Bettina Selby

I was born in London and as a very young child at the outbreak of World War II, I was evacuated to a coal mining village in South Wales where I came early to the grief of separation and the loss of my parents. It was at that time I found consolation and excitement in making up stories, I used to call them 'having an adventure.' Teachers began to say I was a born writer. I left school at fifteen and after a variety of casual jobs, I joined the Women's Royal Army Corps. After leaving the army at nineteen, I married and raised three children while working as a freelance photographer. Later, I studied for a degree in world religions at London University.

By the age of 47, with the children off my hands, I decided it was at last time to see something more of the world. I had no hesitation at all in deciding that a bicycle was the ideal transport for my purpose. I also decided to travel alone and so far I have seen no reason to change the format.

My first project was to ride from Karachi to Kathmandu along the line of the Indus River and the Himalayas, and five months and five thousand miles later I achieved my goal. Back home, I wrote up the account of my journey, calling it 'Riding the Mountains Down,' after a poem by e.e.cummings.

With the book published and selling well (it is still selling in German and Japanese translations under the title 'Himalaya'), I set out to ride from London to Jerusalem following the paths of the Crusaders and early Christian pilgrims.

Probably my most dangerous undertaking was following the course of the Nile from the Mediterranean to the Mountains of the Moon in Uganda. It was a journey that presented great contrasts - the most stunning African landscapes, wonderful and diverse peoples, poverty, refugees, and always the problem of survival, of staying alive in the deserts, of finding food and clean water, and of steering a way through the skirmishes of the Sudanese civil war and the aftermath of the Ugandan massacres. (Published as 'Riding the Desert Trail,' it is available in German as 'Ah Agala' and Japanese as 'something quite unpronounceable.')