Bearback

Pat Garrod

Description

Two doctors, one motorcycle,and a remarkable four year journey around the worldImagine jacking it all in, packing your life into a 41-litre pannier and riding into the sunset. BEARBACK is the story of two GPs who did just that, downing stethoscopes to take off on their motorcycle, The Bear, to see the world. A circumnavigation of epic proportion and entirely unsupported, it was to become one of the longest journeys ever undertaken by a couple on one motorcycle, a journey destined to change their lives forever.'A remarkable journey. Searching, honest, uplifting.' Sir. Ranulph Fiennes'An inspired travelogue, dispelling the myth that remarkable journeys are out of your grasp'National Geographic Traveller'Belts along at a cracking pace. Stylish and good quality.' RIDE'I didn't want this enthralling book to end. If you only read one travelogue this year, make it this one.'Real Travel 'Book of the Month''We've all dreamed about it - quitting the job, packing up the house, and hitting the road for the adventure of a lifetime. Few do it, and even fewer do it as well as Pat Garrod.'Travel Africa'A damned good story, and very well told. This wonderful work fits the category of 'page turner' in every way.' ADVMoto magazine

Sujets

• Travel writing
• World

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 novembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781788034289
• Langue: English

Extrait

PAT GARROD
At the tender age of seven Pat Garrod, typically, knew his own mind. When asked what he wanted to be when he grew up his reply was as instant as it was ambitious.
“A doctor, an author, or a long-distance lorry driver.”
Born in 1964 to parents brought up in the war he acquired a healthy respect for minimalism and inherent value, as well as a love of camping and the great outdoors. Family meals always took place under the alluring shadow of The Daily Telegraph Map of the World. This and the haunting words of a guest-speaker at a school prize-giving ceremony left Pat with an insatiable desire to see the world.
An avid cyclist through his teens, at the age of seventeen Pat developed an unhealthy fascination with motorcycles. In his final year at medical school a serious motorbike accident put him in hospital for three months and on crutches for a further year.
Since qualifying as a doctor in 1988 he has worked in various parts of the world including Australia, on expedition in Zimbabwe, and even a brief spell in Saudi Arabia before being flung out of the kingdom by a disgruntled Queen.
His time in Zimbabwe engendered in him a deep fascination for, and love of, the African continent. In 1995, eight years after the accident, he threw caution to the wind and climbed back on board a motorcycle. With girlfriend Vanessa as pillion he rode from Cairo to Cape Town. By 1998 the world still beckoned and his motorcycle, the Bear, was the proven, perfect tool.
Pat now lives with his wife in a 270 year-old sea captain’s cottage in Dorset. He still cycles, recently for charity from Lands End to John O’ Groats. He is an active supporter of WWF, Greenpeace and the Dorset Wildlife Trust, and is an obsessive windsurfer.
When not exploring some far-flung corner of the Earth he continues to practise as a GP.

BEARBACK
The world overland
Dr Pat Garrod
Copyright © 2010 Pat Garrod
Hardback edition first published 2010, reprinted 2012
Paperback edition first published 2013, reprinted 2017
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
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ISBN: 9781788034289
HB: 9781848765146
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
For Ness
Without you this journey would have been unthinkable, a lesson in loneliness. My pillion, my love, my best friend, you are my world.
‘All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.’
T.E. Lawrence
ITHAKA
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon – don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never finds things like that on your way
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon – you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbours you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind –
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
So you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
CP Cavafy
Translated by Keeley and Stannard, reprinted by kind permission of The Random House Group Ltd
CONTENTS
About the Author
Introduction
Prologue
FAREWELL ENGLAND
1 One-way Ticket
AFRICA
2 Marrakech Kiss
3 Sahara
4 So You Are Explorers
5 Mali Gold
6 An Elf, a Chief and a King
7 Whispers in Timbuktu
8 Tuareg
9 Seventeen Miles a Day
10 Voleur
11 We’re Not Going to Make It!
12 White Men in Africa
13 Snakes
14 Nature’s Drum
15 Ho Ho Ho
SOUTH AMERICA
16 A Continent Awaits
17 El Fin del Mundo
18 Huskies, Glaciers and Condors
19 Ruta Cuarenta
20 German Assistance
21 Salt and Silver
22 The World’s Most Dangerous Road
23 Egypt of the Americas
24 Lonesome George
25 Guerrillas in Our Midst
CENTRAL AND NORTH AMERICA
26 Moon Babies
27 Weed Famine
28 Deliverance
AUSTRALIA
29 Back to Reality
30 Space and Time
31 Kakadu
32 Wild Frontiers
ASIA
33 Raffles, Rubber and Rambo
34 The Killing Fields
35 Mekong Mist
36 City of Bicycles
37 Sinking
38 Humbled
39 Lure of the East
40 Are You a Christian?
41 Persian Pride
42 Iran, Sorry Iran
43 Bosphorus Bound
EUROPE
44 Aurora
45 Full Circle
Epilogue
Appendix 1: Kit List
Appendix 2: Mileages
Acknowledgements
MAPS
West Africa
Southern Africa
South America: the subtropics
South America: the tropics
Central America, Mexico and the U.S.A.
Australia
Southeast Asia
Asia
Europe
African Motorcycle Routes
INTRODUCTION
Why?
That was the question on everyone’s lips before we set off. Friends, family, work colleagues; they all wanted a reason, a rationale.
Why put yourselves in such danger?
Why Africa?
Why the world?
Why so far?
What if you have an accident, get mugged, shot at, break a leg?
The list was endless, and all so focused on the negative. We couldn’t answer them; not then, maybe not even now. I just knew, as I had always known, that I wanted to ride a motorcycle around the entire world.
Writing this book however, has perhaps encouraged me to think a little deeper; back to those early days, back to the planning and preparation, back to the reason, the rationale.
Suggestions were made at the time as to why we might be embarking on such a long journey. Perhaps I needed to know if we had the perseverance and stamina to complete such a circumnavigation? Maybe I set off with my girlfriend to test our relationship, or her me? Were we escaping inner demons? Provocative thoughts. But no. The bare truth of the matter was nothing of the sort.
I would argue that rather than needing a rationale for the journey, surely the onus is on providing a rationale for not making such a journey.
We are born on to this planet and we, one and all, are destined to die on this planet. There are those rare few whose actions or words are remembered throughout time, their names indelible marks on the scroll of human history. As for the rest of us, our existence is transitory, finite and quickly forgotten.
Thankfully, this realisation of my own insignificance in the overall scheme of things dawned on me early in life, perhaps helping to free my spirit. Phrases such as ‘you’re a long time looking at the lid’ and ‘live your dream, don’t dream your life’, though platitudinous, sum it all up for me.
But even so, this rationale thing had me thinking. Why was I so obsessed with riding a motorcycle all the way around the world?
When I was in the sixth form, attending our school prize-giving ceremony, I remember the guest-speaker telling us that with the coming of the jet engine the world had shrunk. I was horrified. His words saddened me immensely. After all, our world, at least in the physical sense, is all that we have. Life anywhere else is, as far as we know, pure science fiction. We are alone.
So, if the journey and consequently this book do have a rationale then it is this.
I wanted to see if the world, our world, was as vast, as interesting and as beautiful as I hoped it might be. To do this we must abandon the sky and travel overland, in such a way as to feel, hear, smell, as well as see what came before us. If it rained I wanted to get wet. If deserts really did exist where temperatures topped 50ºC I wanted to feel my throat beg for water. If there were plagues of locusts then let them hit me in the chest.
Living.
Life.
Out there and free.
A motorcycle, a tent and my best friend, sat right there behind me. There was no better way.
Ness and I qualified as doctors in 1988. It was to be another ten years before we had the means to undertake such a journey, but in that time the dream never faltered.
•
Often now the two of us lie awake at night, staring at the moon through the skylight of our cottage, in our little corner of England. I think of all that we saw, the people we met, the lives we glimpsed, and I realise that it is still all out there, still happening this second and the next, all over the globe, under that very same moon.
The world has not shrunk; it remains colossal . We could ride our entire lives and still only s