Unlimited Horizons

I'm writing this from a hotel room in Macedonia, a vast and rambling edifice tucked away in a fold in the hills, designed partly in the grand manner, and partly put together by string and sticky tape. How its endless corridors and crazy staircases connect with one another, I'm still to find out. It's the sort of place where, with a little imagination, you might hear the swish of evening gowns in the corridors, and catch a fleeting glimpse of the Princess Dragomirov in the restaurant. The hotel is my latest overnight stop on a motorcycle journey which has already taken me through much of South-Eastern Europe (the Balkans), and if all goes to plan, will take me through Turkey, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Siberia, Western Russia, the Ukraine and then some of northern and central Europe on my way back home. The plan, though, changes every day. As do my encounters with places and people. This afternoon, in eastern Macedonia, I met Niko, a young rice farmer. Niko was waiting at a bus stop to collect his father, home from Slovenia where he had been working (over the winter period, I presumed, when there is little labour needed here in the Macedonian rice fields). 'It's a good living, here,' Niko said. I could believe it. It also seemed a good way to live. As the light declined, a solitary figure was casting seed by hand into his flooded field. Tractors rumbled up and down the roads and into nearby villages. People shouted greetings to one another. On such a quiet evening, this corner of Macedonia seems a peaceful place. 'Do you like Macedonia?' Niko asked. 'People are friendly here. And the mountains; they are beautiful.' He pointed across the wide open plain to the line of low peaks and gentle slopes beyond. He was right; they are beautiful, and gentle, too. A bus pulled up at the side of the road and its door puffed open. And older man, strongly built with a face full of experience, stepped down, and Niko introduced me to his father. After a brief exchange, Niko invited me for schnapps, an offer which, with great regret, I declined. I cracked a rib while riding through Italy and have been forbidden to mix the medication with alcohol. And the truth is I have extremely poor brains for alcohol. Riding and drinking do not go together with me very well. I liked these people and would have appreciated a chance to get to know them better. But they have my contact details. I've had many memorable encounters since I began this journey in April. A few weeks ago I met Boro high in the mountains of Montenegro. Boro had just purchased a small piece of land, squeezed between the road and the lower mountain slopes. He was finding his excitement and pleasure hard to contain. Though I was tired and would have been happy to camp on the lower terrace, he insisted on taking me and my camping gear up to the highest one so that I would have the best view. He swept his hand across the scene, a full 180 degrees. 'Panorama' he said. He pointed out his haystack, which had hay stacked around a pole set in the ground, a traditional construction in these parts. He explained that it wasn't really a haystack, but a rumpy pumpy pole. Montenegrans like 'natural' sex apparently or, at least, Boro does. His arms windmilled. It set me wondering whether the horizontal racks that Slovenian farmers build to make their haystacks have had an influence in that country's sexual practices, too. Two days ago in Albania I met Klinton, a twenty-something who is studying at the University of Tirana. Klinton had been summoned by two friends who worked in a cafe in the town of Lac where I had stopped to ask the way. Klinton spoke English and was needed to come and sort out a crazy British motorcyclist bent on getting to Russia, but who had ended up in a cul-de-sac in Albania. He arrived at the cafe in his car where I was drinking tea and refused to leave me until he had guided me out of the town for several kilometers, put me on the right road and made sure I was going in the right direction. He dismissed my thanks, describing his actions as a simple matter of 'respect'. It was in Albania, too, that I met the Dutch family Wesselingh - mother father and three children (and until her recent death, a grandmother too) - not so much a family, more a social project or a way of life. For 20 years the family has devoted itself to helping members of the local community establish some sort of life for themselves as they and the country emerged from a period of intense poverty. They baked loves in their kitchens for the hungry and destitute, rebuilt a maternity unit and restored people's houses after a disastrous flood. They now run an extensive recycling project, as well as a campsite and an organic restaurant to help attract tourism to the area and create employment. They still feed old people with no family to support them. Meeting them was a chance encounter as was my meeting with Aco, way up in the mountain town of Cetinje. I'd knocked on the door of Aco's soba (B&B) looking for somewhere to stay for the night. Aco was an engineer and had been a keen motorcyclist in his youth. His father, too, had been a motorcylist, a professional sports rider. Huge pipes were being installed under the road where Aco lived and the whole area had been dug up. To get my DR650 into his garage, I had to negotiate an open drain and do a little off-roading across a pile of builders' rubble. In Croatia I met Ana who told me about her family who had lived through the siege of Dubrovnik and how it had affected their lives. People are rebuilding their lives, but there is still a lack of trust especially among the older generation. She thought, though, that younger people like herself have a more nuanced understanding of events. And that was good. In Italy, I ran into Alfredo who ran a hostel occupied in the main by young men from Afghanistan and Pakistan looking for a new life. These are encounters and experiences that could only have occurred on this journey. They are all different, but each one, in its own way, has challenged my preconceptions of people and cultures. Everywhere I have travelled so far, I have had my expectations altered, and my journey has only just begun. Friends sometimes say of me, in a kindly way, that I'm not really connected with the 'real' world. But I'm not sure which 'real world' they are talking about. I've dreamed about doing a trip like this since I was in my teens, which is now a fair few decades ago. Even now, it would probably never have happened without the encouragement and example of other overland motorcyclists, many of whom I met through Horizons Unlimited. So, this blog entry is in part a big thank you to all those Horizons riders wherever they now are who made me believe that doing something like this was actually possible, and that I didn't need to be a Commando or street-fighter to survive it. Since going to the Horizons annual meet in the UK, I've discovered a big friendly open family. So, thanks everyone for all the inspiration, the help, advice and information. And if anyone reading this has ever dreamed of riding a motorcycle to distant parts or even to Western Europe, these are the people to speak to. Check them out.

Go to Horizons Unlimited, the website that's all about motorcycle travel. Travellers Community, Bike Travel information on the Bulletin Board, free Monthly Motorcycle Travel E-zine, Travellers' Stories, and plenty of tips and info!

This little guy was standing at a motorway junction trying to sell baby rabbits to passing motorists. He tried to sell me one. He didn't appear to see the problem. I gave him a Euro for letting me take his photo. He accepted it, but reluctantly. He seemed offended.

This is a Ukranian guy on holiday with his wife in Montenegro. He stopped me to ask me for directions, which I was actually able to give him. He asked where I was going. His wife insisted on taking a photo of the 'heroic' motorcyclist. At last, I'm somebody's hero.

This is Klinton. I'd stopped at a cafe in Albania to ask directions. Neither of the youngsters spoke English, so they summoned Klinton by phone to come and sort out the crazy English motorcyclist. He arrived a few minutes later in his car. We chatted at the cafe table for fifteen minutes while I drank my tea. He then drove several kilometers to show me the way to the right road. He wouldn't leave me until he was sure I was on my way and going in the right direction.

This is Aco and his wife who put me up, and encouraged me to do some off roading down some roadworks near his home. His father was a professional motorcyclist in the Montenegran team, which, if I recall, was quite famous in its day.

I'm not sure if you can see the fireflies in this. You may need to expand it. I tried to capture them, but the photo doesn't do justice to how magical they actually were.

This is my first view of Albania taken from a mountainside in Montenegro

It's a blisteringly hot day. You are an elderly Montenegran couple. You take the car out into the country and leave it by the side of the road, put on your walking gear and go for a walk. What must you remember to do? Clearly you must leave all the doors and windows open to make sure the car doesn't overheat. Different world!

If I were ever to win one of those TV quizzes where you get to select a prize, I think I would probably not choose a motorcycling weekend in Prishtine, at least, not if there were any chance of rain. When I crossed over into Kosovo from Albania this morning, the weather was cooler than yesterday, but still warm and fair. It looked like it was going to be a fine day. My plan of travel was straightforward: I would take the motorway directly to the Kosovan capital of Prishtine which is located in the dead centre of the country, find a bank, get some Euros, the official currency of Kosovo, and use some of those Euros to pay for a meal. I'd then head due south to the border crossing over into Macedonia that evening, changing my remaining Euros into Dinar when I got there. It was a simple plan. But not one which had considered the possibility of a major downpour, nor had any realistic concept of what riding a motorcycle in Prishtine might mean. Within minutes of my crossing into Kosovo, the skies darkened, and the rain came down in great grey sheets, so by the time I hit Prishtine's six-lane traffic jams and experienced its inch-of-your-life driving, I was already tired, hungry, soaked and chilled. It was not a good start. A principle or point of honour that seems to be applied by all motorists in South-East Europe is that rules belong to the authorities and are there to be broken by everyone else, and this principle is nowhere more ruthlessly observed than in Prishtine. The number of near escapes I had in this city has left me with enough motorcycling stories to last me the rest of my life (and for a traumatising ninety minutes this afternoon my life seemed likely to be a short one). But it wasn't just the crazy drivers that tested my nerve to breaking point; it was the downpour that made lakes and rivers of what had once been roads, and the great, drenching arcs of spray thrown up by traffic in neighbouring lanes. It was the mud washed down into the streets by the flood waters, and the rubble from the building sites washed down with the mud. It was the hundreds of sunken manhole covers, and the giant potholes laying in wait under the dirty waters. It was the metal cats' eyes, lethal proturusions, which stood a full inch proud of the road at crossings. And above all it was the steep, steep hills where the slippery roads offered no grip whatever, every time I was forced to put my boots to the ground by the creeping traffic. Within minutes of entering the city I had lost track of where I was, and had no idea where I was going. I needed desperately to stop and take stock, but there was little opportunity to park a motorcycle here, even briefly, and especially a fussy motorcycle like Felix that will fall sideways where the camber drops to the right, or will roll forward when parked facing down hill, even if left in gear. When I did manage to find and pull into a bus stop to gather my wits (the bus stop was already packed with parked cars, forcing the buses to stop in the middle of the road) the lining in one soaking-wet glove decided to pull loose, stranding me for an additional half-hour in the pouring rain while I tried to get it back onto my hand. After that, I gave up looking for banks, since none of the banks had parking spaces. And I gave up looking for parking spaces because they were all inaccessible or already crammed full. I even gave up looking for signs to Skopje. I had just one thought in my head - to get out of this town and I didn't care how I did it or what direction I did it in. And despite everything I could do, it still took another half-hour of defensive riding in this stop-go, horn-honking chaos before I extricated myself from the city centre, the traffic started to thin and my adrenalin levels began to fall. I pulled in to the forecourt of the first out-of-town service station, and headed for the cafe/restaurant. I've rarely felt more relived to squelch into a seat and order a cup of tea. That was enough. Just to be out of that mayhem was enough. It meant, at least life (mine) would continue for one more day. As the stress and numbness drained from me, it became clear, though, that I also needed to eat, and soon. But that meant, I needed Euros. I had Croatian Kuna sitting uselessly in my wallet, and I had Albanian Leks, but I had no Euros. I fished around in my pockets for evidence of loose change and, as luck would have it, found six one-Euro coins. That, too, was enough. In Kosovo, six Euros will buy you a lot. It will certainly buy you a meal. (I still feel as though I'm cheating people, paying them so little for things.) Before ordering, though, I had to go through my life-saving ritual of showing the waiter a Google translation of 'I am allergic to milk, butter, cheese, cream, yoghurt, nuts and seeds' on my smartphone. This usually works well, but on this occasion the waiter was puzzled. He called over a colleague, and then another. Within the minute, I had a committee of four debating my message. Eventually, one of them pointed to the smart phone and said: 'Serbo-Croat!' I nodded. 'You have Albanian?' he said. How stupid and disrespectful to visit a country and not know what language people spoke. When the job was done and I was satisfied no-one was going to poison me, I ordered a huge plate hot chicken salad, and an even bigger plate of spiced rice, and then washed it all down with two cups of tea. The bill came to four Euros (about £2.80) As the laws of chance would have it, when I'd made my emergency exit of Prishtine, I'd come out on the wrong side of the city. Access to my route meant I'd have to brave the centre once again. But I'd now re-energised myself and restored my wits, the rain had stopped, the roads had cleared and I had a feasible plan. I'd eaten, so I could forget about getting Euros, at least, for now. I could forget about everything apart from finding my road. Riding back across the city wasn't a fun experience, and I had my closest call of all during that ride on a crazy roundabout right in the centre, but my nerves survived intact. The A2, when I did find it, was a scruffy little road, looking like a line of crazy paving with unfinished borders and an occasional trench scooped out of it. But it ran directly from Prishtine down to Skopje in Macedonia, and that's where I needed to go. On leaving the city, it headed out across a wide plain towards a distant line of fearsome-looking mountains, their sharp peaks still zebra striped with snow. Before it could reach those mountains, though, it was forced to run the gauntlet of an uninterrupted 40-kilometer ribbon development of new and half-built stores, hotels, restaurants and commercial enterprises of all kinds. Here was the soulless and probably unsustainable outcome of Kosovo's new, unregulated capitalist economy, a human and ecological catastrophe. For me, the absurdity and ugliness of it all was symbolised by the petrol stations. Three or four massive stations with huge canopies, sometimes standing side by side, were touting for your business on every single kilometer of that desperate little road - hundreds of them, all in competition with one another. There was no relief from this commercial overdrive anywhere along the road's entire 40 km length. The only indication, in fact, that you were in a town with a recognised identity and name, was that the density of new-build alongside the road increased slightly. For the first time since passing through parts of Northern Italy, I began to feel weary and depressed. So, it was with some relief when I eventually reached the mountains, and the road turned east to ascend a pass. Here the scenery changed from commercial post-modern chaos to forested hillsides and steep river gorges. This was a very beautiful part of the country. I stopped off in a small town close to the Macedonian border because I'd seen an ATM, and didn't realise until I got off the bike how tired I feltI. Asking at a local supermarket if there were any rooms to be had in town, I was directed to a local hotel. I'm now sitting on the carpet of a room in that hotel which I've taken for the night. The floor space of the room is somewhat larger than the floor space of my entire house back home in Hertfordshire. To occupy it fior one night has cost me £14. There don't seem to be any other guests. Down on the first floor there is a huge and very empty dining room. The only other person in the building as far as I can tell, is a young man who sits in a corner of the king-sized bar in a padded jacket watching football on television. If I need anything, I'm told, he is the person I must ask. He speaks no English and gets easily flustered. The entrance hall, the dining room, my room and the corridors that lead to it are all painted brilliant white. The bedspread, too, is white, as is the tiling in the bathroom. I feel like I'm living a scene from 'The Shining'.

I’m blogging this Sunday evening from the home of Aco and Nevenka. Aco is in his early 70s perhaps: it's hard to tell. He's wiry, strong as an ox, and has an easy laugh. He was an engineer (though ‘was’ is probably a little premature: the contents of his garage - tools and machinery - would make any practical man weep). Nevenka restores furniture and paints, and is as lively and as much fun as her old man. Aco speaks little English, but makes up for it with an engineer's ingenuity. We communicate fine. Aco runs his house as a Soba, which here in Montenegro is equivalent to a B&B except that for £11 a night I get a very comfortable bedroom, an en suite shower, and small separate kitchen with all facilities including as much Chai as an Englishman can drink. I also get entertained by this amazing pair. It was very easy decision to install myself in this comfortable little flat for the night; getting Felix, my 2014 DR650, into Aco's garage proved a little more complicated. Aco’s house is just off the main drag in Cetinje, and his street is currently being dug up. The first problem, then, was that the footpath, the only remaining access to his garage was now an obstacle course of rubble mounds. The second problem was that running alongside the main road and therefore across the entrance to the footpath was a large open drain. When I pointed out the drain to him, Aco's response was ‘No problem'. ‘No way’, I thought. I learned later that Aco had been a enthusiastic motorcylist, and his father had been a professional sports rider for the Montenegran team. I, on the other hand am not a confident off-road rider. And although I've ridden on a fair bit of gravel, I've never got used to it. While I was debating how I was going to talk my way out of this, Aco picked up a portable Stop sign in front of the road works, and started examining it. You know the sign: it’s the universal, red, eight-sided sign that tells you to stop and think before you act. It was a second before I realised what he was intending. Carefully, he laid it across the drain in front of the footpath, jumped up and down on it a couple of times and repeated: ‘no problem’. I was still debating with myself whether this was a good idea as I crossed over the road to Felix. Could I trust Aco's judgement on this and more to the point, could I could trust my own nerve? How available was my inner teenager? Very available, as it turned out. I knew that even if the DR's rider sometimes let it down, it would have no problem with this. I fired him up, disengaged my brain, and headed for the drain. No problem. Job done, the sign was returned, now somewhat kinked, to its former use. With sufficient adrenalin in my system, the rubble mounds proved very little problem and I arrived at the garage upright and in one piece. Aco mumbled something in his broken English which took me a moment to decipher. I then realised: ‘Paris-Dakar’. I arrived in Montenegro last night, stayed at a campsite and then headed for the Bay of Kotor. The air in the bay is damp and the land is green. The entire bay is surrounded by high mountains, which plunge down into permanently calm waters, leaving just enough room for the road to skirt the bay. Here and there, where a river has gouged out a little valley for itself in the mountainside, small towns have sprung up. Some, in ancient times were Greek colonies, and the Romans were here too. All the towns I passed looked a little run down, and dismal. Many tourists come here in the summer, but there has been no commercialisation. The one modern-looking hotel complex, when looked at closely, appeared dirty and neglected. This is a poor country with little capital to build infrastructure. Arriving in the town of Kotor, then, gave me something of a surprise. Kotor is a prosperous port with deep harbour, pavement café’s and a booming tourist trade. It has ancient walls that surround the old city at sea level and climb high up the mountain beyond, presumably to prevent an attack from above. I’m already way behind the schedule I set for myself, but I couldn’t help stopping here and having a meal in a pavement café overlooking the bay. Eating at pavement café’s in a hot sun is a temptation I can rarely resist. Beyond Kotor the road charges uphill for fourteen kilometres to one of the highest passes I’ve crossed so far. I was told in advance that it had a total of 27 hairpin bends. It wasn’t told however, that these are only the hairpin bends on the final ascent. None of the other hairpin bends and near hairpin bends in the lower part of the road were mentioned. (And by 'the lower part', I mean the part I managed to ride before my ears popped). The right-handers were nerve racking. I wasn’t concerned so much about getting round, - that was easy enough - it was getting round when there was a car coming the other way. Here as elsewhere in South-East Europe, drivers don’t always stick to their own side of the road. And I sometimes rode wide, too. At the top of the pass I stopped at a restaurant with terraces giving spectacular views of the valleys, the lower mountains, and the entire bay. After the ascent, I decided it was necessary to have another meal. And while eating, I got into a conversation with a group of Italian bikers who were travelling around visiting war memorials in the region. Beyond the pass, the road dips down again into the village of Njegusi which sits in a hollow in the top of the mountain. It’s an idyllic-looking place at this time of the year, but hell in the winter, I imagine. The houses all have very thick walls. After Njegusi, the road continues to twist and turn for another 10 kilometres down into Cetinje. The landscape on this side of the mountain is entirely different. Peaks extend beyond peaks into the distance. The rocks and small trees make this road exquisitely beautiful. There is nothing I know in the Alps that can even begin to compare with it. Cetinje is a big town, located high up in the hills. It once the royal capital of a mountain kingdom. Set away from the lowland areas, no one speaks English here. I picked up a few groceries as I passed through, and carried on, intending to camp wild in the valley beyond. A couple of miles along the main highway to Podgoricia, the capital, I turned down the steep hillsides on a windy, single-track roadsides that drove ever deeper into the mountain forests. After 8 kilometres, though, it became very clear that I would find nowhere to camp here tonight. The road clung to the hillside and nowhere was there any flat land. The only village I saw was a tiny community cut into the slope. I turned back to Cetinje hoping to get back before dark – which is how I met Ato and his daughter, two of the most genial and funny people I have met on the whole trip – and that is saying a great deal.