Fill Your Tank, Then Fill Your Soul

Some bikers are born on two wheels. Alistair was deep into adulthood when he first got on a bike, though that’s not necessarily the same as being grown up. And his big idea to ride around the world wasn’t necessarily a good idea. Just ask Harry.

It starts well enough. French wine, Italian pizza. Then we meet Albania, and life on the road starts to look less like a script from Enid Blyton and more like the work of Stephen King.

“I handed over my passport all too easily, bowing to the presumed authority of guns and uniforms.”

Facing machine guns and landslides – and drug dealers wielding chainsaws – is challenging enough with a friend by his side. When that friendship fractures and his bike breaks, Alistair soon learns how tough it can be to do it alone. Stuck in the Siberian wilderness, he must find some way to make it through to Hotel Vladivostok.

It’s how Long Way Round might have gone if they’d had no budget and even less patience. Or bike skills. It’s the authenticity of Sam Manicom or Ted Simon, blended with the dynamic style of the legendary Dan Walsh. It’s your chance to find out which country has a national holiday to celebrate the melon, or where you could end up in prison for saying the word “ketchup”.

“Harry’s engine had formed a dirty oil habit, smoking like an industrial revolution and drinking like Whitley Bay on a bank holiday.”

It’s a thrilling true story that shows you don’t have to be a superhero to do heroic things. This isn’t a former SAS commander being the first to ride a spacehopper up Mount Everest or the first octogenarian to sail a bouncy castle blindfolded across the Atlantic, it’s just some ordinary guys who set out to do something extraordinary.

“Picnics in the desert didn’t look much like a life lived in terror.”

The result is an adventure you won’t be able to put down. But be warned: After you read this story you’ll be booking some motorcycle lessons and grabbing a map of the world, determined to kickstart your own once-in-a-lifetime escapade. Just as it was for Alistair, after this journey you’ll never again look at life in quite the same way.

“We eased the pain over a table of cold Russian beers and fake Irish fish at Mad Murphy’s Irish Pub. There’s always an Irish Pub. The fish and chips are never authentic, but the antics of drunken expats make soap operas look like documentaries.”