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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.
(#u3689e309-d6a2-59bd-97c6-37b83ba5049b)
If you are in the fortunate position of even being able to dream of undertaking a big adventure, getting hold of £1,000 may not be the biggest hurdle. After all, it’s less money than many holidays, kitchen upgrades, wedding dresses or TVs cost. But not many people have both plenty of money and plenty of time (at least not whilst they are still young enough to climb Rum Doodle without their knees hurting).
For many, the scarcest resource in life is time. That is why I wrote Microadventures, a book about squeezing local adventures into the confines of real life. Microadventures challenge you to look at how you spend the 24 hours you have each day and to try to re-prioritise things a little bit.
But grand adventures require more than 24 hours. If you’re yearning to cross a continent, chasing the days west until the sun sets into the ocean before you, you’ll need to find a bigger chunk of time. There is never an easy time to find that time. Too many people are willing to settle for waiting until they retire, and this always makes me sad. The actor Brandon Lee’s grave is inscribed with these words:
‘Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless …’
Have a look at www.deathclock.com (http://www.deathclock.com); it’s one of my favourite websites! You add various parameters about your life (age, weight, gender, whether you smoke) and it will calculate the date you are likely to die. A big, unstoppable clock begins counting down the remaining seconds of your life.
I have the date of my predicted death scheduled into my diary. Morbid, perhaps, but it takes deadlines to spur most of us into action, and that non-extendable deadline scares the hell out of me. I have so much I want to get done before 8 September 2050!
Life, they say, is what happens while you’re busy making plans. Time is ticking, life is short. These days everyone is busy. We’re racing time, always chasing time. Bragging about how busy we are is one of our era’s favourite things to do. But, as the pithy viral Tweet said, ‘We all have the same 24 hours that Beyoncé has.’ It’s up to us to carve out time to make bootylicious stuff happen. When I was younger I would simply think of a trip, then go and do it. Now that I’m older and busier it’s more often a case of making a chunk of time available and then coming up with a plan that fits into that time slot.
There is no simple solution. This book will not solve the lack-of-time conundrum. I’d be rich if it did. But it might get you excited enough to resolve to solve it yourself: to begin the conversations with the people in your life – your family, your boss, yourself – about how it might be possible to pause the racing rhythm of daily life for long enough to do something different and really memorable. After all, each hour that passes, each dreary commute, each bleary Monday morning – these are hours on the hamster wheel that you have spent and will never be able to recoup or spend again. So spend them wisely.
One of my favourite feelings on expeditions is how much time I have. I don’t have more time, of course, I’ve just freed it up to do stuff that feels important to me. I wake at dawn, the diary is empty and the day stretches long before me. I drink tea and watch the sun rise. All I need to do today is make some miles. And then I will sit again, weary but satisfied, in some place I have never been before, and watch the sun set. The days are not busy, but they are full and fulfilling. I cherish spending that time. At home my days feel short and hurried. Yet at the end of most of them I’ve accomplished nothing memorable. What a waste!
I hope that this book persuades you to find a way to find time to fill your days with what feels important and worthwhile to you, not with the stuff that conventional society deems you ought to be doing.
‘The sooner you begin to get into this mind-set, the sooner you will have that big juicy chunk of time inked into your diary and the adventure can begin’
The first task is to think carefully about how you use your time now, and how you might be able to make some time for adventure. This isn’t about stirring your porridge into your coffee, sleeping in your work suit or other handy tips like that. For a big adventure you’ll need to clear a swathe of time – weeks at least, months, maybe even a year or two.
Begin by asking yourself these questions. I know they are hard, but try to answer them as positively as you can rather than instantly dismissing them as impossible in the circumstances of your life.
What is the biggest chunk of time you might be able to carve out for an adventure? Is this long enough to do what you’d like to do? Squeeze another week on at either end. Is that long enough? How much time do you need?
When in the next year might you have time? Can you block off a non-negotiable chunk of time in your diary? It might be quite far in the future, but once it’s in the diary you can treat it as sacrosanct.
What are your time constraints? Why can’t you go away?
If it’s work, do they truly need you all the time? Could your colleagues cope without you for a while? How much loyalty and time do you owe them? Beware of misplaced loyalty. Talk to your boss about how you might be able to free up some time. Don’t just second-guess them by saying ‘it’ll never happen. They can’t do anything about it’. Have the conversation. Tell them how important this is to you, explain the benefits it will have for you and your work performance.
Imagine you were suddenly bedridden for a couple of months. Would the world cope without you? How would it manage? Could you, therefore, bugger off on an adventure for a couple of months without the world collapsing?
Could you take a sabbatical from work? Maybe you could work from the road. If you resigned, could you get your job back when you return? Could you quit, then seek a new job when you return? Or apply for a new job now but agree not to begin the position for a few months?
If you are too financially constrained to stop working, are there ways you can free yourself a little? Can you clear your credit card debts, downsize your house or rent it out, or even take out a loan? Richard Parks’ parents re-mortgaged their house to help him accomplish his expedition dream of climbing the Seven Summits and bagging both Poles. Extreme measures, perhaps, but it is important to reflect upon how important this experience is to you. You can get more money in life, but not more time.
On expeditions you often need to take bold, decisive decisions that will have a significant impact on your chances of success or staying alive. You have to be confident, clear-headed and brave enough to back yourself. The wilderness is a place for positive decisions, pushing forwards and making shit happen. The sooner you begin to get into this adventurer’s mind-set, the sooner you will have that big juicy chunk of time inked into your diary and the adventure can at last begin.
WISE WORDS FROM FELLOW ADVENTURERS
SEAN, INGRID AND KATE TOMLINSON
CYCLED THE LENGTH OF THE AMERICAS
Kate was eight: the perfect age – old enough to remember and benefit from her experiences, but not yet a reluctant stroppy teenager!
HANNAH ENGELKAMP
WALKED ROUND WALES WITH A DONKEY
Often I’d get people saying, ‘Oh, well, I’m glad you’re doing it now while you’re young, while you can’, and they’d be people in their fifties. Sometimes I’d just think, ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, you’re just giving yourself an easy excuse.’
ROSIE SWALE-POPE
RAN AROUND THE WORLD IN HER SIXTIES.
You’re a long time dead, so you might as well get on and do it whilst you are alive!
JAMIE BOWLBY-WHITING
RAFTED DOWN THE DANUBE
It’s not the days in the office that we’ll reflect upon with nostalgia when we are old.
SARAH OUTEN
TRAVELLED ROUND THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE BY HUMAN POWER
Treat it as you would any other project. Identify what the project is, break it down into bits and put a time frame on it, then suddenly it can happen. Monitor your progress as you go along and learn stuff on the way. I think so long as you’re flexible in that plan and willing to change and adapt, then it’s not rocket science.
COLIN WILLOX
BACKPACKED THROUGH EUROPE
People are often paralysed by fear at the difficulties of making an adventure happen (‘where will I keep my car?’). There is no perfect time to go. So tie up the loose ends you can in a reasonable time, and leave. It will be messy. You’ll screw up. There are no guarantees. Remember that this is what you want, it’s why you’re going. If you didn’t, you would stay home.
PAUL RAMSDEN
TWO-TIME WINNER OF THE PIOLETS D’OR AWARD
It’s really hard [to make the time]. I’m busy. It’s hard to find the time to get fit. The most important thing is that I get the dates in the diary maybe a year in advance. It’s then non-negotiable – if I get work offers or party invites I can then say ‘sorry, I’ll be in India’. It’s a bit brutal. There’s no compromise. It’s massively important to set those dates, otherwise it would be much easier just not to bother.
ROLF POTTS
CIRCLED THE GLOBE WITH NO LUGGAGE OR BAGS
I’d say that procrastinating about the journey is tied into the core fears that keep us from travelling. We keep thinking that there will be a better time, a time when we have more money or fewer obligations, or when the world feels safer and more open. In truth it doesn’t take as much money as most people think, obligations are something we can manage, and the world is far safer than you might think from just watching news headlines.
KIRSTIE PELLING
FOUNDER OF THE FAMILY ADVENTURE PROJECT
We made a decision to go freelance to make time to spend with the children. We started a website to record our adventures. If you voice your ambitions out loud you are more likely to achieve them.
MENNA PRITCHARD
CLIMBER
[Things like time], they’re not the reasons – they’re the excuses. Aren’t they? I really believe that if you want something enough then you will find the time, scrape together the money, and overcome your fears… But it’s all about priorities. And I know because I’m completely guilty of it myself. Ever since I became a mum, I have used it as an excuse. An excuse for not having the adventures my heart desires. There comes a time when we have to say to ourselves, ‘stop making excuses’. That if something means so much to us then it’s worth working towards, it’s worth fighting for – and, dammit, it’s worth the struggle. I don’t want life to be about the battles I never fought, the barriers I never overcame, the excuses I made.
HELEN LLOYD
LONG-DISTANCE JOURNEYS BY BIKE, HORSE, RIVER AND ON FOOT
My job in engineering, although it started as a career, is now a means to an end. It’s how I earn money to do the things I really want. I now work short-term contracts, live cheap, save up and plan another journey. For me, the mix of travel and engineering job satisfies all my needs, which I couldn’t get from just one.
GRANT RAWLINSON
HUMAN-POWERED EXPEDITIONS BEGINNING AND ENDING ON INTERESTING MOUNTAIN SUMMITS
I have a full-time job as a regional sales manager based in Singapore, travelling around Asia spending lots of time eating very nice meals with customers and staying in beautiful hotels. All of which I do not appreciate as much as a lukewarm cup of instant soup in a freezing snow cave. What is wrong with me?!
SCOTT PARAZYNSKI
ASTRONAUT AND MOUNTAINEER
[A lack of time] can probably be viewed as a cop-out on many occasions. A couple of times in my life, I’ve had the opportunity to take a leave of absence and do big things. Both my trips to Everest required some creative work-arounds at my day job, banking vacation time, initially. There are all sorts of really cool adventures that can be done on a shorter scale too.
ANT GODDARD
ROAD-TRIPPED ALL OVER THE USA
I have a young kid and a pregnant wife, so I’m in a good position to tackle the regular excuse given by people that ‘the timing’s not right for adventure now, I’m too busy, life’s too complicated.’ It’s an interesting thought because it’s kind of similar to the dilemma of if/when to have kids. The timing will never be perfect. If you wait for the perfect time you’ll miss out. Mostly everything you think you can’t leave will still be there when you get back, and travelling gives you a lot of time to think about those complications and put them in perspective. There are very few things that are honest blockers to just getting out and having an adventure, no matter how large or small the adventure is. You may feel like there are a lot of ‘what-ifs’ preventing you doing something adventurous, but the scariest one in my mind has always been ‘what if I never go? What if I stay here forever?’
ANDY MADELEY
CYCLED FROM LONDON TO SYDNEY
I realised that we only have this life to get everything done. That outweighed the fear of the unknown and gave me the momentum to bust out from the rut I found myself rolling down.
© Anthony Goddard/Linda Martini
(#u3689e309-d6a2-59bd-97c6-37b83ba5049b)
This much is true: expeditions have cost me time, money, relationships and messed with sensible life plans and pension prospects. They do not make my life easy. They are selfish. But I do not regret any of them. Indeed, I regret a few that I have not done. Adventures have enhanced my life and – this is important – they have ultimately enhanced most of those things I just mentioned, too, despite the initial pain, suffering, worry, compromise and hassle. In other words, my journeys have been worth it in the long run.
When I set off to cycle round the world I did not have a job or a mortgage. I had no monthly bills to pay. So long as I did not spend all the money I had saved, I was free to do whatever I wanted, wherever I wanted, for however long I wanted. My life was simple. I look back at that younger me with enormous envy!
If you are young, free and single, now is the time to head for the hills and go do something extraordinary. Life will never be so simple again, for you are not yet entangled in the mesh of commitments that grows over the years. Save up a bit of cash, whatever you can manage, and then go do something crazy. It will enhance your CV and teach you more than most expensive tuition fees will ever do. If a future employer isn’t more inclined to give you a job because of your experiences then they’re not the type you want to be working for anyway. Skip this chapter and go now! You have no excuse.
Money and time constraints make life complicated, but with planning you can free yourself from some of the muddle. Far more binding are our relationships: husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends and families. If your other half is also itching for adventure, then things should be straightforward and exciting. You just need to start saving and start planning today. If you both save £1,000 and are happy to share a tent then you’ve got double the money and fewer outgoings.
If you’re in a relationship and both wish to travel but you have children, adventure planning becomes more complicated. But if your brood are young enough not to have an opinion, or even if they are able to express an opinion but you can still get away with saying ‘because I told you so’, then adventures are still quite achievable.
Ingrid, Sean and their 8-year-old daughter, Kate, cycled the length of the Americas. Ingrid and Sean were accomplished kayakers and trekkers before they began. This may not appear to benefit a transcontinental cycling journey. But it does in one important way: they knew what life in the wild and on the road was like, and they wanted more of it. They had the appetite. They had momentum and confidence. Theirs was not a standing start. Overcoming the inertia of normal life and generating momentum is very difficult. It can feel overwhelmingly daunting to say ‘we are going to change our life. We are going to go and do something big and bold. We will begin on this date. And right now we are going to begin to get ready by doing x, y and z.’ It’s a lot easier just to put the telly on and watch Bear Grylls.
Ingrid and Sean had to face the challenges of arranging for Kate to miss school, dealing with the concerns of well-meaning friends and family about taking a small girl on a big adventure, and managing their plans to make them compatible with helping an eight-year-old achieve a journey that most adults would be extremely jealous of!
