There wasn’t much up there anyway. Just snow, wind, blue sky, a gigantic, incongruous border gate (with one miserable border guard, who followed us back into Pakistan on his motorbike once he’d established we weren’t going to sneak into China) and a large plaque eulogizing (in English and at some length) the bravery and resilience of the Pakistani soldiers who’d braved “the bone chilling winds, lack of oxygen and sudden drop of temperatures” to build the Karakorum Highway.

We are proud of you. Your sons and grandsons will remember you. You have done the most wonderful job in the history of the army.

What the plaque doesn’t mention is that almost 1,000 workers died building the Highway – over 800 of them Pakistani. That’s roughly one Pakistani death for every mile of the road. They were killed by landslides and industrial accidents – and, judging from the condition of the remaining road-building camps I passed on my way north, a few of them were probably also despatched by disease, and the -30°C temperatures of which the Khunjerab plaque boasts.

When these deaths are mentioned, the tone is more of respect than of regret. Sometimes there’s even a hint of boastfulness. It would be easy enough to recast and mourn these men as victims of slave labour and, to reimagine the KKH as a lesser Road Of Bones. But instead we’re more inclined to think of it as a symbol of Pakistan’s ever-tightening commercial and political alignment with China, or simply a testament to the ingenuity, tenacity and sacrifice of human beings, and their desire both to overcome and to celebrate the landscape they live in. Perhaps it is a bit of both, or all three. I, for one, have been inspired and fascinated by this road ever since I first heard of it, and this admiration has never been entirely effaced by the knowledge that so many human lives were sacrificed in building it.

But in loving the KKH despite its bloodiness, I am admitting not only that there are other aspects to the road than the human lives it’s swallowed, but broaching the uneasy suggestion that perhaps this monument of human endeavour might actually be worth all the deaths it caused – that sometimes we focus on what has been achieved rather than what has been lost. I can’t decide whether to consider this appalling or inevitable. For now I’m settling on ‘uncomfortable’.

This has been running through my mind over the last few weeks, as I repeatedly cycle past the junction of Victoria Street and Palace Street, where cyclist Dr Katharine Giles was killed by a left-turning construction lorry on the 8th of April. Since I left in 2011 the area north of Victoria Street has become a massive building site, and what used to be a generous few metres of pavement on this corner has been temporarily reduced to just a couple of feet, hemmed in by scaffolding and site barriers, with pedestrians obliged to shuffle through in polite single file, barely able to pass each other. Wilting bouquets with faded dedications from Giles’ family, friends and colleagues are tied to the scaffolding and stuck into the traffic cones, against the backdrop of a hoarding informing us that ‘our’ new Waitrose is on its way. It’s a rather horrible juxtaposition, when you think about it too hard.

Victoria is undergoing “an unprecedented and long overdue transformation“, according to a 2011 Evening Standard article probably copied from Land Securities’ press release. The corner where Giles died will eventually (by 2015) be overlooked by the Zig Zag Building, which will feature “one hundred luxury apartments, studios and penthouses” along with “amenities and retail offerings [including the long-awaited Waitrose] on the ground and first floors”.

A mile away, on the Southbank, skaters are up in arms over plans to take over the undercroft skate park hailed as the birthplace of British skateboarding, and turn it into retail units. The Southbank Centre’s director of partnership and policy describes the site as “pivotal both physically and financially” and “the most valuable financial part of the site”. A passionate campaign has been launched to save the skatepark, but despite a pacifying consultation and an online petition with over 30,000 signatures to date, one senses that the developers will end up going ahead as they had planned all along. The site will be closed for construction for two and a half years from autumn 2014, during which time there will be no skateboarding at all, and, I’m willing to bet, at least one cyclist will die under the wheels of a construction lorry.

In Dhaka, bodies are still being found in the wreckage of the Rana Plaza factory that killed over 1,000 people when it collapsed last month. The workers had been producing garments for Western retailers like Primark, Matalan and Mango. Some of these might one day have been sold in the Zig Zag Building, had one edifice not ended before the other began.

In Pakistan, men are probably still dying on the permanent construction site that is the Karakorum Highway, and more will die as local workers are recruited to build the expected pipeline down to Gwadar port in Balochistan, which Pakistan has recently sold to China, giving the Chinese strategic access to the Persian Gulf.

Yesterday my brother was passing through London on his way home to Leeds. I escorted him from the underground to Victoria Coach Station and we wheeled my bicycle and his suitcase around the block, looking for a cheap cafe to sit in while we waited for his coach.

“I’m not sure if we’ll find anywhere”, I warned him, as we passed yet another bijou restaurant, cutlery and glassware lined up on thick white tablecloths, waiting for the early evening influx of hedge fund managers, and those clients that nearby Google deems worthy of better fare than its famous free cafeteria has to offer. “As you’ll have spotted, it’s a bit posh round here.”

As I said that we noticed two figures curled up in grimy sleeping bags in a narrow doorway, their feet sticking out onto the pavement. They seemed to be fast asleep, or intent on getting there, even though it was only mid afternoon. Could they be drunk, or on drugs, I wondered? Or perhaps it’s still too cold to sleep rough at night, so they have to make up for it during the day. How different their world must be from that of the hedge fund managers, the construction workers up the road, my brother, heading back up north to his houseshare and his job in marketing. And yet how close they all were. Once again it seemed obscene that such an appalling discrepancy could exist in just a few square metres of London.

But I can’t condemn this wholly, not without seeming a hypocrite. After all, at other times I’ve waxed lyrical about the diversity of London, its contrasts and all of its overlapping people and presences. I love the way the city grows and changes, and I’m deeply complicit in its machinations. And it stands to reason that a place this diverse will have its horrors alongside its joys. More cyclists will die this year – of this we can be sure – and some of them will be killed by the trucks that are ferrying rubble and concrete to and from the sites of tomorrow’s buildings. Colette O’Shea, who’s overseeing the Zig Zag project for Land Securities, claims that, once the building work is done, “Victoria will be a place where people actually want to walk”, and that pedestrians will feel safer. Maybe in the end this is all for the best, and a few lives and livelihoods lost along the way are necessary sacrifices. But I don’t want to think that. And I don’t want to be part of a world where individual people’s lives are disregarded in the pursuit of profit, of progress, and of some unspecified future good.

It’s not only the injustice of it that bothers me. It’s our helplessness.

Creative, the courier company I currently work for, does a lot of work in Soho, and in between jobs the couriers habitually congregate on the corner of Broadwick Street and Poland Street, next to the pump to which the 1854 outbreak of cholera was traced by Dr John Snow, after whom the nearby pub is named. Once or twice a day a walking tour group will stop at the pump, and they’ll look curiously at us as their guide tells them the story of Dr Snow, and we’ll look indifferently back at them. It’s our corner – Creative Corner, or just ‘The Corner’ as it’s known in the business. For years couriers have sat there, eating, smoking (or trying not to), snoozing, gossiping, flirting, ranting, checking out passing talent, judging passing hipsters, complaining about the lack of work, reminiscing about the Good Old Days, or just gazing into the distance. Like any subculture, or any family, we have our own mythology, with all its larger-than-life characters, all its in-jokes, all its endlessly repeated anecdotes.

A current denizen of The Corner is soon-to-be-Dr Jon Day, who wrote this piece a few years ago, pointing out just how much of what appears to be public space is in fact privately owned, meaning that undesirables (like, for example, couriers, skateboarders, rough sleepers, hazardously parked bicycles) can be moved on at a whim. I don’t know who owns Creative Corner, or the building that abuts it. They seem not to mind having a few sweaty couriers sitting around, but there’s no saying that that won’t change at some point. For all we know, next week a policeman or security guard will come around and, politely or otherwise, inform us that our presence is no longer welcome, and please can we find somewhere else to sit. And that would be it. End of an era. Just like when they closed The Foundry.

We’re disposable, it seems. Just like the workers at the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh (nothing will change, really – there will still be factories, and Primark will continue to sell cheap knickers). Just like the scruffy, emaciated Pakistani road workers I cycled past on my way up the KKH, who didn’t have any other jobs to choose from, and the scruffy, emaciated vagrants sleeping in doorways in London’s wealthiest postcodes. Just like the cyclists crushed under the wheels of the construction industry, and the skaters displaced because someone decided their skatepark was ‘financially pivotal’.

My brother and I managed to find one of the few remaining cheap cafes in Victoria, and spent an hour or so ranting about some of the above, catching up on family gossip and speculating optimistically about our future careers; his in film-making, mine in writing. And then I waved him off from the coach station, marvelling, as I always do, at how grubby and down-at-heel it is, with its stray pigeons, plastic seating, kiosks selling cheap samosas and signs warning that ‘pickpockets operate in this area’ – a little haven of non-affluence amongst the mansions of SW1; of people who can’t afford to fly or travel by train, who are carrying packed lunches and won’t be stopping at Starbucks. Fewer business suits; more tracksuits. How has it survived this long? Sure enough, further research reveals that this area too is soon up for regeneration – it will be transformed into an “active city quarter” (whatever that means), and the coach station will be removed “to a more appropriate location”.

Where will it go? Where will we go? And where will we ever be welcome?

I can’t really explain why couriering makes me so happy, any more than I could tell you why I want to cycle round the world (my current response to this question is ‘I don’t know either – I’m doing it in order to find out!’). It’s actually a terrible job in most ways. On Friday afternoon, within the space of a few minutes in Soho, I spoke to three different couriers about how little money they’re making, how far behind they are on their rent, how much they owe all their friends, how they can’t afford to fix their bikes, and how exploited they feel by the industry and the system. Then we all set off towards Mayfair and Knightsbridge, to deliver bags of designer shoes, cosmetics and jewellery, each cargo probably worth more than we’d earn that day, passing people in business suits downing £3 cups of coffee like it’s nothing. One of the couriers I spoke to commented on how hard it is to keep yourself to a weekly budget of £10, or whatever it is, when you spend 50 hours a week in central London, surrounded by shops and cafes and food stalls and special offers, and constantly struggling with hunger, boredom and the need for caffeine.

I used to marvel somewhat idly at all the differences and discrepancies I witnessed as I rode through the city. Now they make me angry.

I’ve also lost some of the tolerance I’d built up for the bad habits of drivers and pedestrians. Most of the time, when someone’s deliberately cut you up with an inch to spare, or stepped out into your path without even bothering to look, then shouted at you for riding too fast, the only thing to do is to let go of it, and plough your annoyance back into your cycling – otherwise you’d spend the entire day seething with road rage.  But, after the occasionally reckless but generally courteous drivers of most of Asia, I’m now continually aghast by the frequency with which Londoners jump lights, left-turn or U-turn without indicating, speed, ignore one-way systems, and willfully bully and intimidate vulnerable cyclists and pedestrians. But continual aghastment is not a comfortably tenable state, so I’ll build up my tolerance again – much as you’ll build up the rough skin on your palms or heels, with perhaps a few blisters and open sores along the way.

Another unsettling thing about this job is my sudden ubiquity. When you’re out in the streets all day you meet a great number of people. On my first day on the road I ran into three different (non-cycling) friends, who just happened to be going about their daily business as I rode past. I’d braced myself to be patronized by the more recent additions to the courier circuit, who’d assume I was the new one, but instead several of them have pulled up next to me at the traffic lights, asked whether I’m (that) Emily Chappell and admitted to reading one or other of my blogs. Stuff like this is surreal, but also rather wonderful.

What’s less wonderful is all the people I’d rather didn’t see me. An Addison Lee driver chatted me up on Vigo Street on Thursday, and said he’d spotted me in three separate locations just that day. It reminded me of the cabbie who verbally attacked me on Charlotte Street back in 2011, and then happened to walk past me on Montagu Place the very next day, and took the opportunity to continue the attack. It wasn’t so much his aggression that disturbed me, as the fact that he’d run into me by chance less than 24 hours later. The following day a different driver threatened me with a weapon in Cavendish Square, and rather than shaking it off, as I normally would, I rode as fast as I could to the nearest police station, and spent the next half hour sobbing uncontrollably while a very kind policewoman handed me tissues, and sympathized expertly with the challenges of toughing it out in a man’s world. I never saw that van driver again, but for my remaining months on the road I was haunted by the possibility – in fact, the likelihood – that I might run into him, that he might recognize me, or even hunt me down. I finally spotted him last Friday. He’s still on the road, still in the same van, and had only (apparently) managed to get as far as New Oxford Street in two years. The traffic was terrible, and I slipped past him easily and invisibly, and was probably in Hoxton before he’d even crossed Holborn.

I’m not afraid any more. It would be excessively paranoid to assume people are out to get me, and the several years I’ve already spent on the road have shown me that I am generally most at risk from my own stupidity. (Did I tell you about the time I fell off on my last day in Tokyo, and broke my nose? Hilarious.) I doubt very much that driver remembers me, and even if he does, what’s he going to do?

Rather than fear, this is a more nebulous sense of unease – of being constantly, helplessly visible; noticed, noted, remembered, observed, watched. When I was cycling through Iran I was obliged (by the freezing cold weather as well as the laws of the land) to keep everything covered except my hands and my face. Most of the male travellers I encountered objected frequently and vocally to this dress code, either because of the appalling oppression it was supposed to represent or because they felt entitled to see more of women and their bodies than was currently on display. I, on the other hand, found it unexpectedly restful to have so much of myself covered, not necessarily through any sense of prudishness or modesty, but because, despite the male curiosity that followed me wherever I went, I felt safe, hidden, and private. Their curiosity (along with their other, more corporeal impulses) remained mostly unsatisfied. My body – the contours of my skin; the colour of my hair – remained exclusively my own, and couldn’t be co-opted into someone else’s fantasy or narrative. (Or, even if it still was, they had very little to go on, so would be largely making it up.) I enjoyed being inscrutable; being none of their business.

One afternoon last week, at the junction of Goswell and Clerkenwell, I spotted a young man taking a photo of me. When I told him he should have asked my permission, he just looked at me blankly, and then the lights changed and we both rode off. Goodness knows what he’ll use the photo for. Probably nothing, but still. If someone sees me in the street and wants to take my image into his camera or his imagination, and then use it for whatever creative, scurrilous or prurient purpose he sees fit, there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.

My visibility cuts both ways though. I remember a gaggle of teenage girls staring at me as they crossed the road in front of me, initially feeling intimidated (because I have found teenage girls intimidating ever since I was one), and then realizing that, rather than sneering at the loser on the bike, some of them might well have been thinking ‘wow – I wish I could be like that!’, just as I did when I saw my first cycle courier. Now that’s a narrative I wouldn’t  mind being co-opted into. A nice young man introduced himself at some traffic lights recently and told me that my blog was the reason he became a cycle courier. This was flattering, but also vindicating. By doing what I truly love, and by rambling self-indulgently about it for several years, I’ve influenced the course of someone else’s life (hopefully for the better, though as I mentioned above, it is mostly a terrible job and he should definitely keep his options open). I don’t want to become a hero (how boring), but I wouldn’t mind becoming part of a conversation about how the world works and how it might be changed.

But I’ll never completely get over my squeamishness about displaying myself and my lifestyle, both in the streets and on the internet. Which is why I’m so grateful for the other side of the job – along with the constant exposure comes the permanent escape route it offers. If I need to, I can ride away so fast that only other cycle couriers could catch me, and I have corners of London to hide in that I’ve never told anyone about; where you’d never think to look for me. And in a few months’ time I’ll once again be on the road (and I use the definite article deliberately here, because no matter which road I happen to be on, it feels like the same place – that is to say, home), with the sky above me and the horizon all around, and no one will know where I am, not even myself, and all will be right with the world.

I’d worried that my return to the courier circuit would be a let-down in some way, that it could never possibly live up to the rose-tinted picture I’d painted of it. Over the past year I’ve realized repeatedly that what become happy memories are often extremely uncomfortable experiences at the time. I look back fondly on the Turkish winter now, and it’s only on particularly chilly mornings, when my fingers and toes and nose start to sting, that I occasionally get a glimpse of just how painful it actually was. I even speak nostalgically of that time I had to cover over 1,600km of China in 11 days to beat a visa deadline, and then in the same breath state that it was the hardest thing I’d ever done. What if I went back to couriering and was slapped in the face with all the pain and misery I’d edited out of my memories over the years?

And there were more practical concerns too. Riding (slowly) around London over the past couple of months, I’ve noticed that all my old routes are still firmly etched into my subconscious – but that I’ve forgotten the actual street names. I predicted a triumphant return, that would quickly become disastrous the moment I was given a pick-up, and would have to waste the next ten minutes combing through my A-Z to remind myself where on earth Oxford Street is.

Or I would simply find that the world had moved on in my absence. The company I used to work for was bought out last year, so I couldn’t go back to my comfortable old routine of starting the morning in the control room in Vauxhall, necking half a packet of custard creams before I bothered to do any work. (Probably just as well.) A lot of my old friends would by now have left and moved on to better things, as most couriers do eventually (and thank goodness for that), and the circuit would be ruled by a new generation, none of whom I’d recognize, and who would look at me like I was the new one. Trying to rekindle past glory is almost always a bad idea, and it seemed very likely that I’d be disappointed.

But, to my continuing surprise, I’m just as much in love with the job as ever before – the good bits and the bad. I quickly rediscovered the exhilaration of soaring through the streets, ducking in and out of the traffic, cornering at insane angles because I don’t want to slow down, zipping through closing gaps with the thinnest of margins, and moving faster than almost everything else. I also rediscovered what elsewhere I’ve described as “the mild, nagging discomfort that makes up a large unacknowledged portion of the courier experience” – the way couriering magnifies what would otherwise be imperceptible little itches and injuries. After a few hours my feet (in shoes a size too big) were aching sharply, my saddle area (in shorts impregnated with two years of sweat and inadequately washed under Chinese hosepipes) was sore and throbbing with every pedal stroke, and the strap of my (borrowed; unfamiliar) bag was digging painfully into my neck.

None of these things would be so bothersome in the course of a ‘normal’ day’s cycling – a two-hour pootle in the Surrey Hills, or even a full 12-hour jaunt on the Qinghai Plateau. I had forgotten the peculiar intensity of couriering – the intensity of its joy, but also of its discomfort – and I realize now just how well I’d managed to fine-tune everything over the years, gradually adjusting my bike, bag, clothing, riding style, routines and habits so that, at least some of the time, it all hummed along in perfect harmony.

I’ve slipped out of tune now. Every few minutes during a day’s work, a courier will stop, lock up her bike, whip her Xda out of her pocket and the package out of her bag, and stride off towards the next postroom. The frequency with which this simple string of activities is repeated means that they quickly evolve into a dance. You stop the bike, swing your leg over it and lean it against the railings in a single fluid motion. As you dismount you lower your hands to your lock, open it with the key dangling from your right wrist, flick the chain from around your waist with your right hand, catch the free end with your left hand, and thrust it thorough the spokes of your front wheel, bring the ends back together and padlocking them, before turning on your heel and heading towards the building, swinging your bag round to extract the package as you do so. The whole process probably takes a couple of seconds, and is better characterized as one action than as many, each of its constituent parts flowing seamlessly into the next.

But I’m out of practice these days. I can still swing my lock around my waist and catch it with my left hand with uncanny accuracy, but I’m now keeping my key, my Xda, my phone and my pen in the same (capacious yet inaccessible) pocket, which introduces a certain amount of stumbling and fumbling to the process. My bike’s dropped handlebars mean it doesn’t lean against railing as neatly, and the mudguard and extra spokes make it harder to get the lock through the front wheel. None of these things would bother me at all if I were only locking my bike up once or twice a day, but lock your bike up several times an hour, and they will start to grate.

So there’s fine-tuning to be done – much as I fine-tuned the way I packed my panniers during my first few months on the road, so that during an average night’s camping I’d only have to open three of my bags; sometimes only two.

And I’d forgotten (or perhaps never fully realized) how demanding couriering is on the bike itself. I had remarkably few mechanical problems on my way across Asia – a handful of punctures, a couple of snapped spokes, and the usual wear and tear on brake pads, bar tape and cables – but within hours of being back on circuit, I’d snapped a spoke and my back wheel, which was rebuilt under the watchful eye of a professional wheelbuilder back in Tokyo, was once again wavering from side to side as though it had downed five pints of Guinness.

It’s not just that the roads are bumpier in London. (Contrary to what you’d probably expect, the only seriously bumpy road I had to deal with in Asia was the Karakorum Highway (and about 100km somewhere in the dead of night between Taiyuan and Shijiazhuang in China, at the memory of which I still shudder).) The way a courier rides (or perhaps just the way I  ride as a courier) puts a much greater strain on the bike than pedalling gently, steadily and rhythmically across continents. There’s nothing ‘steady’ about couriering. You’re riding as fast as you can, but constantly having to modify your speed or direction because of traffic lights, pedestrians, cars …oh, and all the other thousands of obstacles that might hurl themselves in your way. I regularly feel as though I’m actually wrestling with the bike; wrenching the bars from side to side with as much vigour as I do the pedals, bracing my right leg against my left arm, and then my left leg against my right arm as I set off from one set of traffic lights, trying to get up enough speed so that I’ll beat the next one. Small wonder I had enormous triceps and deltoids when I used to do this for a living. I looked in the mirror after my shower last night and, after only a couple of days, they’re coming back.

But it’s hard on the bike, sprinting from a standing start every few minutes. I once read that Graeme Obree, when he was preparing for (and breaking) the world hour record, would put so much torque through the bike as he set off that the rear tyre would actually touch the chainstays, putting him at risk of a blow-out at (very) high speed. (His team decided not to mention this to him until after the record, in case it affected his performance.) Granted, I’m no Obree, but it no longer surprises me that I wore through so many cranks and bottom brackets in my years on the courier circuit. There are much greater forces going through the bike now than when I used to push off gently and sleepily in the morning, gradually wind up to cruising speed, and carry on rolling till lunchtime.

There are different forces going through my body as well. For the first time in months I’ve felt the burn and drag of of lactic acid in my thighs as I sprint and stop and sprint and stop and sprint and sprint across the city. And I’ve already rediscovered that sweet spot towards the end of the day, where your legs finally (somehow) gather enough momentum to spin without taking up all the air you can get into your lungs, and you race along singing and whistling to yourself. As well as my expanding shoulders, I’ve noticed muscles moving near my waist and hips, as I once again steer from the rear, and shift my weight in the saddle to rebalance the bike as I wind through traffic. Sometimes it feels as if I barely move my body when I’m touring. Pedalling my overloaded tank of a bicycle up and down mountains has made me stronger, no question, and the long strenuous slogs of Iran and China have increased my stamina, but I feared all along that my fitness and agility were declining, and might never come back. Looks like a couple of months on circuit might be just what I need.

I’m still in the UK, and an unexpected (but non-life-threatening) health issue needs to be resolved, meaning that I’m likely to remain here for at least the next four months. Needless to say, this was a difficult realization, but it has countless silver linings.

My health will be my priority for the foreseeable future, but I’m also looking forward to rediscovering the highways and byways of the British Isles (I’m sure I’m not the only one who, after long absence from the motherland, feels the urge to go and explore her own backyard as thoroughly as she did the plains and passes of Asia), making a brief cameo on the London courier circuit (starting tomorrow; lock up your daughters), and taking some time to reflect on (and write up) the experiences of the last couple of years.

I will be back on the road sometime, but I’m not yet sure when, and I’m not yet sure where I’ll be starting (Alaska? Vancouver? New York?), or which direction I’ll be going, which gives me a heady sense of freedom and potential. Curiously, I think I’m at my happiest when planning is kept to a minimum.

In the meantime, if you’re suffering from Chappell withdrawal, I’ll be making various appearances around the UK before I head off again in late March.

On Tuesday the 26th February I’ll be speaking at Newtown Library, Park Lane, Newtown, Powys.

On Saturday the 9th March I’ll be sharing a platform with the late great Beryl Burton (or, at least, a film about her) at an event run by the fabulous Broken Spoke Bike Co-op in Oxford, to celebrate International Women’s Day.

On Tuesday the 11th of March I’ll be speaking (along with an awe-inspiring constellation of fellow adventurers) at Night Of Adventure in London, Leicester Square, raising money for Hope & Homes for Children.

There are one or two more London-based events in the pipeline, and I’m potentially up for more, if anyone’s interested in booking me, although my diary is starting to fill up rather quickly.

Looking forward to meeting some of you in person very soon!

Come, and bring your friends.

And if you’re based in Mid Wales, I’ll also be giving a talk at the Tabernacle in Machynlleth this Wednesday (the 23rd), at 2pm.

It’s a memory I often revisit as I ride through the deserts and the mountains and the vast tracts of earth where there isn’t a familiar face, or even a familiar language. I had never had so many of my nearest and dearest gathered in one place, and now, in my regular daydreams about my triumphant homecoming, I sometimes imagine riding back into London from Dover, some years hence, and finding them all still there, a few years older and wiser, some of them with new babies in their arms, others of them still brandishing the same pints they toasted me with as I left. It never seriously occurred to me that some of them wouldn’t be around any more.

One of the final hangers-on that night was my friend Steff, whom I’d got to know when he read a rant about failing waterproofs on my courier blog, and spent the next few weeks pursuing me round London with a bottle of NikWax. I later learned that this was completely in character. Almost every story I have concerning Steff is of his astounding and persistent generosity – quite a lot of the kit I’m using now came from him, and I have actually started reining myself in from mentioning when things go wrong, because I know he’ll instantly insist on replacing them. As I got to know him I also found out that he was also a fabulously warm, kind and funny (and slightly odd) gentleman, with one of London’s greatest moustaches, and an apt, obscure or hilarious anecdote for every occasion. For some reason or other he became deeply interested in my trip, and glancing back over the comments on my blog, I find many of  them are from him, expressing his interest in reading my eventual book (which I still don’t necessarily plan to write), and looking forward to seeing me when I someday make it back to London.

Three weeks ago, while I was battling through the blizzards of Akita, I remembered that Steff was due to start a new job in a new country round about now, and made plans to email him as soon as I was next online, to find out how it was all going. But when I logged in that evening, the first email I read told me that Steff had died, unexpectedly, just a few hours previously.

In theory, of course, I knew this would happen. When gloomily running through all the worst-case scenarios before I set off (almost none of which have actually occurred), I purposefully acknowledged to myself that it was possible that one or two people I knew wouldn’t be there when I got back. Somehow though, anticipating this scenario didn’t detract from the shock of it actually happening.

The last few weeks have been difficult. My mind’s been flooded with grief and exhaustion and homesickness – so much so that I can no longer really tell which is which, or whether they’re all exacerbating and feeding off each other. Despite the impression I may have given elsewhere, loneliness and homesickness are still fairly unfamiliar emotions for me, so when they do hit, they tend to be unexpected, and thus knock me sideways. When I found myself weeping uncontrollably through most of the Christmas period, I realized I was going to have to do something other than keep a stiff upper lip, and started following the advice I always give other people, and which Sarah Outen recently encapsulated far better than me, which was to talk to people about it.

I felt the same embarrassment that anyone might feel when admitting they’re not coping – and it was magnified by the pride I take in being self-sufficient, and solving my own problems when things go wrong. But I reminded myself that, after sixteen months on the the road, everything will start to wear out. My bike and kit have been breaking a lot more frequently in the last few months – the inevitable consequence of hauling it over all those mountains and deserts. And if I want to continue, there’s no option but to assess the damage, repair it where I can, and replace things where I can’t. I have started to acknowledge that my body needs similar care and attention – but perhaps it’s also the case with my mind. It very rarely gets a proper rest. When I’m not on the road I’m busily bashing away at a laptop, trying to sort out the increasingly complicated admin and logistics of my trip, and to keep it all afloat.

So I took a deep breath, and told a few people what was going on, choosing fellow explorers and travellers, who I thought were most likely to understand.

“Go home! Take a break!” they said.

“No no, that’s just not an option” I replied.

But I started to wonder whether it actually was. I asked my family what they thought – and of course they jumped on the idea with great enthusiasm. And then I looked at flights, and found that I could be back in London for less than £500. And that settled it. I arrive on the 10th of January, and I’ll spend about a month in the UK, before carrying on to the Americas. I have no doubt that I want to continue my journey – this year has been the most wonderful and satisfying of my life, and I still consider cycling round the world to be the right decision. But going home, and spending time with the people I love, is also the right decision.

Am I ‘cheating’? Am I breaking the rules? Well, whose rules are they anyway? There’s actually no such thing as cycling round the world – the way our planet’s formed doesn’t allow for a continuous overland loop, so bicycle circumnavigators have to resort to boats and planes to get them over the blue bits. Guinness sets out certain rules for speed record attempts, but these necessitate riders using air transit in order to get between departure points as quickly as possible, and avoiding the more difficult/fun/mountainous/windy sections, which might slow them down. People who are restricted by financial or professional commitments might ride around the world in segments, perhaps being on the road for a month or two per year. Some people fly over the more dangerous/inconvenient countries (like Iran, Pakistan and China). Some do a loop only of the Northern Hemisphere (i.e. riding across Europe, Asia and North America, but missing out South America and Africa). I long ago gave up wondering who is most genuinely cycling round the world.

What are my personal rules? Well, I like to do things the hard way, and I don’t like to admit defeat. And that’s why I refused to fly from Tehran to Lahore (instead of travelling through Balochistan), as some people suggested. That’s why I only accept a lift if I am absolutely compelled to by the police (or by Japanese samurai comedians in tracksuits). That’s why I rode through Turkey in winter and Xinjiang in summer. That’s why I didn’t crack and take a bus to beat my Chinese visa deadline. That’s why I’m aiming to cycle the length of Asia, the Americas and Africa, avoiding shortcuts. That’s why I’ve still got my eye on the Alaskan winter.

This year I’ve realized what I always suspected – that I am only properly happy when rising to a challenge. And that’s one reason I find this ‘cycling round the world’ lark so immensely satisfying, and why I plan to continue. There has been a great variety of physical and mental challenges over the past sixteen months, and there are many more to come. But the challenge of being without my loved ones for the next few years, with all the toughness, misery and emotional stamina that would require, seems fairly pointless. I can’t see it leading to the same triumphant glow that I felt when I rolled into Dogubeyazit last January. It will simply deprive me of their company and them of mine. We may grow apart in my absence and, worst of all, not all of them will still be there when I finally get home.

One of the things I had to let go of when making this decision was the perfect homecoming scenario I’d imagined. I’d cycle back up the Wye Valley towards Llanidloes, thinking about how many years it had been since I last saw this road, on Day 1, and marvelling at how much had changed, and how much hadn’t. I’d ride through the front gate that was the starting point of my long long journey, and I’d be home. This pretty picture will be completely ruined if I’ve nipped home and passed through the starting gate a couple of times in the intervening years.

But this is a prime example of me scripting the entire adventure before it’s actually happened, something I swore early on I wouldn’t let myself do. I didn’t want to plan this journey in advance – I wanted to set out with an open mind, and see what it might become. Most crucially, I wanted to find stories that hadn’t yet been told. Any deviation from the hackneyed old round-the-world narrative was to be celebrated.

However, moments of triumph are one of the most intrinsic and seductive elements of this narrative. I’ve come to expect them – little ones at the end of each day, bigger ones at the end of each country, others at the tops of mountains and when reaching a long-anticipated city like Esfahan or Kashgar. Everyone expects the ‘money shot’ – Bert and Thijs grinning victoriously with the Hong Kong skyline behind them; Matt and Andy spraying champagne in front of Sydney Opera House. I’ll admit I’ve staged one or two of my own.

But equally, some of the moments of triumph I envisaged and strove for turned out to be anticlimactic. I felt strangely empty after finishing the Karakorum Highway, even though this had been an ambition of mine for years. And when I finished off China, the pride and satisfaction I expected to feel was swept away by a tidal wave of exhaustion, and I fell asleep before the ship even left its berth. There’s no saying my (obsessively anticipated) homecoming might not be a similar let-down. All that misery for nothing!

However, deviating from my stated plan looks suspiciously like a failure. And not being able to keep my chin up and stay apart from my friends and family for the full three, four or five years suggests that perhaps I’m a coward. Well then. Let it be so. There are enough stories of triumph and bravery, and I’m disinclined to write another one. Let this one be a tale of failure and cowardice if it needs to. Let it also be a tale of unexpected love, and unexpected loss. And of discovering that there are far more important things than cycling round the world, and all its silly, pointless, egotistical moments of triumph.

While I was in Akita it started to snow, and my host dolefully informed me that it probably wouldn’t stop until next March. I looked out of his window. The whole city was white, buried under snowdrifts and hard packed ice, tucked in under a blanket of low white clouds that sent their endless snowflakes whirling through the air like feathers, and cast a dim, almost twilight fuzziness over the streets. Every pavement and every road was varnished with ice, and people were shuffling carefully along them, wrapped up in scarves and coats and big thick insulated boots.

“You can stay longer if you want to”, offered Sean. It was tempting. But this was what I’d come for. So I bade him a reluctant farewell, wheeled my bike out of his warm cosy flat, and set off into the blizzard.

Akita Prefecture is one of the poorest areas in Japan, and doesn’t bother with frivolities like clearing the roads when it snows. It’s also an area that gets a lot of snow. As I struggled along the road out of the city, I felt almost smothered by it. There was snow in great heaps on both sides of the road – sometimes almost as high as my head. There was snow on the road, churned by the cars to a mess of slush, which then refroze in gravelly-looking ridges, frequently threatening to send my tyres sliding out from under me. There was snow piled precariously on every tree branch and rooftop I passed, every now and then losing its balance and tumbling off in a miniature avalanche. And there was snow in the air, pouring silently and relentlessly out of the clouds, battering me in the face as I rode along, and settling in drifts on every fold of my clothing.

Riding in conditions like this is rather challenging. There wasn’t much space on the road, so I was torn between wanting to hug the kerb and keep away from the traffic, and wanting to find a bit of road that wasn’t coated in ice. The best place to ride was in the ruts left by the car tyres, but this left me further out than I’d have liked, and swerving in at a moment’s notice was no longer an option – with all this ice, any sudden sideways movements were likely to end in disaster and loss of dignity. And a lot of the time there was no clear road at all.

My tyres kept their grip on the ice better than I’d expected. Riding uphill was just about possible, as long as I kept going. If I stopped though, it was impossible to get myself started again – as I tried to push off, the rear wheel would continually slip on the ice underneath it. A couple of times I faltered, or skidded, and then had to get off and push over the top of the hill.

Going downhill was worse. I’d replaced my brake pads, but there was no way they were actually going to stop me. If I tried to brake, the wheels would lock, and the bike would carry on sliding along the ice. Each descent was accomplished slowly and painstakingly, my left foot dragging along the ground, and my whole body tensed, ready to leap off the bike and into the snowy verge if something went wrong. I quickly realized that cycling up to a mountain lake, camping on its shores in the blizzard, and then trying to ride downhill the following morning was a silly idea. I had quite enough on my plate as it was. So I wistfully rode past the turning for Tazawako, and carried on south.

The going was still tough, but it was also curiously satisfying. Riding on ice demands a degree of concentration I have rarely needed to muster since I start cycle touring. Every twitch of bicycle and body has to be carefully controlled and monitored – if the bike swayed too far in one direction it would slip on the ice when I tried to right it. If I pushed too hard on the pedals the wheels would skid, so I had to be careful to maintain a regular rolling speed. Not too slow, or the bike would slide sideways. Not too fast, or I would lose control when I tried to brake. Every muscle was tensed, and my mind was hyper-aware of everything around me – the snow piled up on the verges, and what might be under it, the cars and trucks thundering by, often sending a spray of slush over me as they passed, every little ridge of ice or pile of snow or pothole in the road – knowing that I had less time and space and friction than usual to respond to obstacles. I hadn’t felt this sort of intense focus since I used to ride my bike in and out of the London traffic. For hour after glorious hour my mind was blank – concentration left no room for extraneous thoughts or worries. Rarely, I think, have I been so completely in the moment.

And then I was kidnapped by Shun and Ken.

I don’t know what Shun and Ken were doing, driving their car round Akita Prefecture in the snow. I found them lying in wait for me in a layby. As I rode past they flagged me down, and before I knew it they were bundling me, bike and bags into their car, handing me a box of hot dumplings and a towel, and speeding off through the blizzard.

They were young, boisterous, hair-gelled and tracksuited, and driving far too fast, whooping with delight as the car bumped and swerved over the rutted ice, and turning round far too frequently to bombard me with questions. They didn’t know what I was doing in Akita Prefecture in the snow either, but I handed them my letter of introduction (expertly translated by Kim – thank you!), which they scanned earnestly and then commended effusively with broad grins, thumbs up and shouts of “oh yeah!”, “very good!” and “champion!” They didn’t speak much English, but they were using what they had to full effect.

The conversation drifted to our respective tastes in music – they bombarded me with a list of artists I hadn’t heard of, and virtually applauded when I finally recognized the name Rihanna. To celebrate, they put on one of her videos, on miniature screens hidden behind their sunshades.

I tried not to think about the effect this might have on Shun’s already haphazard driving, along with the condition of the roads and the fact that he kept getting his smartphone out to try and translate things he wanted to say to me. Perhaps this was even more dangerous than cycling on ice. Or perhaps, with drivers like this on the road, I was safer inside their vehicle than underneath it. I decided not to worry. And anyway, they were extremely friendly. We exchanged all the details of our lives that we were able to with our limited common language, and they filled in the rest with whoops and grins.

“We are Japanese comedians!” Shun informed me. “Japanese comedians! Shun – and Ken! Shun – and Ken! Oh yeah!”

They bumped fists, and bobbed their heads to and fro in time, then hooted with laughter.

We stopped for cigarettes at one of Japan’s ubiquitous convenience stores, and Shun insistently steered me towards the cake section. It was almost as if he knew how hungry one gets cycling through the snow for hours. I hesitantly picked up a packet of pancakes, and he tutted and added another one, and then a doughnut, and then a chocolate bun, then cans of hot coffee (brilliant Japanese innovation) for all three of us.

I was in their car for an hour or two, and their energy never flagged. For some reason they were carrying a selection of cheap plastic masks, and whenever the car stopped for traffic lights or traffic jams, they’d put these on and try to attract the attention of the other drivers alongside them. They were usually ignored, which seemed to strike them as absolutely hilarious.

They wanted to know where I was going. It was difficult to say really. Tokyo? Well, yes, but I didn’t want to risk them offering me a lift all the way there. (Incidentally, I found I didn’t mind in the slightest that I’d broken my line by accepting an unnecessary lift. This was a self-contained loop of Japan, rather than the world, and I’d amply proved to myself how comfortable I was riding in snowy conditions, which was my main goal for this leg. I think I’d have had a lot more trouble accepting a lift if I actually was struggling. And meeting Shun and Ken was an adventure in itself.) I settled for naming a town a few miles down the road, that I’d been sort-of aiming for anyway. But then they wanted to know where to drop me in that town, and of course I couldn’t tell them – if I were on my own I’d just have ridden around until I found a secluded (and hopefully sheltered) spot to pitch my tent.

We settled for a roadside service station, which, this being Japan, was extremely comfortable, with spotlessly clean toilets and a 24-hour cafe. Shun and Ken prowled round the giftshop, playing with souvenir samurai swords (“We are Japanese comedians – and samurai!”), posing with statues and looking for presents they could buy me. I managed to talk them out of everything except a small lucky charm with a bell attached (which I thought might come in useful for scaring off bears in Alaska) and some chocolate (never turning down food is one of my most fundamental principles), and they helped me set up camp in an indoor seating area before swapping email addresses and bounding off back to their car with big waves and grins.

I settled down for a pleasant and leisurely evening of reading books and eating whatever I could get my hands on. (You use so many more calories in winter, keeping warm and keeping the bike straight.) And then I fell asleep at about 7pm. I woke up shortly before 5am, to hear someone whispering my name, or something very like it.

“Emiry. EMIRY!”

It was Shun. He handed me a hot can of coffee, gave me another of his cheeky grins, and then disappeared, as if by magic.

I carried on through the snow. A couple of days later I crossed the final mountain pass before the east coast, and within just a few kilometres the scenery changed from this -

- to this -

- as if by magic.

If you have any questions of your own about being a woman on the road, or about any other aspect of cycle touring at all, please feel free to get in touch – I’ll update the page whenever I can.

And of course, this wouldn’t have been possible without the help and time and expertise of the Questionable Women themselves, so let’s please raise a toast to Helen Lloyd, Eleanor Moseman, Sarah Outen, Amie Thao, Loretta Henderson and Rachel Hugens, six women I have come to regard as heros, mentors, friends and sisters. Thank you very much to all of you for your wonderful contributions to this project. And thank you to everyone who submitted questions – hopefully we’ll be seeing some of you on the road very soon. And the biggest thank you of all to Amie Thao, who fearlessly delved into the twisted entrails of my website to make  the whole thing readable and user-friendly.

(And the photo shows another of my cycling inspirations – my grandmother (right), on a jaunt to the seaside sometime in the late 1940s.)

I habitually cycle alone, but for one reason and another, most of the past few thousand miles had been with other people – from the friendly Frenchman I ran into at the ferry port in Busan, and persuaded to accompany me to Shimonoseki to the two Tokyo friends who accompanied me out to Mount Fuji on the most beautiful autumn weekend of the year.

I’ve long believed myself to be the kind of antisocial hermit on whom the company of other people will always grate after only a day or two, so it’s been both a delight and a relief to discover that riding companions can be almost an unadulterated joy. When I rode with Kate and Jen for three weeks, even with all the stress of dealing with Kate’s stomach problems, Jen’s hub problems, my stove problems, Kate’s knee problems, Jen’s cold problems, my back wheel problems and our collective inability to make a single decision without half an hour of patient discussion, argument and consensus, I was nonetheless constantly happy to have them around, and willing to put up with almost any amount of hassle in exchange for the pleasure of their company. Phew. Turns out I’m not as horrible a person as I feared.

But I think I’ll always ultimately be a solo cyclist. Wonderful and reassuring as other people’s company can occasionally be, it’s when you’re on your own that the magic happens.

I quickly found the hardship I was looking for. The mountains of Japan aren’t as cold as Eastern Turkey, or as high as Northern Pakistan, but the snow hadn’t been cleared from the passes, which made the going slow and treacherous.

I had to admit defeat and walk my bike over the final hilltop, and then nearly froze my fingers off on the 20km descent that followed, unprepared for how suddenly the temperature would drop when it got dark.

Thankfully, that evening I was staying with Rocio, a charming Spanish cyclist who had stumbled across my website just as I arrived in Japan, and excitedly invited me to stay with her, should I end up passing through the small town where she lives, on the edge of the Japanese Alps.

I rarely turn down an invitation if I can help it, and when I arrived at Rocio’s flat I was extremely glad I’d made that detour. Rocio wasn’t at home when I turned up, but she’d left the door open, and a long and detailed letter, welcoming me to her home, offering me the contents of her fridge and the services of  her washing machine, and warning me of the eccentricities of her shower. Best of all, there was a large basket of food sitting on the kitchen counter, labelled “Food for hungry cyclists travelling round the world.”

This could only mean me. So I sat down and tucked in, and only realized when a warm, happy, smiley glow settled over me how hungry I must have been.

Rocio couldn’t have been a better host. Having travelled by bike herself, she recognized the almost simultaneous need for company and for privacy, as well as the importance of vital creature comforts like a hot shower and the opportunity to wash and dry one’s clothes. She also understood the fascination of those ‘places in between’ that one discovers when cycle touring – the medium-sized towns, like Nantwich, and Gorizia and Kirsehir, and also now like Ueda, which I would otherwise never have had any reason to visit or to linger in, but which often turn out to be more memorable than the big cities you’ll find in the guidebooks.

I spent the following afternoon in a newly opened arthouse cafe, run by Nobuko, a friend of Rocio’s and a former professional snowboarder, who has now retired to Ueda to raise her family and to delight her customers with all her homemade objets d’art and delicacies like the Earl Grey waffles we were given to take away with us.

And then it was off to another friend’s house -Tomoko – for homemade pesto with a Japanese twist, and lots of laughter.

I was reminded of a post I wrote almost a year ago, back in Eastern Turkey, after spending a happy evening with a gang of friends that I had only met hours before, remembering all the friends I’d left behind, who might even now be getting together over pasta and cheap red wine, sitting round someone’s kitchen table laughing and joking and enjoying each other’s company, and looking forward to all the friends I hadn’t yet met, who were waiting for me in as-yet-undiscovered towns and cities across the next few continents. I recalled this sentiment as I stood on the roof of an Urumqi skyscraper six months ago, watching the sun set over the city and being stuffed full of barbequed goodness by my hosts and their friends. And it came to mind again over Tomoko’s coffee table, as I realized that Rocio and her friends were some of the people I’d been looking forward to back then, without even knowing it.

After one more fabulous breakfast, I reluctantly bade farewell to Rocio, got on my bike, and pedalled off into the mountains.

(Rocio is planning a big bike trip of her own. If she ends up passing your way, please do take her in, feed her copiously, and give her a bed for the night. She’s an angel.)

That evening I found myself rolling along a snowbound river valley, extremely beautiful, but rather short on comfortable places to pitch a tent.

But I wasn’t unduly worried. Not knowing where I’ll be sleeping that night is no longer something that worries me, because no matter where I am, or how unlikely it seems that I’ll find somewhere, I always have.

As twilight was falling I spotted a weatherbeaten sign with a faded picture of some tents next to a lake, apparently only 1km away. Perfect. It was unlikely that any campsite would be open at this time of year, but I could at least find somewhere to pitch my tent, and maybe even running water, or a washblock to shelter behind. So I ziggzagged my way up the hillside, higher and higher, watching the road get snowier and snowier, until eventually I could go no further. If there was a campsite, it was nowhere to be seen.

So I rolled cautiously back down the hill, and began to inspect the village for likely camping spots (secretly hoping that if I camped somewhere semi-public I might be spotted and invited to stay in someone’s house, as has happened many times before). The station seemed promising, but when I found it there was nothing but a windy carpark, with an unsteady-looking gentleman urinating in the only decent camping spot.

Further down the hill was a large, well-lit building with dozens of cars parked outside – it might have been a hotel or spa, were it not for the lack of signposts and logos. As it turns out, it was a nursing home – warm, bright and comfortable, and staffed by extremely friendly people, who invited me in, sat me down with a coffee, and started making phonecalls to the powers that be to see if I might be allowed to spend the night there, rather than camping out in the cold.

After nearly an hour of this, the main English-speaker came out of the office, told me she was sorry that I wouldn’t be able to stay with them after all, and then presented me with a carefully drawn map, sending me 2km back up the road to the house of Mrs Hando, their boss, where the whole family were looking forward to meeting me.

So I battled back up the hill, through the first flakes of a snowstorm, and was welcomed into a spacious wood-panelled house by Ayi, who had recently been to London and had hundreds of photos to show me, and her smiley father, who insisted I drink some hot sake, and made sure I was well tucked in under the heated table, fringed with blankets, that is the perfectly sensible and civilized centrepiece of Japanese homes in winter. Mrs Hando herself was still out at work.

Having expected to spend the night shivering in my tent, I was given a warm bath, several dishes of hot mushrooms (picked that day by Mr Hando himself), a bowl of steaming ramen and then a blissfully comfortable futon where I fell asleep almost immediately and woke up just before sunrise, marvelling at how perfectly comfortable and rested I felt, and how remarkable it was that I’d managed to fall on my feet yet again. Mrs Hando fed me an enormous breakfast, and handed me a generous packed lunch, and then I rode off into the sparkling snowy sunlight, turning back again and again to wave at the Hando’s, who were lined up outside their house, waving back, and wondering if I’d ever see any of them again.

The day went downhill from there, literally and metaphorically. A harsh wind blew up, clouds rolled over the sparkling sunshine, and it started to rain, and then to sleet. Within a couple of hours all my waterproofs were soaked through. I decided to cut my losses and set up camp under a bridge, hoping the weather would have improved by morning, hung up my wet clothes, cooked up a pot of miso, and settled down to shiver myself to sleep. Just before 5am I was woken by an enormous roar of thunder, and shortly afterwards the tent porch was blown inside out and the wind thrust in like a fist, showering me with freezing rain.

There was no option but to get up and get on with it, so I did, reasoning optimistically that at least it was good to get an early start. The rain was still lashing down, the icy wind was still blowing, and the clothing was still wet from the previous day, which any cyclist will know is a recipe for painfully cold fingers and toes. These were actually some of the worst conditions I’d ridden in so far – I felt almost guilty for being disgruntled, since on balance I’m clearly extremely lucky. I’ve met some cyclists who had to cope with non-stop rain for weeks.

I carried on, grimly, following the road that would eventually take me to the warm dry flat of my next warmshowers.org host in Akita, still two long days’ ride away. It led me briefly along the coast, where violent crosswinds threatened to blow me into the path of moving traffic, then into the shelter of some hills, and then up over an unexpected mountain pass. I kept scanning the grey sky for signs of brightness, but there was no end to the clouds, and as I neared the top of the pass, the slushy rain turned into snow, stinging my face as I rode into it, and turning the road into a treacherous mess of slush.

Descending in cold weather is always a nightmare – your body loses all the heat it generated during the climb, and if your gloves are wet, within a few minutes your hands will be too cold even to grip the brakes properly. I also quickly discovered that my brake pads had worn down to nothing – another hazard of wet days. It was after 3pm by now, and I knew I only had another hour or so of daylight to get myself back to sea level, and try and find somewhere remotely sheltered to camp. I was tired, hungry, and shivering uncontrollably, and my nerves were finally beginning to fray.

So I stopped in the first village I came to, and made a beeline for the convenience store, to warm up, and perhaps treat myself to a hot drink. As I walked in I was greeted by a tall, bearlike man, who most definitely wasn’t Japanese.

“Hello – where are you from?”

“I’m from the UK – where are you from?”

“Oh, I am Pakistani.”

And he really was. I could tell this because within minutes I’d been invited into his house, sat down next to the heater, wrapped up in a blanket and given a hot drink, a pile of Urdu magazines and a plate of jeera biscuits, which I hadn’t tasted since Khunjerab. (Yes, I have a favourite biscuit in every country I ride through – don’t you?)

So I spent the night curled up on Najeeb’s living room floor, rather than in my sodden tent, and the next morning set off at 7am to ride the remaining 100 miles or so to Akita. It was still windy and rainy, and for the first few hours I was riding along the coast, with enormous waves crashing into the breakwaters and occasionally sending their spray right over the road.

Towards the end of the afternoon it finally stopped raining, but there were further woes in store. Suddenly the bike felt unusually wobbly, and I realized I’d snapped another two spokes (and cursed myself for not getting round to rebuilding the wheel when I was in Tokyo). I stopped, did my best to true the wheel, and then had to stop again a few kilometres down the road, to true it again. And then the earthquake struck. I found out later, when I got in to find an inbox full of panicked emails, that it had been quite a big one – big enough to make international headlines – but where I was there was just a few minutes of the world going all wobbly, which I was already experiencing anyway, thanks to my rapidly failing back wheel.

The sense of wobbliness persisted as darkness fell, and eventually I realized that it was down to hunger, as well as wheel problems and geological disruption, and started planning a chocolate stop, whenever I next spotted somewhere that might be warm. Almost immediately I spotted a layby, with a man standing next to his parked car, frantically flagging me down. He told me he had a hamburger for me, and spent a few minutes explaining in incomprehensibly broken English how it had come about that he happened to have a spare hamburger (it had something to do with the earthquake), then handed me the hamburger itself, got in his car, and drove off. I ate it immediately. It was still warm, and was just what I needed to get me through the last few miles.

And then I finally got to Akita, was welcomed by Sean, my host, in true cyclist fashion (i.e. beer, food and hot shower), and then collapsed gratefully into bed. The following day was spent sourcing spokes at a local bike shop, watching them being cut and rethreaded,

watching the mechanic exclaim over my beautiful (albeit filthy and broken down) bicycle,

repairing and retruing my wheel (let’s keep our fingers crossed that it’ll last me till I get back to Tokyo), and enjoying the company of Sean and fellow bike nut Joe (a Yorkshireman!).

And tomorrow I set off again, aiming for Lake Tazawa, up in the mountains. The weather forecast is terrible, but after all the improbable good luck I’ve had in the past week, somehow I’m not at all worried.