From Iringa

I rest up in Tukuyu for a couple of days after leaving hospital. In the mornings I go with Luka to the little market at Kibisi village to buy food for the day. Chickens run across the dusty path and young guys with dreadlocks and massive sunglasses come up and ask if I’m feeling better. We stop at a little stall selling vegetables and dried fish. An old woman, wearing a bright sarong printed with Barack Obama’s face amidst a sea of Stars and Stripes, sits behind the low wooden table and we pick out tomatoes, peas, and potatoes from little wicker bowls. Off the main path kids run around in the dirt sucking on sugar cane and chasing crickets, which they pick up with tiny hands and stuff into little plastic bottles.

After two days here I ride north through the Mbeya Mountains. A dense grey fog clings to the hilltops, smothering the forest in cloud, and leaving tiny water droplets on the hairs of my arms and legs. The cloud thickens as I get higher and a chilly mountain breeze flows swiftly against me on the steep ascent. The road descends dramatically out of the mist and after a few minutes free-wheeling the air is clear and the sun bathes the rolling valley fields before me in bright light.

I check into a motel in Mbeya and have a hot shower for the first time in weeks. A call to prayer from the nearby mosque makes its way across the little motel courtyard as I head into town to get some food. I sit outside a little Indian cafe and order some rice. While I eat a shadow falls on the white plastic table in front of me and I look up at a tall white guy with a neat brown moustache, smiling down on me. He is wearing a faded denim shirt and jeans and there is a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. He grins and asks me what I am doing here in a thick American accent and I think I see him twitch slightly. He nods knowingly when I tell him and laughs and lights a second cigarette with the dying end of the last. He is standing with one hand resting on a chair and starts to talk, as if addressing a large crowd:

“Me, well, I started in South America. Went to twelve countries. Yes! Didn’t visit the other four: cause there’s nothing fucking there.” He hits the table with a flat palm and laughs and his head jerks back awkwardly. “Well, everybody tells me: Paul, you gonna have trouble Paul. Watch your back Paul. It’s not like home Paul! – I ain’t had so much a sniff a trouble. Only this one time, down in Panama, you know. Guys tried to jump me. Little Bastards! Nothing to me though – I’m a federal marine. Yes! Showed em where to go. You bet.” He jumps around like a jack-in-the-box and his moustache jerks involuntarily to the left. “You know South America’s great for a good time. And I like to have a good time me. Paul sure likes to have a gooooood time. Yes! The cocaine – you know?” He bends over and presses his forefinger against his nostril and snorts elaborately just above the table, before jolting back to an upright position. “Well, where was I? Oh yeah. I got bit by a spider the other day. You see here?” He points to a mark on his neck. “Blew up like a fucking balloon. So I go to the local doc. He tells me a fly bit an infected cow, the spider ate the fly, and then bit me, and I got the cow infection. Yes! I tore my room apart when I got back, found three of the little bastards. Squashed em all. Yes!” He slams the table again and I laugh and he starts laughing and sways slightly. My food is cold now and I get up to leave, wondering if there are other guys washed up in dusty end-of the-world towns all over, living off military pensions in empty motels.

I leave very early the next morning and ride 190km to Makambako. It heats up as I come down from the highlands and the thick green forests thin; the trees fading gradually into swaying yellow grasses and the lush green leaves browning as I ride into the stumpy autumnal scrub of the lowland slopes. There is a faint breeze and when I stop I can hear the light orange leaves crinkle softly under the deep blue sky.

From Makambako I ride over rounded hills to a small farm just past Mafinga. The wind blows heavily towards me, whipping rain into my face and weighing me down as I churn the pedals through the swirling air. Ahead a cluster of black crows peck at an enormous python that lies severed on the wet asphalt. They scatter as I ride past, clumsily beating their wings as they hop awkwardly into flight. I get a room at the farm and Mark, who runs the place, gives me a huge chicken curry for lunch. He tells me he used to work on the railways in Buckinghamshire, but has been here for ten years now. He speaks softly about his life in Tanzania and his eyes sparkle gently when I tell him about my ride. As we talk his past journeys gradually unfold. He tells me quietly about the time he walked coast to coast across Canada, the length of New Zealand a few years later, and from Norway to Gibraltar. He tells me he plans to walk the coast of Great Britain next year. He says he has lost touch with England. How last time he was back it was all Jade Goody and X Factor. He says he needs to reconnect with home. He says England is there somewhere. It has to be. He knows he’ll find it: in the little fishing villages and the windy Cumbrian hillsides.

After supper Mark asks if I want to watch the football. It is the Champions League final and it’s good to watch the game on a sofa with a cold beer, huddled between some of the guesthouse workers. I have a cooked breakfast with a pot of tea when I get up and enjoy the short ride to Iringa in the morning sunshine.

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.