blog

The End of the Road

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 21:41:50 +0100

Congratulations!

Today is your day.
You're off to great places!
You're off and away!

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You're on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go.

So...
be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray
or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea,
you're off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So...get on your way!

Oh, the Places You'll Go!
Dr Seuss

It’s been a while since my last blog, but we’re safely back home in England and I’ve finally got round to writing the last chapter.

When we crossed the border into Tanzania from Burundi, we knew that we were running out of time. There was still a long way to go to Cape Town, but our self-imposed deadline was only a month away and it was clear that we’d need to invoke the power of petrol if we wanted to reach our goal.

The town of Kigoma – our first stop over the border in Tanzania – was on the banks of the giant and idyllic Lake Tanganyika, and a boat south would provide a great scenic shortcut down to Zambia. Unfortunately, the fortnightly public ferry had been cancelled for Easter, and our search for another boat failed miserably, despite the harbour master’s insistence that we should ‘ask Jesus - he will help you’. We chose in the end to put our faith in a local driver who agreed to take us south for a day in his Range Rover, dropping us off in roughly the same place as the boat would have. The route covered hundreds of kilometres of dirt track running through the remote and scrubby woodland of western Tanzania, and after a full day of psychotic hi-speed driving we had made it almost all the way to Zambia. It would have taken at least a week to cycle, and judging by the long distances between villages and regular swarms of tsetse flies that got into the car, it would have been a tough ride. But as always, it would have been well worth the effort if only we’d had time. Edging further away from the equatorial centre of the continent, the landscape became freed of its blanket of steaming plant life, and expanded into the majestic African vistas that I’d grown up watching on nature documentaries. There were sadly no animals to be seen, but that was ok. I was more than happy to mentally ‘photoshop’ herds of mastodon and stegosaurus onto the sweeping grasslands and pretend we were in Jurassic Park.

Back in the real world the next morning, we hopped on the bikes and headed for the Zambian border. It was a nice cool day, but the monsoon rains had been hard at work and murky pools of red mud spread across the dirt road. It was nasty stuff, and splattered its way into everything, clogging up the wheels and mudguards. Fortunately the tarmac returned when we left Tanzania and the mud soon dried and flaked away. Zambia immediately felt very different to the other places we’d been on the sub-Saharan leg of our journey. In our experience, Africa had been a place of extremes but here, the people, the climate, and the terrain seemed gentle and soft. Physically, it is a vast country, and the sparse population and unbroken wilderness made it really feel huge and timeless. Quiet days were spent cycling through an unchanging landscape of tall grasses and stunted woodland. Although we were on the main road running through 1000km of northern Zambia, traffic was few and far between, and towns were so spaced out that we would encounter less than one a day. In a different phase of the trip, the peaceful routine would have seemed like paradise, but with our deadline creeping up it felt frustratingly slow. With 800 further kilometres to go to the capital Lusaka, the temptation to take another lift gnawed at us. With the prospect of exciting and less monotonous travel beyond Lusaka, it was an easy decision. We flagged a down a minivan, and before long, our bikes were strapped to the roof and we were heading straight for Lusaka. It was a long drive. Emily was riding in the front with two friendly but fundamentalist Christians, and I was crammed in the back with an assortment of furniture, and a hyperactive chicken. By the time we arrived, it was late at night. Me and the chicken were both smelling worse for wear and looking forward to some time apart. Emily too was glad to get out, having endured 12 solid hours of inquisition into her feelings about Jesus.

From Lusaka it was only a couple of days to the closest Zimbabwean border post, so we got back in the saddle and hit the road. The first night, we stayed at one of the best campsites of our entire journey – not only did they show live English football, but they had wild zebra and giraffe wandering about. The day after, we dropped into the sweltering lowlands of the hippo and crocodile infested Zambezi River. Zambia statistically is one of the most stable country’s in Africa, and even in the space of a week, it had infected us with a Zen-like sense of peace, but Zimbabwe promised a more edgy experience, and it started the second we crossed the border.

The heat was stifling as we pedalled into the eerily quiet, bone dry, wooded savannah. Unusually, there was absolutely nobody on the road – no animals, no bicycles, no villagers pottering about - just a sporadic trickle of lorries coming through from the border behind us. On our map, the area we were in was marked as ‘game reserve’. This - we later found out – was where rich American rednecks come to shoot lions, and there were apparently plenty of lions knocking about. Truck drivers would pass us leaning out of their cabs in disbelief (and not just the normal ‘crazy mzungu’s on bicycles!?’ disbelief). They all issued warnings to cycle quickly because ‘there are tooooooo many lions here!!!’. After the laissez-faire attitude toward wildlife that we’d so far encountered, this was alarming to say the least. For a change, we took comfort in the heat of the mid-day sun, which we hoped would keep the big cats at bay, and pressed on toward a National Park ranger station 40km down the road. Needless to say, we weren’t eaten, but we did acquire a newfound respect for the African bush.

At the ranger station, we were offered a lift deep into Mana Pools National Park. Even in our haste to get to Cape Town, we couldn’t refuse a trip into one of the most famously wild places in Africa. After a few amazing days of mucking about with hyenas, running the gauntlet of hippos and crocodiles on the Zambezi in canoes, and getting treated to sumptuous BBQ ‘Braais’ by sympathetic and better prepared park visitors, we refocused on the task at hand and hit the road. Unfortunately, we had to make up for lost time by taking a final lift through Zimbabwe and into South Africa. It was one of greatest regrets to have skipped so much of Zimbabwe. The nature and especially the people here were among the finest we’d met, and we marvelled – not for the first time – at how such a troubled nation can be so full of smiling happy positive people.

When we first got out of our lift in a motorway service station in South Africa, everything seemed very familiar, yet very strange. Ever since Europe, the world had been getting steadily more exotic, and now suddenly we were back in the sanitised land of ‘western civilisation’. The etiquette and formalities of everyday life as we knew it, had been reinstated and I was immediately aware of how scruffy and dirty we were.

Over the past six months we had slowly, unconsciously, adapted to a entirely different way of life, and now it was as if we had clicked our heels together three times, and been deposited back a the world that we knew, but that had become alien. I went to use the cash machine with the usual feeling of dread. But it worked, first time! I felt elated, but then realised, ‘of course it works’, it’s a normal regularly serviced cash machine. I turned my attention to a nearby fast food joint – a rare treat in most of Africa - and wandered out into the forecourt with my burger to plonk myself down on a clean patch of grass. As I started to eat, it dawned on me that everyone else from the bus was sitting at picnic tables, so I sheepishly got up and joined them. It took a day or so for us to stop having these surreal experiences, but in the end we re-adjusted depressingly quickly to South Africa.

After the rest of Africa, the last 600km of our cycling trip through the glorious Western Cape felt almost embarrassingly decadent, but if truth be told, it was still one of most enjoyable legs of the trip. The cycling was tough (and at times off-road) enough to still feel adventurous, but it was punctuated by regular pit stops at beautiful wineries and delicious cafes, and camping soon gave way to boutique bed and breakfasts. Eventually, we crossed our last mountain pass, and rolled down to the coastal plain which would take us the sea, and southern most point on the African landmass. We savoured every moment of the last few days ride to Cape Town, and by the time we arrived, only our mud-splattered bikes and sun-bleached clothes really distinguished us from regular holiday makers. The rest as they say, is history, and not particularly blog-worthy, suffice to say we spent a wonderful week with my cousin Dane and his lovely family before heading back to Blighty. When we set out 9 months earlier, this was supposed to be our last great travel, before we started ‘taking life seriously’.

6 months later, we’re already plotting the next trip! Cycling to Africa was the best thing we’ve ever done, and we’d do it again tomorrow if there weren’t so many other places to see, and cycle. But there are, and at the risk of being branded as itinerant traveller types, we’ll be off to explore them - with more photos and blog – as soon as we’ve saved up enough money! Until then, in the tradition of all good travel blogs and guidebooks, we’ll leave you with a selection of our favourite ‘Top Threes’ from Europe, Middle East, and Africa.

By the way, if you want to get in touch, you can still reach us at cyclingtoafrica@gmail.com.

Final Stats:

Days on the road: 261 days
Distance cycled: 13,750km
Average Distance per [cycling] day: 82.3km
Average Distance per day including rest days: 52.7km
Highest temperature: 49 Celsius (in the shade)
Highest altitude: 3100 metres
Longest day: 156km

Top three countries:

1. Turkey

2. Burundi

3. Sudan

Top three cities:

1. Damascus

2. Istanbul

3. Budapest

Top three cyclist’s street food:

1. Rolex (Ugandan egg wrap)

2. Legemat (Sudanese donut)

3. Kosheri (for Emily), Falafel (for Max) (both Egyptian)

Top three worst food experiences:

1. Syrian milky/smoky/congealed pudding

2. Max poisoning himself with his own three day old fried rice in Hungary

3. Vending machine breakfast, Bulgaria

Top three hairiest moments:

1. Sandstorm in Egypt

2. Ugandan minicab drivers

3. Losing sanity with Ethiopian children

Top three dangerous animal encounters:

1. Kangal dog attack in Turkey

2. Trapped in a small room with a camel spider in the Omo Valley, Ethiopia

3. Cycling through lion-infested game reserve in Zimbabwe

Top three idyllic roads:

1. Orchards and meadows in the Black Forest, Germany

2. Descending in to Bujumbura and Lake Tanganiyka, Burundi

3. Passing over the Taurus mountains in Turkey

Top three campsites:

1. Queen Elizabeth National Park on the border of the Congo, Uganda

2. Woods in Romania

3. Sahara Desert, Sudan

The Pearl of Africa: Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 12:42:22 +0100

"It seems I am trying to tell you a dream -- making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey ... that notion of being captured by the incredible, which is the very essence of dreams."
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

The last three weeks have been like a dream: tumbling over mountains, through forests, and coming face to face with hippos and hyenas in the heart of Africa's interior. It's been bright and beautiful, and bustling with some of the best people we've met. But it certainly hasn't been dark, despite the fact that Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi have respectively - and in recent living memory - been through brutal dictatorship, genocide, and civil war. Thankfully, on the streets,
'hakuna matata' - swahili for 'no worries' - is now the order of the day, and people seem to approach daily life with a tenacity and humour that quickly makes you forget about the past.

I'm not sure what the 'Real Africa' is really supposed to be, but this sure felt it: Naked light bulbs at nighttime strung up on colourfully painted shopfronts; larger than life African ladies, swaddled from head to toe in colourful fabrics, chatting away gregariously with assorted items balanced on their heads; tropical fruits aplenty; cheerful homegrown music piping out of bars and barbershops; and food vendors bent over metal buckets of burning charcoal, cooking up chapatis and roasting tasty bits of goat and corn-on-the-cob. It was a magnificent place to cycle, but before we got there, we had to head east, from Kenya.

It had been a couple of weeks since we’d escaped from baking Lake Turkana and we were ready for some more punishment. So, we decided to forgo the main highway connecting Kenya and Uganda and take the more ‘scenic route’ (read: obscenely hilly and bumpy dirt road) round the northern slopes of Mount Elgon. As usual, the pain was worth the gain, and we were treated to stunning views up toward the summit, and down onto the hazy plains below. After the bleakness of Northern Kenya, the landscape seemed unnaturally saturated with colour: rich blue skies, earthy red soil under our tyres, and lush green fields and forests covering every inch of the hillsides. Tourists must have been
a rare sight here, because hoards of brightly uniformed school children would spill out of their classrooms to line the streets as we came by. They were too shy to say much, but the adults were jovial and eager to find out what we were doing – although by this point we'd come so far that many wouldn't accept that we’d cycled all the way there. After a night camping at a village police station, and then at the lovely Sipi Waterfalls, we made it back on to a tarmac road just in time to take shelter from our first tropical downpour. I dreaded to think what the rain would have done to the loose red soil that we’d been on for the last three days but I was glad we'd escaped in time. The intense showers have become a regular event now we’ve hit the rainy season but we normally see them coming and manage to dive into clumps of trees or under the eaves of an unsuspecting local’s hut. Inany case, the rain never lasts long and it cools the air for a brief while, until the sun comes out and the humidity returns.

Back on good quality roads and fueled by roadside ‘rolex’ (Ugandan street snack of choice – a fried egg wrapped in an oily chapatti), wemade fast headway toward the west of the country, stopping briefly in the town of Jinja to see the source-of-the-Nile modestly meandering ,out of Lake Victoria, and then again in Kampala for our usual ‘city itinerary' of clothe cleaning, satellite TV watching, and overeating of overpriced European coffee and food. Our decision to go all the way out to Uganda’s western border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo was the latest in a string of considerable detours, but we ,wanted to catch a ferry down Lake Tanganyika two weeks later, so we had some time to kill. And besides, Uganda was really beginning to grow on us.

People here smile and laugh so much. And they're also a nation of fellow cyclists. Throughout the middle-east, and North Africa, it was poor sad looking donkeys doing all the work. Now it was men on single speed bicycles with legs of steel. Some rode ‘bicycle-taxis’ with people perched on the back, others teetered along with huge unwieldy sacks of coal and vegetables, or jerry-cans of water, lashed to their racks. In the rural areas many bikes were laden with great bunches of freshly picked green bananas, hung off the bike like panniers, and precariously stacked up on the rack. On one occasion I was overtaken by a grinning teenager, tearing downhill at breakneck speed with a live pig tied to the rack, squealing and thrashing about and looking thoroughly terrified. Often we’d be surrounded by these bikers, who would enjoy the cycling camaraderie, and hold animated discussions about our strange looking bikes, whilst curiously pointing toward our internal gear systems and other unfamiliar components. Even ,after 8 months on the road, they all seemed fitter and stronger than us. But I suppose most of them have been doing it a lot longer than 8months, with heavier loads, and they don’t even have gears!

Anyhow, we continued on until the Rwenzori Mountains rose up in front of us, and it was time to turn south. In terms of heavyweight African mlocations, this part of Uganda had some serious contenders. First were the picturesque 'crater lakes', which pockmarked the land as a result of an ancient meteor storm. As we rode on, the cloud covered peaks of Africa's highest range, the Rwenzori’s, rose up on our right. Away to our left, were the primate filled jungles of Kibale National Park. Barely a days ride ahead, were the open savannahs of Queen Elizabeth National Park, and beyond them, the misty montane forests of Bwindi in which many of the world’s last wild gorillas are still just about clinging on.

As we approached Queen Elizabeth, a marker on the road told us we had reached the equator, and a few obligatory photographs later, we continued into the Southern Hemisphere. Cycling in most of Africa’s National Parks, as far as I know, is forbidden. But strangely, despite quite a healthy population of lions, hyenas, elephants and buffalo, the park authority at Queen Elizabeth were quite content to let us cycle the longest route through the park, down a quiet 80km stretch of dirt road where lion sightings are apparently quite common. This sounded terrifically exciting but perhaps not such a good idea. However, after consulting a few sensible looking locals, the verdict seemed to be that it was safe and that the lions here never attack people. Still nervous we continued to press the locals but the only lion-related incident anyone could remember was that of a slightly deranged local woman being taken in the night because she was sleeping outdoors in the bush.

So with the statistics apparently in our favour, we set off on the bikes. Just in the case the locals were wrong though, we came up with a cunning plan to deal with any unfriendly lions. In retrospect, it was obviously doomed to failure, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Firstly, Emily would hide behind me, whilst I grabbed the half-litre of petrol from my bottle cage, that we use for stove fuel. Whipping off the lid, I would quickly make a flaming torch using a
large stick with a couple of socks stuffed on the end, and wave this around like an angry caveman until the lion obediently ran away. If the danger was too imminent for this, I planned simply to light the open bottle and lob it at the offending beast as a kind of shambolic molotov cocktail. Fortunately, the closest we came to a lion was when a passing car stopped to tell us that there was one 2km up the road. We progressed - binoculars in hand - but it had gone by the time we got there.

We did see a few other things though, including deer, antelope, warthogs, and the odd cluster of buffalo, which we'd slip by discreetly with hearts in mouths. At one point, a family of elephants came crashing out into the road 40 metres ahead and the biggest of the bunch turned to give us a menacing stare. We screeched to a halt and tried to look nonchalant until they disappeared back into the bush. The most unnerving moments however, were when we couldn't see anything because of the thick undergrowth but were hit by the unmistakable pungent smell of 'large animal', which reminded me vividly of childhood visits to London Zoo.

When we stopped to make camp that night - still in the park - we joined up with a Belgian couple who were crossing Africa in their Range Rover, and headed to a designated camping area in a grassy clearing amongst some trees, on the banks of a small river. We were the only ones there but the river formed the border between Uganda and the
Democratic Republic of Congo, so two armed park rangers had been sent to stay the night with us to protect us from marauding Congolese rebels (although they didn't think there was any real threat). Initially, it seemed be an especially peaceful spot, but as the sun went down, and we settle around a camp-fire to cook our dinner, the whole area promptly erupted into life. I had never been in a Park like this at night, and the sensation that we were suddenly surrounded by wild animals was overwhelming. Firstly, loud grunts and splashes came up from the stream as the resident hippos got ready to come out of the water to feed. Up until this point I was considering wading across the shallow river so as Emily could get a photo of 'me in the Congo', but this was now out of the question. Next, loud piercing whoops started up in the trees around our clearing. I'd never heard any animal make that sound, but I knew exactly what it was because I'd heard kids in Ethiopia doing perfect imitations of these same noises when they were warning us not to camp around their village because of hyenas. We huddled in toward our fire and sent some nervous glances toward our armed guards, but they were happily finishing off our pasta and didn't seem bothered. Out in the woods, the hyenas must have spooked the baboons because they soon joined in, barking like crazy. We also began to smell the whiff of animal corpse wafting into the clearing. The mguards told us the hyenas must have made, or found a kill nearby. Between the hippos, the baboons, and the hyenas, the racket was unbelievable. It was like being in Jurassic Park, and we decided it was probably time to get to bed. Emily and I cautiously crept over to our tent and quickly brushed our teeth but before we'd had a chance to finish, two yellow eyes appeared in the reflection of my head torch, 20 metres away at the edge of the clearing. It was dark and the beam was too weak to see anything except the eyes, but whatever it was suddenly bolted sideways along the treeline. In the dim light, all we saw was a shadowy silhouette. Emily asked hopefully whether I thought it was a deer, but the animals gait looked more...doggy, to me. Joe, the Belgian had heard the commotion and came up behind us with his more powerful torch and shined it at the animal which was revealed to be a hyena. It was an pretty spine chilling moment, especially because it looked so demonic in the torchlight, with its eyes still reflecting a cold yellow glow. I flashed my light back to the original spot where it had run from and was horrified to see anther two pairs of yellow eyes at the treeline. We shouted for the guards who casually walked over and assured us they wouldn't attack. But I'd had enough. I took a quick pee (to avoid the possibility of having to do so later, alone) and we both scurried into our tent. Content in the relative safety of a thin sheet of canvas, we listened as the noises continued unabated, with elephant rumblings and lion grunts joining the fray, and a couple of hungry hippos snuffling around our tent. Then, in the morning as the sun came up, everything in a flash, returned to normal. When crawled out from our tent, back into our quiet riverside clearing, it was like we'd emerged from a dream. A few birds were twittering but all other signs of life had vanished. I was as if we'd accidentally stumbled into a secret world, and popped out the other side. After that, the prospect of seeing a lion from the bike didn't seem nearly so frightening.

Leaving the park, we continued up through the thick highland forests of Bwindi National Park in South Western Uganda, and on past the beautiful Lake Bunyoni into Rwanda. Rwanda is known - at least by its tourist board - as the country of a thousand hills, and it is incredibly hilly. It is also incredibly small though, and incredibly beautiful, so our stay in Rwanda was short and sweet. Kigali - the capital - was probably the most modern and expensive city we'd been to in Africa, so after a couple of evenings spent in fancy restaurants, we made a dash for Burundi with our budget still just about intact.

Cycling in Burundi was a bit of an enigma. The Foreign Office and Lonely Planet guidebook advises against ‘any travel outside the capital city Bujumbura', because of the recent civil war and instability.However, all the locals on the border in Rwanda seemed to think it was perfectly safe so we ventured on with caution. At the Burundian side of the border, the official in charge of handing out visa looked like a gangster, with a thick silver chain around his neck and a pair of
mirrored aviator sunglasses. He was also blaring Celine Dion music out a small ghetto blaster. 'This' I thought worriedly, 'is exactly the kind of psychotic eccentricity that has given the foreign office cause for concern'. In any case, it was too late to turn back so we bought our visas and carried on.

Burundi was magical. With stiff competition from Uganda, Kenya, and Rwanda, (in our experience) it has been the friendliest sub-saharan African country we've visited. Having emerged from their recent troubles with a new lease of life, we were greeted with such enthusiasm and warmth wherever we went that we felt like celebrities. Dense crowds would form around us whenever we stopped in a village and anyone who spoke English (or more often, French) would come to the front to introduce themselves and strike up a conversation. They obviously saw very very few foreigners these days and were keen to get a good look at us. One man eyed Emily - who has gotten quite dark skinned of late - with particular curiosity. After a while he came forward looking intrigued and asked, 'so...are you a mzungu [white foreigner] or an arab?'. We assured him that we were all indeed mzungus.

After a couple of days of riding through the northern hills, we came to the end of the highlands, and the spectacular view down to Lake Tanganyika 1500 metres below us. Gazing down to the silvery lake with Bujumbura's tin roofs glinting like sequins on the shore, was like looking out of an aircraft. The ride down into the city was 33km of non-stop adrenaline fueled downhill. Swooping through the long sweeping curves and tight hairpins felt more like skiing than cycling. When we finally got to the bottom, the humidity was stifling and my insistence to get a cheap unventilated hotel room didn't help matters. Bujumbura was nonetheless a lively buzzing city, with plenty of decent food - perhaps a legacy from the days of french colonialism.

In an effort to comply with the advice of the foreign office we attempted to hitch a lift on a cargo boat down the lake to Tanzania but none were leaving in the near future so we saddled up and carried on down the lake road. We were glad we did. The scenery was some of the most picturesque of the whole trip, with green hills and the tranquil turquoise waters of Tanganyika, backed by the imposing mountains of the Congo on the Lake's far side. Beyond the mountains in the distance, rose huge and elegant cloud formations, looking like a cross between volcanic eruptions and nuclear mushroom clouds. I imagined it probably hadn't changed much since Dr Livingstone famously met Morton Stanley on these very same shores. The water was also bilharzia free (rare in Africa) so Emily even managed to have a long-awaited swim (whilst I fell asleep out of the sun underneath our tarpaulin). All too soon though, we reached the border town and were treated to one last night of chatting on the street to the lovely locals before we crossed over into Tanzania.

Currently, we're in Zambia, but this blog has gotten quite long enough so I'll leave it here. Besides, I'm sweating like a pig and need to get outside to cool off and go in search of some supper. More in a few days...

Tribes and Tribulations: South Ethiopia and Kenya

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 14:36:31 +0100

"He spent 40 days in the wilderness, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry."

The Bible, New Testament

It's been almost 40 days since my last blog but am happy to report that after struggling through the remote wilds of Southern Ethiopia and North West Kenya, we have finally reemerged - a few pounds lighter - back into the welcome arms of hot showers, cold beers, and intermittent internet access. Somewhere along the way we also crossed the 10,000km mark (or as I like to think of it, the 1 billion centimeters mark). A combination of extreme heat, non-existent roads, and long stretches of harsh uninhabited desert bush made this our toughest challenge yet. But, the breathtaking and ancient tribal wilderness we got in return was worth every drop of blood, sweat and tear. The one outside influence that has managed to penetrate this forgotten corner of Africa are Christian missions. With their help, and a huge box of rations from the Kenyan army border post, we just about managed to get through in one piece.

On paper it didn't seem too hard: From Addis Ababa, it was a week's cycle south along the western flank of the great rift valley, before our route turned west, plummeting down from the heavily farmed hills of the Ethiopian Highlands, and into the scorching lowland plains of that would lead down to the Lower Omo Valley and eventually, the Omo River. From here, the river would guide us south into Kenya and onto the barren shores of Lake Turkana, which we had to follow for a mere 150km until we finally got back to civilisation.

In practice, this leg of the journey was extremely tricky. In fact it's become notorious as the worst bit on the route from Cairo to Cape Town. We got mounds of advice to take a more straightforward but boring route toward Nairobi but in the end, the mysterious tribal lands proved too seductive to resist.

The week from Addis Ababa down to Konso - the last major town in the Highlands - was unpleasant and wearisome. The constant mindless begging and harassment continued unabated, and I spent many hours on the road consumed with hatred for the Ethiopian people. Fortunately, I could block them out to some degree with Emily's iPod, and the spectacular mountainous scenery also offered some relief, especially the views down to the distant shimmering hippo-filled lakes on the floor of the Great Rift Valley.

After a long week, we eventually crested a hill, and instead of seeing another one rising up ahead of us as per usual, there with nothing but haze and yellowy brown plains, stretching away below us all the way to the horizon. it was the end of the Ethiopian Highlands! Pointing our wheels downhill, we plunged into a new world, or rather, an old world. The area from here to the Kenyan border is inhabited by various tribes of cattle herders for whom life is still tough and traditional. There are no roads, no mains electricity, and in some parts it hasn't rained properly for years. Half naked women in goat-skins, beads, and bangles are a common sight, as are painted and decorated tribal warriors with kalashnikovs. All rather weird at first, but you get used to them after a while.

Anyway, as we dropped out of the highlands, we were hit by wave of hairdryer-like air. Even at 4.30pm, it was oppressive, and a serious shock to the system. But for such an inhospitable place, it was surprisingly green and lively. As we made our way toward the Omo Valley, we were surrounded on both sides by thorny bush and sporadic patches of forest. Hornbills squawked in the trees, and guinea fowl and dik-dik (small deer) skittered nervously through the bush as we rode past. Our first encounter with a discernible 'tribesman' came as we were struggling to push our bikes up a steep slope from a fjord in a stream. He was leading his cattle back up the slope after taking them for a drink and at first glance I thought he was wearing nothing but earings, a loincloth, and white leggings. On closer inspection I realised his legs were actually covered in wavy patterns, drawn with chalk. I was eager to see how he would react to us and was relieved when he regarded us with a mixture of sympathy and amusement that's become quite familiar over the last six months. I like this reaction - it's the sort of response I would have in his position - and I sensed some kinship between us. The next day, at a village called Arbore, we sat down in a thatched hut (the local 'pub') for an afternoon rest and bottle of Fanta. Before long, two tall and impressive looking men came in. Their hair was ornately styled with clay and they were covered in copper armlets, and brightly coloured earings and necklaces. They were from the Hamer tribe, we were told. To my delight, they sat down opposite us and also got themselves some Fantas. I had thought they must be there on some kind of goat-related business, but no! Apparently they were just getting out of the sun for a refreshing fizzy drink like us. We nodded pleasantly to each other and drank our drinks. It was beginning to seem that these strange people weren't so different from us after all.

There were supposedly a lot of hyenas in the area so we stayed put in Arbore that night and the next day we made it to Turmi, the last stop before the Omo River. Here we got our most welcoming reception in all of Ethiopia, and I ended up getting drunk on the local fermented honey wine before lunch, and was then roped into playing football [still a bit pissed] for the local team in a very important match against a team of road workers from out of town. It was a great way to end a very long 5 weeks in Ethiopia and when we got to the Omo River I was almost (but not quite) sad to leave. In Turmi, we also met up with Sadie and John, an American couple we had met in Sudan who we were reuniting with to cross into Kenya, and Aaron - another American who they had picked up along the way.

Crossing into Kenya, we knew things would be getting a lot harder. In Ethiopia, a steady stream of tourists coming to see the tribes means that there is some infrastructure but this is not the case on the Kenyan side. In addition, the first 50km is a volatile no-mans land, next to a disputed border with South Sudan, and the site of an ongoing conflict between tribes from either side of the Kenya-Ethiopia border.

When we got dropped off on the other side of the Omo River on a little boat we had hired, we were well prepared, carrying about 20 litres of water each and five days worth of food (including lots of instant noodles). But to our horror, there was no sign of any kind of road or track so we had to push our bikes through the sandy wasteland in roughly the right direction, hoping for the best. After a while, we came across some tyre tracks that seemed to go the right way so we followed them. It was 10 grueling km later that Aaron looked at his GPS and announced that we would be entering Southern Sudan in 2km if we continued. We'd gone the wrong way already! With considerable frustration we turned back and retraced our steps. After consulting some local tribesmen, it turned out that we'd missed the correct turning - a single set of tyre tracks branching away to the south near the beginning of the track.

Back on the right trail, the bright colours of tribal Ethiopia drained away. The landscape took on a barren but beautiful post apocalyptic feel, with little now growing in it, apart from patchy grass. The ground was an unfortunate mixture of sand and volcanic dust - the worst thing imaginable to try and cycle through - and more than half our time was spent trudging sweatily through soft sand, pushing the bikes. After two days we had only just made it into Kenya.

Aaron had had enough. He persuaded some guys at the army barracks to take him onward in a truck. For the rest of us, things began to look up. The army guys had replenished our water supplies and generously given us a huge box filled with all sorts of goodies from corned beef to tinned pineapple chunks (ridiculously opulent treats in our mindset at the time). We also met the wonderful Father Lazarus who took us into the local mission and managed to find us a huge Tilapia fresh out of Lake Turkana, which we greedily fried up and scoffed down with some rice from the army boys. We now had more than enough food to get us through even at this slow rate, and according to Father Lazarus, we should be able to get round the lake by hopping from mission to mission to find water and a safe place to sleep.

As we continued on, our most formidable foe was the heat. I had never been anywhere so hot and the power of sun was literally becoming fearful. There was no escape and rarely a cloud in the sky. The only comfortable time to ride was between 6.30am - 9am. After that, the temperature would soar to around 45 Celsius and remain there until nightfall. Even then, we needed to sleep with our tent open (regardless of scorpions and other things) to stop ourselves melting away in a pool of sweat. Our daily routine involved waking up at around 5am to pack up camp and eat breakfast in the dark, before waiting nervously until there was enough light to set off. During the day, we spent much time underneath shady trees trying unsuccessfully to get out of the heat and conserve water (I was drinking about 12 litres per day, more than I'd thought humanly possible).

Still, we couldn't complain. The wilderness and the people who were sharing it with us were awe-inspiring and we felt very privileged to be there. The track also improved, and bit by bit, we managed to get round the lake. On the 5th day after crossing the Omo River, we rode into the town of Kalakol. After 10 days of juddering along rocky tracks or being bogged down in sand, our tyres hit tarmac. It was like gliding through air, and with our hardships behind us, we were ready to see what the 16th country on our route had to offer.

Sorely in need of some home-style comforts, Kenya - a former British colony - was surely the right place to be. Almost everyone wears smart shirts and speaks English and they have various cultural reminders of home. Sadly, and shockingly, it still proved impossible to find a decent cup of tea, but remarkably easy to find Guinness and live Premier League football. I indulged in both before leaving Kalakol and was amazed at how fanatically people here support Arsenal - definitely more so than where I grew up in North London. On my way out of town a fisherman started riding alongside me with his day's catch tied to the back of his bike. He enquired eagerly whether I had "ever seen an English football match, physically?". "Yes" I said, "I've seen lots of games - I live in England". "Wow!" he said dreamily, "the day that God accepts us to watch a game physically....ohhhhh....we shall rejoice!".

As we continued south-west toward Uganda, we had to take a short lift (our second since leaving home) to get past a dangerous stretch of road where bandits from the Pokot tribe had recently been jumping out the bushes and hijacking people. It was a horrible, hot and bumpy ride squished in the back of the lorry amongst sacks of coal and miscellaneous wicker products, and ironically, it did more damage to my bike than 11,000km of riding.

As we gradually climbed up to 2000 metres, the baking heat of Turkana soon seemed like a distant memory as the landscape became steadily wetter and more lush. For a while now, greenery had been so sparse that all plants had to be covered in a thick layer of thorns to protect against being nibbled to death by goats. Now, fertile red soil was everywhere, and from it oozed all kinds of new flora. Fortunately for Emily, who had long-held and severe cravings for fresh fruit and veg, this included plenty of banana, mango and papaya, which was sold on the roadside for as little as 5p a mango! It seemed inconceivable that tinned pineapple had seemed so exciting barely a week ago. The red soil soon managed to permeate all our belongings, either dust when it was dry, or mud when it rained, but it was a small price to pay for the paradise it created.

As mentioned, Kenya holds various clues to its British past, but I will always remember one in particular. We’d turned off the road one afternoon in search of a campsite and after following a dirt track for a minute or two, we popped out in front of a perfectly quintessential English country cottage nestled among flower beds and an immaculately kept English country garden. It was quite surreal. Polite Kenyan staff bustled about and before long we met the owner, an elderly woman in her 90’s called Jane who was quick to sternly point out, "it doesn't look English, it is English". Jane had come over in the 1950s and her parents built the house, where she still lived with her son, Dick. The whole experience there was extraordinary. It was as if the whole place had been suspended in time for the last 60 years, and now existed as a rare and purified form of Englishness, all but extinct back home in the modernised multi-cultural England of the 21st Century. We sat down to a big Sunday roast with them and as the staff fussed around us in their perfectly preserved 1950’s living-room, I felt like we’d been sucked into a post-war period novel. Dick pulled out a strange looking pot of anchovy stuff labeled 'Gentleman's Relish' which one of his friends had brought over from England. He was surprised I didn’t know what it was and I had to inform him that regrettably, this kind of thing is no longer available in your average English grocery shop. When we left Dick and Jane, I felt very extremely lucky to have met and stayed with them. In many ways, they gave us a cultural experience that in modern times, had become just as wonderful and unique as any tribal rite of passage that we’d seen in Ethiopia.

Back in the real world, we headed for Uganda via the North slopes of Mount Elgon. With the toughest trials now surely behind us, it's started to feel like we're almost on the home straight, but as we cycle toward the steaming jungles of Central Africa with the rainy season closing in, perhaps we're not out the woods just yet.

Stats so far

Days on the road: 194
Distance cycled: 10,943km
% of total distance done: 60.8%
Average Distance per [cycling] day: 82.3km
Average Distance per day including rest days: 56.4km
Highest temperature: 49 Celsius (in the shade)

Ups and Downs in the Ethiopian Highlands

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 07:02:12 +0100

"There was a rustling, that seemed like a bustling,
Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling,
Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering,
Little hands clapping and little tongues chattering,
And, like fowls in a farmyard when barley is scattering,
Out came the children running."

The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Robert Browning

This is precisely the effect we seem to have on the children of Ethiopia, but unlike the Pied Piper of Hamelin, we can't get rid of them. Unfortunately, this has led to the very people that we are trying to help through our chosen charity, becoming the bane of my life. So numerous and intensely frustrating are the children of the rural north of Ethiopia, that I have come to wish they would all just disappear. We’re holed up in Addis Ababa at the moment, nursing our frayed nerves with satellite TV and pizza delivery, but it’s only a matter of time before we’re thrust back out into the giant hamster wheel of hell that is cycling through Ethiopia. Waiting for us 800km away at the Kenyan border is the wild and remote – and child free - Lake Turkana region, but this is hardly a comforting thought. Once the cradle of evolution for our early ancestors, it is now ironically, one of the most inhospitable places in Africa. Bad roads, extreme temperatures, unreliable water supplies, unsavoury wildlife, and warring tribes make it the most disconcerting stretch on our entire trip. I was at the Kenyan embassy today seeking some reassurance and was put on the phone to an official who knew the area. I asked him about the current status quo regarding tribal warfare. He paused, and said matter-of-factly in a hilariously African accent, ‘they are not fighting right now, but if you steal their cattle…they will kill you’.

So, bearing all this in mind, I would like to cast my mind back to happier times, for therapeutic purposes, and also to let you know what we’ve been up to.

Khartoum – like the rest of Sudan - was a blast, and after camping for a few days on the banks of the Nile at a sailing club in the middle of town, we reluctantly packed our panniers and prepared to tackle the 500km to the Ethiopian border. The boat-owning high flyers of Khartoum that we’d been hanging out with at the club had put us in touch with a local racing cyclist who in the spirit of good Sudanese hospitality, very patiently led us out of town and saw us safely on our way. We were also with an Italian guy we’d met called Andrea, who would end up riding with us all the way to Addis Ababa.

For a day and a half, we sped south through Khartoum's agricultural hinterland before breaking away from the Nile toward Ethiopia. The fields soon disappeared and were replaced once again by the wilderness. As we edged nearer to Ethiopia, a clear transition was occurring as life was slowly breathed back into the dusty desert landscape. Carpets of bleached savannah grass stretched into the distance, and clusters of budding acacia trees were taking hold in the richer soils. It was wonderful after such a long time in the seemingly sterile desert, to hear birds and insects again. And with every few kilometers, the sights and sounds of the wildlife became denser and more diverse.

It was such a novelty the first time a saw a really beautiful piece of wildlife - a bright iridescent blue bird - that I leaped off my bike and pursued it through the roadside trees and scrub trying to get a photo. Within 50km, these birds were everywhere, and in my twisted logic, they were now far too common to bother getting my camera out. The temperature was also increasing to uncomfortable levels, but the movement and colour seeping back into the land was exciting and contagious, and seemed to have a rejuvenating effect which drove us on. When we stopped for the night near a small roadside tea-shack, the obvious downside of the flourishing wildlife soon became apparent. After pitching our tents, we put on a big pot of rice to boil, but huge crickets, grasshoppers, and other noisy flying things were everywhere, crashing into us, and ending up in the food. Doing our best to calmly fend them off, we tried to finish the cooking, but a weird looking rodent appeared next the stove and sent us squealing. As I jumped up, I noticed a scorpion right next to me, so naturally starting leaping around and pointing at it helplessly, shouting 'SCORPION, SCORPION'. The owner of the tea-shack heard the commotion and came trotting over with a grin on his face, and promptly stomped both rodent and scorpion to death. Two more scorpions were discovered and squished before the rice was done, and I wondered how long it would be before one slipped through the net and stung somebody. The answer was about 12 hours. Whilst fumbling around in the tent's outdoor 'porch' area for clean underwear the next morning, Emily put her hand down and recoiled in pain. It was only a baby, less than a centimeter long, but still inflicted a painful bee-like sting. It reminded us that even after 9000km without incident, it could still all go very wrong, very quickly, if we weren't careful.

Changes continued to emerge the next day. In the north, settlements had been made up of squat rectangular buildings made from mudbrick, manufactured from river clay. Now, with no river and lots of trees, people took to building the more quintessentially African round thatched huts. I loved these very much, and to my delight, when we stopped in a little village that night, we were invited to stay in one - a beautiful 'guest hut' with 3 beds - apparently reserved especially for impromptu visitors such as ourselves.

When we crossed over the border a couple of days later, it was immediately obvious that we had finally left the Arab world behind. Metema, the border post on the Ethiopian side, was a true frontier town. There was a whiff of lawlessness in the air, and the main street was lined with seedy looking bars, where Sudanese could come to surrepticiously consume alcohol and no doubt engage in other naughty business. After gleefully knocking back a few beers for the first time in a month, thoughts turned to the new country ahead.

In many ways, Ethiopia symbolized the mystique and glamour of Africa: The mountain kingdom of legends, filled with strange tribes and exotic wildlife, standing alone as the only country in Africa never to be colonized by Europeans. The other - very different - image of Ethiopia, recalled from my youth, was of the world's iconic 'poor country' and the subject of Bandaid's hit record, 'Do they know it's Christmas?'. One of the first things I discovered was that Northern Ethiopians are pretty serious orthodox Christians (mostly), so they do indeed know when it's Christmas time. On the other hand, as I also quickly found out, anything to do with time here is very confusing. Ethiopia still uses the Julian calendar - so it's currently June 2003 here - and to make matters worse, 'one-o-clock' means one hour after sunrise.

The first 200km of our cycle through Ethiopia would be a steady but tough climb from 500m altitude in the baking lowlands, to over 2000m at the edge of the cooler and more populated highland plateau. We saw very few vehicles on the road - only the occasional oil tanker coming from Sudan, or shipment of timber heading toward Sudan. Villages were few and far between, and the three day climb was a tough but pleasant cycle as the terrain became steadily more mountainous and dramatic. Finding quiet spots to camp was no problem (although there were more scorpions), and the wildlife continued to blossom as it had begun to do in Sudan. Just as I was starting to wonder how such a dry climate could sustain all this flora and fauna, we had a quite momentous occasion. For the first time in almost 3 months (since 29th October 2010 in Northern Turkey) the sky clouded over and it rained. I had been quite looking forward to rain after so long in the heat and the unfamiliar smell of wetness brought back lots of memories.

The road got steeper and the last part of the climb into the highlands was long and hard. Children had been consistently begging for money by the road and seeing us panting away, some of the more entrepreneurial amongst them now seized the opportunity to make a quick buck. In teams of five or six they got behind the bikes and started pushing us up the hill. I appreciated this and every few hundred metres I tossed them a small packet of biscuits to keep them motivated. It was a convenient arrangement and I found it quite amusing, but eventually it began to feel a trifle vulgar (skinny African child labourers pushing well fed Englishman uphill for biscuits) so I apologetically pretended to be out of biccys and the kids soon disappeared. The climb went on until we were higher than we'd ever been on a bike. When we finally reached the top I staggered off my bike and collapsed next to the road in a storm drain to have a biscuit and recuperate. But it didn't seem right to celebrate our toughest climb so far in a concrete gully so I clambered on to a large boulder and that felt better. As I gazed back down to the lowlands, stretching hazily away toward Sudan, two old men in traditional dress passed by, carrying ancient single-shot rifles, and I felt that we'd really arrived in Ethiopia.

The next week saw us ditch the bikes in the town of Gondar for some chill out time with Emily's dad and step-mum who had come to visit, and to head into Simien Mountains National Park on foot to see some of Ethiopia's most spectacular scenery and wildlife. Both of us turned 30 whilst we were there, and celebrated by buying a live chicken which we somewhat unsuccessfully managed to BBQ on the side of a mountain. The next morning we saw a hyena - hopefully for the last time on the trip - and headed back to Gondar to continue on our way south.

Unfortunately it all started to go downhill from here (apart from the roads, which always seemed to go uphill).

The cycling was physically quite tough. As in Sudan, the Chinese had been hard at work building roads, but here they had neglected to make any tunnels or bridges so we were going up and down like a roller coaster, over hills and into stream beds. In the more fertile and attractive territory of the highlands, the countryside was becoming much more crowded. Finding a discreet place to camp on our first night out of Gondar was very tough. As night fell, we tried to conceal ourselves in a field behind an embankment next to the road but remained woefully conspicuous. The sun went down and we started cooking up some food, hoping we'd got away with it, but three figures shortly emerged out of the darkness, in plain clothes, carrying Kalashnikovs. I tentatively said 'hello', hoping they weren't bandits, but they didn't look scary enough to be bandits, and sure enough they turned out to be policemen ordering us to move on. Apparently, we would have our stuff stolen if we stayed but we decided it would be more dangerous to continue in the dark to the next town, so we stayed put. They left, and before long another two men showed up with sticks, each wrapped in a blanket. We were used to people appearing out of nowhere and staring at us so I just greeted them politely, hoping they would go away soon, but they didn't. They spread out their blankets and sat right next to our tent and started chatting to each other. After brushing our teeth and packing away our cooking things the men were still there so we said goodnight and went to bed, hoping their presence would at least deter the thieves. In the morning, we awoke to hear them still sitting there chatting away, right next to the tent. 'How bizarre', I thought. Had they been sent to protect us by the policemen? Or were they just bored? We never found out.

As we hit the road again, the countryside felt more crowded than ever. The traffic stayed sparse, but the roads were now bustling with people, donkeys, and herds of cattle all going about their business. Being immersed in daily life like this would normally be a good thing but here it was not.

Wherever we went, kids would flood out on to the road as if we were driving some kind of enchanted ice-cream van, manically screaming 'you, you, you, you, you, you, youuuuuuu....where are you go?'.

Most beg incessantly for money, plastic water bottles (which they can resell), pens ‘for school’ (which they sell because of course they aren’t in school), and clothes (which they must also sell as my clothes are much too big for them). If they don’t get what they want – which they never do – they just run alongside you, sometimes for over a kilometer, asking and asking, again and again. When they finally get bored of that, many then throw stones at you as you cycle off. This has never become dangerous or threatening but it is non-stop and incredibly annoying. The annoyance is amplified by the fact that we're normally at breaking point anyway because of the relentless hills.

For the first few days in the lowlands, we patiently tried to respond to every child, and apologise to them individually for choosing not to give them money, but we couldn't sustain this for long. We now respond with wild bi-polar mood swings. Often I feel at peace - birds are singing, people are friendly, beautiful scenery abounds, and I can put up with the odd annoying child. The next minute, I'm panting my way up squiggly mountain roads, being followed by hoards of children, mindlessly repeating phrases like 'bring me money' or 'give me pen', and something snaps. We get at least one outburst of rage each, per day. Sometimes it involves swearing and threats of violence, like the time Emily got off the bike screaming, and gave chase to a gang of 10-year-old stone throwing goatherds. At other times I quietly consider phoning up UNICEF Schools for Africa to demand that none of our sponsorship money get spent in Ethiopia. Then later, I admit to myself that I should probably be demanding that it all get spent here as I can see no other way than education that this situation will ever change. The children wearing school uniform always seem like good kids, but they are in a small minority. Adults incidentally, are normally friendly and charming but too many condone the kid's behavior and stone throwing antics.

One of the most upsetting things is that - in my opinion - many clearly don't need to beg. They're not disabled, elderly, homeless or starving. They're usually tending 1000s of dollars worth of cattle and have families and communities that support them. But they beg anyway, as if they feel entitled to our money whether they really need it or not. 'Is this the fault of decades of foreign aid?' I wonder. It's tempting to draw a link, but I don't have enough knowledge or experience about Ethiopia to confidently do so.

In any case, my patience has been slowly whittled away to the point where I can no longer keep up the politeness and tolerance that I usually try to show in new countries. Anybody begging or trying to 'be my friend', now gets very short shrift. It's a great shame that it's come to this, and I feel in some way that I have failed in letting it do so, but I'm looking forward to leaving. It's a particular shame because Ethiopia is in fact a very beautiful, safe, friendly, and culturally intriguing place, but this attitude that people have toward us makes the north of the country an utterly impossible place to enjoy cycling through as far as we're concerned. I now believe that contrary to my preconceptions, (outside the tourist areas) there is nothing mystical and glamorous about life in the Ethiopian Highlands. Most people simply struggle to get by, in an overcrowded region with limited resources.

So, the upshot of all this is that Addis Ababa - which is by normal standards a fairly crowded, ugly, and chaotic city - currently seems like a wonderful island of tranquility compared with the sea of irritating countryside that surrounds it. Tomorrow however, we're off again, and with our minds and bodies recharged, we'll be doing our best to go with goodwill, in an optimistic frame of mind, hoping that the south of the country will provide a different experience.

Stats so far

Days on the road: 164
Distance cycled: 9737km
% of total distance done: 54.1%
Average Distance per [cycling] day: 84.7km
Average Distance per day including rest days: 59.3km
Highest altitude: 3100 metres (near Fiche, 100km north east of Addis Ababa)
Longest continuous climb: 1470 vertical metres (from the bottom of the Nile Gorge to the top)
Longest day: 156km (somewhere in the desert to Khartoum)
Best wild animal sightings: hippos, hyena, baboons, vultures.

Most amusing heckles from kids: 'Are you a male or a female?' (to emily)
'Bring me my money!' (cheeky bastards!)
'China, China, Chinaaaaa!' (Many people think we must be Chinese if we're foreigners in Ethiopia. Clearly we all look the same to them!)

Donuts and Deserts: Sunny Sudan

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 19:11:50 +0100

"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more."

Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz

As I dragged my bicycle off the ferry from Egypt at about lunchtime, anything seemed possible, even perhaps munchkins and wicked witches. This was the start of 'Africa' as far as I was concerned, and I was primed and ready for strange and unexpected goings on. First up was border control: It was quick and painless. That was certainly unexpected. (although the American couple behind us in the queue were asked by the immigration officer, "do you think black people are mentally defective"). Next was the intolerable wall of heat we had been promised. But it was nowhere to be seen, and the weather was refreshingly mild - similar to an English summers day. A cool breeze was blowing from the north which would translate into a lovely tailwind once we were on the road, but we weren't out the woods yet. The roads in Sudan are famously treacherous and I've read many accounts of people toiling for hours as they pushed their bikes on foot through the deep sand. However, thanks to the Chinese, this prophecy of doom also never materialised. As Sudan's largest trade partner and new best friend, they had just finished building a beautiful smooth tarmac road all the way to the capital. They'd even put in little markers every kilometer - starting at about 900km - which we could use to count down our journey all the way to Khartoum. I felt that whatever greater power was responsible for sand-blasting us for three days in the Sinai desert, was now trying to say it was sorry. Like Dorothy and Toto, it seemed that all we had to do was faithfully follow our own little yellow brick road and we would eventually - but surely - end up at our destination (in fact there was literally an unbroken 900km yellow line painted on the side of the road that went all the way there!). Also like Dorothy and Toto, we were thrown together with some rather unlikely companions. Sadie and John, an American couple of soon-to-be PhD students, Josh, a photography student from Yorkshire, and Yves, a Belgian PE teacher were all on the boat from Egypt and heading the same way as us, so as we set off into one the most remote locations on our whole trip, we had found more cycling buddies than anywhere else. Sudan was certainly providing some unexpected twists, but not the kind of ones we'd expected (if that makes sense). And it didn’t stop there.

As we cruised into the border town of Wadi Halfa to look for some lunch, I was ready for the notoriously basic Sudanese diet which I'd heard about, which supposedly consists almost solely of fuul, a sludgy brown bean stew. More nonsense! In the first restaurant we came to, there was a veritable feast of goodies bubbling away. They had orange potato stuff, brown meaty broth, an oily red vegetable stew, and loads of other stuff. And it was all delicious. Sudanese cuisine seemed brilliant to me, and by this point, I hadn't even found the piece de resistance (in my baked-goods-obsessed opinion) which are legemat, or 'breakfast donuts'. That's right! They have delicious fresh donuts smothered in sugar....for breakfast. The only problem is, they're not served for long so I had to get up early to find them. But it's worth it. Even on our first rest day in a small town called Dongola, I was hungrily prowling the streets by 7am.

And whilst we're on the subject of baking, another familiar foodstuff that I keep finding in is Lyle’s Golden Syrup. It's the only British import I've found, and I find it very confusing. It's always in small grocery stores in amongst local staples, and often in large supply, but I never see anyone buying it, and I can’t work out what the locals would possibly use it for. Not for baking presumably as most people don't have ovens.

Anyway, back to cycling. The day after arriving in Wadi Halfa we set off southward with brand new chunky off road tyres fitted on the bikes, and few African additions to our equipment including water filters, anti-malarials, and a healthy stock of emergency instant noodles. With the cool wind behind us and the good road ahead, it looked as if the gateway to Africa might actually let us through without a fight. We were covering well over 100km a day with no trouble and at one point the wind was so good that I used my fleece as a makeshift sail and managed to keep up 20km/hr without peddling. The terrain was flat and the road stuck close to the Nile, occasionally dipping into the desert and emerging back out next to the water after 10-20km. Egypt’s broad and voluptuous ‘Nile Valley’, had now slimmed down into the more modest but still beautiful ‘Nile Corridor’. Only a few palm trees and the odd cultivated field now bordered the river, before the desert took over, stretching away as far as the eye could see in low black rocky hills, and bare sandy plains.

The entire north of the country was desert, and seemed very sparsely populated. The peace and solitude was a welcome change after Egypt, although it did raise some concerns about finding water sources. On the first day, we had gone 70km before we came to the first small settlement of low mud-brick buildings. Outside near the road, were four huge clay pots filled with water that looked like ancient roman amphora (see photos), sitting in a kind of giant test tube rack. These things as we soon discovered, were Sudan’s answer to public drinking fountains, and they were a real lifesaver. The water inside did seem a little murky at times, but we always filtered it, and that 70km is still the longest we've had to go before finding one of these water stations.

Even more easy to find, have been campsites – you just turn off the road at any given moment, walk for a minute or two out into the expansive nothingness of the desert and hey presto, you’re in a secluded and beautiful campsite. Unfortunately, camping in Sudan has also been problematic: Our pegs won’t stay in the sand. On the first night camping, I turned to our new friends to find out what they were doing about it and to my horror, all of them had freestanding tents (no pegs needed). ‘Bugger’, I thought to myself. Although we managed to use rocks to weigh down the pegs, I'm sure we'll end up somewhere without rocks before too long. On the second we camped near the Nile and the soil was a bit more compact and on the third night we dropped into a village and pitched up in someone’s barn.

This was our first proper chance to meet some locals and they were a great bunch. One guy got some tea on the go, and another came over and drew a big scorpion in the sand. He then rather alarmingly mimed ‘being stung’ and ‘dying’. I was definitely a bit more careful than usual crawling out my tent the next morning, but there were no scorpions, just some fresh goats milk. This was a bit disgusting, but a very nice gesture nonetheless. Some time after we left, I realised that the unusual thing about our visit to this village was that for once, we hadn't been mobbed by kids. They certainly knew we were there but must have been too shy (or well behaved) to come over. After the obnoxious stone throwing little brats of Egypt and Jordan, I had a lot of admiration for the respect we were given by these and all the Sudanese children we’ve encountered. They must be very curious about the weird Europeans on bikes, but they don't run at you, screaming and shouting and grabbing - they just wave and smile and say hello. And it's not hard to see where they get it from. The Sudanese in general, seem to us to have the most wonderful disposition: Reserved and understated, yet warm and friendly; Proud and dignified but at the same time without any arrogance or bravado. They give us plenty of space but always make us feel welcome, and often take the time to introduce themselves and ask a few questions about life in England. I'd heard about the poverty and political strife in Sudan, but the locals we met did not have the demeanor of a desperate or oppressed people. For one thing, we've felt absolutely 100% safe all the time, even riding all the way through Khartoum at night after misjudging our distances (and bear in mind, like all foreigners, we're carrying over $1000 cash becase we can't use ATMs or travellers cheques - and locals must realise this!). I understand things may be different in the tribal south or in Darfur which are the bits that usually make the headlines, but the relatively prosperous north where we've been travelling, it seems like an entirely separate country, which coincidentally, it soon may be.

So with persistance of favourable conditions, we made it down to Khartoum and said goodbye to our new cycling buddies who were taking a different route, and we also said goodbye to the desert which is now finally coming to an end. Somewhere on the last couple of days cycling toward Khartoum, gnarled thorn trees started to appear sporadically in the sand, followed by tufts of dry bleached grass. Both gradually increased until the landscape had morphed into a kind of dried out savannah. Arriving in our campsite on the banks of the Nile in the middle of town, we definitely need a little rest. Although the wind has kept temperatures down, the constant sun has been slowly irradiating our lower lips which have become painful and unsightly blistered messes. When we set off again, we'll be turning East toward Ethiopia and the 2000 metre climb up to the source of the Blue Nile (one of the two branches of the Nile). It's been almost two months since we've cycled up a hill, so we're not looking forward to this. Thankfully our old friend Nutella will be close at hand.

Into Africa

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 06:33:31 +0100

'"If I could work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding"'

Charles Dickens, 'A Christmas Carol'

Bah humbug! I hate spending the festive season in countries that don't know what a mince pie is, and this year was no exception. My Christmas Eve was like some kind of depraved scene from Trainspotting, on Christmas Day we were left homeless after being turfed out of a monastery in the dark, and New Year's was the most unpleasant day I've ever spent on a bicycle. And today we're off to a country where Sharia Law rules out most people's idea of festive fun (e.g. drinking = 40 lashes, adultery = death by stoning).

Even so, with boisterous fun-loving locals, plentiful sources of yummy street food, and idyllic postcard scenery, Egypt has been awesome. On paper, the long road from Cairo down the Nile looks like a congested nightmare. With the third highest population in Africa - almost all crammed into the Nile Valley - and the most frighteningly dangerous drivers so far, it was a pleasant surprise as we cleared Cairo, to find ourselves in a landscape of lush rural greenery. After so many weeks in the dusty deserts and hills of the middle-east, it all seemed bizarrly out of place, but wonderful to back amongst so much life. It was as if someone had peeled off a 900km strip of South East Asia - complete with palm trees, water buffalo, rickshaws, and rice paddys - and stuck it down in the middle of the Sahara. The tropical setting, in the pancake-flat terrain of the Nile floodplain, with the low humidity and non-existant rainfall of the desert, was in many ways a cycling paradise. The only problem was, we weren't really supposed to be cycling there. After a handful of terrorist attacks over the last two decades, and some well documented support for fundamentalism, the Egyptian authorities actively discourage independent travel in the Nile Valley. They especially disapprove of silly westerners cycling down it. However the British Foreign Office seem to think it's fine, so that was good enough for us.

On our first night, we turned off the main road to look for somewhere to camp. Every square inch of the ultra-fertile soils of the floodplain are intensively farmed on so it isn't easy. The few scraps of available land are normally right by the road, and so noisy, indiscreet, and therefore unsuitable. We stop at a farm and after much toing and froing we're directed up the road toward the police station, to ask for help. We'd spied a big pyramid out of the valley in the desert and were contemplating heading out to camp there but we got stopped at a police checkpoint on the way. I explained what we were up to and they weren't happy with the plan. 'Camping is forbidden', we were told, however there were no hotels nearby so they weren't sure what to do with us. The solution they came up with was to have us camp on the pavement, right outside the police station with an armed guard watching over us all night. This worked well. We cooked up some pasta for dinner and went to bed, safe in the knowledge that nosey locals and curious youngsters would be shooed away if necessary.

The next morning we thanked them, had some felafel for breakfast, and trundled off back to the main road. Before long, a car filled with police started tailing us. I'd heard of paranoid poilce escorting cyclists around but surely they wouldn't have the time and patience to do this for long - we were only going about 22km/h. It turned out they did have the patience, and we were faithfully escorted from that point onward, for almost the entire six day, 700km journey to Luxor. At one point, there was one police car cruising along in front of us, and a small truck of soldiers behind. Nine people all in all, armed with AK-47's, and 'protecting us from what?', I thought. The old men wobbling past on donkeys? The hoards of friendly children running out to say hello? It seemed utterly ridiculous. How in the world can Egypt spare the resources to babysit cyclists for days at a time when they seem to find it hard enough to manage basic services like rubbish collection? Goodness knows, but if I was an Egyptian taxpayer, I would be writing a very strongly worded letter to my MP. Fortunately I'm not, so I found the whole absurd thing rather entertaining.

We would have a few different escort teams each day, always with one guy in charge, who would invariably be a bit of a maverick, with cool sun-glasses or a non-uniform jacket to denote his authority. After half-heartedly suggesting we just load the bikes on to their vehicle, they would then preside over our day's cycle as if we were some kind of presidential envoy. Taking it very seriously, they were always courteous but ran a very tight ship. There would be no eating at non police-approved tea shacks or falafel carts, no going down off-the-beaten-track roads, no impromtu photo stops, and absolutely no camping. When we got to busy intersections, on went the sirens and we would speed through apologetically as the traffic ground to a halt. Should any local have the gall to come alongside us on a motorbike, donkey, etc to say hello, they would also get a swift blast of the sirens until they 'left the foreigners alone'. When Emily needed the toilet she had to be accompanied. When I paused to buy clementines, it became a ridiculous fiasco: I parked my bike and began to scuttle across the road between cars toward the fruit stall. The policeman was out of the car too though and nonchalantly walked into the middle of the road with one hand imperiously raised against the traffic, calmly informing me that he was a policeman so we don't need to run. 'What a cock', I thought to myself. I then started asking for some fruit, but was shushed by the policeman who proceeded to broker the deal for me. He drove a hard bargain - demanding 20p for a bag of clementines - and the fruit sellers erupted in protest. I handed over 40p feeling a bit embarrased. At lunch I was berated for making Emily carry 'so much' of our baggage.

As amusing as it all was, as evening approached, it would be time for the stressful daily search for a hotel. With up to 50km between towns big enough to have hotels, we often had to cycle into the night (very dangerous) in the name of safety, in order to find somewhere the police would be happy to let us stay. One day we set a new distance record (153km) doing this, and another day the police just gave up and dumped us on the doorstep of a monastery, who kindly gave us bread and a room for free. On Christmas Eve, we were left at a particularly filthy hotel, in an awful little town called Nag Hammadi. This was particularly depressing. Determined to have at least a token celebration, I sat in the mosquito-infested corridor drinking a warm beer wrapped in newspaper, with a roll-up out of my stale tobacco from Istanbul. Hardly mulled wine and mice pies but it was the best Nag Hammadi had to offer. On Christmas Day, we were heading for a monastery where perhaps we would find evidence of Christmas but when we got there in the evening we found out that in the Egyptian Coptic Christian calendar, Christmas isn't until the 7th of January. Seeing our obvious disappointment, a monk was quickly dispatched to rustle up some presents. One small carton of orange juice each. He then broke the news that we couldn't stay so it was back out for some more nighttime cycling.

New Years was even worse. We'd been abandoned by the police after a luxurious Christmas break in Luxor, it was a Friday so the kids weren't at school. With nothing better to do, most of them decided to terrorise us. Over the 110km between Luxor and a town called Idfu we were chased, spat on, hit with sugar canes, repeatedly told to 'fuck off', had rocks (and more sugar canes) thrown at us, and I had the spare tyre nicked from the back of my bike (which I fortunately managed to get back). I imagined the various scenarios that could unfold if I acted on impulse and gave one of them a good clout on the way past. Most ended badly for me, so I stoically ignored them, with only an occasional odd torrent of abuse when especially provoked. I wondered how one stretch of road could have such violent hostility when most Egyptians we'd met had been exuberant, but almost always friendly and polite. I'm convinced it wasn't just the lack of police, and guess it had something to do with the closeness to popular tourist towns, and that the exposure to rich westerners had bred resentment. In any case, I've tried not to let it colour my opinions Egypt. When you travel like this, searching out authentic character of a country behind their homogenised tourist industry, you have to take the bad with the good.

Today, we head for Sudan, and I'm almost as excited as I was leaving London. The land border is closed to tourists so we'll take the ferry across Lake Nasser, and finally leave the arab world behind. For the first time on this trip, we really have no idea what to expect. Sudan is the one country that's guaranteed to raise an eyebrow when I reel off the list of places we're going through. And it's true that when planning a cycling holiday, one should normally steer clear of places with climatic extremes, civil unrest, and a leader who's wanted by the ICC for war crimes. However, the north-east of the country is famous for its friendly hospitality and has some of the lowest rates of violent crime - not only in Africa - but in the world, so hopefully all will be well.

Egyptian Conniptions

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 06:45:10 +0100

"they came at last to the end of the living lands...So desolate were those places and so deep the horror that lay on them, that some of the host were unmanned and they could neither walk nor ride further"

JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

And so it was, with Europe knee deep in snow, we were trapped in a vicious sandstorm in the dark Mordor-like wasteland of Egypt's Sinai Desert, only 300km short of Cairo. With nowhere to shelter and no way forward or back, it was with regret that we had to be rescued by a passing pick-up truck, accepting our first lift since leaving home. Three days later, we rolled into Cairo, one third of the way through our journey, with only one continent, 12000km, and 24000 lions between us and our flight home. We now sit in a rented flat at the top of a run down suburban tower block, which we've transformed into a clothes washing, tent cleaning, bike maintenance factory, as we prepare to join the Nile and follow it south through the Sahara, until it spits us out in Africa. And after a grueling two of weeks of battling through horrid squiggly mountain roads, we're looking forward to being back on the banks of a river for a while.

On such a long journey, you have to strike a balance between going slowly enough to have fun, but fast enough to get to where you're going. When we left Damascus, the plan was to get our heads down, get back on schedule, and get to Cairo in a couple of weeks. But as usual, nothing quite went to plan. Cycling in Jordan was brutally tough. Fierce headwinds and the most ludicrously hilly terrain I've ever seen made for slow progress, and more than a couple of exasperated and profane roadside rants, decrying mother nature and what a 'bloody sh*t country Jordan is' (which I now wholeheartedly retract). The route we had chosen went through the heart of the country along a ridge between the Arabian desert in the east, and the descent down to the Dead Sea – the lowest point on Earth – in the west. The further we pressed south toward the Sahara, the drier and more inhospitable the land became. Horribly steep and dramatic gorges would come before us, winding down toward the Sea. My heart would sink, and distressed locals would inform us that the road through them was 'too dangerous' or just 'not possible by bicycle'. After stubbornly refusing to hop in their vehicles for a lift, we would spend entire mornings painfully proving them wrong in true stiff-upper-lipped British fashion. My altimeter told me that for one stretch we were doing the equivalent of cycling our fully laden bikes up Ben Nevis from bottom to top, every day for three days, against the wind. Sadistically grinding out the kilometers like this made it almost impossible to appreciate the magnificence and unique geography of this part of Jordan. When we stopped for a 'rest' day at a National Park to hike down into another gorge, I was so exhausted that I only managed to walk for 20 minutes before scoffing my pack lunch, and refusing to go any further ("i'm not spending a supposed rest day going up and down another f***ing gorge" I thought to myself). Fortunately, the culture of hospitality that we found in Syria, was also alive and well in Jordan. Whenever we decided to stop for the day, we could always count on a warm reception, wherever we might be. First a Jordanian buisnessman took us in, then a Palestinian mosque the next night; and a bedouin village the next. Every day we'd see a new side to Jordan's multicultural populace, and as usual, we rarely needed to camp. 'What will my neighbours think if they see you camping in my garden when I have a spare bedroom' our bedouin host exclaimed in horror when we asked to put up our tent. He was an English student and after his mother - a wise looking old matriarch with ritual tattoos on her face from her nomadic childhood - had rustled up some dinner, he took me to meet the rest of the village. They were a truly amazing bunch: carefree and happy, with the simple and welcoming, community orientated values of a traditional people, but also with a surprisingly modern outlook on life. Women could speak their minds (unusual in the middle east) and one scruffy looking guy who I assumed was a farmer of some kind, turned out to be studying political science in New York! Despite getting invited for dinner the next day with the chief, we had to push on.

When we crested the last hill before Jordan's southern border on the shores of the Red Sea, the glittering turquiose waters looked too good to be true. Then I saw a huge Burger King sign! I would have wept with joy if the dusty gale force winds had left any moisture in my eyes. Worried that it may be a mirage, brought on by wind and hill induced madness, I waited until the burger was actually in my hand before collapsing in celebration. The next day we had to take a boat across the water to Egypt as passing through Israel over the land border would have disqualified us from getting a Sudan visa. As is mandatory for British ferry passengers, I got some duty free cans of beer, which I drank whilst wandering around in my shorts like a twat.

Riding up the Egyptian coast, we were sandwiched between the Red Sea on one hand, and a wall of mountains on the other that we'd have to cross to get into the open desert. All signs of vegetation had been slowly disappearing since Syria, and the barren rocky slopes that rose above us really did look like Mordor. It was the very last place you would expect to find a pristine 18-hole golf course, yet that is exactly what we found as we looked for somewhere to stay the night before turning inland. 'Taba Heights' was a weird kind of place: A heavily guarded tourist enclave of luxury hotels, boutique shops, and restaurants. We had to show our passports at the gate, and once inside, it was as if we'd been teleported back to Europe. But all was not well. Behind the glitzy facade, Taba Heights was a tightly controlled holiday police state, in which camping - and the likes of us - were not permitted. The message was clear: If we weren't paying hundreds of dollars for a hotel, we could sod off into the desert. It seemed ironic that we had spent the last 3 months being welcomed in foreign lands, and now back amongst our own people and culture, we were persona non grata. As night fell, we sought assylum in the 'Traditional English Pub and Curry House' to have a pint, and assess our next move. Going back out into Mordor wasn't appealing, and after explaining our plight to the restaurant owner, he agreed to let us sneak upstairs and sleep on the roof. So after a curry and a couple of drinks, we crept up like a couple of fugitives and quietly inflated our air-mattresses. Hopefully we'd gone unnoticed. I nervously imagined the Holiday Inn gestapo beating down the door in the middle of the night – after receiving an anonymous tip off - and dragging us out, along with the complicit restaurant owner, to be executed at dawn. It was a beautiful night though and we remained undiscovered. I could see lights twinkling across the Red Sea on the coast-line of Saudi Arabia, and a thick blanket of stars overhead. Orion looked a bit wonky though, and I realised that we'd cycled so far now that the even the stars looked different. In the morning, we went to the nearest fancy hotel to abuse their buffet breakfast cart, before heading up the mountains and across the desert.

Camping that night, the desert was silent and the air was still. It was so nice to be out of the wind for the first time in two weeks but it didn't last long. Sometime in the night, we were woken up by galeforce winds battering our tent. In the morning it was clear that we were going to have a very bad day. The wind was almost too much to cycle in and we had to fight to keep balance, creeping along at only 6km/h. As the day wore on, things went from bad to worse and at some point, the heavy winds turned into a full blown sandstorm. The air was thick with dust, and waves of sand were streaking across the road at high speed, stinging our faces and arms and legs. Even with sunglasses on and our faces covered, the sand was working its way into our eyes and throats until we could barely see. Visibility in any case was down to a few metres, and eventually we had to get off and start pushing. We'd never get the tent up in these conditions, and at walking speed we wouldn't make it to the next village before night. We'd been declining lifts all day ("no, no, thanks very much but we're fine, really" I would scream over the noise of the tempest), but the situation was now getting ridiculous, and potentially dangerous so upsettingly, we had to jump on a passing truck. We got about 150km and it broke down, leaving us to pedal the last 20km into the town of Suez (of canal fame) where we holed up for two days waiting for the storm to die down. Suez is a squalid little place, and it was extremely frustrating to be stuck there, only 130km from Cairo. There was a KFC though, so it was bearable, just.

Riding into Cairo was pretty hairy. But I felt better when I saw another cyclist riding the wrong way through three lanes of traffic, balancing an enormous tray of pitta breads on his head. I have been to Cairo once before during my gap year, after working on a banana plantation in Israel. I was quite a sorry sight, with no money and no idea what I was doing. I remember thinking that one day I'd have to come back when I had a job, and wasn't in such a state, and see Egypt properly...Now, 10 years later, here I am again with no money, and in more of a state than ever. But I wouldn't have it any other way. As we set off out of the so called cradle of civilisation, and into the cradle of humanity, I haven't the foggiest idea what to expect. What little I know about Africa comes mostly from wildlife documentaries and TV charity appeals. In fact I probably have a better understanding of the surface conditions on Mars than I do of most of the places we'll be riding through in Africa. We will be doing some research though. When we arrive in Luxor in south Egypt, I am expecting Santa Claus (aka Emily's dad) to have Fed-Ex'd our Christmas list of literature, maps and bike stuff to a convenient postal depot so we can do some last minute swotting-up on what the hell we're about to get ourselves into.

Until then, Merry Christmas!!

Stats so far:

Days on the road: 109
Kilometers: 6258
Average Distance per [cycling] day: 81.3km
Average Distance per day including rest days: 57.4km
% of total distance done: 34.8%
Longest day: 143km
Highest Poınt: 1720 metres (Taurus Mountain pass)
Top Speed: 64km/h

Sheiks, Rugs, and Chick'n'Roll

Sat, 27 Nov 2010 20:25:45 +0100

In Syria, resistance is futile. All daily normality and forward planning must be abandoned, and cyclists must submit to wonderful non-stop chaos. Since leaving the relative tranquility of Turkey, strange and unpredictable events are becoming the norm. A couple of days ago I found myself sitting in the desert on my tarpaulin 'picnic blanket', about 100 miles from the Iraqi border, making banana and nutella sandwiches for lunch. Only now in retrosprect, from an internet cafe in Damascus does this seem like a slightly odd thing to be doing. At the time, it was just the latest in a stream of surreal Syrian experiences. The only constant has been the people. I can honestly say that they're the most pathologically friendly people I've ever come across. The extremist form of hospitality that pervades their culture is humbling, charming, and a wee bit unnerving all at the same time.

But before I get on to that, I'll pick up where I left off last time, in Turkey, as we set off to cross the Taurus mountains and head for the border. The long climb up to 1720 metres (a new altitude record) was made up for by the scenery, and when we set up our tents at the foot of the tallest mountain in the range having reached the pass, we were confident that the worst was behind us. But, we didn't realise how cold it would get up there and even wrapped up in sleeping bag, hat, gloves, and mutiple layers, it was the coldest night I'd ever spent in a tent. In the morning I felt half dead, and crawled out of the tent to find it had been encased in shell of icy frost. After scraping it off and packing up, we rode away with a grizzly determination to get out the mountains and spend the next night in warmer weather. 12 hours and 143km later (another new record), we were in a different world. We'd cruised all the way down to sea level, to the ancient roman city of Tarsus, near the shores of the Med. But as we raced to get there before dark, I hit a pothole and my inner tube blew up dramatically, leaving us to mend it and cycle the remaining 15km in the dark. Needless to say, the tent stayed in its bag that night, as we sought out a hotel with room service, and collapsed.

The remaining few days to the Syrian border went quickly and somewhat disappointingly. There probably won't be a country that we spend longer in than Turkey and we loved every [dog-free] minute, so it was sad to spend our last few days rushing through nasty industrial heartland on busy smokey roads. However, we never get much time to dwell on things and the excitement of crossing a new border soon took over. As we cycled through a long winding valley of no-mans land between the Turkish and Syrian borders, we weren't sure what to expect as we approached the notorious 'rogue state'. After a lengthy battle to persuade the border officials to let us in without registration numbers on our bikes (consisting of lots of men in uniform shouting 'BISSICLAYT' and other stuff in arabic at me for 20 minutes), it was almost dark when we eventually crossed the border. We stopped at the first place we came to - a restaurant - to try and camp. There were no customers and the chef was shooting small sparrow-like birds in some trees out the back. They staff insisted it was too cold to camp outdoors (a reccurring theme in Syria) and we were shown into the restaurant storeroom which we quickly converted into a bedroom. It was a lovely warm welcome to Syria but we were annoyingly kept awake all night by a swarm of hungry mosquitos and a man who was screaming in arabic at the top of his voice until about 2am, because he kept losing at cards (I know this because I was spying on him through a window to the restaurant).

When you only travel at 20km per hour, things usually change very slowly, but when we set off into Syria the next day, the terrain seemed immediately unfamiliar. The awesome natural beauty of Turkey had transformed into a hazy and stereotypically middle-eastern landscape of low, dusty, rocky hills and plains, with sandy coloured settlements dotted around the place. Fortunately through, the lack of natural wonder was made up for by the historical wonders. It's impossible to cycle for long here without stumbling across some kind of magnificent ancient ruin, from Crusader castles and Byzantine ghost towns, to Roman temples, and places where biblical stuff supposedly happened. Cycling through them has the same effect as looking up at a starry night sky. You forget that you're hungry and sweaty and wearing the same socks for a third day in a row, and realise what an awesome bigger picture we're all a part of.

On our first day in Syria, we went past the 1500 year old church of St Simeon, once the biggest church in the world. Simeon apparently found the locals so intense that he built an 18 metre stone pillar in the middle of nowhere to live on top of, just to get a bit of peace. After spending a couple of weeks here, I can kind of sympathise with him although I'm not sure he deserved to become a saint just because he was really anti-social. We pushed on from here to the city of Aleppo where we met up with Yorg (German), Gregoire (French), and Richard (english), a few other cyclists we met in Turkey who were also heading toward Egypt. We decided to carry on together for a while and cycled out of Aleppo en masse. Having been quite disciplined in the distance we were covering in Turkey, it's all gone out the window in Syria. This is partly due to all the 'must see' attractions, and partly because of the logistical delays of cycling in a bigger group, (or the four P's as I like to call them - punctures, poos, phood, and photos). Most of all though, we've been waylaid by the astounding friendliness and hospitality of the locals. Whatever the US Department of Homeland Security might say about Syria, all I can say is that it's felt like the safest country we've been to and we've been treated like royalty. We've not needed to pay for a single hotel (outside Aleppo and Damascus), and I've regulalrly been in serious pain after all the food that's been forced down my throat by the well meaning families who've taken us in for the night.

It happens like this: In the day, we're bombarded with shouts of 'Welcome to Syria', and flagged down time and time again by people inviting us for tea and a chat. Sometimes we also get shot at by kids with BB-guns, and I get to do my shouty grown-up act. Then as night draws near, we start to look for somewhere to camp. The wild land that we've seen in Syria is generally dusty, exposed and rocky, and therefore unsuitable for camping. Olive groves however are plentiful, sheltered, discreet, and have nice soft ground. These are Syria's camsites par excellence, but the trouble is, out of courtesy you have to ask the owner / farmer before pitching there, and once that happens, there is almost no chance you'll be allowed to stay outside in 'the cold', or eat your own food (however much you just want to chill out with the nutella you've just bought, and not eat more olives and yogurt and cheese and bread).

On the first night out of Aleppo we stopped at an olive grove owned by the Baroums, an extended family of crane drivers and olive farmers consisting of six brothers, and their wives and kids. The family home was a few kilometers away and Ahmed, one of the brothers, was fast asleep in a little farm house with the TV blaring in the background. We stomped around loudly for a while trying to 'accidentally' wake him up but soon lost patience and gave a few clanging knocks on the open metal door. Ahmed woke with a start, and before we knew it we were sitting on cushions, glugging down tea and trying out the local cigarettes. Because there were five of us, it was dark, and their home was far away, Ahmed had no choice but to let us camp that night, but in the morning we were escorted by car to meet the rest of the family (all 25 of them). Emily was shooed off through a door to the womens quarters (not the only time this has happened!) and the rest of us were led into a large men-only living room to sit down with the other brothers and their kids. A lavish breakfast was soon brought out which we devoured, and more cigarettes, which we had to refuse (smoking seems to be a national pasttime in Syria). The Baroums were so excited to have guests from Europe, and we were delighted to be there, so the morning dragged on and it was a very late start when we finally got going. At sunset that evening, we arrived at the town of Al-Barra which lies next to a ghostly and ancient abandoned Byzantine city, now overgrown with olive trees. The plan was to camp in the ruins but when we stopped to ask a local whether it would be ok, that was it. We simply had to come home with him - It was apparently much too cold to camp. The head of the household spoke no English and looked like a giant teddy bear with a huge beaming smile. I never worked out what he did for a living but he worked in Lebanon and was definitely more well off than most Syrians we met. Up on his roof terrace we sat down and tea was brought out with plates of fruit, nuts, and chocolates. As we polished of the nibbles, one of the kids lit up a pile of wood and started BBQing skewers of freshly slaughtered sheep (there was festival on at the time where everyone in Syria kills and eats their sheep!). Soon, more plates were arriving - houmous, salads, bread, falafel, cheese, rice - and the meat was brought over. The family weren't eating. It was all for us and we were the centre of attention for the whole night. After dinner we were taken inside and given tea, coffee, and more fruits and chocolates. I couldn't believe it. I wondered do they do this whenever a traveller comes by? Haven't we totally ruined their evening plans? Are they doing this out of a sense of obligation or are they genuinely pleased to have us? (I decided the latter was true). The next day, we had an enormous breakfast and a morning of guided tours of the local ruins. It was a magnificent experience and the only slight hiccup was when I got out my map late in the evening to ask what he thought of cycling to Lebanon. The giant teddy clearly thought Lebanon was great, and as he mused over the map he got suddenly excited when he came to the border area between Lebanon and Israel. Smiling, he waved his fists in the air shouting, 'Hezbollah, Hezbollah' whist making missile noises and pointing to Israel. I laughed nervously and swiftly moved the conversation on to road conditions. We couldn't have asked for a better reception from the Syrian people, but the the constant attention was also quite exhausting. On the following night, a tummy bug had started to go round the group, and we wanted a night out of the spotlight, to lounge in our tents and get to bed early. It wasn't easy though. It took a long time to persuade our next hosts - more farmers - that we wouldn't be cold and that we really love sleeping in our tents. The remaining days to Damascus continued in this way, alternating between spending the nights in family homes, and desparately trying to persuade them that we just wanted to camp. Even though it all got too much at times, I will never forget the way we've been treated here and will always regret that we can't can't even speak enough Arabic to thank properly.

When we finally rolled into Damascus after our whistlestop tour of Syria, I needed two things: My first wash in 5 days, and some peace and quiet. First stop, Nureddin Hammam - Damascus's 900 year old traditional (i.e. men only) bath house - but as I should have guessed being in Syria, there were surprises in store and no chance of the relaxing soak I had been dreaming of. I was shown into a big domed marble room filled with thick steam and the door was closed behind me. Stumbling to the wall, I had to sit down on the floor to find breathable air, and also found that the room was lined with marble bird-bath looking thingys filled with water. After steaming myself and sloshing some water around the place, I emerged and was led into a room where a big hairy man gave me an 'abrasive' rub-down with a sandpaper-like glove. Then into a room where an even bigger, even harier man 'massaged' (read: 'beat the shit out of') me. Finally, I was given a soothing cup of tea and ejected back into the hubbub of Damascus's medieval souk. I felt relaxed and invigorated for the first time in quite a while.

The souks of Syria are magical places of winding alleyways and bustling covered streets, filled with everything imaginable. Each bit has it's own niche speciality. There are areas for having stuff welded to other stuff, one section devoted solely to caged tropical birds, and places to discreetly grab some kinky lingerie for your burka clad wife. Sadly, I can't afford to carry any more crap than I already have, so I had to studiously ignore all the intriguing Arabic treasures...with a couple of exceptions. I couldn't resist a kilo of peanut brittle, and half a kilo of dates, both of which cost next to nothing. With my front bag full of this energy giving goodness we'll soon be setting off to the Jordanian border, 110km south of Damascus to begin cycling our last country before we officially reach Africa!!

Stats so far:

Days on the road: 88
Kilometers: 5282

Average Distance per [cycling] day: 79km

Average Distance per day including rest days: 60km

% of total distance done: 29%

Most days in a row without washing: 5
Longest day: 143km (In Turkey, from Cukerbag at in the Tauruses, to Tarsus at sea level)

Highest Poınt: 1720 metres (Taurus Mountain pass)

Top Speed: 64km/h
Weirdest Food: Turkish Chicken Pudding (rice pudding but with ground chicken instead of rice)

Most impressive fellow cycle tourer we've met: Bill, a retired Chinese power station engineer travelling the world on a fold-up Brompton style bike with hardly any luggage.

More Turkish Delights

Sat, 06 Nov 2010 20:45:40 +0100

Old Islamic Proverb: ‘He is not a believer who eats his fill while his neighbour remains hungry’

For most of the last week we've been in the sunshine, crossing the rolling grassy steppe of Central Turkey on blissfully quiet country roads. We also recently passed the 4000km mark! All in all, perfect cycling, apart from the steep highland roads which frequently go above 1300 metres. A few days ago, we passed a dishevelleled looking shepherd on one of these roads who inexplicably said 'G'day mate' in a thick Australian accent. I burst out laughing, thinking that a passing Aussie must have taught him to do this, but it turned out that he'd spent 10 years sheep farming in Australia and had now returned to his village. We'd had so many interactions with locals that had consisted only of tea and miming, and it was great to be able to communicate properly for a change. I told him how amazed I was at the kind heartedness and generosity of his people, and he quoted the above proverb to me. I realised that unlike the Christian equivalent of 'love thy neighbour' back in the UK, the idea of sharing and helping people is a strong guiding principle in everyday life here.

Luckily for us, 98% of Turkish people are Muslim, and their definition of neighbour seems to extend to 'random English cyclist', so over the last week, we've been fed, watered, put up for the night, and generally met with the most incredible hospitality wherever we've gone. And not just in sleepy villages where you may expect that kind of traditional courtesy, but in hotels, petrol stations and elsewhere. It's been overwhelming in fact, although sometimes it can get a bit much, like I was flagged down by a roadside fruit seller who insisted on giving me a giant melon to take on my way. This is obviously not the most appropriate gift for a long distance cyclist but I still had to squeeze it into a pannier and say thankyou.

Melons aside, the only real complaint over the last week has been the dog situation. It's not good. In fact, Emily was almost mauled the other day. In the rural higlands that we've been cycling in, there's a lot of sheep farming and consequently, a lot of sheep dogs. The breed of choice is the infamous Kangal - Turkey's national dog - which locals sometimes fit with a horrific medieval looking spiked metal collar. It's actually hard to convey in words how scary these dogs can be when they're angry. Unlike our shaggy Brıtısh sheep dogs, Kangals - as wikipedia puts it - are 'not herding dogs, but rather flock guardians'. They're also so vicious that they can apparently be trained as 'specialised wolf killers' and their 'overwhelming size and strength' has made them popular illegal fighting-dogs. They've even been exported to Namibia to protect livestock from cheetahs!

With this in mınd, you can imagine that it can be a bit unnerving cycling through a countryside, choc-a-bloc wıth free ranging Kangals, fiercly protecting their flocks. One afternoon, we had just passed a particularly disturbed (and blood stained) Kangal and were very keen not to wild camp. There were no villages nearby but just before it got dark we spotted a farm and the owners were happy to let us put our tent up across the field from their farm house. As we set up the tent, a man came over from the farm wıth some lamb stew and bread. As he gave us the food, he was trying to tell us somethıng about dogs...there was a lot of animated miming that didn't make much sense and I decıded that he was probably sayıng 'don't worry about my dog, I've tied him up so he won't bother you'. I smiled and said 'ok, thankyou' in Turkish and he smiled back wandered off. I had got it badly wrong though. In retrospect I would now guess that he was actually trying to say, 'my brother wıll be back any mınute wıth our sheep and then there'll be seven utterly vicious Kangals on the loose outsıde the farmhouse. Don't whatever you do come over without warning or they'll go nuts'. Unaware of the mortal danger we were in, we ate the stew ın our tent as ıt got dark and Emıly pottered off in the direction of the farmhouse to return the stew pot. All I heard from inside the tent was furious barking, followed by Emıly screaming, followed by men shoutıng and more barking. I feared the worse but the men had got to Emily just in time. Emily descrıbed it as the most terrıfying experience of her life. All seven dogs (wıth the spiked metal collars) had suddenly surrounded her in the dark and were growling and leapıng up at her. Immediately though, three men had burst out of the farmhouse with big sticks and beaten back. They had to ferret Emily away into the house until the dogs calmed down and the farmers were all quite shaken up, as if Emily had had a lucky escape. She was duly returned, unharmed, and I was chastised for letting her walk over alone into the pack of dogs. It was difficult to sleep with the dogs prowling around the tent, and when nature called at about 4am, we were almost too terrified to leave the tent. In the morning one of the men came over - armed again with a big stick - to escort us over to the house for breakfast. We both cowered nervously behind him until we were snuck past the dogs and into the house.

After this, we made sure not to camp anywhere where we may come across dogs. In one village there happened to be an English speaker who used to run a kebab shop ın Kent so he arranged for us to sleep in the local school for the night. The vıllage 'boss' (as he was referred to) bought us as many teas as we could drınk from the tea house, and the village kids piled ın to our room to help us make our beds. This is definitely better than camping in open country.

Right now we're in Capadoccia, one of Turkey's main tourist attractions, which is an area of valleys filled with surreal other-worldly volcanic rock formations and cave dwellings. It's beautiful, but having been off the beaten track for a week, paying tourist prices again is really irritating me and I'm eager to get back on the road. Especially because all that now lies between us and the warm waters of the Mediterranean are the Taurus Mountains. The high peaks have been looming up on the horizon for a few days now and tomorrow we'll finally be heading over the top, as it were, to begin the final push through the mountains and down to the Syrian border. With a bit of luck we won't have to camp up there, but if we do, at least we'll be able to dream of cruising down into 25°C temperatures when we're wrapped up in hats and gloves in our sleeping bags.

Notes From a Turkısh Truck Stop

Sat, 06 Nov 2010 20:49:12 +0100

We're currently holed up ın the cafe of a petrol statıon wıth a load of mıddle aged Turkısh truck drıvers after mısjudgıng our dıstances and gettıng caught ın the mıddle of nowhere at nıghtfall. Fortunately, they've let us pıtch our tent on a patch of grass next to the forecourt but ıt's a crystal clear nıght up at 900 metres altıtute on the Central Turkısh plateau and the temperature ıs dıppıng below zero so we're hangıng out at an ınternet termınal ın the cafe, neckıng a few cups of tea untıl bed tıme when we'll don a couple of base layers and make a dash to our sleepıng bags.

Progress sınce my last blog a few days ago ıs as follows: To save ourselves from another near death experıence on Istanbul's maın arterıes, we opted for a ferry rıde across the Marmara sea from the centre of town. We were then understandably punıshed by the cyclıng Gods for thıs 40km of 'cheatıng' wıth a gruellıng 500 metre clımb and two days of torrentıal raın. The raın was unbelıevable and we were ınıtally tempted to hıde out ın a hotel for a day untıl ıt subsıded, but we decıded that we were probably beıng a bıt wet, and that thıs was perhaps normal weather for thıs tıme of year. So we hıt the road. However, half way up the fırst 500 metre clımb, I saw locals wıth theır camera-phones vıdeoıng ragıng brown water gushıng down from the mountaıns and I realısed thıs was not just a run of the mıll Autumn shower. All over the place, newly created rıvers of thıck brown water were blastıng theır way through fıelds and copses of trees, at tımes floodıng the road and almost knockıng us off our bıkes. It remınded me of all the home footage that was released after the 2004 tsunamı (but obvıously not as bad as that).

There was a old walled cıty called Iznık 45km away that we were desperately aımıng for and my head was fılled wıth romantıc vısıons of the bedraggled and weary traveller shoutıng up to a guard on the battlements beggıng for a place to stay. We were - as ıt turned out - a couple of thousand years late for that but were greeted by an equally appealıng neon green sıgn sayıng 'Hotel Istanbul'.

The raın contınued the next day and wıth the temperature droppıng ıt wasn't long before we were freezıng and agaın, desperately lookıng for shelter. Rıdıng through the hılls, there was no sıgn of any large settlements on the map but before long we came across a tıny vıllage. No one was out, and there were apparently no shops so we headed for the mosque and found a tea house next door, fılled wıth the usual gaggle of kındly old men. Nobody spoke a word of Englısh but they beckoned us ın, very concerned about how cold and wet we were. Most of these tea shops have a wood burnıng stove ın the mıddle and thıs was no exceptıon - we were soon posıtıoned paınfully close to the furnace wıth hot cups of tea and cake. The old guys weren't fınıshed though. One dısappeared off to take Emıly to the toılet ın hıs house (because there was only a urınal ın the bathroom due to the exclusıvely male clıentel of Turkısh tea shops). The tea shop owner started lookıng at my map and mysterıously scrawlıng lots of Turkısh words (place names maybe? I never found out) on bıts of card for me to take. Then the fırst guy returned from the toılet trıp clutchıng a freshly pressed paır of trousers and ınsıstıng I put them on over my shorts. Emıly was gıgglıng and wearıng a gıant suıt jacket over her top. By thıs poınt I had vırtually roasted myself on the wood burnıng stove so was polıtely tryıng to refuse, but he was extremely determıned. I really dıdn't want to muck up hıs nıce chınos but he was shoutıng and thrustıng them ın my face and eventually he got down on the floor and started pawıng at the release clıp for my cyclıng shoe straps. Understandıng now that I had no choıce, I took my shoes off myself and pulled on the trousers. Placated, he fınally sat down and we enjoyed a few cups of tea whılst we warmed up and prepared to face the raın agaın. Then came the customary battle to try and pay for our tea and cakes whıch, as usual, I lost. Thankıng them all profusely for theır hospıtalıty I went to take off the trousers but the old guy wasn't havıng any of ıt. He lıterally trıed to force me out the door to contınue cyclıng ın hıs trousers. Thıs was hospıtalıty on an entırely new level to anythıng I have ever experıenced. He only admıtted defeat when the tea shop owner had a gentle word ın hıs ear, possıbly to ınform hım that chınos aren't really acceptable long dıstance cyclıng wear. I loved thıs vıllage and wısh I could go back there every day!

Slıghtly tırıng of the raın, I just checked the weather and to my delıght ıt's now goıng to be sunny for a whole week whıch ıs just what we need to get across the cold but beautıful grassy hıghlands and rocky mountaıns between here and Syrıa.

I'm goıng to have one more tea, then bed.