I've been invited to give another talk at the South Lancashire Advanced Motorcyclists club (SLAM). I visited them shortly after my return from Africa in 2008 and they said if I ever write a book about my exploits they'd love to have me back. So I'm going.
It is a membership club but they are very welcoming and wouldn't mind interested people just stopping by, I'm sure. Come along for a pint.
Venue: Hartwood Hotel, Preston Road, Chorley PR7 1EX
Date: June 3
Time: 8pm
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
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
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.
To read on, buy the book here
.......... UK .......................USA ............... SOUTH AFRICA ......... . IRELAND
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
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
To read on, buy the book here
The African Brew Ha Ha keeps brewing ...
African Brew Ha Ha - the book - will soon be available to all the abhaha fans who could not get enough of the blog!
Publication of the book about my tea tour through Africa is due in April 2010 in the UK from the good people at Summersdale. Then who knows!
I've already had a great endorsement from travel writer Peter Moore who read an early draft of the book. Always thought he was a man of good taste.
June 22-24 2007 I spent
a couple of days at the Horizons Unlimited Travellers’ Meeting, which is a chance to meet other overlanders (although I’m not actually one of
them yet) to discuss things like which bike, which luggage, which malaria
prophylactic, which countries, and reflect on the internal question ‘Is this
why I wanted to go in the first place?’
Henry David Thoreau said it best – “Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes” – and boy are there a lot of new clothes, and gizmos, and gadgets involved in overland biking …
I allowed myself to get bogged down in the ephemera of the trip – what I call fetishising the journey. I wasted time worrying whether one luggage ‘system’ was better/more reliable/more secure/more robust/more accessible than another. All of which proves you can fritter away your life with detail. I know I am going to regret that last sentence.
I just want the day to come that I can say ‘So long, see you in Zanzibar’.
One thing the HU weekend does bring into focus is the sheer number
of people who are doing major overland trips these days. There were around 500
people at the HU meeting – and it
clashed with the Glastonbury Festival (and Ascot!) It is no longer the preserve of the truly
madcap or eccentric or the loner. The overland scene has metamorphosed into an
industry served by many professional outfits keen to insulate the modern
overlander from the more unpleasant parts of the trip. So we have companies
that accompany you on your adventure, smoothing your way through border posts,
giving you checklists of essential gear (to be bought from another company
ready to serve your wanderlust); and companies that sell a plethora of add-ons
for your bike, some items approaching Mad Max-style protection. Many of these
products have come out of the already popular off-road scene, but with the
advent of Ewan MacGregor’s and Charlie Boorman’s Long Way Round and subsequent popularity of the famed BMW GS series
of adventure bikes, more people believe they too can ride the dream instead of just
dreaming it.
As good as many of the presentations were there seemed to be very few that focused on the people met on their journeys. Much time was taken with the logistics and fetishisation of the trip but I was introduced to precious few new people on the slide shows.
One who does focus his thoughts and writing on the people he meets
is Ted Simon, doyen of overlanders everywhere who completed his epic RTW in the
1970s on a version of the same bike I’m using (well, it has the same name,
anyway) - a Triumph Tiger.
Ted Simon had a prime presentation spot on Saturday evening to push his new book.
I asked him what advice he would give to someone doing a trans-Africa trip.
“None.”
“Just do it?” I enquired.
“Yes. I was given advice once – ‘Bring the lightest bike you can and something to rest the side stand on’.”
Which was actually very good advice for someone about to bring a very
heavy bike to Africa without a centre stand.
Hi, I'm Alan Whelan. You might like my travel books African Brew Ha-Ha, The Black Stars of Ghana and Empire Road, and my first novel Mandela Park. [email protected]
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