I was exhausted, and got to the point where I was almost getting a bit delirious and really weak.
“I was really in quite a bad way, I sort of slept by the side of the road. And I ended up kind of collapsing as I got to this town eventually. Someone called it a heatwave, which amused me because it’s the Sahara. “I even turned down some water, because they offered me some local water and I had to separate all through my filter straw, but it takes forever to get it out. “I didn’t take enough water with me, because I just expected that I would find somewhere,” Lowe continues. “It was just a little bit of a reminder of just how powerful the desert really is” Then the road I ended up on was a really quiet road, with no rest stops at all.” I can’t even remember how that came about. “I crossed to the other side to find, like these, these old ruins, then ended up staying the night in some random place in the middle of nowhere. They also had like, lots of these big earthenware jars where with bamboo the water was shadowed. On the side I had been on, there’d be lots of these rest stops where you can stop and buy water. In Sudan, I just made a terrible error of judgement when I had crossed over from one side of the Nile to the other. “The biggest danger was really I think, myself. I actually never saw it as a particularly dangerous trip. Whereas there’s not so much crime in the Middle East, it was very hospitable. “A lot of people felt like the trip was a dangerous trip, and I never saw it as a dangerous trip, I thought it was really fairly safe, much safer than for example, going down through South America or even going through North America actually. “It was probably one of the low points and it was really of my own making,” she explains. There are a few sketchy moments in her epic journey, although the biggest one possibly comes from a mistake Lowe makes herself, rather than from interference from others. “All I needed to do was to turn up anywhere looking a little bit tired and hungry, which was a look I perfected by this point wasn’t hard, and suddenly like there are blocks and people inviting me in for lamb stew and to their house.”Īll of us all-too used to the experienced of cycling in the UK and the USA can only dream of such a welcome wherever we go. I didn’t stay in one hotel or camp once in Iran, I just didn’t need to. It was like a whole new level of hospitality. “If someone from like Iran or Sudan or Egypt passes by our village, how many people would invite them in to stay the night in their house? Iran was just amazing.
“I was treated in a way that I feel we would never have reciprocated had the reverse been true,” she says. What strikes the reader more than anything else, however, is the hospitality of the people of almost every place Lowe cycles through. The book is a fascinating ride through entire cultures, with the diversity and vibrancy of south-east Europe and the Middle East fully on show. The author also comes out of the experience incredibly bored of punctures, which seemed to dog her throughout the trip, especially after getting some new tyres – allegedly the best in all of Beirut – halfway through. I’d never cycled the tour bike, I’d never cycled with panniers.” I ended up only packing the night before. I didn’t leave enough time to plan, I only left my job three weeks before and it was really hectic like those weeks. “I had a newfound respect for cyclists as well because cycling is tough, and I was going very slowly. When you’re looking sort of sad and dishevelled, as I was, people just wanted to be nice to me really. “If you’re a woman on a bicycle, that’s a whole kind of lesser threat, as well. “I think being on a bicycle for a start was seen as less threatening,” Lowe says. It is true that by bike, she was able to traverse a whole continent and a half in a way that would have been a little more boring by car, plane or train. I think a bike is just a wonderful way to see places. It really isn’t about that, the bike was really a means to an end. “I do say at the beginning of the book that I’m not a cyclist, you know, I’m somebody who cycles. I’ve sort of cycled quite a bit, but I’ve never been a cycling fanatic at all. I hadn’t done huge long trips, but I’ve always commuted, I always cycled to work and back.
I’ve always cycled quite a lot, but more in a kind of pragmatic way. “Maybe love is a strong word, but I really enjoy cycling.