MOTORBIKE AROUND THE WORLD Tome 1

From France to China

My motorcycle adventure to China dates back to 2005. The path of my life leads me today (2020 already!) to go beyond literary borders to extend its diffusion. The text of my story remains the same. I have refrained from modifying my personal feelings that I delivered to you in their raw state, even if it is certain that to this day the experience of the travels that followed and my life experience have given me a wider understanding of the world we live in.

To keep the original text is to bring my testimony of the countries I traveled through with a China in full mutation and to remain faithful to the person I was fifteen years ago.

This reprint is the first volume of my motorcycle trips around the world. It will be easy for me to write the following ones; I have so many roads to tell because if I was not born on a motorcycle, we found each other when I was a pre-teenager and we never left each other.

So it was without realizing it that when I was twenty years old I had traveled many kilometers - seminal elements in the realization of the adventure - and passed through a door that could not close: that other side recorded in small notebooks, anecdotes taken from life, places, encounters, good and bad, where I spoke of road and freedom, free will and destiny, years of transformation where as a young teenager I became an experienced motorcyclist. This is the story, in part, of a metamorphosis that was introduced by the writing of my story in China.

I am not saying that traveling and motorcycling are essential for personal fulfillment, everyone seeks his balance in his own way. I have no other ambition than to state how I found mine.

 

Note to readers: a short grammatical clarification for those who may have questions about my use of the term "on a motorcycle". The prepositions to and from are both derived from the Latin in, which means in and on. The expression "on a motorcycle" (which I prefer, because "I am one with my motorcycle"!) is therefore correct and confirmed by usage (Le Robert).

Mon récit de cette aventure

Après avoir roulé sur plusieurs continents, Jean-Loup Fournier part en Chine au guidon de sa moto. Il va parcourir la légendaire Route de la soie et ses caravansérails dans des contrées mythiques, Turquie, Iran, Turkménistan, Ouzbékistan, Kazakhstan, et, au coeur de la Chine, Xi’an, ultime marché vers l’Occident. Son voyage lui fera découvrir les différentes facettes de la Chine, ses habitants, ses provinces reculées, le nord du Tibet et ses monastères, jusqu’à Pékin et sa Cité Interdite. Il ira au-delà de ses espérances en prolongeant sa route jusqu’à Shanghaï, départ maritime de la Route de la soie, époustouflante de modernité exubérante.

Mon récit est disponible

France, le départ

[…] Aussi long que soit le voyage, il commence par un simple tour de roue.
Me voilà prêt à partir vers la Chine.

La route ensoleillée de cette jeune journée me rappelle à la simple réalité : parvenir à rester sur mes roues et aller au plus loin que la providence m’accordera, toujours plus à l’Est. Vers la Chine [...]

Davaï ! L’aventure n’attend qu’à être vécue !

France-Nissa la Bella!

En partant pour ce nouveau voyage, je ne pouvais ignorer les liens qui me nouent étroitement à cette ville,

à mon histoire et de la même façon je ne pouvais pas négliger de traverser la toile des sentiments comme si de rien n’était. La dernière amarre est coupée ; en route pour de nouvelles aventures ! La ville s’éloigne lentement dans le miroir du rétroviseur. Le ronronnement rassurant du monocylindre me l’assure : il y aura d’autres ailleurs et autant de retours. [...]