Turning the Wheel: Ireland to India by Bicycle - Softcover

Loughlin, Simon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1527205665 ISBN 13: 9781527205666

Publisher: Inner Space Publishing, 2017

Synopsis

Pedalling a bike was when I consistently felt most awake and alive. With no capsule around my senses, from the saddle I got to know my surroundings in new and more intimate ways. Breathing draughts of fresh air into expanded lungs as I went was an antidote to the sense of spiritual suffocation I was experiencing in the rest of my life. The humble bicycle, I was convinced, was the vehicle that would take me back to my true self. Against all sensible advice, I dropped everything and pedaled for seven months across Europe, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India and Nepal. Eight thousand miles of chaotic highways and empty country lanes, freezing winter-bound mountain passes and steaming tropical jungle paths, vast unpopulated desert highways and the streets of densely packed third world metropli, brought me from my parents' home in Ireland to the Nepali Himalaya. En route I stayed at the mercy of local inhabitants as I found myself in places well off the tourist radar; with Kurds in goat-hair tea-houses, with respectable Iranians and their opium loaded Shisha pipes, with Afghanis in dirt-floored desert roadhouses and even in the luxurious palace of a desert king and ex-Pakistani president. This book is the story of that life changing journey undertaken in 2001. During these seven months I re-learned to trust the human soul, no matter in what colours it came decked. The great enemy I discovered was internal, the endless solo hours of contemplation bringing fierce challenges my ideas of my own identity. This book is the story of that journey.

Edition details

• Publisher: Inner Space Publishing
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1527205665
• ISBN 13: 9781527205666
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 302