He faced scorpions, snakes and hostile US soldiers and his bicycle took a beating, but the 63-year-old Chechen now back home after cycling to and from Makkah says he is counting his blessings. Dzhanar-Aliyev Magomed-Ali returned to this war-torn Chechnya town on January 18. His pilgrimage, (Haj), to the Muslim holy city of Makkah in Saudi Arabia, had little in common with the exploits of most Western adventurers.
But his story reflects the dogged determination of many older people in this battle-scarred region of southern Russia, which has spent most of the last 12 years in armed conflict with Moscow and where day-to-day survival has often required near-superhuman effort.
In an interview in Urus-Martan, near Chechnya's main city of Grozny, Magomed-Ali showed off an article from a Jordanian newspaper about his epic cycle-ride, published as he passed through that country. It was one of 13 states he said he criss-crossed on his winding route before returning last week.
The impulse for the journey came when his mother visited him in a dream, recalled the slight man who sports the tall lambskin hat worn by respected elders in this mostly Muslim mountain region.
"She told me: 'You should do the Haj, Magomed-Ali'. And when I asked her how I was supposed to do it she answered: 'You've got a bicycle. Go on that and I'll help you along the way'," said Magomed-Ali.
He took the precaution of training for the journey, taking short cycle-rides around Chechnya's war-ravaged landscape, and also equipped himself with 11 spare chains and six replacement inner tubes for his bicycle, which he bought for the equivalent of 70 dollars.
In search of the most direct route, he headed south last November 8 out of Russia to neighbouring Azerbaijan, where he camped outside the Saudi embassy hoping for a visa. The disbelief he encountered from consulate officials was perhaps not surprising - it was hardly cycle-friendly territory that lay before him. "The consulate's employees took me to be abnormal and couldn't understand how I planned to get to their country by bicycle," he recalled.
After 18 days he gave up and headed south across the border into Iran and then, for perhaps the most perilous part of his journey, into strife-torn Iraq - a lengthy and perilous wrong turn. Having reached Baghdad and witnessed what he calls that country's "terrible war," Magomed-Ali ran into a group of American soldiers.
"Because I hadn't got a visa, they broke my bicycle, smashed it against the ground and called me a Russian pig. I told them I wasn't Russian but a Muslim and they seized my passport and pointed to the crosses on the cover," he said.
He was then forced to turn around and head back to Iran and around Iraq through Armenia and Georgia, down through Turkey, Syria, Jordan and finally - after further border wrangles - into Saudi Arabia and to his destination, Makkah.
There he was well-received and offered prayers for his family and homeland, before turning round and heading back home. Beyond the Jordanian newspaper report the details of this extraordinary tale cannot be confirmed. Magomed-Ali clearly revels in the more hair-raising aspects of his tale, including encounters with wolves in Azerbaijan and also with a fierce hyena while sleeping under the stars.
But while it is impossible to vouch for every detail there is no mistaking the determination of this innocuous-seeming figure, who recounted his adventure with all the passion of traditional storytellers in this part of the world.
He clearly has no love for Chechnya's Moscow-backed rulers and his bicycle - his "iron horse," as he calls it - is adorned with a symbol showing a wolf under the moon, the emblem of Chechen independence fighters.
He insists that along his route, even in Iraq, he was not afraid. "I was only afraid, and am afraid, of God - and that I might not reach my goal," he said. "I did the Haj in order to fulfil the will of my mother, who gave me life and taught me love for my homeland, which for me is priceless," he said.
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