The sound is deafening. There are ten of us in the tiny bar, and we’re all yelling at the top of our lungs in the name of “Karaoke”, the national pastime the Japanese use to let their hair down. The bar owner has already had to go next door and apologise to his neighbours for the racket. “HERE WE ARE NOW, ENTERTAIN US”, sing Nirvana, accompanied by a group of very tired but happy Skeddaddlers, celebrating their last night of a fantastic trip.
Scroll back 2 and half weeks and I’m excitedly sat on the plane somewhere above Russia with an air of naivety and expectation, on the way to Osaka.

THERE was an elegant simplicity to Zarko Bartolic’s beige 1982 Renault, a battered four-door that — if I succeeded in deciphering his Slav-accented Italian with my rusty Utah Spanish — was paid for entirely with money he earned finding truffles in the Croatian mountains and selling them to local restaurants.

This is Sandy’s story from here recent trip to Morocco with us :
Back home in Cape Town one week on from the end of the tour I find I am missing my roommate! Jo was a jolly and lovely woman with whom I shared Callas, Single malt and much laughter. Such is the companionship of the road. Sorting the photographs and contemplating this report and to whom it would be sent called to mind the many special people I have met on many cycle tours over the past decade.

This superb desert biking adventure focuses on the deep south of Morocco, a land of big skies and stark mountain ranges where mud-brick kasbahs appear to rise up out of the desert, sitting in tranquil palm oases and framed by dramatic backdrops of snowcapped mountains. We ride along Morocco’s dirt roads, taking us from Marrakech to the Tichka Pass, the highest in the High Atlas, and then southward, descending along the Draa Valley to the fringes of the Sahara Desert.