, it is slow going. On either side of the asphalt the grassland is strewn with outcrops of grey rock. A shepherd, wrapped up in a thick brown coat, sits on a rock besides a large herd of sheep. I hear barking, and I jolt, and watch a tall sand-coated dog rushing across the moorland towards me. These dogs are all over the plateau. They have thick coats and big black jaws, rounded like a St. Bernard’s. Around this one’s neck there is a spiked metal collar, to protect it from wolves. I stop and stare at it and it realizes I am human and walks slowly back towards its sheep. I watch it go and wave at the shepherd. I was told the dogs used to kill bears and still kill wolves if they approach the flock. Further on the hillsides sharpen and enclose above the road and steep ravine walls block the sun. I follow a sharp bend out of the canyon and the road dips and I ease down. On my left there are the remnants of a long-ago abandoned village; low stone walls, crumbling, and overgrown with tall grasses.

I freewheel down for a long time, running besides a thin stream, shaded by skeletal trees. On the banks there are run-down sheds; boxes of grey breezeblocks overlain by tatty tarpaulins. There is litter everywhere and two guys in all-in-one tracksuits bait a pack of scrawny mongrels. The dogs bark and whimper and the guys laugh, and then they notice me watching and yell out in Turkish. I turn away and loosen the brakes and roll on by.

I reach a valley and icy looking streams cross between the fields. Ahead the little road joins a broader highway, and at the junction is Pinarbasi. I pedal slowly through the little streets. All the shops are closed for Bayram and outside the butcher there is a pile of bloody sheep wools and a cellophane bag of the animals’ severed heads. There is a hotel above a petrol station cafeteria on the edge of town and I get a room and read all evening.

The road out of Pinarbasi ıs flanked by rounded hills, which look rose-red in the morning sunshine. In the hollows beneath the hills there are lakes, still and blue. I stop to take a photograph and then see the banks are cemented, and the lakes are man-made, and I put the camera down. Ahead the road dips and then falls onto a broad plateau, and for miles all I can see are fields of wheat. The air warms, and the road stretches on, and ahead I can see a snow capped mountain, rising high above the golden prairies, far in the distance. As I near Kayseri the mountain looms larger and I can see folds and crags of dark rock, where no snow has settled, between the slopes of white. I descend into the city, past a long line of colouful tower blocks that look plastic from the road, and reach the black walls of Kayseri’s old fort just past midday.

I leave early and ride west across the fringes of Cappaddocia, through pale green hills that roll gently into the distance, carved into fields by low stone walls. I reach Avanos and turn onto a narrow road that passes a low ridge of heavily wrinkled orange and white rock. In the grasses between the ridge and the road there are tall outcrops of grey rock with black, basalt tips. Some are shaped like wizard's hats, others like enormous mushrooms. I turn off the tar and ride on dusty paths through the outcrops and stop and clamber up between them. They sprout from the land for miles, like fields of giant termite mounds, impossibly shaped. I ride for hours through narrow valleys full of the rocks and it is only when I see the sun beginning to set, that I join the road to Goreme.

From Goksun

2010-11-18T05:14:00.000-08:00

I stay for two more days in Aleppo waiting for my chest to clear. I am still wheezing, and I cough through the night, but my visa is expiring, and I must ride north in the morning. I go slowly, through the flat scrubland, to the Turkish border. Before long I am riding through the quiet streets of Kilis. The young women are bare-headed here, and wear tight jeans and low tops and walk with head-phones in. The shopkeepers are well turned out, and stand in their doorways, arms folded behind their backs, watching the passers-by. There are old Ottoman mosques and hamams, made from alternating cream and black bricks, and old men walk by arm-in-arm. I am drowsy and decide to spend night and ride the sixty kilometers to Gaziantep in the morning.

It feels good to be back on an open road. The highway in Syria was noisy and clogged with traffic. Here three broad lanes of clear tar stretch out between chocolate-coloured fields, and rise slowly, and disappear between round hills far ahead. The fields are separated into long, thin lanes by lines of boulders, and farmers in rusty tractors plough the dark soil. Where the land is drier, orchards of bare silver trees stand deserted in the light earth. A man in muddy blue overalls flags me down from the roadside and I slow. He takes an apple from his pocket and hands it to me. He talks in Turkish and I smile and eat the apple and he nods. A man shouts from a tractor in the field behind and he runs off. I wave as I ride on and feel sad about all the times I don’t stop and leave those I pass waving sadly behind.

The road passes hills covered with deep green trees, and then the city appears, and the hills are full of buildings. There are rows of brightly coloured apartment blocks, surrounded by green lawns and well-kept playgrounds. I watch all the children getting off the turquoise buses and think it looks like a model. I wonder if Clichy-sous-Bois looked this way once.

In the city I walk by an old fortress and through covered markets where the metal workers are bashing pots. Later I go to a tea-house to watch a football game. The room is full of smoke and fifty old men look up from the backgammon boards and stare. I see a team of red shirts on the screen at the end of the room, and gaze around for a chair. There are big signs announcing the smoking ban on each of the walls and I smile. A young guy with a shaved head, and a metal bolt through his eyebrow, gestures for me to pull up a chair. He is with two friends and receipts are strewn across the felt table. Scores flash across the bottom of the screen and they all rustle through the papers and scribble numbers down. We drink tea and smoke and each time a new score appears Dogan pats me on the shoulder and says ‘Is goal. Is one-zero. I know. Is happy’ and he lifts his bet-slip up like a champion, and then the scores update and he puts his head in his hands and says ‘is life, is life. Robert, is life. I know. No problem. Is smile.’

I meet Dogan at the bakery the next morning, and the baker flattens the dough and sprinkles sesame seeds on top, and gives us tea while the bread is in the oven. On the steps to Dogan’s block of flats a little boy is tying his laces and Dogan ruffles his hair as we walk past and the boy runs off looking happy. His mum is making breakfast and we sit down at a little table. His brother comes in and then his brother’s friend ands his sister and her baby, and we eat omelet and cucumbers and grape syrup with the bread.

In the evening we go to see Gaziantep play Besiktas, and sit on concrete steps in the cold with all the shouting fans. There are policeman with long shields guarding the corner-flags and a man in a leather jacket taking photographs of the crowd.

I wake in the night coughing, and then I’m sick, and I go to the hospital in the morning. The receptionist smiles helplessly at me and I follow a nurse around wards and surgeries looking for a doctor who speaks English. After a while we give up and a doctor listens to my chest and then gives me an injection and puts me on a ventilator. The receptionist won’t take any money and I go back to the hotel and lie down.

I am short of breath as I ride out of Gaziantep, but as I get into the hills the cool air is soothing. I am on a narrow road winding around hillsides dotted with deep green pines, heading north onto the Anatolian Plateau. Long sections of the road are being re-surfaced and I rattle across the bare stone slowly, sending clouds of fine cream dust into the air around the tyres. I stop in Maras and find a hotel and buy some antibiotics for my chest.

The road north climbs steeply into the mountains. In the sunshine I sweat while I climb and when the road runs beneath the shade of a hillside the air feels cold on my wet shirt. I am high up now and I look back at the thin band of tar snaking through the pine forests to the south, and then the mountains behind, which are shrouded in a wintry haze. For miles I freewheel down, through deep bowls full of silver trees, sending crinkled orange leaves down onto the road. It is Bayram and families sit out on the porches eating barbecued mutton. They wave and some hand me charred sides of meat with thick crusts of white bread.

The road climbs again and I am tiring. The sun is low behind the mountains and it is cold. I am still far from Goksun and I wonder if I’ll make it by dark. It is too cold to camp and I try to pedal hard, but my legs are weary. I turn a steep bend and a broad valley of flat brown and green fields opens up before me. The road winds down and down, around the hillside, and at the far end of the valley I see the town. On three sides it is encircled by hills, dim in the fading light. Hills for the morning.

From Aleppo

2010-11-07T05:36:00.000-08:00

It is a good feeling to be on an empty road, heading into the hills. The highway out of Damascus is loud and full of heavy lorries, trundling to Baghdad, Aleppo, Beirut. It is quiet here; there are a few houses set back from the road amidst dusty fields and orchards of olive trees. And I ride slowly up the gently rising hillside to Maalula.

The village sits between two grey-faced cliffs; concrete houses and crucifix-spired churches and narrow lanes are crammed between the walls of stone that overhang the little village. On the ledge of the southern outcrop there is a statue of the virgin Mary, in blue robes, head-bowed. On the northern hillside a gleaming white figure of Jesus, arms outstretched, stares out across the valley.

Beneath the crest of the northern rockface there is a white-bricked convent. I lean my bike against the open metal gates and ask one of the nuns if İ may stay the night here. She looks down disapprovingly at my knees and says İ must speak to Sister Mariam. I follow her through a courtyard, past a small shelter full of icons and candles, past the brass-gilded doors of the chapel, into a brightly lit corridor. Sister Mariam smiles and looks down disapprovıngly at my knees and İ say İ am on a bicycle and she nods and points me to a bedroom.

She tells me that if İ follow a path through the rocks behind, and climb up the hill, I will come to another church. She says it is one of the oldest ın the world. She says the fathers there still speak Amharic. I walk there later, through a narrow cleft ın the rock, which seems to have formed inconceivably; it is just a few feet wide and banked on both sides by shear walls of stone, sixty feet high. In the courtyard to the church a father in black robes stands smiling, staring at two cats playing. He doesn't notice me and I go into the little stone chapel and light a candle.

In the morning I walk down the steps towards the village and Sister Mariam calls me back. She leads me into a dining room and gives me warm bread and olives and boiled eggs and a bowl of walnut jam.

İ coast down the hill and rejoin the highway. The pine trees on the roadside bow towards me; their narrow trunks bent by strong southerly winds. Today the wind flows from behind me and I ride fast. Cars flash past and the endless fields of barren yellow earth roll by. The days are short now and night is already falling as İ reach the clocktower at Hama, 170 km to the north. A shallow green river runs through the town and on the banks old wooden waterwheels are attached to crumbling walls. They are not turning anymore. I sleep on the roof of a hotel and am woken before dawn by all the calls to prayer trumpeting out across the city. I look up, bleary eyed, at neon minarets glowing green in every direction.

There is little to draw my eyes from the tar ahead of the handlebars, on the road to Aleppo. The land is flat and the fields the same. Groups of women in multi-coloured shawls, and shemaghs masking their faces, pick olives from the low trees off the road, and there is litter strewn along the dry ditches beside the tarmac. I think it is a shame that İ must take the highway, but my map does not show the country roads.

Aleppo is an old city and there is a great citadel on a mound at its centre. Near the foot of the citadel a network of enclosed alleyways runs for what seems to be miles, housing the city's souk. The tunnels are full wıth crowds; boys on bicycles, men on scooters, women carrying heavy sacks on their heads, and tea-boys rushing around with trays held high. I spend a morning here, and ask some of the stall-holders if I may take their photographs. Tomorrow I ride to Turkey.

From Damascus

2010-11-03T03:36:00.000-07:00

I ride east towards Syria, down a winding hillside road, through olive groves and forests of low pine trees, shedding their browning needles on the dry earth below. I stop for tea where the land flattens, already far from Amman, and a man in mechanic's overalls sits beside me. He peers over at the map and says Iraq. I point to Baghdad and he smiles and nods. I read Fulluja, Najaf, Basra, and he says yes, yes, yes, after each and smiles.

Every mile I pass fruit vendors, lying behind polystyrene crates of apples and pomegranates and tomatoes. They look up dozily at me and flick the ends off the cigarettes and lean back down. I reach Jerash and go to the old Roman city there. Teachers lead groups of school girls up the long avenue of stone columns and the girls run up to the tourists and say good-morning and what’s-your-name. I ride up a country lane into the hills and camp beneath an olive tree, the whole valley below filled with patches of forest and villages of white stone houses.

It is only fifty kilometres to the border and I stop for some bread and look up, for the last time, at the smiling Jordanian king in the photo above the counter. Here he is playing with his young son. His picture is everywhere; smiling in a suit and tie, in army uniform surveying his troops, standing happily with his seated wife. I leave Jordan and ride the short stretch through no-man’s land, past cement century posts looking out above the fields, into Syria, where I am ushered into an office at immigration. I look up at the Sryian president staring down from above the desk. His eyes are very close together and he has an immaculate moustache. He smiles uneasily, looking embarrassed, as if a puppy had just pee-ed on his leg. I have no visa and the official looks at me curiously. He examines each page of my passport over and over, and asks me to promise I have never been to Israel. 'If I find you have another passport in your baggages.' He pauses and smirks and his left eye narrows to a squint. 'And if I find an Israel stamp there. I will be very angry.' He hands me back my passport, freshly stamped, and waves me off.

I am 120 kilometres from Damascus and I rush across the dry scrubland with the wind behind me. I stop for tea and the tea-man won't accept my money and hands me two packs of biscuits and a handful of seeds. I ride on past shiny new service stations and ragged, shepherd's tents, and as the light fades I see the tall cement blocks of the city's suburbs ahead. It is dark now and I stop and ask for the old town and I am pointed this way and then another. I am on a busy one-way road, cycling against the traffic. I pass white-haired men in blue aprons, working on huge black printing machines, and brightly lit pastry shops, and old men playing backgammon and smoking shishas in dim cafes, and men engraving headstones in enclaves dug into an old stone wall that lines the road. I ride for over an hour, up and down the same streets, staring at everything. I am startled by a horn, and I swerve, and my eyes return to the road, and then drift back to the street sides. Eventually I find a bed in a dormitory off Souq Saroujah and eat and fall asleep.

It is Friday, and in the courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque large groups of women in black hijabs sit listening to preachers, under gold-leafed domes that stand on stone stilts across the marble terrace. The facade of the main chamber is gilded with a gold and green mosaic showing trees and fruit, and on three corners of the enclosure there are cream minarets patterned with black and ochre bricks.

I walk down the main arcade that leads into the old city. There is a high curved roof of corrugated metal above the line of clothes stalls and ice cream parlours and epiceries. Ahead there is a large crowd and I hear the beating of drums. Palestinian flags and black flags, branded with white crossed rifles, are waving in the air. Children, in camouflage uniforms and purple berets, stationary-march amidst a crowd of clapping elders. The children slowly leave the shadows of the souq and move through the streets. They join other groups, and policemen block the traffic, and at the front two little girls lead the crowd, dressed like toy soldiers, flags raised, smiling sweetly.

From Amman

2010-10-26T05:29:00.000-07:00

Aqaba is calm and modern and comfortable. There are lawned roundabouts, working banks, smiling Jordanians with bright blue eyes. The town’s white blocks are scattered thickly across the steep brown hills that curve around the blue bay. A giant red, green and white Jordanian flag tugs heavily at the lines of its pole, unfurling grandly across the sky. On the waterfront beneath, men laze around in swim shorts, smoking, and women in head scarves and ankle length black tobes bathe timidly in rubber rings, floating in the shallows.

In the morning I climb from the coast, into the wind, towards gleaming brown hills. The air rushes towards the sea, strengthening as it is funneled between two great walls of dark rock that overhang the road, and I push helplessly against it. For hours I am in the shadows of the shear granite embankments, the pedals faltering beneath my feet. The wheels turn more easily as the great masses of rock fall away into plains of light red dust. Here, the only remnants of the mountains are irregular outcrops, protruding from the sands like smashed teeth, visible for miles across the flats.

There is a camel galloping by the road, kicking up plumes of blood-orange dust as its heavy hooves pound the sands. The cameleer, in a frayed shemagh and flowing grey robes, waves from the saddle, and yells for me to speed up. I draw level and we begin to race. The camel tears forward, and the telephone wires and the ochre rocks and the grains of Jupiter sands, die away behind us. The camel’s strides start to shorten, its rider starts to smile and I leave them panting in the heat.

I ride on, past intermittent plain villages of low stone houses, and sprawling complexes of corrugated warehouses, full of containers and waiting trucks, towards higher land, up into sandstone hills, under the midday sun. The road climbs out from the plains, and the desert below becomes empty and vast; the little villages are swallowed up in the sands; the road behind narrows to a thread; the rocky outcrops fade like freckles on a retreating face, until, from the top, all I can see is a blank wilderness below.

I have no water and I stop at a police post to fill up the bottles. Three men sit in armchairs watching an Egyptian movie. They pull up a chair and give me tea, and when I get up to go, they pretend to arrest me until I have another glass. The King’s Highway branches from the main road here, rolling over dusty uplands, towards Petra. The hills are dry and sparsely vegetated; the only inhabitants Bedouin herdsmen. I see their camps from the road; long tents of heavy, hemp-like cloth sitting in the hollows, a beaten-up Mitsubishi buggy outside, and on the slopes around, men in red and white shemaghs shepherding their goats. As I near Petra the shallow hills condense into dark mounds of bare rock, shedding the scree and scrub that covered the land a little to the south. The sun is dropping from the rose horizon and I ride through a quiet little village, down a steep hill, to Wasi Musa, and the edge of the rock-hewn city.

I spend two days in Petra, amongst the palaces and monastery and tombs of the old Nabataean city. Rough cliffs of deep orange rock have been smoothed and Romanesque columns, stepped sills, winged statues, and terraces decorated with swirling patterns, have been sculpted into the facades; whole cliff faces carved as if they were blocks of wood.

The road gently rises and falls as I ride north to Dana. The village sits on the precipice to a deep sandstone gorge, strewn with pale boulders and thin pine-leafed trees. Many of the houses here are crumbling; their old stone walls collapsing onto the narrow cobbled alleys that wind up the little piece of hillside. I camp on the roof of a small hotel and when I wake the gorge below is filled with cloud. I continue north to Karak, descending into, and rising from, Wadi Hasa, a vast sand-walled canyon. Deep triangular creases are imprinted across the sandstone sides, casting thin veins of shadow, which splinter like tributaries on a map, across the valley walls. There are olive trees growing in the rocky soil between Bedouin encampments at its base. I climb for ten kilometres to where the land plateaus to the north, and reach the towering limestone walls of Karak’s citadel late in the afternoon.

Along the desert highway to Amman the land is more subdued. The tarmac is flat and straight; the only forms on the horizon smoking factories and stale roadside towns. The city is set on a cluster of hills; its slopes filled with wealthy villas; its steep roads thick with traffic.

From Aqaba

2010-10-21T08:43:00.000-07:00

I pedal up a barricaded overpass, above another busy highway, cars roaring beneath and alongside. Cairo gradually recedes behind me; the light blue skies, streaked white with wisps of cloud, reclaim the horizon, as the towers of bricks and glass lower, and then disappear altogether; the traffic thins, and the road stretches out towards fields of coarse yellow sands. I ride 140km across the desert flats, trucks flowing past, the land dry and empty. I reach Suez and sit by the canal and watch colossal tankers passing by, stacked high with colourful containers, which look no bigger than blocks of Lego on the huge decks.

I take a tunnel under the canal and ride south; the blue waters of the Red Sea to the east, desert plains to the west. There are patches of heavily watered crops; isolated squares of green amidst the still dust. By the water, tall charcoal-tipped chimneys rise from oil refineries, exhaling continuous orange flames and sending waves of black vapour into the sky. Further south the coast is full of high-rise resorts, each protected by tall steel gates, each marked by a wide billboard, showing smiling families in western swimsuits, enjoying the beach. The road is quiet and the wind blows behind me, propelling the bicycle effortlessly south.

The resorts die away and the road hugs the shore; a thin beach separates the tar from the water, and to the west coarser sands roll out to meet banks of rough rock. The sun is beginning to set, the sky beginning to glow a deep yellow, and the contours of the thick-grained desert beginning to sharpen. An old motor-bike chugs slowly past me, a family crammed onto the narrow frame. A few miles on I pass the bike standing isolated on the empty shore, and the mother, her headscarf quivering in the breeze, and then her children turn to watch and wave as I ride by.

The road leaves the sea and winds inland through sandy hills. There are smooth dunes of fine beige sands, peppered with black rocks, and worn banks of sandstone further from the road. Shallow channels run between the dunes, carved out by long-ago rains. I wheel my bike up the dry bed, over grey rocks and pale green scrub, and pitch my tent beneath a lone thorn tree by the bank of the wadi.

I wake while the sun is pale and crimson, and the grey light all around seems to come from elsewhere. I ride east, away from the coast, and dark mountains begin to rise from the sands, low and shallow at first; gentle slopes of brown scree falling into the dust, then darkening and towering above the road, blocking the morning sun, until all around I see nothing but rock. I reach the outskirts of a village; there are date palms and crumbling outhouses, and herds of goats grazing on thorn trees that grow in the crescents of sand beneath the rocks. Further on, there are walled gardens and low houses in courtyards, cluttered in the narrow flats between the mountains and the road. Children run towards the bicycle, pointing and shouting, and I feel like I’m in Africa again. The voices die down and the palms disappear and I turn off the road, and roll out my mat, and fall asleep.

I haven’t been up long and I see another cyclist pedaling towards me. We stop and sit on the roadside and talk about the journeys. He has come from England and is riding around the world; the length of Africa before him, then Asia, Australia, the Americas. He says he will be away for five years. I tell what I can about the roads south, and he about the roads east. I have only two months to reach Istanbul, and I realise the journey is near its end. We ride our separate ways and a little later I reach St. Katherine’s Monastery.

It is strange to ride among the quiet desert mountains, pedaling slowly against the oncoming wind, and to come to a village in their centre, and to see hundreds of tourists. All around there are big groups of South Koreans, Russians, French, English, some in matching luminous t-shirts, others having their visit filmed. We file along the high monastery walls, the slopes of Mt Sinai above, past the old stone well, beneath the pale, rose-brick bell-tower, and into the chapel, amidst all the dangling lanterns, and bronze urns, and chandeliers.

Within a few miles I am back alone among the silent brown mountains, climbing for the first time since Ethiopia, and then freewheeling, for mile after mile, hurtling towards Sinai’s eastern shores. I reach Nuweiba, and ride to the port, and soon I am on the boat, bound for Jordan.

Have a look at Steve’s blog, which is brilliant, at: http://www.cyclingthe6.blogspot.com

From Cairo

2010-10-18T05:02:00.000-07:00

From Minya there are only 250km to reach Cairo. Today I head for Beni Suef; another set of high-rise blocks on the banks of the Nile. The road continues along the fringes of an irrigation canal, whose waters become lower and blacker and more cluttered with rubbish as I head north. Steep embankments drop towards the water on either side of the canal; they are covered in rotting fruit, polystyrene packaging, chicken carcases, soiled tissues, scraps of plastic bags, torn apart by hungry cats. I watch women and children walk down to the bank and wash metal plates and pots in the water. There are tall white tower blocks just behind the water-logged fields; water-buffalo graze and tall white birds with thin yellow legs stand still as statues in the thin wet grasses. The road is flat and I reach Beni Suef early in the day and drink glasses of tea and write until evening.

Soon I will be in Cairo; I ride fast and the traffic thickens. There are more bridges, more concrete blocks, more long posters of the president, looking out over the highway, jaw clenched beneath dark glasses, the red and black bands of the Egyptian flag behind. In every direction I can see the lone turrets of power stations, rising high above the date palms, sending dark smoke, from blackened tips, into the hot sky.

The cars are rushing in a constant stream now, jerking and honking, six lanes wide, flowing madly towards the towers collecting on the approaching skyline. I drift alongside, through Giza's decaying tower blocks, across the Nile, up the Corniche, and on, to Midan Tahir.

Since leaving Addis Ababa, expiring visas, departing ferries, police escorts, have kept me chasing the road north. That road is now at an end and I have time in Cairo. I go the city’s eastern quarters first; to all the mosques. The streets are narrow here and many floored with dust. Slanted scaffolds of dark wood cross the air between the old stone buildings that enclose the cluttered alley. In the gaps between the latticed beams I can see fluted minarets; pairs of tall stone shoots rising to a chalky sky, encircled by crown shaped balconies that open like petals around the spherical towers. On the street, old women swat flies from trays of silver fish and men in beige jalibiyas sit hunched on low stools behind mounds of pale yellow pears. There are pigeons and chickens and rabbits crammed into a layered wire-fenced coup, and on the corner behind, a short man, with an enormous metal gourd strapped to his chest, stands, like a French cartoon, pouring black coffee into little glasses. The bread boys fly past on bicycles, shouting to clear a path, one hand, dusted white with flour, resting on the handlebars, the other supporting a five-foot long tray piled high with flat buns.

I knock on a thick bronze-studded door, beneath a huge, smooth-brick mosque. A few minutes later a dosey imam lets me in. Small circular grooves, decorated with brown stars, are carved into the chamber of the portico roof, leaving triangular splinters of stone hanging like stunted stalactites above the high door. Within, long lines of Arabic script run along the wooden panelling just below the ceiling, and the walls are covered in white and turquoise alabaster murals. From the roof, I can see abandoned planks and tyres and bundles of tangled wire, left on the tops of buildings just below. There are tall glass and steel towers far to the south, and all around, crescent-tipped spires sprout above the tattered city skyline.

When I come out, a man in a white skull cap, with a thick black beard, walks towards me: ' My brother, take this. For clothes, for food.' He hands me a two hundred pound note. I am astonished. 'You are a Muslim, my brother?' I tell him no, that I just have a beard, that my clothes are worn from a long journey, that I have plenty to eat. He smiles and tells me he is a shoe-maker, and takes me to his shop and gives me a glass of tea.

I walk up past the citadel, along a busy ring-road, to a cemetery in the far east of the city. Long lanes of fine dust split rows of stone walls that guard domed-minarets. Behind the metal gates of many of the tombs I hear mothers shouting at noisy children, men spitting, the clatter of dishes being washed. Throughout the cemetery people are living in the tomb enclosures.

I spend four days in the city: In the white-washed churches of Coptic Cairo, the coach-ridden pyramids, the tranquil suburbs of Maadi, in smart nightclubs, full of high-heels, frosted glasses of Russian vodka, brightly painted eyelids. Tomorrow I ride east to Sinai.

From El Minya

2010-10-18T00:08:00.000-07:00

North to Qena, to Sohag, to Asyut, to Minya. I try to dart between the red and black police fences that block the road, but I am seen, and a large man in a white uniform stands in front and points for me to pull over. I wait for an hour and am told a car is here to escort me. A blue van with six officers inside pulls up and I am told to go. I ride on and the blue van crawls a few metres behind.

The view from the road is much as before. Pink flowers sprout from overgrown Nile Roses on the banks of the canal that flanks the road. Thick jets of foaming water gush from generator-powered pumps, down narrow channels, to turn the desert green. In the fields men in jalibiyas and turbans sift through the soil on hands and knees, planting seeds. The blue van hums behind me. Boys swimming in the canal yell out as I pass and splash the water with their hands. Men sit awkwardly on reluctant donkeys, trotting between the fields, and further off, a train hoots and groans along the old tracks. The blue van draws level as I take the flyover into Qena and hums slowly behind until I find a hotel.

The sun is strong when I walk into the temple grounds just outside town. Amidst the date palms there are fallen statues and collapsed sandstone colonnades, and ahead, six tall stone pillars, each with a pharaoh's head at its centre, support the broad temple entrance. In the shadows within, an old man, with grey stuble and a white turban, sweeps the stone slabs between the rows of glossed columns. There are long tunnels of grey stone, bathed in harsh fluorescent light, engraved with funerary boats, sun gods, jackal heads. I climb onto the roof and look down at the ruins, and clamber down into dark chambers beneath the temple floor.

I leave Qena and at the checkpoint a blue van is waiting. I ride north, 150 km, to Sohag, along the canal, past lines of adobe houses, many decorated with paintings of mosques and boats and stars, strewn amongst the fields and up the desert ridge behind. Beneath the palms, men dangle fishing lines into the water, and fat, smooth-haired water buffalo chomp on huge piles of maize stalks. It is beautiful when the road rejoins the Nile; there are slender canoes floating near the bank, and palms reflected in the still water, and sand mountains to the east, full of caves and dark doorways carved high into the rock. I want to stop and take a photograph and sit by the river for a moment, but the blue van is just behind me and I don't stop. The sun is scorching and my mouth is dry and my legs feel heavy. I stand on the pedals and speed off, trying to outrun the escort, absurdly.

The blue van stops for petrol and I think about turning into a field and hiding and riding on alone. I imagine the conversation between Mahmoud, the general at the last post, and the officers in the van: 'You lost him! Six of you, in a van. One white man, on a bicycle! How? You imbeciles!' Mahmoud is fat and smokes Rothmans and probably would have slapped one of them and huffed and puffed into his walkie-talkie. It makes me smile, but I stay on the road and soon the blue van is humming behind, just as before, and I pedal on.

It is mid-afternoon when I join the flyover into the city. I stare out at crowded tar roads criss-crossing through rows of scruffy concrete towers, ten stories high, with steel stumps protruding towards the sky; foundations of another floor that was never built. I am stopped at a checkpoint and told to follow another van to a hotel. It is hot and I am tired as I dodge scooters and honking taxis, and kids running up and asking my name, while I try to tail the police. When I go out for food later, a man in a shirt and jeans, with a revolver tucked into his belt, follows me and sits on the table behind, smoking shisha. He leaves as I leave and watches me climb the stairs to the little hotel.

I take two days to ride the 250 km to Minya, sleeping in Asyut between. I am chaperoned all the way and the constant police presence engulfs my mind, the riding, the land around me. A busy stream of dwellings boards the road and sometimes I hear a train crashing past. For long stretches I stare at the tar just above the handlebars and try to blank out the humming van behind. In towns, tuc-tucs swarm along the road, blasting their horns, and tall camels, so overloaded with maize they are only identifiable by their soft padded-feet, plod calmly through the traffic.

On the outskirts of Minya I take a little bridge over the canal and turn off into a dusty street full of carts and bicycles and rusty old Egyptian cars. The blue van blasts its horn and I rattle over the bumpy stones, out of sight. I ride on through the little stone streets, up narrow alleys, past fruit stands and a thousand flies, and blacksmiths hammering sheets of metal, and dark butchers shops, filled with thick legs of raw meat, hanging, wrapped in cloth that is turning pink from the flesh within. A man on an old bicycle asks where I go and leads me to the centre. He is old and has a huge bag of grapes dangling heavily from the handlebars. Each time he hits a bump or a hole or swerves to avoid a scooter or a football, I think he will topple over, but he stays upright, and soon we are on a wide tarmac boulevard, overshadowed by a line of tall buildings, in the city centre.

From Luxor

2010-10-09T09:29:00.000-07:00

There is a long blast from the foghorn, we all stir, and the worn white ferry pulls off the concrete jetty and turns north up Lake Nasser. It is a little before sunset and a crowd of men have come up on deck to pray. The ship gently sways and sixty white robes kneel and rise and tilt their heads back and forth, their backs to the setting sun. Night falls and I lie out on deck looking at the sky. We pass a great temple on the western bank. I think we must be in Egypt now; bathed in soft yellow light there are four colossal statues, sitting on stone thrones, guarding the entrance to a temple, carved into the rock. One has lost its head; the others have slit eyes, closed beneath pharaonic manes. The spotlights flood the smooth temple façade in warm light and beams are caught in the narrow groves of hieroglyphics that have been etched into the rockface. Abruptly the lights are switched off and the temple and its stone pharaohs disappear into the shadows.

It is chaos when we arrive. A monstrous old Egyptian policeman blocks the metal doors to shore; brutish arms outstretched across the gates like thick rope. Porters in torn blue overalls and grimy white turbans barge through the crowded metal tunnel, ferrying huge plastic sacks and TV boxes and metal crates. Fat women in burkhas fall to the ground, we are all sweating. Police pour onto the boat, everyone is shouting and shoving, cramped in the low steel alleyway. The doors open and we flood onto the jetty like taunted bulls suddenly released.

From the port the road weaves between pale desert hills. There are concrete barricades lining the tar, and empty century posts linked by ribbons of barbed wire, as if the sandstone wilderness were a prison. Tall wasted apartment blocks line Aswan’s outer hills; layer upon layer of box balconies beneath a clutter of decaying satellite dishes, rising to a clear blue sky. I reach the river, and ride slowly up the palm-lined bank. There are huge cruise ships docked beside the promenade. I can see glittering chandeliers and flat-screen TVs and golden staircases spiraling between the decks. Behind, white-sailed feluccas glide upstream like cotton kites.

I linger in Aswan: the cool conditioned air inside, the lines of shinning street lamps, the bus-loads of white faces, the fridges full of branded drinks on every corner, the carefully manicured alleyways of its pristine souk, filled with neat sacks of colourful spices. I realize I left Africa behind in the sands of Sudan. It makes me sad.

From Aswan the road runs north between the Nile and the railway. Narrow plots of maize and sorghum are crammed into the thin plains beside the river, and across the tracks to the east, houses of all colours are huddled together on the steep banks of a dry sandstone ridge. Streams of sotty yellow carriages trundle past on the rails, men hanging from the open windows, faint veils of black smog trailing in its wake. I overtake donkeys, lugging brightly decorated wooden carts, piled high with bundles of wilted maize stalks or gas canisters. Smartly uniformed children make their way back from school. The girls wear white veils and blue dresses, the boys are in neat shirts and shorts. Many are fat; all have black buckled shoes and shinny new backpacks.

I reach Idfu near midday and stop to see the temple here. In a high enclosure on the edge of town there are two huge smooth-walled stone monuments, joined by a rectangular archway. A pair of granite falcons stands either side of the entrance, and behind, through the dimly lit interior, lines of beautifully engraved alabaster colonnades, showing gods with the heads of birds and foxes and crocodiles, recede towards crumbling statues beyond.

Big white coaches, with ‘Luxury Tours’ written in gold letters on their sides, zoom past as I ride north to Luxor. Dark grey curtains are drawn shut behind the windows. Every five kilometers, black and red fences have been pulled into the road, funneling the traffic into a single lane. Policemen sit smoking in the shade, and I try to stay on the blind side of cars as we bounce over the bumps, to avoid another passport check. The road leaves the river and passes steep sandstone hills that catch the sun’s rays, sending waves of heat radiating towards the road. There are dark rectangular doorways cut into the rock, and no signs of life on the ridge. I rejoin the Nile and the land is green again and full of people and I watch bright red tractors churning up the fields.

As I approach Luxor the streams of tour buses thicken and in town there are white faces everywhere. Some are dressed like Arabs in jalibiyas. Long rows of cruise ships are moored along the riverbank, joining into a thick band of gleaming white that sparkles like a brand new shopping mall, floating on the Nile. On my left there is a wide dusty trench dug between the roads. I look down, and between the racing-black-bus-tyres and the slow-moving wooden cartwheels, I follow a line of sandstone sphinxes that leads to a grey obelisk in front of two towering temple gates. Amidst green palms, two stone pharaohs stand beneath the gates, and behind, like a limpet, a smooth domed mosque sits amongst the ancient piles of crumbling stones and colonnades.

From Wadi Halfa

2010-09-30T08:25:00.000-07:00

Before dawn I am riding again, between the imposing steel pillars of a shiny new bridge, over to the east bank. The road leaves the river and soon I am flanked by two vast expanses of mustard dust. I stop and sit on the pebbled verge off the road and eat some biscuits and watch a green lorry trundle past. It turns into the desert and dumps a boot-load of rubbish into the sand. Bottles and plastic bags and torn wrappers cartwheel across the dust, spinning and tumbling towards me in the breeze.

I ride into the wind, heat streaming from the blazing sun. I am hot and I see a cafeteria ahead and pull off the road. Beneath the shade of tarpaulins men smoke on bubbling shishas and I fill my bottles from cool stone urns with water the colour of milky tea, thick with Nile silt. Outside a generator whirs loudly and a battered green LandRover stands on flattened black tyres. I lie on a rope bed and my mum calls from home and wishes me a happy birthday. We talk for a long time, while all around men are washing their feet and beginning to pray. An old man edges his way into the shade, pressing his gold-leafed cane carefully into the sand with each step. His eyes twinkle like bright butterflies beneath his white turban and he comes over and shakes my hand. 'My dear, you are welcome in Sudan. Do you have something cold to drink? This is your bicycle. This is very good.' He tells me I must rest until the sun is lower and to be careful for hyenas: 'You will see their eyes in the dark from the road.'

The wind drops later in the day and I ride fast through the rocky desert plains. There are granite boulders strewn across the sand and mounds of purple scree sloping into the dust. I follow the road through the dusty hills and rejoin the palm-lined river. The sun begins to set, reducing the low western hills and the scruffy palms to dark silhouettes and painting the horizon, just above, deep yellow. I turn off the road and fetch water from the river and camp beside a crumbling wall.

From here the road follows the river, passing neat clusters of smooth-walled dwellings. I stop at a police check-point near midday and drink cool water and eat dates in the shade. Near sundown I reach Ferqa, a village on the river, and a young guy invites me to stay with his family. He gives me goat stew and begs me to take him to Ingliterra. A little later there is a great commotion and his mother rushes into the courtyard, flustered. Saleed tells me a man has been eaten by a crocodile. It has bitten off his leg. All the village has gone to the bank to help. He says the other men beat the crocodile away, but the hospital is far.

Next morning, while it is still dark I get lost in the deep banks of sand between the village and the road. I wander through the rocky dunes for almost an hour and only find the tar as day begins to break. I ride all day to make Wadi Halfa by night fall. The mounds of black rock that were scattered irregularly across the sand further south, dominate the landscape here. Stout mounds of burning black and purple boulders tumble towards the narrow plains of sand just off the road. They give shelter from the wind and I ride quickly northwards. Near town the rocky outcrops recede into dunes and the gravel returns to sand. I see the fringes of the lake ahead and the cluster of buildings on its bank, which look so grand after the emptiness behind. In the lokanda I sleep on a rope bed in a full courtyard. Men in jalibiyas lie everywhere, scattered like discarded clothes, and spit and snore and smoke through the hot night.

In town the next day I pass the occasional weathered white face on the dusty streets. I see Nico, whose thick auburn beard is longer then when we last met in Addis Ababa. He is backpacking north and we have met in Botswana, Zambia, Ethiopia, and now here. There is a French couple, dirtier than me, who have walked here from South Africa. And Eduardo, an Argentine with a thick grey moustache, in an all-in-one Addis tracksuit. He speaks no English and tells stories with animated expressions like a silent cartoon, screwing his face up and drawing streams of tears from his eyes, with his fingers, to show sadness, and bending over, clasping both fists, and letting out energetic whooshes, to mime bicycling.

He tells how he rode a scooter from Morocco, aiming for the World Cup in South Africa. By the time it was over he had only reached Nigeria, so he decided he would see the pyramids instead. He crossed the Central African Republic into Sudan and now he is here waiting for the boat. In Central African Republic he got stuck in the mud in the jungle. He was found by monkey hunters on bicycles. They helped him out and he lived with them for three days, eating monkeys, until they reached the border.

We sit around in the shade eating beans and falafel, waiting for the boat, which leaves for Egypt tomorrow.

From Dongola

2010-09-24T00:27:00.000-07:00

I ride alongside the wall of a heavily guarded compound, encircling the towering mirrored fortresses of the security services headquarters. I cross the Nile, where a lone rowing boat drifts between metal pylons that rise from the murky water. Into Omdurman, around the crowded alleys of the souk, and further north, through scruffier streets, past lower dwellings, tattered flags and donkeys with bleeding backs. I have ridden fifty kilometres since leaving the cool sanctuary of John's flat, and still I am in Khartoum. Abruptly the city ends and the desert begins.

A straight band of smooth black tarmac severs the coarse brown sand in two. There is a low escarpment of pale sandstone far to the east and small mud-brick cubes stand isolated and crumbling on the silent horizon. The boat to Egypt leaves Wadi Halfa in a week and I must ride 950 km across the desert to make it.

Patches of thin grey cloud hang high above the sand, filtering the sun's strong rays into a grainy haze. On the roadside the sand is thick with dark pebbles and further off the grains merge into an indistinct plain of dull orange. Scrawny plants, the colour of parched lime flesh, cling to the barren earth and for long stretches worn acacias are the only forms on the endless flats. There are villages far from the road; clusters of twenty square blocks, camels and a beaten-up buggy and billowing white jalibiyas flowing from coal-black faces. I stop at a cafeteria and eat a bowl of beans amongst the flies and the praying truck drivers, and fill up with water from thick stone urns, shaded by a straw orning. Close to sundown I pull off the road and pitch my tent beside a derelict mud wall, to shelter from the wind.

I wake at three and ride through the dark. Twin lamps bob up and down, miles ahead, peering out across the sand, and the silence is broken as the truck passes, and then it is quiet and black. Gradually the fine contours of the sands become discernible and colour separates the desert from the sky. The horizon is pale pink and the sands moon-grey in the morning twilight. Soon the sun burns yellow, growing visible in fragments at a time, as wisps of morning cloud melt before it, slowly revealing a full circle. I am amongst high dunes of caramel sands, speckled with molten black rocks, rough amidst the shimmering smooth mounds of sand. The sparse patches of green have ended and beyond the frail telephone lines to the west there is mile upon mile of golden wilderness. Far ahead I see a faint outline of a rectangle, thickening into form as I approach. I wheel the bike through the deep sand and an old man gives me a glass of tea. His sons are sprawled out on straw mats, all in white jalibiyas. I wonder where the women are, and what they are doing.

Back on the road the air is hot and the wind floods towards me, gripping the thick tyres, and slowing me to a crawl. A constant gust rushes in my ears and I am already tiring. The sun is higher, the sand the same; pock-marked where the wind has whisked it up and set it, swirling, down. For sixty kilometres I see nothing and then over the brow of a broad dune, the crescent-tipped spire of a tall minaret, gleaming white, comes into view. I press hard on the pedals against the wind, and turn into a truck stop on the edge of the little village, where I spend the night.

Men talk till late into the night, and groaning trucks pull into the dust, and a butcher hammers his cleaver through legs of meat, thudding loudly on the wooden counter. My body is tired, but I cannot sleep, and a thick pool of sweat coats my dusty mat. I pack up and ride for hours through the cool darkness. The sun rises and the wind is relentless. Plains of bare sand stretch out to meet high dunes to east and west. And the road blazes flat and straight across it all. Far ahead I can see a line of green and as I get closer I see mosques and a petrol station and low, mud-walled homes. I cannot see the water, but I can trace the Nile by the long line of tall palms that rise from its banks. The villages are continuous here, low and sprawling, covering the sand between the river and the road. I ride all day and sleep in the courtyard of a restaurant in a riverside village.

It is a hundred kilometres to Dongola, the only town between Khartoum and the lake. The road archs back and forth between the desert and the river, and torrents of dry air flow heavily towards me, pinning me back, as if I were dragging an anchor. I turn into town after lunch and ride through empty streets. Metal shutters hide shop facades and the souk is desolate. It is Friday and everyone is praying. I sit for an hour beneath a tree and watch the streets gradually awaken; cars and bicycles slowly return to the roads, and shop doors are unlocked. I am given a rope bed in the courtyard of a guesthouse and sleep just as night begins to fall.

From Khartoum

2010-09-24T00:13:00.000-07:00

The sky is dusky; day bleaching the darkness grey; the stars fading out. I tiptoe past the snoring policemen, splayed out on rope beds, and stop outside the hut. I let my eyes adjust and slowly trace the forms of the rocky outcrops across the road. The camels are sitting patiently where they were placed the night before and the cluster of huts behind is silent. It is cool and the wind not yet up and all I hear is the chain whirring gently as I ride. I pass a village and hear barking growing louder from amongst the huts. Three black dogs tear towards the bike and I shout and slash the air with waving arms, and they are close now, snapping and drooling. I kick out and hit one in the jaw and they sink back as I pedal wildly on.

There are two boys ahead tending to a herd of goats. One is tall with broad shoulders, wearing a jalibiya and skull cap. As I pass he turns from his animals and runs at me with a thick stick raised. He swings once, his eyes maddened, shouting frantically in Arabic. I swerve and fall, catching the bike, and he swings again, bringing the stick close above my ducking head. A younger boy behind is looking at the floor and I hear the clamour of older men rushing from a hut. The boy stands looking over me, eyes blazing, the stick raised, clasped with both hands, ready to swing again. I stumble backwards and get to my feet and yell at him. He stares, furious, and begins to shout and neither of us moves. The elders are all around us now and usher him back and I swear and shout and they look pleadingly and gesture food and apologies. I am shaking as I ride on.

Isolated villages give way to a sprawling line of low-brick houses, and the fields recede into the dust, as I head west. The houses are all the same; a low rise wall of sandy stone surrounding a single-storey square building within. There are no schools, or shops, or cafes, that I can see, just the monotonous trail of sand buildings, a few people milling about. An old man flags me down and ushers me into his courtyard. He brings a little table and bread and yoghurt and tomatoes and a glass of tea. He speaks no English and sits and grins as I eat. He leaves for a minute and comes back with a clean white t-shirt and gestures that mine is no good. I look down; it is torn and coated in dust and grease. He smiles when I have changed and waves me on gladly.

I am heading for Wad Medani, a town on the banks of the Nile, and just past midday I see the river I will follow to Cairo, for the first time since the Gorge in Ethiopia. It is wider now, lazy and brown near the banks, and rushing at the centre, where bubbles foam on the crests of the currents. I cross a broad, metallic framed bridge, beneath the stares of stern policemen, and turn off into town.

It is 190km to Khartoum and I wake early to try to reach the city before dark. Before long the sun is burning and a gale is blowing into my side. Grains of dirt and scraps of paper and swirling plastic bags sweep across the road and all I hear is the rushing breeze and the continual growing and fading roar of passing trucks. The tar is narrow and each time a lorry passes I am sucked into the road and I must swerve awkwardly back towards the wind. The houses are low and grim, the walls smoothed by dust filled winds, no one about. A group of boys saunter on the verge, and as I pass, they throw handfuls of pebbles into my face. I am tired and it is hot and when I feel the stones thud on my check and temple I am angry. I brake, letting the bike clatter to the floor, and run like a madman after them: across the dust, through a gate, into a courtyard, and then a house. I knock over a man praying on a mat in the first room and grad hold of a boy in the backyard. He looks helpless and ashamed and I feel the same. Sweat is pouring from my temples and I let him go. An older man comes out and screams at the boys and gives me water and holds my shoulders, saying sorry.

The wind is making me slow and the stream of traffic is continuous now. I am still far from Khartoum, riding through a wasteland. Strips of barbed fencing hang from metal poles, jutting from the dust, in front of endless plains of smoke and rubbish. There are small groups of children kicking bottles between pyres of burning plastic and goats grazing on rotting food from battered cans. It looks like the end of the world here. Every time the wind picks up waves of plastic bags sail towards the road: greens and blues and bright reds and blacks tumbling helter-skelter across the path of the deep red sun. They snag on the barbs or flutter to linger beneath the engines of choking lorries. Gradually the buildings thicken and the sun disappears behind the high wires that link the towering pylons to the west. Ahead, there are modern factories basking in the glare of their fluorescent lights, dropped like new toys in the sprawling dust-fields. I pedal hard and the road widens and I am in the suburbs of Khartoum as night falls.

It is enormous. I ride for mile after mile in the dark, down a four-laned industrial boulevard, past thousands of cloned square blocks, four or five stories high. Many are half built and it feels like the city has emerged overnight. There are no signs and I don’t know where to go. I am weary and stop outside a shop for food. A thickly set white man pulls up in a four-by-four and asks what I am up to. We talk, as he thumbs the tyres and looks disapprovingly at the chain and feels the brake levers, and he invites me to stay. Within an hour I have had a warm shower and have a glass of vodka in my hand, sitting in front of a big plate of pasta, with John and his girlfriend.

From Habrisa

2010-09-11T23:35:00.000-07:00

From Gondar I ride west towards Sudan, across the fringes of the Abyssinian highlands. Green hills swell gently before me, and drop into wide valley basins, and the road is quiet. I ride through Aygll, a rickety strip of bars and stores, straddling the tar, and a few miles on, the hills sharpen into mountains. Rolling mounds sheer into skeletal crags, and deep forested canyons sever the solid highland frame into a precipitous range of angular ridges. It is down from here, and I rattle round and round the spiraling road, like a child on a bumpy slide. On my right there is a steep embankment of bare orange rock, crumbling in parts, and overlain by gentler grass slopes. On the left is the canyon. The long shoulder of the ridge is creased like crumpled paper and carpeted in green scrub that tumbles between the folds towards the gorge floor. Thin waterfalls run from the mountain side like veins of liquid silver.

Ahead, shepherd boys amble in the road, their whips lying slack in their hands. As I pass they smack the rope on the asphalt, sending a crack rebounding like a gunshot across the gorges. I near Shehdi, and stop to stare back at the far-off mountains behind, then pedal lightly on through flatland bush. It is my last night in Ethiopia and I watch an old lady stooped over a black stone oven, baking injera, and I eat one last plate of tibs.

From Shehdi I ride 200km, across the border, to Gedaref. The land is flat and green and empty. Endless fields of sorghum and sesame span out to where I can see no further, broken only by a train of high pylons, running imposingly alongside the road. I am stopped again and again at police checkpoints, and khaki gunships, manned by waving soldiers, whose faces are covered by white scarves, speed past me. Every hour or so I pass a neat village of a hundred symmetrical huts, all with straw domed roofs, enclosed in square wooden pens. Large groups of women in bright tobes are washing clothes in streams and stand and stare as I pass.

It begins to cool and soon I am racing the falling sun; Gedaref is still forty kilometers away and the sun is already glowing as it drops; its fringes sharpening into a defined orb, its light deepening from indefinite glare, to heavy yellow, and then to orange. I pass the checkpoint on the outskirts of town just as the red tip of the circle descends behind the fields, and head towards the centre.

Low walled courtyards line the street, and in front, on long mats, men in white jalabiyas sit crossed legged in front of metal trays of food. A man shouts at me as I pass and beckons for me to join. It is Ramadan, and the men are sitting out to break the fast together. I take off my shoes and am handed a mug of juice and then bowls of dates, chick-peas, flatbreads, goat, and yoghurt with cucumber. We eat quickly and then they get up to pray. Four lines of white robes at dusk, standing, and bowing, and kneeling, hands outstretched. I watch and when it is done we drink black coffee from tiny china cups and smoke cigarettes. I ride on towards the souk, towards the glare of all the fluorescent lights. Everyone is out taking the air, and I sit on the curb with a cup of juice and smoke, and watch, while old men stop to shake my hand and smile and bow and walk on by.

The land dries as I head west; the grass starching, and dusty patches spreading by the roadside. I pull into a truck stop in the midday sun and lean my bike against a pile of dusty tires. A vaporous haze blurs the air above barrels standing before the clutter of plastic chairs. Legs of raw meat hang above a wooden counter and flies swarm from the meat to my face. Scrawny cats pick at bones on the floor and two young girls in billowing tobes ride past on a weary donkey.
Back on the road I am heading towards three far off mounds of rock, distant pimples on a featureless landscape. It is hot and I am low on water and the outcrops ahead are not growing yet. Dragonflies hover in the air all around and acacias stand low in the scrubland off the road. I am in a daze now, thinking of water, and where the next village might be. A van passes, honking, and pulls over. I stop and see it is a French ambulance. A Breton couple get out and give me two bottles of water, and oranges, and make me tea while we talk about journeys.

Between the hills I reach a village and turn off the road as the sun is dropping behind the boulders. A man in a smart blue uniform ushers me to the police post and I pitch my tent behind the little blue building. I watch as he puts the camels, which they use for patrols, to bed, sitting each one down in the dust and tying their front legs together. As the sky darkens we sit on a straw mat and break the fast, sharing a big bowl of millet with spicy red sauce. I wake to the tent flapping violently in the wind and one of the men shouting: 'Mr Robin, Mr Robin. Storm is coming. Come inside Mr Robin.' Soon I am lying on the floor between their rope beds, and fall asleep to a grainy Arabic radio crackling above the wind.

From Gondar

2010-09-08T03:25:00.000-07:00

There is a mosque on the outskirts of Dejen; two circular pillars stand tall either side of a cream dome, tipped with a turquoise crescent. I ride slowly past, and the rest of the little highway town is already familiar. I pass the buzzing engines of sky blue minibuses, pausing, two wheels lying on a muddy verge, and a crowd of children tapping on the windows, offering up baskets of oranges, chewing gum, kola nuts. A child sees me approach and at once they are all around, my eyes directed to the little baskets by gentle nudges from every angle. Soon the shoeshine boys will join, and then the guys with bikes will ride along beside.

The strip of wooden shacks; shadowy bars and bakeries and tiny general stores, is broken by muddy alleys branching from the tar, weaving between smoke-filled corrugated shelters that recede into the cluttered half-light behind the road. I pedal past long lines of men returning from the fields, wrapped in blankets, tapping their donkeys along with sticks, and women shooing away landing crows from hides of cattle, laid out to dry on the dirt. Men wash in a ditch parallel to the road, and just behind, groups of boys huddle around a cardboard square, playing a game with bottle caps. Ahead I see a row of numbered doors, behind an open metal gate, in one of which I will spend the night.

Over the next two days I ride 190 km to Burie. I notice little beyond the cloud, the rain, the endless dull moors. Streaming currents of silt-filled water have carved deep red groves across the fields, and young shepherds, huddled in drenched blankets, stare bleakly as I spin pass.

It has rained for five days and at last the cloud's hold on the landscape is broken. I climb from Burie, the sun already streaming yellow light through the morning haze. The road undulates gently across soft hills, fields of barley, maize, and teff, pouring out across the little valleys in squares of green and brown. Loaded donkeys trot along the roadside and occasionally I pass men on taller white mules, sitting on brightly embroided saddles, an umbrella in one hand, the reins in the other. I stop for lunch, leaning on an abandoned wooden wheel and eat bread and smoke a cigarette. Out of the corner of my eye I see children crawling on hands and knees through tall maize stalks in front. They jump from the field sheepishly and stand and stare. I ride on through the flats, the rivers becoming more regular as I near Lake Tana. There are tanks lying in the grasses; decrepit metal shells, sitting sadly where they were halted years ago. The road begins to descend and I can see beads of light twinkling on the flat lake ahead, and the steel skeletons of future-apartment-blocks, marking the edge of Bahir Dar.

I pass through town to the shore and sit beside the water. Small flocks of heron float beside a lone buoy and men washing from the rocks send crescents of expanding ripples across the flat surface. There are two upturned boats at the end of a collapsing jetty, and further off, I can see clumps of green; the southernmost of Lake Tana's island monasteries.

I take a boat to the islands, passing fisherman casting their nets from low-lying papyrus canoes. Reeds rise from the shallows to the forested island banks, and I follow a muddy path through the trees, past a woman weaving cotton on a wooden spinner and a baboon tied to a string patrolling a little hut, to a circular church in a clearing. A circuit of high limestone arches runs around the edge of the building and four sets of tall wooden doors give entry to the inner chapel. A young monk leads me in and opens each of the doors and light slowly penetrates the brightly painted interior. A raging emerald devil sits amidst spikes of fire, serpents flowing from his lap, and the heads of the damned clasped to his chest. Above, two saints, with perfectly spherical heads, stand in orange and green robes, spearing the blooded head of a whale beneath.
In an outbuilding he shows me golden crowns; gifts from kings centuries ago, and the thick pages of ancient amharic bibles, bound in tattered gold-leafed leather. Monks sit in alcoves reading aloud and beyond the trees I can hear water lapping at the bank. The young monk tells me he has not left the island in three years. Many of the elders have spent whole lives here.

Back on the bike I ride north, the lake slipping in and out of view, between gentle hills to the west. The road is elevated from the surrounding plains, and a film of brown water covers the land as far as I can see. Trees stand half-submerged and huts are scattered across the flood like smoking match heads. I hear screams from the water and a crowd of naked boys storms across the road, waving their arms and hurling stones and jumping in front of the bike. Ahead, a thickening range of hills come into view and loom larger as I approach Addis Zemen, where I spend the night.

I set out for Gondar while the sun is still hidden behind the mountains to the east. Near the summit of the first climb a lone tooth of sheer rock stands bare above the green ridges below. I stop and watch the sky turn sulphurous as the upper rays of the morning sun rise above the heads of the black mountains behind, burnishing the silken clouds orange, like dull embers given life by a sudden gust of air. As I descend, the valley, flooded with light, glows green, and a light breeze sends me whirling through the flats. By noon the sandy turrets of Gondar's castle come into view and I am climbing past the fort's thick walls, into the old city.

From Dejen

2010-09-08T00:03:00.000-07:00

I am back in Addis Ababa now, yo-yoing between the high-walled compounds of embassies in search of a visa for Sudan. At the Sudanese Embassy I am greeted by the head of security, wearing tight leather trousers and crocodile-leather shoes. He ushers me past a crowd of patient Muslim women and I am told I must first have an Egyptian visa and a letter from the British Embassy. At the Egyptian Embassy a pretty Ethiopian girl laughs at my photo and tells me to come back in four days. Back to the Egyptian four days later, onto the British, back to the Sudanese; it is closed on Tuesdays, to the Sudanese on Wednesday, and finally, back once more, to collect my freshly stamped passport.

I fill the hours and days between, wandering the city’s museums and markets and shanties. On Sunday the thick cloud that has overlain the city skyline since I’ve been here, recedes, leaving a deep blue sky, and I walk out past Siddist Kilo towards the fringes of the city. Goats nibble at piles of junk amongst the corrugated shacks and kids whizz past on shiny new bikes. On the corners old men sit on plastic stools drinking tea and the blind tap their way gingerly along the street, handed from helping-passer-by to helping-passer-by like a baton in a slow race. A long line of shaded stalls, selling flashing Chinese gadgets and brightly sequined dresses, runs along the main street, and on the curb a man sits naked with his head in his hands, his feet dangling in the gutter.

In the afternoon I chew chat with two young barbers, who work across the street from where I stay, and the bitter leaves make me drowsy. We play cards and drink glasses of black coffee in the shady backroom of a Piazza bar. That evening I have drinks with Florian, a German doctor who is here for a few months. His room has a balcony overlooking the hotel terrace, and from my table, I watch him lower a rucksack, dangling from shoelaces, to a ready waiter, who places a cold bottle of beer in the bag, before it is hoisted back up. I join him and soon the rucksack is ferrying two bottles upwards.

He sits very upright, and nods a lot, and his hands adjust his tortoiseshell, pebble spectacles as he talks. The sleeves of his ironed shirt are folded at right angles, just above the elbow, and the shirt tails are tucked neatly into thick mustard corduroys. He tells me about the hospital, how many patients are wealthy Somalis, who have traveled from Mogadishu to have surgery on gunshot and car-bomb wounds. Every now and then the conversation halts as a pigeon lands on the ledge in front and Florian stops mid-sentence to hurl a peanut at the bird and mutters about missing his rifle.

We go to supper at a friend of his, Awguchew’s, whose wife gives us big bowls of pasta and glasses of honey wine, filled to the brim, and sits in silence, smiling, while we talk. Awguchew asks about my journey and as I describe the route he recalls hotels along the way: ‘Awassa, hmmm, I been there. Yes. Big hotel there: very modern, very expensive. Visa: they have... Yes, and Nairobi. I stay Hilton. You Know? Very big room, with big bed. Mini-bar: there is...’ He nods approvingly at the recollection and looks disappointed when I say I stayed elsewhere. After each sip of wine he jumps up to refill our already-full glasses and when his young son comes shyly in from playing he plucks him from the floor and gives him a huge hug.

He tells about his work for an HIV charity, about the need to distribute condoms, about truck-drivers with girlfriends in every town: ‘in ten town between here and Djibouti, every stop, different girl. No protection. Very bad.’ He says people are trying and things will improve: ‘Look Uganda. Infection: falling. Because good government. But government can be very problem too.’ He says how at a meeting with African ministers, an official from Mozambique had suggested that America introduced the virus to control the African population. ‘This is rubbish. And I say “why, to them, why we look from where the virus come?” And then I ask to them: “if a lion were to walk into the midst of our group now, what would we do? Would we stand here, still, and ask to one another, “from which direction did the lion come?” or would we kill the lion, and ask after, from which direction did it come?” They say, of course, first we must kill the lion, then ask from where it came. I say to them, it is the same with the virus. First we must end it and then we may ask from where it came.’

‘How can we expect the normal peoples to prevent illness, when the leaders, they are not trying? This is the problem. The politicians they come to discuss and spend their times in Sheraton Hotel, drinking whiskies and wines.’ He looks grave and his eyes wander to my glass and he bounces with bottle in hand to refill and starts to tell how some years ago it was heard that Colonel Gaddafi came to Addis and hired out the whole third floor of the Sheraton. He paid for exclusive use of the swimming pool and had a slide erected from his window to the water…

It is my last night in Addis Ababa and time to leave. Early next morning I ride north and the sprawl of rusted corrugated roofs and half built concrete blocks gradually recede as I climb into the forested slopes of the Entoto Hills. Rain starts to pour and I am cold as I reach the top and stare out at the band of asphalt before me, thinning, and finally disappearing between plains of grey moorland ahead. Gusts of wind sweep across the high plateau, driving pellets of cold water into my face. I ride on and find a motel at Fiche, where I spend the night.

I have ridden only five kilometres and my body is aching. The hills are gentle but my knees sting every time my foot presses on the pedal. Pain shoots from my shoulder and I stare grimly at sheets of rain merging thick clouds with the featureless ploughland all around. I stop again and again, edging slowly northwards. After eighty kilometers I reach Goha Tsion, find a bed, and go to sleep, wondering if I’ll make it up the hill I know I must climb in the morning.

A few minutes out of town the road dips and a thousand metres below the Blue Nile snakes its way through a deep canyon. The ravine walls are sheer and patches of cloud are strewn across the great valley like shreds of torn cloth. Terraces have been carved into the slopes and they descend in a shrinking green staircase to the distant thread of water below. For almost an hour I freewheel round and round the falling canyon wall, the river growing wider, and my forearms stiffer as I clamp the brakes shut. I pass waterfalls and little straw huts, camouflaged in the trees, and startled children fleeing from the road. Soon I am crossing a mighty current of rushing water and now I am climbing, the road spiraling up and around, and I slowly with it, the river shrinking and my legs tiring. For twenty-one kilometers I crawl upwards, and after nearly three hours, I reach Dejen.

From Mekele

2010-09-01T01:51:00.000-07:00

It is half past two in the morning and beneath the glare of airport night I wait for Ed and Duncan to walk through the shiny gates in front of me. I have two weeks travelling in Northern Ethiopia, two weeks off the bicycle, two weeks with my brother and an old friend. They arrive and soon we are on a plane to Gonder, a bus to Debark, and at the foot of the Simien Mountains. 　

We will be in the mountains for five days and we traipse through the muddy streets of Debark, between dim wooden shops, in search of rice and oats and kerosene. We set off early the following morning and soon the ramshackle, mud-coated village paths give way to a wide green valley, dotted with patches of thick forest. Beyond broad ledges have been carved across the faces of the shallow hillsides and clusters of straw-domed huts are scattered across the verdant slopes. The sky is clear and speckles of highland sunshine flicker like floating sapphires in the thin streams that twist through the soft grasses ahead. We pass young shepherds leading sheep to graze and old women wrapped in white shawls on the way to market in Debark. 　

As we climb from the valley the air cools and beads of grey moisture begin to hang lower in the air, gradually thickening, until the hillside is shrouded in a bleak cloak of dense fog. Branches from nearby trees protrude indistinctly out of the whiteness, seemingly floating in the mist. We reach a plateau and the surroundings sharpen as the cloud thins to a veil. Ahead, shrieks and howls pierce the mountain quiet. We are in the midst of a troop of Gelada Baboons. They dash between the low junipers, huge clumps of sandy fur, charging and snarling and abruptly stopping to dig. We have been walking for seven hours now and rain starts to fall. We pull our hoods tightly around our faces and trudge up the slippery path, reaching Sankaber, the first camp at three. As night falls we huddle around the low flames, which rise from the burning eucalyptus, and shelter from the sheets of icy rain driving through the open-sided hut.

We awake to a clear blue sky and I look out at a vast body of tall green ridges, splintering the land into a richly forested skeleton of deep gulleys and gorges. In every direction angular veins of precipitous rock stretch out into the distance and a few feet away grassed slopes roll for hundreds of metres towards the valley bed. As we walk along the long spine of the ravine edge, the drop sharpens, and after an hour we reach the Gich Abyss. Here, a hollow shaft descends for five hundred metres, walled on three sides by bare rock, streaked grey and pale ochre. A torrent of water gushes past tufts of euphorbia over the cliff ahead and monstrous black-winged Lammergeier glide above the rocks in search of bones.

The mist begins to descend as we walk the final ten kilometers to camp, and as we build a fire in the little wooden shelter, drops of heavy rain pound the thin corrugated roof overhead. We buy a chicken from a nearby village and I watch a young boy cut off its head in three strokes. Blood dribbles from the bird’s open neck, splattering red drops on the pale rock at our feet. The boy grins as the chicken’s wings beat frantically in his hands, and then it is still.

From Gich we walk to Chennek, across a crumpled landscape of vast gorges and ridges that fan out towards the horizon like waves on a giant, forested sea. Cries of baboons carry from distant crags and children, sheltering in torn sacks to keep the rain from their heads, rush from their sheep to stare. It is a long, cold walk back to Debark, through dense fog and driving rain, and our tired feet our glad to meet the muddy paths of the little town.

From Debark we make our way north to Aksum, and it is from here that we visit the rock-hewn churches of Tigrai. A dusty road winds through slopes of barren sandstone, past stout craggy outcrops, dotted with dark juniper bushes, and ancient stone huts that look to be falling back into the rocky scrub. At the end of the road the monastery of Debre Damos lies on an island of rock, raised seventy feet above the surrounding plains. At the foot of the mound I stare up at a monk lowering a thick rope from a low wooden portal at the top of the plateau. I begin to climb, my hands and feet meeting smooth groves, worn into the sheer face by hundreds of years of monks’ ascents. At the top there is a rectangular chapel made of small sandstone boulders, layered with thick beams of dark wood. Inside the dark room the walls are covered with paintings of cartoon saints slaying dragons, in bright reds and yellows and greens. Dusty carpets lie over the stone floor, and the pages of an ancient bible, laid out on a wooden shelf, glow beneath the flickering light of a dying candle.

Later, in the midst of the Gheralta wilderness, we follow shabby priests up slender paths, past boulders and candelabras and crumbling cliffs, through small wooden doors, into domes and prayer-cells and ancient tombs, all encrusted in great mounds of rock. At Abreha we Atabeha, the cave is full of men and women, shrouded in long white cloth, covering their heads and flowing to the knees. Men sit on wooden benches along the stone walls, clasping staffs, with heads bowed. From a hidden enclave at the back of the cave, a priest begins to chant, and like awakened mummies, the crowd of worshippers rises and begins to hum. The chanting grows louder and some start to sway and the men tap their staffs on the rock floor. The cave is dark and I stand in the shadows in silence, like an intruder at an ancient burial.

When we arrive at the foot of the climb to Abuna Yemata Guh, I look up at two columns of heavily weathered rock, slipping in and out of view, amidst billowing clouds of mist. Bare trees cling frailly to shallow ledges near the outcrop’s base, and piles of fallen boulders clutter the cliff foot. I follow the white-robed priest up a shear rock face for twenty feet, mimicking, in slow-motion, his nimble ascent. We tread across a ledge and clamber up a steep path before the next flat wall of rock appears. There are no ropes and I haul myself clumsily upwards, clinging to the shallow groves in the stone mass before me. We reach a sheltered inlet between the two columns and I stare at a human skull and shattered bones lying in a small cave. To reach the church we cross a final narrow ledge and between shifting veils of mist I can see tattered stone huts, scattered like pebbles, five hundred feet below. The priest unlocks the low wooden door and raises the flame of a candle above his head, to show the faded cream and ochre faces of saints and angels smiling down from the rough cave roof.

From Addis Ababa

2010-08-21T07:10:00.001-07:00

Leaving Dilla, I pass a grubby white milestone showing 400 km to Addis Ababa. I roll quickly down the hill out of town and my tyre bursts as I hit the uneven surface of a bridge at the foot of the slope. I begin to remove the wheel on the roadside and soon a crowd of a hundred silent faces has encircled me. No one says a word as they stare and twenty minutes later I pedal slowly up the oncoming hill. I am riding to Awassa, across the final folds of the Rift Valley’s southern shoulder. At the crest of each hill I stop to photograph thickly forested slopes rippling into the distance beneath a glowing quilt of amber fog. The land is lush and the air damp with mist. As I ride young men shout out “Faranji, Faranji, I Love You”, and others, “You-You. Fuck You.” Kids swarm around the bike whenever I slow and old men stop and lean on their sticks and stare as I pass.

The thick mat of mottled grey and white cloud that has swamped the highland skyline begins to thin, and marble over, as I descend towards the valley floor, and wispy rays of lemon light gradually tear the stormy mass into a brightening patchwork of blue and white. I catch a glimpse of Lake Awassa shimmering far across the flats and I pedal gently through an avenue of tall Cedars, past tired donkeys carting mountains of cut grass, and join the broad, palm-lined main-street of Awassa. Shiny hotels and tall, mirror-fronted office blocks form orderly lines beside clean paved-streets. The rags, and the mud, and the run-down wooden shacks that have boarded the road since Moyale seem distant here, and I feel clean, as I come back to my room, for the first time in weeks.

Out of Awassa the road unfurls straight and flat across green plains, past glittering valley lakes. The maize is tall and strong here and vast herds of long-horned cattle are led by boys with sticks, to drink in murky streams. Much of the land is being ploughed and young men in vintage Arsenal shirts drive yoked-oxen through the slow churning earth. I am heading to Ziway, another lakeside town, and the hundred kilometers fall fast as the helping hand of the northerly wind spins the wheels from behind. As I near town, I ride past a horse-and-trap and watch the young driver eye the bicycle with curiosity. From behind I hear a cry for speed and then his whip slap the horse’s side. The horse bursts past, and the young driver looks at me proudly. We are racing now and I pedal hard. The driver’s whip cracks down again and again and the blinkered horse’s hooves beat harder and faster on the tar. I reach forty kilometres an hour, and start to pull away, and ride smiling into town.

I head north from Ziway and the valley walls begin to loom in the distance. On the roadside, neat cactus hedges encircle clusters of straw-roofed huts, and stone graves, painted blue and red, topped with metal crucifixes, are dotted amongst the grasses. The white milestones fall like dominoes as I ride across the flats and Addis Ababa is drawing nearer. At Mojo I turn east and follow a busy, narrow, highway towards Debre Zeyit. I pass crowds of beggars sitting outside the iron gate of an Orthodox church, huddled under rugs. The traffic is thick now and ahead a flock of pink-headed crows with pre-historic wings circle a dead dog lying on the asphalt. I sleep at Debre Zeyit and set off early the following morning, with only fifty km to Addis Ababa.

I can see a crowd of high-rise towers in the haze ahead. Behind, dense green forest sprouts across the Entoto Hills, overhanging a sprawling mass of corrugated shacks that glitter as they rebound smog-cloaked rays of sunshine. I follow the highway into the city and climb up Churchill Avenue, past an imposing Obelisk, bearing the Red Star of Communism on its tip, towards the Piazza. The streets of Addis Ababa are crowded. Spindly little girls in torn dresses, with crosses hanging from lace around their necks, dash towards the bicycle, drawn to a white face like rain to the ground. They mime hunger and I stare back. I pedal slowly on, past ancient beggars with swollen feet, and raging madmen, and beautiful women in tight jeans and crop-tops. I find a room in an old hotel and take a long shower and sit down to write, beneath an old wooden veranda, with a cup of black coffee.

From Dilla

2010-07-30T22:51:00.000-07:00

I arrive in Moyale covered in dust. I have spent the last 18 hours drifting in and out of sleep on top of a truck. For long spells I gaze through the rattling metal bars at fields of black lava rock and swirling dust. The corrugations and holes in the road slow the lorry to 20 km per hour for most of the 400 km journey. When we arrive I haul my bike from the truck top, with the help of the guard and driver, and ride down a dirt side-street in search of a room. I have spent the last two nights sleeping on the floor of a hut and the back of a lorry and I fall asleep without eating or washing.

I wake early and ride across the border into Ethiopia. I stop at a courtyard restaurant and get a shot of black coffee and a big sour pancake with spicy red sauce. Men come in to drink the coffee and they shake my hand as they pass. The people have lighter skin here and the women are beautiful. I spend the day writing and planning my route north. Late in the afternoon I go to the bakery. The ceiling is very low and three men sit in the dark, scrubbing their teeth with twigs. Rows of square white buns rest on a stone block. I buy six and a jar of honey to eat on the way to Mega.

Out of Moyale a narrow band of worn asphalt unfurls across the windswept scrubland. Ten-foot high anthills and patchy-leaved thorn bushes cling to the loose red earth. Every few miles I pass a cluster of mud huts set back from the road. They are circular with concave roofs overlain with torn black plastic sheets that rustle in the wind. The walls are cream or red and some have charcoal drawings of leopard and wolves scrawled beside the low door frames. Men lead large herds of horned cattle through the scrub and small groups of camel chew on Acacia branches.

At the first village I pass, a large group of Borena women are tying branches together to form a fence. They all have plaited hair that hangs to just below the ears. Some have faint blue crucifixes tattooed in the centre of the foreheads and they all wail softly and sway from side to side as they work. I stop for a glass of tea and watch long lines of donkey being loaded up with bulging sacks, many of which bare the faded stars and stripes of the American flag and have ‘USAID: A Gift from the American People’ written in blue and red on the side.

As I head north the land turns from red to cream and the sky is a solid mass of light grey cloud. It is very quiet and for long stretches the only forms on the roadside are the towering anthills. I pass a group of Borena women carrying heavy loads of firewood, who run from the road when they see me. I arrive at Mega, a little town halfway up an escarpment, in the early afternoon. As I sit to eat, children in rags stare at me like an alien has landed. I sleep here and ride 100km to Yabello through the vast flat scrubland the next morning. Occasionally lorries pass and men in flowing white robes whip their horses aggressively as they gallop through the dust. I pass a cattle market in a village and weave through streaming lines of trudging oxen. In Mega I was told that in order for young men to marry here they must prove their worth by jumping over bulls, whose backs are smothered in butter.

From Yabello I climb out of the low-lying dust fields of the far south into Juniper forested hills. I am heading for Hagere Maryam, a town 100km north. By late morning I am out of food and the climbing wears me down. I take breaks every six or seven kilometers and grind my way slowly upwards, as my legs begin to falter. On the outskirts of town there is a large crowd in the road. There are many young men and women dressed in long black gowns, holding mortar boards. There is a great commotion as I try to pass and people rush from every direction and tussle to pose for a photograph next to me. I stand for fifteen minutes, smiling, while new-graduate after new-graduate stands beside me grinning excitedly into the old-fashioned cameras clicking away in front. Eventually I tangle free and ride the final mile into town.

From Hagere Maryam to Dilla the road climbs and climbs, and flattens for a short stretch, and climbs again. Thick drops of rain fall in torrents from the dark sky and I am shivering as I pedal stubbornly up the steep slopes. Families shelter in thickly thatched round huts and I can smell the smoke of warm wood fires hanging in the soaking air. Tall flat-leaved plantain trees smoother the roadside and mangy horses stand pathetically in the curdling mud. When the rain stops crowds of 20-30 children rush from the fields screaming and tug at the bike as I crawl up the rising hills. I arrive in Dilla, exhausted, having taken eight hours to ride just 110km.

From Moyale

2010-07-27T02:36:00.000-07:00

In the dust and the searing heat I feel very far away. I am in Isiolo and must stock up for the ride north. I will carry 15 litres of water and enough food for three days. I buy chewing tobacco to give to Samburu on the road. I am told if they are aggressive the tobacco will make them happy. They cannot get it up there. I wander amongst the narrow rows of dust and stones, through collapsing wooden stands, past old men sitting on low wooden stools playing a game with dried beans. Sudden gusts of wind rouse the sullen grains of sand into momentary frenzy and the old men wrap their shemaghs tightly around their beards. The remnants of black plastic bags quiver like charred flags in the thorny branches of leafless trees. I am staying at the most expensive hotel here and the yard is full of white Land Cruisers with sky blue UN markings branded on the bonnets.

As I ride out of town the shimmering rim of the eastern sun blazes low between the silhouettes of two distant Acacias and the first rays of yellow light flash across the flat scrubland. I am stopped at a police post on the edge of town and told it is better to take a truck. The guard walks around the bicycle and looks curiously at me. He asks if I have a weapon. He lets me pass.

The road is empty and on the new tar, with the wind behind me, I ride quickly. Large swathes of the dry copper earth lie bare and the sun glints off the corrugated roofs of small clusters of rectangular houses. To the west a bank of purple rock bridges the scrub and a low pool of receding grey clouds. Soon I am crossing the Ewaso Nyiro River and am at the town of Archer’s Post. The police here tell me there has been no sign of trouble for some days. The guard points to two hills in the distance and tells me to be carful here. Bandits hide in the bush there and make ambush. Even the MP for the area, he has been attacked between these two hills.

Out of Archer’s Post the tar stretches straight for miles ahead and disappears in the vast orange flats. Ostrich on the road quicken their pace as I approach and scatter powerfully across the sand as I pass. Dic-dic stand alert in the dry bush and a lone eagle rises and falls with the currents of the empty sky. I ride on and pass two large mounds of bare stone that looked so small in the distance from Archer’s Post. I hear the faint hum of an approaching vehicle breach the desert silence. A man on a motorbike passes and waves. He has a rifle slung across his chest. It is hot now, and even with the wind behind me, the sweat is pouring from my forid as I stare at the waves of heat rising from the black tar.

By mid morning I am riding across a rough dusty stretch through a village. Small stone huts and rickety shelters made of tangled branches line the road. Samburu warriors walk bare-chested in twos and threes, marking each stride by pressing their spears into the dust. They turn as I pass and stare silently at me. I smile and stare back. They wear bright robes from the waist down and sandals made from tyres on their feet. Each man has a dagger sheathed in red leather strapped to his thigh. A chain of golden beads runs from large wooden earings that hang heavily from each lobe and passes across their faces between the nose and mouth. Some are bare-headed, others wear helmets with bright red plumes the shape of mohicans running from their foreheads to the back of their necks.

Women in long red and blue robes with rows and rows of beads, hanging from their necks to their breasts, carry buckets of water to their huts. Scruffy kids in torn shorts, with anklets tied loosely above bare feet, peek at me from the safety of their huts and disappear shyly as I wave. There are soldiers in green camouflage ambling up the road holding worn rifles and goats searching for scraps in the dust.

A man runs into the road in front and tells me I must not continue. He says between here and Laisamis the road is very dangerous. He says a Chinese road worker was shot just 6km from here. He says an American cyclist was assaulted between here and Merille. They didn’t steal anything from him, but they broke both his thumbs and smashed his shoulder. The sun is scorching now and I take a long gulp of water. I wheel my bike into the shade and light a cigarette. ‘You will wait here for a truck. It is better.’ I feel sad and try to summon the will to continue, but guilt, when I think of home, and dread, swallow my faltering courage.

A tall woman in long white robes comes out of her house and nods and smiles. She tells me they do not often get visitors here. ‘We like visitors. You stay as long as you need.’ Her daughter brings me a bowl of beans and ugali and sits in silence as I eat. She smiles when I finish the plate and asks if she may give me a thing. A necklace of multi-coloured beads slips from her fingers and she stands on tip-toes and ties it round my neck.

I sit for hours waiting for a truck, but none pass. The children gradually get used to me and poke at my beard and laugh and stare at the bicycle in wonder. Night falls and I drift into sleep on an old sofa, amidst the low murmurs of those sitting around me. I am woken in the middle of the night and told a truck is outside. It is all very rushed and I am ushered through the darkness and hoisted onto the open back of a metal framed lorry. There is an old Muslim lady wrapped in a rug on top of the crates and a man with an AK47 keeping watch on the front. Soon I am hurtling through the night towards Moyale with a hundred crates of beer beneath me, staring up at all the stars of the desert sky.

From Isiolo

2010-07-26T06:43:00.000-07:00

As I leave Malaba, heading north-east, the prospect of what I will do when I reach Isiolo begins to dominate my thoughts. Since the start of the journey, four months ago, the road north from Isiolo to Ethiopia has been a distant, but impossible stretch. I have met many cyclists along the way; none of whom attempted it. I have been warned, and warned again, this stretch is rough. Do not try to ride it. Trucks travel in armed convoy. Bandits roam the desert scrub. Many have died on the road. Somalis, AK47s, warring tribes, 50 degree temperatures, 530 km of rock and dust stretching out into a violent wilderness. Now the road draws near the warnings grow louder and my desire to try stronger.

As I leave Malaba, I am still 620 km from Isiolo, and I am beginning the slow climb back across the Rift Valley. I ride 140km to Eldoret, over hill after hill, past the same maize, the same huts, on the same rutted tar. It is a different road to the one I took to Uganda, but I feel as if I have covered it before, and as the climb saps my strength, I stare blankly at the slow-passing landscape with growing weariness. The villages, the waving children, the great swathes of hillside carpeted in crops, would have filled me with wonder a time ago. But familiarity has drawn a grey curtain over the land and now I ride blindly back towards the east.

By early afternoon the sun is hot and I feel the energy of a storm growing in the surrounding air. Ahead a wall of blue cloud bruises the eastern skyline and thunder begins to roll across the hills. It is like riding into the night as I approach the darkening skies with the scorching sun still burning my back. Soon heavy droplets are falling like pebbles from the sky and I rush to the shelter of a little highway town. Within an hour the sky lightens and I ride onto Eldoret.

I stay at a guesthouse with smashed windows and take a bath in a bucket. In the evening I take a walk and pass a young boy digging for treasure in a junk-filled skip. A young mother sits slumped on the cracked pavement and stares at me with angry eyes. Her hands join together to beg and her eyes have lost all hope. I pass hustlers, and alley cats, and young men leaning lazily on Chinese scooters, and all the sidewalk skanks. From the shadows a man whispers: ‘Jesus, is that you?’ I laugh and he smiles and disappears down a smoky passageway. It was here, in Eldoret, three years ago, where bitterness over the election became violent. Thirty women and children were burnt alive in a church, and men slashed each other to death in the streets.

From Eldoret I ride 155km to Nakuru, climbing again, senselessly. As I descend for miles towards the valley floor, past Candelabras and Acacias, the thrill of the ride returns. After Nakuru I head north to Nyahururu, and onto Nyeri, and Timau. I cross the equator, and the last of the long Rift Valley ascents, and isolated wooden shacks in the golden grasses of Adebare plateau. At Nyeri I join the Great North Road and cycle through crisp highland air, passing the twin peaks of Mount Kenya in the east. I pull into a campsite just north of Timau and pitch my tent amongst Wild Olive trees and tall Cedars. I am only 65 km from Isiolo.

I go to speak to the lodge owner, Mr Wason, about the road north. He is sitting in a wicker chair on his porch, wispy grey hairs sprout from his open-necked shirt, and both his thumbs are hinged behind his braces. He invites me to sit and his wife brings me a cup of chai. I tell him about my journey and what I have heard of the road north. He nods, and strokes his chin, and rocks gently in his chair. He says the road is very bad. He says cyclists take trucks for this section. He says I should try. ‘Why fear? Never let fear decide.’ He pauses. ‘How do you want to die?’ I look startled and he smiles and says back in Afghanistan that is how we talk. ‘Do not fear death. We will all die.’ He tells me how years ago two people walked the road. They were fine. He tells me how, in the fifties, his brother hitchhiked there, across the frontier territories. His brother was picked up by a British army truck, who told him a nearby tribe would cut off his nuts and hang them from his neck if they found him.

He lists villages along the road and says I must camp at the police posts there. With each village name he tells a story from the old days. ‘After Serolevi, you will reach Merille. I was there in seventies, hunting lion, you know. Indeed just west of there I came across an elephant stuck in a swamp. I walked into the mud and tied a rope across its belly. Now, the elephant it knew. It knew I was trying to help. When I was beneath it, it moved its trunk very slowly towards me and sniffed. It just sniffed. It knew I meant it no harm. For two days we tried to pull it out, but it was no good, it was sinking. There was a crowd of 500 around waiting for it to die. After two days we gave up, it was suffering, you know. So we had to shoot. Before we shot I went up to the elephant, very close. And I saw tears coming from its eyes. It was crying. It knew we had given up.’ He sighs. ‘I couldn’t take the shot and from that moment I never shot another elephant.’

‘…. And then to Laisamis, yes, Laisamis. My good friend, a vet, he was speared by a rhino near Laisamis. He would have died if we hadn’t had my 4x4.’ He tells me story after story: lion, Samburu, deserts, guardian angels. As he talks I feel the apprehension drain begin to drain from me and the will to try, and to trust those I meet along the way, begin to grow. As I get up to go he gives me the names of men in Marsabit and Moyale: ‘the most powerful men in the towns: If you have any troubles, you will call them and mention my name. They will help you.’

The next morning I zoom from the highlands into the oncoming desert. It takes me only two and a half hours to ride the 65 km to Isiolo, and soon the land is golden and the grass has turned to dust. Ahead the desert rolls out before me and I am on the fringes of a great wilderness, staring out at vast ochre plains and mounds of far-off black rock, burning beneath the scorching crimson sun.

From Malaba

2010-07-13T23:16:00.000-07:00

I ride out of Busia while it is still dark, to see the sun rise from the road over my first morning in Uganda. The air is fresh and cool and the road deserted. As the sky begins to pale I can see the stout forms of circular huts and tall straight palms emerging from the shadowy flats. Silhouettes move slowly between the shacks and the first fires of the day are being lit. Soon the sky lightens and distant mists gleam before the rising sun, coating the horizon the colour of frozen honey. Above clouds drift softly over the low forests and beyond, unfurling and collapsing like giant rose petals released into the breeze.

I ride on west, heading for Jinja, through soaking paddi fields which line the road and cover the land as far as I can see. Men are already in the fields, picking at bright green stalks and sifting through the muddy water. Cormorants and slender long-legged birds with sharp beaks stand in the shallows and peck below the surface. I ride fast on the cool flat road and pass pools full of floating white lilies. As I come nearer to Jinja, the road rises and drops across little hills, and all along the tar people sit in front of huts watching the cars pass and stirring pots and laying washing out to dry on the grass.

By lunchtime I am in Jinja; the source of the Nile. I spend a night camping out of town at Bujagali and watch the wild rapids rush towards the north. There is a giant storm and I stand beneath a slanting corrugated orning, with heavy drops beating the ground at my feet, and watch the river turn red as soil flows from the steep banks. In Jinja town I wander up the main street and four old men in flowing cream cloaks, with long grey beards and wrinkled yellow faces, lead me down a side road. They tell me they are from Egypt and smile and speak in Arabic and nod their heads and point to the sky and I am bemused. There is a young black man with them, who I only notice now, dressed all in white, with a red shemagh draped loosely around his neck. He stares straight into my eyes as he speaks, translating the crowd of prophecies and proverbs that flow from the old men’s mouths.

The lead cleric looks at me kindly and says ‘La ilaha illa allah.’ The young black man says: ‘There is no God but God.’ The lead cleric looks at the floor and slowly raises his head and extends a finger to the sky and talks at me in words I cannot understand. The young black man’s words follow softly behind: ‘Can man make the sun?’ They all shake their heads earnestly. ‘Can man make the moon?’ They pause for me to consider. ‘Can man make the stars?’ One of the old men has his hand on my chest and they stare at my face and all shake their heads and smile serenely. They invite me to the mosque and I say I must go. ‘Before you go, you must take a Muslim name.’ They begin to list names at me and I stop them at Hassam. ‘So’ the old man says in his first English words, ‘next time, when I shall see you across the road in Cairo, I shall shout out “Hello, Hassam” and you will answer, and we shall greet.’ I smile and shake his hand and wander off into the bright sunshine.

From Jinja I ride 145km to Mbale in the north-west. I start late and the equator sun burns high and hot in the cloudless sky. The land is green all around and when I leave the main road I can see nothing but maize and plantain trees and collections of four or five mud huts with conical roofs, thatched elegantly in layered circles that narrow as they rise above the fields. Kids slashing at grasses with worn machetes shout out to their brothers and sisters to watch me pass. The land becomes swampy as I head north and tall reeds with flowers like peacock feathers crowd both sides of the elevated road. I stop in a roadside bar at Tirinji and a woman in smart clothes asks where I am going. She tells me, in Mbale, I will find lots of my brothers and sisters from London, America, Japan. As I approach town, I can see long metal antennae cluttering the sky with angles, and two-storey cement blocks, rising above the rice fields, at the foot of the purple rock-face of the Wanale Ridge.

The next morning I ride 50km up to Sipii, a little town in the foothills of Mount Elgon. The final 10km is a continuous steep climb. The road latches onto the mushrooming hillside and winds and bends up relentless slopes. I grind my way up past collapsing adobe huts, held together with winding tree branches. Kids pour out of the low door frames and rush to the road past chickens and goats and mothers, who sit serenely tending to pots by the fire. They shout and whoop and slap the back of the slow moving bike and look in wonder at the weak bedraggled white man, clambering towards the sun.

I am almost falling now and my thick wheels will barely turn. The sweat is pouring from my temples, stinging my bloodshot eyes. Women call out from the roadside: ‘You are tired, muzungu, come and rest here. You must rest.’ I smile and try to suppress the deep pants that shake my whole torso. For the first time in 8000km I get off and push. I stare, defeated, at the land dropping from the roadside precipice. The clutter of huts and livestock and screaming children melt into the vast flats that roll out to meet the western sky below. I pull my legs onto the pedals and ride again and soon I am forced to push once more. At last I can hear the crashing falls of water that rush from the highland rivers around Sipii and I know I am close and I ride the final bend to a campsite in the village.

I spend the afternoon roaming the muddy hillside paths in the driving rain to look at the waterfalls up close. I walk through plots of head-high maize, past old women, carrying huge sacks of cut grasses, who scuttle nimbly up the steep hillside tracks, while I slip and slide past, my legs covered in greasy red earth from earlier falls. Everyone is huddled in huts peering out of dark doorways at the storm. At the base of the biggest fall, water cascades down a sheer ochre rock-face and foams and froths in a rocky pool below.

Back at the campsite I stare out into the night across the ravine. There isn’t a single light burning, though there must be a thousand huts spread across the valley. I freewheel down the same slope the next morning, in quarter of an hour, and ride 100km across the flats through Mbale and Tororo, and just after midday I am back across the border in Kenya.

From Busia

2010-06-27T03:45:00.000-07:00

I have been off the bike for over two weeks waiting for my visa, and I am jumpy as I swerve and dash through Nairobi’s morning traffic. My mind is already turning to where I will spend the night; thoughts that before the lay-up wouldn’t have bugged me. The uncertainty of the road ahead makes me sad.

I am heading west on the road to Uganda and soon after leaving the city I am climbing through the lower folds of the Rift Valley’s eastern edge, past empty fields towards distant hills. The sky is pale and blue and fine wisps of smoky cloud flutter across the horizon. The road is quieter here and I can see Lake Naivasha gleaming calmly and Mount Longonot rising from the flat valley floor. The descent into the valley is long and fast and I glide quickly through the breeze. Along the valley floor murky yellow grasses stretch out towards the southern hills beneath billowing Candelabra trees and lonely corrugated shacks. After a few miles the road climbs again and the pedals grind reluctantly as I make my way slowly up and up the oncoming hills. The sun is strong now and I pull into a little motel at a town called Gilgil and spend the afternoon reading in the shade.

The next day I rejoin the highway and ride 160km to Kericho. It is just light as I set off and the dull grey forms of far-away hills fade into the soft dawn sky as I descend towards Nakuru. I pass lakes, and tall, sprawling acacias, and little villages of brick houses with metal roofs. Children in smart green uniforms wave as they walk to school and dalla-dallas and rumbling trucks rush past me on the worn asphalt. I stop for a plate of beef and ugali at a little junction town. Across the road women scrub clothes in plastic buckets amongst a cluster of faded white tents. I ask a guy in the café why they are living in tents. He says they lost their homes in the violence in 2007. They have lived like this since. I turn off the highway and climb across the highlands towards Kericho. The road is flanked by deep green fields of tea; sprawling, well kept plantations that fan out over the smooth hills in endless, orderly rows. Amongst the fields I pass big estates made up of little white rectangular houses, where the workers live. They are all identical, with two front windows and a wooden door between, planted like blocks of lego in the trimmed grasses. The road is full of holes and I slowly rattle across the potted tar under the afternoon sun, reaching Kericho at three.

I ride out of town at dawn and young women are already picking tea in the fields off the road. They stand above the short plants, like statues in the smoky mist, watching me pedal past. The air is cold and toddlers sit outside huts wrapped up in woolly hats and puffy jackets while their mothers boil up ugali in thick black pots over smouldering wood. I stop on a little bridge above a fast running stream and watch the sun rise over the tall forests that grow on the highest slopes around Kericho. I think that if I am riding towards Kisumu, and Uganda, the sun sould be rising behind me, not to the left. I ask a passer-by where this road goes to. He says Kisii, a town to the south. I have taken the wrong road. I take out the map and decide to carry on to Kisii and ride to Kisumu the following day. The road is quiet and the highlands beautiful, but it means a 150km detour.

I climb up, and freewheel down, hill after hill past steep sloping fields of maize and tea. On the roadside men sit chipping at blocks of stone with hammers and call out at me: ‘Sah, Sah, where to? Where from? How far? Some of them get up and shout: ‘Yes you can! Yes you can!’ with their hands raised above their heads. The hills grow steeper as the midday sun reaches its hottest and I am covered in sweat as I ride into Kisii. It is market day and large women lie in the dust under umbrellas behind piles of fruit.

The next day, after a couple of hours riding from Kisii, I emerge from the hills and the green lowlands unfurl before me, from the shores of Lake Victoria to a distant escarpment in the east. I can see for miles in every direction and it is a good feeling to ride across the open expanses, past little mud huts, through the swampy flats. It is Sunday and clapping and singing and a preacher’s booming voice carry to the road from a little white church. There are women sitting under trees selling yams in buckets. They will sit like this till dusk and I wonder if anyone will stop to buy yams today. As I near Kisumu a young guy runs after me shouting: ‘It is you. It is you. I read you in the newspaper. You are the one who rides his bicycle around the world. And now you are here in Kenya.’ I tell I am not and he looks disappointed. He says that guy must be very strong. It is quiet when I ride into Kisumu. On the main street bums sit on a corner flipping coins and drinking whisky. They peer at me riding past with junky eyes that look out above puffy cheeks. I see them later bedding down in a derelict stone building with no roof.

From Kisumu it is 120 km to Busia, just across the Ugandan border. On the way I stop for a drink at a village off the highway, called Sidindi. An old man sits on the step next to me. I give him a sandwich and he tells me this is the Luo region. He says Obama’s grandfather resides just a few kilometers behind here. He says Obama himself came to the region. He says that on the day of the election in the US, the village also put on an election. They made ballot boxes, one for Obama, and one for McCain. The whole village voted. Obama got all the votes and McCain got none.

The road is flat and by lunchtime I am crossing the border. The customs officer stares at me and asks why I am so dirty. I tell her it is dusty and I am on a bicycle. She tells me to make sure I take a bath and change my clothes. Busia is full of people rushing back and forth; everyone sweating and in a hurry. I ride a couple of kilometers to the edge of town and sit writing under a tree. As the sun goes down the insects start to roar and bats swoop between the trees.

From Chogoria

2010-06-23T21:45:00.001-07:00

My bicycle is in Nairobi and my passport in London and I am in the back of a dalla dalla on the way to the foot of Mount Kenya. We race across the hills, past towns and fields and rivers, and I want to stop and look at all, but we are already past and through the little plastic window it is all tinged with grey. I am with David, who will guide me up the mountain, and we arrive in Nanyuki, from where we will start the trek, in the afternoon. We get a plate of barbecued mutton and ugali in a huge diner and people shout out countries at me as I walk through the tables: Guatemala, Israel, Spain. On the road outside a British Army van passes and David tells me there is a base nearby. He says the soldiers do good for the town. He says at weekends the soldiers come in from the bush, and have beers, and make African babies.

In the morning we set off early and walk up a rocky 4 x 4 track that climbs gently through the grassy foothills. A dense fog covers the hilltops and the gangly stalks of giant heather, bald and singed black by a forest fire, rise statically from the swaying elephant grasses. As we get higher we clamber across rocky streams, crisp water bubbling just below our boots. I kneel down and drink from my hands. We stop at a hut after hiking 9 km and boil a chicken which we eat with fried onion and carrot.

We are up before sunrise and follow a thin path over the thick spines of swelling ridges and walk down into soft valleys carpeted in damp yellow moss that squelches beneath our feet. The sky is very clear and currents of cool air sweep across the valley floor making the feathers of the tall lobelia plants shiver in the pale sunlight. We take a rest by a stream and I look up and watch the fickle mountain mists drift apart to reveal the towering spires of the summit brushing against the crystal sky far ahead. Huge swathes of the slopes just below the peak have given way leaving a frail membrane of scree trickling towards the valley. As we get higher the grasses disappear and we make our way through barren slopes of dust. Mountain rats and rock hyraxes scuttle amongst the pebbles and rosette flowered lobelia stick out of the rocky ground like triffids on a martian moon.

We reach the hut where we will sleep long before dark and sit around a barrel of burning wood clutching streaming cups of tea. By dusk frail flakes of snow crowd the icy air and a veil of fog has fallen on the twin peaks above us. The vague form of the mountain top looms heavily in the gloomy sky; a great mass of volcanic rock peering out from the mist like a lost cathedral. David tells me how the people who lived at the base of the mountain believed the mountain to be a God. When there was no rain the elders would walk to this point and pray. When they came down the rain would come.

We wake at three to make the summit by sunrise. It is bitterly cold when David and I begin the final 3 km ascent. We clamber up the scree, slipping, and then grasping for solid rock, guided by the faint light of our head-torches. Above shooting stars drop from the sky like pieces of crumbling candy. We take regular breaks and lean against boulders, breathless. As we get higher the air thins and the darkness begins to recede, unmasking the hazy silhouette of the approaching summit. Soon we are scrambling up the final few metres of frosted rock and I am looking out at the young sun igniting the eastern sky in a thin field of ochre light. I look down from the mass of jagged brown rock at boulders and dust cascading towards an enormous tide of thick white cloud. There is a glacier sitting in a hollow to the south and crater lakes reflecting the brightening sky scattered amongst the crumbling slopes beneath us. David is sitting quietly on a rock, with a faint smile on his face, watching me try to take it all in.

On the way down we slip on the scree and I try to run down the steep bits and lose my balance and then tread timidly until the slope begins to flatten. We pass calm green lakes that from the peak shimmered like little pearls, half buried in the rubble, but now we see them wide and deep. We stop and share a bar of chocolate that I saved and have a smoke with the sun warming our faces. As we descend further the lobelia begin to sprout from the rocks and soon they are all around us. The ground is soft and murky yellow now and thin streams of water trickle quietly through the boggy soil. Two tall shoulders of rock rise sharply on either side of the gorge ahead, swallowing the falling green valley in darkness. We follow the lip of the gorge on the eastern side and I stare over the edge at the valley dropping abruptly and a torrent of water cascading over the rocky crest towards the grassy floor.

My legs are tired now and David is limping; we trudge slowly through the heather with our packs, like two hobbits in an empty world. The wind is picking up and I stop to take a photograph of a small red flower clinging to the craggy cliff edge. I wonder if it will blow off and where the little red petals would carry to in the wind. We have been walking for ten hours now and my feet are sore. I bought my boots second hand at a market in the slums and they are wearing the skin off my heels. I am happy to sit down when we stop for lunch and we build a little fire and boil a pot of noddles and some tea. We lie back with our heads resting on our packs, blowing smoke into the air. I ask David about his life in Nairobi. He says he lives in a single room with his wife and son. He has electricity, but life is hard. He says some people in Nairobi are very rich. There are even men who pay $500 to stay in a hotel. Just for one night. And in coffee shops in the city people pay $2 for a little cup of coffee. He shakes his head in disbelief.

We eat and get up wearily and walk for another few hours to camp, where we sleep, exhausted. The next morning we hike the final 20 km to Chogoria. We walk through a bamboo forest; the glare from the low sun filters through the crowded spines of wood, splintering shards of bright light across the path ahead. Elephants have trampled many of the trees and the narrow stalks lie crushed on the path. We stop to look at some leopard tracks, stooping over the shallow imprints, and tracing little circles in the dust with twigs. David tells me how the Masai carry the dying into the forests near here. When people are very sick they are led here and left for three days. If they are still alive after that time they are taken back to the village. But there are many wild animals in the forests. They will eat the dying. We emerge from the forest and out into fields of tea and coffee and pineapples sown into steep green slopes. There are women with baskets slung over their backs picking there way through the crops and more and more people everywhere as we arrive in Chogoria.

From Nairobi

2010-06-13T03:11:00.000-07:00

Leaving Moshi the sky is dull. Light rain trickles from the heavy clouds and all around the land is swamped is grey. It is Sunday and the roads are quiet; the little highway towns waking slowly as I pass. A dense fog hangs stubbornly in the still air, hiding Kilimanjaro and a hundred beautiful views behind a drab curtain of impenetrable mist. I slip into a daze and soon I am nearing Arusha. From a village just out of town a long procession snakes its way slowly across the road. There are young kids at the front clapping and swaying, shuffling to slow rhythm of the march. Behind nuns in blue habits shepherd them along and women in their Sunday best sing hymns which carry through the crowd and drift into the surrounding fields. I stop to let the long line cross the highway before riding onto Arusha. The town is bigger than I had expected and hustlers chase me through the streets shouting about safaris and best-deal-hotels.

From Arusha it is 120 km to the Kenyan border. The road is being re-tarred and a relentless wind drives thick clouds of dirt across the rough track. The dust clings to the grasses and bushes to my left smothering them in a lifeless carpet of ashen dirt. To my right Chinese workers wearing clean white masks sit in rollers preparing the new highway. On the sections of completed road I speed along the smooth surface through the silent dry plains. I can see Masai roaming through the wilderness with great herds of horned cattle. Lonely Acacias and Buffalo Thorns stand out on the horizon and above it all Kilimanjaro looms above the clouds like a giant from another world.

As I near the border a Masai stops me and asks for a dollar. He looks a great warrior holding his spear, his beautiful robes billowing in the wild wind. It makes me sad that he asks. I camp over the border and head north on the road to Nairobi the next day. The air is cold and damp and all around the lowland slopes are covered in empty Savannah grasses. I ride quickly, using the momentum from each downward slope to propel me over the next. As I rise over the shallow lip of another small hill I see a dalla-dalla reversing towards me. We are already close and the little bus is still reversing. The driver hasn’t seen me and it is too late now. I swerve to the right as far as I can and the back smacks my leg and I fall to the ground.

I stand up and look at the saddlebags strewn across the roadside and the bike lying calmly on the gravel. I turn and stare at the bus still slowly reversing. It is packed with bewildered faces staring at the lunatic beginning to run towards them. Blood is streaming from my leg and I am screaming at the driver. He slowly stops and I wrench his door open and haul him from his seat. I cannot believe he didn’t stop. That he was reversing that fast. That my bike might be bust. I am pinning him against the bus and shouting in his face. He keeps saying sorry, that he didn’t see.

There are people all around us now telling me to calm down; kind eyes and peaceful hands trying to cool the spoilt rage of the melodramatic Muzungu. Kind eyes saying accidents happen. The bike can be fixed. The driver didn’t mean it. And above, all worse things happen. I look around at the corrugated shacks that line this section of the road. I feel ashamed. I step back and walk over to my bike. The back wheel won’t turn and the the frame is bent. I take out an allen key and begin to adjust the brakes and realign the wheel. Everyone is trying to help, bashing the frame back into shape, and after half an hour the wheel is turning again and I pedal off northwards.

I spend the night in a little Muslim guesthouse in Kajiado. It is the World Cup and I watch the England game with the owner, drinking sugary tea. From Kajaido it is only 80 km to Nairobi and by mid morning I am riding on a three lane highway past tall mirrored buildings and outlet stores and billboards advertising financial solutions. There are women in high heels and pencil skirts talking on mobiles and new Mercedes Benzes speeding towards the skyscrapers on the horizon. I head downtown and find a backpackers.

I go to the Ethiopian Embassy the next day to get my visa. I am sitting in a little waiting room when I hear a call to get in. There is a man sitting behind a desk with his arms folded across his tie. I hand him my passport and begin to explain my journey. He tells me it is not possible to get a visa. I must fly to Addis and get one at the airport. I explain that I have ridden a bicycle from Cape Town, riding every mile. He says it is not possible to get a visa. I must fly to Addis and get one at the airport. I stare at the flag on his desk and think that there is always a flag nearby in these situations. I mumble that I don’t understand and he looks at me sternly and tells me it is not for me to understand. That is the Ethiopian Regulations. They make sense. He tells me to get out. I wander back towards my hostel down a long avenue of high-walled compounds, wondering what to do. I decide to send my passport to London and get an agency to arrange the visa from there. It means two weeks in Nairobi. It is a fun city and I will climb Mount Kenya while I wait.

From Moshi

2010-06-04T23:58:00.000-07:00

The streets of Dar are wet and muddy the day I arrive and my torn clothes are covered in dirt by the time I wheel my bike up to the gates of Bob and Judy’s house. The security guard looks curiously at me, and hesitates, before checking if I should be allowed in. There is a Canadian flag blowing reassuringly on a tall white pole at the end of the lawn and a few hundred yards behind, Tanzania’s eastern shores meet the Indian Ocean. The family, whom I had never met, invites me to stay for as long as I like. There is a golden retriever lying quietly in the hallway and Western newspapers are laid out neatly on a coffee table. I stay here for the weekend and sleep in a double bed and eat family meals with a napkin on my lap. On the Saturday I go with them to the yacht club and on Sunday to a charity sale where I say hello to the same smiling faces I saw at the club the day before.

Since the first day of the ride, almost three months ago, when I found a pack of sandwiches and a note from the guesthouse owner, resting on my saddlebag, I have been met with the kindness of strangers. In villages in Namibia, Botswana, and Zambia I have been given food and water and a place to sleep. Along the roads people have stopped to give me cold drinks. And here in Dar I am welcomed by strangers as if I am an old friend.

After a few days rest the road beckons and I head north along the coast to Bagamoyo. It is a short ride and I arrive in the little seafront town early in the day. The tide is out and beached dhows rest on the sand amongst torn nets and bright plastic bags that billow across the cluttered shore. Fires are smouldering beneath rickety corrugated shelters in the little market off the beach. Women stoop over pans of spitting oil and the smell of dried fish clings to the humid air. An ancient carpenter chips at a block of dark wood in a shaded corner. He is very thin and his brown skin clings tightly to the lean fibres of his tensed arm as he brings the axe down onto the wood. I buy a woolly hat from an old woman; it will be cold when I ride into the northern mountains around Kilimanjaro.

From Bagamoyo the tar stops and I ride a dirt track 70 km to Msata. The rains have washed much of the earth away and my bicycle clatters painfully over the exposed rocks that jut out of the dust. Where the road dips, deep pools of water have collected and I must get off and wade with my bike, muddy water swilling around my ankles. The sun is strong and the going slow. It takes six hours to reach Msata, where I get a big plate of goat and rice and a cold Coke. From Msata I ride north on the highway to Mbwewe. There is a guesthouse here and I spend a couple of hours fixing my bike beside the bed in the dark room.

Later I sit in the bar, where people stare at me sullenly over bottles of warm beer. The barman pulls a chair up next to me. He tells me his name is William and that he grew up in Tabora, in Western Tanzania. He has a cropped head of short wiry hair that recedes from his gaunt face and he smiles placidly as he talks. He tells me that he went to primary school till he was seven. That his parents were very poor and so died when he was young. That he came here to make a business. He used to sell charcoal here, for ten years: “Now I must work here, at the bar. Yes. It is because I am weak, you see. Too weak to work on my business. I am a victim, am victim of HIV, you see. Yes.” He nods meekly and I am silent. “Tanzania government, they have not enough money to help us, the victims. To bring us the foods and the drugs. But NGOs, you understand, NGOs from Europe, they want to help us. Yes.” He is speaking very softly and smiles when he looks up. “They want to bring us the monies so we can have the foods and the drugs. Yes. But they do not bring straight to us, the victims. They bring to the district leaders, you understand, to give to us. The NGOs they want the foods and the drugs to come to us. Yes. But the district leaders, they are a thief. They keep the monies and they are rich. We, the victims, do not get the foods and the drugs.” We are sitting side by side on plastic chairs as dusk falls on the little bar. I stare ahead and ask him when he found out he was sick. He says three months ago. We both go quiet and he jumps up to bring a drink to a guy shouting at him from the table opposite.

From Mbwewe I take three days to ride the 400 km to Moshi. I pull out of the guesthouse while the air is grey and I can see the shimmering glow of the first fires of the day being lit across the surrounding hills. For a couple of hours it is cool and a thin mist hangs over the road. In the east the dusky forms of the Usambara Mountains hide the rising sun; a pale yellow light filters through the cloud above them bathing the craggy hilltops in an angelic glow, as if plumes of stardust were drifting from the rocks towards the sky.

Between the road and the hills the land is lush and green and women are working in the fields. The road is full of potholes and coaches speed past forcing me onto the grassy verge. At Segera I am stopped at a roadblock and the policeman asks me how I find the condition of Tanzania. He beams when I tell him it is great. The roads good. The people friendly. National pride wells up in him and spreads across his plump face in a broad grin. I sleep at Korogwe and ride 160 km to Same the next day. The land dries up as I go further north; the fields of yellow-faced sunflowers and healthy maize give way to vast plains of dusty red earth. There are deep groves running through the dying soil, the scars of heavy rains that remain etched in the burning land. It is very flat and a battered sign warns of strong winds. I pass by row upon row of cotton plants and speed across the flats with a rushing wind behind me. I stay at Same and ride 100 km, past the Pare Mountains, to Moshi the next morning.

From Dar Es Salaam

2010-05-29T03:50:00.000-07:00

When I first arrived in Tanzania I had planned to take the western road to Rwanda, along the shore of Lake Tanganyika, via Kigoma. But the rains have come late this year and the road is closed; impassable with thick mud and impromptu rivers. So I had ridden east to Iringa, planning to head north to Dodoma and then to cut back on myself and head north west to Rwanda, across the Wembere Swamps and the dusty north-western plains past Nzega. I am in a little café in Iringa staring at the map. It is a long detour. A huge > across the heart of Tanzania and the road will be desolate. I must stock up with food and water here.

A young guy pulls up a chair next to me and looks down at the map, which is splayed out beneath a mug of black tea on the wobbly table. I show him where I will go and he shakes his head solemnly and tells me I must not go this way. When I tell him I am on a bicycle, alone, he becomes more animated. He says there are bad men with guns on the north western road. Bandits from Rwanda. It is already late afternoon and I had planned to leave early the next morning. I ask him how he knows this and he says he is from Nzega. He knows the road well. I walk into a little tour company across the street and ask the travel agent about the route. He says the same. The road is dangerous. I must carry on east and reach Rwanda via Uganda.

I think back to when I met Jean-Claude in Livingstone, Zambia. He was scrawny and weathered with skin like burnished leather and thin grey hair. He told me how when he couldn’t get a visa to ride through Angola he had bicycled 2000 km across western Congo. He would not have been put off by the hearsay of a couple of local guys. By the remote prospect of trouble. I tell myself I will go on as planned and then change my mind. I know in daylight, riding, the warnings will fade in the sunshine. I know when I am camping on the dark roadside the spectre of trouble will rise out of the shadows and make me lonely and scared. I look at the map again and draw a line east to Dar Es Salaam. 400 km of main highway; of guesthouses and passing trucks and occasional road-trippers waving from battered Land Rovers. I will go to Dar and then north to Kenya, and across Uganda to Rwanda.

The next morning I rejoin the Tanzam highway and set off towards the eastern shoreline. It is a beautiful day. The wind flows lightly on my back while the sun climbs quickly above the receding bank of eastern cloud. After a long winding descent the road stretches out through the flat Tanzanian prairies, across miles of Khaki grasses and wide topped acacias, which spread out across the horizon in every direction, broken only by the occasional hump of a freestanding green hill that protrudes gently out of the bush. Soon the foothills of the Udzunga Mountains flank the road to the south and I am passing through a great valley filled with thousands of baobab trees. Those nearest the road loom powerfully out of the dust, casting tangled patches of shade on the flat tar. The upper branches flow from the stout trunks like locks of frozen hair, towering above the dried mud shacks that are dotted through the forest. I camp in the valley on the bank of the Ruaha River. In the moonlight the trees grow larger, their silhouettes bearing down from the starry sky, shrouding the valley floor in ghostly shadows.

I take two days to ride the 190 km to Morogoro across the Uluguru Hills and on through Mikumi National Park. On the roadside lime green cactuses and half built brick houses are interspersed amongst the bright fields of sunflowers and endless maize. Maasai in red and purple robes, with gapping round holes in their ear lobes, lead small herds of cattle through the scrub with tall staffs. Shortly after leaving Mikumi I ride past a sign marking the entrance to the Park. The bustle of passing bicycles and droning scooters and running children has stopped and the road feels very empty. I quicken my pace and scour the grasses for signs of animals. After 20 km I reach a small hut and am stopped by a warden. He tells me cycling in the Park is strictly prohibited, but, in this instance, as I have got this far, as my bicycle is strong, I may go on. As I pedal off he shouts that he will pray I do not encounter any lion or buffalo. The grasses are high and little pools of stagnant water sit in muddy enclaves off the road. The noise of the chain whirring as I ride startles a warthog who bursts from the grass towards the bush. A small herd of buffalo are sitting beneath a tree to my left. My eyes are fixed on them as I pass but they take no notice. After 50 km I make it out of the Park and reach Morogoro by lunchtime.

I leave Morogoro heading for Chimala, from where I will ride to Dar. There is a tall escarpment running parallel to the south. Frail trees are perched on its narrow ridge above a thick band of light cloud. The road is busier as I head east and it starts to rain. Lorries trundle past whipping up dark highway water from under their heavy wheels. It is muggy in Chimala and the rain has churned the verge into a thick brown paste. I sit down in a truckers bar and watch cradle shaped pens full of chickens being loaded onto a bus. The bar girls pull up chairs and sit staring at me while I write. I slowly list the countries I have passed through and they laugh and poke my legs and point at the bicycle behind. The sit with me for hours saying words I cannot understand and laughing with instinctive friendliness. When I come back later to eat, they are watching a trashy American sitcom called ‘Shades of Sin’ although none of them speak a word of English.

The next day I reach Dar Es Salaam in the late morning and dart through the chaos of the city’s choking roads. Combi’s cut me up and I swerve and brake and swear my head off and the driver looks perplexed and hits the side of the van through the window and honks his horn and then a gap in the traffic opens up and we both potter off into the smog. Swirls of dust rise from the wake of the rushing cars and I squint in the grime, dripping with sweat. Outside a Pepsi stand a guy strangles a dog with both hands; yelps and howls carry desperately across the roaring traffic and while I watch the man giggling I ride into a deep pothole and nearly come off. After hours of muddling my way through the city I arrive at the calm leafy driveway of the house I will stay at for the weekend.

From Iringa

2010-05-26T05:32:00.000-07:00

I rest up in Tukuyu for a couple of days after leaving hospital. In the mornings I go with Luka to the little market at Kibisi village to buy food for the day. Chickens run across the dusty path and young guys with dreadlocks and massive sunglasses come up and ask if I’m feeling better. We stop at a little stall selling vegetables and dried fish. An old woman, wearing a bright sarong printed with Barack Obama’s face amidst a sea of Stars and Stripes, sits behind the low wooden table and we pick out tomatoes, peas, and potatoes from little wicker bowls. Off the main path kids run around in the dirt sucking on sugar cane and chasing crickets, which they pick up with tiny hands and stuff into little plastic bottles.

After two days here I ride north through the Mbeya Mountains. A dense grey fog clings to the hilltops, smothering the forest in cloud, and leaving tiny water droplets on the hairs of my arms and legs. The cloud thickens as I get higher and a chilly mountain breeze flows swiftly against me on the steep ascent. The road descends dramatically out of the mist and after a few minutes free-wheeling the air is clear and the sun bathes the rolling valley fields before me in bright light.

I check into a motel in Mbeya and have a hot shower for the first time in weeks. A call to prayer from the nearby mosque makes its way across the little motel courtyard as I head into town to get some food. I sit outside a little Indian cafe and order some rice. While I eat a shadow falls on the white plastic table in front of me and I look up at a tall white guy with a neat brown moustache, smiling down on me. He is wearing a faded denim shirt and jeans and there is a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. He grins and asks me what I am doing here in a thick American accent and I think I see him twitch slightly. He nods knowingly when I tell him and laughs and lights a second cigarette with the dying end of the last. He is standing with one hand resting on a chair and starts to talk, as if addressing a large crowd:

“Me, well, I started in South America. Went to twelve countries. Yes! Didn’t visit the other four: cause there’s nothing fucking there.” He hits the table with a flat palm and laughs and his head jerks back awkwardly. “Well, everybody tells me: Paul, you gonna have trouble Paul. Watch your back Paul. It’s not like home Paul! – I ain’t had so much a sniff a trouble. Only this one time, down in Panama, you know. Guys tried to jump me. Little Bastards! Nothing to me though – I’m a federal marine. Yes! Showed em where to go. You bet.” He jumps around like a jack-in-the-box and his moustache jerks involuntarily to the left. “You know South America’s great for a good time. And I like to have a good time me. Paul sure likes to have a gooooood time. Yes! The cocaine – you know?” He bends over and presses his forefinger against his nostril and snorts elaborately just above the table, before jolting back to an upright position. “Well, where was I? Oh yeah. I got bit by a spider the other day. You see here?” He points to a mark on his neck. “Blew up like a fucking balloon. So I go to the local doc. He tells me a fly bit an infected cow, the spider ate the fly, and then bit me, and I got the cow infection. Yes! I tore my room apart when I got back, found three of the little bastards. Squashed em all. Yes!” He slams the table again and I laugh and he starts laughing and sways slightly. My food is cold now and I get up to leave, wondering if there are other guys washed up in dusty end-of the-world towns all over, living off military pensions in empty motels.

I leave very early the next morning and ride 190km to Makambako. It heats up as I come down from the highlands and the thick green forests thin; the trees fading gradually into swaying yellow grasses and the lush green leaves browning as I ride into the stumpy autumnal scrub of the lowland slopes. There is a faint breeze and when I stop I can hear the light orange leaves crinkle softly under the deep blue sky.

From Makambako I ride over rounded hills to a small farm just past Mafinga. The wind blows heavily towards me, whipping rain into my face and weighing me down as I churn the pedals through the swirling air. Ahead a cluster of black crows peck at an enormous python that lies severed on the wet asphalt. They scatter as I ride past, clumsily beating their wings as they hop awkwardly into flight. I get a room at the farm and Mark, who runs the place, gives me a huge chicken curry for lunch. He tells me he used to work on the railways in Buckinghamshire, but has been here for ten years now. He speaks softly about his life in Tanzania and his eyes sparkle gently when I tell him about my ride. As we talk his past journeys gradually unfold. He tells me quietly about the time he walked coast to coast across Canada, the length of New Zealand a few years later, and from Norway to Gibraltar. He tells me he plans to walk the coast of Great Britain next year. He says he has lost touch with England. How last time he was back it was all Jade Goody and X Factor. He says he needs to reconnect with home. He says England is there somewhere. It has to be. He knows he’ll find it: in the little fishing villages and the windy Cumbrian hillsides.

After supper Mark asks if I want to watch the football. It is the Champions League final and it’s good to watch the game on a sofa with a cold beer, huddled between some of the guesthouse workers. I have a cooked breakfast with a pot of tea when I get up and enjoy the short ride to Iringa in the morning sunshine.

From Tukuyu

2010-05-13T06:17:00.000-07:00

From Nkhata Bay it is a steep climb from the flats along the lake up to Mzuzu at the top of the Nyika Plateau to the west. The climb is slow and I keep stopping to catch my breath and end up talking to farmers on the roadside about their harvests and my bicycle. After 3 hours I reach the top of the escarpment and look back at the hillsides rippling across the surrounding valleys in great flowing patchworks of thick green forest and loose red earth. I spend the night at a hostel and get drunk with Gerard, the Swiss owner. He sits behind the wooden bar tapping his fingers to Duke Ellington, peering out between his Panama hat and Hunter S. Thompson glasses. We talk about Paris, and his life before in Lausanne, and I wonder how he ended up here but never think to ask.

The next morning I set off late and ride 90 km north across the forested plateau before the road rises abruptly and clambers up over the eastern lip of the escarpment for 6 km. The pedals barely respond to my weight and I crawl up past broken-down-lorry after broken-down-lorry for what seems like hours. At the highest point the weariness in my legs melts away as I stare down at the tumbling slope before me. The road winds steeply back down to the lake and I can see miles and miles of blue shoreline and thousands of tiny thatch huts, hundreds of metres below, scattered like straw thimbles on an endless green carpet. The descent is breathtaking and I glide, teeth bared like a madman, through the rush of oncoming air. People wave and point and I'm too scarred to take my hands off the bars and hurtle towards the lake at 60 km an hour. I camp at Chitimba, on the lakeside, where I meet up with Christian, an Austrian guy, and we make a plan to hike the 15 km up to the old Scottish mission at Livingstonia, the following morning.

We set off while the sun is hidden behind the low Tanzanian cliffs across the lake and soon leave the rocky road that snakes up the hillside and follow little tracks up the forested slope. We scramble over loose rock and bare tree roots, brushing against the flat overhanging leaves. Christian is dressed like a mountaineer and tells me grand stories about ascents in Kyrgyzstan and the Andes, while I stumble behind in shoes full of holes and torn swimming trunks. As the escarpment flattens out we take muddy paths through fields of tea and tall silver birch trees and get lost and ask the way and eventually arrive at the cool hilltop town.

A wide dusty avenue runs through the centre of Livingstonia, leading past shady verandas draped with hanging gardens overflowing from rusty corrugated roofs and broad whitewashed buildings housing hospitals, schools, technical colleges, and a university. Enormous grey barked bluegum trees shade the road and we amble slowly to the house of the mission founder, Dr Robert Laws. The pale stone house is now a little museum, full of old photos, and trays of ancient butterflies, and other odds and ends. In one of the cabinets there is a tatty sheet of paper telling a story about the mission fifty years ago. It tells how in 1959, during Malawi’s struggle for independence, violence broke out across the country. The government, worried about the safety of the white missionaries, sent a message telling the missionaries to write a ‘V’ on the lawn outside the house if they wished to be evacuated, or an ‘I’ if they wished to remain where they were. The missionaries wanted to show that in Livingstonia whites and blacks were living happily together, even when all around things were falling apart. The government plane flew over the following morning to find these words whitewashed on the lawn: “For Christ is our peace who hath made both one and hath broken down the middle wall of partition around us” (Ephesians 2 v 4). I am standing in front of the drab wooden cabinet staring at the faded black and white text, thinking it is a beautiful story.

We camp near Livingstonia and walk down to Chitimba the next morning, trudging into the rising sun. I take two days to ride from Chitimba to the Tukuyu, a town 50 km north of the Tanzanian border, spending a night at Karonga on the way. Leaving Malawi the road is flat and the surrounding land overgrown and wet. Little streams run through the thick grass, trickling towards the road and forming a layer bog on the verge. There are naked kids playing in the muddy water and I hear the incessant gurgling of frogs as I ride past.

Crossing the border the road climbs into the Rungwe hills. Rows of tea and cocoa and coffee are etched delicately into the steep slopes and the valley floors are crammed full of tall green banana plants. I continue climbing into the misty hills until I reach Tukuyu, where I camp at a little place run by local musicians. In the night I wake up shivering and run through the field to a hole in the ground and stoop, my teeth chattering and my whole body convulsing. In the morning I rise drowsily from my tent and stumble through the grey dawn looking around at kids walking to school through the misty groves of avocado trees. I ask Luka, who works here, about a doctor and he takes me to the local hospital.

The doctor tells me I must stay here and I lie down in a white room and stare at the buzzing tube of fluorescent light on the pale ceiling. There is a drip in my arm and I can hear women singing gospel music, carrying in the wind from across the hills. Through the day doctors come and go. The first tells me I have malaria and giardia, another that he is not sure: probably something from the water. Luka brings me tea and porridge and oranges and washes my soiled clothes and sits with me for hours as I lie dazed, retching. When he leaves, nurses bustle around the bed and chatter in Swahili and smile kindly and ask about my condition, while I lie, curled up under layers of blankets, feverish, and weeping like a lost boy in a strange dream. Luka keeps coming with food and gradually my stomach calms down and the fever cools. After a couple of days I go back to the camp, anxious to get back on the road.

From Nkhata Bay

2010-05-08T02:22:00.000-07:00

I head east from Lilongwe, riding quickly into the surrounding countryside and on towards the lake. The road winds over shallow green hills, past clusters of small red brick huts, popping out of the hillsides amongst the wilting maize and broad leaved banana plants. Each time I stop, searching for the lake in the distance, small crowds of villagers emerge from the fields onto the roadside and stare and laugh and shout ‘where you go, muzungu?’ There is a cool breeze and fine puffs of white cloud grow and fade as they drift across the path of the morning sun. I freewheel for long stretches, my eyes glued to the eastern horizon, my bike rattling unsteadily past grubby pick-us carting huge crowds of Malawians, all on top of each other, to Salima, a big lakeside town.
I reach Salima, 110 km from Lilongwe, by lunchtime and wheel my bike through the little market to a bar playing loud music. An old man wearing a bright red truckers cap with ‘I Love Jesus’ on the front is tapping his cane to Peter Andre’s ‘Mysterious Girl’. I ask him the way to the shore and he points east: Straight, Straight, Straight to the lake my friend. The next morning I set off up the lake. As I push my bike through the deep sand to the road a little girl runs up to me clasping a cold bottle of water. She hands it to me and runs shyly away. I take a long drink and head north along the highway.

The road runs through the fertile lowlands that lie between the lake and the high Nyika escarpment that looms to the west. I cross single track bridges that ford the little rivers running from the western highlands. Women and young kids are standing in the reeds washing clothes and men are fishing in dug-out canoes where the streams widen as they meet the lake. There are people everywhere. Fishermen dangling fresh chambo in my face, women drying out cassava fruit in the sun, young guys on bikes trying to race with me, old men sitting in the shade watching it all pan out.

From the road the lake comes in and out of view, over the lips of gentle hills and through the gaps between honey blossomed trees. I ride while the morning sun is still low above the faint outline of Mozambique across the calm water. I camp at inlets along the water: at a pottery in Nkhotakota, a little resort at Ngala Bay, a sprawling water-front campsite at Kande Beach. At Kande I chat with the English owner about life in Malawi. He tells me how people are content growing what they need to eat on their little plots. He says people are very poor here. He says the schools, the prisons, the hospitals are full to the brim and falling down. He tells me about a time he was admitted to the local hospital at Chinteche for malaria: ‘The place is chaos. There are turkeys in the wards. Turkeys. Where they come from I’ll never know. You could walk 500km to Blantyre and not see a turkey. Go to Chinteche hospital and they’re clucking about between the beds. Mind you its not as bad as Nkhata Bay. They’ve got a resident baboon there, pinching food from unconscious patients and medicines from the nurses’ pockets.’ I tell him a story a German doctor told me about Lilongwe District Hospital: there was a power cut in the night and the duty nurse forgot to turn the generator on. The respirators had no power. The following morning she came into work and found her whole ward dead.

I leave Kande the next day with only 70 km to reach Nkhata Bay, where I will spend a few days not riding. The road leaves the shore and passes beneath the shadows of the tall Visara Forest. The Laba trees give way abruptly to a sprawling tea plantation. Workers in baggy sun hats wander through the neat rows of green plants with machetes. I ride past and take a long winding downhill to the deep blue bay. I have ridden 4600km to get here, across deserts and dusty plains, early mornings in the driving rain, whole skies of tumbling black clouds, mile after mile of dark tar creeping over great forested hillsides. I get off the bike under the high sun and walk across the hot flat rocks, over the frail pink petals of a little flower overhanging the water’s edge, down collapsing wooden steps, across a gently rocking dug-out canoe, and into the cool lake water.

From Lilongwe

2010-04-30T05:58:00.000-07:00

I take the Great East Road out of downtown Lusaka, already miles behind Guy, who is racing towards the airport in a taxi, his bike boxed up and London just a day away. As I make my way into the rising sun, the traffic gradually thins and after a couple of hours I see the first wave of swelling hilltops emerge out of the misty horizon ahead. I am soon climbing across thick forest through the foothills of the Luangwa valley. In the glare of the midday sun the road winds up and up, my battered Converse turning stubbornly and my whole frame tense, locked into the slow rhythm of the climb. I hope for a downward slope at each bend, but the road winds on up relentlessly through the thinning trees. At last I see the top and I stop for a minute to look around at the dense forest, cascading down into the bowling valleys from the lumps of hilltop behind me.

By late afternoon I reach Rufunsa, a dusty strip of bars and general stores, 160 km east of Lusaka. It is Friday and men and women stoop under corrugated shelters drinking murky beer from the severed ends of plastic bottles. Grainy Zambian music blasts out from a generator-powered black speaker outside the bar and all around people stare impassively at me, as I wheel my bike through the hazy dust. I order a drink and sit in the shade, watching a young man beside me carefully pour a sachet of liquor into a glass bottle of Sprite. An old man walks towards me, wide-eyed and unsteady. As he gets closer I see flies feeding on weeping lesions in the patchy grey stubble around his lips. He doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care, and opens his mouth to speak, showing a few chipped yellow teeth. Muzungu, Muzungu. Money. Buy me one beer. I stare up at him in the glare and watch the barman push him into the road, helpless and sad.

The barman towers above me. He has terrible burn scars running up his left arm and neck and tells me that Muzungu, white men, don’t stop here, but that there will be no trouble for me. He offers me a room to rest in and gives me water. To reassure me it is drinkable he takes a long gulp from my bottle, wiping the drops from his mouth with the shrivelled skin of his thick forearm. He shows me the room and I lie down on the mattress on the stone floor. The plaster on the stained white walls is cracking and the only other object in the room is a candle stub in a bottle of beer. When I was in Lusaka I had spoken to a hunter about this leg of the route and he had told me about a cook on one of their trips who had stopped here in Rufunsa. He said the cook had refused to sell some meat to the locals and they had set fire to his room while he was sleeping.

Tired from the day’s ride I fall asleep early. At first light the area outside the bar is littered with hundreds of empty yellow beer cartons, quivering gently in the light morning breeze. I head onto the road and am soon climbing again, across great mounds of forested hills, tumbling towards the Luangwa Rift Valley. Thick Miombo trees shoulder the tarmac, broken by shady paths that lead to huts hidden behind the leaves. It is still early and the air is cool and dense around me. The smell of morning wood fires, being lit outside the huts, blows across the road and a thick layer of fog hugs the canopy in the valley floor to the south. I ride all day and camp just off the bank of the Luangwa River, pitching my tent in the fading pink twilight.

The following day I ride 160 km over the last of the rift valley hills and across the fertile plateau of the lower Zambezi to a town called Petauke. I pass countless small towns, all made up of a single row of buildings facing the highway, all falling down into the dust. The store fronts bear the faint logos of Coca-Cola and other big brands, whose goods the grocers and bars have never stocked. I buy some bananas from a stall and look at the neat piles of bright red tomatoes, laid out on row upon row of rickety wooden tables. I wonder who buys them. Every village I pass has a school marked by a sturdy headstone, bearing the name in bold and the school’s motto beneath: Chitimbwe Primary School. Motto: Look to the Future and Have a Vision. In clearings between the trees there are nondescript brick churches of the Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, God’s Embassy, and other sects I have never heard of. All empty and dark inside.

I reach Petauke just before dark and check into a motel, where I have supper with a young government worker. He speaks softly about corruption in Zambia, about how chiefs are paid to direct their village to vote one way or another, and how politicians side with the most powerful party, irrespective of ideology. He looks sadly across the table and tells me about the theatre group he is head of in Petauke, about the lack of funding and prospects for artists and actors here. I tell him emptily that Zambia seems very happy and how England has its problems too: Meaningless clichés that neither of us believes.

The next morning, while it is still dark, I am sick twice and take a double dose of antibiotics before riding a shallow climb out of town. At the crest of the hill I stare out at the road shooting through the endless plains of elephant grasses into the soft yellow cloud ahead. My stomach cramps as I ride and I struggle to go quickly at first, but reach Chipata, a town 30 km from the Malawian border, before nightfall, having covered 200 km. I rest for a day here and head out of Zambia on Thursday, past children playing see-saw on a fallen tree, and past men walking beneath swaying palm trees to Chipata’s sand coloured mosque, across the border into Malawi and on through the flat, bustling countryside to Lilongwe.

From Lusaka

2010-04-26T03:37:00.000-07:00

Guy and I set off along the flat highway out of Livingstone into the open bush and big blue sky at an easy pace. We have enough food to last a few days and little idea of what lies ahead. As the air around us heats up we come to a section of the road that is being re-tarred and must ride a dirt road parallel. Each time a car passes it kicks up a cloud of orange sediment that sits in the still air ahead, choking us as we rattle into the dust. We push our bikes through the trees to our right, back on to the newly laid tar and see the tracks of our wheels leave two long straight lines stretching back through the soft black road behind. While we stop to eat in the shade, a van passes sprinkling water to set the tar. We run under the spray and take a cool shower under the midday sun.

We ride on through the afternoon past conical huts with straw roofs that jut out from the clumps of green acacia bushes and dry yellow grasses that line the road. At four, we turn off down a thin path which winds past small plots of maize and sweet potatoes, opening out onto a dusty yard in the middle of five small huts. Three women are sitting on short wooden stools sieving ground nuts under a mophane tree. They bring us a purple cushioned stool each to sit on and are happy for us to camp here. There is a rainbow arching faintly in the sky above the largest rectangular hut and I get up to try to photograph the shadow my body casts on the hut’s sandy walls. As the sky pales and the thin white crescent of the moon becomes visible above the pink clouds to the east we cut wood and pull our stools around the fire.

One of the younger women, Rose, speaks English and asks about life in our place, where we come from. We tell her we are from London and she turns her head to the north and says, ummm.. oooh.. from that side.. and what is it like there? Do you live on farms, that side? We tell her we buy our food from shops and live in houses made of bricks. Oooh.. And do have a car, on that side? We tell her most people do, but we prefer to ride our bicycles. Oooh.. yes.. ummm.. on bicycles, you do prefer, by your own legs.. She nods and smiles and adds some more maize to the pot of boiling water. Gradually kids of various ages approach out of the dusk and perch beside us around the fire. They stare at us and whisper quietly to one another. We smile at them and slowly say our names and they look startled and search for Rose’s eyes across the low flames.

When the food is ready we each wash our hands in a bowl of water and share nshima which we dip in a paste made from ground nuts. It is very dark now and the sky is clear. Rose tilts her head back and tells us that here, this side, they do often enjoy to look up at the stars. We all stare upwards and I tell her that where we live the stars have been turned black by the lights in peoples’ houses.

The next morning we wake to a rooster calling loudly just outside our tents and set off early, heading for Choma, a town 120 km north. The road is flanked by little corn fields and small huts and waving children, calling out as we pass. We check into a motel in town and get an early night ready to ride 200 km the following day.

We wake to pouring rain and set off under heavy black clouds. As we leave town the road rise gently onto a low plateau above valleys of fertile green forest on both sides. To the east the escarpment on the western fringe of Lake Kariba is just visible through the thick grey air. After a few hours of riding in steady rain, the clouds begin to hail and I can barely make out the headlights of oncoming cars not twenty feet ahead. The hail ricashaes off the road and the tar is flooded with thin torrents of water that rush towards the muddy verge. The sand roads off the highway have turned dark brown and the rivets on the tracks are filled with puddles of murky water. We ride on past small towns made up of single rows of dilapidated buildings with faded facades offering butchers, spices, investment services, and groceries. At half past ten we stop at Monze for a cup of tea, having covered 100 km in four hours. As the clouds lighten and the rain subsides the road through Monze begins to fill up with rickety bicycles, carrying logs and bleating goats, and women wandering to market in brightly coloured sarongs with babies tied snuggly to their backs.

After a long break we set off again and the ride begins to wear me down. The road undulates over rolling hills and my legs are weary even on the shallow climbs. It is getting late and the roadside is fenced on both sides; there is nowhere to camp. Eventually we turn off down a muddy track onto a cattle ranch. The mud on the road down to the farm is thick and our wheels churn slowly and sink to a halt, refusing to turn. Guy falls and we are both exhausted and our bikes are soon covered in the thick red earth. The workers say it is ok to camp and we trudge back up to the track and pitch our tents in the dark. Guy cooks us both noddles and beans and we go to bed wet and tired, but knowing we will reach Lusaka the next day. We leave at first light and climb over the Mantumi Hills, across the Kafue River, into the heavy Lusaka traffic. The sun is bright and it is a good feeling to weave our way through the busy city streets, having ridden 550 km since leaving Livingstone four days ago.

From Bovu Island

2010-04-26T01:20:00.001-07:00

For the first time since arriving in Africa I am reluctant to get back on the road. Guy and I are on a small island on the Zambezi. The sun is slowly rising, burning thin clouds of mist off the surface of the water that flows past our open fronted hut. To get here we have ridden across the far northern corner of Zimbabwe, from Kazungula to Victoria Falls, and across the Zambian border to Livingstone. Riding into Zimbabwe we pass a long line of lorries waiting for clearance from customs. The drivers tell us they are taking cooking oil to the Congo and have been stuck here for 36 hours. They laugh at our bicycles and honk as they pass us later on the road. The ride from Kazungula is hilly and for long stretches the roadside is full of trees. At the highest points we can see sprawling vistas of green bush stretching out to the bank of the Zambezi to the north and can hear the water rushing over the falls in the distance. We spend a night In Zimbabwe before riding up to Zambia and west to Bovu Island.

On the banks of the island, papyrus stalks and white branches of water berry trees are partially submerged in the high water. The island is carpeted in near white sand, interspersed with beds of darker earth. The trees are so thick in parts that I cannot see the river which I hear flowing only a few feet away. There are vervet monkeys swinging on python vines that cling to the patchy bark of corkwood trees and woodpeckers tapping loudly somewhere in the leaves. In the day we read under the shade of the enormous Jackleberry tree at the centre of the island and when the sun drops later in the afternoon we fish in dug out canoes. On our first morning here, Brett, the island’s sole permanent inhabitant and the guy who opened it up to travelers, sends us off to help build a school in the village across the river.

We work with a handful of local guys and two young Irish volunteers. The work is hard and we are covered in sweat as we mix cement and deep red sand with heavy shovels. By midday we have finished a section of the wall and stop for lunch at a house in the village. We eat nshima with dried bream and sweet potatoe leaves before taking a canoe back to the island.

In the evening we sit up till late around a long wooden table with Brett and his girlfriend, Evelyn. Brett is tall and thin, with a Rolling Stone haircut and smashed up teeth. He smiles and smokes and talks constantly, getting up every now and then to pour another vodka and Coke. After supper he begins to talk about the old days on the island. He is telling us about three day parties at Equinox, about lanterns hanging from the trees and mushrooms and tall whisky glasses and billionaire heiresses floating round with frisbies full of a thousand types of acid. As he talks his hands dance around his face, making crazy shapes as he tries to make us see how it was. He tells us about his travels before the island: walking bare foot across Tibet in the 70s, hitching through Germany in light brown leathers and knee high pink fluffy socks in Ferraris racing at 200 mph.

There is quiet for a moment and I watch two small white moths fluttering gently around the flame that is burning off the paraffin lamp in the centre of the table. Brett tells us they are our ancestors, grandparents and such, dropping down amongst us and happy to see us enjoying life on the road. I tell him that is a nice thought and watch the last of the candles die slowly, dribbling soft white wax down the old wine bottle in which it stands. The only light is from the paraffin lamp now and I think the table will look sad in the shadows tomorrow morning, when all around it the island will be bathed in sunshine. Calexico is singing Bob Dylan’s ‘Goin to Acapulco’ in the background and we drink more and smoke more and talk about Africa and Brett’s childhood and bird-watching and the school he is building. Eventually we go to bed and in the morning Brett gives us a long hug and tells us to be all super-dooper and ride all the way to Ethiopia.

From Kazungula

2010-04-19T07:42:00.000-07:00

It is a Sunday afternoon and the rain is pattering gently on the umbrella above me. I am sitting on a wooden veranda overlooking the Zambezi. On the far bank the sky is almost black and bolts of lightening split the clouds across the river. I am writing, smoking a Chesterfield and drinking tea. Guy is facing the river, with his eyes closed, meditating. We have bicycled 620 km over the past five days since leaving Maun, and are now in the far north east of Botswana, at the Zimbabwean border, which we will cross tomorrow morning.

Leaving Maun on Wednesday we ride due east towards Nata. The first day is hot, but the road is flat and we ride quickly. Late in the afternoon we turn off the highway and wheel our bikes into the sand and short trees off the road. We collect dead wood and dry grasses and make a small fire to cook on. As we eat, we hear elephant crashing around in the bush not far from our tents. We wake early and ride along the edge of the Nxai salt pans, which are concealed from view beneath pools of water. In every direction the land is completely flat. The only markers on the barren horizon are lonely leafless trees. We camp at Gweta , where we run into Hans, a German pilot who I met in Maun. He has been bitten by a spitting cobra here two nights ago and shows us the puncture wounds on the small of his back. He tells us how the poison spread throughout his body, giving him fevers and pain all over.

To reach Nata we bicycle 110 km on Friday, through torrential rain. Guy is far ahead and thunder rolls across the sky. I remember a story Thomas, the German cyclist in Maun, told me at the Old Bridge. He saw lightening strike a tree and a heard of goats beneath die instantly. He said their heads dropped a split second after the bolt struck the branches above. I pedal hard and hope each flash in front of me is the last. Nata is made up of a cluster of motels and gas stations, at the crossroads of the major routes linking Francistown, Maun, and Kasane. The road north, which we must take towards Kazungula, is desolate. It cuts across constant bush and the first settlement from Nata, Pandamatenga, is 200 km away. We must reach it by nightfall as we have been warned that leopard and lion make wild camping dangerous here.

Large swathes of the road are being re-tarred and our bicycles rattle across the uneven surface as we try to maintain a decent pace. Noisy trucks ferrying sand, rumble past, whipping up clouds of dust which sting our eyes and cover our filthy clothes. We press on, but we must stop each time there is an elephant standing by the roadside. The first we encounter is an enormous lone bull, with one tusk missing. We pedal gingerly nearer, hugging the far side of the road. He looks up at us and Guy brakes suddenly. I pedal straight into the back of him and our bicycles clatter to the floor. The elephant turns and runs powerfully into the bush and we pick ourselves up, laughing. After nine hours riding we reach Pandamatenaga rest camp. It is run by an old Tanzanian guy, who has travelled all over East Africa on his motorcycle. He gets up early the next morning before we set off for Kazungula, giving us some worn maps and wishing us a safe journey, with a jealous glint in his eye.

From Maun

2010-04-13T08:04:00.000-07:00

Leaving Ghanzi I catch glimpses of the sun, already blazing yellow, through the gaps between the buildings and the trees that line the road north. It is later than I usually set off and the wind is already flowing towards me. I am heading north-east on the A3, 110 km across the Kobe Pan, towards a village called Kuke, which I know as nothing more than a dot on the map. After a long ride under the scorching Kalahari sun I turn off onto a sandy track, which winds through circular wooden huts. I ask a group of women, who are giggling under a tree, whether I can get water here. They point me to a wooden pen in the midst of a throng of people. There are young men thrashing donkeys wildly and women pushing rickety wheelbarrows loaded high with tanks of water. I wheel my bike across a dusty football pitch, flanked with leafy camelthorn trees, and queue up for water. A young girl runs up to me, grabs the bottles from my hands and fills them. A crowd of children has gathered around me and more and more approach. They laugh at my shorts, my straggly beard, and the streaks of sun-cream and salt that are smeared across my flushed cheeks.

While I sit in the shade and take a long drink, the children sit on the logs beside me and the branches above. They stare expectantly and chat loudly in clicks, the language of the San Bushmen. I take some photographs and they tussle with each other to get in front of the lens, posing like action movie heroes. The light fades and gradually the children disperse, leaving me eating a tin of beans next to three young boys who sit watching me, smiling in silence. Across the village, children are chasing horses, which are rampaging wildly through the dust under the bright full moon. I get into my tent, tired, but feeling lucky to be here and I awake before day breaks to try to reach Maun by nightfall.

Maun lies at the southern end of the Okavango Delta, 170 km from Kuke, in the north-western corner of Botswana. I cycle the same road up and as I approach the delta, the grasses and acacias, which have flanked my ride since Windhoek, gradually become interspersed with a variety of taller trees and flat leaved bushes. The thicker foliage restricts my horizon to the banks of the road and I stare blankly ahead, pedaling hard. The road rises gently for a few hundred metres and as I reach the shallow summit the landscape opens up before my eyes. To the east there are seven hills with deep green slopes. There are huge sycamore fig trees standing tall in the endless expanse of green grasses. I can see black vultures flapping their wings clumsily in the low sky just ahead and single huts set back from the road, with brightly coloured clothes hanging from lines tied to fence posts. I ride on passing occasional villages for another 50 km, reaching the outskirts of Maun by 5 in afternoon.

In Maun I follow signs to The Old Bridge Lodge, weaving my way between taxis, scattering goats and donkeys onto the roadside, and grubby LandRovers piled high with fuel tanks and camping equipment. It is dusk by the time I wheel my bicycle under the thatch roof of the Old Bridge’s open bar. It has started to pour with rain and I haven’t slept in a bed for over three weeks; fortunately I get the last room. It is Wednesday night and I will stay here until Saturday, when Guy, a friend from London, flies to Maun to join me on the ride to Lusaka.

The lodge rests on the banks of the Okavango River and from the lawn I can see the seldom used old bridge. The bridge is formed by a bank of earth interspersed with heavy logs, all bound together by free growing grasses and the exposed roots of Jackleberry trees. From a distance it looks to have forded the river of its own accord. On the low roots nearest the water, old men sit, casting fishing lines gently in the clam pool below. Back in the bar a group of ex-pats, perched on tall stools, drink cans of beer and shots of Jagermeister. They all live in Maun now: David, who owns the place, John, a semi-retired safari pilot, and Thomas, a German guy, who arrived here by bicycle eight years ago and never left. John tells me this is his favourite sundowner place, although it is not yet midday. They talk about how high the river has got, the storms they have seen, close shaves with game, planes, lightening. The end of the bar goes silent for a moment and John looks across the room, laughing. Its Good Friday… No Bunnies... No fucking eggs… What kind of operation is this? Another round of Castles I think…

On Saturday I ride to meet Guy at the airport. We will take a trip out on the delta on Monday and ride east towards Nata on Wednesday morning. We take a speed boat under the old bridge into the Okavango, north towards Chief’s Island, where there is a small camp. David, and his girlfriend Helena, are going to dismantle the camp and have let us tag along with them. We follow a broad channel that flows through high reeds and flat green lilies with little white flowers. In the islands dotted throughout the wide body of water there are elephant and giraffe wandering peacefully amongst the fig trees and termite mounds. We share sandwiches and cans of beer and watch fish eagles flying above the reeds. As we approach the entrance to the Moremi reserve the channel opens up into a wide lagoon. Staring into the surface of the still water, I can see the shapes of the clouds above shifting slightly as they drift through the pale blue sky.

At the camp we play petanque beneath a pack of shrieking baboons and just before sunset we take the boat out and go fishing. Guy catches a bream and I watch the sun falling beneath the trees in the horizon, flushing the whole sky pink. In the morning we take a mokoro canoe through the shallows. Tiny frogs leap from the reeds onto the tip of the canoe and golden web spiders run across my arms. It starts to rain and we head back to the island where we pack up camp and eat a huge cooked breakfast, before heading back to Maun.

From Ghanzi

2010-04-01T12:12:00.000-07:00

On Friday I leave Windhoek, happy to be climbing across green hills with the clutter of the city fading gradually into the bush. I am on the Trans-Kalahari Highway heading east. The sky is covered with thick grey cloud and the air is cool. The road is banked with tall wheat coloured grasses swaying gently in the breeze and thick acacia bushes as far as the eye can see. After a couple of hours I am over the hills and the dark tar road stretches straight and flat. I pedal fast, not sure where I am headed. The road, the sky, and the grassland become indistinct and my mind clouds over, daydreaming of unlikely futures. Eleven hours later I arrive in Gobabis, 200 km east of Windhoek. I find a campsite just out of town and fall asleep thinking that I will cross into Botswana the following afternoon.

The next morning the road continues through the desert grasses. The sky turns deep blue as the hours pass, with small white puffs of cloud forming low above the tree line. In vain I will the clouds to drift into the path of the sun, as it burns hotter with the onset of midday. When I stop at the border-post my face is streaked with fine lines of dried salt and my shirt is drenched. At Botswanan customs the official asks me where I will stay. I reply at Mamuno campsite, which is marked on my map. I am told that there is no campsite until Ghanzi, 220 km east. He then asks me if I am not afraid of wild animals and robbers.

I ride into Botswana and stop at a petrol station in need of shade. My bike falls as I try to lean it against a wall and my whole body aches. I will have to sleep rough for the next two nights and the repeated warnings, of people I have met along the way, begin to crowd my thoughts. I sit down and slowly rub the palms of my hands against the faint indents of my temples, fighting back tears. I light a cigarette and try to relax. I consider the journeys of others: Rory Stewart alone on foot through winter in Afghanistan, Al Humphreys on a bicycle for four years around the world, George Orwell in the slums of 1930s Paris, Christopher Mcandless slowly starving in the Alaskan spring. I am still near the start of my short trip and I am safe. I wheel my bike out of the forecourt and pedal slowly into the nearby village, Charles Hill.

Along the main sandy strip there is a general store and a liquor shop. In front of each, people mill around lazily in the afternoon heat. Many of the women I pass are wearing long and wide Herero dresses, draped with bright sequined shawls. On their heads they wear broad hats that match the dresses, shaped like rustic flat breads. A tall skinny man, dressed in baggy clothes, too big for his slight frame, approaches me and I ask if there is anywhere I might pitch my tent here. He walks with me to a Toyota pick-up and introduces me to a man in a dark suit. I am Mr Kamiizo. I am the chief of Charles Hill. You understand? I tell him about my ride and that I wish to rest here in his village.

I am led away by two men who have offered to let me stay outside their house. We walk through dusty yards separated by thin wire fences. They are both staggering slightly and their eyes are streaked with pale red veins, stretching out towards dark pupils. When we arrive at their place, the taller man, Abby, looks at the floor and starts to talk: Be at home, my brother… We are the same me and you… You understand, my brother? I feel... I feel that race, religion, no matter what, we are still the same, my brother... He trails off leaving the words hanging in the dry heat, stumbles gently, and shakes my hand. Be at home here, my brother.

A group of kids have collected around us. They look at the bicycle with wide eyes and I show them where I have been on the map. I pitch my tent in the shade of a Mophane tree and they jostle with one another, each tugging the ends of the poles. When the tent is standing they fall about laughing at how small it is. I open some tins of food and watch the children playing football in the sand. I give them some chocolate and feel better with a full stomach. The two men amble towards me to check if I am ok. As they wander off, Abby turns, and tells me that he is going to the liquor store. We are a couple of drunks, he says meekly.

The next morning I am on the road by the time the sun rises behind the flat plains to the east. On the roadside I make out the silhouettes of donkeys grazing in the dim morning light. On the horizon the sky is pale yellow, and thin wisps of low lying cloud are glowing orange and light pink. The wind is gentle in the early morning, but it picks up as the day goes on, and by 10:00 I am riding into an unrelenting wall of air that blows powerfully against me, sapping the speed from the wheels. I only cover 12 km an hour and it is exhausting. By mid afternoon I realize there is no chance I will make the next town, Ghanzi, so I turn off the highway and pedal 4 km to a village called Chobowanke. The village is divided into rectangular plots, in which there are circular huts made of staves of wood bound together. The roofs are thatched and overhang the walls below by almost a foot. I am directed to a deserted campsite at the end of a sandy track. No one has been here for years. In the long grass are three wigwam shaped wooden structures, all derelict. I peer at the inner roof of one. There is a fat white spider sitting peacefully in a thick cloud of web hanging from the fragile eaves. I sit under a tree and read, happy to have some quiet.

Next morning, eager to reach Ghanzi, I set off in the dark towards the highway. I ride slowly as my headlamp only illuminates a few metres ahead. After a couple of kilometres I settle and pick up speed. A horse appears out of the dark, just a few feet in front. It stands tall and still. I grab both brakes and just hold myself from falling. The horse stares at me, immobile, before exhaling deeply and running to the roadside. I continue gingerly until the sun rises and then pedal hard against the same Kalahari wind, arriving at Ghanzi by lunchtime on Monday.

From Windhoek

2010-03-25T07:42:00.000-07:00

We arrive in Windhoek late on Tuesday afternoon, after a grueling ride across the Auas Mountains in which the city sits. We had left camp with only 100 km to reach the city and had expected to arrive by lunchtime. We arrive at 5 after 10 hours of riding into a restless wind over wave after wave of steep incline. If I stop I know the pedals will freeze under my feet, so I continue to trudge forward painfully slowly. At times the others get off their bikes to push. At each summit I stop to catch my breath and look around. It is good to see clouds and hills and slopes full of deep green grass and leafy Acacia trees. When I first arrived in the desert it struck me as beautiful, but after a week of riding my eyes grew tired of gazing into endless fields of dust. Here, in the hills, I see baboons messing around with empty plastic bottles in the laybys and I pedal past a puff adder, which slithers lazily into the roadside grasses. Throughout the ride I focus on reaching Windhoek and the rest days I have ahead. I imagine the city to be quaint and dozy. I hadn’t thought about the logistics of my arrival. I ride past a police check point into rush hour traffic in the pouring rain. I have no idea where I am going and all around taxis and lorries impatiently honk their horns and swerve aggressively past me. It quickly dawns on me that this is an African capital. I turn into a side street and wait for the others who are about an hour behind.

I have ridden over 1500 km to get here over the past two and a half weeks, and 500 km over the past four days. Leaving Keetmanshoop on Saturday morning we headed to a town called Asab, 130 km north on the B1 and marked on the map with a petrol station and hotel. The road there is flat and the only landmark to focus on is a broad mountain in the distance to the west. As we approach Asab, tired, hungry, and thirsty, the wind picks up and Stefan gets a puncture drawing the final 20 km out for what seems like hours. I finally see the faint form of buildings in the haze of heat and dust ahead. I quicken my pace and arrive to find two houses and a burnt out shell of a bar-hotel. The petrol station has closed down. There are no trees so wild camping is impossible and we are nearly out of water. We approach one of the houses, in front of which there is a donkey and cart. An old man explains that there is no running water here, but we may pitch our tents behind his house. To get water we must take a dirt track 3 km west and ask at the village there.

A young guy leads us down the track, which is littered with coarse brown rocks in the dark sand. There are goats everywhere grazing in the dust around the small houses and corrugated huts which form the village. The first building we pass is a tiny white church. It is one storey high with a pale grey corrugated roof. The glassless windows are draped with deep blue curtains and the small tower at the church’s southern end has long thin crucifixes carved out of the cream stone. Some people gaze meekly as we push our bikes between the little houses. Others don’t look up. We are led to a corrugated house with a tap in the garden. The elderly couple there smile and gesture for us to fill up our bottles. We sit with them for a few minutes and share some biscuits, before heading back down the track, with the sun setting beneath the thin clouds over the village behind. We pitch our tents behind the old man’s house, next to a 1950s purple pick-up, which looks not to have moved for years. We cook up noodles and tins of bully beef before turning in just after dark, exhausted.

On Sunday we head to the next town up, Mariental. The road there is flat and the wind blows kindly on our backs, allowing us to make the 100 km in under 5 hours. We stop at a service station on the outskirts of town and buy big glass bottles of Coke which we drink greedily in the sunshine. While we sit a man stops beside us on a huge Harley Davidson and asks where we are headed. Before he leaves he brings us a bag full of drinks and burgers. The next night we stop at a grouping of little chalets, 25 km south of Rehoboth, where the owner lets us camp for free. The road there is lined with long savannah grasses swaying gently in the breeze and we cycle 160 km, crossing the Tropic of Capricorn, to reach the row of pastle coloured chalets, where we spend our last night before Windhoek.

It is good to spend a couple of days off the bike in Windhoek and we are looked after well here by Andre, a friend of Stefan’s. He takes us on an evening game drive on a friend’s farm. While he drives, we stand in the back of the buggy drinking bottles of beer and watching out for kudu and oryx galloping amongst the trees. There are huge eagles soaring over the hills amongst the darkening clouds. When the sun disappears behind the mountains in the distance, we make a fire and cook a big rack of lamb, which we eat on its own, with our hands. It starts to pour with rain and thunder echoes powerfully around the surrounding hills, forcing us to sit in the buggy, where we drink glasses of brandy and Coke, before driving back to the city.

Tomorrow I leave Windhoek and will take the road east towards Botswana on my own. It will be strange to cycle by myself again, but the others must head north and I must reach Maun by the beginning of April.

From Keetmanshoop

2010-03-19T05:16:00.000-07:00

I cross into Namibia at Vioolsdrift on Saturday after a quick ride from Springbok. I make the 120 km in 5 hours, barely noticing the sun. The breeze created by the bicycle, moving smoothly across the flat tar, keeps me cool. The view from the road changes gradually as I ride north towards the border: the pale scrub bushes thin, the deep red crusts of dried earth, that have flanked the road since the Cederberg, lighten and the grains of caked dust begin to loosen into sand. With only 10 km to the border the road winds between huge mounds of boulders that rise impossibly out of the dust. Just off the road a dead donkey lies on its side.

At Vioolsdrift I bump into three South African guys on bicycles, who are heading up to Windhoek. They ask if I wish to camp with them at Noordoewer. I am glad to have the company and Dewald, Ludi, Stefan and I head across the border to a camp on the banks of the Orange River. We stop at a roadside stall and pick up two quarts of cold beer each, which we strap to the bikes. The camp is set back 100 m from the river and as the sun drops Dewald and I take some fishing rods down to the bank and cast a line. The river is running fast and neither of us has much luck, but it is a good feeling to stand beside the river in the shade with the sun dipping behind the trees downstream. As we walk back empty handed, a kingfisher hovers and darts sharply to the surface, plucking a small fish from the water.

After a gentle rest day at Noordoewer, we set off at 5 am on the road to Ai Ais, a camp at the southern tip of the Fish River Canyon. It is still dark and I spend the first hour staring at the sky. As dawn approaches the sky blanches and then turns pale pink, faintly illuminating the rows of pylons that line the road. At the turn off to the dirt road to Ai Ais we stop for a smoke. Ahead I see two dusty white guys pedal quietly over the brow of the hill in front. They are wearing old jeans and no shirts and have ridden all the way from Kampala. It is surreal coming across others on bicycles emerging from the desert.

The dirt road is brutal on our bodies and the bikes. The bumps are relentless and every few metres the sand is deep and I must slow to keep from falling. The air is very dry and sand billows across the track from the rough. After 3 hours of riding we have only covered 25 km and the headwind seems to blow stronger and stronger. There is no shade for miles, and and we huddle behind a thorn bush, eating dry bread and a tin of tuna. We ride for another 6 hours under the same sun and into the same wind, growing more and more anxious. Only one car has passed on this track and our water is running low. At dusk we arrive at Ai Ais, having ridden for 14 hours.

We are all too tired to prepare for the following days ride so we take another rest day at Ai Ais. In the morning we walk for an hour up the Fish River Canyon. On both sides the rock rises steeply from the foot of the gorge. The river is low and it seems unthinkable that that it has carved out the Canyon. While we walk Dewald points out the tracks of mountain zebra, oryx and otter. He tells me the names of all the trees and even the stories behind the names: this is the Fever Tree - you can tell by the smooth bark... When early explorers came here they often got sick. They thought it was the trees that caused the sickness... In fact it was because the tree grows near water and drinking the water made them ill... This is why they named it the Fever Tree...

On Wednesday we set off early along the dirt roads to Hobas, a camp at the main mouth of the Canyon. The dusty track winds its way through high mounds of shear granite. Cycling in the pale dawn light through the red dust and dim shadows cast by the rocks, it feels as if I were pedalling across the surface of another planet. After a steady climb the road plateaus and runs parallel to the gorge for 60 km. At 2 we stop and pitch our tents behind a motel. After another days riding the dirt roads we have not passed a shop for 3 days and our supplies are very low. We stop in the middle of tha day at a hotel at Seehiem, a grand old building that sits at the intersection of two gravel roads. A group of fat South African men, downing rum and cokes in the midday heat, give us the leftovers of their barbecue. As we wolf down the plate of sausages they mock me for being English. I don't look up, simply happy to have eaten. That evening we wild camp on some farm land set back from the road. I fall asleep looking at the sky and awake much later to the sound of jackals howling close by. I drift off thinking about the tar road which we will rejoin in the morning and the prospect of a supermarket and internet at Keetmanshoop.

From Springbok

2010-03-12T05:33:00.000-08:00

It is Friday and my first day not cycling. I am in a town called Springbok, 580 km north of Cape Town and 120 km south of the Namibian border. Springbok is much like the other towns I have stopped off at since leaving Cape Town. There is a main strip, off which lie low rise white buildings and a smattering of diners, guesthouses and petrol stations. I ask the waitress, at the restaurant I am in, whether she likes it here. She says it is too small. There is nothing to do. At the weekend people drink until they can drink no more. There is one club. The same people each time. There is always a fight. I feel lucky to have the freedom to come and go as I please. Lots of the people I have met, in the towns I have passed through so far, seem to feel trapped.

Over the past 6 days I have bicycled up the main highway, the N7, stopping at Malmesbury, Piketberg, Citrusdal, Vanrynshorp, Garies, and Springbok. Arriving in each town is surreal. Everyone stares as I pedal wearily to the first bar with an orning, in search of shade. On the road I have crossed the Cederberg Mountains by the Piekenierskloop pass, which winds up and over the range via a steady 3 km climb. The mountains rise out of the sandy wilderness and from the summit I see the dark tarmac I have ridden until it disappears between the desert and the sky. The climb itself is hard for me. It is still early, but the heat reaches the mid 40s by noon and even at ten the sun is high. I take regular breaks and wave at the passing lorries, who crawl up past me like broken mules. They always honk their horns as they pass, which spurs me on. The descent is a wonderful feeling and I arrive at Citrusdal by 11, where I decide to call it a day.

I leave Citrusdal at dawn and decide to take a gravel track towards Clanwilliam instead of the highway. The riding is slower but the landscape more varied. To my left there is a stream which runs across pale stones and near white sand. There are lots of trees and the track itself is deep ochre. It is still early as I pass through the first village, which has a tiny school. As I cycle past the playground all the kids look up and as one yells out something in Africans they all clap and shout. I wave back and speed up for the next 15 km. At the first turning I re-join the highway and cycle up past the Clanwilliam Dam, arriving at Vanrynsdorp by mid afternoon. I cycled 140 km and get an early night in a pretty little B&B.

Leaving Vanrynsdorp the landscape is pleasantly flatter: the hills soften, rolling into the Karoo. The road is long and straight and empty. The air is cool and I cycle at a decent pace. After an hour or so the sky darkens and I hear thunder and see lightening flash ahead. The storm makes me anxious – I can see no sign of life in all directions, only the rain, the black clouds, and the scrub. As it passes I relax and feel glad to have seen it. I cycle for another 7 hours and arrive at Garies, having covered 150 km.

The final day of riding is the toughest yet; all the way to Springbok are hills. After each climb my heart sinks as I see another rise ahead of me and the sun saps my energy. It takes 9 hours to cover only 120 km. In the evening I have some drinks with a couple of English overlanders and look forward to a lie-in. The past 6 days I had set off early and seen the sunrise from the road. Tomorrow I head to Vioolsdrift where I cross the border to Namibia.