Gweta - Magkadikadi salt pans

50 foot me

matt's book cover idea put to the test in the pans
check the sun coming through the bike. beautiful

camp
the sunrise the following day



free to be
nothing to look at but the line


getting to the pans

Jupiter's travels shot - you gotta have it
hot day, loads of bike gear. bad cocktail

riding on a salt pan has been a dream of mine for a long time. ever since ive dreamed of this trip i have an image of myself riding through a salt pan with nothing in sight. well on that fine day i did it. it was a hard 70km ride through deep sand to get there. and over lots of shrubs and other indescribables. but mamma mia was it worth it. on arrival your greeted with this nothingness. and its goes on forever. an infinte nothingness. it feels like a scene from the neverending story. where the word was lost to emptiness. all your left with is simplicity. the sky and the white earth. theres a line you can draw at the horizon and its all you have. its a magical feeling being out there. i kind of felt like i was in my mind. in my subconsious. i was all alone out there and so it was quiet. just me and myself and the line. everything i amplified. your breathing, your swallowing. theres no sound, so a breath has the force of a hurricane and a click of your tongue is the sound of a lightening bolt. i felt so free. at one point i took all my clothes off and ran naked with my eyes closed in the nothing. and i did it for a long time. that really touched me - and no, not down there.

i then layed myself down and closed my eyes. the brightness was hurting and as i didnt have any sunglasses i could get sun-blindness very quickly. i slept under the shade of the ducati with nothing to do the whole day but look occasionally at the line and think about who i was and where i was. my life and my loved ones. and its all so simple out there. i felt like lifes complexities were broken down. that i knew what mattered, that i truly knew who and what i was.

i put up my tent and cooked a simple dinner. the sun went down and it was a magnificent sunset. the setting sun's light pans out horizontally across the nothingness and the gradients of colour were both perfect and new to me in their tones. i slept. during the night there was a large animal sniffing around my tent. i had a dream that the animal was pulling me out. i woke up in the morning to the predawn sunrise. and it was more. the colour range could have killed a goldfish.

i left. i was sad to go. but you cant hang around the nothingness too long. i think you would go mad. mad with its infinity and beauty. it was one of the most beautiful moments ive had on this trip. and what made it even more special was that i was all alone with me myself and i.