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Cycling the world since 2011

23/10/2026

FASTEST DANCE IN THE WORLD

This is Zaouli dance, a traditional masked street dance of the G**o people in Ivory Coast. It is famous for its lightning-fast, non-repeating footwork while keeping the upper body and head completely still.

It takes about seven years of training to master the complex high-speed rhythmic movements.

22/10/2026

While cycling through Guinea, I stopped at a small village shop to buy water and noticed a young boy taking a phone call. I immediately checked my iPhone 17 Pro and there was not a single bar, despite the best eSIM I could find.

This little man kept talking. He was animated and so loud that everybody around could hear him. He gestured and scolded someone on the other end like a contractor yelling at workers who had messed up a construction job.

I stood there, genuinely wondering what technology he was using. When the call finally ended, the little businessman turned toward me. I asked him what kind of phone he had.

He gave me the look of a man interrupted during office hours. Then he held it out.

It was a tomato paste can, hammered flat, strung around his neck with a thin rope. His own invention.

Then I noticed what he was standing behind: an old motorcycle tyre.

I couldn’t stop looking at it. Because once, there was a boy in Layyah, rolling an old tyre in the dusty streets, dreaming of something bigger.

Two boys. Two tyres. Worlds apart, face to face for one short moment.

I had never seen ingenuity quite like this. The lack of resources didn’t stop his imagination. I set him free instead.

That day, I had the most expensive phone in the village yet no signal. He had a tomato can, and he was the one connected.

Today, we can access the whole world through our phones, yet so many of us feel more bored and alone than ever. Perhaps it’s not about technology, but being fully present where we are.

Africa taught me lessons like this every day. Every encounter opened a small window in my heart, and a little more humanity got in.

22/07/2026

21 July. I turn 49 today.

It is another birthday on the road, far from Layyah. I have spent more than one-fifth of my life cycling around the world. The last two and a half years have taken me across Africa.

No matter how far I go, I keep crossing paths with home.

While crossing the Sahara in Morocco, I reached the same latitude as Layyah, my hometown in Pakistan. An invisible line stretched eastward across the Earth, linking the desert beneath my feet to the place where my life began, 7,280 kilometres away.

I stopped and gathered stones from the ground. One by one, I arranged them until the name LAYYAH appeared in the Sahara.

It was not the first time an invisible line had connected me to home.

In 2018, while crossing the same latitude in Mexico, I installed a signpost pointing towards Layyah. In Tajikistan in 2015, I crossed the same longitude as Layyah.

Layyah is more than a point on a map. It is where I grew up rolling a tyre through dusty streets, where my parents are buried, and where my first journey on two wheels began.

My father used to tell me, “My son, whatever you become and wherever you go, never forget your roots.”

Perhaps each of these small acts has been my way of keeping that promise.

All these years, I thought I was carrying Layyah with me.

I did not realize that the journey was also finding its way back to the same street where it began.

16/07/2026

While cycling through the Sahara Desert in Morocco, I reached the same latitude as Layyah, the town in Pakistan where I was born. If I drew a straight line towards the east, it would cross deserts, mountains, cities, rivers and seas before reaching the place where my story began.

Layyah was 7280 kilometres away. Yet, for a moment, it felt very close.

Perhaps our origin is an essential part of our identity. It shapes who we are, even after we have travelled far from it. My father always used to say, “My son, whatever you become, wherever you go, don’t forget your roots.”

After more than a decade on the road, I am still trying to understand what home really is.

Is it where we were born, where someone waits for us, or simply an attachment we are unable to let go of?

Maybe we never truly leave home.

What does home mean to you?

01/07/2026

Can you hear the silence when it is the loudest?

Can you see when the night is at its darkest?

Can you find peace when everything around you is moving?

Imagine a journey through the vast stretch of the Sahara Desert on an empty iron ore freight train, the longest train in the world. No seats, no shade, nothing to hold on to. You feel as if you are alone inside a washing machine.

The train feels like a cry in the emptiness of the Sahara Desert.

Dust and sand blind you.

It feels like a dream. As if we are prisoners of our destiny, being transported to another planet for the gravest crime possible: breaking free from the system and traveling.

When the train starts or stops, the force moves through the wagons like a whip, a shockwave strong enough to throw you off your feet and slam your head against the walls of the wagon. At night, this shockwave sounds like a jet flying above your head.

The brightest and most vivid sunset I have ever seen in my life was on this train, moving like a giant worm through the desert. It was as if the eye of the sky was looking directly at us.

When the night fell, there was a strange silence in perhaps the loudest train on the planet. The night sky was hazy with a thick layer of dust, and the waning crescent moon hung low in the sky. Far in the distance were cone-shaped blank mountains rising from the flat plain of the Sahara Desert.

Standing on the right side of the train wagon, I looked far and deep. The silence of the landscape spoke something to me, and I felt peace in all the chaos.

Perhaps it was the most spiritual moment in all my journey across Africa. It didn’t happen in a place of worship, but on the iron ore train, in noise, dust, and darkness.

It told me that no matter how far we go, eventually we have to find peace within ourselves. The outer world only helps dissolve the veil that stands between our mind and spirituality.

And I wondered: if peace can be found in such chaos, why do we travel so far searching for it only in quiet places?

28/06/2026

These portraits were taken in Belen village, Guinea Bissau, during Fanado, an initiation ceremony among the Balanta people.

Photographing the ceremony itself was not allowed, so I didn’t photograph that.

There was a language barrier, and I didn’t have a guide with me, only a local person accompanying me. I didn’t understand everything that was happening around me.

So I photographed what was allowed: the faces.

At the end, I spent whatever money I had with me to buy water, drinks, and snacks for people around me. It was a small gesture, but it brought smiles, surprise, laughter, and a little joy, even when we could barely speak to each other.

Maybe life is nothing but a collection of such memories.

These are some of the faces I photographed in Belen.

Which face spoke to you the most?

27/06/2026

This is the Gio Devil of Liberia. Despite the name, the Gio masquerade is not something evil or malicious, but a powerful cultural figure connected to entertainment, social order, spiritual presence, and community life.

The Gio dancer rises up to 10 feet high on stilts, dominating the skyline as drums and singers guide every movement.

These masked figures are seen as protectors of the community and appear during festivals, holidays, and cultural events, bringing blessings, excitement, and a sense of order.

Have you ever seen a mask dance like this before?

23/06/2026

DALOMON FESTIVAL, GUINEA 🇬🇳

At first glance, it looks like a battle.

Thousands of people rushing across the landscape, carrying nets and converging on a small lake. From the ground, it feels chaotic. From the air, it resembles a scene from a war movie.

But this is Dalomon Festival. An annual community fishing festival near Kankan, Guinea.

Once a year, entire communities gather around the lake or rivers for this tradition. When the signal is given, thousands of people rush into the water with their nets in the hope of catching fish.

Yet only a handful of people among the thousands will actually catch any.ll But, Dalomon is about much more than fish. The fish caught during the festival are not meant to be sold. They are shared with family and the community. The day is about reunion, tradition, and bringing people together. For many, taking part matters more than the catch itself.

Watching it from above was one of the most extraordinary sights I have witnessed in all my years of travel. What looked like chaos was, in reality, an entire community coming together around a tradition that has been passed down through generations.

09/06/2026

THE SEVEN STAGES OF TRAVEL

1. Curiosity & Excitement
Every journey begins with a spark of curiosity. Something awakens the desire to leave home and see what lies beyond the horizon: landscapes, cities, cultures, people, and the unknown.

2. Adventure
We choose harder ways to explore the world. The road is not only beautiful; it is unpredictable and unforgiving. We learn to overcome fear and find courage in uncertainty.

3. Passion & Obsession
With time, travel turns into passion and then into obsession. We no longer want only to visit places; we want to understand them. Routine life starts to feel shallow. A traveler would rather suffer in the unknown than remain forever in the comfort of home.

4. Connection
The world stops being a list of destinations. A stranger is no longer just a stranger. The traveler begins to feel connected to people, animals, rivers, forests, deserts, and the fragile beauty of the planet.

5. Deepening
The traveler begins to notice what tourism often hides: poverty, injustice, inequality, exploitation, and suffering. He realizes that traveling the world is a privilege. He starts asking harder questions: Why do some have so much and others so little? Why do borders divide us? Why are we destroying nature? Even photography becomes a moral responsibility. The traveler can no longer look at the world merely as scenery; he becomes a storyteller in search of truth.

6. Transformation
The journey enters the body, mind, and soul. The traveler does not simply see the world differently; he begins to live differently. Material possessions and status lose their power. The modern race for more feels shallow. The traveler searches for ways to become worthy of the road.

7. Fanaa
This is the final stage. In the beginning, the traveler leaves home thinking he will return with stories, photographs, and memories. But the true traveler does not return. Like the moth flying into the flame, he is drawn toward disappearance.

Fanaa is not the death of the body, but the death of the old identity: the person who needed certainty, applause, possessions, and a fixed idea of home.

He keeps moving. He has rejected the cage.

He has become the journey.

08/05/2026

I took these portraits of Donso musicians in Kankan, Guinea, not very far from the border of Mali.

Darkness had already fallen upon the village, and only two weak solar street lights illuminated the dusty open space where the musicians performed while locals danced with their guns under the dark night sky.

The voices of the singers pierced the silence like swords of light through the darkness. During one of the performance breaks, I took the musicians aside and made these portraits with a tiny pocket light that I carry on my tours.

For a brief moment, it brought some calmness into the intensity of the atmosphere.

People assume that I love cycling, and that is why I have been traveling the world by bicycle for more than 11 years.

But that is not really the case.

I travel by bicycle because it is the best way to explore the world. Slow, intimate, and demanding. A way of travel that requires both physical and mental resolve. You must work hard to earn your experiences.

Photography is the reward. It is what I truly love and enjoy. Cycling is the labor and the price I pay to experience and document people, places, and cultures.

Behind these portraits of honest and dignified musicians — performing for their own people, untouched by materialism, tourism, and social media — are thousands upon thousands of kilometers of cycling across deserts, villages, borders, heat, loneliness, and uncertainty.

All of that effort, just to stand in places like this for a few fleeting moments and witness something real.

And perhaps that is my true love for the indigenous cultures and tribes of Africa. Not to consume them, but to reach them slowly enough to truly see them.

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