Jupiters Travels: Four Years Around the World on a Triumph

by Ted Simon

  By eleven I had my five gallons of petrol and had found a lorry going to Kinedra. By mid-afternoon I was back there. The lorry set me down about a kilometre away, and a small boy on a donkey carried the petrol as I walked alongside.

  The warmth and generosity of the schoolmasters rose to a crescendo on my last night. In the morning they gave me a gift of money which they had collected between them to help me on my way. I knew that for them it represented a sizeable sacrifice and it was difficult to take it, but I felt that such gifts could not, and should not, be refused.

  I had become close to them and it was a wrench to leave. They were very solemn in their farewells, giving the parting its full value as they did with everything and not shirking the emotion. A great crowd of boys had gathered to wave me goodbye. I would have been embarrassed if I had not known the feeling was genuine.

  My feeling for the Sudanese was one of total admiration. Never had I met such unmotivated generosity, such a capacity for imbuing the simplest life with a touch of splendour. I had felt it straight away in Atbara. In the tea houses there it had been rare for me to pay, though I had tried. When it was time to settle I would find that someone had paid my bill and left before me. Only afterwards would I remember the quiet greeting from a stranger on his way out. Or the proprietor would refuse my piastre. They were small amounts, but they added great value to the tea and made it rich.

  The previous day I had been told that a District Forest Officer was taking his Landrover to Kassala for brake fluid, and had agreed to lead me

  on to the best route. When we met, I asked him, naturally enough, where his forest was. He told me that this desert I was travelling through, which I had thought of as being as old as the stars above it, had become a desert only in the previous thirty years. Before that there had been grasses and trees, but the travelling herds of cattle had increased and stripped away all the natural vegetation, and men had cut down the trees. Now dunes were beginning to form, and soon it would be like the Sahara. The fence I had encountered the other day was to protect new plantations of grasses and trees to stabilize the soil once more. He was not cheerful about the prospect. 'We are too few,' he said, 'and they are too many. The dunes will spread. We are like Canute against the waves.'

  At mid-morning he was ready, and we set off. From the start it was touch and go. His driver, over-impressed by the size of the Triumph, set a pace that was altogether too dashing. I managed to keep him in sight for several miles, but dropped far behind, unable to fly across the dips and soft bits as he could. It was while trying to catch him again on a fairly easy stretch that I ran into the same trap of intersecting ruts that had caught me on the first day. This time my 'Oops' was a, good deal louder. The bike came crashing down again, but much harder, ripping one of the boxes off its mountings and smashing the headlamp. My shoulder also took a fair blow.

  Even so, all the important things were alright. The jerry was intact, the bike was functioning. My shoulder would manage. I found some wire and tied the box back on where the screws had torn through the fibre-glass, taking my time, determined that I would get through somehow, and resolving that I would never again ride at anybody else's pace. Two such disasters, I thought, must teach me the lesson.

  I was almost ready to go again when the Landrover returned. They had missed me, eventually; I explained that it was far better for me to ride alone, if they would just describe the route as best they could. They wanted to try to load the bike on the car, but I refused, and at last they did their best to draw me a diagram of what to look for, and left wishing me luck.

  That was the beginning of the hardest and most rewarding physical experience of my entire journey.

  I am trying to keep track of the number of times I have fallen. The other day, three times. Today twice, the hard fall that wrenched my left arm, and one soft tumble since. The arm is alright, but weakened.

  My greatest problem is keeping up concentration. I have to watch the surface all the time, with only occasional glimpses at the longer views around me. The light is intense, but luckily I was given some Polaroid ski goggles in London, and they are excellent for the desert. When wearing them I sometimes have the feeling that I am travelling underwater. They give everything that cool clarity you get in a rock pool.

  Heat does not worry me, even in the jacket and the sheepskin lined boots. It seems crazy, but I don't feel it. It is not hot by Sudanese standards of course, but it must be nearly ninety in the shade. And I am not in the shade. It is very dry heat, easier to support. Does the clothing help to conserve sweat?

  Goz Regeb, said Mochi, is the place to spend the night. It is still a hundred miles away, five hours at this present rate. I will not make it today.

  Something is moving on the horizon, something live. I stop. Far away I see cattle crossing the desert, but they seem to be swimming through a silver lake. A mirage. A fantastic sight.

  It is Thursday 13 November. I have been travelling five weeks. How many days of actual riding? I count twenty-one. How far have I ridden? The clock shows 5,137 miles. Minus 867 when I started, leaves 4,170 miles on the journey. Average, 200 miles a day. Not bad. Well, the average will start dropping now.

  After three more hours I have come another fifty miles. In an hour or two it will be dark, but there should be a tea hut soon. I think it is called Khor el Fil, which is supposed to mean The Crocodile's Mouth. Spelling is very optional and distances are vague.

  I have had one more soft fall, but each jerk on the wheel pulls the muscle in my left shoulder and prevents it from healing. I feel no hunger, no thirst. I am absolutely wrapped up in this extraordinary experience, in the unremitting effort, in the marvellous fact that I am succeeding, that it is at all possible, that my worst fears are not just unrealized but contradicted. The bike, for all its load, is manageable. I seem to have, after all, the strength and stamina to get by, and my reserves seem to grow the more I draw upon them. The natives, armed with swords and fierce pride, show me only the greatest respect.

  Sometimes I wonder why the wilder parts of the world have always seemed so frightening, why the word 'primitive' has always meant 'danger'. If it weren't so, would I be falling over tourists out for a day in the desert? Would I meet Len and Nell from Cranfield Park Road sitting under a tree at Khor el Fil, mopping their brows and writing picture postcards?

  No, I must not forget why I am able to function here. These five weeks have changed me already. My stomach has shrunk drastically, my blood has changed, my sweat glands are adapted to a different regime, my palate has altered and my muscles have certainly hardened, to speak only of physical changes.

  I have also had time to learn a confidence I never knew before, and surely my own confidence in the face of strangers must, in turn, increase their confidence in me. Then there is also the fact that I am proud of what I am doing. There is no denying it. I try to be modest, to say anyone could do it. But they don't, and I feel I have managed to pull off something special. It helps me to know that, as though I were plugged into a kind of power I did not know I had.

  Why doesn't everybody do it? I don't think it's only timidity. I was as afraid as anyone would be. They have careers, of course, and mortgages. They say they would do it 'if it weren't for the kids'. I used to laugh at that, but why should I? It's perfectly legitimate. Much as they envy me, they are simply too absorbed in their lives to want to leave them behind. They are fascinated, as I pass by, to hear about my plans and my stories, but in the end they are happy enough to let me do it for them. Len and Nell can mop their brows under the pyramids for a week and leave the stomach-shrinking to me.

  Why you?

  Why were you chosen to ride through the desert while other men are going home from the office?

  Chosen? I thought I chose myself. Were Odysseus and Jason, Columbus and Magellan chosen?

  That is a very exalted company you have summoned up there. What have you got in common with Odysseus, for God's sake?

  Well, we're all just acting out othe
r people's fantasies, aren't we. Maybe we're not much good for anything else.

  Looking back on what has already happened I can see that it would have the makings of a legend. Every encounter seems so significant, each one testing me and preparing me for the next. Zanfini; the Via Torre-muzzo, the SS Pascoli; Kabaria; Sfax; Cyrenaica; Salloum; Mersa Mat-ruh; Alexandria; The Great Bird of Atbara; and Sidon. And why did the Twirling Turk on the ferry point his finger at me?

  In my childhood I was devoted to stories of men who overcame terrible obstacles to win the hand of the princess; dogs with eyes like saucers, dogs with eyes the size of dinner plates, dogs with eyes as big as cartwheels. They always came in threes. I did not know then that they were tidied up versions of ancient mythology. In my childhood, nobody talked about myths and legends. They were just stories. The job of explaining life was left to science, but science eventually failed the test. So did politics, of course. And love. And property. And journalism just went on begging the question.

  So here I am, still looking for an explanation, acting out those childhood stories which, perhaps, were always the most satisfying after all; making myself the hero of my own myth?

  These are not so much sequential thoughts as feelings interspersed with memories, dancing in my brain as the bike rolls comfortably over an easier stretch. The symbols group themselves in my mind. The Yom Kippur War, the Turk and the Bird loom large as omens. What do they portend?

  My thoughts are interrupted by the sight of a lorry ahead of me. It is stationary. There are people grouped round it. Tracks start to sweep in across my path from the open desert, and following them round I see they converge near the river, by a group of trees and a hut. Khor el Fil, the halfway mark.

  Nothing ever tasted more delicious than the tea I hold in my hand.

  'Take the lorry,' they are saying. 'You cannot go through. There are big dunes. Take the lorry to Goz Regeb. It is not far.'

  I resist, but their concern for me is so genuine that I feel excused by it. Fifty miles in the truck, that's not too much.

  There are four Bescharyin here at the tea house with me, exotic figures, splendidly robed and armed, their hair teased out and glued into strands. I realize with a start that these must be the 'Fuzzie-wuzzies' who fought so fanatically against Gordon at Khartoum. The contact between us is instantaneous and overwhelming. There is a spirit in this tea, a magic solvent to wash away our differences. This is another reason why I am here; to experience (nothing less) the brotherhood of man. Imagine meeting these men in a London pub or an American diner. Impossible. They could never be there what they are here. They would be made small by the complexities, the paraphernalia that we have added to our lives, just as we are, though we have learned to pretend otherwise. I had to come here to realize the full stature of man; here outside a grass hut, on a rough wooden bench, with no noise, no crowds, no appointments, no axe to grind, no secret to conceal, all the space and time in the world, and my heart as translucent as the glass of tea in my hand. The sense of affinity with these men is so strong that I would tear down every building in the West if I thought it would bring us together like this. I understand why the Arab idea seems so perverse, so fanatical, untrustworthy and self-destructive to the Western mind. It must be because the Arab puts an ultimate value on something we no longer even know exists.

  Integrity, in its real sense of being at one with oneself and one's God, whoever and wherever that God may be. Without it he feels crippled.

  We Europeans sold our integrity many years ago for progress, and we have debased the word to mean merely someone who obeys the rules. A chasm of misunderstanding yawns between us. At this moment I know on which side I want to stand.

  The lorry is being loaded by members of another tribe, the Raschaid. I gather they originate in Iraq, are known as nomadic camel herders, and are supposed to be rich. This is a large family moving house by truck rather than camel. They have their tent wrapped up in great bundles of hide; the poles tied together; enormous heavy glass bottles slung in rope nets; the rest wrapped in carpets. Their women are with them, the first women I have been close to since Egypt. They wear finely woven silver veils over their faces, just below eye level. For them it is the mouth which must not, in any circumstances, be seen by a strange man. Their robes hang loose, their breasts are visible from time to time, it does not bother them. It does bother me, however, and I have to guard my expression carefully. I am helped in this by the playful way in which the head of the family toys with his rifle, as he sits on top of the truck and supervises the loading.

  Four men load the bike without difficulty. I pay a small sum, and we're off. I sit jammed up against the members of the family, trying to ignore the sumptuous femininity jiggling so close to me.

  There really are dunes. The lorry has to put down metal tracks to cross them. I would not have had a chance here, but I might have made it through the trees.

  All I can see of Goz Regeb, at night, is the big tea house with many rooms. There is food too, meat and beans and kissera. There are wooden bed-frames strung with jute to sleep on. All around me men fall to their knees in prayer, arms rising and falling, voices chanting:

  'Allah Harkborough, Allah Harkborough', at least that's what it sounds like. Then again the silence, the stars, and the early morning chill, but this time I am prepared.

  Approaching Kassala at last, I can scarcely believe the skyline that rises before me. A range of high mountains with smoothly rounded tops like mounds of ice-cream half licked. I feel as though I am approaching an enchanted land, and more and more often I feel that I am acting out some fairy tale or legend. All I lack is a clear idea of my purpose. Maybe the reader knows.

  In Kassala I seek out the Forest Officer, hoping to spend more time with him. The driver of the Landrover is the first to see me coming. His broad face radiates happiness at seeing me.

  ‘You are a real man’ he says and I almost choke with the pleasure that gives me. It was worth it all just to hear that.

  From Kassala there are two ways to go. The usual route, the one I planned to take, follows a big highway through Eritrea to Asmara. According to the Ethiopian Consul the road is untroubled by rebels at present. I find the prospect rather tame. A real man has his responsibilities. I decide on another route, continuing south through the Sudan for two hundred and forty miles and then crossing into Ethiopia at Metema.

  On the map the road is graded one better than nothing as far as the border. After that it reverts to the same condition as the one I have just travelled, but I know now that this can only be the vaguest indication. All I am fairly sure of is that there is no more open desert.

  The first stretch as far as Khashm el Girba runs alongside the railway line. In fact it is part of the bed of the track, and made of dried mud, baked and cracked in the sun. At times it is raised above the surrounding brush, at others not, and it varies a great deal in width. There are some shallow ruts which reduce speed drastically, but worse still, most of the way is '. mildly corrugated.

  The riding is not only as difficult as it was in the desert, it is also more uncomfortable and frustrating, as the bike rattles furiously over the bumps. The fifty-three miles take me three hours of hard work. There are tea houses on the way. I have made it a rule always to stop. At Khashm el Girba I am rewarded by a tea house with wonderful fresh fish from the reservoir there. Again the atmosphere is one of all-embracing intimacy. I have only to sit down in these places now, to feel that I am among old friends.

  The road to Gedaref?

  'Queiss,' they say, 'Much better.'

  I reserve my judgement this time, but draw strength from their encouragement.

  The road to Gedaref is worse. Much worse. Worse than anything I imagined. At times, in fact, I believe it is impossible, and consider giving up. The corrugations are monstrous. Six-inch ridges, two feet apart, all the way with monotonous, shattering regularity. Everything on the bike that can move does so. Every bone in every socket of my body rattles. Not even the
most ingenious fairground proprietor could devise a more uncomfortable ride. I feel certain that it must break the bike. I try riding very slowly, and it is worse than ever. Only at fifty miles an hour does the bike begin to fly over the ridges, levelling out the vibration a little, but it is ;

  terribly risky. Between the ridges is much loose sand. Here and there are sudden hazards. The chances of falling are great, and I am afraid of serious damage to the bike. Yet If eel I must fly, because I don't think the machine will survive eighty miles of this otherwise. It is hair-raising, and then it becomes impossible again. The road swings to the west and the sun burns out my vision. I realize I must stop and make a camp, because I shall never arrive at Gedaref today, anyhow.

  Between some bushes I set up the mosquito net, cook some rice and tea, smoke a cigarette, and sleep. I have been going from dawn to sunset, a full day of total endeavour, and I have come just under a hundred miles.

  Something wakes me from my sleep. Huge shapes loom around the net in the darkness, threatening to squash me. I am petrified. A herd of camels is being driven through the night across my camp site. The camels obviously sense my presence though, because they avoid me daintily. After a minute I lose my fear and simply gaze up at them in wonder. They are really like ships in the night. Even so, I think I was lucky.

  In the morning, refreshed, I lose patience with the corrugations and fly over them regardless. I find that I can control the bike better than I had thought. I still fear for the effect on the bike, but I am hopeful that after Gedaref things may improve. These corrugations are the result of traffic. Beyond Gedaref, according to the map, the road is less important. I even hope, nostalgically, that it may be as pleasant as the desert track. At least, in the desert, I was able to think. Here every part of me is pinned to the road and survival.