The Boy Who Biked the World

by Alastair Humphreys

  But he wasn’t going to give up yet. It was time to cross the sea to his first foreign country. Tom checked that his passport was still safely in his pocket and then pedalled towards the ferry.

  Tom found the ticket office and spoke to the lady there.

  “Hello, my name’s Tom. I am going to cycle round the world, so I need a ferry ticket to France, please.”

  “You’re going round the world? On a bike? Are you crazy? That must be thousands of miles!” The ticket lady couldn’t believe what Tom had just told her. Tom was beginning to wish that he received £1 every time someone called him crazy. He would be rich already!

  “It’s true.” Tom said. “I’m going to ride round the world on my bike.” And he patted the seat of his bike.

  “Well, if you are mad enough to be doing that then the least you deserve is a free ferry ticket.” And she pushed a ticket to France across the counter.

  “Thank you!” exclaimed Tom, amazed at her kindness.

  “Good luck!” called the lady as Tom wheeled his heavy bike towards the ferry, clutching his free ticket and his passport. The horn blasted and the ferry set sail on the short voyage to France.

  A Frenchman in a smart uniform stamped Tom’s passport and then he was free to ride into France. Tom looked at the stamp. It was the first one in his passport. He smiled as he thought of all the countries he was going to visit and all the colourful visa stamps he would collect. He put his passport in a safe place at the bottom of one of his bags so that he would not lose it and then rode into his first foreign country.

  Tom was excited but he had to concentrate hard. The people in France looked like the people in England, but here Tom could not understand what anyone was saying. He could not read the shop signs and the cars were driving on the right hand side of the road, not the left hand side like in England. He made sure that his helmet was fitting snugly before he began riding. It was amazing how different things could be after just a short ferry trip.

  But which way was it to Africa?

  Tom wondered how many times he was going to ask himself that question. Then he remembered his Mum’s advice to ask people for help. Sitting on a bench nearby was a lady with a baby in a pushchair. Tom thought that she looked nice. He decided to ask her.

  He rode over to the lady and asked politely,

  “Excuse me please, can you tell me the way to Africa?”

  The lady looked at him, puzzled, and said nothing. Tom tried again.

  “Excuse me please, can you tell me the way to Africa?”

  This time the lady said something, her shoulders shrugging and her hands waving as she spoke. Tom did not understand a word she was saying. It sounded like, “Ooh la la! Blah blah blah! Waffle wiffle wuffle.”

  Was that really what she was saying? Surely not. Unless she was crazy. Was she a crazy lady? She didn’t look crazy. Of course! Tom realised she was speaking French. But Tom did not understand French. His class were not going to learn French until next year. Oh dear. What was he going to do now that he was in a country where he could not speak the language? He wished that Jo was here. She would have a good idea. But just then he had a good idea of his own.

  Tom rummaged in one of his bags and pulled out his map of the world. You don’t need to speak the same language to recognize a map of the world. Every country has the same world maps. Tom showed his map to the lady, whose face seemed to suggest that she thought Tom was crazy. Tom pointed to the distinctive shape of Africa and then pointed down the street in both directions with a questioning look on his face.

  “Africa?” he said once more.

  The lady with the pushchair looked puzzled for a moment. Even her baby looked puzzled. She swept her brown hair from her face with her hand and asked,

  “Afrique?”

  “Africa.” said Tom.

  “Afrique?” said the lady once again, and pointed in growing amazement at Tom, then at his bike, and then back at Tom again.

  Grinning, Tom nodded. This seemed to be going rather well.

  “Afrique,” he repeated the French word for Africa. “That’s an easy word to remember!” he thought. He made a pedalling motion with his hands to show that he wanted to cycle to Africa.

  Shaking her head in amazement, she pointed left down the road, away from the setting sun, and said once again, “Afrique.”

  “Thank you!” called Tom as he climbed back on his bike. He was so happy to be on his way that he forgot the lady did not speak English. He would have to start learning some French words, starting with ‘thank you’.

  Things were looking up. Maybe he wasn’t actually mad to have begun this ride. He had crossed two gigantic hurdles already: first he had left England and was into his first foreign country. And second, he had managed to communicate with somebody without using words. And she had been friendly and helpful. Tom realised that he was not completely alone on his ride after all. He had everyone in the whole world to ask for help!

  How to Make a Banana Sandwich and Other Vital Life Lessons)

  Day after day Tom rode east across Europe. The days turned into weeks. The weeks turned into months. He grew stronger and fitter each day. He pedalled from morning until night. In the morning the sun was bright on his face as he rode towards it. By the evening the sun had moved round the sky and was behind him. Tom was pulled forwards by his evening shadow which stayed in front of him, encouraging him to keep going. He learned a few new words each day to help him talk to the people he met. He learned to put his tent up quickly without it blowing away. He fixed some punctures. And he felt the muscles in his legs growing bigger each day.

  As well as becoming very fit, Tom realised that he was also hungry all the time. A hungry cyclist. Cycling uses up a lot of energy. He spent a lot of time daydreaming about food. It was in one of these daydreams that Tom came up with the idea of banana sandwiches. They had lots of energy and they were very cheap. Tom lost count of how many hundreds of banana sandwiches he ate on his ride round the world.

  Because he did not have much money, Tom always had to eat cheap food. He also liked to try the different foods in the countries he was riding through. But more often than not it was banana sandwiches in the day, noodles at night. The same thing day after day after day. This might sound a bit boring. But because he was always hungry, a banana sandwich or three tasted just as delicious as his Mum’s best cooked dinners.

  Another way that Tom kept his adventure cheap was by camping at night rather than staying in hotels. Sleeping in his tent was good because it was free. And it was good because it was exciting. It was bad because he could not have a shower so he got quite dirty. But Tom didn’t care too much about that.

  Each evening, as the sun began to set, Tom would look for a safe, quiet place to sleep. He would find a peaceful wood or a grassy field.

  Once he stopped to camp he did the same things every day. First he would take off his sweaty shoes and socks. He liked the cool, fresh feel of the soft ground on his feet after a hard day’s ride. As he could only get clean when he found a river to wash in, his feet were starting to become very smelly!

  Next Tom set up his tent. He had a small green tent. It did not weigh much but it had enough space to protect him and all his things from the rain. The first few times he put the tent up he ended up in a complicated tangle of tent fabric and long poles. But he soon got the hang of it and now could put up the tent in just under five minutes.

  Once his tent was up, Tom would find a nice log to use as a seat. Then he would cook his supper on his little camping stove. He did the washing-up simply by licking his spoon and wiping his pan clean with a piece of bread. He wondered if his Mum would let him use this new technique when he returned home. After eating, Tom would write his diary so that, even when he was an old man, he would never forget the adventures he had enjoyed that day. There are adventures every day if you know how to look for them.

  Tom Becomes a Caveman

  In the town of Donaueschingen in Germany (it took Tom about an hou
r of cycling before he managed to wrap his tongue round such a difficult name for a town) Tom arrived on the banks of the mighty Danube River. The Danube, so blue, so bright and blue, is the second longest river in Europe (the longest river is the Volga in Russia). The Danube begins in the Black Forest of Germany (the forest famous for its cakes) and runs all the way to the Black Sea. It flows for 1700 miles. Tom was going to ride all the way.

  Tom sat down beside the Danube, munching his fourth banana sandwich of the day, and stared at the water sliding by. He felt hypnotised by the wide river. It had been flowing day and night, year after year for thousands and thousands of years. How amazing!

  Tom rode alongside the River Danube for weeks. He pedalled downstream through Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Romania and into Bulgaria where the Danube ran out into the Black Sea.

  A few days after leaving Bulgaria Tom reached Istanbul. Istanbul is the biggest city in Turkey. It was also the most beautiful city he had been to so far. It has been an important city for thousands of years, and some of its most impressive buildings are very, very old. Tom wrote a postcard to his family back home.

  After looking round Istanbul, taking lots of photos, and treating himself to some delicious pide (Turkish pizza), Tom rode down to the shore of the Bosporus. The Bosporus is a narrow strait of water about 700 metres wide. Old men were sitting quietly on little stools holding fishing rods. They didn’t seem to be catching many fish. But they didn’t seem to mind either. They were happy chatting to their friends and feeling the warm sunshine on their faces.

  The Bosporus marks the edge of Europe. Looking at the big ships sailing by, Tom was delighted to have made it right across Europe. His first continent was behind him. On the other side of the water lay a brand new continent. Even though Tom knew that Europe was the smallest and the easiest continent he would cross on his journey, he still felt proud. He was happy to have made it this far, but he was eager to keep going. New continents waited for him: new friends, new challenges, new adventures. Brilliant! Tom wheeled his bike onto the little ferry for the short ride across the water.

  “Goodbye Europe! Hello rest of the world!” shouted Tom into the breeze out on the deck of the ferry. A seagull whirled away in surprise at his loud voice, even though Turkish seagulls probably cannot understand English.

  Riding through Turkey, Tom visited the region of Cappadocia. Two thousand years ago people had begun living in underground cities there. Homes, churches, store rooms: everything had been carved underground out of the rock. People had stored their harvests in caves, and kept their sheep and goats in them at night. Even today some people live in homes carved into the side of cliffs. As well as the interesting houses, Cappadocia also has weird, beautiful rock formations, known as fairy chimneys, that rise up out of the ground.

  Salaam Aleikum!

  After Turkey Tom rode into Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, an area known as the Middle East. The language of the Middle East is Arabic. Tom once again began learning new words. But he was faced with an extra difficulty in Arabic: even the alphabet was totally different. Suddenly signposts and shops looked as though they had been splattered by spaghetti rather than words! His journey had just become even more difficult.

  “How could all these squiggles be words?” thought Tom, helplessly. He could not even understand the road signs or distance signs because numbers are also written differently in Arabic. Tom had to use his fingers to explain how many bananas he wanted to buy when he pointed to them in shops.

  Of course to the local people Arabic was easy and normal, and they would have found the English language just as funny-looking and difficult. Arabic is the fifth most common language on Earth, spoken by nearly 250 million people, so Tom thought he had better start learning.

  The first thing Tom learned was how to greet people. ”Salaam aleikum!” shepherd boys shouted from the fields. In the mornings the people in the bakeries where Tom bought delicious, fresh flat bread (so hot he had to juggle it back to his bike), would smile and say “Salaam aleikum.”

  In fact every single person Tom met would say “Salaam aleikum!” to him.

  Tom learned how to reply to this greeting which means “Peace be with you!”

  He said “Aleikum salaam” which means “And peace to you also.”

  This greeting is used by every Muslim person in the world. A Muslim is someone who follows the religion of Islam. Islam is the second largest religion in the world and the biggest one in the Middle Eastern countries Tom was riding through.

  Tom was on his way to Baalbek in Lebanon to see the largest Roman temples in the world. He had also been told about ‘Hajar-al-Habla,’ the biggest brick in the world which lay near to the temples. He definitely wanted to see that. The Romans had dreamed of building the ultimate temple, using bricks bigger than a bus! Tom couldn’t even imagine how big this temple would have been. However, after carving the first giant brick out of stone in a quarry, the Romans realised that it was maybe just a bit too big. It weighed 1200 tons! So in the end they only made the first brick.

  Baalbek was an exciting place. The temples were so well preserved that Tom found it easy to imagine Romans living there 2000 years ago. Six huge columns towered above him. Tom learned that eight more of the original stone columns had been taken down and carried by ship to Istanbul 1500 years ago. They were used in the building of Hagia Sophia which Tom had recently visited. This journey was teaching Tom how the history of so many different countries and cultures are all mixed up together.

  The historic city of Petra in Jordan was even more astonishing. It took Tom about two weeks to ride there from Baalbek. Petra was another ancient city. Incredible temples and buildings have been carved into the side of cliffs. Although Petra was 2000 years old people in Europe did not even know it existed until a Swiss explorer called Johann Ludwig Burckhardt re-discovered it just 200 years ago.

  Petra is hidden away down a narrow, winding canyon. Tom pedalled down its winding route for about a mile. The steep rock walls rose up above him on both sides and he could see only a tiny slice of sky far, far above him.

  “What an unbelievable entry to a city!” Tom thought to himself. “No wonder it stayed secret for so long.”

  But that was nothing compared to his excitement when he reached the end of the narrow gorge. Facing him, rising up from the sandy floor, was an enormous, beautiful building known as the Treasury carved out of the cliff. It was a beautiful rose-red colour. Tom’s jaw dropped as he stared up at it. If people could make something so wonderful 2000 years ago then he could definitely ride his bike around the world. He was inspired to believe that he could actually do it.

  Tom and Mummy

  After five months of pedalling, Tom had ridden from his front door in England to the Egyptian border. He was in Africa at last! His hair was long now and his clothes were faded by months of strong sunshine, but he was fitter and stronger than ever before. He could ride all day and then, tired but happy, sleep like one of the Egyptian mummies that he hoped to see. He had never felt so happy.

  Tom rode towards the famous pyramids. But he first had to cross the Suez Canal. As he got near to it he was surprised to see what looked like ships sailing through the desert. Only when he was very close did he see the narrow strip of water that was the canal. It was not much wider than the ships that sailed along the canal in single file. It was weird to see a canal in a desert.

  After the canal Tom pedalled into Cairo, the capital city of Egypt. The traffic was total chaos. Cars beeped at each other and motorbikes weaved through the traffic jams and delivery boys on bicycles and donkey carts with wobbly wooden wheels trundled slowly along busy motorways. A baker cycled slowly by with a tray of loaves of bread balanced on his head. He was covered from head to toe in flour and so he looked like a ghost.

  Cairo had a skyline of tall modern buildings, mosques and minarets (the tall thin towers above mosques that are used to call everyone to come and pray). Above all the other buildings Tom suddenly spotted the
clear outline of the famous pyramids. He had seen pictures of them in books at home and also learned about them at school. So he was very excited to see the real things. Even the best photograph in the world is not as exciting as seeing somewhere with your own eyes. He pedalled quickly towards them. It was late afternoon and the sun was sinking down the sky, losing some of its ferocious power.

  Tom sat down in the shade of the Great Pyramid. The pyramids are the only one of the seven Ancient Wonders of the World still standing, and even today they are one of the most wonderful things on Earth. Like Baalbek and Petra it is hard to believe that the pyramids were built without modern machinery. Tom drank from his water bottle and made himself an extra large banana sandwich to celebrate having made it all the way to Africa.

  The Pharaohs who built the pyramids were very, very rich. When they died they were buried inside their pyramids with huge amounts of gold and treasure. Most of the treasure has been stolen over the last few thousand years. So nowadays the small burial chambers are just an empty room deep within the heart of the pyramids. Ancient Egyptians used special techniques to preserve the Pharaohs’ dead bodies. They wrapped them in long bandages to create mummies and these can last for thousands of years.

  Tom was now going to cycle all the way down Africa from Cairo to Cape Town, the city at the opposite end of Africa. Africa sounded really exciting: elephants and crocodiles, drums and spears, big cities and empty wildernesses and so many different cultures and languages and people. His heart beat a little faster as he thought of all the adventures that awaited.

  The Border Guards

  Tom cycled through Egypt alongside the river Nile, the longest river on the planet. He was surprised by how narrow it was. He watched farmers ploughing their small fields. Their large wooden ploughs were pulled by oxen with big, curved horns. The fields were very good for growing crops as the river floods every year, adding a layer of nutritious mud to all the fields. The Nile is more than 4000 miles long, four times longer than the length of Great Britain.