At the age of 47 I found myself free
of commitments. I decided the time had at last come to do what I had
long wanted, namely, to see something of the wilder regions of the
world. I had already discovered the eminent suitability of a bicycle
for travel and exploration, and so, with little more ado, I set out
to see something of the Himalayas.
My first objective was
Pakistan. I planned to ride from Karachi to Kathmandhu; going first
along the line of the Indus River, and then weaving my way in and out
of the Himalayan Valleys of India and Nepal. Five months and five
thousand miles later I achieved my goal. Back home I set to work on
the account of this journey. I called it RIDING THE
MOUNTAINS DOWN, after a poem by e.e.cummings.
With the
book published and selling well,with various foreign translations, I
was commissioned to write another book.
This was a very
different undertaking. I decided to make a journey from London to
Jerusalem following the routes of the Medieval Crusaders and early
Christian pilgrims. As physically challenging as the Himalayan
journey, it was also one of the most enjoyable long distance rides I
ever made, and not just for the many different countries and cultures
I passed through, but particularly for the numerous and amazing sites
of antiquity that I had long wanted to explore. RIDING
TO JERUSALEM is the account.
My third long journey
was a far more dangerous enterprise. I followed the course of
the Nile from its Delta on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, through
the length of Egypt and Sudan to the Mountains of the Moon in
Uganda. It was a journey that presented great contrasts - the
most stunning African landscapes and wonderful and diverse peoples on
the one hand, and on the other the terrible problems of drought,
poverty, desertification and the plight of refugees. And always
there was the problem of my own survival; of staying alive in the
deserts; of finding food and clean water; and of steering a way
through the skirmishes of the Sudanese civil war and the aftermath of
the Ugandan massacres. The account of this journey, published as
'RIDING THE DESERT TRAIL', is available in
German as 'AH AGALA'
A second African journey centred
on yet another of that continent's great rivers. This time I followed
the strange course of the Niger, which bites deep into the Sahara
Desert before turning back on itself, as Mungo Park first
discovered,to flow through some of the poorest countries in West
Africa. Through the remote desert lands of the Sahel, home to the
last of Africa’s nomadic tribes, through Niger and Mali, I
struggled with the sand and the climate to get to Timbuktu.
Again beauty and hardship were the two poles of the experience. The
terrible beauty of an inimical desert terrain permeated by the ghosts
of the past, of black empires steeped in gold and the slave
trade.`FRAIL DREAM OF TIMBUKTU' is also
available in a German translation as `TIMBUKTU'
I have
also written two books about my own country. RIDING
NORTH ONE SUMMER was intended as a celebration of the English
landscape seen through the web of its history. It was as good a
summer bicycle jaunt as I ever took - three months of cycle/camping
through the byways of England, discovering a green and pleasant
land that still existed there, away from the motorways. Like all
journeys, it produced its own surprises.
My other `home
book’, 'THE FRAGILE ISLANDS', is
about the Outer Hebrides - a string of small remote islands off the
North West coast of Scotland. I find them as exotic as the remotest
places I’ve travelled in, and even after spending a very wet
summer there in a very small tent, my love for these Western Isles
remains undimmed.
More recently I travelled in Eastern
Turkey, going by way of the little explored and horrendously
mountainous Black Sea Coast, before heading up into the even more
mountainous lands of Kurdistan and Armenia, and on through the vast
plains to Mount Ararat with its legends of Noah and the Flood.
Beyond the crossing of the ancient Silk Route I rode on to the
strange landlocked area of Lake Van - the central melting pot of
Western history and seemingly older than time itself. `BEYOND
ARARAT' is also available in German translation as `ARARAT'
A
quite different journey was one I made to the north-western corner of
Spain, exchanging wilder tracks for the well-beaten path of a
thousand years of pilgrimage to the shrine of Santiago de
Compostela. It proved to be a richly rewarding experience, and
also surprising in the unexpected demands it made upon me, and in the
insights it afforded into my own motives and feelings. It also gave
me a tremendous sense of rubbing shoulders with other pilgrims past
and present. PILGRIM’S ROAD is
published in German as JACOBSWEG
My most recent travel book is
also something of a departure in that it explores a political
situation. Up till then I had managed to keep clear of politics. But
`LIKE WATER IN A DRY LAND’ was, in a
real sense, a debt of honour, something I felt I had to write.
It is about present day Palestine. It begins in Cyprus and continues
through Lebanon, Syria and Jordan to finish in Jerusalem, and my main
motive was to discover what the peace moves in the Middle East at the
time of the Oslo Agreement were really adding up to. I certainly did
not find the predicted peace, and much of what I did see was deeply
disturbing. Nonetheless, the journey was rewarding and proved
as much of a surprise as all real journeys should. Reviewers have
been kind enough to write that the book sheds light on a difficult
and complicated scenario. LIKE WATER IN A DRY LAND is at present only
available directly from ourselves at Mountain
House Publications.
*
* *
My long distance bicycling days are now at an
end. Nothing lasts forever, at least physical strength and stamina do
not. But I consider myself very fortunate in having had two good
decades of such satisfying travel and adventure.
Anyone who
reads my books and is at all inspired by them, especially if they are
moved to set out independently and explore the planet for
themselves, I wish them well.
I must, even if
sadly, tell you about my two tabby cats, Sappho and Dido, who long
ago persuaded me to assist them in publishing their first book. They
were cats with decided literary pretensions and, living as they
did in a house with computers, they became computer literate
and highly articulate. To find out more click on:-
Two
Cats Walking