A quick hello from Essaouira…

Since our last post we have not strayed from our usual cycle routine but some great things have been happening in and outside of cyberspace…

Firstly, a few novel things about our blog. If you ever find yourself pondering where on earth we could be, you can now find out simply by going to the maps page. Not only will you find our latest location, updated as often as possible via SMS, you can also check our past progress in the form of waypoints, blogs and photos.

Also, you may have noticed that our first musical blog didn’t have any working music. This problem has now been resolved, so please have a listen to the fascinating Gnawa music.

We’ve also had some great press coverage in the past week. We’ve had a article about music cycles published in the Malian newspaper Le Tambour, describing an “extraordinary human adventure”. We’ve also just heard that we appear in the news section of the Nov/Dec edition of Songlines magazine, an exciting world music publication.

We left Safi a few days ago and we’ve battled some steep hills but the wind has been much kinder, making our progress slow, but painless. We’re now in Essaouira, which hosts the annual Gnawa festival, so we’re hoping to hear some more gimbris and krakebs whilst here! Essaouira is also known for its beach life, so we feel almost obliged to extend our current suntans from our forearms and shins, perhaps even bronzing beyond the glove and sock marks..!

Less than a week..!

So we’re both attempting to get into ‘doing’ mode, but the temptations of working from home beckon us away from the should-be-doing to the absolutely-should-not-be-doing, right now such activity consists primarily of eating. You see, Imran has this theory that we can now eat as much as we like because we cycling thousands of kilometers… the grave reality of waddling across Europe is looming however and I am now parroting the phrase ‘tomorrow we are eating nothing but healthy, wholesome, LOW FAT foods’. It hasn’t happened yet.

But our personal battles aside, practical arrangements are coming together and things are beginning to fall into place. We have a tent, a cooker, sleeping bags, roll mats, insecticide treatment, all manner of medical supplies, a swish GPS thing, but something is still missing, something important… our bikes.

They’re a work in progress, with the emphasis on progress I am told.

In the mean time we have an album to finish, routes to plan and funds to raise… I think I can sacrifice sleep for a few days.

Please donate whatever you can to the Joliba Trust via the Just Giving website.