A CYCLING doctor is celebrating after clocking up 10,000km in his attempt to pedal around the globe.

Dr Steve Fabes, who grew up in North Oxford, notched up the milestone in Sudan, the 17th country he has travelled through since leaving London in January.

Despite oppressive heat, insects and problems with “dodgy bowels”, the 29-year-old said the African nation was beautiful.

The former Abingdon School pupil, currently cycling with a friend, said: “The heat was intense and oppressive.

“In the whole of 2010 this area of Sudan had received just 10 minutes of light rainfall and on one day in June this year the temperature had been recorded at 49.6C in the shade.

“In the sun we recorded a high of 48C, and this was winter.

“The Saharan silence was a penetrating, piercing silence that I have lived in only once before, a decade ago when I rode through Patagonia.

“It’s a silence so complete and unsullied that it almost has volume.”

Dr Fabes aims to raise £50,000 for medical charity Merlin, which sets up medical clinics in developing countries. So far he has raised £10,000.

Despite having to fly home for knee surgery earlier this year, he still aims to cycle the 50,000 miles in five years.

Dr Fabes said he faced disaster when his £1,000 bike broke in the desert.

The medic said: “It felt like a small puncture. Then I noticed the spoke flapping in the breeze.

“Inexplicably a piece of metal had spontaneously fallen off the part where the spokes attach to.

“There was no way I could reattach the spoke by the road.

“By the look of it I would need a new hub and with it I would have to deal with a whole world of problems.

“I had to pedal onwards to the next sizable town, Dongola, 50km away. We were still 500km from the capital Khartoum.”

There Dr Fabes spent three days hunting for a bike mechanic, before eventually finding one.

After a quick welding job, the bike was ready to carry on towards Ethiopia, where the medic will be spending Christmas.

Dr Fabes added: “It wasn’t my ingenuity or resourcefulness and it wasn’t good fortune that helped me solve the problem with my bike. It was people.

“After Ethiopia we get much more off the beaten track by skirting the shores of Lake Turkana, a desolate wilderness and tribal area in the borderlands of Kenya and Ethiopia where few cyclists dare to venture and where lions, crocodiles and carpet vipers roam.”

His route will take him through regions affected by tropical diseases which occur in areas of poverty and affect as many as one billion people worldwide.

To follow Dr Fabes’s progress, or to donate, see cycling the6.blogspot.com