By Douglas Whitehead Published: 11:02AM GMT twenty-six February 2010
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Douglas Whitehead"s tour took him from Belgium to India 
Amritsar, inside the Golden Temple, done a correct culmination Photo: ALAMY 
Chillis parching on the main highway in Kyrgyzstan Photo: DOUGLAS WHITEHEAD 
Istanbul, one of Douglas Whitehead"s prime cities Photo: CORBIS 
Mausoleums at the Shah-i-Zinda formidable in Samarkand Photo: CORBIS 
Tajik herdsmen go on to suffer a normal approach of hold up Photo: DOUGLAS WHITEHEAD 
A family with their yurt in Kazakhstan Photo: ALAMY 
The people in Uzbekistan were in in in between the friendliest encountered on his tour Photo: ALAMY So this was how it would end. Not customarily the journey. Everything.
Top tips for long-distance cycling Read Douglas Whitehead"s blogs More tour holidays The Bicycle Diaries: finish of the main highway in Amritsar The Bicycle Diaries: the main highway to Islamabad The Bicycle Diaries: gunshots in Shangri-LaMy killer crept up kindly until he loomed on top of in the night darkness. In his palm he clasped a sport knife, the blade edge about 6in long.
The crime scene: a remote, tumbledown shed by a main highway that spread out by the dried in Azerbaijan. The shack"s owner, dirt-poor, had invited me to nap there in sequence to take my bicycle and possessions.
Disappeared but trace. Nobody behind home would ever know where or why. Attempting to cycle all the approach to India alone. What a plainly stupid idea.
I wasn"t stabbed to death. That"s viewable enough. But putting the full story in to context requires going behind a integrate of months in time.
Rewind to the second week of Mar last year, when a childishly vehement 40 year-old had customarily disembarked from the packet to Belgium. Along for the float was a radiant Galaxy Dawes, not prolonged ago paid for for about �700 and the primary bicycle I had owned given I was a teenager. Clipped on to the support was a set of 4 Ortlieb panniers. Inside the panniers: a tent, a sleeping bag, a primus stove, a shift of clothes, a integrate of gangling tools and not majority room for anything else.
Why was I you do this? For reasons majority appropriate summed up by Robert Louis Stevenson, who was as great a passenger as he was a writer. "I travel," he wrote, "to feel the needs and hitches of the hold up some-more clearly, to come down off the feather-bed of civilisation."
The total far-reaching universe right afar lay forward or, at least, the sizeable cube in in in between here and India earnest 9 months and 6,000 miles of adventure. It was a feeling of pristine exhilaration. The object was even shining; the primary comfortable day of open and positively a great omen.
Such a excellent weekday afternoon behind in London would have found me cooped up inside an office. But here I was, in the quaint, Gothic locale centre of Bruges, lunching at camp on a creatively oven baked baguette and cheese. What a plainly shining idea. Nobel Prizes had been awarded for less.
The primary feeling of well-being would shortly empty away. Five days after I was alone in a drab highway house in a drab suburb of Sedan, a drab locale in northern France. At �60 a night, the highway house was well over my budget, but my really bad painful knees would no longer straighten out properly. All day I had been earnest myself the oppulance of a night in a genuine bed, and this was the customarily place available.
Exhausted, but incompetent to sleep, I distributed how far I had cycled. At 50 miles a day, it worked out at less than 3 per cent of the way. If customarily quitting were an choice but that would meant carrying to leave the nation out of undiluted embarrassment. My primary inform for theTravel website done no discuss of this miserable state of mind. Reading the essay the subsequent day, I found that the paper had noted down my attempt to reach India as "ambitious". Yes, that was customarily about mark on.
With the good of hindsight, these primary traumas were a compulsory sermon of passage. There is simply no approach to replicate the bid compulsory to pedal 6 or 7 hours a day, solely to pedal for 6 or 7 hours a day, that equates to you competence as well be on legal holiday rather than in a gym.
Fitness levels progressively softened as the days, afterwards weeks, passed. In Germany"s Black Forest it rained completely for 48 hours. Then it began to snow. The miss of guesthouses until April, the proceed of the traveller season, meant camping in forests, underneath railway bridges, in failing in duty buildings. The pretence was in the timing: as well early and I risked being detected and presumably systematic to move on; as well late and I would be environment up the tent in darkness.
It was so cold that, one night, my H2O bottles froze inside the tent. The goal of environment off by Europe this early in the year, however, was to equivocate Central Asia"s far harsher winter meridian majority after in the journey.
From the source in Donaueschingen, a small locale in southern Germany, the Danube acted as my messenger for the subsequent 7 weeks, heading me opposite 7 countries. Crossing in to Austria, it flowed by the beautiful, wine-producing Wachau valley, afterwards in to Vienna, where I outlayed 3 relaxing days, my primary correct break.
By right afar the object was out all the time and camping became less of a chore. The downy hat, waterproofs and thermals were happily packaged afar in to the panniers, not to be seen again for a prolonged time. Onwards the stream wound to Slovakia"s lifelike capital, Bratislava, and Hungary"s primary city, Budapest.
Cycling was apropos similar to a job, but one nude of lifeless routine. The happiness came in never meaningful what would occur subsequent or whom I competence meet. Walter, a 71-year-old German, was sitting by the roadside customarily a integrate of miles over the Croatian border. Having flown the comrade East at the age of 18, he had depressed so profoundly in love with leisure that he had outlayed some-more than half the inserted years travelling the universe by bicycle. This time he was cycling to Turkey.
A purpose model? No, Walter was a small eccentric. We split association that dusk when he insisted on camping in a meadow noted with a skull-and-crossbones sign. Twenty years on from war, this segment of Croatia one after an additional to bear the scars, in in in between them uncleared minefields and Vukovar"s bombed-out buildings.
Serbia and the surprisingly accessible people; Romania and the deeply antipathetic packs of wild dogs; dickey carts outnumbering cars; shepherds in the fields; women wearing headscarves by encampment wells; a last farewell to the Danube and south opposite Bulgaria"s undulating countryside.
I cycled in to Istanbul during the last week of May, by that time the website had started to impute to my tour as "intrepid", a transparent improvement. Before environment out, I had done Istanbul my fallback destination. From right afar on, whatever happened, India or not, I could at slightest hold my head up.
After dual stately weeks in one of the majority windy cities on earth, I found the main highway was job again. The Black Sea seashore seemed the milder route, preferable to going internal or along the Mediterranean. Still, the temperatures continually strike 90F (32C). Glorious scenery, exhausted fishing villages and splendidly hospitable people, but high mountain after hill.
One night, pang from what contingency have been heatstroke, I woke to find a hulk rat inside the dejection of the tent. Despite aroused threats it refused to run away, so I picked up a foot and began bashing out the brains. The rat incited out to be my camera case. A organisation of dismayed Turkish students outlayed the rest of the night shocked that a psychopath was camping subsequent doorway to them on the beach.
The muezzin"s call to request at 4.45am became the vigilance to set off cycling. This approach I could rest in the shade during the midday heat.
Dire headlines from Iran: a doubtful election, riots, deaths. Obtaining the Iranian visa had been expensive, but a shift of plan seemed wise. My believe of Georgia was hazy, solely that it was the hearth of Stalin. The small lodge where he grew up in a locale called Gori had been incited in to a museum. Once, pilgrims would have journeyed there from opposite the Soviet Empire; right afar the nation was pockmarked with outworn factories dating from the comrade past.
And so to Azerbaijan and the impulse when I honestly thought that genocide was imminent. You or I probably wouldn"t entice in to the home a foreigner who didn"t verbalise a word of the language. We positively wouldn"t transport in on him during the night whilst brandishing a weapon. But Shahin, as the man with the sport blade was called, had motionless at about 2am to have a snack, and his stove was inside the behind room where I was asleep. The blade was for rupturing up a small mutton rather than a tourist. Not customarily had attempted murder or spoliation never occurred to him, but nor had the probability that I competence think they had.
It"s not customarily dangerous to transport in remote places. Often it"s surprisingly safe. Time and again, in Muslim countries especially, I would be the target of such basic hospitality.
Nearly a week late, the packet eventually set out opposite the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan. This immeasurable nation is simply the distance of horse opera Europe, but my track took in the merest slither: 4 days by a hilly desert, with small pointer of hold up solely for the occasional camel.
My bizarre plan had not entailed entrance this way; anticipating food and, even some-more importantly, H2O had valid a consistent worry. Now an additional main highway spread out over the limit in to Uzbekistan and opposite another, far bigger desert. What if tools were mired in low sand? The denunciation separator done it unfit to ask the locals, and progressing searches on the internet had thrown up no information.
Maybe someone had cycled this approach before, but if so, he or she had never created about it. Lacking the bravery to fire a trail, I installed my bicycle on to a train.
In Samarkand, the former collateral of Uzbekistan, I walked in to a lodging place to find 4 alternative long-distance cyclists from Europe; the intercourse was really acquire after I had outlayed so majority time alone. Less acquire was the courtesy of the authorities in Tashkent, the new capital, where being stopped and systematic to furnish my pass was a every day occurrence. Uzbekistan is a military state, but notwithstanding the xenophobia of the president-for-life, Islam Karimov, the people were probably the friendliest I met on the trip.
By contrast, Kyrgyzstan was a freer society, but the policemen, nonetheless fewer in number, were some-more corrupt. Arrested for smoking a cigarette, I outlayed a total afternoon refusing to compensate a cheat prior to they let me go.
Bishkek, Kyrgyzstans capital, became my bottom for scarcely a month, whilst the Chinese embassy refused to issue a visa unless a guide was hired at $100 a day to expostulate me everywhere. Allegedly, it was for my own protection. In reality, the 60th anniversary of the comrade array was approaching, creation the authorities overly suspicious about vouchsafing foreigners transport around independently. Once the rarely choreographed "celebrations" had upheld off, I returned with a fraudulent highway house engagement and moody reservation, and the same embassy central duly hammered my passport.
However, the prolonged enforced lay-off meant it was right afar late October, and the heat in Kyrgyzstan was descending sharply. Temporarily out of condition again, I hitched a lift. The BMW had blacked-out windows and belonged to a organisation of 3 contentious gangsters. They were pleasing sufficient to me, but afterwards one of them pulled a gun on a building a whole workman who had the benevolence to demand that a main highway by the plateau was closed.
The Karakoram Highway in in in between China and Pakistan passes right to one side a array of peaks rising to 23,000ft (7,000m) some-more than five times higher than Ben Nevis. Cycling there in open when the trees are in full freshness would be a delight. Cycling there in midwinter, when it can be -10F (-23C) and 3 pairs of hosiery are no longer sufficient to forestall your feet from going numb… yes, it was still a delight, but arduous.
Down in to the densely populated plains of Pakistan and opposite the limit in to India. I had been toying with the thought of finale my tour at the Taj Mahal, that was customarily 300 miles afar now, but 9 months had upheld and that was prolonged enough. Instead, I outlayed my last night in Amritsar, inside the Golden Temple, the holiest tabernacle of Sikhism. Guests are authorised to nap and eat free at the temple, but ethanol is particularly prohibited. There would be no rebellious journeys-end party, but that didnt have a difference any more.
What to have of it all? Im still not sure. I trafficked by nineteen countries; met scores of erotically appealing people of all opposite types, creeds and backgrounds; witnessed the seasons shift close up; experienced a small of the majority appropriate and additionally a small of the misfortune moments of my life. But it was hold up lived to the full, with the volume, colour and contrariety controls incited up to the maximum.
Maybe when I have saved sufficient income I will do it again and thats something I never approaching to be observant when I was lying in anguish on a highway house bed in France. Maybe I will fly out to India and proceed cycling opposite the Far East, or head off to South America. Go turn the world. Who knows?
Maybe, after celebration of the mass this, you as well will buy a bicycle and set off to somewhere faraway on the map. Go on: I brave you.
Quotes from the roadMarch 10, 2009, Bradford
"Its going to be fun. Nine months and 6,000 miles of pedalling, sleeping in a tent and in progress on a primus stove. Well, at slightest I goal the going to be fun. India is a prolonged approach to go on a bicycle if youre not enjoying the ride. Insane? Idiotic? For Marco Polo and Lance Armstrong roving together on a tandem, maybe not. For an customarily tolerably fit 40-year-old bureau worker, who paid for a bike customarily a integrate of months ago, the craving does enclose a clever intensity for degrading failure."
April 14, Passau, Germany
"Its taken scarcely a month, but on the hinterland of the German city of Passau I eventually met my primary associate long-distance cyclist. We recognized each alternative rught afar by the volume of wallop we were carrying. I told him of my dictated track to Istanbul. Until right afar I have told everybody that the Turkish city is my finish India sounds so far afar Im disturbed that I competence not be believed."
May 11, Drobeta-Turnu Severin, Romania
"Outside an ice-cream salon a cackle of girls was ready to go in complicated fashions, excitedly utilizing mobile phones to take photographs of each other. Opposite, a organisation of nomadic women walked down the street. The stage seemed an easy contrariety in in in between Romanias haves and have-nots until the nomadic women climbed in to the behind of a new Mercedes."
June 23, Sinop, Turkey
"A purloin and a barbed spear gun were unresolved from the wall of his precarious shack. Sometimes, however, you have to certitude your instincts. Naci was really a charming character, but he seemed all right. In his mid-sixties with a prolonged white brave and a tanned, weather-beaten face, he could have been Ernest Hemingways Old Man of the Sea or Captain Birdseye, at a push."
July 21, Poti, Georgia
"I see up to see a black sports car entrance true at me. Its overtaking a van, which, in turn, is overtaking a line of lorries. All this takes place on a blind corner. I snake off the tough shoulder and on to a weed bank. It shortly becomes transparent that the "double pass is utterly a usual Georgian pushing technique."
August 12, Baku, Azerbaijan
"I crossed the Caspian Sea by boat. The mattress in my cabin looked as though it had been the stage of a prior occupants genocide and decomposition."
September 1, Samarkand, Uzbekistan
"In Samarkand, the hostels community lavatory was so wet and the hunker toilet reeked so foul that the customers nicknamed it "The Pit". If you were going to encounter an additional long-distance cyclist, it would probably be at a glamorous place similar to this."
September 8, Tashkent, Uzbekistan
"The small play being played out was an discernment in to what sort of people flower in a total society. Tashkents immigration arch seemed to be in assign on the caveman element that he was bigger and nastier than everybody else in the department. His sidekick, presumably his younger brother, was scarcely as imposing, nonetheless probably even dimmer."
September 28, Osh, Kyrgyzstan
"Kyrgyzstan, the nightly dreamland of Scrabble players everywhere."
October 13, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
"Do not sketch the guards who mount rigid outward Bishkeks Presidential Palace. They have a robe of unexpected jumping in a huff to hold up and indicating their rifles at people."
December 1, Kashgar, China
"In China, youre never far afar from being told what to do."
December 8, Tashkurgan, China
"I complacent for the night in a Kazakh dwelling, celebration tea flavoured with tainted yak milk, sleeping underneath complicated woollen rugs, kept comfortable by a stove that browns yak dung. Its a approach of hold up roughly unvaried for large generations. Almost. The eldest daughter energetically watched a hairy black-and-white radio set. Chinas cocktail statue competition is display tonight."
December 14, Sost, Pakistan
"My accommodation, the One Star Hotel, had awarded itself far as well most stars."
December 19, Amritsar, India
"The hostels owners is the matchless Mr Malik. When I arrived he review my palm and conspicuous that I would father dual young kids a lady called Baby Rosemary and a child declared James Bond."
"The tour was eventually entrance to an end. I felt a bizarre reduction of service and disappointment, enthusiasm and emptiness. Right in the heart of Amritsar, the Golden Temple done for a undiluted place to outlay my last night. It is the holiest tabernacle of Sikhism, but everybody is welcome."
Read all of Douglas Whiteheads blogs at telegraph.co.uk/bicyclediaries
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