Peter Gostelow
Adventure cycling, Photography, Writing
Looking back at 2008
Memories of life on the road sometimes feel quite distant now. On New Year’s Eve last year I was in Syria – looking ahead to the challenges of cycling through Jordan, Egypt and across north Africa....
Read MoreAnother cyclopath
Writing and photography are two obvious ways to document an expedition. Filming is the other, but when you are both cameraman and actor this can be a challenge, as proven by Rob Lilwall in this humorous video. Rob...
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Inspiration for women
It’s rare to meet women on a solo bicycle tour, particularly in Muslim countries. I occasionally get e-mails and questions from women who are thinking of cycling through Asia. They ask me if I think...
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Calendar for Christmas
I took around 24,000 photos during my 3-year trip. Before the age of digital cameras that would have created some big problems, and costs. Looking over and editing them during the last several months has been an...
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Filling up. Borehole pumps, like this one pictured, are a bit of a life saver when it comes to cycling through Africa. Most of the time you will find women and children filling up buckets and jerry cans, which may then be carried on foot for long distances. Collecting water is rarely ever done by men, although many borehole pumps, particularly in populated communities, are managed. This means that the pump may be locked at times to prevent constant usage throughout the day and night. Those with the key and padlock are often men, at least that was my experience. Typically a pump in such a place may be open for access for 2 hours in the morning, and 2 hours in the late afternoon.
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Whenever I passed a busy borehole pump I almost always stopped, unless my bottles were completely full. The coastal regions of Mozambique are low lying and very hot, so I usually carried 4-5 litres of water in the day, and more if it was late and I planned to camp with no knowledge of whether I would find water. As I mentioned a few posts back, water in these pumps is almost always safe to drink, and because it has often come from deep in the ground, it's refreshingly cool.
🚿🚿
A queuing system was usually in place at most busy pumps, even if it wasn't very apparent for a Brit like me 😂, but as I was usually only filling no more than 10 litres, people didn't mind me jumping the queue, and there was usually an energetic helper to pump while I held my bottle beneath the tap, or visa versa.
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Many borehole pumps in Africa have been funded by outside NGOs, so there may be a sign next to a pump saying who paid for it. In more populated and urban communities people pay for water, but in small villages, which is often where I filled up, there was no fee, at least to my knowledge.
_🇲🇿😂💪🚲😰☀🔥
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