Alastair Humphreys - Grand Adventures

CHRIS MILLAR

CYCLED TO THE SAHARA

I worked as a rickshaw driver to save some pennies, get fit and learn the basics of bicycle maintenance.

NIC CONNER

CYCLED FROM LONDON TO TOKYO FOR £1,000

We realised with our pay cheques it wasn’t going to be too much of a budget we were going to be living on, so we thought, ‘Right. Let’s work with this and make it a challenge.’

JAMES KETCHELL

CYCLED ROUND THE WORLD, ROWED THE ATLANTIC, CLIMBED EVEREST

I was working as an account manager for an IT company. I moved back home with my parents; this made a big difference to my finances. Not particularly cool when you’re in your late twenties but it goes back to how much you want something. I took on an extra job delivering Chinese food in the evenings.

© Alastair Humphreys

A SHORT WALK IN THE WESTERN GHATS

I once walked 600 miles across southern India because I wanted a challenge but didn’t have the time or money to walk 6,000 miles. I was trying to understand what drives me to go on all these adventures I feel addicted to. In order to understand, I felt I had to push myself really hard…

Head thumping, heat shimmering, sun beating. The loneliness I felt in crowds of foreign tongues, staring at one foreign face. Bruised feet, dragging spirit, bruised shoulders slumped. Can’t think. Can’t speak. Just walk. The monotony of the open road.

These are common complaints on a difficult journey. I often get them all in a single day, and I know there will be more of the same tomorrow. Most days involve very little except this carousel of discomfort. It doesn’t sound like much of an escape.

Yet escape is a key part of the appeal of the road. All my adult life I have felt the need to get away. The intensity and frequency of this desire ebbs and flows but it has never gone altogether. Perhaps it is immaturity, perhaps a low-tolerance threshold. But there is something about rush hour on the London underground, tax return forms and the spirit-sapping averageness of normal life that weighs on my soul like a damp, drizzly November. It makes me want to scream. Life is so much easier out on the road. And so I run away for a while. I’m not proud of that, but the rush of freedom I feel each time I escape keeps me coming back for more. Trading it all in for simplicity, adventure, endurance, curiosity and perspective. For my complicated love affair with the open road.

Escaping to the open road is not a solution to life’s difficulties. It’s not going to win the beautiful girl or stop the debt letters piling up on the doormat. (It will probably do the opposite.) It’s just an escape. A pause button for real life. An escape portal to a life that feels real. Life is so much simpler out there.

But it is not only about running away. I am also escaping to attempt difficult things, to see what I am capable of. I don’t see it as opting out of life. I’m opting in. Total cost: £500, including flight

(Extract from There Are Other Rivers)

CROSSING A CONTINENT

With three weeks to spare, my friend Rob and I decided to cycle across Europe. We flew to Istanbul and began riding home. The maths was quite simple: we had to ride 100 miles a day, every single day. We had £100 each to spend (plus money for ferries), which meant a budget of £5 a day.

I remember the stinking madness of the roads of Istanbul. I remember our excitement as we made it out of the city. I remember reaching the Sea of Marmara and how refreshing it felt to run into the water to cool down. Then it was back on the bike and ride, ride, ride.

Cycling 100 miles a day was really tough for me back then and this was a gruelling physical challenge. But that was what we wanted. We were invited into a family’s home for strong coffee and fresh oranges. We peered at a dead bear beside the road. I waited for my friend for ages at the top of a winding hairpin pass in Greece. I was annoyed at his slowness. But then he arrived with his helmet full of sweets – like a foraged basket of blackberries – that a passing a driver had given him. Those bonus free calories tasted so good!

I remember the satisfaction of seeing the odometer tick over to ‘100’ each day. I remember the simple fun of finding a quiet spot to camp, in flinty olive groves as the sun set over the sea. Those were good days. Total cost: £100 plus flight

© Alastair Humphreys

IS £1,000 REALLY ENOUGH MONEY FOR AN ADVENTURE?

There is an assumption that adventures have to be expensive. They need not be. This is particularly true if you overcome another assumption: that you have to fly far away in order to have an adventure. Hatching an adventure that begins and ends at your front door is not only cheaper, it’s also satisfying. It creates a story that is easier for your friends and family to engage with and get involved with, and it leaves you with fond memories every time you leave your front door in future.

So, if you are trying to do a big trip for less than £1,000, I recommend cutting the expense of a plane ticket. Cycle away from your front door on whatever bike you own or can borrow and see how far you get.

However, you can get some great bargains on plane tickets. For example, if you decide to commit £200 of your £1,000 to a plane ticket, a website like Kayak (www.kayak.co.uk/explore) shows enticing options of where you can go for that amount of money. Writing this now, I had a look at the website. I could fly from London to Nizhny Novgorod for £190. I have never even heard of Nizhny Novgorod but instantly my mind starts to fill with ideas…

Here’s a cursory budget outline to help you start making plans and to realise that trips are neither as complicated nor as expensive as you might fear.

— Boring but important stuff: insurance, vaccinations, first aid supplies: £200.

— Equipment that you don’t already own or can’t borrow from a mate: £400 will get you a lot of stuff from eBay.

— Costs along the way: ferries, repairs, visas, an ill-advised piss-up in a dangerous but exciting port: £200

— Daily food budget: £5 per day. You could easily live on half this amount, or twice this amount, according to how you like to travel. But £5 will buy you pasta, oats, bread, bananas, veg and a tin of tuna, even in an expensive part of the world. Never pay for water. Just refill your bottles from a tap, purifying the water if necessary.

With £200 remaining, you have enough for 40 days on the road at £5 a day. If you set off from your front door and cycle a pretty leisurely 60 miles a day, and have one day off each week, that still amounts to an impressive 2,000-mile journey. You could cycle from London to Warsaw and back, San Francisco to Vancouver and back, or Copenhagen to Marseille and back. New York to New Orleans and back is a bit far, but York to Orleans is definitely do-able… If you choose to walk, run or swim you won’t travel so fast but your equipment costs will be lower so you will have more days on the trail.

You might choose to spend a bit more or a bit less on different things. You’ll probably find your own budget spreadsheet to be a little more complicated than mine here. But I hope you are starting to realise that the financial element of an adventure is within your grasp.

© Alastair Humphreys CONTENTS COVER TITLE PAGE COPYRIGHT DEDICATION For my parents, Who taught me to save up, work hard and make stuff happen. INTRODUCTION Part 1 PLAN MONEY TIME COMMITMENTS AND RELATIONSHIPS HATCH A PLAN KIT LIST Part 2 CHOOSE BICYCLE FOOT ANIMAL WATER MOTOR TRAVEL CLIMB EVERYDAY GRANDER BIOGRAPHIES INDEX ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABOUT THE PUBLISHER Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.