WHITBY -- Josh Martyn’s passion for travelling has landed him in South Africa.

But it’s his passion for being on the bicycle that is going to keep him there for the next four months.

The 27-year-old Blackstock resident is currently taking part in the Tour d’Afrique, an annual trek from Cairo, Egypt through to Cape Town, South Africa and almost everywhere in between.

Long a traveller, and a cyclist, Martyn, on the advice of fellow rider David Houghton, figured it was about time he took a shot at the 11,900-kilometre journey that will see stops in Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Nambia.

“I’ve always loved travelling and always loved being on the bicycle too so it’s just kind of a combination of the two,” he said, attempting to explain what drew his interest in signing up for the event. “The best part of being on the bike is it really gets you more involved with the locals as opposed to if you are in a truck a bus or a car where you’re doing 300 kilometres a day. You’re missing a lot. On a bike you are doing 100 to 200 kilometres a day and interacting a lot more with the people.”

The former Port Perry High School student, who serves as a manager at Whitby’s Impala Bicycles, is likely enduring the toughest span of the adventure right now. Not only did he admit the first couple of weeks would be tough from a mental standpoint, but one can imagine the difficulty of spinning your wheels through the Sudan desert surrounded by nothing but the sky and the sand.

“It’s tough because the main thing is the physiological side of things. The physical aspect of it, well, over four months you’re going to get in shape pretty quick,” he said. “The first couple of weeks will be rough but the more you do over that time the better it is going to get. They talk about in Sudan where your wheel pretty much gets lost in the sand, and the heat when you’re going through Ethiopia. Those are things that are really going to take a lot out of you physiologically.”

It’s not all going to be a grind, though, for Martyn and the 55 others that have committed to making the full journey.

“I am going into it with a really open mind,” he said. “I won’t worry so much really about going fast, but go at my own pace. If I have a really lousy day and I can’t go on, I am not going to force myself to get back on the bike. I can take a day off. I’d rather ride the bike obviously, but it’s a matter of having a good time or a lousy time.

“If there is something I really want to do, that we don’t stop for, I can stop and do it. Leave all my stuff on the trucks, hop on the bus and do it, then catch up with everyone else and the trucks later,” Martyn added.

Some of the stops riders can make include seeing the pyramids, the Ngorongoro Crater, the Lower Zambezi National Park and Victoria Falls, among others.

Martyn, for one, is quite thrilled at the chance to take it all in.

“There is a race aspect to it, but the people that race in the Cairo thing... that has no appeal to me whatsoever just because you are going to miss so much,” he said. “I’ve been to Africa twice, Tanzania and Egypt, and I loved it both times. Everything about it from the food, the culture and the climate so I am sure looking forward to experiencing all that again and then some.”

Taking his time is probably the best route to ensuring Martyn gets his money’s worth out of the trip, being that the entry fee runs up to nearly $10,000 dollars for the duration.

But for Martyn, after years of racing mountain bikes, this is an opportunity worth every penny.

“When you’re racing, you’re training and you’re doing it for racing. Now I just do it for my own personal pleasure and I’m loving it,” he says.

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