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Annapurna: Cycling a circuit in crisis
In this world, few things exist alone, unworried by and remote from the rest. When heavy rains and gusts ripped through India’s eastern seaboard and cyclone Hudhud was christened as such, the sun was...
View ArticleBears and how to beat them
My regular blog piece about my time in India is still a week or so away, but this month you get an extra piece because an article I wrote about a not so close call with a bear in Canada has been...
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Of calm and chaos
I spluttered out of Kathmandu, my lungs assaulted by the gritty air that lifted from fields of litter and their resident limping dogs. In the hills the smog abated and the light paled to silk. I dealt...
View ArticleThe Final Frontiers : A crowd-funding campaign
This week I have launched a crowd-funding campaign to help finance my journey back to the UK by bicycle. It's a last ditch attempt to keep me pedaling. And here it is......
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Kit Reviews 2013
If you expected some of my usual musings and yarns then I'm afraid you will have to wait until I'm back on the road. This month I've been based in Anchorage in Alaska where I've been making new...
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Espionage is easy
I took my seat on the ferry and looked out at the high-rising dens of Hong Kong’s deal makers. The sun was low and amber - reflected in the windowed skyline, the effect was a city-wide inferno. The...
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The Chinese Burn
I was scouting for a place to camp behind a thin disguise of bushes when I saw him approaching; the mounting dusk made a tapered silhouette of a bicycle and rider. In Hunan province what makes for a...
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Cold eyeballs in the Gobi
‘Ganbei!’Again?I heaved myself to my feet and raised my glass of ‘wine’, it swayed in front of me, vague, like a ship’s lantern. ‘Ganbei!’ (‘Cheers!’) and I brought the glass to my lips. A pungence...
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Ices lakes and frozen worlds
To the lake...After pedalling just a few kilometres from Ulaanbaator there was no hint a world capital lurked close by. The sky reached to wider horizons, plucked of the reaching soviet tower blocks,...
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Mongolia's Wild West
It was hard to leave Khatgal, hard to forsake my gur into which a young girl would tiptoe each morning and fire up the wood-burning stove which in minutes improved the temperature from minus 15 to 20...
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The resurrection of Green
The Tian Shan mountains arrived four days after leaving Urumqi, green and misty-peaked. My left knee, which had been a generous font of pain for the last month, felt obligingly strong. Before I crossed...
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60 Signs that you need to STOP Cycle Touring and GO HOME
1. You put your entire leg through a rip in the crotch of your shorts when trying to find the leg hole2. You ‘sense’ wild camping opportunities, like a Jedi3. If you are a woman, there is consistently...
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The Crazy Adventures of Crazy Max
‘Ahhh you from England!’ said the man behind the counter of the snug photocopy shop in downtown Bishkek ‘you like zero zero seven?’ I had to think for a minute ‘Double-O-seven? James Bond?’ ‘Yes. But…’...
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Blood, sweat and Pamirs
‘Oh hey, do you have a map of the Pamirs?’I shook my head as the Irishman, one of four cyclists I ran into on the climb up from Osh, rummaged in his head bag and handed me a shred of dark-spotted...
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Equipment Reviews 2015
As it turns out, cycling six continents is a particularly savage way to prove the quality of gear. Things have been fraying and snapping and dissolving, and once, actually exploding. I’ve been busily...
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Two go vagabonding
It’s just inevitable as men get older - they develop a receding sense of humour…The sound of an engine dies, a car door clicks closed and then two voices fill the night. I walk down the driveway...
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The Land of the Misty Sunglasses
A Rainbow Lorikeet munching on an Illawarra Flame Tree, QueenslandSummer days in Queensland are whacked by a hail of meteoric commotions that arrive without warning and linger for as long as traveling...
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The art of Island Bopping
What is that? Long, thin, oblique; the island was a lone speech mark amid the wordless Pacific Ocean. I zoomed in until Googlemaps gave up it's identity - 'New Caledonia'. The name didn't ring any...
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The death-defying meesters
A windshield was just a slant of glass until East Timor.Deep, aching regret chased my decision to add myself to the human-stuffing inside this microlet - the local bus - whipping through the clamorous...
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Rising up, back on the street
A three part story this time: Komodo, Lombok and Bali.Komodo castaways‘Um, excuse me, how many tourists have been attacked by the dragons? You know, badly’Confident that everyone was itching to ask our...
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