"Hell is alone" —TS Eliot
"Hell is other people" —Jean-Paul Sartre

On George Bush: "Of course, Jesus and Evil Knievel don't consort too well in one psyche" —the New York Review of Books

Two years ago this all began and yet still I feel nervous and vulnerable every time I wake at the end of a break and realise that I have to get back on the bike, back on the road, back on my own. I rode into year three and the faint grey drizzle of grid-locked Lima's Monday morning rush hour. But compared to how I felt two years ago it was a positively joyous occasion. After the reckless extravagant hedonism of my three weeks with Rob (a Coke a day! Sometimes even more!) it was depressing to return to my ascetic normality. To return to the Pan-American Highway was even worse. George Orwell cheerfully described the future as "a heavy boot stamping on a human face - forever". The Pan-American Highway hauling north from Lima is perhaps not quite that bad but it certainly depressed the hell out of me. It must be even worse for the chickens reared in huge canvas tents alongside the road in the gloomy desert, force-fed on fish meal to fatten fast enough to keep up with Peru's insatiable appetite for chicken. These vast production lines almost depressed me into a relinquishing of carnivory.

Two days of grey nothingness left too much time for thinking and it was a relief to turn towards the fierce gradients of the mountains once again, to sit on a warm rock beneath a blue sky watching the shadows change on the hills as the sun set and a quiet breeze brought the sounds of the nearby village up to my hidden campsite in a small canyon. I was following a river valley up towards Huaraz, through small villages of green sugar cane and bright chillies like colourful carpets spread out to dry in the sun. I passed two children trying to enjoy one pair of roller skates, each limping along on one skate. In Barranca a man tried to sell me a suit cover. He seemed surprised that, as an Englishman, my panniers did not contain my tuxedo. I think he had been watching too many James Bond films.

For two days I rode upwards, my hatred of the flat ease of the Pan-American waning with each hairpin bend. Above the green villages and tiny cultivated fields was a bleak and desolate beauty; high, cold and silent. Ahead appeared the Huascaran mountain range; the highest peaks in the Tropics. Their white heights caught the dawn long before it reached me down at a mere 4000 metres above sea-level. I tried to enjoy a quiet breakfast looking at the mountains, but an old woman was busy abusing me (and even putting a curse on me) for not giving her any money. She assured me that I was very rich and that every gringo gave her money. She was so angry at me that I couldn't help but smile and that only made her madder.

People come to Huaraz to climb. I did the next best thing: I sat in Café California, drank coffee and read books about climbing. For months I have been umm-ing and aah-ing about whether or not it is worth the risk to try and ride through Colombia. Then twice in the same day I came across those famous words of Goethe (see below) and that decided it: I am going to Colombia.

The mountains around Huaraz are the most beautiful I have seen and the ride down the valley parallel to the range was a joy. I planned a cunning shortcut through the mountains to Cajamarca - a plan to keep me away from that awful Pan-American. When every local told me that my planned route did not exist it confirmed what really I already knew: from painful experience of my father's "shortcuts" on family outings I knew that shortcuts are rarely short. Instead of four days ride on paved roads and a climb up to 2750m, I ended up riding and walking for a week along dirt tracks and climbing up to 4700m!

The dusty track was hacked into the side of a cliff, high above a fast, dirty river where men panned for gold. I asked one man - a poor man dressed in rags - whether there was much gold in the river. "Mucho!" he cried, enthusiastically. I admired his optimism.

For anyone who knows Peru, a sign of how little this track was used was that for two days I did not see a single place selling fizzy drinks or a single building boldly painted with the name of a potential village mayor and an urging to vote for him or her ("Work not words!", "Clean hands and truth!", "Drinking water and televisions!" they promised).

There was little flat ground and so I embarked on a new pastime - sleeping on cliff edges. The nights were warm and I did not need my tent. Waking in the night I could guess the time by the position of the moon. At dawn, as Venus slowly faded, I would brew coffee, snuggled in my sleeping bag and admiring the spectacular downward view. They would not have been good nights to take up sleep-walking.

One evening I was laying out my sleeping bag on a very narrow and high footpath when an old lady in a magnificent hat came round the corner carrying a large bundle of twigs on her back. "Are you going to sleep here?" she asked. "Yes, lovely view isn't it?!" I replied enthusiastically. She continued on her way, unsurprised. Everywhere I have been on this trip the local people have been unfailingly unfazed by the eternally weird behaviours of gringos.

The fertile imagination of my cartographer in London continued unabated, rendering my map pretty and colourful but rather less than useful as a navigation tool. I had to rely on the animated discussions of villagers as to which way I should take. The general consensus was usually that it was impossible by bicycle. Much of their advice was based on little more than imaginations that my map-maker would have envied. Distances in Peru are given in hours not kilometres and it is an art to interpret them. Firstly, you must appreciate that more often than not the given answer is completely made up and is probably best ignored. Secondly, you must evaluate the probable state of the vehicle in which your helper is likely to have travelled in order to come up with your own estimate of the distance. I have at home a book from the Royal Geographical Society of 1892 full of handy hints for travellers. One piece of advice runs along the lines of "In Equatoria distances are given in hours not miles. By judging the stoutness of the fellow's legs one can reach one's own conclusions...". It seems that little has changed.

The shortcut was brutally tough and I pushed the bike uphill for two entire days. The track then dropped right back down to the river I had climbed up from and then proceeded to climb for two more days. It was tiring stuff. But the rewards were ample, finding in Pallasca my favourite place in Peru: a hilltop village of red-tiled adobe houses and villagers eager to host a rare gringo. Travel writing of the genre "they had never seen a gringo before" is tedious, but it is undoubtedly true that the further away you are from the Lonely Planet-clutching swarms of Israelis the more fun you will have. I listened to the old folk tell me tales of their lives, watched Baywatch on TV and, clustered around a crackling radio, cheered on Peru against Paraguay in a World Cup qualifying match. After the match (which to everyone's surprise and delight Peru actually won) the plaza was full of children playing football with an old plastic bottle, their ponchos flapping in the crisp night air.

An important update on the state of the ladies hats: we have moved from the rakish ridiculousness of the altiplano's bowler hat through straw boaters decorated with plastic flowers and now onto enormous Stetsons, unisex and approaching diameters of two feet. They are magnificent, though umbrella sales are thought to be struggling in the area.

I began the trek over the mountains towards Huamachuco. People said that it was too far, too high, not possible. What I like to do when planning something is to draw a line down a piece of paper. One half is for "Why this is not possible". The other half is for "How to achieve this". Then I scribble out the "Why this is not possible" side and think no more about it. I explained this to the villagers I was talking with but I think that they just thought that I was weird. One lady urged me not to go: "It is so very dangerous: there is absolutely nothing except silence! Oh the silence, it is horrible!" There were tales of terrorist lairs and robbers, but I had heard imaginative warnings like that so often that I did not pay much attention and set off pushing the bike up towards the pass.

I was struggling with the altitude, pausing to catch my breath every hundred metres or so. The track weaved around contours amongst the barren crags and dropped down into valleys and climbed over crests. The way was so rocky that I even had to walk the bike downhill occasionally. It was an empty and beautiful world, like a giant version of the Scottish Highlands, the beckoning silence pierced only occasionally by a bird's harsh shriek, feeble against the immensity of it all.

Hours later, a bus (coming from a different village) screeched to a halt in front of me and everyone leaped out and began tugging at me, yelling at me that I must turn around and return the way I had come immediately. Fifteen minutes ago the bus had been held up at gunpoint and everybody was freaking out. The driver was beeping his horn and revving his engine: he didn't fancy hanging about. Everyone jumped back on board and, with a cloud of dust, the bus disappeared, leaving me alone in the silence and very scared. I have often spoken confidently of how if something bad is going to happen it is going to happen and so there is no point worrying about it. But now I was very scared. And I made a decision which even at the time I knew was daft but now sitting here seems positively stupid. Rather than retrace my hard-earned steps I chose to carry on regardless.

The lady in the village had felt the nothingness of these mountains to be hellish, yet now I wanted nothing more than not to see another soul. I rode on, terrified, stopping to climb ridges to scout out each valley before I entered it. I camped secretly and without lights and moved on before dawn. For the next 36 hours I saw not one vehicle and could not decide if that was a good sign or not. I saw only three people and took care to hide from them all. Yet, despite my precautions I was still rattling along very slowly, in broad daylight, carrying a substantial value of possessions, along the only track in the area. Targets do not get much softer than that! It was a nerve-racking, unpleasant experience. However, with immense relief, I reached Huamachuco safely. Where the bad guys had gone I had no idea and did not really care.

However, I did learn one valuable lesson from my decision to persevere down that road, and that was that the integrity of this journey (i.e. riding every inch of the way possible) really does not mean as much to me as I thought that it did. I am not, as I had often thought in the dusty recesses of my mind, willing to risk life and limb for the sake of this bike ride. Bugger that: call me what you like, but if guys with guns are in the vicinity again then rest assured that I shall not be!

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:
The Incredible Voyage - Tristan Jones. The author decides to sail his boat on the world's lowest and highest pieces of water... and everything in between. Barking mad.

The Long Walk – Slavomir Rawicz. In 1941 Rawicz escaped from a Siberian labour camp and trekked to freedom... to India! Extraordinary

Visions of a Nomad – Wilfred Thesiger. In these photos Thesiger captures so many of the memories I have of my ride through Africa so much better than I ever could.

GOETHE had this to say:
"Until there is commitment, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: That the moment one definitely commits oneself then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.

A whole stream of events issues forth from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would come his way.

Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Begin it now."

AMERICAN PR: Do you know of anyone who would be able/willing to help with the fund-raising publicity of my ride when I enter the USA? Please contact me

Questions?
If you want more information about this area you can email the author or check out our South America Insiders page.