English Introduction

How a biking engineer became a travel-writer.

After studying electrical engineering I had the idea of exploring a bit of the world before starting a business career. For that purpose the bike seemed the most appropriate means because, as I had already experienced on a few bike trips through Europe and the US, it brings you much closer to nature and people than any other means of getting around, hiking excluded. So I took the plane to Peru and cycled in nine months through South-, Central- and North- America to Denver. Shortly after my return to Holland I found a job as a physics teacher, but during every lesson I gave it became clearer to me that those nine months of freedom should be repeated. So in spite of already making myself indispensable in education, I started off on a new trip the next summer. This time I rode my bike in ten months through the Balkans, Turkey, the Middle East and Africa down to Cape Town. After this second trip my urge to travel and see the world was stimulated rather than fulfilled and, to be honest, that was what I had expected. So after a second intermezzo in the field of teaching, during which I was able to hide my qualities as a teacher rather well, I started on a third trip, to Asia this time. Bit by bit I drifted away from electrical engineering and teaching to the uncertain profession of a cycling explorer. After many travels all over the world, I started writing about my adventures, and that resulted in fourteen books, of which one has been translated into English, but not yet published. This book is about a trip through Asia and is called Pilgrims and Peppers because of the many pilgrims I met (and in a sense I finally became a pilgrim myself), and while the peppers in the food tried hard, but failed after all, to spoil my trip. Follow the link to view the extract of Pilgrims and Peppers, but teachers at the start of their career (and maybe very experienced ones too) should now seriously consider immediately logging onto a safer website. The idea of “exploring a little bit of the world” is born in a flash and before you notice it, you are pedalling across India and are dreaming of the following sabbatical years in China, Cameroon and Australia.

Do you happen to be a publisher and are you interested in publishing an English (French, German, Spanish, Norwegian, Chinese) version of Pilgrims and Peppers, or any of my other books? Please contact me or my publisher Elmar.