Lone Rider

The south road was notorious at the best of times, 300 miles of dirt and corrugations and the only highway running from the north to the south of Australia.

After the bustle of India, Pakistan, Iran and Turkey, my still and silent home city felt entirely alien.

My brakes were still not working properly and we’d have to cross several passes where the snow would be several feet deep and the temperatures even more brutal than where we were now standing.

Like many border towns in third-world countries, the place was a dump, but Taftan even pushed the deprivations of shitty border towns to a new low.

After riding for days through dust, we were filthy. My light cotton trousers that I’d bought in Sydney were stiff with dirt and flecked with my attempts to repair rips with patches I’d cut from my towel. Robert wore a pair of dungarees that hadn’t been properly washed for months.

more gung-ho than me

‘Oooh, selfie start . . . selfie start,’

Adherence to tight itineraries was a Western way of thinking that I’d already discovered didn’t work in Southeast Asia, where it was foolish to rely on ever being anywhere at any particular time.

Singapore was everything that Indonesia wasn’t – spotlessly clean, highly efficient, totally soulless.

I’d been to other dirty, hot, ramshackle third-world cities, but compared even to Cairo, Jakarta was a cesspit.