Pelotome –
around Pakistan on a bicycle.
“Whether I would find it practicable to start on the wheel again from Karachi, or whether it would be necessary to proceed to the northeast, I had not yet been able to find out. At any rate, it is always best to leave these matters until one gets on the spot.
The result of my investigations at once proves the impossibility, even were it desirable, of starting from Karachi.
The Indus River is at flood, inundating the country, which is also jungly and wild and without roads.
The heat throughout Seinde [Sindh] in July is some thing terrific ; and to endeavor to force a way through flooded jungle with a bicycle at such a time would be little short of madness.”
~ Around The World on a Bicycle, Thomas Stevens (1888).
My Life and Times
by Jerome K. Jerome
From £4,75
July 1886 – Published 1888.
Around the World on a Bicycle.
“From Teheran to Yokohama” was the second illustrated volume of Tom Steven’s pioneering ride around the globe and covers the second half of his journey on a fifty-inch Pope “Columbia” high-wheeler, from Persia to Japan.
After having been refused passage through Afghanistan from Iran, the Englishman had to re-route, arriving in Karachi (then in India) by steamer from Suez in Egypt, on 21st July 1886.
With the Indus River flooded, “inundating the country,” and the July heat “somrthing terrifc”, he decides that “to endeavor to force a way through flooded jungle with a bicycle at such a time would be little short of madness,” and instead proceeds by rail to Lahore, which is also, “as the crow flies,” nearer to Farah – where he was turned back in Afghanistan – “so that my purpose of making a continuous trail will be better served from that point anyhow.”
Arriving in Lahore on 28th July 1886, he battled the heat and cycled “some thirty-five miles down the Grand Trunk Road” to Amritsar, (in modern day India), continuing his journey toward Japan.
- By Thomas Stevens.
- Published by Sampson, Lowe, Marston, Searle and Rivington, London.
THROUGH INDIA.
“The heat is intense, being the end of the heated term at the commencement of the earliest monsoons. It is certainly not less than 130 ° Fahr., in the sun, when at 3 P.M. I mount and shape my course toward Amritza, some thirty-five miles down the Grand Trunk Road.
In such a temperature and beneath such a sun it behooves the discreet Caucasian to dress as carefully for protection against the heat as he would against the frost of an Arctic winter .
The United States army helmet which I have constantly worn since obtaining it at Fort Sydney, Neb., has now to be discarded in favor of a huge pith solar topee an inch thick and but little smaller than an umbrella.
This overshadowing head-dress imparts a cheerful, mushroom-like aspect to my person, and casts a shadow on the smooth whitish surface of the road, as I ride along, that wellnigh obliterates the shadow of the wheel and its rider.”
~ Around The World on a Bicycle, Thomas Stevens (1888).