Hi! I’m Tom, originally from England, but the island was too small.
For 20 years I’ve been exploring the world by bike at every chance I get.
Why? Simply put: because it’s the closest thing you’ll find to pure freedom!
Here at TomsBikeTrip.com I share hard-earned lessons about cycle touring and bikepacking, tell original stories, and road-test new ideas.
A love of adventure has powered my 100% AI-free blog since 2006, when I first decided to travel the world by bicycle and write about it.
Welcome!
The blog: over half a million words of hard-earned, hand-written cycle touring & bikepacking advice.
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Rest And Recuperation In Gondar, Ethiopia
I spent four days in Metema. The mild symptoms of malaria were the lesser of my concerns. More worrying was the stiffness and soreness that quickly appeared in my legs, as if somehow sparked off by the unexpected parasites. By the evening of my arrival, my lower calves were sore and stiff, causing some discomfort when walking. The following morning, after wishing my temporary Austrian companion a safe journey to Sudan, I could barely hobble from my tiny mud-walled room to the latrine across the stony yard. The hotel proprietor, an older woman assisted by her daughters, interrogated me in… Continue reading →
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When Things Go Wrong, How Do You React?
My six days in Khartoum had been somewhat surreal, to say the least. Barging through the dark, dusty, unpaved back streets in a big white United Nations four-by-four, passing observers would have assumed me and my host to be rushing to assist in some nearby international crisis, unaware that we were actually trying to find the district’s only Chinese restaurant to get some fried noodles and a bowl of tofu soup… In a quiet health club studio, incense candles burning, I giggled in embarrassed discomfort as a Thai woman inserted her elbows deep into my aching leg muscles. (My mirth was partly… Continue reading →
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Hard Days in the Sahara
“Four days”, I said to George when he asked me how long it would take to ride to Khartoum. “Depending on how hard I ride, but I think four days is about right.” I had met a rag-tag band of other travellers in the small hotel in Dongola — from Austria, New Zealand, Singapore and England. They’d met on the boat from Egypt a week after I’d made the same voyage. That had been yesterday, and they’d taken the overnight bus to Dongola, covering in a few hours much of the ground through which I’d spent 8 days crawling. Continue reading →
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Biking The Nubian Desert
I rode out of the tiny outpost of Wadi Halfa into the fading light and into the Sahara desert of northern Sudan. I had no map, no guidebook, no sun cream, no insect repellent. A lone man stopped me on the outskirts of the village, his head and body robed and wrapped in loose white cotton which flapped in the brisk evening air. “There are wolves in the desert”, he warned me. “Wolves!!! Do not stop! Do not camp!” Continue reading →
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Along the Egyptian Nile to Luxor
The direction to ride after Cairo was uncertain. I’d been juggling the options for weeks. Previous attempts at the Nile had resulted in police convoys to ‘safer’ places. The Red Sea Coast route didn’t appeal to me after the ugliness and monotony of its opposite shore, and the Western Desert route, beautiful, quiet and remote, would constitute a long, if tempting, detour. But in the end, it wasn’t ’til I was weaving through Cairo’s downtown traffic, Sudanese visa stuck firmly in my passport, that I made my choice. Despite the previous failed attempts, I would try and ride the Nile. Continue reading →
Books, eBooks & Guides
I’ve written a range of guidebooks and travelogues to read at your leisure, whether you’re preparing for a bike trip, living life on the road, or home and dreaming of the next big ride.
How To Hit The Road: A Beginner’s Guide To Cycle Touring & Bikepacking
First published in 2017 and updated in 2021, this book is my comprehensive newcomers’ introduction to the art of the bicycle-mounted adventure.
Every aspect of a cycle tour or bikepacking trip is covered in 34 chapters, split over three parts: pre-trip planning, initial execution, and adapting to the long haul.
As well as broad, practical advice, I’ve woven inspiring and reassuring anecdotes throughout the book – because getting away from the starting line isn’t about knowing everything, but having the confidence to begin.
Drawing on my personal experience of almost two decades of adventure cycling, more than 50 veteran riders from diverse backgrounds have also contributed to this guide, making it one of the most well-rounded introductions you’ll find to this radically liberating form of independent travel.
Whatever you’re planning and wherever you’re going, if it involves a bicycle and the spirit of adventure, How To Hit The Road has got you covered.
Janapar: Love, on a Bike
My first travelogue, originally published in 2013 and the subject of a successful crowdfunding campaign, telling the true story of my first 3½ years on the road.
This was far from your typical long-distance bike tour, however. From the cover blurb:
When twenty-three-year-old Tom Allen and his friends set off from their English village to cycle around the world, they were expecting physical hardship, extreme conditions and a serious case of culture shock. But the hours spent poring over maps could never have prepared them for the experience of life on the road: the petty squabbles, the extreme hospitality, the unexpected joys and dangers.
And then Tom meets Tenny, a feisty Iranian-Armenian girl with dreams of her own, and hits a crossroad. Should he give up his grand plan for the girl he loves, or cycle off and risk missing out on the greatest adventure of them all?
Temporarily out of print (except in the USA), Janapar is still available as a Kindle ebook from all Amazon portals worldwide.