This was written for and is posted on the World Biking website, which has a great section listing the 5 best reasons for cycling each country on the globe. I was happy to write something for The Gambia, Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the last two of which see very few foreign cyclists.

Rivers run through it

 Read more... (864 words, 7 images, estimated 3:27 mins reading time)

“I went out to Mount Kilimanjaro, which I thought was very beautiful, but there were a lot of people there”. (Ralph Fiennes)

One of those new Chinese roads provided my exit from Kenya. There are a lot of these in Africa. In fact there probably isn’t a country on the continent that hasn’t had some Sino-African road-building agreement signed. Well Africa needs better roads, and the Chinese do a good a job at providing them. I think you could travel most of the length of Africa if you wanted to on Chinese built roads, but dirt tracks are always more interesting.

The Emir of ‘Old Muri’ took care of us in Jalingo. By this I mean we received a reduced rate at his brother’s Guest House and had breakfast and dinner delivered free of charge to our room by one of his ‘personal assistants’. We had first met the Emir, whose long name I quickly forgot, sitting on a palatial throne and swathed in a white robe several days earlier in ‘Old Muri’ itself. Why this man, (who had obviously received word of two foreigners riding bicycles through his chiefdom) decided to send his messengers out to summon us to his home I’m not sure.  Read more... (1266 words, 11 images, estimated 5:04 mins reading time)

Greetings from Guinea. This post, like the previous one, has been written from my hotel room in the town of Labe. There is Internet connection here, albeit very slow, which is the first I’ve come across since leaving Bissau two weeks ago. Not in the hotel I should note. I’m surprised there is even electricity. There isn’t much of the time. My room and the rest of the hotel give the impression that there have been very few people staying here in recent months. It has that musty airless smell of an attic. If there ever was a cleaner, he or she has not been working for a while. A family of large cockroaches has moved in during the interim. Most have now disappeared under my foot, except the largest, who is particularly nimble. I realised last night he is actually a mouse.  Read more... (1350 words, 4 images, estimated 5:24 mins reading time)

It felt strange to be by myself again after leaving Demnate. One thing I hadn’t mentioned in the previous post is how a guest in a Muslim family is rarely left alone. I knew that for my hosts it would have been rude to do so. There must be something written in the Koran about this. It’s really about time I picked up a copy, if there’s a light paperweight version that is. It was a similar story staying with locals in other Muslim countries, such as Pakistan, Syria and Libya. In the face of such hospitality all these experiences have left me feeling overwhelmed and indebted. At the same they’ve been complete contrasts to the comparative solitude of my normal life on the road.  Read more... (2250 words, estimated 9:00 mins reading time)