The Mad and the Bad

Pratts in hats in Kashgar

Please excuse any formatting troubles- not worth spending longer trying to fix.

Kashgar came at a good time for me. I had five days to recover while waiting for Chris to arrive and my hotel room had sometimes enough hot water for a bath – good for reviving the spirits. It took me a few weeks to get back to strength – on one of my first rides around Kashgar I had to stop for a rest after only 2km riding on the flat! Even old geezers breezed by me, my legs had no energy at all. Kashgar’s not a bad city for a week or so and relatively quiet. Electric motorscooters are popular and the police were riding round on slow-motion electric golf carts that a cyclist in good shape could easily outrun. Only taxis felt they needed to honk, as if only they had any rights of way. The rest of us rode or drove slowly and predictably and managed to weave in and out silently. Uighur food looked far more interesting than Chinese food, rich and spicy, but I couldn’t keep much down. I found out too late how good Uighur bread was, as after rubbery Kyrgyz bread I’d lost my taste for Asian flat breads of any kind.

Among the Cathedral Peaks, Pakistan

Chris arrived in his usual high spirits, ready for his first ever tour, a thousand kilometres or so on a used bike he’d never even seen. He took to it straight away, it was light and fast, and when he got the saddle in the right place, even faster. We’d been told by numerous people that we couldn’t ride the Chinese section of the Karakorum Highway at all, probably because of recent attacks on police posts by Islamic militants, so I’d been to the police to check out what we could do and was told we couldn’t get through the checkpoints unless we were in a vehicle. That gave us only a day’s ride before we had to take some kind of transport through the checkpoint. Out of town, through strong desert winds then a village where all the restaurants were closed for Ramadan but where villagers brought us food when we stopped for a picnic lunch in the shade by the side of the road. Our first night camping, discovering a hole in the fuel pipe – Chris loves making fun of expensive camping stoves and their unreliability, so this was just what I didn’t need. But I wrapped duct tape round it for that night and glued the hole the next night when we were in a hotel in Taxkurgan. It’s said to be a shabby town but we liked it, it’s mostly Tajiks with Chinese in charge of the customs post where we would have to take a bus over the pass. It was a great shame not being able to ride almost any of it, the road from Kashgar is perfect for cycling and camping and even better up over Kunjerab Pass into Pakistan at 4700m. We were the only travellers that day, outnumbered by police and customs people, having a minibus all to ourselves for the entire journey to the border and a Chinese soldier on board to guard us. We were asked to show our passports six times in the space of a hundred meters, but after we got moving, there were no more checkpoints till the border.

Karimabad, Hunza

Pakistan was an immediate and huge relief after the tension inevitable in a region that is so heavily policed, despite the fact that Pakistan has more serious public security problems than Xinjiang. The Chinese had been courteous and smiling and above all, trustworthy compared to Kyrgyzstan, but all those uniforms and restrictions are too much for the independent traveller. Pakistanis felt much warmer by comparison, and often embarrassingly polite. In the northern areas, they’re all Ishmaelis, a kind of Muslim-lite, and altogether less austere than down south, so it was a good way for us to start. Ramadan wasn’t very strictly practiced and women were allowed out, so I had to wonder, with all this bending of the rules, if a beer or two might be found now that I was getting some colour back in my gills, but there was none. We rode for a few hours after after arriving in Pakistan into increasingly glorious scenery, stopping for the night among the Cathedral Peaks of the northern Hunza region. It was nice to be back in an English-speaking country and to be welcomed with a pot of milk tea. The Karakorum Highway doesn’t disappoint, it’s wall to wall high mountains, sometimes reaching 5000m above the 2000m ground you’re standing on as you gawp up. Traffic is light, especially in the north, and trekking opportunities abound. The road winds down in a hardly noticeable way such that it’s no problem to ride either up or down it, and we only used our lowest gears when we travelled on the side road to Chitral.

The Cathedral Peaks could be seen for over 30km along the road, the views are fantastic for days on end. We often stopped for photos among the stunning backdrops that Chris and I hoped might make an ideal cover shot for the next edition of my book and got into a nice habit of lunch stops, cooking our own food and having a brew-up afterwards. People always appeared from nowhere to watch us, but they were happy enough and not bothered by our eating during their fast. We spent a couple of nights in Karimabad, the former capital of Hunza with the Emir’s old fort standing over the town. It’s a steep climb that would have most cyclists walking but the views and the quiet make it worth it. We got our expectations about the food down by then, it was good and occasionally really quite good, but never more than that and often fairly dull. Plenty of fruit, but not always tasting great. They made great chips, though, and always handmade unlike in Britain.

Chris finds Pakistani tailoring too large even for him

After Hunza we crossed into a different geographic region, more rugged, a bit less beautiful, crossing by bridge from one side of the river to the other took us from the Karakorums to the Himalaya and then crossing back to stay in a simple farming village whose only guest house was so grubby we chose to sleep in the garden. As elsewhere, they aren’t offended that anyone would prefer camping to staying in one of the rooms and we shared their dinner, but when the boss came back later in the evening, he insisted on cooking another meal especially for us and we sat and watched Al Jazeera news with him over a cup of tea.

We knew to expect little of Gilgit other than a taste of the noise and pollution we would find in the bigger towns down south, but we nevertheless hurried towards it, hoping for the comforts of hot water and good food and probably a good internet connection and a few days rest. The food was nothing special, nor was the town but it is in a dramatic setting at the end of a valley and surrounded by high mountains.

Madina’s Guesthouse is the place every traveller and trekker stays and it’s one of the nicest in Pakistan, a quiet garden guesthouse in the middle of a busy and noisy town. The owner, Mr. Yaqoob, has never grown weary or cynical for all the young western backpackers he has looked after. Women are free to dress as they wish within the grounds, but he might warn them

to cover up if they are going out. He is one of the few devout believers who was entirely non-judgmental about infidels and all his staff make an effort to be hospitable towards guests. Every evening during Ramadan a free light dinner is served to all the guests – I had to go and hide, I got sick once from his food and didn’t want a repeat but he was most disappointed I’d missed a dish he’d cooked especially for me, something to calm the stomach, he claimed.  Mr. Yaqoob took me to a bike shop where he once worked to fix my buckled back wheel and did the work himself, hammering the bumps out with a mallet. Nice job, but it didn’t last for long and the bumps came back a few days later. I don’t think you can whack alloy rims with a mallet like that, but you can probably fix steel Pakistani rims.

We took a bus up to Skardu in the hope of riding back down, but I was sick on the way and spent the rest of the day in bed or in the loo. We’d underestimated the distance back from Skardu to Gilgit and decided to bus it back, but it looked spectacular and would be far more enjoyable – and safer – on a bike than sitting squashed in a minibus.  With only two weeks left, we had to set off straight away to Chitral, a quieter route than the KKH and going over Shandur pass at 3715m, a good entry-level altitude. From the time we had spent earlier in the trip at around 3000m, it wouldn’t be a problem. It’s a beautiful farming valley with less traffic every day as we gradually ascended and rode farther from Gilgit. On day one we discovered a crack several inches long in Chris’s back wheel. There was little we could do other than to slip a lollipop stick inside the rim to try and spread the pressure from the tyre around the crack, but Chris wasn’t too bothered. Like me, he saw it as an adventure that had taken another interesting turn. The crack worsened for the rest of the trip, though, and on the last day Chris disconnected the back brake entirely as the bulge in the wheel was hitting the brake pad all the time.

We weren’t sure what to expect from the locals as we rode towards Chitral. It was clear that that Pakistanis are a most hospitable people and it would take a lot to make them be anything other than helpful and kind to travellers. But troubles were mounting in Swat valley and the tribal regions generally and most people had told us we’d be unwise to ride beyond Chitral. Some villages were quiet, a few villages were Ishmaeli and a little more exuberant, but all were friendly enough, especially if you asked for help of any kind. Strangely, every male, no matter how old, seemed to carry a catapult, but no stones ever flew our way. It seemed they were just for killing time, which many Pakistanis have a lot of, there being little work.

About 150km of the road to Chitral is unpaved, and most of that is fairly hard going. A bus goes over the pass daily, but there’s little other traffic. The steep part of the climb is only about 500m, but it’s steep and rough enough that you have to sit all the way to keep the bike from losing traction, and can only ride for a few minutes at a time. It’s all over in an hour or so and then we signed the guest book at the police checkpoint on the top and ride off to find a quiet place to camp – there’s no lack of those, we didn’t see another soul till morning. Chris slept out on his mat and for a while I envied him the views as I lay in my tent, but later it got cold and extremely bright under the moon. Chris woke up to some frost on his sleeping bag, not that he noticed it.

Sick of the ups and downs!

We were told there was paved road after the pass and assumed it would be immediately after the pass. But no, more  like 150km after. It’s a fairly hard descent on the west side, mainly due to the bad surface which becomes increasingly rocky as you go down. We had a day of rock-bashing but found another PTDC motel, the government-run chain of reliably good but slightly dull guest houses. Some of the best but most demanding  riding, the way good mountain biking should be, on the last but one day, flying down really rough tracks with fantastic views round each corner. We were sorry to hit the road again after that. That’s the dilemma of adventure bike-touring. We looked forward to paved road as it’s much easier to ride on, but after five minutes back among the honking and smoke, we missed the quiet back roads. The last day of riding was all ups and downs and landslides.  It was the hardest day and the villagers seemed to be the most unsmiling we had yet seen. They were the same in Chitral too, though it seemed to be more due to the unfamiliarity of what they were looking at. They had much to be unsmiling about, too, and Ramadan didn’t help. Only in the hour before sundown did people seem to cheer up much. When the call to prayer announced the end of the day’s fast, everyone disappeared, though there was much stealth-snacking during the day.

We flew to Islamabad from Chitral as we’d run out of time but if we could have, we would have gone on to Peshawar. But the flight to Islamabad was simple and cheap with no hassle over the bikes. It’s really nice to have bearded machine-gun-toting security guards at the airport help you with check-in and getting the bikes through security. So different to scowling or thieving guards you might meet elsewhere. There we were in a pretty conservative area in the middle of heightened tension with the West over the Taliban, yet the beardies were all “no problem sir!” with us and smiling all the way. At Islamabad we left the airport just in time to avoid the whole place being shut down due to a bomb alert. It was a pleasant ride into the city from the airport, back to buses of grinning  faces and other cyclists on their Chinese sit-up-and-beg bikes racing us in the heat. We spent most of the weekend waiting for Chris’s flight in the hotel, watching tv and enjoying a/c and hot showers. Chris flew home, I took the train to Lahore and spent a night there before riding to Amritsar. Lahore is the most Indian of the Pakistani cities and has pretty good food, especially for Pakistan, and a lot of fine colonial architecture.

I’m glad I rode into India, though I didn’t see much of it on this trip. It’s far richer and more industrious than Pakistan and far more colourful too. And better food, of course. They were waving ice-cold beers at me as I crossed into India, but it was mid-day and I’d tried riding into a country (Syria) drunk before amid busy traffic and wouldn’t do it again. I spent a very pleasant few days at a famous old guesthouse, Mrs. Bandhari’s, in Amritsar, organising my flight home and finding a place to stay in Delhi (no longer cheap at all) and a sleeper train there. India is far louder than Pakistan, ear-splittingly loud in its impatience and liveliness. I was relieved to be finally out of the Islamic world but wouldn’t soon forget the courtesy and gentleness of much of it.

A photo-free postscript, I’m afraid. I left Osh after five pleasant days relaxing at a very nice guesthouse in a quiet neighbourhood, occasionally getting lucky enough with the water (meaning both running and hot at the same time, and not too brown) to have a bath in the splendid room I had. I ate what I could, but it’s hard to get much of an appetite for Kyrgyz food, and I had a lucky escape when I drank a litre of tap water the evening I arrived. I had forgotten to ask my usual question which had saved me up to that point, which is “do you drink this water?” and do what the locals do. I had minor runs, but my Spanish friends, the couple I had ridden with through the backcountry to Osh, they had major problems and had to endure an overnight taxi ride to Bishkek and a flight home with fevers of 40 degrees. I ate breakfast in the gueshouse and dinner at the same Turkish restaurant every evening, the ONLY clean restaurant in Osh and the only freshly-cooked food that I could find.

I left Osh on a burst of restlessness and feeling that some minor malady was wearing off and that after five days I should be in great shape, but I rode like an old dog and as I began to walk the only and easy pass of the day, I realised whatever I had was settling in, not going away. Just when my thoughts turned to the usual ‘too old for it’ whingeing to myself, a retired Swiss couple with a fine layer of dust all over came down the the road the other way to stop for a chat. They told me the bigger pass, which I would have to ride the following day, had a layer of dust over an inch thick on it, making it hell to ride, especially with trucks for company. I went over the easy first pass, exchanged less than friendly gestures with a car trying to overtake into my space and dropped down through the dust for miles, down far lower than I would have liked, to a small town off the road (and so away from the dust and truck noise) where I asked around for a homestay. A young girl took me to her home and I was offered the verandah to sleep in. It was the most simple home I’ve stayed in, everything looking wretched and filthy, a grandmother looking after a two-year old, himself covered in dirt, and old food was soon brought out from under a cover of some kind and served up. Mother and grandfather showed up, granddad wearing the traditional Kyrgyz Kalpak (hat) and jam jar glasses. I should have photographed him, he was an absolute classic but I feared they would have twigged that I was just having fun, the sort of photo that gets sent round the internet. Dinner was bread, just plain flat bread, and rice. Oh, and tea. All shared with the same hands and spoons Kyrgyz style… oh I’m starting to whinge again. Breakfast would have been the same, except I broke out my muesli, the stuff of pass-climbing champions.

I spent a long day on a steady climb, the kind you hardly notice except that the bike doesn’t seem to be running as freely as usual, but seeing the river flowing towards you, you know you’re knocking off some metres against that 3600m pass looming ahead. I stopped to camp in a village at the foot of the pass, it was a beautiful setting with wide views of the valley behind me, the whole village involved in bringing in the hay and had a flat stretch of clean grass in front of the house of a very contented looking old couple chatting away, and a small clear stream next to it. Perfect. The price was to have to entertain the kids for much of the evening and put up with smoke, dust, truck-horns and dogs all night. And the little buggers who threw stones at my tent while I was in it reading. They got bellowed at. I would probably have done a bit better had I continued up into the valley as there were a lot of nomads camped up there and it was flatter than it had looked. But still would have been a dust bowl, I should think. The pass was a piece of cake though, I had slowly climbed 1000m or so the day before and the pass only took two hours. The other side was short, too, so I would keep the altitude gained. I met a Slovenian biker on the way down, another stranded cyclist unable to get a China visa, on his way to Bishkek, having already made a bus trip there and back, to fly out and over China.

Then a lunch stop in Sary Tash, much like a ghost town lying facing the Pamirs at the gap in that wall of mountains where the Pamir Highway comes through. It’s little more than a village, the kind where nobody needs to have a sign saying ‘magazin’ (for ’shop’) above the door, though one or two cafes had signs. I had lunch at the only guest house in town and bought five eggs, a mad choice when I was about to ride one of the worst roads in the world, but I was desparate for something different to eat. I’d had it with bread and chocolate, instant noodles and so on. And I’d worked up a great yearning for properly cooked scrambled eggs after having them fried to death for me every single time in Kyrgyzstan. Can they never learn anything? Will they only ever have one kind of bread, I mean, forever? I wrapped the eggs individually, plastic-bagged them, and put three on one side, two on the other in jacket pockets, so if I kept my weight not too heavy on the saddle and let legs and arms take the strain, they’d be OK.

The Irkeshtam road is indeed a tough road, but partly because it’s so exposed. The east-west valley is known for bad weather and having this stony road raised about ten feet above the valley floor only exposes it all the more to wind. The view of the Pamirs, broody in cloud cover and fresh snow, is fantastic. For about 50km the road runs straight, then rises gradually to a pass you don’t even notice, then looks like an easy ride down the ridge. The odd thing is why the road follows the top of the ridge down. I wish I were a geographer, but ridges surely only get to be ridges because they are made of hard rock and this is the worst I’ve ever seen that was called a road. The downhill, and it’s quite rideable if you have a very strong bike, sees the trucks reduced to walking pace, and more than the usual number of mechanical casualties by the wayside. The stones are as big as football size and well-embedded. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done but I picked up a fair old speed going down, it seemed, forever. A little Kyrgyz checkpoint, giggly teenage soldiers, one of whom jokingly poked his AK-47 in my stomach when it was time for me to go. I had to pull rank (age) and tell him sternly that was not a toy or thing to joke with. And finally some paved road, hopefully the unpaved stuff is pretty much over! It was about 7 o’clock, getting dark and had been spitting all day, and cold too. I was ready to camp but the only river around was a red river, impossible to drink from. But just a few kilometres more I rounded a corner where a fresh, clear stream ran below the road and I turned off and found a great spot for my scrambled eggs feast, unwrapping each egg carefully in anticipation of a few broken ones, but hey – I got five good ones!. Or so I thought. I used the powdered flavourings from my last egg noodle packet as seasoning, and the little sachet of oil to grease the pan, and cooked a wonderful dinner, eating the dried uncooked noodles while cooking the eggs. The eggs aren’t half as good as they are up in northern Kyrgyzstan, it’s all dusty down south and the chickens must get as poor a diet as they do, well probably everywhere from here on south and east until New Zealand.

It was a pitch-black night, the kind that is safest of all for wild campers, no dogs, no trucks, but another night of coughing and bad sleep and ominous stomach pain. I knew to jump out of the sleeping bag as soon as I got the warning signs. This was no place to lie in and sleep it off, either, I’d just about run out of food. I was weak and had to force myself to do everything, taking it all one step at a time, as in “in five minutes, I will put everything in this bag. By 8.30, I will leave”, and did. I had to walk up the slightest hill towards the Kyrgyz checkpoint and sat down on the road a few times after hurried runs to the side of the road, but I made it to the top, looked back upon Irkeshtam, and rolled down to leave Kyrgyzstan. I went over to the customs and border control building, left my bike outside, went in and got customs clearance, went out and round the other side to get my passport stamped, queueing among the tiny, swarthy truck drivers, and went out. I was clear. A few hundred metres down the road I stopped to put a jacket on touched my handlebar bag momentarily – camera gone! I turned round and found unexpected strength to go back uphill and back into what they call the Zonya. I knew I stood next to no chance, but even less chance if I did nothing. I had got on well with the customs guy, who spoke good English, and another guy who liked to practice English who operated the weigh scales (a graduate, this was the only job he could get; he once worked in construction in Russia for $200 a month, 12 hour days, 7 days a week). I insisted in talking to the big boss and after a short time he gathered all his men round and ordered a search. Then he ordered all the truck drivers’ bosses to come over and they got a very stern lecture (though perhaps for my benefit, it was interpreted for me) that they wouldn’t be allowed any more privileges, like bringing unregistered people in the trucks, any more if the camera was not produced. I spoke and offered a hundred dollars, claiming, with a little truth, that this was a month’s work gone, work that was intended to develop Kyrgyz tourism, and that I wanted the card more than the camera. Then twenty soldiers arrived and another big chief from further down the valley. He ordered a search, but it looked to me as useless as the search the Roman guards made in Life of Brian. Mostly everyone was sitting around for three hours, but they really did lock the gates at both ends for three hours just for my camera. I intimated several times that I thought one of the border guards themselves would have had the best chance of taking it, but that was dismissed as totally unacceptable and impossible. I couldn’t push it too far, though I really felt it to be the most likely case as they were standing round the entrances and the little truck drivers would never dream of touching something so strange. No one wants trouble in a border zone. And so I couldn’t ask them to search the guards themselves – these guys are Kyrgyz, I don’t know the form there and I too was locked in, and not having eaten all day, was as desparate to get out as anyone.

So I pushed off in the middle of the afternoon and the truck drivers didn’t seem to hold it against me by yelling or running me off the road. They have long queues at each country’s border, whereas a cyclist rides past and gets VIP treatment, relatively speaking. Certainly the equivalent of what passes for the VIP lane at Heathrow, anyway. A clock on the proud-looking Chinese customs post declared Beijing time- two hours ahead, and so much so that locals use Xinjiang time, ie two hours behind Beijing. Beyond customs, a Chinese border scene from the Wild West, dust flying around, men standing spitting, grubby knocking shops for truck drivers with broken plywood doors, filth everywhere. The cluster of buildings was itself enclosed and the exit hard to find, but round a corner I found a man with an empty pickup truck not wanting to go back to Kashgar empty…

It took seconds, especially when I looked at a packed bus filling to over-capacity. I paid $40, but it’s 280km and a hard road indeed for a sick cyclist. Uphill for the first 5km or so (I would have to have walked), then perhaps twenty km until drinkable water and then sporadic water and food after that. My first Bactrian camels, though… It could have taken me days and I was low on food and lower on strength. You have to know when to fold, and I was never happier, or at least more relieved, than spending that $40. Nor more certain. Clean sheets, aircon (not really necessary), a bath no crummier than many a London bath, and I could begin to recover – and Kashgar is not a bad place at all for a few days and when I am ready to eat, the food certainly looks far better than Kyrgyz food. For now it’s the backpacker fare of fruit and yoghurt and banana pancakes. The Uighurs are my latest Muslim nationality, they are still the majority in what I’ve seen of Kashgar, and mostly very pleasant too. A surprising number speak some English. They have a colourful folk culture and one or two buildings and features here and there that suggest a richer and more glorious past. They can go to school and be taught in their own language, though many want to learn Chinese while speaking Uighur at home. The food is still nan but with far more influences than in Central Asia (some call this Chinese Central Asia, as it used to be East Turkestan for a short time) and the numbers and some words are the same, more or less, as in Turkey.

And what of me? I’m still sore about the camera loss, especially as I’d taken some shots specifically for the book under Chris’s strict guidelines (I wasn’t able to shift the clouds off the Pamirs to reveal their full beauty though) and those shots from the last week were the only ones not backed up. Theft always makes me feel a fool for letting it happen, and there’s a feeling of being violated too. Yes, flog’em and hang’em, there’s too many of them anyway. But I digress. If not for the camera, I was on the mend. The runs is passing, the cold will go, and my knees are a bit tender but what a perfect time to give them a week’s rest. You can run on empty for a while but you can’t ignore knee pain, though this is rare for me. I need to loosen the muscles up a bit to free up my knees, I think. And for the rest of the week, wash dust off my bags, clean my bike, true the wheels again, go and see the lake, see the Sunday market tomorrow and perhaps lighten the load by finishing off David Copperfield.

Kyrgyzstan – what a contrast to Iran. After alcohol-hell, namely theoretically dry Iran, Kyrgyzstan is awash with booze, but I wouldn’t call it alcohol-heaven, it’s a hell of a different kind. Does no one here understand moderate drinking? Drunks stagger round in the mid-day sun, red-faced and sporting the Kyrgyz trilby, the traditional felt hat, or lie unconscious in ditches or under bus shelters. The shops are half-full of booze, mostly vodka. The other half of the population seems to be equally guilty, for they are the pushers and enablers. I’ve seen wives trying to keep their husbands pacified by doling up small cups of vodka rather than give them the whole bottle. But the good side of it is that at least the demon booze prevails over Islam here in Kyrgyzstan!

Bishkek is fairly russified in style, I heard no Kyrgyz language whatsoever and most of the Russian population lives there. It’s a well-integrated place, there is no animosity towards the remaining Russian population who are Kyrgyz citizens. Lonely Planet’s very PC Central Asian phrasebook has 30 pages devoted to Kyrgyz but only 3 for Russian, though the latter is by far the dominant language in Kyrgyzstan, even among the nomads. In fact the first Kyrgyz I can be sure I heard was spoken by a French couple speaking to some nomads who would otherwise have spoken Russian to us. I can remember Turkish numbers and find those are understood by everyone here, they are almost identical to Kyrgyz. Many of the young women in Bishkek dress like Russians – meaning like harlots (!). Down here in the south in Osh, dress is more conservative but not repressive; quite nice taste in fact. The bazaar area of Osh feels very Asian and noticeably more Islamic, for it is only a few kilometers to the Uzbekistan border and the restive Fergana valley, but a kilometer south in the Russian/Soviet-designed government area where I am staying, it feels more European.

After 6 weeks holiday from occupational cycling, I was in shock at being back on the road. The heat, the food! I doubt Russia influenced Kyrgyz food for the worse, that would be difficult, but they can’t have been inspirational either. There’s been a drought this summer, and few villages or small towns have running water. Almost nowhere has plumbing of any kind, even cooking is mostly done outside the house. Homestays are widely understood in Kyrgyzstan, either officially arranged by tourist offices or informally just by asking. It costs a few pounds but you are sometimes fed away from the family, which is a bit depressing, though at other times have to sing for your supper and entertain the kids or help with their English. They have almost certainly never had a native English speaker in their house and maybe not in the whole village, so I always felt I had to get to work if the kids showed any interest at all in me. To be honest I would rather have sprawled out and read another chapter or two of David Copperfield.

I whimpered my way up the first few passes, feeling truly sorry for myself in having made my life so difficult by coming here when I was well past it, etc etc. I had to push the bike half way up to Song Kul, the lake up at 3000m, thinking I was well and truly stuck – couldn’t go up, couldn’t go down as there were some bad hills to climb on the way out. And I had a bit of the runs too, so I was weak. But I kept pushing and made it up to Song Kul and the good times began there. It’s an energizing feeling being so high, the breeze, the fresh air, the quality of light and the seemingly carefree nomads all around. It’s hard, undulating ground for miles, and I never got within 10km of the huge lake but rode around till I found a yurt I thought I’d ask if I could camp by. If I’d had a guidebook I would have known the tourist visits are all organized now, but doing it the unorganized way was more authentic. The nomads were a bit surprised, but said (in gestures and Russian) yes, why not, and we warmed up to each other from there. I sat in my tent for a while reading, thinking that Dickens was pure escapism and had nothing to do with my surroundings, but inside the yurt was the Kyrgyz rural equivalent of the humble homes Dickens wrote about and this was one of his happy, loving families.

Temirbek and his wife have three children, one just a small baby, but now and then he would pick the little one up and ride with him on his lap. They keep about a hundred horses and some cows. Lunch followed, a bit of a shocker, the inside of the yurt was as filthy as anything I’d seen in Tibet, the same food was brought out three times a day and there was no refrigeration or cover for it. Hands and spoons were all over the food and into mouths but at least no one had a hacking cough or smoked. Everything except the bread seemed to be a dairy product of some kind, lard, flavoured lard, lard rolled with butter and lemon juice into a kind of cous-cous. And koomis, the fermented mare’s milk the nomads are known for. I was relieved to find I liked it, just as I had liked yak-butter tea in Tibet. It has a fizzy yoghurty taste but a strong smell to it and I found I was soon smelling of the stuff and all my clothes were too. I drank as much as they offered as I thought it was an easy way to get nutrition inside me. Temirbek was keen for me to sleep in the yurt, but with five people in it already, I much preferred my tent. He brought me a blanket, thinking I would freeze, but it was a mild night and I’ve not been cold yet.

A fabulous mountain bike ride down followed, on a route not marked on my map and too steep for most vehicles to follow. 45km till I reached paved road again, then another 45km to Naryn and hot running water. From there I headed south to visit Tashi Rabat, the country’s best-preserved (or restored) monument, a caravanserai dating from the 15^th century. You can see it all in 5 or 10 minutes but the location is superb, in high mountains near the Chinese border and an easy hour’s climb from the road, which in that area is not paved for a hundred km or so. I felt sorry for the Chinese truck drivers who probably supply 90% of everything sold in Kyrgyzstan (except for alcohol) and gave every one a wave. They are the only good drivers in the country and Kyrgyzstan cannot afford to pave the roads which allow in these vital imports. I met the French couple using their Kyrgyz phrasebook at Tashi Rabat, and another small group, a Spanish couple and a French woman all of whom were cycling. The nomads serve wonderful food there in yurts to tourists, by far the best and healthiest food I have eaten in the whole country. I spent a day there waiting for the rain to stop and set off at 4pm, hoping to break the next long day into two.

Pascal had told me the turnoff I wanted was only a few km down the main road and I headed north up a long but straightforward pass for an hour or more. As I reached the top, a storm threatened and I felt unsure I was on the right road – there had been no signpost nor any other traffic to ask except for a shepherd on horseback singing to himself over a kilometer away. The valley ahead looked very dry and I only had a litre and a half of water left, and if I were wrong about the road, I would be stuck there for a night. I turned back, racing down the pass, the storm picking up as I reached the main road again and crossed it, riding over open grassland to try and find the river to camp by. Of course I knew the river was there, but trying to find the bit of a half-mile wide shingle river bed that actually has the wet stuff in it in failing light, that’s another thing. It was wide open land, tucked under snow-capped mountains, just me and a few hundred horses. I was too busy getting the tent securely put up and the dry things inside, the wet gear out in the porch, to get depressed or panicky about my predicament, miserable though it was. Better to dip into my food bags and eat some bread, cheese, chocolate and peanuts and read Dickens and hope for better the next morning.

And that was the last of the big rain. Better still, the next day’s ride was the best of the trip so far, a long two-pass day where I still had to push some of the way up the second, higher pass, but rode really well and enjoyed the whole day, celebrating with a potato and soup stew cooked at the top at 3250m. The Italian mountain bikers I met early in the day who had hired a bus for two weeks to carry their bags were rather impressed that I’d hauled up all that gear just so I could cook a proper lunch up there. But you get used to riding with all that gear and have the freedom to stop where you want and some sense of security with so much food and sometimes water. After that it was another great downhill thrashing of the bike to reach a run-down village with a Russian-built guesthouse where nothing had worked for decades. I could see the next four or five days would continue along unpaved roads, meaning I would stand no chance of getting to Osh in time to run into my Spanish friend Salva. No internet anywhere, though most of the sober were standing around staring at their mobiles, just as they do everywhere. Perhaps they were like Mr. Micawber, waiting in hope for something to turn up. No buses either, except back to Naryn. It was either a 1500km circular bus trip and a couple of days to get to Osh, or keep on riding. I rode down to the market to stock up and was surprised and pleased to run into the Spanish and French little family (as they called themselves), Pau, Mig and Karinne. They had planned on taking two days to get there but had taken just one. I could join them to ride west. It was a flat day, but on a road so bad and with such strong headwinds that we would gladly have chosen a high pass instead. To ride into the wind on those roads means spending the day doing less than 10km/h, not much faster than climbing and with no prospect of a downhill afterwards. The land was dry badlands with little water around, and not very clear at that, but beautiful. We had had enough for the day by the time the wind dropped and a friendly farmer offered us his land, near a stream, to camp on and brought us some eggs. Just perfect and we could all sneak off to the stream later for a discreet little wash all-over (and under).

In baking hot weather we tackled a fairly easy pass to beautiful views of nomad pastureland and red and green mountains behind. A second much shorter pass led into a valley of nomad encampments and children on horseback who were shepherds. It’s interesting to see the responsibility they are given and their horse-riding skills at such young ages. They often came over to take a look at us as we rode by. We had a long ride downhill, quite the best of the trip, blazing heat but a gradient so gentle we picked up speed and never had to brake for 20km or so into a vast and beautiful farming valley. The women rode ahead as Pau and I stopped to cool off in a grey, fast-running river. Karinne and Mig’s job – and they were pretty good at it – was to ask around for a homestay for the night. These villages sometimes look very poor but each house may have an acre of two of good farmland for corn, sunflowers and so on, and in this case, 50 turkeys and a dozen chickens or so. They were happy to provide us dinner and a room to ourselves for sleep for a couple of pounds each and their lovely kids showed us around and brought their textbooks over for me to read and ask questions from.

Karinne told us we would leave next morning at 6.30 as we had the biggest pass of the ride ahead of us, 1600m but, as we found out, several practice hills before that, with steep climbs and sharp drops and then down to the bottom of the valley where we would begin the 1600m pass. We probably cycled a total of 2000m uphill that day. I had always thought I would struggle with this group, Pau and Mig were 20 years younger and riding light mountain bikes with rear bags only, and Karinne was an outdoors amazon from Chamonix who works in Mountain Rescue in ski season. But everyone has that fear of not being able to keep up, we would all suffer with the road, the gradient and the heat and were starting out with stiff muscles. We took our breaks in the morning, fuelling up with several Snickers bars each (I would never eat such a thing at home but it’s a quick energy source) and the last of our cheese, muesli and fruit. About seven hours later and three-quarters of the way up, I inched ahead just to get some more wobble-room for myself on such a bad road, but somehow I kept on advancing, as Pau chose to keep Mig company and Karinne struggled with a heavy bike and older, higher gears than the rest of us. Somehow all my carbohydrates kicked in at once, I was no longer crawling up in first gear but standing in fifth, then sitting in fifth focused only on the pass that I could now see. I feared I might burn out long before the pass and have to walk it, but instead I picked up speed. I really don’t know what came over me; it was not competitiveness as I would gladly have enjoyed Pau’s company, but I wanted to get to that pass, thinking the town of Jallalabad and its imagined luxuries were just the other side. They were not, it was another 50km to Jallalabad and the road was not paved, as we had been told, in fact it was rutted and with landslides. Pau’s brakes had almost completely failed by then, he raced down, unable to stop. Karinne took a fall and bruised one hand badly and sprained the other. We finally chose to hitch a ride into Jallalabad on a Russian logging truck.

Another charmless Russian hotel run by ladies with 1960s hairdos with ‘nyet’ rolling off their lips in answer to every question, but we were back on paved roads. Pau, Mig and I chose to ride on to Osh next day rather than relax in that fairly crummy little town of Jallalabad. It was quite a haul in the heat and with such tired legs. I drank 6 litres of water during the 100km ride alone and sweated 99% of it.

I am still in Osh and will stay here for a total of 6 days, just resting and trying to fatten up. A little girl sat by the path with an electronic scale that measures height and weight, it told me I was 76kg, just slightly underweight for my height. The Spanish couple were violently sick all night and I had a close call after drinking tap water in the luxurious guest house, but I’ve found a Turkish restaurant that I will happily go to every night rather than risk more bad Kyrgyz food. I have to decide about the last few days to Sary Tash and the border, as the road is being completely rebuilt and even cyclists say it is murder, all sand and dust. From there on, the road into China looks fine and reports from the Karakorum Highway still sound absolutely fine for tourists despite what you see on the news.

Someone told me I’d regret being home as soon as I arrived, but it didn’t work out that way at all. Summer in Britain is green, cool and wonderful. Summer fruits, Wimbledon on the telly, opera (we got invited to Glyndebourne), the forthcoming Hadrian special at the British Museum, a trip to Yorkshire and the lakes and a ride with my friend Dave along the river Exe and the Devon coast. Compared to all the cities I’ve been through, London is quiet and so clean you can actually sit in a cafe and count pieces of litter, there are so few. Now I understand a little better why so many Syrians and Iranians think Britain is the Promised Land. I thought I might be disgusted at the sight of so much flab on display after months in countries where everything is under wraps, but in fact I was delighted to see people dressing how they want to dress, free to show their bum cleavage, tattoos, earrings and all and no one to tell them they cannot or should not. This mildly vulgar behaviour, these Hogarthian scenes on so many streets in summertime are what make us who we are. Life can be tough here and that’s how people let off steam. These tattoos are badges of freedom and rebellion which would not tolerated be tolerated in an Islamic country. One bad thing that stills seems to be developing in Britain is a very authoritarian bureaucracy, these weird stories of people arrested for the most minor things or who get into trouble for failing to follow some petty rules or procedures. It’s very alien and un-British and flies in the face of our reputation for common sense.

It’s also been a great pleasure to get back to a little social drinking, and enjoying the odd snifter or two on my own, to be honest. Alcohol’s not an easy thing for people to manage, it takes a few years to get to learn how to handle it and still the cost to society is high, but being able to drink is one of our great freedoms.

The bike’s had a bit of a facelift. I decided I’d tried it with drops and found its good and bad points and that straight bars would be better. Much better in fact, especially off-road. Though it’s set me back about £300, it’s a great improvement. I’ve been able to set it up the way the bikefit computer program recommended, that is, with the handlebars and seat in exactly the right position. It’s a bit symptomatic of that collective madness that’s swept over the country to do something just because a computer told me, but the computer’s right – the bike is far more comfortable now and feels even more as though it’s set up for me. Hopefully I’ll have less back trouble.

Plans for part two of my ride are coming along well. I’m waiting for the China visa with bated breath. Trailfinders (travel agents) think it will be OK. I’ve got Kyrgyz and Pakistan visas in my passport. I’ve got a flight to Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan on August 4th and a yurt reserved in the back garden of a good backpackers place in the middle of town near the beer hall. Chris Scott is joining me in Kashi for the Karakorum Highway ride in September, and David Crute is keen to join me for the Ladakh circuit in October.

As the only tourist on the Iran-bound train, I had plenty of help with getting my bike on and buying a ticket. The train had seen much better days, but the staff were all helpful and spoke some English. The Immigration official had to be woken for his sole foreign visitor that evening, but he was none the surlier for that, a great improvement over the uniformed jobsworthies who prowl European trains looking at passports in the dead of night. I was starting to like Iran and I hadn’t even crossed the border yet!

I woke five hours or so later, slightly confused by an hour and a half’s time change, to scruffy desert and small towns on the approach to Tabriz. A glorious desert sunrise marred by a tumbleweed of black plastic bags blowing across fields scratched out of the sand. The Iranians were plastic bag farmers like the Syrians, with pale and undersized crops growing here and there amid the rubbish. At Tabriz station there was a customs inspection waiting for the train, but I was waved through as if I were a foreign VIP and while I stood outside sorting out my bike and bags, a few people came over to welcome me to Iran (the first of many hundreds of welcomes) and I set off to find a hotel.

It was a Friday, almost everything was closed and I couldn’t change money either. I walked round for a few hours hoping to change some money. Someone at an internet gaming place changed $5 for me as a favour as I told him I couldn’t afford dinner without a few Rials, but I was wrong there, food is pretty cheap in Iran and I found a tasteless wonder-bread sandwich for $1.50 for lunch. Tabriz looked boring, but religious holidays in Iran could be expected to be pretty boring, especially as far as shop hours go. Just outside my hotel, a car pulled over and someone was calling to me in English. At that time I was far from jaded at people calling out to me in English, and this guy spoke it well. I had an idea that this was how people in Iran made contact with foreigners, that conversations or encounters might come out of the blue. I went over to talk and jumped in Ali’s car, an Iranian Paykan, the old Hillman Hunter built under licence. Ali is of Russian descent and regards himself as neither Iranian nor Muslim. He was on his way to a picnic with friends and family and did I want to come, as Fridays in Tabriz were none too exciting? Yes I did, what better way to find out about Iran than through someone used to foreigners and who lived for making contacts with the outside world. Family picnics are very much an Iranian activity, and there’s little else to do anyway. Orchards are a popular spot, and picnics in public parks are very common on Fridays, with large foldaway tents set up to give a little privacy. We went to the biggest park in Tabriz afterwards for a little people-watching. The black chadors and frumpy raincoats stand out. If white is such a practical colour for the heat that Arabs wear it, why do Iranian women have to dress in black? It’s a strange form of imprisonment, a sort of house arrest under those horrid black tents, and is enforced by the police.

Next morning everything was open and the noise levels were up much higher. It’s deafening, in fact, and crossing the road is a skilled art as the traffic stops only for rare traffic lights, if then. You have to find a local and cross with them till you learn how to do it on your own, but you pick your moment and then walk slowly and steadily across so that vehicles can decide whether to pass behind you or in front of you. Running would be very dangerous and standing still means you get ignored and drivers won’t slow down at all. Why did they let it get to this?

I went to the Tourist Office and the man there took me to where the money-changers operate, mosty from offices. It’s all very open and safe, nothing like Asian money-sharks (with the exception of Singapore, which is dead straight). I told the Tourist-wallah I wanted to go up into the hills, but with all the traffic, could I get a bus out of town? He said he had met a Spanish cyclist who was headed the same way and told me where to find him, so a few hours later I met Salva at his guest house. He quickly dismissed the idea of a bus: “but you have a bike, you don’t need a bus!” and instantly my faith in cycling was restored. I came over to his place next morning ready to take off. In the meantime, two Austrian guys and a Swiss girl had arrived and were to join us. A cyclist from the bike shop Salva had just got replacement gears from offered to show us the way out of town, which was about 15km of uphill freeway. In a group, it felt far safer and our guide stopped to buy us all banana milkshakes before showing us the last junction where he would turn back. And then it was open roads again, cars and trucks flying by but far less honking than in Turkey, one car sounding like a buzz-saw as it rode on one shredded tyre that was now down to bare rim against the road. A gas station stop for lunch in the shade.

I noticed Salva had an excellent eye for good camping spots. He had been on the road for two and a half years, riding first down the west side of Africa, then back up the east side. He thought he had better do the hardest part of his world trip first, then everything else would seem easy. I’m sure he’s right, he took little troubles in his stride. He found us a great camping place that nobody else could see just a hundred yards from a village and he knew we would likely find water there. Some women were washing clothes in a stream near where we wanted to camp, but didn’t seem friendly or positive about us camping. We later learned that women can’t give the OK for anything, that has to come from men. Sadly there’s often little to gain in talking to women (unless you are a woman) as they may feel ill at ease talking to you and it could be viewed in a poor light by any men watching, but Iranian women are for the most part more liberated than other Middle-Eastern women, and the headscarf is far more common than in the Arab world, which typically insists on more ‘modesty’, ie only eyes visible, if that even. That’s modern Iran – a more advanced society than its Arab neighbours, but held back by a government that thinks it’s still the Middle Ages.

The campspot was too good for us to give up despite the uncertain reaction of the villagers, but it was not long before some men came over on a motorbike to welcome us and have a chat, first asking us if we would sleep in the village, then offering to bring us bread. They are so kind and hospitable, you have to be gentle and persistent in saying you would prefer to sleep in your tent, as that’s the thing they do not understand, why anyone, especially from a rich country, would prefer to do that. And you have to be extra welcoming to people who come to your campsite, especially when they come laden with gifts.

The next day we rode on over a pass and down a long straight hill where several of us set personal records for speed. I usually brake if my bike gets over 50km/h (30mph in old money) but I let it run up to 70 on this road. I learned not to ride too close behind Salva, things have a habit of flying off his bike at any time. We stopped to buy food in a town but quickly a small crowd gathered. Someone offered us tea and before we knew it we were led off the road and into a school where we sat for tea in the headmaster’s office, though it was a holiday and no children were there. Unable to explain that it was a perfect cycling day with a strong tailwind, they insisted we stay for lunch and we left our bikes there to be taken by car to the headmaster’s home, where we met his family and he offered us every refreshment he could find and let us all take showers in turn. Sparsely furnished and looking as though the last details of decorating and electricals might never be finished, it was a comfortable place for its thick rugs. For some reason you have to duck to get into an Iranian bathroom. They never think to put the plumbing below the floor, so the floor is raised to accommodate the squat toilet and you bump your head on the door frame. The shower is often next to the loo in what we would call a wet bathroom, so you have to be careful you don’t slip into the toilet. After an hour or so we were whisked off to lunch in the best place the town could offer, and we were invited to stay for a night or three. I find this sort of overdone hospitality to be too much. There’s never any thought given to your needs and you seem to be put there for your host’s entertainment and to impress the neighbours. After an hour more at our new friends’ house I started to make demands that we be released. I wasn’t the only one, it was a wonderful day, a day for riding and not for sitting around. With great reluctance, we were allowed to go but then our host decided to get in his car and take the whole family with him, escorting us out of town and stopping to beg us to come back and stay, then offering to carry our bikes (all five of them) in his car to the next town. This episode seemed never-ending. I thought we’d shaken him off and we rode on, hoping to run into a Spanish cyclist Salva had corresponded with coming the other way. This we did and as it was getting later in the day and the winds were strong, we decided to look for a camping place nearby.

We should have tried a little harder. We picked an industrial estate with some grassy hills behind it, all closed for the holidays that week. The man at the gate gave us an equivocal response and we went ahead and set up camp. Several visits from the police followed, adroitly handled by Alvaro, a professional clown turned world cyclist. I don’t know if his tricks impressed them or nearly got us in jail, but at 10pm the police gave up on us. It was another holiday tomorrow and not worth their while messing with. We huddled round Alvaro’s small computer to watch a DVD Salva had made of his last world biking trip. Five cyclists watching this 9″ screen, with sound to match. Wonderful.

We only had one night camping with Alvaro but it was inspiring, a great boost to the spirits. Alvaro has been on the road for three years, also going down and then up through Africa. We were the first group of cyclists he had met, as there were very few individuals cycling Africa. Alvaro is travelling from 2004-2014 (I thought of Michael Palin’s cry as the leper in Life of Brian: “Ten years behind the bell!”), he’s a giant of a character. He has one sponsor, a benefactor cyclists other impoverished riders can only dream of. This sponsor has given him a top-class bike, in fact he built the bike and flew out to Egypt with it to give it to Alvaro. Alvaro carries his clown gear with him and has given a lot of free shows in refugee camps in Africa. So far, the reception to a clown in the Islamic world is a lot less clear; it’s not an art form they readily understand the way that most people immediately laugh at a clown.

On we rode, through beautiful hilly country skirting round the back of a 5000m mountain for several days. There were small crowds and sometimes large ones wherever we stopped. One little shop where we sat on the steps outside for lunch, asked us in to sit there, then refused to let us pay for anything. We felt so bad about his giving us food that the two Austrians, Andy and Jannis, sneaked off to another shop where they were allowed to pay for their food. In other towns, we caused traffic jams when we stopped to buy bread. People were desperate to help us, whether they spoke English or not. We fled one such town and dreamed of finding an ideal campspot well hidden from the road, and a few bends in the road later we saw a low hill with a fast flowing stream coming our from behind it and pulled over to investigate before anyone saw what we were doing. It was perfect, the hill hid us completely and with running water for a wash too. Next morning we woke up to find the stream had dried up, it had come from a storm over the mountain a day or two before, but had been there just when we needed it.

To Ardebil, a town as ugly as its name, where the five of us shared a room for three, all we could find that holiday week. Someone took us to a hamam nearby, much the cheapest one I visited at less than a Euro, a bit small but it had a steam room and a hot bath and was certainly old. A little silly having to wear underwear while showering. And then Salva and I went south into the mountains and the other three headed straight to the Caspian Sea. It’s a lovely part of the country, a getaway region for Tehranis as it is scenic, not too hot and less humid and cloudy than the Caspian region. We saw a village just half a kilometre off the road and headed down a rough road past well cared for small fields and beehives to find a bridge over the shallow river to a village of mud-brick houses. Cows and sheep had muddied the river banks and rubbish was dumped at the foot of the village, but otherwise it was a scene worthy of Constable’s attention. I asked the first person I met if we might camp nearby and he offered me water from his house nearby while Salva looked around for a good site. As we sat and washed by the river, our new friend came over with a tray full of food, all from his own pantry and home made, honeycomb and a pot of honey flavoured with flower petals, a baked yoghurt dish, a flask of fermented yoghurt drink, more bread than we could eat in a couple of days. It was overwhelming, this generosity. Later half a dozen women came over with a flask of tea and we stood talking to them. They too had all but ignored us till they got the OK from the men of the village, now they were all smiles. And then a quiet evening with a few more visitors, it seemed the whole village came down to take a look.

In the morning a water pump started up at 6am so there was no lie-in for us, but there’s nearly always some disturbance if you camp anywhere near people. We had a great day riding, marred only by the police coming in to the restaurant while we ate lunch to demand passports. The officer wanted to take our passports away to photocopy; we took an instant dislike to him. No ID, no uniform, he just pointed to his car sitting outside as proof of who he was, and we were eating lunch. The restaurant owner pleaded with him to go, guests were disturbed, we dug our heels in. We decided we weren’t going anywhere for an hour anyway, so we refused to let him take away the passports. After we had eaten, we went outside, a crowd of some 30 people gathered. Why wouldn’t we give him our passports, they were asking us but after a while opinion seemed to swing in our favour. In Iran, people must go along with whatever the police want, or face the consequences. If the public realises that the police do not have unlimited legal powers, they will realise that they themselves have rights. And in fact the police do not have the authority to take your passport away in Iran, so our standing up to him was hopefully a good example to those watching. But it wasn’t getting us anywhere, besides being faintly amusing seeing the officer get more and more angry. He tried to start anew by offering a hand to shake. I refused. Then he knew it was personal. More officers arrived, then the young guys with trousers tucked into their socks, billy clubs and machine guns. Salva gave him his passport, went to the car door to argue some more, and slammed the door as the cop drove off. He knew that was the limit as the one with the stick moved forward. Ten minutes later he came back and demanded mine. My bit of theatrics was to try and get in the car with him and go to the station, but he threw my passport down on the floor of his car and put his foot down with the door still open and me holding the door. The other policeman standing by said to us in English “he is very tired” which gave us a laugh and defused the whole thing.

Afterwards we rode off to sit in a park to let our food go down. We thought we might have a nap but a few men surrounded us and someone wanted to sit next to me on the bench I hoped to sleep on. More inane questions. More borrowed phrases from me in response:

What do you think of of George Bush?
I don’t do politics.
What do you think of Ahmadinejad?
I couldn’t possibly comment.
What about homosexuals?
In this country, that’s politics, and I don’t do politics.

I looked around and wondered if it was a gay park. After a short while, we got back on our bikes. One more checkpoint, one more easy pass and we were out of that valley and into another and a long downhill and more fabulous riverside camping next to a family picnic, which meant more food offered and we nearly had to sing and dance for that too. Next day we had a long ride up and over an unpaved pass to the Caspian side. A long , four hour climb and then plunge into another weather system altogether, the humid rice-growing land by the Caspian Sea. Two nights in the mountain tourist village of Masouleh, then on to the coast. The rice paddies and backdrop of forested mountains were beautiful, the roaring traffic on the only east-west road far less so. In the evening , with hopes of

camping fading (we forgot the possibility of beach camping), we turned off the main road to try and find something on the back roads. After a few hundred metres the houses thinned out and there was nothing but rice fields. We turned round to have another look. A side road led to some open land that wasn’t flooded for rice, so we asked around there. No luck, but at least people were friendly and interested in helping us. We kept them talking, hoping some ideas might come to mind. Phone calls were made, and in a few minutes Theo came on his motorbike to pick us up, wearing his dairyman’s outfit.

Theo is half German and lived overseas, in Germany and the USA for most of his life, returning only five years ago to marry and resettle in his homeland. He told us he was a priest and conducts services in his home. He had a large cross on the wall and an equally large and prominent picture of Khomeini in case of unwanted visitors. He and his wife live very frugally on the milk from three cows he keeps behind his home along with some chickens and numerous cats. He spoke good English, though he claimed he had not spoken a word of it for more than five years. He was so excited to meet us he wanted to play us some DVDs of pop concerts straight away – Kenny Rogers and a concert by Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters were his favourites. We had a great evening with him and his wife, like the earlier nights we had with Christians, it felt like a night off from Islam, a time with like-minded people, though Theo’s wife was a Muslim. She was one of the few Iranians who removed her scarf in front of us.

We cycled on another day but Salva left his bike at a camping place on the beach and took the bus to Tehran with me. The road through the mountains looked terrifying but we met the Austrians and Swiss in Tehran and they made it OK. Tehran is a tough place to spend more than a few days, hot and terrifically noisy. The roads are difficult and dangerous to cross by foot, though of course there is no choice. Although culturally it can feel like a liberal place to most Iranians, the food there was limited to the same dreary kebabs and rice we had eaten everywhere else. We spent most of our time hanging around the hotel and staying out of the heat and noise. I went to Esfehan by train for two nights. More police checks at the station each way. The journey was beautiful, Esfehan is an improvement on Tehran but I wasn’t hooked on the place. The Armenian church (the architectural style is that of a mosque, though) had beautiful murals on all its walls and a fine museum, but the mosques, much as I appreciate them, are empty and one gets through them in about half an hour or so. I was sorry to see traffic running through one end of the famous square that is ‘half the world’ and motorbikes running up and down the covered bazaar. There was no escape, except by bike to Turkmenistan or plane to London. I chose BMI over Iran Air for the alcohol. As expected, the headscarves came off as soon as the women got on board. Nearly everyone had a drink before breakfast was served; all were relieved to be out of that mental prison for a while. Wonderfully friendly but demoralized and ill at ease as a nation, it was the worst luck that Iran should be stuck with the government they’ve got, a government that makes Syria’s look benign. Of all the countries I have visited, this one really seemed like a bad dream. By the time we arrived in London, everyone on the plane had come back to life, London looked vivid and colourful, with vast acres of flesh on display, bottom cleavage, tattoed boobs, the lot. Dreadful bad taste, but to feel free and enjoy the treats of an English summer, that’s hard to beat.

The crusade to the Holy Lands had ground to a halt in the heat of Damascus. Having been too long away from home, King Michael received word (by email – that’s a first!) of a full-scale revolt by his Queen. In short, he was no longer welcome back in his Hamburg castle. We spent a few more days walking in the shade of the Bazaar and the Old City, and having a quiet beer every evening in the middle of the roundabout at Martyr’s Square (beer is hard to find in Damascus, but there were a couple of small bottle shops in that area) talking about his troubles, but we were just passing time, these things take ages to figure out and we had so little to go on. He was brave, he knew he had to pull himself together if he were to get home, wherever that would be, safe and sound.
We checked out of the Heartbreak Hotel and took a bus north to Palmyra. It’s a busy road with refineries, cement works and other heavy industry along much of the way. I wouldn’t think of cycling it in any season, but (cycling content here…) we found that the road from Homs directly east would be an excellent way to go, across empty roads and hilly desert country, only seeing Palmyra at the last moment after crossing over the hill where the Citadel stands protecting the city of Palmyra. That would be the way to arrive in style, not the shabby bus we rode in on.
Palmyra is one of the world’s greats, a vast site recalling a fantastic and rich city that on several occasions in its history upstaged Rome and revolted against it. I think that much of what we saw is reassembled, as from drawings of a couple of hundred years ago, very little was left standing after the Romans finally sacked it. We could have camped among the ruins, most of which are open to anyone, but this was not the season to do it as nearby hotels are far more convenient (eg, they have water!) and not expensive at all. The nearby town is based around the oasis that was the original reason for Palmyra’s prominence on a trade route to the Middle East, but though it is desert now, it was once the Fertile Crescent. We spent a couple of hours each evening up at the Citadel, where tourists gather to watch the sun setting, its last rays showing up Palmyra to the east in rich colours. The evening air is a fabulous cool desert breeze, after which we rode our bikes in darkness back down the hill into the town to watch motorbikes roaring up and down the main street all night. It’s a grotty tourist town next to the site, but it made me realize that had we only bussed around between the top tourist destinations, we would have had a very different, and more negative experience of the Syrian people. Cycling enabled us to get far off that beaten track and to meet people as yet unjaded by tourists.
Then another long haul up to the Turkish border by bus. It was open for foot traffic and oddballs like us only, and had shut by the time we got there and we spent the night in the entirely Kurdish town of Al-Qamishli on the Syrian side. It was our first Kurdish town as we had exited Turkey for Syria far to the west. People don’t talk politics in Syria, and I had no impression that the Syrian Kurds had any grievances at all. Maybe, maybe not. I was to find it is very different among the Turkish Kurds. Our last night in Syria was a happy one, with a simple dinner of pizzas – Syrian pizzas are tiny but cost about 5p each. One of the guys at the pizza place offered to go and get us beers on his bike while we sat eating and I was pleased when he brought us a lot of change, telling us the beers had been half the price he had expected. We went there for breakfast the next day and someone walked off to bring us coffees and then the manager refused payment for any of it. Wonderful Syria!
Syria had been a marvellous place to visit for all the physical hardships. Not just friendly, but interesting and very communicative people who love to chat and have the widest range of facial expressions and gestures when language fails. Very straightforward to deal with too, and certainly straight with us when it came to money. When it came time to head for the border, one of our friends at the pizza place (income about 100 British pounds a month; his teacher wife makes 60 pounds) escorted us by bike and firmly refused my request for him to ‘look after’ my unused Syrian pounds which would become worthless to me in just a few minutes time.
It was a mildly chaotic border crossing, the Syrian staff having a military look and bearing to them and telling us we would have to wait as the computer system was down and they had to check it before we left. We decided to make ourselves just mildly irritating to encourage them to get the boss to sign off on our departure, which he did after an hour and a half, but they remained courteous despite our awkwardness and offered us tea and let us sit in the top dog’s office while we waited. Turkey seemed very First World after Syria, surprising for a border town, but we soon sensed we were in a very different part of Turkey. A Kurd told us the difference between Turks and Kurds is that Turks drink and Kurds don’t (bad news for thirsty pilgrims!), which is the nub of it. Kurds are the more devout Muslims. We rode up into a wooded valley and camped in trees by a river on a picnic site owned by a Kurdish family and continued up the valley the next day to high rounded hills at about 1500m and no shade for the next few thousand kilometres.

We wanted to visit the Syrian Orthodox monasteries in the area, and found one just a few miles off the highway. Built in AD419, there are only three monks now, though two are in hospital and it is hard to imagine them returning. Several women run a boarding school for local village boys from families who still speak Aramaic. The classes and religious services are all in Aramaic, the language of Christ’s time, but in the daytime the boys are bussed to local schools to be taught in Turkish. One of the women told us two of her brothers had been killed during Kurdish uprisings in the 1970s and 80s, when Muslim Kurds had stormed the monastery. They won’t let Muslims stay the night but we were made welcome. It was a delight to have dinner with well-behaved children and we brought what we had to the meal – some baklava and biscuits, which were well received.

Then finally to the small city of Batman, where the two crusaders parted company, Michael heading back west to get his affairs in order, and me eastwards into Iran. My first gas station tea stop was a shocker- the people were friendly enough but there were religious posters and pictures of Mecca everywhere and the manager called it the ‘Islamic Republic of Kurdistan’. Heaven help us, just what the world doesn’t need, another Islamic republic. I stopped at a rough farming town for lunch and was stopped by the police in plain clothes (this is PKK country, uniforms could make them targets). What was I doing there? This was no tourist town, they said in suspicion of my motives. Just a lunch stop, and could they direct me to a good restaurant? With help from twenty or so schoolkids who had followed me around town, their car was push-started and I followed them to the town’s only restaurant. From then on I passed more checkpoints before stopping in a small village to be mobbed by more badly dressed and worse-behaved children. One little swine hit me with a pellet gun in the back, but when I turned round and saw he was only four, I gave him a fierce-sounding bellow and he ran off in terror.

The next morning I sat down for a morning tea with some soldiers at a checkpoint where their dogs were giving me some trouble and I was just loading up my catapult before they called me in for a tea. The officers on duty joined me while their charges stood in line for inspection, but it was clear the officers were liked and respected as well as being tough. Far different from the Syrian army. The young conscripts were all good-natured enough and keen to survive their year or more serving in Kurdish Turkey, but the officers were professionals. From a couple of tea-stops at army checkpoints, all the officers are Turkish, never Kurdish. It was tempting to toady up to them by saying, in some form of mime, that the PKK should all be shot (which is my view), but it was more interesting to try and draw them out on their views of things. They didn’t talk about the Kurdish problem, nor did I ask, but their views on Islam were clear. ‘Islamic Republic – big problem. Pakistan – problem. Syria – problem. Aleman, France, Ingilterra, Christian – no problem. As for Iran, they gave a little hand wave that suggested ‘crazy’. I saw it more than once in Turkey as their opinion of Iran. Syria too sometimes gets it. Turkey has dodgy neighbours. It’s probably a Turkish army view as they are known to be a conservative force in politics. Music to my ears, though.
A good tailwind pushed me up the valley to Lake Van at 2000m. The scenery was looking more alpine, with patches of snow on the surrounding mountains. I entered the town of Tatvan where I planned to take the ferry across Lake Van and catch up a bit of time, but first I stopped for a ‘tourist information’ sign, which sadly had no English speakers (nor any information) save for one young Kurdish student sitting nearby, who was an excellent, if unpracticed speaker. I sat with him over tea for an hour or more, and asked him to tell me about the Kurds. It elicited a long list of grievances and explanations as to why the Kurds are so poor. No education, can’t join the army as they wouldn’t be allowed to pray five times a day – this guy was a first-class whinger, but I’d invited him to let loose his thoughts. The sense of grievance and victimhood that I found in other devout Muslims seems a part of the culture, and in Shia Iran, it seemed central to their identity as the killing of their ‘martyr’ Ali is still mourned as if it happened yesterday.

My new Muslim friend and his mates wanted to ask me questions. What did I think of the war in Palestine, and whose side was I on? Did I think it was true that Israeli soldiers killed babies? This was going nowhere, so I made my excuses and escaped with my life and without having to perjure myself to the ferry terminal to see when the boats run to Van, the other side of the lake. A few rust buckets sat in the harbour and there was no office, no one to ask at all but the guy running the coffee shop told me to come back around 7am and I definitely wouldn’t miss the ferry, if it ran.
I rode into town to find a hotel and stopped at the first one that had easy ground floor access for my bike. I was pleased to find the receptionist spoke good English, and sat down to chat with them as tea was brought. As he spoke, I noticed his English improving far beyond the little he claimed to know. He soon wandered onto politics via another favourite theme of the devout, that large families are good. Why they never realise that large families go hand in hand with poverty and poor education and a host of other troubles I don’t know. He thought it was Europe’s big mistake not to grow their population. I think there’s a bigger plot, a plan to dominate the world by sheer numbers. Look at Bangladesh, I said, isn’t that the result of these huge families? This only got him onto his favourite topics, such as the Great Satan. I was starting to feel a vague unease and dismay that I had allowed this conversation to go this way when he said
“Osama made a big mistake. He should have used a nuclear bomb”.
I froze for half a second and without thought or any explanation got up and said slowly “I am going” and walked out leaving the tea on the table. I was mortified at the sheer evil of this remark and though I felt no personal danger, wanted to get well away from a man who thought that way. The PKK has many supporters in Kurdistan. But a few minutes later I had found a peaceful and friendly place where tea and polite conversation was the order of the day. I found a nice spot for dinner and was welcomed by even the long-beards in the corner. It’s a great relief that the truly devout have little interest in politics or nationality, and from that springs true hospitality.
The ferry left around 10 the next morning. It carries trains across the lake and the ferries are designed with low sterns to take the carriages directly onto the boat. The problem comes when the weight of the boat is altered by train carriages coming on or off, and I saw the other ferry rise about a foot above the dock where its connection to the dock had slipped. The trains run to Iran, sometimes carrying passengers, mostly Iranians working in Turkey. It was a wonderful day as the only passenger on the boat, no kids to bother me, music to listen to and clouds and mountains up to 4000m to watch. Van was a bit more in touch with life than Tatvan and I had a last beer in a back alley to steel myself for Iran. I made a few phone calls from a phone booth place and the guy at the desk let me call for free both times. I write this partly to remind myself how many great Kurds there are. It’s never a matter of money with these guys, they know you’ve got more than they have, it’s pure hospitality and friendliness towards a foreign visitor.
My last day in Turkey was the best riding, few cars heading east to the Iranian border, wide pasture meadows and tufty clouds sauntering past me, a lunch in the only non-smoking restaurant I’ve come across in Turkey, then a visit to the student house of some young Kurdish lads who all seemed to be dreadfully serious about religion. I think I preferred hanging out with the bad lads across the road waiting for the electric power to come back on in the internet cafe, but I couldn’t refuse the offer of a tea. You need a good reason to refuse Middle Eastern hospitality. Eight students living together, all male of course, and several keen beard-growers among them. Far too courteous to grill me on my country’s role in the world, though Israel’s always fair game to them. I could tell the West is a decadent place in their minds. So lacking in any experience of adult life, their minds were full of dangerous certainties. Islam, the victim religion, so peaceful, so harmless. I began to see them as the enemy – I was sitting having tea with the enemy. Not my personal enemy, not my country’s enemy, but the enemy of freedom, the arts and all cultured life, of women, of pop music and everything we hold dear in the West and all the rubbish we put up with too as the price of freedom. All this would go if the young bearded ones had their way.

I rode on, again enjoying the freedom my bike gave me to choose my own escape route, down an unpaved road that ran straight to the border. It was riding that cyclists would give their eye teeth for, more wide meadows, skylarks soaring, singing at the top of their climb and then falling back to earth, flocks of sheep, led by pushy goats and friendly sheepdogs and young shepherds, all with the wind at my back. I rejoined the road and rolled down a fairly steep valley for the last few kilometres to stop abruptly at the border, which looked closed for good. I’d chosen a little used border, not the busy one to the north at Dog Biscuit (no traveller can pronounce the Turkish name). A shepherd appeared from nowhere and explained to me with a lot of hand waves that this border was closed to all but trains, but that a train ran at midnight – the one coming off the ferry. We walked back to the small station and he stopped to have a snack and share his food with me, sitting on the unused road and gave me the rest of his cheese that he’d taken to Iran (a little harmless smuggling taking the high route) to sell. The station welcomed me as their only piece of business in a long time and the young and very switched-on customs guy took me under his wing. Husseyn is from the West, ie not a Kurd, but all the other staff are. His spot is so isolated he has to climb a 500m mountainside every evening to call his fiance. He offered me his flat to have a nap if I wanted, or take a shower and use the internet. Perfect, and when he was calling his girl, I sat with the station’s post office manager and had tea with him and listened to Turkish music. At 10pm, Husseyn had finished his long nightly phone call and took me to his friends’ flat for dinner. It was one of the best meals I had in Turkey, stuffed peppers and aubergines, plenty of bread to mop it up, all served on the carpet with newspaper spread out as a tablecloth. At midnight the train pulled in and the guys helped me through Immigration and Customs – I’d met all those guys beforehand and had tea with a few, then introduced me to the Iranian train crew and got my bike on the train. All fabulous, and the perfect way to leave Turkey on a good note and stop dwelling on the few duds I’d met.

We’ve been here a couple of weeks now, but still the welcomes still come as if we’d just arrived, in shops, on the street, from policemen, all the time. It’s as if they’ve been told to say it but it comes with a smile and they know it’s a winner. And it is, for they are a charming people who love politeness and kind words but aren’t bothered too much by formalities. I suspect and certainly hope my refusing of so many offers of tea as we ride through the countryside has not caused any offence as hospitality is the highest form of generosity. Also it’s rare that one gets to see inside a Syrian home anyway so perhaps I was unwise to refuse, but we’d never have gotten anywhere if I hadn’t gestured that we really needed to press on. And a few times I accepted an offer of a cup of tea only to find it was the cup of tea my kind host was in the middle of drinking. We recoil a bit at the excessive handling food and drinks receive in Syria, it’s the easiest way to suffer minor stomach troubles but I think our refusals are not looked on so harshly as we’re foreigners and can’t be expected to follow all their rules.

After a few days in Aleppo we were well kippered from the smoke and struck out towards the ancient ruins at Ebla. It’s thought to be the first city in the World, meaning there’s not much left, just foundations but of a large city thought to have been built for an aristocratic class only, around 3000 b.c. The city stood in middle of a raised area walled by a 3km long circular earth wall, now a hillside. We had a hard ride there through dust and din and finally a 25km slog along the motorway. The roar of traffic was enough to make me try something I said I’d never do, which was to listen to music in an attempt to drown out the noise and give me some calmness, but it only fed my irritation. I thought Simon & Garfunkel might do the trick, but in the gritty mood I was in, their soft singing only sounded complacent and superficial. Then the bland duo stuck the knife in:

“Gee but it’s great to be back home. Home is where I want to be….”

“Bastards!”, I raged internally, because they were right. I vowed to go through their music later and delete all but the very best, but we were close to the end of the day’s ride. We couldn’t find a camping place and Ebla is in the middle of farmland where we would easily be seen. We passed through the little village, went up to the site and were told we couldn’t camp there. We rode back to the village and asked for help. In Syria and probably in many Muslim countries this triggers a reaction as it hits that hospitality button quite hard. Our problem becomes their problem. And luckily – always – an English speaker pops up, and twenty or thirty kids and a long process of finding a place begins, seemingly involving half the village. Someone telephoned up to the site and now that the staff had left and the night-watchman was there, he said we were welcome to camp under their faux-Bedouin tent in the middle of the site, which is what we wanted in the first place.

Our host spoke no English but keeping him company for the evening was his cousin, who spoke it fluently. A teacher from the village, he was a very devout Muslim and only too keen to talk about it at length. I have to say I didn’t quite click with him but thankfully Michael did, enabling me to drop out of the conversation as I find discussing religion with humourless zealots to be as pleasant as dental surgery and my facial expressions would have given my feelings away, in fact they probably did. The truth is I find the calm certainty these characters have reminds me of talking to Marxists in the 1970s (and where’s their Second Coming/Revolution?). Drives me crazy! Is there no room for doubt? As someone who once made not a bad career out of risk and uncertainty, I find dogmatism, well, boring at best, but it’s such a limited, one-sided view of the world. I’m with Doubting Thomas. But for the record, my tormentor told us he hates the extremists and terrorists. They give Islam a bad name, he says. He’s for a peaceful takeover and yes, he thinks they will take over the World. North Africa, that was part of the Project, as he calls it, and Spain, well they invited the Muslims in, he told us, so they’ve never really invaded anywhere and are a peaceful religion. He doesn’t always get to prayers and his daughter tells him he’s not a good Muslim (I’d give her a good cuffing if I were him, but it reminds me of Nazi children turning in their parents, and besides, what a rotten child to have!). And praying shouldn’t get in the way of work, for ‘Work is the first Adoration’ in the Koran, he tells us. Well you wouldn’t know it in this country, where running a hotel is about spending 18 hours a day watching TV and zero hours spent cleaning.

We left Ebla very impressed with the hospitality and dependability of the people we met, who live in an economy which is largely cashless, the shops selling only things they cannot make or grow easily. The Bedouins, I don’t know if they were Bedouins or just people who dress like them, seem to be masters of hospitality. We’ve met several teachers now and they all seem to be very high calibre types. One of the shepherds we met spoke excellent English and is studying Physics at Aleppo University. He was just watching his father’s flock for a few days and had to shear some sheep when we met him. It’s a hard environment, with the noise of tractors and farm equipment, naturally with kids riding on top, drowning out conversation and people shouting at each other no matter how close, and dust swirling around as vehicles pass. At first look as we rode through, they looked as though they’d happily slice us to pieces, but when we left the next morning, it was like leaving many new friends.

We had a long journey to the southwest to visit Saladin Castle and negotiated for a truck to take us there. We missed strong headwinds and a steep 1500m pass. Another night camping at a restaurant, the tent tied to those ubiquitous white plastic chairs to hold it up, and then a ride down to the coast.

Syria’s coast is no beauty and the military seem to have bagged three quarters of it for themselves, with antiquated missiles and anti-aircraft guns pointing out to sea. On the way we met Alex, a Slovenian cyclist on his way to Beijing and spent the night with him camping at a restaurant on the beach. It was our best night yet, I felt. Alex was good company, if a little batty in my view. His blue lycra outfit would be embarrassing in any country but was particularly so in Syria, it left nothing to the imagination and he’s tall too, so, well I leave you to guess. Syrians would never say anything, he’s foreign and so a guest and it’s sporting gear, so in Syria, he gets away with it. I have yet to meet a rude person here. The restaurant was the usual falling-to-bits affair with an attempt at a hotel but they haven’t seen guests in years. It was how I imagine Cuba to be, and the young guys who work there, they were thrilled to have us there and entertained us royally. The young men, I thought, seemed a bit socially disadvantaged to say the least; they lived in the restaurant, sleeping on foam mattresses on the floor. An older man, Johnny, who is a Christian and says he doesn’t like Turkey because it’s anti-Christian whereas Syria is tolerant of all religions, looks after them as a father figure.

We left with Alex the next morning, hoping to ride with him but knowing that we had no chance or desire to keep up with his 200km a day plan (I don’t think he even came close to this as we heard he was not far away two days later). I told him I couldn’t bear the noise of his gears so if he wanted to ride with us, he had better let me fix them. I know, a bit bossy of me but he was grinding his rig to bits. But shortly after that, a gear cable broke on Michael’s bike so we had to stop and replace that and Alex pedalled off. He was a bit of a character but you’d have to be a bit mad to want to cycle across Iraq, as he hoped to do.

More military bases, more hooting, a foul-air bonus of riding past an oil refinery in the middle of Allawi country, the Allawis being the tribe that the ruling family come from, meaning more than the usual saturation coverage of pictures of the Assad family on every flat surface. More headwinds too and a storm brewing, spirits drooping amid the plastic bags and filth swirling around us, and we stopped at a little shop, hoping to find shelter and something from their shelves with which to make a lunch. In fact it was abnormally clean and they had all the junk food cyclists crave, sweet biscuits and ice cream and a large tub of yoghurt (it’s good here) with a jar of apricot jam for sweetening. Our new hosts were sitting down to watch some UEFA cup football and were pleased to have us. More tea had to be turned down in order for us to reach the next town, Tartous, where we took a room in the best hotel, the Grand, another run-down Cuban type of place with a balcony overlooking the unfinished esplanade and the sea.

Here we met Michael of Colorado, so his shirt read, a Syrian who had emigrated to the US as a boy, served in the US Airforce and had divorced his American wife because he wanted to come back to Syria to retire. His fluent English and distinct Colorado accent intrigued us and we were keen to meet him the next day as he promised to tell all about Syria and he also wanted to show us the palace he had bought for only $50,000. I should have remembered that he’d told us he was a real estate salesman in the US before accepting the offer. Michael of Colorado sat in the hotel lobby telling us of the great life he had found here and while I sat watching him to take a photograph, I noticed that he never smiled. No matter how good the story sounded, it could not possibly be true coming from this face. He took us in his Lada (”Better than any Porsche or Mercedes I’ve owned”) to his flat, a sad bachelor place with not even a proper kitchen, just a gas burner to make tea. A cheap tiled floor with identical prints on each tile. He has plans for a 40 unit apartment block, he writes to the President of Syria with suggestions on reforms of the telephone system, he’s going to Alexandria to find a woman who wants to come back to Syria with him to be his companion and clean for him (anyone know somebody who might be interested?), but we realised we’d simply made a mistake in accepting his hospitality, for Michael of Colorado was desparately lonely, a good example of the expat who comes home only to be viewed with suspicion by his compatriots whom he wished would accept him back. At 73, with dodgy knees, overweight and alone, we felt dreadfully sorry for him. What madness had made him leave a wife and proximity to America’s veterans’ hospitals and take his last dollars to sink them irretrievably into this flat?

One of the delights of cycling was that we could experience all this and ride off happily the next day and leave it all behind. We had a hard ride up to Krak de Chevaliers, the altitude isn’t so great at 620m up from sea level where we started, but the ups and downs are many and steep enough to have us walk the last climbs. We camped at the nearest restaurant less than 100m from the castle itself and spent a happy day wandering round the castle and talking to some Dutch motorbikers who camped alongside us. The region is said to be Allawi, but around Krak it’s all Christian villages, and our restaurant owner was a Shi’ite.

One can have a fairly harmless political conversation in Syria by just asking “Bush?” and then any Syrian will give the thumbs down or make some yucky sound, then, “Arafat?” and he makes another, more pleasant sound, and so on until every Middle Eastern and World leader we can think of has been covered, and we all know where we stand on the key loyalties. He had some posters up of the Hezbollah leader Nusralluh that make him look like a Kalashnikov-armed Robin Hood. Nusralluh is the only terrorist one can permissibly support in Syria, and we’ve seen posters of Ahadinejad, Assad and Nusrallah together (the funds and weapons flow from left to right) in Damascus, though I dare not photograph them. Extremism is frowned upon, unless it’s state-sponsored. So the papers denounce foreign interference in Lebanon, except their own, of course, which is in support of Lebanon’s sovereignty and Hezbollah’s fight against the Wolf to the south, we are told.
We rode east to Homs with the wind behind us through 6 checkpoints on the Lebanon border. The men wore uniforms but without any identification or insignias and were armed but we were waved through as they drank tea, ate ice creams or watched the telly. They weren’t the usual scrawny 18-year olds but in their 40s, possibly working for Customs, possibly trusted units of the President himself, this being a country where trust is valued above competence in all such matters. Homs showed the wonder of cycling yet again, for it’s a town few people would visit with little tourist infrastructure and hence more friendliness and less over-charging. Cyclists discover these places by accident, but this process works. We picked a grubby fleapit with a nostalgic look that made me think of Indian hotels where coughing and throat clearing would be the norm. The nearby roundabout was full of a lively crowd gathering for a public hanging of two youths convicted only the day before of a ghastly murder for which special approval from the President had been sought – and received – for the death sentence. We took our tea on the balcony to watch the crowd and excitement growing and had the predictable discussion on whether the hanging would be right or not, Michael thinking perhaps with such a short trial and me saying we had to respect local customs and that most people in Britain (eg Sun and Daily Mail readers) would happily hang those convicted of such offences, but thankfully we didn’t have to witness it, not that we could have beared to do so. The police charged the crowd with batons flailing several times to allow traffic through, and the idea that the execution would be public was just a fantasy anyway.

We had a fine time wandering the old town, with many Middle East Colonial-looking buildings of less than a century’s age looking softly worn and crumbled. Next day we found an internet cafe and as the manager was such a good speaker of English and so helpful, I took the chance of asking him a few questions about religion, but he quickly beckoned me outside with “that man there, he is my friend, but he works for Secret Police”, then helpfully adding “in fact I do, too, but it’s better he doesn’t hear”, which ended whatever it was we were talking about and I asked him about the weather instead.

On to Damascus by bus – 180km of motorway saved – and we’ve settled in for a few days. The Syrians claim Damascus is the World’s oldest capital city and it has a wonderful and enormous and thriving Old City just a short walk away from our hotel. The neighbourhood is similar in style to the Old City, narrow streets with houses and mosques cheek by jowl and overhanging windows on each side just inches apart. Mediaeval masonry, plaster and timber like exposed or poking out of walls supporting floors and balconies in a very organic, natural style seen in only one or two streets in Britain, such as York’s Shambles. Here it’s widespread, though so many buildings are neglected and have whole corners knocked off or bulldozed in the name of progress . Thousands of years old, it’s still very liveable and efficient for people, only to be ruined by cars determined to push their way down the narrowest alleys. Yet these neighbourhoods are Syria’s riches, not the damned cars that will come and go in less than the blink of an eye compared with these elegant communities.

The jewel in the Old City is the Ummayad Mosque, the Islamised Byzantine cathedral dating back to the 4th or 5th century. The old nave is 157m long inside, were it still a cathedral I think it would be the World’s longest. As it runs West to East, muslim worshippers face sideways, to the south, for their prayers. In the middle lies the tomb of John the Baptist, but I was told there’s probably only a toenail of the saint, if that, and that many churches lay claim to parts of him. The marble-floored inner courtyard of the mosque is magnificent on a bright day and children play happily and families picnic. Women unsuitably dressed, which is most of them, must borrow a special robe to cover themselves before entering. They sit at the back during prayers and in every mosque have their own, clearly inferior entrance. We walked on to the Iranian mosque nearby, dedicated to the daughter of Ali, the Shia martyr, and enjoyed its mirrors, light and gaudiness, and ostentatious prayer too. On to Saladin’s tomb and the Roman Jupiter’s temple, now just a few arches and columns which support part of the Souk and elsewhere stand alone in testament to Rome’s great engineering, if not her now forgotten Gods.

And then to a hammam, the best one we have yet found. Costing only 5 euros for the works, ie quick massage and scrape with a loofah glove as well as the sauna and steam room, the owner claims this hammam is 1023 years old. It’s well maintained and top quality with a very warm steam room. I have to say it’s fairly gay too but everything’s above board and Lawrence would have had nothing to worry about here. After my massage the masseur said to me “You very nice” to which I smiled “Thank you very little”, which was completely stupid but off I went for a final cold shower, then out to be cocooned like a babe in more clean towels and to sit drinking tea in the lobby. One of the staff stands guard with a towel to preserve your dignity as you get dressed, rather like Mum used to do on the beaches when we were kids. These are simply incredible places, an interesting counterpoint to Japan’s onsens. People are by and large far more at ease in a hammam, there are no strict rules you could break, unlike Japan, and the staff guide you with ease by gestures around the place. You wear a towel at all times and can spend as long as you want in there. You’re never made to feel unwelcome in these places, or in mosques either . There are so many Syrians taking photos that a foreigner doing so is absolutely nothing at all.

I sat down to have a quiet late afternoon beer by myself at a little hole-in-the-wall cafe where I know the owner has some beer hidden. No sooner had I taken my first sip than the two Syrian guys either side of me both homed in to strike up a conversation. Secret policemen again? I asked them what they did for a living as they routinely ask us age, marital status etc. so why not, but I couldn’t shake them off to enjoy my beer in peace. They wanted to know what I thought about marriage, and did I believe in love (I had no great insights into either, I’m afraid to say) and finally, what were the virtues I looked for in a woman? I should have given Ataturk’s reply, which was “availability” but I don’t think they’d have got it.

We’re now in Syria, the self-styled Cradle of Civilization, and very glad to be here. The ubiquitous Ataturk we saw in Turkey has now been replaced by His Omnipresence, shown above, who can only be referred to in a coded way for reasons of self-preservation. Though from the customs and immigration procedures we experienced, there’s not much to worry about with the Syrian government for tourists – they want the money.

But first, we had a great last few days in Turkey in the ancient city of Antioch, or Antakya as the Turks called it. They’ve only controlled Antioch for some 70 years, it was previously part of Syria but geographically it fits far better with Turkey; the change in scenery to stock ‘Biblical-looking’ begins at the border. Antioch’s a great little town and has a long history on the Silk Road as the largest Roman town in the region through which all east-west traffic came. It has only a couple of hundred thousand inhabitants now, but in the 1920s over 250,000 died in an earthquake. We walked up above the town to visit St. Peter’s cave, which more accurately was owned by St. Luke and is believed to be the oldest place of worship still in existence from the early Christian period. Services are still available for groups of pilgrims, but for phonies like us, perhaps not. We’ve left our pilgrim credentials at home this time. Unfortunately there were rocks falling from the cliffs above the two times we tried to visit and it was closed. Antioch has a fantastic collection of Roman mosaic floors in its museum, a sprawling covered market and a couple of hamams. We looked

into one rather seedy hamam in the market and found we’d stepped into a grungy underworld, the sole attendant was pacing round dressed in only his underwear and a grubby dust-filled wig. He saw us and went to put on an incredibly filthy towel round his waist and beckoned us over, but let me tell you there was no way I would lie face down on a massage table with this guy in charge, or face up for that matter. We high-tailed it out of there and went to the one just behind our hotel, which also needed a bit of a refurb but had bags of character and antiquity to it. The hamam we had visited in Antalya touted itself as being 600 years old, and it probably was, but I suspect that many of them are of similar vintage. Only in Antalya we paid about 17 Euros for the full monty – soap massage and oil massage. Here we paid only 2.50 Euros for just the bath, which it really isn’t, it’s a mild steam sauna and a good washing with running water poured over ourselves from small pales. It was a bit decrepit but for 2.50 it’s the equivalent of the fast-disappearing local public baths in Japan, the sentos. It’s a great tradition, a chance to actually use and experience something that’s been around for hundreds of years for a price that is next to nothing. Hamams always have small domed roofs with glass stars or hexagons cut into the roof in odd (or rather, sophisticated) geometric shapes and are usually near mosques, though everything is near a mosque in Turkey and so far, in Syria too.

We had a dream-ride from Antioch to Aleppo in Syria, two days of steady warm tailwinds and beautiful farmland scenery. I didn’t have a Syrian visa and was hoping to get one at the border, and was not disappointed. In fact Michael had more difficulty getting in as they asked him the key question in their visa approval process, a question concerning his previous regional travels. He’s been bounced at the border before by Syria, and this time they got very excited by a visa from Mauritius, thinking it was this other country referred to by travellers only as ‘Disneyland’. But we made it, and while waiting at the border we met round-the-world motorbiker Nick Sanders, who interviewed ‘Knight of the Road Sir Michael Kiljan’ for a podcast on his website http://www.nicksanders.com .

The scenery changed drastically as we passed through the line of low hills that marks the border between Turkey and Syria. It’s immediately more rocky, arid and ‘Biblical’ looking and buildings are low and cream-coloured. Goat country. We stopped to change money at the first village we came to, getting a not so great rate but appreciating the convenience – and a cold beer. Syria’s not dry – that’s great news, and a good indication that Syria is not a country of religious extremism. The Syrian beers were all around the 10% alcohol mark so I picked a familiar Turkish beer – only to find it was a mere 9% alcohol after I’d bought it. In the euphoria of getting a visa and our both going to a new country together for the first time, I chugged it down and we headed off into a fine evening ride, but instead of finding horses and carts, we rode amongst the most maniacal drivers I have ever experienced, it was like India at high speed. When the ten year-old drove past us on a tractor towing a water tanker, that was it for me. I really regretted the beer, it made it hard to concentrate with traffic around us flying by, stopping, starting and sometimes reversing without warning, yelling and honking at us while the road broadened and narrowed for no reason. It got worse as we approached Aleppo, I think it was payday and everyone was off the fields and heading into town. Syria’s a mandatory crash-helmet country for bikers, sad to say. The road crossed over a section of Roman road in excellent condition after 2000 years and still in use today.

We knew we wouldn’t make Aleppo that evening, and as light fell our choices evaporated as to where we could stay for the night. A sign for camping led us 2 km up a side road and to the home of a Belgian-Syrian couple. Crystal, also seemingly dressed as an extra for Life of Brian, is a Belgian woman now living in Syria. She hasn’t converted to Islam, being a non-believer (shhhh….) but she chooses to dress that way, and to sit on the ground when she wants to, refusing offers of a mat. They have a few small businesses and take in campers and she’s starting to grow food on their half-acre plot. She’s done a good job with the solar showers and clean toilets too.

We spent an hour finding the hotel my guidebook recommended, the Al Gawaher, but would have found it in minutes if only I hadn’t lost my compass. A hotel could be a few blocks away in this town and no one would know of it. It’s the best budget place in Aleppo and they let us camp on the roof where we have plenty of space and shade and a view. The breeze at night is wonderful and we watch the neighbours on their roof-tops. They all seem to be pigeon-fanciers and many have a soft spot for the hordes of cats who wander the side streets and roof-tops at night. Dogs are nowhere to be seen, this being a Muslim land.

The food was a big hit straight away, especially at lunchtime when it’s freshly prepared. The local fast food – falafels and a soupy mix pronounced ‘fool’ is just to my taste. ‘Fool’ consists of large beans like fava beans, chickpeas, some yoghurt and olive oil and spices. There are so many more spices than I have eaten in this kind of food before. We’ve had cups of coffee with cardamoms mixed in, mint leaves with everything, new variations on baklava. It’s very inventive. Dinner is a bit duller, it looks as though it’s been prepared earlier and just kept warm, though if we could speak Arabic we could ask for something to be made fresh for us. The water is drinkable as far as I can see, but getting a bottle avoids some of the rather excessive handling that drink, food, cups and plates etc usually seem to get.

We went to see the Citadel, the enormous castle that still dominates the now sprawling city. Every building is the same dusty dun colour and there’s been little new building in the last forty years, a lot of the newer buildings faring worse than their much older neighbours, as is so often the case in the Middle East. The wall the Byzantines built around Constantinople has lasted much longer than the half-century old slums next to it. The walk back from the Citadel through the covered souk is at least a mile long.

We strolled around the Christian quarter as it seems to be the oldest surviving medieval neighbourhood in Aleppo, lots of narrow alleys and low archways that keep cars out.

It’s a very tolerant country in terms of religion, there are a couple of Armenian churches, the larger Syrian Orthodox Church and the Greek Catholic church we went to this morning. There were just half a dozen worshippers plus two very dubious-looking sinners at the back and a grumpy priest who we thought spoke and sang in several different languages through the service. I thought it a brave little outpost of Christianity but when we went to the Forty Martyrs Cathedral almost next door to watch a bit of the Armenian Orthodox service, there were over a hundred people and it looked like a thriving place. We have seen a few heavily wrapped Muslim women in the streets, but the percentage overall looks to be less than one might find on the streets of London – my feeling is the Muslims over here are more moderate than the ones that made it to Britain, as a generalisation. We saw a lot of Bedouins working the fields when we rode in and saw their tents too, but in the whole time we spent in Turkey and here I have only seen one man with the full ‘mujahedeen’ look, ZZ Top beard and all. Aleppo’s streets have a wonderful variety of religious dress and of course non-religious dress with no feeling that anything is being imposed on women. Shorts are OK for sports or male tourists though I did see some kids following a western woman in shorts and laughing at her. Talking of dress, someone in turkey did ask us if we were in the military, which made me a little nervous. Actually these clothes are working out great, the shirt sometimes gets soaked while riding but is breezy and easily washed out, and keeps the sun off very well. I didn’t wear it for the entry to Syria though. Perhaps we should tell them we’re Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade veterans? Mike vetoed that idea.

A rare day of peace and quiet as we are staying at the flat of some friends we made very briefly while assembling our bikes in Antalya, a couple of fellow bike tourers, one of whom lives in Adana which is directly on our route. This is incredible luck and for a day and two nights we are out of the heat and noise and are living the high life (the 9th floor but above the din of traffic). Michael took his earplugs out for the first time in 10 days. He’s been wearing them night and day. I tried wearing them myself in traffic but it seemed dangerous, but I’ve used them for several nights. The sound of the Muezzin, eerily omnipresent even when there is no mosque in sight, seems to have been factored in by my brain and it doesn’t disturb me, but there is always some unexpected nighttime prowling or visitor or otherwise totally unpredictable noise no matter where we camp. And we’ve had some interesting and varied campgrounds, such as behind a restaurant on a hillside (see photo above), where someone tried to get in to the restaurant in the middle of the night, banging the door so hard he broke some glass. The restaurant owner, on whose rear balcony we camped, slept through it all. We could see the madman banging on the door but decided he was not the axe-murderer people always warn you about before you set off on a camping trip. He was pretty mad, though. We never found out why.

Another evening we totally ran out of options and begged a restaurant to let us camp in their grounds, but they only allowed us a sort of gazebo where we camped in close quarters with my tent tied to the posts. The guard dogs serenaded us all night. We camped in a hotel being refurbished, next to the swimming pool. Another night struggling to get the tent pegs into solid concrete – glad I brought a tent that has to be pegged out to stand up…. actually I love it, but I’ve had to tied the guy lines down with stones more often than not. But the great thing was that people let us camp for free lots of times. Not that we needed the money, in fact we often offered it, but they refused and that’s what’s great about Turks, at least those Turks not involved in the tourist industry. They are very generous. We stopped to chat to a trucker fixing a bulging tyre. No, that’s OK, we don’t need any oranges. No, none, no space. Ok just two, well, no, really, OK, just the three kilos. I cut and passed around as many as I could, and when he’d gone I gave the bag to some shepherd family nearby living in a goat-hair tent. They had one of the fabled east-Turkish guard-dogs, a mastiff of some kind. I should have gotten closer to take its photo as it was tied up, but it was so ferocious. I’ve read about these, indeed written about them, and this was the first I had actually seen. Deadly, deadly, deadly. It wouldn’t give a toot about your Dog Dazer, I promise you that!

So how’s the ride going? Very tough so far. We like the coast, it’s beautiful alright but the grades are incredible in places, I told Michael I thought it was much steeper than in Tibet and those places. It’s marked as 12% in places on the map, and we walked a fair bit. On top of that, the traffic has been hard to bear. Where there’s a shoulder to ride on, the traffic’s speeding by and deafeningly loud. On the narrow roads, we’re all sharing the same limited space, some overtaking on the way up, those others racing down towards us overtaking on the corners. I had my saddle set too high the first few days and somehow my shoes dug in to my ankles, giving me tendonitis in one leg. I rested two days in Alanya, another great coastal town backed by sheer mountains, and we moved on slowly. It’s hard to shake off the tendonitis but with stretching, massaging and occasional ice-downs, it’s not getting any worse. I was starting to enjoy the hills too, standing up on the pedals to give some muscles a rest and then sit down a minute or two later (that’s all I could manage for each burst) and keep pedalling. But it’s probably not good therapy for my tendons. So when we reached the town of Mersin, we took the train straight to Adana where we have a place to stay. Our hostess Kathy hasn’t noticed yet that I managed to get the tent pegs into her parquet floor, but don’t worry, she’s moving out soon.

And how’s Turkey? Any scathing remarks there? Not really, though if I say the country reminds me of Mexico, I suppose that’s damning with faint praise. Turkey’s a Big Flag country. North Korea is the archetype, and Mexico has a lot of huge flags, and so does Turkey. I can’t figure out why but it doesn’t seem healthy to me. I can think of some reasons but I don’t really know Turkey. It doesn’t feel that free politically, but I’ve not been here long and it’s not to do with religion, things seem relaxed on that front. At the moment. Nor do the statues of Ataturk everywhere put one at ease. Is there no other Turkish hero? Does Suleyman the Magnificent not get a look in? Ataturk gets the main street in every town named for him. There was Childrens’ Day last week, someone told us “Ataturk gave us that holiday”. But the Turks themselves are angels, especially relative to Mexico. The generosity has all been in their favour, they will share everything with you and only in the most jaded tourist spots are foreigners over-charged. We’ve had so much given to us, endless cups of tea. On the few back roads we took, they were shouting to us waving food. It never stops. We particularly like the gas station free teas. It’s a chance to chat and joke with the pump attendants and take a break from the traffic.

On our last night camping up to now, we found a real, public campground which we had to ourselves all night, or so we thought, as you’re never really alone in Turkey. People come and go during the night, cars come, people stop for a smoke or whatever and we pray they will see us and not drive over us in our tents. I swear some people came to sing the Muezzin’s call outside my tent in the night (the first call is always around 5am) as I could see no mosque and the singing did not sound recorded or as morose as usual. When we woke up, a few cars had come into the park and were indeed heading towards our tents. A sound system was going up – it was another festival for Ataturk and families were coming early to stake out the best spots. We got up amid what looked like the beginnings of a big concert party, with families offering us food and chay and the usual ‘what is your name?’ type of questions. Although it was a Sunday and everyone was dressed for a sunny holiday, there was one Man in a Suit. There’s always one Man in a Suit no matter what the occasion. This character has been showing up in my life for many years now, on top of Cairngorm was where I first saw him 30 years ago. Then I worked with him and his clones for a dozen years or so. Now he’s here, still following me. Later we saw this cautionary sign:

A subdued start in Istanbul coughing and sneezing our way round the sites as Anne-Marie was getting over a cold and I was just beginning one. It is still with me and seems to have settled for the ride to Syria. The weather didn’t cooperate either, being rainy and cloudy for much of the time. We trudged round the sites and saw what we could in the week that we had. Aya Sophia – the huge Byzantine church turned mosque turned museum underwhelmed; It is the world’s third largest dome but the insides are bare save for the huge Islamic banners mounted in each corner, a kind of ‘up yours’ statement that seems to be SOP when the Faith conquers other nations.

On the third day I was given a tedious but necessary warning to watch my money at all times. I paid a taxi driver with a YTL 20 note and he told me I had only given him a One YTL note. I was ill, tired and though I was certain I only carried YTL20 notes, indeed had never seen a One lira note, I gave in and handed over another twenty. Moments later we were in the old Byzantine church now known as Kariye by Turks and was in rapture at the mosaics on the walls and ceilings, some of the best extant examples of Byzantine iconic art. Heaven, and a great start to the trip as the next 6 months are spent in the Islamic world.

I fear I will have to vent occasionally on the matter of religion as although I have chosen to ride through Muslim countries, I won’t be discussing the topic of religion with the locals along the way! So apologies in advance for any un-PC remarks which you run across. On the whole we found religious art to be far more beautiful than the secular variety. In fact the two palaces were pretty tawdry, as they so often are in many countries (save my own!). We first traipsed round the 19th century Dolmabahce palace in a guided group (we had no other choice) – ‘the chandelier weighs 4 tons and comes from England. The carpets are French and are 120 square metres’ and so on from our bored guide, and then had to wait for 20 minutes before being guided through the harem. Much as I was curious about what the Sultan got up to while his empire was disintegrating, hunger got the better of us and we gave up the wait in favour of a good lunch by the Bosphorous on a rare sunny day. Later we had a second chance to see a harem when we visited the far larger Topkapi palace. Some nice tile work but the rooms are all bare now, not so much as a broken hash pipe or worn-out sweaty cushion lying around to indicate the Sultan’s former conquests. A French-speaking tour guide led his group into the room I was in, promising quelque chose sensationel to his flock, so I paused a moment to listen but left none the wiser as to what was so great about the harem. We had a lot more fun in the rooms where they kept religous artefacts, queueing among the faithful to see remnants of The Prophet’s beard while enjoying the Call to Prayer. Moving stuff…

And now Antalya, with good prospects of a start to the ride tomorrow. Michael is in great spirits but the flesh is not so strong; he’s had a bit of food poisoning and suffered a little friendly fire in his sleep, poor soul! Luckily for me I slept through it.