Category: Big Adventures

It was late April and the Ethiopian highlands had been rolling beneath my wheels for several days. Inching towards Djibouti, I consulted detailed road-engineers’ maps of the country to plan my route, and found an enticing-looking dirt track through the Afar region of the infamous Danakil Depression. I’d developed something of a romantic fascination with this remote bruise in the planet’s surface, a few hundred kilometres inland from the Horn of Africa. For it was here that it is widely thought that, hundreds of thousands of years ago, before farming, before writing, before metallurgy, the ancestors of you, me, Ghenghis… Continue reading →

I climbed the stairs to a small flat in a back alley of central Tehran and rang the doorbell. Tenny opened the door, stared at me blankly for a second, then jumped out of her skin in shock. Minutes later we were laughing happily together. The journey was over. We would spend the next few days tentatively getting used to being with each other again after six long months apart. In the two years since I left England I have had plenty of time to think about how life on the road has affected me. I don’t remember experiencing any… Continue reading →

Just as Tenny’s parents were readying the documents needed to issue a formal invitation for me to obtain a visa, the Iranian presidential elections took place, followed by a fortnight of diplomatic sniping which left Anglo-Iranian relations even more strained than before. I woke every morning to silence from the Iranian Foreign Ministry, and gradually my hopes of visiting Tenny’s family in Tehran began to dwindle. I cursed the idiotic squabbling of these children who are supposed to be our world’s leaders, and, like Andy a few months ago, began to look into alternative ways to get back to my girl.… Continue reading →

As I wait in Dubai for my Iranian visa application to be processed, I’ve been watching the events portrayed in the international media of Iran’s elections and subsequent demostrations with a certain amount of frustration. I have deeper ties than most to the country. Not only did I spent several weeks travelling in Iran last year, but I did so with a girl who spent the first twenty-four years of her life growing up in Tehran, and to whom I’m now engaged. Having access to her very personal perspective on current events and the historical context that created them, as… Continue reading →

Today marks the second anniversary of my departure from my family home in England, and my twenty-sixth birthday. “None of us have any experience of cycle touring before, so this is really going to test our mental and physical endurance”, I wrote on this blog on the morning of departure, and a couple of hours later, Andy, Mark and I were pedalling nervously out of my village. Shortly after, I found myself further than I’d ever been from home on a bike. I remember the feeling clearly. It was fear — dull, resigned, and energy-sapping, striking deep in the gut.… Continue reading →

I got off the bus in Muscat and noticed immediately that the crowds assembling to watch me reconstructing my bike were not Omanis. South Asians from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka form a large underclass in Oman, working as labourers on construction sites and in date plantations, as mechanics, metalworkers and carpenters, and running cafeterias to cater for the working community. So I was delighted to find myself a Peshawari cafeteria for a delicious breakfast of vegetable curry and fresh naan bread! My host lived in one of the many suburbs that stretched west along the coast of the Indian… Continue reading →

From the southern city of Salalah I planned to ride through Oman towards the UAE. Arriving late at night in a new city is never fun when you’re travelling with a pushbike, and I had the added hindrance of being entirely unfamiliar with what made Oman tick. The streets were surprisingly busy with pedestrians at this late hour, even though traffic was light, and I realised that it was Friday night. Groups of friends and families strolled peacefully along attractive boulevards and through magnanimous public gardens. The buildings were modern yet traditionally styled, and carefully designed and built to create a… Continue reading →

Aden turned out to be an interesting place to spend a few days. What the city lacked in architectural grace it made up for with its laid-back, low-key atmosphere and friendly people. In fact, it felt more like a collection of quaint seaside towns strung around a small volcanic island than a former national capital. Over dinner one night, I discussed with my host and his Yemeni friends the intricacies of wooing girls down at Aden mall. While pre-marital relations of any kind are illegal in Yemen, they are by no means non-existent — it’s just that no-one talks about… Continue reading →