From Maun

Leaving Ghanzi I catch glimpses of the sun, already blazing yellow, through the gaps between the buildings and the trees that line the road north. It is later than I usually set off and the wind is already flowing towards me. I am heading north-east on the A3, 110 km across the Kobe Pan, towards a village called Kuke, which I know as nothing more than a dot on the map. After a long ride under the scorching Kalahari sun I turn off onto a sandy track, which winds through circular wooden huts. I ask a group of women, who are giggling under a tree, whether I can get water here. They point me to a wooden pen in the midst of a throng of people. There are young men thrashing donkeys wildly and women pushing rickety wheelbarrows loaded high with tanks of water. I wheel my bike across a dusty football pitch, flanked with leafy camelthorn trees, and queue up for water. A young girl runs up to me, grabs the bottles from my hands and fills them. A crowd of children has gathered around me and more and more approach. They laugh at my shorts, my straggly beard, and the streaks of sun-cream and salt that are smeared across my flushed cheeks.

While I sit in the shade and take a long drink, the children sit on the logs beside me and the branches above. They stare expectantly and chat loudly in clicks, the language of the San Bushmen. I take some photographs and they tussle with each other to get in front of the lens, posing like action movie heroes. The light fades and gradually the children disperse, leaving me eating a tin of beans next to three young boys who sit watching me, smiling in silence. Across the village, children are chasing horses, which are rampaging wildly through the dust under the bright full moon. I get into my tent, tired, but feeling lucky to be here and I awake before day breaks to try to reach Maun by nightfall.

Maun lies at the southern end of the Okavango Delta, 170 km from Kuke, in the north-western corner of Botswana. I cycle the same road up and as I approach the delta, the grasses and acacias, which have flanked my ride since Windhoek, gradually become interspersed with a variety of taller trees and flat leaved bushes. The thicker foliage restricts my horizon to the banks of the road and I stare blankly ahead, pedaling hard. The road rises gently for a few hundred metres and as I reach the shallow summit the landscape opens up before my eyes. To the east there are seven hills with deep green slopes. There are huge sycamore fig trees standing tall in the endless expanse of green grasses. I can see black vultures flapping their wings clumsily in the low sky just ahead and single huts set back from the road, with brightly coloured clothes hanging from lines tied to fence posts. I ride on passing occasional villages for another 50 km, reaching the outskirts of Maun by 5 in afternoon.

In Maun I follow signs to The Old Bridge Lodge, weaving my way between taxis, scattering goats and donkeys onto the roadside, and grubby LandRovers piled high with fuel tanks and camping equipment. It is dusk by the time I wheel my bicycle under the thatch roof of the Old Bridge’s open bar. It has started to pour with rain and I haven’t slept in a bed for over three weeks; fortunately I get the last room. It is Wednesday night and I will stay here until Saturday, when Guy, a friend from London, flies to Maun to join me on the ride to Lusaka.

The lodge rests on the banks of the Okavango River and from the lawn I can see the seldom used old bridge. The bridge is formed by a bank of earth interspersed with heavy logs, all bound together by free growing grasses and the exposed roots of Jackleberry trees. From a distance it looks to have forded the river of its own accord. On the low roots nearest the water, old men sit, casting fishing lines gently in the clam pool below. Back in the bar a group of ex-pats, perched on tall stools, drink cans of beer and shots of Jagermeister. They all live in Maun now: David, who owns the place, John, a semi-retired safari pilot, and Thomas, a German guy, who arrived here by bicycle eight years ago and never left. John tells me this is his favourite sundowner place, although it is not yet midday. They talk about how high the river has got, the storms they have seen, close shaves with game, planes, lightening. The end of the bar goes silent for a moment and John looks across the room, laughing. Its Good Friday… No Bunnies... No fucking eggs… What kind of operation is this? Another round of Castles I think…

On Saturday I ride to meet Guy at the airport. We will take a trip out on the delta on Monday and ride east towards Nata on Wednesday morning. We take a speed boat under the old bridge into the Okavango, north towards Chief’s Island, where there is a small camp. David, and his girlfriend Helena, are going to dismantle the camp and have let us tag along with them. We follow a broad channel that flows through high reeds and flat green lilies with little white flowers. In the islands dotted throughout the wide body of water there are elephant and giraffe wandering peacefully amongst the fig trees and termite mounds. We share sandwiches and cans of beer and watch fish eagles flying above the reeds. As we approach the entrance to the Moremi reserve the channel opens up into a wide lagoon. Staring into the surface of the still water, I can see the shapes of the clouds above shifting slightly as they drift through the pale blue sky.

At the camp we play petanque beneath a pack of shrieking baboons and just before sunset we take the boat out and go fishing. Guy catches a bream and I watch the sun falling beneath the trees in the horizon, flushing the whole sky pink. In the morning we take a mokoro canoe through the shallows. Tiny frogs leap from the reeds onto the tip of the canoe and golden web spiders run across my arms. It starts to rain and we head back to the island where we pack up camp and eat a huge cooked breakfast, before heading back to Maun.

From Ghanzi

On Friday I leave Windhoek, happy to be climbing across green hills with the clutter of the city fading gradually into the bush. I am on the Trans-Kalahari Highway heading east. The sky is covered with thick grey cloud and the air is cool. The road is banked with tall wheat coloured grasses swaying gently in the breeze and thick acacia bushes as far as the eye can see. After a couple of hours I am over the hills and the dark tar road stretches straight and flat. I pedal fast, not sure where I am headed. The road, the sky, and the grassland become indistinct and my mind clouds over, daydreaming of unlikely futures. Eleven hours later I arrive in Gobabis, 200 km east of Windhoek. I find a campsite just out of town and fall asleep thinking that I will cross into Botswana the following afternoon.

The next morning the road continues through the desert grasses. The sky turns deep blue as the hours pass, with small white puffs of cloud forming low above the tree line. In vain I will the clouds to drift into the path of the sun, as it burns hotter with the onset of midday. When I stop at the border-post my face is streaked with fine lines of dried salt and my shirt is drenched. At Botswanan customs the official asks me where I will stay. I reply at Mamuno campsite, which is marked on my map. I am told that there is no campsite until Ghanzi, 220 km east. He then asks me if I am not afraid of wild animals and robbers.

I ride into Botswana and stop at a petrol station in need of shade. My bike falls as I try to lean it against a wall and my whole body aches. I will have to sleep rough for the next two nights and the repeated warnings, of people I have met along the way, begin to crowd my thoughts. I sit down and slowly rub the palms of my hands against the faint indents of my temples, fighting back tears. I light a cigarette and try to relax. I consider the journeys of others: Rory Stewart alone on foot through winter in Afghanistan, Al Humphreys on a bicycle for four years around the world, George Orwell in the slums of 1930s Paris, Christopher Mcandless slowly starving in the Alaskan spring. I am still near the start of my short trip and I am safe. I wheel my bike out of the forecourt and pedal slowly into the nearby village, Charles Hill.

Along the main sandy strip there is a general store and a liquor shop. In front of each, people mill around lazily in the afternoon heat. Many of the women I pass are wearing long and wide Herero dresses, draped with bright sequined shawls. On their heads they wear broad hats that match the dresses, shaped like rustic flat breads. A tall skinny man, dressed in baggy clothes, too big for his slight frame, approaches me and I ask if there is anywhere I might pitch my tent here. He walks with me to a Toyota pick-up and introduces me to a man in a dark suit. I am Mr Kamiizo. I am the chief of Charles Hill. You understand? I tell him about my ride and that I wish to rest here in his village.

I am led away by two men who have offered to let me stay outside their house. We walk through dusty yards separated by thin wire fences. They are both staggering slightly and their eyes are streaked with pale red veins, stretching out towards dark pupils. When we arrive at their place, the taller man, Abby, looks at the floor and starts to talk: Be at home, my brother… We are the same me and you… You understand, my brother? I feel... I feel that race, religion, no matter what, we are still the same, my brother... He trails off leaving the words hanging in the dry heat, stumbles gently, and shakes my hand. Be at home here, my brother.

A group of kids have collected around us. They look at the bicycle with wide eyes and I show them where I have been on the map. I pitch my tent in the shade of a Mophane tree and they jostle with one another, each tugging the ends of the poles. When the tent is standing they fall about laughing at how small it is. I open some tins of food and watch the children playing football in the sand. I give them some chocolate and feel better with a full stomach. The two men amble towards me to check if I am ok. As they wander off, Abby turns, and tells me that he is going to the liquor store. We are a couple of drunks, he says meekly.

The next morning I am on the road by the time the sun rises behind the flat plains to the east. On the roadside I make out the silhouettes of donkeys grazing in the dim morning light. On the horizon the sky is pale yellow, and thin wisps of low lying cloud are glowing orange and light pink. The wind is gentle in the early morning, but it picks up as the day goes on, and by 10:00 I am riding into an unrelenting wall of air that blows powerfully against me, sapping the speed from the wheels. I only cover 12 km an hour and it is exhausting. By mid afternoon I realize there is no chance I will make the next town, Ghanzi, so I turn off the highway and pedal 4 km to a village called Chobowanke. The village is divided into rectangular plots, in which there are circular huts made of staves of wood bound together. The roofs are thatched and overhang the walls below by almost a foot. I am directed to a deserted campsite at the end of a sandy track. No one has been here for years. In the long grass are three wigwam shaped wooden structures, all derelict. I peer at the inner roof of one. There is a fat white spider sitting peacefully in a thick cloud of web hanging from the fragile eaves. I sit under a tree and read, happy to have some quiet.

Next morning, eager to reach Ghanzi, I set off in the dark towards the highway. I ride slowly as my headlamp only illuminates a few metres ahead. After a couple of kilometres I settle and pick up speed. A horse appears out of the dark, just a few feet in front. It stands tall and still. I grab both brakes and just hold myself from falling. The horse stares at me, immobile, before exhaling deeply and running to the roadside. I continue gingerly until the sun rises and then pedal hard against the same Kalahari wind, arriving at Ghanzi by lunchtime on Monday.