Two Years on the Road (September 2003)

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The Guardian is the only major newspaper to have taken an interest in my ride so far. This link takes you to a summary of my first two years. Many thanks to the Guardian, (despite my father's verdict of "lefty tosh"!)

(If you feel inclined to make a donation to the charity I am supporting please check out www.hopeandhomes.org)

Here are some more thoughts as I launch into year 3, plus a list of various "Top 10's"...

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'

Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

—Tennyson "Ulysses"

Two things have become apparent to me during the first two years of my
attempt to cycle around the planet. Firstly, in many ways, the world seems
very small - gossip from home on the email, the same music in every bar in
the world, David Beckham's haircuts discussed globally. Secondly, from the
seat of a bicycle, the world seems very large. Three more years of riding
until I arrive where I started (and know the place for the first time?) is a
daunting prospect indeed. Yet the further I ride the more I feel at home in
our world; places begin to feel more normal and the similarities easily
outweigh the differences, whether it be Vienna, Beirut, Khartoum, Nairobi or
Lima.

I left England rejoicing in England's 5-1 drubbing of Germany and set my
sights towards Australia. But the September 11^th attacks and the USA's
retaliation made my planned route through Afghanistan and Pakistan suddenly
seem rather less appealing. So in Istanbul I turned right instead and headed
for Cape Town. The aftermath of September 11^th made for exciting riding
through the Middle East. Three weeks hauling my bike through the 45�C desert
Sudan sands felt like a holiday compared with the stone throwing children of
Ethiopia and it's post-Live Aid culture of expectant, demanding begging.
Maasai men (the biggest posers I have ever met) looked enviously at my
straight yellow hair whilst I wondered at the vast holes in their earlobes.
A dollar-a-day budget saw me living on banana sandwiches; dull fare but I
still declined the offers of boiled mice on sticks in Malawi. Landmines in
Mozambique made heading into the bush to go to the loo less than relaxing,
whilst in Zimbabwe mad Mugabe's land redistribution policy (to himself
mostly) left me fearing that I was watching the beginning of an
irrecoverable decline in that most beautiful of African success stories. And
I thought that it would never happen, but one day Table Mountain eased over
the horizon, the champagne cooled in my pannier and eventually Africa was
behind me.

I hitched a lift on a 17 metre racing yacht, the renowned 'Maiden', and
joined in the "Cape to Rio" race over to South America. 24 days at sea saw
more time devoted to eating ceviche than to sail trimming. Offered £50
for the pleasure of wielding the scissors I succumbed to my first haircut in
18 months and allowed the sailor - well-oiled with caipirinha - to scalp me
before I did battle with the notorious howling winds of Patagonia. From the
southernmost city on earth, Ushuaia, I have been crawling northwards,
through the glorious south of Chile, Argentina's winelands and the world's
driest desert. I broke my previous record as I managed 24 days without a
shower. 4600 metre passes and �20�C nights helped pass the time as did some
entertaining, yet very cold, naked cycling across Bolivia's Salar de Uyuni,
one of several claimants to the title of "World's Largest Salt Lake". A
recent second haircut was prompted by a desire to look as un-druggy as
possible as I head towards the uncertainties of Colombia. After that awaits
the USA where I hope my English accent and Royal blood will help secure me
plenty of hospitality. The odd white lie never hurt anyone, did it? A quick
dash across Australia and Asia and I'll be back in Trafalgar Square before
you know it, or rather in three years time.

I entered the project with my eyes wide shut, dreaming of adventure and
exotic, far-off lands and blazing sunsets. I had subscribed to National
Geographic, read Bill Bryson and watched Michael Palin on the telly. So I
knew a thing or two about travel destinations. What I had omitted to
consider, however, was the 8000km between Trafalgar Square and the Pyramids,
the 12,000km between the Pyramids and Table Mountain or the 8000km between
Ushuaia and Machu Picchu. On a scale such as this the highlights shrink to
the size of bright stars in a vast night sky. It is the journey itself that
has to be the reward. All that lies between the destinations is the true
journey: the destinations are important merely to make the journey necessary
and give it some purpose. This is the biggest single difference between
cycling and backpacking where the sights listed in the Lonely Planet can
start to become little more than just a tick-sheet. I have ridden through
deserts and mountain ranges and mad Arabian mêlées and fiestas and African
funeral parades. Strange and extravagant sights and sounds (that break the
monotony) and unfathomable animated conversations on the street corners and
market stalls and cafés of the world are the fascination. Yet I am just
looking into someone else's normality at the vast ordinariness of all the
people of the world. Everywhere I ride through is only someone else's normal
Thursday afternoon. Indeed the reverse effect is also true, whereby I, an
ordinary English guy on a bicycle, becomes an exotic, extraordinary
spectacle to the people and places I am seeing, merely by being two years
out of my own natural environment.

The challenges of the first year on the road were the feelings of isolation,
of never belonging, of always moving on. The battles have been against
loneliness and boredom rather than against corrupt officials with large
moustaches, gun-toting child soldiers or unamusingly large mountains. This
second year I have grown accustomed to my choice of lifestyle. After two
years I feel that I could belong anywhere; every pause in every city leaves
me thinking, "I could live here, perhaps I should stop and settle down
here." There is so much normality in the world that you really can feel at
home wherever you choose to feel at home. It has been a warm, welcome
discovery to find that I can find something in common with almost everyone
in the world.

Generalizing a little, a great view is a great view, a sunset still a sunset
whether it be over a Roman temple or African village, the Pacific or the
Atlantic, Aconcagua or Kilimanjaro. I think therefore that the challenge of
my third year on the road, the ride up to Alaska, will be to try to keep my
sense of wonder and my wanderlust. The challenge has lost some of it's
appeal now that I realize that it is actually possible. I need now to
generate other ways to motivate myself, other metaphorical dangling carrots.
Perhaps a real dangling carrot would work?! I am sure though that, somehow,
I will keep myself moving on. I look at maps of the world through different
eyes these days, calculating in my head the time it would take to cycle
between cities or countries or continents. It is all feasible. The world is
not so big, even when seen from the saddle of a bicycle.

Top 10's of the first 2 Years...

COUNTRY

• South Africa
  
• Sudan
  
• Jordan
  
• Argentina
  
• Turkey
  
• Kenya
  
• Lebanon
  
• Zimbabwe
  
• Chile
  
• Lesotho
  

• Cape Town
  
• Rio de Janeiro
  
  
• Istanbul
  
• Budapest
  
• Beirut
  
• Belgrade
  
• Salta
  
• Amman
  
• Cairo
  
• La Paz
  

• Islamic Iftars (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan)
  
• Braais (South African barbecues)
  
• Asados (Argentinian barbecues)
  
• Cape to Rio race (Atlantic Ocean. It is no wonder we didn't win the race -
  we spent the whole trip eating. Thanks, Joel!)
  
• Njera (unique Ethiopian food. Usually revolting, but the good stuff can
  be really good)
  
  
• Saltenas (Bolivian Cornish pasties)
  
• Kebabs (sorry, Turkey and England: the best ones are in Damascus)
  
• Sausage sandwiches (Belgrade)
  

1. Petra (Jordan)
2. Abu Simbel (Egypt)
3. Baalbek (Lebanon)
4. Lalibela (Ethiopia)
5. Pyramids (Egypt)
6. Machu Picchu (Peru)
7. Valley of the Kings (Egypt)

• Carreterra Austral (Chile)
  
• Wadi Rum (Jordan)
  
• Table Mountain (South Africa)
  
• Dana (Jordan)
  
• Salar de Uyuni (Bolivia)
  
  
• Patagonia (Chile and Argentina)
  
• Victoria Falls (Zimbabawe)
  
• Tlaeeng Pass (Lesotho)
  
• Perito Moreno glacier (Argentina)
  
• Fitzroy (Argentina)
  
• Torres del Paine (Chile)
  
• Cappadoccia (Turkey)
  
• Coffee Bay (South Africa)
  
• Nile in the Sudan desert (Sudan)
  
• Blue Nile Falls (Ethiopia)
  
• Lake Titicaca (Bolivia and Peru)
  
• Lake Malawi (Malawi)
  

• Sudan
  
  
• Ethiopia
  
• Southern Chile
  
• Lesotho
  
• Northern Chile/Argentina
  
• Bolivia
  

• England 5 - Germany 1: my last day in England, Sevenoaks, Kent
  
• September 11^th 2001: cycling through Germany on my way to Afghanistan
  
• Beckhams's penalty against Argentina: in the Sheraton Hotel, Dar Es
  Salaam, where British Airways were foolishly offering free beer for any
  English people present. The place was packed!
  
  
• Declaring War on Iraq: blissfully unaware in Southern Chile
  
• Christmases: cycling in Jordan and relaxing in Cape Town
  
• Queen Mother's death: on my way to Lalibela, Ethiopia
  
• Queen's Jubilee: Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania
  

MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRLS

• Mendoza
  
• Rio de Janeiro
  
• Cape Town
  
• Beirut
  
• Belgrade
  
• Bolivia (...only joking!)
  

• Cape Town
  
• Nkhata Bay, Malawi
  
• Mendoza
  
• Rio de Janeiro (sleeping on a moving yacht doesn't help)
  
• Nairobi
  
• Amman
  
• Salta
  

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