A smashing, cliche-free global adventure as Ted Simon, the Magellan
of the Motorcycle, circles the world on a four-year, two-wheeled
solo jaunt, determined to see it all despite fear at every turn. To
wheel through so many nations over strange and often torn roads, to
negotiate roadless deserts, was indeed cause for fear. But he did
it; and clocked 63,000 miles, returning a changed man and prey, at
last, to a new fear - rootlessness, a sense of coming apart.
Subsidized by the London Sunday Times and with one book already
published (The Chequered Year, about Grand Prix racing), Simon gets
a completely unmodified motorcycle from Britain's Triumph factory
in late 1973 and leaves England for France. His first leg takes him
to Italy, Sicily, and Tunis. Arabic is sheer gibberish to him as he
crosses Libya and worries that he won't be allowed into Egypt. But
he is and follows the Nile to Wadi Halfa and the Sudan where he
finds himself crossing hundreds of miles of hard desert in the
midday heat, and running out of gas in the trackless wastes. No
road! But he meets many friendly Sudanese, who ask him to address
their students. Then it's on to unfriendly Ethiopia where poverty
has hardened every face. And down through the jungles of Kenya, the
elephant-filled plains of Tanzania to Johannesburg and Cape Town
and the very tip of Africa - and rapturous, lightning-filled
euphoria. By boat to northern Brazil, down through Rio to Uruguay,
over to Chile and up the east coast to Mexico and Southern
California. . . by boat to Australia, all over India (meeting Sai
Baba) where he rises above fear of death. . . through the Mideast
and back to France. . . then to the Triumph factory - in triumph.
Jails, graft, border guards, breakdowns, good people - and a love
affair. A vicarious whirlwind for armchair sloths. (Kirkus Reviews)
Like Marco Polo or Clare Francis, Ted Simon made a journey that millions dream of. He rode 63,000 miles, four years and fifty-four countries round the world. Spinning through the Sudanese desert, into prison in Brazil, into a Californian commune; through war, revolutions, disasters; into depths of fear, heights of euphoria and a fleeting love affair ... Riding the tightrope across vast continents, meeting their peoples, he is seen as a spy, as a glamorous, astonishing stranger and as a deity. And for Ted Simon, Magellan on a motorbike, it became a journey to the centre of his soul.
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