Cycling to the Ashes by Oli Broom

Author:Oli Broom [Oli Broom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2013-04-06T16:00:00+00:00

A LESSON IN DESERT CAMPING

Every day on the road brought new sights, smells and sounds so that there was little time to dwell, always something new to enjoy and appreciate. But there was routine, too, and for me it is the seemingly conflicting relationship between these two things, the new and the quotidian, that makes travel by bicycle so alluring.

Each day I pedalled huge distances, I listened to the same songs over and over again, I thought of home, I wondered what I would do when I finally got home, I attempted to speak to local people using sign language, I watched the sun rise, I was asked my name, and whether I was married, I watched the sun set, I dreamed of doing it all over again, I dreamed of the end. And each night I slept.

Camping became one of the many routines of my journey. While it was necessary for me to keep pedalling in order to reach Australia by bicycle, it was just as important that I slept and, although my budget allowed for occasional nights in hostels and cheap hotels, it was a tent that was my default home come dark. The search for a place to sleep was a boring task that became a gratifying ritual and an unexpected daily highlight of my ride.

In the Sudanese desert my companions and I were occasionally lucky enough to find ourselves in a town and there was no need to camp. These were enjoyable evenings that gave us an opportunity to belong for a time, to explore markets and to watch local people. ‘England I love you’ was a common greeting from people in small towns like Dongola and Delgo, at least once they discovered where we were from. Hotels were crudely built: mud walls, no electricity, bucket showers. Prices reflected simplicity. In Dongola we paid fifteen Sudanese pounds, the equivalent of two British pounds, for a windowless twin room with string beds and no mattresses in the Lords Hotel (more likely named after the Lord’s Resistance Army, the military movement led by Joseph Kony and accused of murderous campaigns in the region, than the home of cricket).

Out of the towns, we camped. Security was always the most important consideration but despite the eternal sand and space that Sudan offered, we sometimes found it difficult to decide upon a safe place to spend the night. The roads we used may have been far from civilisation, but remoteness meant danger. We were often warned by strangers in villages: ‘Must be careful, there are many bandits on roads at night’, or ‘Do not enter next village, many bad people there’. Although we were never sure whether to trust such warnings, we felt it was better to do so than ignore what may have been genuine advice gleaned from personal experience. In the absence of any decent getaway vehicles five foreign cyclists would have been easy prey for even a trainee bandit.

On my journey until Sudan I had often enjoyed camping

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