There is one word, to describe this book. To paraphrase author Danny Bent, ‘You’ve Gone Too Far This Time, Sir!‘.
It start with the desire of a teacher in a school in the UK to go to teach in a school in India. “Oh, how will you get there, Sir?” asked one of the children. It was an innocent question, you might think, except that Danny had been educating his class all about the environmental consequences of using different types of transport. And planes had been described as being a very bad idea indeed – they even merited a poster with a great big red cross all over it.
The humble bicycle, on the other hand, that was environmentally-friendly. Gulp! Well, could Danny destroy all his pupils’ trust in one lazy and inconsiderate action? No, he couldn’t. It was time to get on his bike and peddle away – peddle a very long way, in fact.
He decided to get his trip sponsored for the benefit of Action Aid and, in turn, for the benefit of a women’s group in India which was oppressed but had great potential if given an honest chance.
His stories strike me as being entirely honest too. I didn’t get the impression that anything was made up, or even played up, although a great deal happened. Luckily for us, Danny has a bit of the Peter Ustinov about him when it comes to being a story teller, and he also has the late Mr. Ustinov’s cheerful candor which results in his being sucked into far more local activities than would be availed to many of us.
If you could, for a moment, Peter Ustinov on a bike. Actually, that doesn’t work at all. Imagine a very slim bearded ginger-headed guy on a bike telling you entertaining and emotional stories of endurance and delight.
And what stories! I don’t suppose that all books recording the events of great adventures need to masquerade as how-to guides, but if you ever need to know how to drink goat soup made with pestilent water and survive the resultant food poisoning, or how to speed away from a determined bandit with a whip when 4,000 metres above sea level and suffering from oxygen deprivation, or how not to freeze to death camping out in the open during a Central Asian winter, or how to stay calm when a gun is pointing into your eyes or people all around you are staggering around with blood gushing from their heads, or how to go to the toilet in an exceedingly disgusting public utility bare-bottomed and open to the scrutiny of the entire town, or how to ‘skitch’, this is exactly the book for you.
As Danny crosses Central Asia, you realise just how tame Western Europe is, given that his toughest task there was to find a shop open in Belgium on a public holiday, but I also came to the conclusion that I wasn’t planning to visit some of the ‘Stan’ countries of Eastern Europe in an armoured car escorted by a tank division any time soon, never mind on a bike. Better Danny than me. He has the guts, he has the drive, he has the insanity and he has the warmth of heart that brought out the generous, friendly and hospitable best from so many people he met along the way.
Indeed, that is the real lesson of Danny’s book – that people across the world are decent and willing to go to huge lengths to help in a crisis, or even without one.
Danny’s journey is the result of a decision that took twenty years and one minute to make. For twenty years he had wanted to do something to raise money for charity. The one minute was when, as their teacher, he was put on the spot by his pupils.
