London, eastwards...

In order of importance...
Number one, a louder horn. It really can save your life. And by loud, I mean Walls of Jericho volume. There's more detail on how to make all these changes on Deti's transalp pages http://www.ta-deti.de/ta/

Distance travel on a Transalp

Like descending into the steamy bowels of hell, ten miles of diabolical duodenum

6am in France. Why are these road markings so difficult? Ahh, my first lesson. Doing a roundabout clockwise at is not correct. Roundabouts are anti-clockwise on the continent sonny-boy. D’oh. Gives me a mantra for each time I get on the machine: “drive on the right, nice and steady”.

My first breakdown. The bike not me.Get cut up on the autostrada by a hearse at 120kph. These roads make me appreciate how well Britain regards safety. Green for go, explains my Italian friend, red for stop—if you want—and flashing amber for whatever.

Over the Kkatari pass in thick fog. Good job I can’t see down those drops.
Oh no. Greece also has a fuel strike. Stuck for seven days in Metsovo. A tourist trap town. The restaurants won’t serve us. Don’t know why. We go in, get ignored, hear some derisive comments and leave sheepishly after a few minutes perplexed. So I cook pasta on my camping stove on the balcony in the driving rain. I thought people liked travellers. Throw away some useless knick knacks.

Wearing full length thermal underwear makes me want to do a knees in the air dance and sing show tunes.

Bananas, fairy chimneys and underground cities.According to the guide book, Incekum’s golden crescent of sand is deserted. Pass through a similar setting covered in hotels. Turn around ten miles later. Lesson here is don’t buy out of date guide books. Things develop. The standard of rooms is the highest I have seen. A mainly German clientele. Figures. Hot showers a relief after the tepid stuff that trickles out elsewhere. But after being sternly addressed in German through loud hailers in the expensive hotel grounds by men with walkie talkies I decide to move on.

Katmandu is full of backpackers moaning about India. That’ll teach them to listen to the Beatles.Nepal is lovely. So calm. Katmandu is full of backpackers moaning about India. That’ll teach them to listen to the Beatles.

Biting off more than I can chew? The Annapurna Circuit trek looks nice in the guidebook. Go for it. Not very sensible. But 21 days walking and climbing a pass of 5500 metres sure cleans out my lungs a treat after all those lorry fumes.

Can’t brake or use the clutch but my fingers aren’t blue any more. Meet three British guys who are cycling to Sydney today. To keep up the calories they are eating three meals for my one. They have no guidebooks or maps. A pocket diary with a Times world map printed in the back cover is sufficient. With a ruler and a splodgy biro they have drawn a line from London to Sydney: “it’s for directions”.

The lure of sheep brain and some air guage karmaSeeing spaghetti in a restaurant gets my hopes up. A break from the twice-daily low quality kebab. Receive wheat-based sludge in a sandwich. This proves to be my best meal. Can’t find breakfast. The preferred option here is sheep’s head: brain, eyes and cheek. Sometimes with feet on the side. For some reason this never caught on with Kelloggs.

Racing nomads and a feminist statement.Go down to Bandar e Abbas from Shiraz to get some warmth. Palms appears. The smugglers run the town, shipping in white goods from across the straights of Hormoz. The police stand aside as the fridges are wheeled across the port road, back pockets bulging.

Curry, hardened steel and the anthropomorphic fallacy.

The embers from last night's fiery barricades have died down...The embers from last night's fiery barricades have died down, but tension is still high following Saturdays gun battles between police and Sunni muslims. Three mullahs have been arrested and four days of general strikes have ensued. Gilgit: definitely the place to come for a rest. Stories vary, but it seems a Shii schoolboy tore out a page from his Sunni religious textbook. This escalated quickly. Now there are burning tyres on each street corner and every man carries a firearm.

Tampons stops Transalp shocker.Entry into India is a bit of a gas. They are a bit wary of foreigners since a German couple drove a whole van of rifles over the border for the Kashmiri rebels: “open please”. The elderly customs officer can’t make sense of my girlfriend’s tampon collection. But he is sure that they are suspicious. He holds one up. I make some nodding and smirking type moves to let him know the general nature of the items. “Women’s things” I say. It doesn’t help. So I search the English vocabulary for a more precise description.

A lady with a lama, and some motorbike existentialism.I make small talk with the lady on the roof terrace in Delhi. “I am travelling with a lama” she says proudly. She stretches a sheet between poles: “He doesn’t like the sun”.

“Right”. I have heard of a guy doing it with an elephant; his book is in the travel section at Borders. An Andean quadruped would be easier to feed I guess. “No trouble getting him up the stairs?”

She furrows her brow “No. Of course not. He’s very fit”.

“What does he eat?”

Vanity, curruption and my Steve McQueen moment.Lots of black smoke from the back of the bike today. So I learn the meditative benefits of carb dismantling all evening. Doesn’t do any good though.

The monsoon builds

Picturesque poverty, but terror is riding pillion. Despite their purgative effects on my stomach, The Ghats along the western coast are quite an experience: each climb and descent two thousand metres on Indian hairpins. They certainly focus the mind. Just the one near death, but my cornering is super sharp. The bike coughs a bit up there. Something about the altitude. Maybe I should re-jet or somesuch, but hell, I'll only be coming down again. Otherwise, the machine seems to like mountains (it’s in the name I guess), the gearing appears well judged.

Bar girls, elephants and mean dogs. I will miss Thailand.The place is sticky the way a foreign metropolis should be. Lots of "Hello you want to be my friend?" The heels and crimson paint landscape is a bit of a shocker after the subcontinent. The women are up front all right. I get my first proposition in the terminal.

Opium and suffering the out of context problem.Everyone likes it here. There’s nothing to dislike. There's nearly no traffic outside the capital so you can indulge yourself happily winding through the misty mountains for hours on end. And, above all, they have coffee and baguettes (the legacies of France). Now how good is that? The people are calm and friendly. And the backpackers can pretend that they are discovering it for themselves.

Real difficult getting the toothless hotel lady out of my room. I think she is after more than an extended English lesson.Overland bikers tend to gravitate together; the magnetic pull of the aluminium panniers or something. Seven of us cross en mass into Vietnam. It is great fun. What a sight we make ploughing north through the rain to Hanoi. Feeling smug. Hanoi is my favourite city so far. It is small, it is raining, there are few tourists. Perfect.

You know things aren’t right when “fuckie fuckie, very cheap” is the nicest thing anyone’s said to you.Have a fine drive through the coffee plantations. Off the joyless north-south Highway One the temperature drops, the traffic thins out to almost nothing and the people get all smiley. No tourists.

Wind in hair; low yellow sun; bike purring; ancient jungle cities of stone all around.Cambodian roads are not as bad as everyone makes out. Okay, they are not tarmac, and turn to sludge in the rain, but they still join places up: a vital part of roadness. The trick on a motorbike is not to slow down; stay at the top of potholes and glide man, just glide. The half-built bridges, with gaping holes designed especially to sink your front tyre are a bit of a laugh though. Gliding carefully.

Hundreds of cockroaches live in the wall latrine. Their chosen mode of locomotion is breast stroke.

Where to begin in a country the size of a continent? At the top of course. Tropical Darwin in the monsoon. Soaking. After four drenching days I was collecting two of each species and enough wood to make my ark.

From Beachport I ride to Bordertown. The south is peppered with these literal settlements. A shock to see buildings over three storeys. There’re women with severe blond hair and silver jewellery. In a pleasant Adelaide campsite next to the river I wake at seven to the bad-tempered shrieks of cockatoos. I like it. The warm autumnal days and crisp clear nights are perfect.

A long dark strand slides slowly from under the rim...Bladder full, tank empty. Time to reverse the situation. Ambrose is one of those family run road houses that won’t last the decade. A single loo, with the strong smell of piss. A short flush doesn’t do it, so, cursing the penny-pinching plumbing installed by the petit bourgeoisie, I press again. A long dark strand slides slowly from under the rim. Disgusting. And then, and then, no it can’t be, it articulates and pulls itself up. Jesus. This, as they say, is some clever shit.

Thoughts on the Haight-Ashbury revolution.

I am the little guy chasing the big American dream...A friend lends me his bike for a fortnight in sympathy and I spent a day riding round San Francisco, up and down: phew, a view of the bay over the brow, and then zoom, I am tipped front forwards, engine roaring and brake pads earning every penny. Sizzle sizzle goes the fluid. Fun fun fun.

So that's what heppened to Sheena Easton.The strip is as garish and ridiculous as promised. Nothing is permanent. Faux Venice (no smells), faux Paris (no intellectuals) and faux New York (no Hilary) will have been concreted over in a decade. I wander about the slots and tables. It feels a library, the relaxed quiet concentration. There are some shows, but day-to-day Vegas is dull, unrelenting in its own way.

"It's like a giant vibrator Simon".Flagstaff AZ turns out to be a lovely little college town. It even has a centre. Hook up with a young woman in a Wee Willy Winky nightgown. It contrasts nicely with her dark brown skin. She talks about energies, the spiritual world and how what happens happens in an inexhaustible tone of profound understanding. I take her out for a ride to Sedona and the Airport Mesa. The rocks are stark and jagged surrounding the town, the centre of the universe according to someone famous I have ever heard of. The relaxed cornering descending into the valley was fun.

A friendly contact from the Utah police.In Mount Carmel Junction, UT the waitresses look at me with disgust. I only want some eggs love. What is it? Maybe it’s my nose. It is bleeding a lot now. It can’t take all this high-speed dust/heat/cold that I treat it to constantly. No way I’m putting down that visor though. I want to feel this air. And my hair is a bit wild. Mind you, the guy at the motel last night was the same: contempt bordering on hostility. It’s like they are only serving me because their dog is being held hostage. It is so untypical of the country.

I meet the Village people and get money off coupons for the local brothels.Next day, the storm follows me for six hours, lightning cracking overhead all the way into Nevada as I search for the loneliest road in the USA. I find it full of Harleys. The riders are amiable enough. In their quest for personal freedom and individuality they all dress the same. It's like meeting the Village People.

Out through Texas, the huge belly of the beast.I spend two days trying to get my bike out of the port.

Greeting from my bling bling world.

It’s time to re-learn the international waiter language of elbows-out clucking and the moo-cow first-finger horns. Menus mirror the early aspirations of the proprietor not the food options. Giblets and gizzard? That’ll do nicely. No, I’ll give seconds a miss today; je dois garder ma ligne, yes.

Hot wet pain is spreading up my right arm. I am finding it quite intriguing. That car-crash slow-mo is running quarter-time...Near San Miguel de Allende: whach whach whach. Or maybe tatatata. Or maybe more of a dug dug dug. Whatever the noise it was a helluv a thing. A calm sixty miles an hour on a open four lane highway and that smear on my visor becomes a tiny black cloud. Now it looks like it is moving, animated. Decidedly alive. I am right on it and I think, hmm, that’s a lot of flies. Close now: no, I’m wrong, not flies. That would be a swarm of wasps that.

A pleasant ride and a test of principles.

Paramilitary shootings have doubled in frequency in Guatemala of late. It’s election time, with a 24 caret nasty standing for presidente. So I plan on moving sharpish.

Perhaps there's a drinking water fountain. How do I mime that? Piss in an arch?Parched throat. That sinking feeling. I have been in the wrong queue these last thirty minutes. Did the guy really have to sneer so as he sent me away? Was that necessary? Wrong papers. When does paperwork work? I should have changed out of these big motocross boots before a border crossing. What was I thinking? I look a sight, striding about like a geriatric beast of the jungle. Each heel hits ceramic floor with an indelicate thud. And they squeak. Everyone stares. No local currency.

Waiting on the beach for Mr Magoo.Twenty kilometres of dirt, including three river crossings. In the dark. What for? There was none there. We waited. We went back to the car to get food and water. It had a puncture; we fixed it and returned to the beach. We sat for another hour. It was puzzlingly romantic, the six of us staring out to sea wondering if the turtles would lumber in from the sea. There’s a purity in waiting for animals to visit, not knowing if they’ll come. It engenders humility. A couple of bored guards swung their shotguns from shoulder to shoulder.

Ahhhgg, fast food...Ahhhgg, fast food...I get up at six and work flat out for three hours on my bike, readjusting the carbs, re-routing the fuel line and other fun stuff, before the heat comes up. Then I arrange for a new rack to be made, supervise that, take a siesta, watch the rain for a while, eat a filet of white fish in garlic with beer on the seafront and go on the net for a while. My first break in a while. I’ve got that peaceful easy feeling.

She shakes her sternly with the finality of a nightclub doorman...She shakes her sternly with the finality of a nightclub doorman...The bed is a treat. A foam mattress. The favourite of bed bugs everywhere--they adore the way it absorbs and holds all the juices. The frame has metal bar crosspieces positioned perfectly for maximum discomfort. I have just taken the doors off the wardrobe with my leatherman (there is a special attachment) and slid them underneath to stop the bruising.

"Isn't that Osama bin Laden over there?""Isn't that Osama bin Laden over there?" A perfectly executed diversion tactic. It works a treat. That, and switching the passports for immigration. They examine the ticket and the passport separately. And there is no record of my nationality on the ticket. Easy really. I am sneaking my way into Colombia. Some might say that was unwise Simey boy. But what a rebel.

We watch the world go by on Sexto Street, half of it tottering on four-inch heels. It is a bit like being in a giant Christina Aguilera video.Seeing my whole life rush before my eyes ten times a day. It is averaging out at four homicidal assaults a day. Not too grateful for this. I mean, the story aint so interesting. I don’t need to be repeatedly reminded thanks very much. Christmas in Colombia is a month of booze and more booze. Have a drink have a drive. It is wild.

Some good news. I have found the solution to the bike’s altitude problems. Sometimes the solution is staring you right in the face. Just go downhill. Big improvement. It works a treat.

After weeks in the sky I drop to under 1000 metres. The mosquitoes are man size, but it is great to be in the clouds. It is a joy to take on a cumulonimbus—see one on the horizon and then ride right through the middle. Spooky, mesmerising, unbelievable fun.

Early start. Over the Andes. Skip breakfast to get moving. Touristy San Pedro de Atacama has the last gas station in Chile. I ask around for the distance to the next fuel. It is either 200 km, 400 km, or “Far. Very far”. Best carry some spare. Spend my lunch hour failing to find gerrycans. Thankfully, the improvising overlander alternative is all around. Big plastic pop bottles. Where are these useful empty containers Simon? Why they are in the rubbish bins.Early start. Over the Andes. Skip breakfast to get moving. Touristy San Pedro de Atacama has the last gas station in Chile.

Every tale needs an ending. Mine is biological.

I am having aluminium boxes made (again) in Viedma, southern Argentina, when an email arrives from Europe. Rachel has just got back after a tough trip down the pan-American highway - weeks of gravel roads, camping rough and being blown off her bike. There’s some big news.

Photo by Lois