The Boy Who Biked the World

by Alastair Humphreys

  They all sat on the floor around a low, circular table. The family asked Tom lots of questions about his expedition. Abai or his Dad, the teacher, translated their questions. Then Abai’s Mum placed a large round tray on the table. It was covered with what looked like a huge pancake.

  “This bread is called injera,” said Abai. “In Ethiopia we eat it almost every day.”

  On top of the injera were heaps of stews and cooked vegetables. There were no plates or knives or forks.

  Abai showed Tom how to eat in the Ethiopian style. He tore off a piece of injera with his hand and used it to scoop up some vegetables. He popped it into his mouth and smiled as he chewed. Next it was Tom’s turn. The whole family watched Tom’s face to see if he liked the food. Abai’s Mum, who had cooked the meal, watched the most carefully of all. Tom tore off a piece of injera and began to eat.

  After such an eventful day Tom was really hungry so the food tasted especially good. He smiled and said, “Amesegenallo,” which means ‘Thank You’ in Amharic. He liked the food very much. It was very spicy.

  Everyone laughed. They were happy that Tom enjoyed their food. Now the whole family began to eat together. Everyone ate from the same giant piece of injera, sharing the food. Everyone was talking all the time as well as eating all the time. It was a very noisy meal. There were so many questions to ask and so much to learn about each other’s countries. Abai’s Mum was shocked to learn that people in England do not eat injera. And Tom learned that in Ethiopia it was actually a different year than in England! The Ethiopian calendar is seven years behind the rest of the world’s calendar. Even telling the time is different in Ethiopia. Rather than starting a day at midnight as Tom was used to, on Ethiopian time the day begins at sunrise. So one hour after sunrise is called one o’clock in the morning.

  The house was very small so there was not a spare bed for Tom to sleep in. But that did not matter to Tom. He was very tired and was happy to just roll out his sleeping bag and sleep on the floor.

  In the morning as he packed up his sleeping bag and prepared to ride, Tom thanked his new friends for looking after him so well. The family waved right until he had ridden out of sight, on towards the next new friends he would meet on his ride, and on towards the really steep roads of the Ethiopian highlands. Abai’s kind family had really cheered Tom up and he was excited about his adventure once again.

  For the next few weeks Tom rode through the mountains. The road was really rocky and bumpy, and his poor bike took a real battering. Monkeys swung in the trees overhead. They watched Tom pedal slowly past.The biggest mountains he had ever seen towered above him wherever he looked. And he had to sweat and pant his way up and over all of them. His legs ached each evening but he felt his muscles growing too. With each day he was becoming fitter and stronger. And the downhills were brilliant.

  Tom definitely felt ready for a cool swim by the time he reached Lake Tana, Ethiopia’s biggest lake. He had been told that there were crocodiles in the lake. But he was so desperate for a refreshing dip that he thought it was worth the risk. He only had a very short swim, just in case the crocs did decide that they were hungry!

  After the dry Middle East, the desert in Sudan, and the rocky mountains he had just ridden through, Lake Tana seemed especially beautiful. Colourful bushes grew on the shore and green trees waved in the breeze. Pelicans flew through the sky and cormorants dried their wings in the sunshine before diving into the lake to try to catch a fish.

  Lake Tana is usually described as the beginning of the Blue Nile. From the lake this branch of the world’s longest river crashes over a massive waterfall and then flows all the way down to the sea in Egypt. So Tom had now cycled the whole length of the river. It was an important landmark. Tom treated himself to a banana sandwich in the shade of a big tree. As he chewed his thoughts turned to his next big landmark: crossing the equator and riding into the southern half of the world.

  Blood, Milk and Bananas

  The days were scorching hot now as Tom pedalled deeper into Africa. He cycled through Kenya and Tanzania. He was sweaty all the time, even in his tent at night. The refreshing swim in Lake Tana felt like a distant memory. The land was hot and dusty. Weeks would go by before Tom next found a nice clean river to swim in and wash his clothes in. Thorny acacia trees provided the only shade for Tom to rest underneath, though he learned the hard way to not bring his bike near to them. Their sharp thorns easily punctured his tyres.

  Cycling through Kenya and Tanzania felt like riding through one of the wildlife programmes that Tom used to enjoy watching on TV with his sister, Jo. He thought of her sitting on the big old beanbag at home in front of the television. He laughed as he imagined her face if she suddenly saw him on his bike pedalling across the screen in the background of a nature programme!

  Although he had seen elephants on TV and at the zoo, Tom could not believe his eyes when he actually saw one in the wild. It was a quiet evening. Tom was sitting outside his tent happily rubbing the dirt from between his toes. A big pan of noodles was bubbling on the camping stove. The sun was just starting to set. It was one of those brilliant red African sunsets you see on TV. Everything was peaceful.

  Tom looked up from cleaning his feet. His heart thumped suddenly in his chest because walking across the grassland in front of him was a family of elephants! A father, a mother, and a little baby elephant. The “little baby” elephant was actually bigger than Tom’s tent! Tom did not know whether to be excited or terrified. These were the biggest animals he had ever seen. They would squash him flat if they sat on him. Tom was both frightened and excited.

  The elephants had not spotted Tom. So he moved very slowly to fetch his camera and take a photograph of this special sight. He couldn’t wait to show Jo this picture. She would be so jealous. This was one of the best things that he had seen on this incredible ride. He watched the elephants until they had walked out of sight far across the plain. He kept very still and quiet until they had gone. By now his noodles had cooked too long and were really soggy. But it had been worth it!

  That night Tom found it hard to fall asleep in his tent. His excitement at seeing the elephants had slowly changed to worry. He thought to himself, “If there are elephants here, what other animals are there?”

  Suddenly his eyes opened really wide.

  “What if there are lions?!”

  And as soon as he thought about lions he was very worried indeed. After many months of cycling there was not a lot of fat on Tom so he didn’t think that he would make a very filling lunch for a lion. And because he had not washed or changed his clothes for weeks he hoped he might be a bit too smelly to be very tasty. But he was not sure how fussy lions were with their food. He hid a little deeper down inside his sleeping bag. Of course his tent and sleeping bag would not provide much protection from a hungry lion but it made poor Tom feel a little better. He shivered nervously.

  Tom normally loved camping, but he did not enjoy it that night. Every gust of breeze, every far-off sound made him jump. Every little noise began to sound like a pack of hungry lions sneaking up on him. He imagined huge teeth drooling and then crunching him up. He imagined a huge lion licking his lips after finishing him off, giving a happy, full-up, Tom-flavoured burp. Tom had a terrible night’s sleep!

  He was very happy to eventually see the sun rising. The long night was over. Tom was exhausted. He dragged himself out of his tent, stretched, and looked around. He felt a bit silly, now that it was daylight, at being so scared in the night. It was just a normal sunny morning like every other day in Africa.Tom brushed his teeth and splashed cold water on his face to help him to wake up. That felt much better. He treated himself to a double-decker banana sandwich for breakfast (that’s bread-banana-bread-banana-bread) and climbed back onto the bike. It felt even better than usual to be riding quickly through the cool fresh air of the early morning.

  Tom decided that he did not want to sleep out in the countryside in his tent again until he was away from all the big animal
s. It would be safer if he stopped in a village in the evening and asked permission to sleep there.

  And that is how Tom found himself drinking the bowl of blood and milk in a village of red-robed Maasai warriors. It is a ritual they carry out on very special occasions. The men’s wrists and necks were wrapped round and round with beautiful bright beads. They carried spears and shields, like you see on the Kenyan flag. When Tom had arrived in the village after another long day’s ride, he had not been afraid of the spears. He had actually been glad to see them: these men could definitely keep him safe from lions. Maybe he would get a better night’s sleep than last night! He asked the village chief for permission to sleep in the village for the night, explaining that he was riding round the world on his bike and that he was scared of lions.

  “Of course you can stay here!” laughed the chief. “We are very happy to be able to help you on your long journey.”

  As well as elephants and occasional traffic, Tom shared the road with lots of people on bicycles. Children cycling to school, grown-ups riding to work, or farmers carrying their vegetables or pigs to market. Many people had decorated their bicycles with coloured tape or tied bunches of plastic flowers to their handlebars. And they had musical hooters instead of ordinary bicycle bells. The roads were busy. Tom also passed ladies in bright dresses carrying huge bunches of bananas balanced on their heads as they walked. They usually had a small sleeping baby strapped to their back as well. Often the ladies would smile and give Tom a banana or two as a small present. He would munch the sweet fruit as he rode or sit down in the shade of a baobab tree to enjoy it.

  Tom followed a broad and winding river for several days from Tanzania into Malawi. It dropped down towards Lake Malawi, one of the biggest lakes in the world.

  Rising up from the far shore of the lake was a ridge of steep mountains. The side of the lake that Tom followed was flatter. Tom breathed a sigh of relief, remembering how hard the mountains had been in Ethiopia. At night the sky was full of stars. They seemed so close that at times Tom would try to reach out and touch them. Tom would pitch his tent on a warm sandy beach and go for an evening swim. They were good days. The lake was blue and beautiful. It was so big that it looked more like a sea than a lake.

  The villages in Malawi were made up of neat, thatched cottages with small vegetable gardens outside them. There were lots of rubber trees growing as well. Each tree had small holes cut into the bark. White liquid rubber oozed out and was being collected in plastic bottles. Villagers sold this rubber in the market. It would be turned into things such as balloons or welly boots which would then be sold all around the world.

  Tom noticed something strange about some of the cars that passed him in Malawi. At first he thought he was seeing things. But no, some of the cars really did have big fish dangling from the wing mirrors! How strange! So Tom stopped to ask a boy for an explanation. The boy told him that people bought fish from Lake Malawi to cook for their families back in the city. But the cars were very hot inside because of the sunshine, so the fish would start to stink before they arrived home. So people hung them from the mirrors to keep the fish a bit cooler and to stop their cars smelling.

  But the fish were nothing compared to Tom’s surprise when he came across cooked mice for sale as a snack! Children were standing beside the busy road with rows of cooked mice on sticks. They were apparently a popular and tasty snack. Tom looked at them in amazement. He tried to decide which he would prefer to try: a cooked mouse, or another snack he had been told about: a burger made from the clouds of flies that rise from Lake Malawi at certain times of the year and are caught by local people in big nets.

  “Mouse kebab or fly burger?” Tom wondered to himself. “Mouse kebab or fly burger…?”

  The decision was so difficult that in the end he decided to settle for some sugarcane instead. That was much nicer than eating a mouse! Sugarcane is the plant that sugar comes from. It looks like a fat bamboo cane. You bite off a chunk, chew it and suck the juices. It is like chewing a stick except that it is a stick filled with sweet, delicious sugar. It is somewhere between eating a stick and eating a stick of rock candy at the seaside. Once you have sucked all of the sugar from your mouthful of cane you spit out the woody mess that is left.

  Tom couldn’t think of anything better than a day’s bike ride, a stick of sugar cane, a swim in a lake and a night sleeping under the stars in his tent. This was the life.

  The End of Africa

  On and on rode Tom. Days and weeks and months passed by. At last Tom reached the border crossing into South Africa, meaning his bike ride through Africa was nearly complete. A South African police officer asked to look at Tom’s passport. She was amazed by all the stamps in it.

  “You have been to all these different countries on this little bicycle?” she asked, disbelief written across her face.

  “Yep!” smiled Tom, “But I still have many more countries to cross if I am going to make it round the whole world on my bicycle!”

  “You are riding round the world? On this bicycle? You are crazy, my friend!” said the police officer.

  “I am riding round the world. But for now I am just thinking about making it to the sea at the bottom of your country. That will mean that I have cycled the whole length of Africa. Cape Town will be the end of Africa.”

  “What an adventure you must have had, young Tom. Please tell me all about it.”

  Tom smiled as he told the police officer, called Sergeant Tshosane, about the beginning of his trip – leaving home and riding to France. He told her about the River Danube, the cave homes in Turkey, the pyramids, the River Nile, about monkeys and lions and all the many, many adventures he had enjoyed in Africa.

  Sergeant Tshosane’s face turned serious when Tom finished telling his story. She said, “You are very lucky to have made it so far.”

  Then she beckoned Tom close and whispered in his ear, “Africa is very dangerous. I am surprised you did not die in all the countries you have ridden through.”

  When Tom heard this he burst out laughing very loudly. Sergeant Tshosane jumped back with shock. She was giving Tom very serious advice. It was Not Funny. Plus, she was a very important police officer. She was not used to being laughed at by a young boy on a bicycle.

  “Why are you laughing?” asked Sergeant Tshosane. She looked quite angry.

  “I am sorry,” said Tom, although he still had a big smile on his face. “I am not laughing at you. You just really remind me of somebody I met in Egypt, long ago at the very start of Africa. His name was Sergeant Sharif. He said the exact same thing that you have just said. I think you would become good friends if you ever get to meet each other.”

  Then Tom cycled into the last country in Africa, leaving a very confused-looking Sergeant Tshosane scratching her head as she watched Tom ride away. She was a very important woman. She was not used to being laughed at. Nor had she ever met somebody before who had travelled the whole length of Africa on a bicycle. It had been a strange day.

  Tom was excited to have reached South Africa, the last country in Africa. After leaving the border post he packed his passport away, as he always did. He buried it safely deep down in one of his bags. He would not need to use it again until he left Africa. The end was close!

  But South Africa is a big country and Tom had a long way to cycle before he reached the sea. And he still had to ride over the highest road in Africa. The highest road in Africa (called the Tlaeng Pass) is in Lesotho, a small, beautiful country which is completely surrounded by South Africa. Tom rode deep into the mountains, climbing up steeper and steeper hills every day.

  Many of the people in the small villages of Lesotho were wrapped in blankets and wore traditional conical hats on their heads.They needed the blankets because the temperature was falling fast as Tom climbed higher and higher. Tom’s water bottle even froze solid one night! He had not expected that to happen in Africa. He did not have any gloves in Africa as most places had been boiling hot and he had not needed them.
So Tom put his spare of socks on his hands and used them as gloves instead. They were a bit smelly as he had not been able to wash them for many weeks. But at least they kept his hands warm.

  By now Tom was high in the mountains and he thought that he must be getting close to the highest road in Africa. He stopped to ask a lady. She was fanning the flames and hot coals of a barbecue made from half an oil drum. A row of corn-on-the cob was browning gently on the grill. The smell was delicious. Tom, hungry as always, bought one from the lady. He munched the corn and asked her if he was near to the highest road in Africa yet.

  “No, no, no, no, no,” she laughed. “You have a long way still to ride, my young friend.”

  Hours later, after much more sweating and panting up steep, winding mountain roads, Tom stopped to ask a boy who was trying to catch fish in a racing, noisy river.

  “Excuse me, am I nearly there yet?” asked Tom.

  “No, no, no, no,” he laughed. “You have a long way still to ride.”

  Tom kept riding.

  Looking back over his shoulder he could see down, down, down so far. He was amazed how high he had climbed. The view across Lesotho was beautiful. He could see so far. But still he was not at the top.

  Tom looked back down the valley he had cycled up. He was even higher than some birds he could see arching above the village far below him where he had eaten the barbecued corn.

  When he was so tired that he thought that he could not possibly continue any longer, Tom stopped to ask a farmer. The farmer was leading his flock of sheep down from the fields for the night.

  “Excuse me, am I nearly there yet?” asked Tom.

  “No, no, no,” he laughed. “You have a long way still to ride.”