The New Journeys / 2025—6

Thirsty Horse, Anthony

 

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Here is a whole new series of Journeys that I have planned. Three journeys, three stories; that start in different places but all finish together.

The  first: a long time ago, when I was a mere 18 years old, in fact, the very first

international journey that I ever undertook was to travel to Athens by Train from the UK. That

took 3 days, but it went ok. Coming back was a different matter. I decided to link up buses and boats and cut across the Adriatic to Italy, up through the Alps to Paris and then to the UK. Well it all went wrong for me, and although I have made many successful journeys since, the failure of that first attempt still stings and I’d like to lay it to rest.

 

The second: begins in Beirut, Lebanon, and this is a very different tale to tell. Leila, the heroine of my first book, was a Christian Palestinian girl survivor of the Shatilla Camp massacre in 1982. Orphaned, manipulated and caught up in the sex trade of Beirut nightclubs, Leila escapes to Cyprus with her tormentors hot on her trail, but with help from a chance acquaintance met along the way, slips away to Athens and undertakes a clandestine road trip to Paris, and you guessed already the route she took.

 

And the third: Once upon a time, in a far away universe, there was a Jedi knight and his trusty companion who decided to take a motorcycle trip “The Long Way round” the world. So they took 2 beautiful BMW GS 1200s and headed out. All went well until they reached Mongolia, but then one of the BMs broke down. They couldn’t fix it, and so they took the available option and purchased a considerably more modest 350cc single cylinder 2 stroke Izh Planetta. The bike gave them some trouble, but was always fixable, in the way of this genre of machinery, and it took them all the way to Ulan Bator. There they left it chained to a tree in the garden of the British Embassy, and there it stayed for quite a while until someone came along. Someone?, the last person on Earth that you would ever expect -  Bilbo Baggins of the Shire? Hmm, not quite. It was Mike Rokich from Australia who bought it, and ran it for a year or two until his job in UB came to an end. And then the bike came into our safe keeping at THM and sits now in our garage  - still legal, still road worthy, and always waiting for its chance to renew its travels and complete the journey of its dreams  - all the way to Mordor -  sorry, Shepherd’s Bush. And there you have it. Three stories, all heading West. All heading to London. And all in the spirit of the Thirsty Horse of Mongolia.

 

Now I have bikes to find, a team to put together, logistics and support, and all the administration I could ever wish for; and I invite you to follow me/us on these new journeys and watch a new dawn rise on a time of modern legends and high adventure  - with a bit of luck!