The first thing we did was buy the Adventure Motorcycling Handbook

Ewan McGregor – The Long Way Round

 [Sahara Overland] gets right to the heart of desert travel

Sir Michael Palin – Sahara

… we have spoken to dozens of ‘experts’ over the … years … and your straight forward no-nonsense approach is a breath of fresh air.  J & A, London

Since 1982 I’ve undertaken over fifty expeditions or tours through the Sahara from Egypt to the Atlantic by motorcycle, 4×4, M.A.N truck, Mercedes saloon car, bush taxi and with camel caravans.
All this has enabled me to gain an unparalleled knowledge of the practicalities of desert travel across the entire Sahara both as a tourist, a driver, rider, trekker and as a tour leader.

My books, Sahara Overland, Adventure Motorcycling Handbook (‘AMH’), Overlanders’ Handbook and Morocco Overland have frequently been described as ‘bibles’ for adventurous overland travel. Indeed, in 1997 I was the first to coin the term ‘adventure motorcycling’ to describe overland travel by motorcycle and which has since become the name for a best-selling genre of ‘SUV’ motorcycles.

In 1998 I was one of the first British motorcyclists to visit the slowly emerging Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, or ‘Libya’ for short.

In 1988 I led my first Sahara motorcycle tour, a sorry catalogue of petty calamities vividly described in Desert Travels.
In 2000 and 2001 I organised and led the first UK 4×4 and motorcycle tours to return to Algeria as well as Libya.

In 2003 I led the Desert Riders expedition across unvisited parts of southern Algeria to the Tenere Desert’s Lost Tree in Niger. A film about our trip was broadcast on National Geographic Channel. Watch it on youtube.

A few visits to Egypt’s Gilf Kebir followed, then in 2006 I organised an exclusive tour to view the Saharan Eclipse in Niger, and in the same year completed the second known traverse of the Majabat al Koubra or as I translate it, the Saharan ‘Empty Quarter’ from Mauritania to Algeria, on the way traversing half the width of the Sahara, but not without having to abandon my Toyota pickup.

More visits to Algeria and Libya followed, and in 2007 I organised a trek to reach the Amguid crater, a remote site only accessible following over a week’s cross-country travel supported by camels. I continue to run or lead tours and – where possible – plan my own explorations in little-known parts of the Sahara.

Books & Magazines

Since 1985 my travel articles have featured regularly in dozens of 4×4, motorcycle and adventure travel publications in the UK, Australia and the US. They include Wanderlust, Geographical magazine, Overland Journal, Land Rover Owner magazines, the Independent, National Geographic Adventure, and Guardian Online. In 1996 I even modelled in a feature (right) alongside Wilfred Thesiger and Benedict Allen, wearing a £60 T-shirt for an ‘Explorers’ fashion shoot in Esquire magazine.

From the early 1990s I co-authored several editions of the Rough Guide Australia (left; the spin-off East Coast Australia won the 2009 Travel Press Awards Guide of the Year). In the following years, I wrote Desert Travels (right; new cover 2020), several editions of the Adventure Motorcycling Handbook, my acclaimed 700-page ‘desert bible’, Sahara Overland, the equally comprehensive Overlanders’ Handbook and Morocco Overland.

I also contributed to four- and wrote one of the Rough Guide 25s ‘Ultimate Experience’ booklets (right) released to mark Rough Guides’ 25th anniversary. All my contributions were then featured in the best-selling compendium title released later that year: Make the Most of Your Time on Earth (left). My features included cameling, rock art, motorcycling and driving in the Sahara, as well as sea kayaking, rafting, sailing, and several other adventurous activities in Australia.

In 2008 I substantially updated and improved the mapping on the second edition of Trailblazer’s Pennine Way walking guide (left); the first such book to feature downloadable GPS waypoints for Britain’s longest Long Distance Footpath (LDP).
In summer 2009 and again in 2013 I did the same job for Trailblazer’s Coast to Coast title, the best-selling guides for Britain’s most walked LDP.

Between writing my own books I’ve also edited and contributed to Trailblazer’s cycle-touring guides: The Adventure Cycle Touring Handbook (ACTH) and the much under-rated Himalaya by Bike (left).
More books below.

Expedition & Project Consultation

Over the last 35 years I’ve provided advice or guiding services to expeditions, TV production companies, product launch events and adventure tour operators looking to work in the Sahara. They include:

• Explore Worldwide
• Simoon Travel
• The Scientific Exploration Society
• Fact-checking articles for National Geographic magazine
• TV companies including Michael Palin’s production company
• Channel 4 reality show concept
• BBC’s ‘blue-chip’ Planet Earth series, as well as other projects
• The Skycar Expedition
• A successful trans-Sahara Guinness cycling record
• Work with a major long-term EU-funded scientific project in the Sahara
• Consultation for ITN (News)
• Advice on a BF Goodrich product launch
• Safety and survival briefing for FAAM aircrew (right; atmospheric research)
• Ineos Grenadier ‘Hard Way Home‘ Morocco 2023

I’ve also provided informal route advice on such events as the London to Cape Town Rally and a successful London to Cape Town record attempt. On both types of events, the choice of route was critical to the successful outcome.

On the way, I’ve also helped put several hare-brained schemes straight, been approached by authors of romantic fiction and Hollywood scriptwriters to clarify details in their Sahara-based projects, adventuresome honeymooners, and even reassured worried parents about their siblings setting off on a Saharan adventure.

I also advise on expeditions or projects ranging from:
• Explaining what’s possible in the ever-changing Saharan security environment with which I’m very familiar, having attended security briefings and provided feedback at the British Foreign Office.
• Advising individuals or organisations where not to waste their money, effort and time.
• Offering individuals a complete package where vehicles are acquired, prepared and delivered to the desert so busy clients can fly in, have their desert adventure and fly home.
• Providing customised briefings for those undertaking challenging projects in the Sahara.
• Practical desert survival planning and strategies that bear little resemblance to ‘SAS Survival Handbooks’ or survival-themed TV shows.

If you think I can help you with something similar, get in touch. In many cases the feasibility of your project can be established in a couple of emails. Otherwise, my fees include ongoing support following an initial meeting.

Expedition Reports & Presentations

I’ve submitted expedition reports as well regularly chaired or co-presented at the annual Explore seminar at the Royal Geographical Society. 

I also regularly give presentations at London’s Adventure Travel Show where I’ve been interviewed for BBC Radio, have presented talks for the Oxford University Explorers Society and have been invited to do the same at Eton College. I’ve also given presentations at the Overland Expo in Arizona, as well as motorcycle shops and clubs along the US west coast.

Films and TV
With my books established, from 2000 I went through a spell of making dvds to accompany them. The first of these, Algeria 2000 (re-released on dvd in 2006) was featured on Sky TV’s Destination Adventure series, followed by Call of the Wild (Yukon, 2001) and Desert Riders (Sahara, 2003). Both were subsequently broadcast on National Geographic Channel, as well as something called Moto TV in 2008.

Gorge Riders, a motorcycling and canyoneering dvd set northwest Australia was released in July 2005, and in early 2006 I produced an updated version of my instructional Desert Driving 2 dvd (right) to accompany Sahara Overland 2. In 2004 I was invited to appear as one of the judges for a ‘Sand Racer’ episode on the then-popular Channel 4 TV show, Scrapheap Challenge (left).

Photography

I don’t claim to have any special talent or flashy DSLRs, but once in a while I happen to be in the right place at the right time. As well as shooting some covers and colour spreads of my books, a couple of my photos have reached the finals of photo competitions.
The cover of Gorge Riders dvd (left), shot at the Knox Slide in Western Australia’s Hamersley Ranges was a finalist at the Kendal Mountain Film Festival Photo Competition in 2006. And a photo I shot of some grazing deer in the Lake District in 2009 (right) was a finalist in a wildlife photography competition. In 2011 an 8-page report on my Algeria tour made the front cover of 4×4 magazine.

Book Production

Right from the start with Desert Biking I’ve been interested in book layout, possibly picked up while working for London typesetters in the 1980s as a messenger. I taught myself Quark Xpress and later, InDesign, and now deliver all my Trailblazer guides as near-print ready files ready for proof-reading and fine tuning.

With image-heavy books like these, this greatly speeds up the production process, because the author knows best which images or boxes to position where, and how text can be modified to avoid bad breaks. In AMH8 you won’t find a widow or orphan to rub together! With my self-published paperback titles: Desert Travels and The Street Riding Years, I did everything bar editing, proof-reading and help with some graphics to deliver print-ready pdfs to the printers. For others (above left) I’ve done all that and editing, too. The intention was to make books appear as un-self-published as possible.

Not Desert Travels

As Sahara tourism has declined I’ve taken to other forms of adventure travel. In 2008 I cycled from China through the Karakoram and Hindu Kush to Chitral in Pakistan with ACTH author, Steve Lord. And a year later we took a similar 800-km ride across the Himalaya from Leh to Shimla, including a sphincter-loosening ride across the Kibber Span.

I’m also into paddling inflatable boats and run the IK&P website. In recent years my paddling has taken me to Scotland, France, Turkey, New Zealand, Iceland, the US as well as Shark Bay (below) and the Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia. In 2011 a friend and I flew into the remote Kimberley region of northwestern Australia and tracked our way back south along the Fitzroy river, carrying or paddling our packrafts. The series of five short videos we filmed starts here.

In early 2015 I produced and published my ninth book, an urban memoir eventually retitled The Street Riding Years.
It covers the same period as Desert Travels but describes an altogether different world which owes little to my sensible handbooks.
Ride magazine nominated it their ‘Book of the Year’.

In February 2016 the 7th edition of AMH was published after 25 years in print. It was the best one yet, so saturated with experience, hard-won know-how and some Atacama-dry humour that I really don’t know what to say anymore. I also reissued my Desert Riders dvd shot in Algeria and Niger in 2003 just before the whole Sahara tourism house of cards came tumbling down. You can watch that film now online for free.

In 2017 the second edition of my mammoth Overlanders’ Handbook (right) was published and so was the third edition of Morocco Overland (left), now in full-colour and on a good day a bestseller on amazon (in it’s tightly defined category ;-).

In 2018 I put together an ebook on Sahara Camel Trekking. Based on the camel section in the 2005 edition of Sahara Overland, it was updated throughout with more recent material from Algeria, as well as that of several contributors.

Following a visit to Mauritania, a second, fully revised and expanded edition called Sahara Trekking (right) was published in 2018.

In the same year Gestalten in Germany published the second English and a parallel German edition of their high-end overlanding lifestyle monograph called Hit The Road (left). I was invited to contribute the introduction to this edition.

I also completed a long project editing and producing a paperback and kindle edition of In Search of the Tuareg; the Veiled People of the Sahara, by award-winning Dutch journalist and Saharan specialist, Gerbert van der Aa.
Motorcycle Messengers 2 is a compilation of motorcycle travel stories edited by Jeremy Kroeker. I’m told I’m in there too. Below: recent travel articles in RIDE and Bike magazine.

It was in the lost Covid summer of 2020 that the latest, all-colour edition of AMH8 got published. Incredibly, yet again it was the best one yet, saturated with experience, hard-won know-how and some Atacama-dry humour. More about AMH8 here.

In the same year I was interviewed in ABR magazine (right) and I’m told there’s a similar interview in the new Adventure Rider (US) magazine too.

Early in 2021 I published a revised edition of my 1996 desert travelogue: Desert Travels.

During the Lockdowns I wrote a new book about inflatable kayaking for British nautical publisher, Fernhurst Books. As with many of my previous books, it’s the first of its kind in English. More about that book here. A year later in summer 2022, the similar Packrafting; A Beginner’s Guide was published, as well as a PoD paperback edition of Street Riding Years.

A feature on my travels in the Libyan Desert was published in the summer 2022 issue of Overland Journal (above left), another on riding in Morocco in the Winter issue of Adventure Rider magazine (above) and another in Wired magazine about packrafting, with another dur on Morocco in Adventure Rider in the summer of 2024
In April 2024 Glyndwr’s Way, a National Trail in mid-Wales, will be published by Trailblazer Guides (right) while I get stuck into the fourth edition of Morocco Overland (left) due out in December.

You can find me Twitter for overlanding and desert, or Instagram for packboats.

Updated: April 2024        Contact me