Every journey begins in our imaginations. I open an album of memories and see an eight-year-old boy sitting in front of a fuzzy TV screen watching film clips and documentaries of the jungles of India and Africa. When my dream converged with reality, and I climbed on a motorcycle to cross the African Continent, I wasn’t unprepared. Besides being a professional mechanic and an experienced motorcyclist, three years living in rural India was a mental survival school of sorts. It was there that I learned to be at ease with the lack of basic comforts and to regard the unexpected as normal.

After those years of Peace Corps service in India, I was ready for another challenge and where would be a better place to look for it than in the far reaches of Africa. In nineteen seventy three, I set out on a motorcycle trip with my future wife Kersti that would take us from the Mediterranean Sea in the north across the world’s largest desert to the Congo Basin’s rain forest on the equator, and back again.

We didn’t ride on camels in the Sahara like Berber or Tuareg tribesmen or through the Central African jungle in four-wheel drive Land Rovers like tourists on safari, but on a BMW R75/5 motorcycle. On that long and difficult trip, we lived the life of nomads sleeping in a tent and traveling from oasis to oasis in the desert, and village to village in the jungle, always unsure if we’d find water and petrol in the places marked out on our map

A lot of the American male mystique springs from a collective identity centered around unbroken horizons and a love affair with the open road. I was part of a generation that grew up with Western films where a lonesome hero always seemed to be riding off into the distance.

Those rugged protagonists were searching for something that was over the next hill, or the hill after that. For them, travel and freedom were synonymous, perhaps just different sides of the same coin. In those movies there was the seductive allure of independence and a moral code that was simple and unambiguous. There was right and wrong, good and evil, nothing in between.

I had been looking at a map of the African Continent for months before starting out, and finalized my plans of crossing it from north to south, and then continuing west to the Atlantic Coast with hopes of signing on to a freighter bound for South America. Had there been anyone to give me advice, or tried to convince me that my Africa dreams were both dangerous and foolish, I probably wouldn’t have listened.

I was driven by youth’s kinetic energy and curiosity, and like most young people had a tendency to see and confirm things according to my own preconceived ideas.  Not only did I have deaf ears regarding sensible advice, I had most of the answers to it before it was given, and never considered that even the best planned trip could be spoiled in a moment.  Injury, illness, a major mechanical failure or accident in the desert or jungle would have meant disaster.

Take away some of the unpredictable and a lot of the thrill of traveling disappears. Life’s whirlwinds pluck us up and cast us here and there.

It's sensible to have a reasonable amount of planning and take the necessary precautions when you are travelling, but not to the point where you are the prisoner of an itinerary or destination. You can be disappointed when things don’t go as you hoped, or you can miss out on an unforgettable adventure.

There is a quote from the Tao that is worth remembering. “The journey is more important than the destination.”