African Adventure Motorcycle Travel

Overland Biker Heads for the Centre of the Sun

African Brew Ha-Ha extract taken from Chapter 2

Desert drift and the road that's on fire

The following day I make an early start and ride south through the desert on a road that’s on fire. I am heading for Dakhla in Western Sahara (the coastal town that was 1,152 kilometres distant a couple of days ago), which is like aiming for the centre of the sun. My face is soon etched into a mask of anguish: my eyes are slits, lips sealed in a grimace, nostrils flaring yet not wanting to inhale too deeply the burning air.

The road is flat and featureless and I drift. My brain senses the balance of the bike and it knows the general direction it has to go; with the essentials taken care of that part of the mind that controls the bike relaxes. But as one synapse shuts down a dormant one re-emerges, as if the movement through space is shaking up the experiences in my head, regurgitating snippets of recent history: scraps of conversation, flashbacks of glances from veiled faces, encounters with shopkeepers and smiling policemen at the checkpoints as my weary mind tries to create order from the events of the past day, of the whole trip so far.

In my peripheral vision I am aware of the monochromatic beige of the landscape that does not change for hour after hour. Above, the blue is so oppressive I try not to look up. In front, the strip of black tarmac and the broken white line become as unreal as a video game. The vastness of the landscape forces me back inside my own mind. An occasional camel or black figure is not enough to return me to human-scaled certainty. The muscles in my limbs are so tired and locked in position and the drone of the engine so uniform that my mind plays strange games and I start to believe I can step off the bike whenever I choose. I overlook the fact that I’m actually travelling at 120 kilometres an hour. I am going to sleep. I gently float from side to side of the two-lane blacktop. There is some gravel and fine sand lining the road on both sides, a frail margin between me and the Sahara, between the unfolding journey and an abrupt halt. To be safe I do what most other drivers do – I hog the centre white line.

Approaching trucks, and it is mostly trucks, also straddle the line and we both leave it dangerously late to move to our own side of the road. The trucks emerge out of a thick heat haze that keeps me guessing (Focus… focus) until about ten seconds before they reach me. Many times I see a vehicle approaching, but my muscles won’t let me move over. I see the thundering object looming larger, but I want to stay in the comforting centre of the road. I belong here. It becomes a monumental physical effort to swing the bike into the right-hand lane. Often the approaching truck driver does not see me because his mind is telling him the same thing – ‘this tarmac is mine, I don’t want to share it’ – so he needs flashing and honking if he is to awaken from his own trance.

The thoughts in my mind, now living in a strange netherworld, are accompanied by a bizarre soundtrack: ‘Fly me to the… Walking on the… Rocket man…’ Is there life on Mars? I think I’ve left the planet.

Another problem is stopping. After hours on the bike it becomes a titanic effort to bring my mental state to accept that I need water or to stretch my legs, which are screaming blue murder. My mind is telling me that I have to keep moving, every minute stopped is another mile I could be further through this burning hell. There is such little traffic – nothing has overtaken me for days – that I can lean forward while stretching my legs slightly and resting the chin of the helmet on the tank bag. Temporarily it’s heaven as some fresh blood rushes into my limbs. Now all I need do is shut my eyes…

After twice skimming the edge of the road, I recall Bashir Benslimane’s advice – ‘If you hurry you will be late’ – and finally pull into a rusting heap of a petrol station, unused for years. Probably couldn’t get the staff. The pumps and offices are still there, but it has been sand-blasted to the point that the structure is unsafe. Great sheets of corrugated roofing lift in the wind and threaten to crown me; all the windows are missing and anything of value has been scavenged. The door to the jakes is kicked in and, amazingly, people are still using the shit hole. The bog has no roof, no plumbing, it’s hundreds of kilometres from any kind of town, and people still go to the WC. Human nature. I do the same.

I step out into the searing heat and do a three-sixty. Dreamily, I face the shimmering horizon. The smudged line radiates its own energy; it is of this planet yet otherworldly, alluring yet untouchable, a metaphor for the trip maybe. It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

My squinting vision alights on the bike, the only human-scaled object within sight. I give it a pat on the scalding tank and scare myself into wondering, ‘What if the thing doesn’t start?’ Despite the soaring temperature, the thought gives me a shiver. I quickly lean over, turn the key to ignition, push the starter and am greeted by the greatest sound in my world – 955 cubic centimetres of British-made internal combustion.

I swing a leg over the bike like a rootless cowboy in a John Ford film and take a swig of water from the jerrycan but convulsively spew it all out. The sun has heated it to the temperature of bath water. If I had a tea bag at least I could make a cuppa. I put the helmet back on and continue riding south.

Shortly, I pass a sign in Arabic: ‘300 km Dakhla’.

Jesus.

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African Brew Ha-Ha Meets the Last Man Standing

African Brew Ha-Ha extract taken from Chapter 4

The last man on earth

For mile after repetitive mile there is no shade, no life anywhere, not even a spiny tree to make it worth the stop, just the now-familiar mesmerising trio of blue sky, beige sand and black tarmac. I’m exhausted, my head is burning from the sulphurous atmosphere inside the helmet, and I’m shedding weight by the minute in vaporous sweat. After a passage of floating time, which could be twenty minutes or an hour and a half, I notice a small shack close to the road in the middle distance. As I get closer I see a raggedy tent nearby and some fish hanging absurdly on a washing line. The curious sight shakes me from my dreamlike state and I let go of the throttle.

I park up close to the shack and step inside. Within, there is a man and two children; the man, wearing calf-length trousers and a loose shirt tied at the front with a single button, barely nods at my arrival; the children, squatting on the ground in no more than rags, look up at me with watchful eyes. The sensation of being off the bike suddenly hits me in a wave of vertigo, and I become aware of the silence; silence except for the low hush of the gritty wind.

The primitive structure serves as a shop selling just five items: bottled water, dried fish, matches, torches and, rather bizarrely, three flavours of custard creams – orange, lemon and strawberry. The emptiness of the hundreds of kilometres of desert I have ridden through today catches up with me and the sight of the man almost makes me want to hug him. We look at each other as if we are the last two men on earth. What do you say to the last man on earth? There is nothing to say. I buy a bottle of water and offer to share the last of my food with him: an apple. He takes half and peels it clean, dropping the peel on the ground before eating the flesh noisily. I give the children a Fox’s Glacier Mint each and have one myself, but for some reason their father takes the sweets off the kids and hands them back to me silently. Maybe they’re not halal.

I squat down on my haunches. It is just me and him and the two silent children in the tiny shack with not another soul for miles, seemingly fighting against insignificance. I step outside the shack, careful to stay in the shade, and squint to the dazzling horizon full of emptiness, then look back inside and try to calibrate the vastness of the Sahara with life in the shack. It is an impossibly breathtaking moment. I instantly feel I have taken a great step away from my life back home. Tethers are being cut. At this moment in time, at this juncture of my own personal history on this earth, there is nothing more than this. This is my entire life, my life on the road, and it is wonderful.

I try to imagine what the life of this silent, suspicious man must be like, the constant gusting an immutable companion while the occasional trucker, I guess, stops by for a packet of custard creams to make his day. But what are this man’s ambitions, his hopes, dreams? What does his family think of living this close to the edge of nothing? Where the hell is the nearest cash and carry? But we all make big lives out of small lives. This man has a life. He has loved ones; what more is there to strive for?

I leave the family in their stillness and drink the water up against the side of the shack. I’m thankful for the shade, a tangible thing here; it is not a negative – ‘out of the sun’ – but a positive life-saving condition, something to celebrate.

This brief stop is too extraordinary to comprehend, so much so that my brain does not have a folder to file the information. So the hard drive deals with it the best way it knows how. It closes down. Reboot. I have to get back on the bike.

‘Merci beaucoup. Au revoir,’ I say softly.

The father nods almost imperceptibly and follows me out of the shop. I think he’ll be happier with me off the premises. The family allow themselves a shy gaze at the bike as I put on my jacket and helmet and fire the ignition. I get a mind’s eye glimpse of how I must look to them: who the hell would go out in this heat in the middle of the day? The man in the black suit. The fifteen-minute stop is disorienting and I leave knowing I have to focus on something beyond this nothingness to pull me out of here. I put all my hopes of the future in Nouakchott, City of Light. Well, it’s worth a shot.

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The Bastard Beast Shows Me Who's Boss

Thursday – Sunday October 18-21  After six times on the deck I realise I should have taken that off-road motorcycle course. The sand is now so deep and fine that it is difficult to get the bike moving at all, and when I do, I soon fall off, hands first, the sand coming up over my gloves. I’m eating the stuff now.

If it wasn’t for Bwedra, I would be there still. He jogs ahead over the dunes leading the way to the encampment and occasionally looks back over his shoulder. Seeing me hit the ground brings him jogging back to help me right the bike, wait for me to catch my breath and wipe the sweat from my red, bloated face, and continue on. His expression never changes from an encouraging look that suggests ‘You can do it, we are nearly there’, for it is expressions only that we rely on, Hassaniya and English not having many words in common.

When I  see the camp I give in to hubris and increase the speed slightly to quicken the pace but instead give the bike a final balletic spin, which puts me on the deck with an awkward, grim finality. The bike gets heavier every time we pick it up.

The bike is eventually righted but will not move; the engine roars but the bastard beast just stands there covered in sand like an ass that has had enough and would rather die than take one more step no matter how much it is thrashed. Let it die there, see if I care.

Perversely, I find I am pleased it won’t shift; it means I won’t have to struggle the last 100 metres or so to the camp. I sit down on the hot scalding next to it with Bwedra – both of us not knowing what to do.

He looks at me hopefully and utters just one word: “Thé?”

Three days in the desert was made more than tolerable by the hospitality of Colin and Freya. You may not have much to fall back on in the desert but you can rely on the people. Colin, the owner of the encampment, worked with someone who had a nephew who found a mechanic who knew someone who could make me some new clutch plates. That’s how it’s done in the Western Sahara.

But even with the best will in the world this idea seemed too far-fetched to entertain. We were in the desert. There’s nothing in the desert, let alone a man who can make me some replacement clutch plates for a Triumph Tiger 955i 2001 model. It was Saturday night now and it was suggested that I had nothing to lose by letting him try. If he couldn’t manage it, I’d be on the phone to England to send out a new clutch on Monday morning.

Within 24 hours the clutch plates were manufactured and replaced with fresh oil for a fee that I am embarrassed to commit to the keyboard.

I picked up the bike at 3.30pm on Sunday with a sizeable crowd in attendance; all proud that the traveller could now continue on his way. I thanked the mechanic and tried to apologise for doubting his skills and I promised the beast I’d take it easy in deep sand for the duration.