Cycling FORBIDDEN?!🚳Hitchhiking Into Bahrain

Day 294. 51km (69636kms)

The shelter had protected me from the light overnight rain. In contrast to the night before the beach was now silent save for a couple of grounds keepers who respectfully kept their distance. The garbage on the beach by the unoccupied booths had been cleaned up already, but outside mine the litter remained making me look the one throwing my rubbish around! Distant dolphins swam by as I drank my coffee and prepared myself for the adventure that lay ahead..

A grey overcast day on grey flat highways it wasn’t a very inspiring ride, until I got lost in a go-carting track before emerging at last at the tollbooth entry to the bridge than joins Saudi to Bahrain. Annoyingly it’s forbidden to cycle here so bike-tourers must hitch a lift over. Several utes, a great many huuuuuge SUVs, even a motor home with an empty bike rack passed me by without stopping. I was offered taxis for around $200. I waited. I was brought coffee and water on a little silver tray by the toll manager, followed by a bag of breakfast. I think the drivers didn’t know cycling was forbidden - there are no signs to this effect - and so were confused as to what I was trying to do. At last, and with the help of the toll manager, a Saudi ute driver picked me up. He was on his was to party over New Year’s Eve in the less restrictive Bahrain and as such preferred not to be identified.

I wished I could’ve cycled the causeway; a magnificent 30kms of wide-shouldered highway over the water with a stop midway on a tiny island for customs and immigration. Not technically travelling by bike this time the bureaucracy of entry and exit took no time at all.

Once in Manama I immediately found my way to one of the half dozen bottle shops in the city and bought some new year bubbles. Whilst I’d been rushing through the desert to reach Bahrain for new year my NYE plans had regrettably fallen through. In addition Lavanya my Warm Showers host with whom I spent a lovely couple of days, did not celebrate solar new year. So in the end I brought 2023 in FaceTiming my family and popping a Prosecco cork as quietly as possible to avoid waking my sleeping host.

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