Sitting in my kitchen, a few days before Christmas, only a few days left at work before I retire, I have a plan. A plan for the next 12 months or so. It’s not a detailed plan. It’s not a fixed plan. More a few statements of intent. Subject to change. The intentions, part of my dream. I’m a big believer that if you don’t have dreams then they can’t come true.
March – Barcelona
Somewhere along the way in the last year I managed to agree to run the Barca Marat in the middle of March. More specifically it was a challenge from my niece, Hanna – if I ran the marathon in Barcelona with her, she would come and cycle with me in India for the first few weeks of my trip. Later in things were further complicated, when in conversation with an old school friend, we decided that it would be a good idea to ride to Barcelona together.
So my first trip lined up is to cycle to Barca with Simon, run the marathon, leaving Simon to head further south.
May – Senegal
Last year, I started following the progress of a fellow Brompton owner called Jonathan. There are fanatical Brompton owners all over the world. Many using the folding bike for what it has been designed for, urban commuting. There are a smaller number of Brompton owners who like to push the limits of the bike and somewhere in a facebook group I came across Jonathan – more unique and pushing the Brompton boundaries, cycling across the Sahara. More than 1,200KM of some of the worlds most inhospitable landscape. That’s more than 1,200KMs on a folding bike designed for commuting on urban streets. He finished his journey in Dakar.
This year Jonathan is picking up his journey. Stage by stage he’s cycling to a school in Tanzania, fund raising for https://www.kafunjo.org/. Hopefully a few others will join him starting in Dakar and travelling through The Gambia, back down to the southern point of Senegal.
It’s not 100% confirmed yet, but if I go, I will take my Brompton to keep Jonathan company.
May/June – The Pyrenees
To prepare for the Himalayas in Northern India, I’m going to cycle the Pyrenees from the Atlantic Coast, over all of the high cols to the Mediterranean. This trip will be the tester for my bike and equipment, giving me time to mix anything up that doesn’t work
August on – India and beyond
This is the big one – towards the start of August, I will fly to India with my bike and once more venture up into the high Himalayas in Northern India. I will head into Ladakh and I’m hoping to ascend the Umling La, the worlds highest paved road
From there I will cycle south to the very tip of India, before heading over to Sri Lanka.
From there I plan to go to Malaysia, down to Singapore and then over to Indonesia and all the way to Timor Leste. Things are less sketchy as to what I do afterwards.
Further into the Future
It’s always been a dream of mine to travel to Timbuktu in Mali. I don’t recall how I got to wanting to go there specifically. I do have a thought and picture n my head that I keep coming back to – it’s one of me much younger on a bicycle crossing the Sahara and riding all the way to Timbuktu. Why it’s even there, but it’s something that peeks my curiosity. Just the name, Timbuktu, seems so exotic to me. Sadly as I write, it will have to remain a dream as all the advice is not to travel there due to the political situation.
However that doesn’t mean that I can’t drive across the Sahara in a van that’s nearly 60 years old, with an Ikea bed strapped to some home made drawers. So that’s what I plan to do. This time with Juliet. Heading down the western coast of Africa, across the Sahara and down to the Fouta Djallon Highlands in Guinea.
