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Part 2 – Kyrgyzstan Chaos Continues
At last, it was time. Time to meet my new cycling tribe and get the adventure I’d been waiting for underway. When joining any group tour, there’s always a rider meeting, that first gathering where everyone sizes each other up, secretly wondering who they’ll ride with the most, laugh with…
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Part One – Pre Tour Chaos in Kyrgyzstan
If Kazakhstan was Central Asia for beginners, Kyrgyzstan felt like it plunged me deep into chaos from the moment I stepped onto the near-melting runway. With the flight from Almaty to Bishkek only 30 minutes, I naively expected more of the easy travel I’d enjoyed the preceding week. Instead, right…
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Rock the Kazakh Bar!
Having now moved on from Almaty to Kyrgyzstan I realise my week spent in Kazakhstan was definitely Central Asia for beginners. Wide tree lined boulevards with a strong cafe culture, where English was if not widely spoken, manageable to be understood. The change I experienced after only a short 30…
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Freedom in Fragments: Part 1 – Taiwan
When you work full-time, your life is carved into neat, predictable segments. Meetings, commutes, deadlines, weekends that disappear far too quickly. Big, sweeping adventures rarely arrive as month-long epics. They come as fragments: stolen weeks, long weekends, single days where you decide to choose the world over the washing pile.…
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The Final Push South
South Africa marked a key milestone in this journey……edging towards the END! Throughout this last week I tried to use the time to enjoy the last few riding days, mainly by myself. Throughout this whole journey the mornings had always brought me the most joy feeling somehow special. Generally blessed…
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Namibia threw everything at me apart from the kitchen sink!
Having spent some time in Namibia a couple of years ago I was going into this section of riding with my eyes wide open. My expectation was long dusty corrugated roads. But this was only the half of it. Quite literally I had everything thrown at me and just about…
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Botswana’s Backcountry
Botswana marked a major milestone in my journey through Africa, I got to ride my own bike again. The Wheels of Steel were well and truly back on the road. On the pan flat roads of Botswana, I was flying along, faster than I had ever ridden on my road…
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Zambia – When the wheels came off……. Literally!
When I look back on Zambia in years to come I am sure it will be with a smile and I am sure at some point I will be able to laugh about the experience. But at the time it felt super stressful and uncomfortable on my body and a…
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The Closest I hope I Ever come to Prison……
Malawi was always going to have a lot to live up to after the special experience in Tanzania. Like normal on this trip, we are tomorrow about to leave Zambia and I am only just gathering my thoughts on the country before. Normally my lack of speed is due to…
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The good, the bad and the ugly…..
Tanzania for me to date has been the biggest mix of emotions on the trip. Initially it was god damn awful. I am not sure in what society having stones thrown at you, riders being attacked by sticks and having machetes waved in you face by young boys demonstrates a…
