you're about it check the battery level.
There's the Optimus stove to fill from the tank, a messy business because I can't see the level in the stove, and it's hard to control the flow of fuel anyway. Must find a better way. There are stuffed peppers canned in Hungary to eat with rice. The whole performance, unpacking, checking, Cooking and clearing up keeps me moving and thinking for nearly two hours. I have almost forgotten where I am. With coffee and a cigarette I settle back into the astounding hush of the desert and remember, and then a really fierce flood of joy comes rushing over me.
Just look at me. Look where I am. Isn't this too bloody fantastic for words? It's me here, not Lawrence of Arabia or Rudolf Valentino or Rommel and the Afrika Korps. Me, and this little machine, we made it here.
The sun has run off into the sand somewhere in Tunisia. The stars are making unbelievably big holes in the moonless night. I am in a stupor of delight. If the journey ends tomorrow it will have been worth it, but a premonition sweeps away all doubt and for once I allow myself to know that the journey will not end tomorrow and that there will be many times when I will feel this same overwhelming joy. Tonight we are showing t ‘A’ film.
Life never leaves well alone. I feel the wind change, see the lightning at sea, hear the thunder. In early morning the storm moves inland. It rains very heavily and I'm afraid the water may undermine the bike and drop it on the tent and me, but I did choose slightly higher ground and it should be alright. I decide to sit it out. At last a break in the rain. I pack hastily, the tent full of water and sand, and get back on the road to Tripoli.
All I know of Libya is The Road, a thousand miles of road, good fast highway, stretched along the African coast like a washing line. Libya hangs from the line like a giant's bed sheet , pegged on by Tripoli and Benghazi, blistering in the sun. They say there are some lovely damp spots down below among the folds at Kufra and Sebha, but what I see from the road is outrageous.
Out in the desert I see a tent, the old kind made of hides strung on poles in graceful peaks and troughs where the Sheik of Arabee forced our forebears to swallow sheep's eyes and murmur 'delicious'. Out of the top grows a television aerial. Alongside the tent are two gas bottles, and beside them is parked a new Mercedes limousine. The owner strides out in billowing white cotton, leaps in kicking off his sandals, and presses a leathery foot down hard on the accelerator.
A little way along the road, on the other side are two camels tethered next to an aeroplane.
Every man in Libya, employed or not, single or married, gets a weekly oil dividend from the state. In the towns people are doing up their places. Every other shop sells paint. And every other shop sells audio optical gear from Japan. The Koran is proclaimed throughout the land on triumphal arches set across the roads. Alcohol and women out of wedlock are forbidden. Whisky is twenty-five dollars a bottle and forty-eight hours in gaol for a first offence. Women wrap themselves in a chequered shroud, holding it in their mouths so that sometimes only an eye and a tooth are visible. You must not look at the eye. (Who would want to? The one I saw glittered like glass.)
Tripoli looks as though it were recently bombed. It still has an Italian air about it, I think, from the colonial days. The Italians are back with contracts. In my hotel red-necked Italian pipe layers lounge in the breakfast room reading comics. The hotel is very expensive and I have to go to the bank. There are three cashiers, but the man ahead of me in the line reaches into his plastic shoulder bag and brings out a pile of notes a foot high, mostly in tens and twenties. Now all three cashiers are counting his money. Halfway through a stack someone shouts a greeting, a cashier replies, has a little chat, loses count, and starts again. It takes twenty minutes before
There's the Optimus stove to fill from the tank, a messy business because I can't see the level in the stove, and it's hard to control the flow of fuel anyway. Must find a better way. There are stuffed peppers canned in Hungary to eat with rice. The whole performance, unpacking, checking, Cooking and clearing up keeps me moving and thinking for nearly two hours. I have almost forgotten where I am. With coffee and a cigarette I settle back into the astounding hush of the desert and remember, and then a really fierce flood of joy comes rushing over me.
Just look at me. Look where I am. Isn't this too bloody fantastic for words? It's me here, not Lawrence of Arabia or Rudolf Valentino or Rommel and the Afrika Korps. Me, and this little machine, we made it here.
The sun has run off into the sand somewhere in Tunisia. The stars are making unbelievably big holes in the moonless night. I am in a stupor of delight. If the journey ends tomorrow it will have been worth it, but a premonition sweeps away all doubt and for once I allow myself to know that the journey will not end tomorrow and that there will be many times when I will feel this same overwhelming joy. Tonight we are showing t ‘A’ film.
Life never leaves well alone. I feel the wind change, see the lightning at sea, hear the thunder. In early morning the storm moves inland. It rains very heavily and I'm afraid the water may undermine the bike and drop it on the tent and me, but I did choose slightly higher ground and it should be alright. I decide to sit it out. At last a break in the rain. I pack hastily, the tent full of water and sand, and get back on the road to Tripoli.
All I know of Libya is The Road, a thousand miles of road, good fast highway, stretched along the African coast like a washing line. Libya hangs from the line like a giant's bed sheet , pegged on by Tripoli and Benghazi, blistering in the sun. They say there are some lovely damp spots down below among the folds at Kufra and Sebha, but what I see from the road is outrageous.
Out in the desert I see a tent, the old kind made of hides strung on poles in graceful peaks and troughs where the Sheik of Arabee forced our forebears to swallow sheep's eyes and murmur 'delicious'. Out of the top grows a television aerial. Alongside the tent are two gas bottles, and beside them is parked a new Mercedes limousine. The owner strides out in billowing white cotton, leaps in kicking off his sandals, and presses a leathery foot down hard on the accelerator.
A little way along the road, on the other side are two camels tethered next to an aeroplane.
Every man in Libya, employed or not, single or married, gets a weekly oil dividend from the state. In the towns people are doing up their places. Every other shop sells paint. And every other shop sells audio optical gear from Japan. The Koran is proclaimed throughout the land on triumphal arches set across the roads. Alcohol and women out of wedlock are forbidden. Whisky is twenty-five dollars a bottle and forty-eight hours in gaol for a first offence. Women wrap themselves in a chequered shroud, holding it in their mouths so that sometimes only an eye and a tooth are visible. You must not look at the eye. (Who would want to? The one I saw glittered like glass.)
Tripoli looks as though it were recently bombed. It still has an Italian air about it, I think, from the colonial days. The Italians are back with contracts. In my hotel red-necked Italian pipe layers lounge in the breakfast room reading comics. The hotel is very expensive and I have to go to the bank. There are three cashiers, but the man ahead of me in the line reaches into his plastic shoulder bag and brings out a pile of notes a foot high, mostly in tens and twenties. Now all three cashiers are counting his money. Halfway through a stack someone shouts a greeting, a cashier replies, has a little chat, loses count, and starts again. It takes twenty minutes before
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