Motorcycle Explorer February 2015 Issue 4 | Page 75

Desert Travels
Motorcycle Journeys in the Sahara
and West Africa
By Chris Scott
Scott is perhaps best known for writing Adventure
Motorcycling Handbook aka ‘The Bible’ and of
course this one! Now more than ever does Scott
show just how and why he is considered by many
to be the voice to listen to when it comes to riding
across the often perilous Sahara desert. I hate the
cliché ‘page turner’ (what else would you do with
a book!) but I found myself lost in the pages – the
sign of wonderful content mixed with skilful
writing and Scott has both in spades!
This little paperbound cracker has the beautiful
appeal of a rather special patchwork quilt.
Segments of current adventures are stitched with
past trials and tribulations with an almost
seamless skill, enriching the story further as you
get a deep sense of a man getting it wrong in all
the best ways. Then from getting it oh so very
wrong and living to tell about it, goes back and
gets it right (most of the time).
The various explorations are done with respectful
detail, not just of what Scott is looking at, feeling
or trying to achieve but also the turbulent history
that the sands have laid witness to from the tribes
to the ill fated French chomping on each other to
stay alive due to a feckless leader. Passing burned
out shells of vehicles and tales of hot-roding
tourists belting off to the dunes never to be heard
of again. Scott makes it very clear that the desert
deserves your respect. While running up to a
sleeping lion and slapping him in the face with
your knackers with the plan of running for it does
have a crazed charm to it you kinda know that the
lack of respect shown for what that big pussy cat
can do is not going to end well!
feeling that you’ve just read three books in one
and still remain thirsty for more tales of comical
engine choices to Tuareg fires huddles around the
flicking flames in the open arms of some massive
dune watching the sun contort the colours of the
desert before you’re very eyes – damn I want to
ride there now!
You can see Scott developing before your eyes as
they scan eagerly from left to right and devour the
words. Scott comes from a ‘have a go lad’ to
‘expert guide’ as the pages turn. Not shying away
from questions about solo rides and tour rides is a
brave move and Scott takes the ‘white elephant’ in
the room head on! That anxiety of being alone of
the senses raised to your surroundings and the
euphoric (and addictive) feeling of success that
comes with doing that sort of adventure – but then
being able to ditch your luggage in the back of a
101 and go slice up some mammoth dune on your
machine with little care of screwing up the bike as
killing your bike no longer means you slowly
drying to death in the Sahara would have even the
most elitist of adventurers pondering the pros and
cons. As Scott puts it “The grateful appreciation of
fortune’s fair hand is a luxury limited to survivors”.
There was something that I missed in this book …
or rather I didn’t miss it until I started to write the
review. Scott does not use pictures in his book
(there are a stack on his website) but to Scott’s
credit I had to flick through the book again to
check so rich was the detail that I could have
sworn I’d had pictorial aids in the book a true
testament to Scott’s writing skill.
Much like the head canted smiling princess giving
a smile and a wave (you’ll come to that) you find at
the end of this book that again Scott reaches
another chapter in his life, a life that still has so
very much to tell and you find you want to know
more …
It was inevitable that the Adventure Motorcycling
Handbook was going to happen; to not have put
Intertwined through this like a glorious silk thread such experience to paper would have been a
is Scott’s blunt insight into his own failing and the crime.
relationships he has with people on the road (or
sand as it happens to be) laughs and fights all put
down with no gloss in sight adds not only an
Bravo.
honest feeling but also a very identifiable quality
to the pages. All this craftwork leaves you with a