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Swings and dives
Photo courtesy of Zoe Danielski, a future professional.High Times in JakartaSitting next to one of Jakarta’s most eminent food critics, at one of the city’s finest restaurants, I dredge up a memory...
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Dear Iron Rider
The first clue that the Tree In Lodge Hostel in Singapore is a kind of sanctuary for roving cycle tourers is the front door, which has been fitted with a bicycle crank arm for a handle. Inside a...
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Dogs in fridges
Dengue fever doesn't feature in the advertising campaigns of Thailand’s ministry of tourism. They don’t produce brochures scattered with photos of pallid, sweaty westerners with handlebar-ribs and...
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Fugitive faces
Cambodia and The Lake Clinic‘Ladies and Gentlemen, can I have your attention please? We have reached the office where we will all get our VISAs to Cambodia’ ‘Scam!’ crooned someone from the front seats...
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An unlikely tourist: travels to Afghanistan
Part one: TajikistanThe Tajik border patrols usually came in trotting formations of boyish men in camouflage gear but this troop were in the black get-up of special ops. My new friend James and I...
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Sand and caravans
North of Termiz the land turned to semi-desert: knuckles of sandstone, punched by the green plumes of weed. After the pale, deathly world of Afghanistan I was coming into the hunk of Uzbekistan that...
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Curveballs
KazbegiGeorgia is a country of curves. It greets the Black Sea in an arcing coastline; a probing tongue composes the border with Azerbaijan. The Georgian script is fantastically looping, as are the...
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Why adventurers should aim to inspire, not motivate: the trouble with...
Two weeks ago Sarah Outen returned from nearly half a decade of cycling and rowing around the world, half a decade of vigorously roughing it in a manner that puts my similarly spanned escapade to...
View ArticleThe human cost of conflict, northern Afghanistan
Home is an exciting, alarming, and chilly two months away. The homecoming is set, come down if you're free: Friday 19th February at lunch time. Warning - there may be any or all of the following:...
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Footfall
As I'm winding up this journey I'm getting a touch nostalgic so I thought I'd revisit some experiences from the road. I'm often asked what was the most frightening or dangerous moment during your trip....
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Europe part 2: Revenge of the vagabond
When the night time temperature in Germany fell to minus thirteen, I wasn’t surprised. When the sun brought a pale haze to the valleys, and when the world stiffened under ice and trees became ghoulish,...
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The succour of homesickness
Thoughts on returning home after six years around the world by bicycleIn 2008 I was working as a doctor in a hospital in central London and living in a flat nearby. It was comfortable, familiar, a...
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Home straights and homecomings
It was Germany that played host to the chilly, damp dregs of my journey around the world by bicycle. But I’d become distracted. In principle, this was still cycle touring, more pertinently I was on an...
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Life after cycling: stage 1 - The Honeymoon
I know what I said, alright. I know I made promises of a silky new blog, some quick and tidy tribute to the age of Wordpress, with an array of mind-flipping images and prose to inspire great belches of...
View ArticleVideo highlights from six years biking around the world
Apologies if you'd been expecting my monthly update and got radio-silence... It was the first time I've missed a blog post in the last seven years. My excuse is that I've been embroiled in all manner...
View ArticleFor the sake of balance...
Last week I posted a video featuring some highlights from the six years I spent travelling around the world on a bicycle, and it was predictably dominated by the people I met and cycled alongside. But...
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