Name Mike Carter
Who? Freelance travel writer whose work appears mostly in the Guardian and Observer newspapers. His Uneasy Rider travel column in the Observer, which charted his 2006 six-month solo motorcycle trip through Europe and beyond, was subsequently turned into a book of the same name. He’s currently cycling around the coastline of Britain — a journey of 6,000 miles — for his latest Observer column. If he survives, he plans to write a book about it too. Check out his column here.
Age 45
Countries Visited 54

Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Stretch of Road for Motorcycle If things haven’t improved since 2006, any stretch of road in Albania. In just a few short days, I practically destroyed my shocks in the potholes, was attacked by snakes, shot at and had the nearest of near misses with a car that came straight at me before flying over a wall. It was like starring in my own Indiana Jones movie.
2. Worst Travel Writing Line A toss up between “It was the perfect end to the perfect day” and “I’ll definitely be back”. I’m pretty sure I’ve used them both at some stage. Possibly in the same piece.
3. Worst Thing about Guidebooks I may be missing the point here, but I can’t for the life of me understand why some guidebooks print huge, double-page spread color photos of places and just a few words about them. You’ve bought the guidebook, you’re reading the guidebook. You are, presumably, going to travel to see the place for yourself. So give us some useful information, not pictures, damn you.
4. Worst Meal Not so much a meal, but I bought a Fan Milk, an ice-cream type snack, in Togo recently. Unpasturised milk product, from a street vendor, in Togo. It was coming out of both ends for days. Funny that.
5. Worst Toilet No contest. In a bar in a village in central Romania they had an outside toilet up some steps. When you entered, you saw that the toilet was just a very large hole in the floor to a deep pit of sewage about six feet below you. The floor was very slippery as one can imagine and the hole easily big enough to fall through. No one would even know you were gone. I have nightmares about it to this day.