Hot air blows in your face keeping the sweat off your brow as the smooth tarmac road ploughs on in a straight line across the flat dry plane. Crisp tan bush stretches out for miles to your left and right. In the hazy distance ahead the Drakensburg mountains rise invitingly, bathed in mid-morning sun. The road starts to dip and the air cools as you approach a deep green slow-moving river. You can smell the moist riverside vegetation as the front wheel bumps up the slight step onto the bridge. You become aware of the roar of the exhaust pipe as it echoes in pulses off the sturdy iron girders, that look like they have been there for decades. You slow down to a jogging pace to let your eyes follow the path of the river. No waterfalls this time, the land is too flat, but bright red flowering shrubs light up one bank a hundred metres downstream. As you approach the base of the mountain, the road starts to rise and you give the engine a bit more fuel to maintain the easy 100 kmh you have been cruising at for the last two hours. The road starts to wind up the dusty, rocky mountain side. You lower your speed to 80 so as to not strain the engine. The turns are almost 180 degrees now and above, you can see a line of cars snaking behind an old lorry which is spewing out black diesel smoke. You allow yourself the pleasure and pull back on the throttle, passing the cars at 100 in a couple of seconds. The mountain air is refreshingly cool now as you finish the last few turns. As you approach the brow, you stand up on the foot pegs, to get an advanced glimpse of what the mountain is hiding. Then you pull into the side of the road, put the bike on its side stand, take off your helmet and gaze at the wooded valley far below.

It sounds like a passage from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, but it is all true and is just some of the many different sensations you experience every day, when touring Africa on a motorbike. It is understandably not everyone's dream, and the going is hard at times, but touring Africa by motorbike does offer an insight into countryside, countries and cultures which the enclosed space of a car or lorry doesn't give. Yet you are able to cover distances not possible on foot or by bicycle, on appalling 'roads' if need be.

We had thought about our trip back to Europe from Cameroon for over a year before leaving. Plans were complicated by the unstable political situations in the neighbouring countries. It seemed that every time we bought a visa for a country, either war broke out or the borders were closed. We wanted to travel south to Cape Town, down the west coast of Africa, and the return to Europe via the east coast. After an aborted attempt to enter Gabon (the border officials wouldn't let us in despite the fact that our visas had been issued just a week before), we decided to try Congo, avoiding the trouble-stricken capital, Brazzaville.

The bikes we chose were two Yamaha XT600 Tenérés because of their simple, robust, single cylinder engines, 30 litre fuel tanks and relatively low weight. It is also possible to find spares for them in the remoter areas of Africa, having been widely used in this rough terrain. Neither of the bikes was less than ten years old.

We designed and built front and rear luggage racks and had panniers made from beaten sheet metal. We were later to remove the panniers to cut down on weight. The bikes were loaded up and then unloaded again when they wouldn't stand up on their own. We kept the tools and spares but dumped half the clothes, the cooking equipment and the tent, deciding large plastic bivi bags would be enough.

Both of us took crash courses in basic mechanics, from a good friend in Cameroon and felt that we had some idea of how an engine worked. It gave us confidence which we were later to need while somewhere between the last border post in Cameroon and the first in Congo.

I imagine the 'road' would have made hippopotamuses feel at home. What we had estimated would take two days had so far taken four and we weren't even half way there. We stood in a semi-circle, arms folded across our chests, eyes fixed on an engine plastered in caramel coloured mud. Water dripped off broad leaves from the overhanging jungle. Bees buzzed around the bright colours of our jackets and boots. Perspiration rolled down from my eyebrow into the corner of my eye and the salt stung. The last village we had passed which might have a mechanic was 50 kms away, back in Cameroon. The last vehicle we had seen was in that village. Ahead lay Congo, the nearest sizable village 100 kms away. We had always planned to tow if we had an irreparable breakdown. Clearly that was not a practical option on this road. My mind switched back to the jammed engine. What stops an engine from turning? I picked up the workshop manual and flicked hopefully through a few grubby pages. The only option available was to open up the side covers of the engine and see if we could see anything. We started to clean off the right hand side of the engine which, as far as we could remember, had the most moving parts. Peering inside after lifting of the cover, everything looked in order, although nothing turned A line of pygmies wondered up, some of them balancing bundles of firewood on their heads, others carrying live chickens in woven grass baskets on their backs. They greeted us with both their hands and stood and stared at the broken engine, nodding in recognition of a problem. Downhearted, we replaced the cover and started on the left. One of the pygmies returned holding two ballbearings the size of golf balls in her hand and indicating that she had found them more or less Joel had fallen and the engine had jammed. We pondered for a while as to how they could have got out of the engine without us noticing and then realised that they were far to big to have come from our 600cc motors. We removed the left hand cover and gazed dejectedly at what seemed to be perfect, oily, shiny working parts. Then we noticed a piece of metal the thicknes of two matchsticks and about a quarter of the length, jammed between a big round thing and the engine casing. Joel pulled it out and the engine turned on its own. Wide grins spread across both our faces.

by Geoff Hardwick