Russell McGilton

BOMBAY TO BEIJING BY BICYCLE

In loving memory of my father – may you still play the golden Hammond – and Krista Bernard, cycle adventurer and inspiration to many

Prologue

‘Congratulations,’ grinned Dr Chawla as he handed me my blood test result. ‘You are having the malaria.’

‘Malaria?’

‘Yes, yes.’ He smiled again as he slouched back in his chair and scratched his crotch. ‘Wonderful.’

‘Tell me, Doctor,’ I said, wiping sweat from my eye, ‘is this the kind of malaria that goes to your brain… and then kills you?’

‘No, no, no, no,’ he said and, just before I could breathe a sigh of relief, ‘not yet.’

I tried to relax as my head slowly slid off my shoulders. Here I was in the middle of rural India, miles from anywhere while some deadly malaria strain coursed through my veins.

‘Do many people die from this around here?’

‘Yes, many!’ He smiled brightly, then flipped me over a squeaky hospital bed and whacked a needle in my bum.

It was at this moment, with my face jammed against a stained pillowcase and a prick rammed in my rear, that I wondered how I got here, why I came here and why I wasn’t at home stuffing my face with chocolate biscuits and watching erotic Spanish movies on SBS: ‘¡Me golpearon con un burro, Victor!’[i]

There were numerous reasons, but one in particular that had pushed me over the edge and onto a plane. You see, some months prior to my feverish dilemma, my father had died. I inherited money and wanted to do something responsible with it, such as get a mortgage. This, of course, meant getting a steady job, something more permanent than my recent endeavours: a cameo on Neighbours and then, upping my range, a job as a silhouette in a commercial. (I was fired because my bald head was, to quote the director, ‘too shiny’.)

My writing, on the other hand, was gaining much better traction with numerous articles published in newspapers and magazines. So I decided to knuckle down and get a job as a journalist.

Try as I might, ten months later I had been turned down by every newspaper, magazine, website, zine and pamphlet publisher in the country. But just as I was flirting with the possibility of becoming a stringer[ii] (‘Ah! The civil war in Sudan looks nice…’), I received a call from the Age newspaper. They wanted me to come in for an interview. This was miraculous in itself; I had sat an exam for that very privilege and was sure I had failed.

I groomed myself in the art of interviewing. I read all the books. I role-played with friends. I even sought professional advice from a careers counsellor. I was going to crack this baby.

But, as I was about to learn, no matter how well I prepared myself, no matter how badly I wanted to change the course of my life in that year of 2000, fate sometimes just decides to have her way with you.

‘Let’s pretend for a moment that you’re in a time machine,’ said Colin, a serious man with a bald, freckly head amid a panel of tight HR suits. He had been a newspaperman for 20 years and had the paper cuts to prove it. ‘You can go anywhere you like, at any time you like. Whom would you interview?’

My career counsellor, concerned at my habit of blurting out whatever was on my mind, had advised me to ‘pause and marshal my thoughts’. But old habits die hard.

‘William Burroughs.’

‘Why?’

‘’Cause he shot his wife in the head.’

The panel of interviewers raised their eyebrows one after the other like a Mexican wave.

‘Why else would you interview him?’ Colin pressed.

‘Er… he was into some pretty wild drugs. Not that I’m into that kind of thing!’ (A damned lie.) ‘It’s just that… he wrote about the most amazing things.’

‘Such as?’

Oh, well he wrote this story about baboons taking over the US senate and fucking all the senators in the – stop! Brain! Stop!

‘He used to cut up narratives, I mean, from books, and create a new story.’

‘Any other reason?’

My mind went blank. Well, not quite. ‘Er… ’cause he was into little boys?’

Oh, Christ! What must they be thinking? That I’m a wife-shooting, drug-taking paedophile?

Colin and the suits shifted in their chairs.

‘Now, we don’t normally do this, but we made an exception for you.’ He pulled out my exam paper.

Exception? What exception?

‘Looking at the questionnaire, it seems that you don’t know very much.’

‘Pardon?’

‘You got less than a third of the questions right.’

‘Well, not exactly,’ I stammered. ‘I mean… it’s just that… it’s just that I don’t know the answers to those questions!’

‘Do you think it is important that a journalist should know a lot of things?’

‘Well… yes. Yes, of course.’

‘Let’s move on.’ Colin flipped over the exam paper. ‘The writing component. Now tell me. In your defence from the prosecution, namely us, how would you defend yourself from the very obvious mistake in your story?’

I swallowed. ‘Mistake?’

‘Yes. In your story from the police report you have put the number of the crack house as 32 Audrey Street when it is quite clearly number 23 Audrey Street on the fact page.’

He showed me my horrid blunder.

‘How do you defend yourself against such an inexcusable mistake? A mistake that could have had us sued by the people at 32 Audrey Street if this story went to print.’

‘You see,’ a revelation struck me, ‘under your code of ethics you wouldn’t have been allowed to print the address of the victim.’

‘Then why did you put it in your story?!’ Colin and the suits chorused.

‘Ah, that’s because I didn’t know about the code of ethics before the exam!’ I said, throwing a triumphant smile. They didn’t smile back.

* * *

Later that evening

‘Anyway,’ I said to Alan, a good friend of mine, splashing puddles of red wine around his house, ‘what was wrong with my answers?’

‘Well aren’t journalists supposed to be able to argue a point? You know, present a lively discussion?’

‘Oh, Alan, I don’t know how to argue. I mean, I’m an actor—’

‘Sooo, you’re an actor now?’

‘Look. What did they expect?’

‘A journalist,’ he sighed heavily, letting the conversation deflate him. ‘So what are you going to do?’

At this moment, the memory of my father’s death seemed to squeeze the knee of my mortality just a little tighter, asking ever so impatiently, ‘What exactly are you doing with your life?’

For some time I’d been harbouring the idea of writing a travel book and rather than let that ship sit in dock and sink (like my father who never accomplished what he wanted) I was going to make it set sail.

So looking for inspiration I found myself in the travel section of my local library, perusing through a rather obscure book entitled Full Tilt by Dervla Murphy.

Murphy was a stout Irishwoman with a head the size of a bar fridge,[iii] who in 1963 cycled from Dunkirk to Delhi. She endured one of Europe’s worst winters, was attacked by wolves in Yugoslavia, travelled through Pakistan’s baking 50-degree heat, copped a gutful of dysentery, and was forced to shoot at bike thieves in Iran.

It sounded just the ticket for me!

Of course, I didn’t exactly want to suffer those kind of travails, but what struck me was that the bike provided a conduit for stories, unusual stories, stories that you weren’t likely to get as a backpacker where you’re subjected to the tyranny of bus and train schedules, tourist touts, that inevitably lead to a sameness of experience.

I had, however, had the brief joy of cycle touring with Al through New Zealand. We were unfit, flabby and so under-prepared and swore never to travel with each other again (actually, I think we just swore). But what we both liked was that you got time to enjoy the environment more, smell it, feel it, unlike the countless Maui Campervans and tourist buses that rushed from town to hotel, hotel to town.

Dervla’s stories set my imagination in motion. The question was: where to go?

Of late I had been under the spell from travellers’ stories of the Sub-Indian continent and India soon seduced me with promises of exotic desert nights, ancient architecture, colourful tribes, renegade hippies, yoga and Bollywood movies. I wanted to taste her spices, feel her dust and her rain.

As for China, I heard things were changing quickly there. Foreigners no longer had to take a guide with them, and more of the country was becoming accessible. With a bike, the possibilities of unrestricted travel (except in Tibet) made China just that bit more enticing. The more I thought about it, the more I really liked the idea of being lost in a foreign culture: I wanted to be confused by Chinese street signs, eat things that questioned my better judgement, and be that weigoren stumbling through backstreet markets lost to it all as the soft lilts of Mandarin swirled around me.

So late one night, flipping through an old high school atlas and admiring the well-rounded contours of the Himalayas flowing into India and China, an idea hit me: if Dervla cycled from Dunkirk to Delhi, then why not… Bombay to Beijing?

I set out a pile of matchsticks like a trail of ants across the atlas and came up with an exact distance of…

Well, approximately 10 000 kilometres. If I cycled 55 kilometres each day, I would be able to complete the trip in eight months (with tea breaks, maybe ten). It would be a doddle!

‘Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle… what a great title for a book!’

Except there was one big problem with that.

1

MELBOURNE – BOMBAY/MUMBAI

January, 2001

I have never liked flying, and I was about to never like it even more. At 35 000 feet, this became abundantly obvious.

‘You are cycling from Bombay to Beijing?’ asked a rotund Indian man sitting next to me while Denzel Washington flashed across a small television screen above us in football gear. His name was Deejay and though his name might suggest something in the hip music world, he was in fact an IT consultant living in Sydney.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘But why? We have trains and buses there. Much easier for you, I think.’

‘Well, you see, cycling lets you delve into the lives of people you wouldn’t normally meet. You get to be one with the landscape, letting it wash over you.’

He snorted. ‘To be with the common man?’

‘Well, that’s part of it. I’m writing a book and I thought Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle would be an excellent title.’

‘Ah, the alliteration.’

‘Precisely. The bum-de-bum, bum-de-bum sound,’ I said, thumping my hand on each ‘b’ to stress the point.

‘Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle!’ He laughed, then sipped his tea thoughtfully. ‘Only…’

‘What is it?’

‘Bombay, my friend, is not Bombay anymore.’

‘What?’

‘This is the old name. It is now Mumbai.’

I gulped my scotch, spilling it down my chin. ‘Oh, sure. Right. I know. It’s just that in my guidebook it’s got “Mumbai slash Bombay”. I mean, doesn’t everyone still refer to it as Bombay? You know, when I was in Ho Chi Minh City the locals kept calling it Saigon. Or Myanmar still being referred to as Burma. You know, one and the same… interchangeable… well, aren’t they?’

‘No, no. It is Mumbai.’ He grinned then put on his headphones and went back to watching Denzel teach white boys how to tackle.

‘Mumbai…’ I said to myself. ‘Mumbai to Beijing by…’ I looked out at the escaping Australian desert, suddenly wanting to retrieve it.

‘Shit!’

* * *

The next morning I woke to the sound of the phone ringing.

‘Good morning, sir. Breakfast? Budda toast, omelette, chai. Vhot are you vanting?’

‘Could I please have the buttered toast, chai, omelette… jam?’

‘Okay.’

He hung up.

I opened the drapes. The sun was out, warming the run-down and mildewed buildings opposite, their window ledges chalked with pigeon shit. Dusty rainwater pipes ran this way and that like some alien mechanical creeper while a large yellow sheet, hung out to dry, tongued its way down a wall.

This was the daylight squalor I had imagined as I bounced around Mumbai’s traffic the previous night.

‘Sorry, sir,’ the taxi driver had said, swerving out of the way of a doorless bus. ‘Much traffic bumping. No good here in India. Many bad peoples driving without permission.’

I was in Colaba, a narrow peninsula of Mumbai bubbling with hotels, tourists, markets and restaurants by the sea. Under the morning sun, ragged men, dark as the rubbish around them, shovelled clumps of brown muck onto wagons pulled by water buffalo while business men briskly marched past, skipping over holes in the pavement as their leather briefcases pumped them towards towering office buildings. Women delicately tiptoed around a beggar sitting by a gift store, their gold and red saris floating around the women as if they were walking under water. Meanwhile, inside my hotel, a child exhausted itself into convulsive, tearful retches.

Mumbai sounded big, and with good reason. Over 16 million people live,[iv] work and breathe in this colliding metropolis. It has the biggest film industry in the world, more millionaires than New York, and a port that handles half of India’s foreign trade. Workers from Assam, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and even as far away as Nepal come here to make it big in this collective maelstrom, doing any work they can find. Many are unlucky and find themselves in one of the largest street slums of India, if not the world.

I turned on the air-conditioner and looked at the mess that had taken over my room: a Trek mountain bike: four panniers (bike bags), a handlebar bag and a medium-sized backpack. A total weight (bike included) of 43 kilograms.[v] While Dervla Murphy carried only a small kitbag of clothes, a handgun and a dash of courage, I felt it prudent to pack for the worst.

Just as I was considering all this the door burst open.

A porter, sweating in the humidity, charged in with breakfast, and put it on the table. This would be a common experience for me in India – staff walking in on me without a knock catching me in all sorts of undress not to mention compromising situations.

‘Welcome to Bombay, sir.’

‘Bombay? I thought it was called Mumbai?’

He smiled. ‘As you like.’

Deejay had been wrong, it seemed (or just winding me up). As I would find out later, Indians were still using the name Bombay quite liberally: taxi drivers asked where in Bombay I wanted to go to, students eagerly asked for my impressions of Bombay, restaurant owners praised Bombay epicure, hotel managers requested information on the duration of my stay in Bombay, and the local film industry was still referred to as Bollywood, not Mollywood.

Perhaps the new name hadn’t been embraced for political reasons. In 1996, Bombay’s name was changed to Mumbai after pressure on the Indian government from the ultra-right-wing Shivsena party, led by the prickly Bal Thackery. The name change was aimed at repelling legacies of India’s past colonisation and encroaching Westernisation. British names had been written over with Indian ones – street names, places and features of the city that lent reference to the Raj.

The smell of omelette took me from these thoughts and sat me down to breakfast, where I noticed that something was missing. Everything was there – the omelette, tea and toast…

‘Jam?’ I asked the porter, but he simply wobbled his head again and left.

What was with the head-wobble? Was it a ‘yes’, a ‘no’, ‘I don’t know?’ or ‘I’ll just keep you guessing’? It reminded me of those toy dogs you used to see in the back of old Chrysler Valiants, heads jiggling happily.

I bit into my omelette when a distinct sweetness hit my palate. ‘Oooh! They’ve mixed the jam in!’

With my jam-curried omelette hanging off my fork, I unfurled my Nelles map of India and China.

When I first decided to do this trip back in Melbourne, my plan was to start from Mumbai/Bombay, straight through to Nepal then into Tibet, China and eventually Beijing. However, the Chinese government were (and still are) a bit sensitive about independent foreign travellers, let alone cyclists, going through this border crossing (mmm… could it be the wholesale destruction of the Tibetan people and their culture that they don’t want us to see?), thus they were barred from passing. It was only on organised tour groups that this was possible.

So, my plan changed to China via Pakistan.

But this changed again when four months before I was about to leave, I fell in love.

A gorgeous blue-eyed blonde, Rebecca, a recently qualified acupuncturist and eight years my junior had caught me hook line and sinker. She too was going travelling, and as it was her first time, adamant about doing it on her own.

‘Besides,’ she had said, flicking through travel guides at the bookstore. ‘Europe’s more my thing. Not India.’

‘But just imagine Bec, there we are in an Indian palace, making love in the steamy monsoonal heat, while the rain trickled and danced outside and a cool breeze refreshed our hot naked bodies… mmm?’

‘Ooh! Now, there’s a thought!’

Of course, this wasn’t the only reason Bec eventually agreed. She wasn’t that kinda girl. Bec was going because she wanted to meet the people, learn about the history, to understand the cultural milieu and the colonial context in sub-continental India… actually, no, I think she was just going for the sex! Hell, it would be enough for me. ‘You wanna shag over a Indonesian volcano… surrrreee!’

‘Just say anywhere on my itinerary, Bec, and we can meet up there for a month and then you can do your own thing.’

She looked at the map and pointed to an obscure splog.

‘Kathmandu!? But that’s not on the way,’ I protested.

‘Yes, it is darling!’

And because women are always right, I made a ‘slight’ 3000-kilometre detour via Rajasthan (to beat the approaching summer).

This was my final plan:

Yes, I know. It makes Winston Churchill’s hiccup[vi] look like an epileptic seizure. But would you believe it got far worse?

* * *

After breakfast, I set to work on assembling the bike, most of that time spent straightening or ‘truing’, as it’s called, the front wheel (‘Thanks Qantas!’).

Dervla, before her big trip, christened her bike ‘Roz’. Not to be outdone, I called mine ‘bike’.

Once ready, I hauled ‘bike’ over my shoulder, walked downstairs and, with a stiff breath, threw myself into the maelstrom of traffic for my debut ride into Mumbai.

Of course, the first thing you notice about cycling in Mumbai is the traffic. In Melbourne, cyclists go on the far left of the road and cars go on the right. In India, well, it’s pretty much the same except the cows go on the far left and cars on the right.

The reason cows in India have such free rein of the roads, footpaths and in some cases (as I have seen) banks, is because of that well-known fact that they are considered – in India’s largest religion, Hinduism – to be sacred. In its religious texts cows are represented with their famous deities: Lord Rama, The Protector, received a dowry of a thousand cows; a bull was used to transport Lord Shiva, The Destroyer; while the Lord Krishna, The Supreme Being, was a humble cowherd. There are even temples built in honour of them.

Cows are so loved in India, Mahatma Gandhi went so far as to declare, ‘Mother cow is in many ways better than the mother who gave us birth’. Somehow, I don’t think mothers around the world would be impressed with Gandhi’s comparison, i.e. being upstaged by some dozy, garbage-eating ruminant with hairy teats.

Anyway, it is no wonder that it is illegal to eat or harm cows in most states of India.

Now the problem with all this… this overt bovine respect, is that the cows, people, the cows… know this! And let me tell you something – they are the rudest and most arrogant cows (apart from the ones in public office) that I have ever met in my entire life!

They just lurch out in front of you like a second-hand couch falling off a truck without so much as a cursory look. So many times I’ve had to slam on the brakes to narrowly miss their voluminous rumps or have been ‘nosed’ off the pavement for being in their way. I’ve even seen gangs of them plonking down in the middle of traffic like some grazing roundabout. I tried to exact some kind of revenge by going to McDonalds but to my dismay they only sold mutton burgers.

Despite the cows, cycling in Mumbai wasn’t as dangerous as I had thought, even if there didn’t seem to be enough space for anything other than taxis, crammed buses and the occasional gnat. Traffic moved a lot slower due to there being so much of it and drivers showed no sign of agitation as they beeped madly at seemingly everything around them.

It was, however, pollution that caused me the greatest of ills. Most drivers adulterated the fuel of their cars, auto-rickshaws, motorbikes or trucks with kerosene, as kerosene is much cheaper than petrol. Try as I might to block out the foul mess with a folded handkerchief over my face, this only served to scare American Express staff when I went to cash a traveller’s cheque.

I thought I’d go and see the Parsi Towers of Silence situated on Malaba Hill, a lush enclave of Mumbai some 5 kilometres away. For over 2500 years Parsis have been disposing of their dead in dokhmas (towers). In these towers, corpses are laid out naked and arranged according to age and sex, and are later… devoured by vultures.

As I cycled into the thicket of street life along Colaba Causeway, my nose was assaulted by a confluence of smells: the heavy stench from open drains, the odour of stale urine, the relieving aroma of pakoras (fried vegetables) from street vendors, and for contrast, the overpowering perfume from joss sticks placed like guards on the corner of erected tables selling bluish pictures of the Hindu monkey god, Hanuman.

I dodged workmen laying bricks on the road, and was forced onto the pavement and walked with the bike. A woman, sitting with her hand open to passers-by, upon seeing me, grabbed at my shorts. I tried to keep walking but her nails caught in my shorts like blackberry thorns.

‘Ten rupees, sir. Ten rupees…’

I pulled out a bunch of rupee notes and my shorts were instantly released.

Office workers were busily marching off to lunch, and as I dodged swinging limbs and sweaty business shirts, it appeared that I was walking in the wrong direction. My only relief came as I walked through the Oval Maidan, a broad, parched park filled with enthusiastic young cricketers knocking cricket balls across its starkness.

Near Mumbai’s Churchgate Station throngs of passengers swam by. Across the current of faces, Tiffin boxes (silver tins with wire handles) were being stacked and carried on wooden barrows by men in cotton pyjamas and Nehru pillbox hats. These men were dabbawallahs (in local dialect, Marathi, dabba means ‘Tiffin carrier’; wallah means ‘man’), lunch-box couriers of the Mumbai Tiffin-Box Suppliers Association – a vestige of the British Raj. Every day, about 5000 dabbawallahs deliver approximately 170 000 lunches (prepared by housewives) from suburban households to schools, universities and offices across Mumbai. Apparently, dabbawallahs, despite many being illiterate, only make one mistake for every eight million lunches delivered!

I watched two dabbawallahs spear through the slowing traffic, bounce the barrow over a gutter and disappear around a building.

I got back on the bike and cut through onto Marine Drive on the west side of Colaba where the Arabian Sea met the bay. On the beach lay clumps of rags flapping in the wind. Some of these rags got up and walked around – people, no, whole communities, perhaps from the rural plains I would soon be cycling on, were living among plastic bags of blue ruin. Behind them, smog chalked across Back Bay, leaving shadows of Colaba’s hotels like a badly printed watercolour.

Parched from the acrid taste of exhaust, I stopped at a restaurant, sat down and ordered a juice. Shortly after, a frumpish woman entered and greeted the waiter with a kiss and a devilish smile, her green-and-white sari swaying around her. I thought this was odd, as I had not seen an Indian woman greet any man in this way in the four days I had been here. And there was a reason for this, I soon discovered: she was a man or, rather, I think had been. She was a hijra – a caste of transvestites and eunuchs.

‘Give me some money,’ came a deep, smooth, yet feminine voice. She smiled at me, flirting a little.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Tsk!’ Her face twisted, taking her large smile with it. ‘You give me some rupees.’

‘What for?’

‘Tsk! Give me money!’

‘But what have you done?’

‘Baksheesh,’ she said, and her large smile returned with a proffered hand adorned with gold rings and bangles.

‘No.’

‘Tsk! You give me no money!’ This time she hissed like a cat and made a strange claw with her fingers.

‘Oh, dear. Am I cursed now?’ I smiled, but her eyes were like razors and she shooed me away as if I were an overweight moth.

I was lucky I hadn’t been spat on or, worse, flashed at by his/her missing bits. Hijras usually earn their living by turning up at weddings, births and other celebrations in the hope that their bad singing, dancing and vulgar habits will be put to a stop by a few handy bribes. If none of that paper note stuff comes their way, eunuchs will curse newborn babies, spit ochre-coloured paan juice on newlyweds or sometimes go as far as taking their own clothes off.

Although it’s unclear how many hijras there are in India, the figure has been put at anything between 100 000 and 1.2 million – in other words, nobody has the foggiest. Hijras are generally either those born with deformed genitalia, hermaphrodites, transsexuals or voluntary castratos, while others have allegedly been kidnapped, drugged and castrated against their will.

Interestingly, because hijras have an insider’s knowledge of local neighbourhoods (they always know in advance where a wedding will take place), some credit card companies now employ them as debt collectors. Somehow I can’t see that working particularly well in the East End of London: ‘Ya gonna show me ya wot?’

I pushed up Malaba Hill through slivers of light, the sun trying to knife its way through the thick canopy of trees. At a junction, my guidebook got me lost, so I asked directions from a group of old men wearing Nehru hats and playing what looked to be Chinese chequers. They pointed further up the hill just as a kite snapped in front of my face; a gang of schoolchildren giggled and ran away with it.

I rode up through a lush tropical garden and arrived at a nondescript bungalow that I thought was the entry to the Towers of Silence. An old Parsi gentleman with a black silk cap and Lawrence Olivier air was circumspect about letting me go any further.

‘What do you want?’ he asked flatly.

I explained that, while I didn’t want to go into the Towers of Silence, I wondered if perhaps I could see them from afar.

‘Hmm,’ he held a stiff gaze. ‘Where are you from?’

‘Australia.’

‘Hmm. What are you doing with this bicycle?’

‘Cycling.’

‘From Australia! Good God!’ and, before I could interject to say ‘I’ve only done a few kilometres from Colaba’, he was jabbering at his colleagues, who made lots of ‘ooh, aah!’ sounds and crowded around me.

‘Oh, very far! You must be a strong man.’

‘No, I—’

‘Much hardship for you. Yes, sir. You must be such determination.’

He then palmed me off to a young man named Benjamin.

‘He will show you the towers. Follow him.’

‘They’re much smaller than I imagined them to be,’ I said.

‘Yes, they are small.’

I leant over the square model of the towers; clearly such interest in Parsi funeral rites had forced the Parsis to make a proxy. Well, that and the fact that a Time Life photographer had recently scaled a building opposite the towers and published colour photographs of a funeral, vultures and all. The Parsi community was understandably outraged.

‘In here,’ Benjamin said, pointing to four wells that surrounded the structure, ‘it flushes the remains. The blood goes down this chamber into the wells and is filtered. The earth cannot be defiled by the dead.’ He shook his finger. ‘Nothing goes into the sacred elements – water, fire, air and earth.’

This isn’t strictly true. There have been complaints from local residents finding the odd dismembered finger in their washing (‘Ere? What’s that finger doin’ in me undies?’), and of other titbits landing on passers-by as the vultures fly past looking for a private place to eat.

At the time of my visit, not all was well in the Towers of Silence. Corpses weren’t being eaten. A type of sickness, Benjamin told me, was causing the vultures to die. It was in fact due to the use of Diclofena, an anti-inflammatory used on cattle. Vultures would eat the carcass, which in turn would cause their renal system to fail. The decimation of vultures was not unique to Mumbai but right across the Indian-subcontinent.

To remedy the lack of available vultures, the Parsi panchayat (council) had installed giant solar reflectors to hasten the process of corpse decomposition, as well as an ozone generator to help combat the stench. Some reformists within the Parsi community were opting for burying the dead while an aviary was being built to breed vultures in captivity.

Like the vultures, the Parsi community was also endangered. Only 90 000 Parsis live in India today, and their numbers are continuing to drop due to intermarriage and a historical disadvantage. When the Parsis’ ancestors – known then as Persians – first arrived in India sometime around the tenth century, the Hindu ruler of Gujarat allowed them to stay, on the condition that they were not allowed to convert his subjects to their religion, Zoroastrianism. Even now, the Hindu community regards the Parsis as outsiders.

I thanked Benjamin for his time, got back on my bike and followed the road down the winding hill. It wasn’t long before I was hopelessly lost. I looked to the sinking sun to get my bearings.

I figured that if I headed south I would eventually end up in Colaba’s narrow peninsula and back at my hotel. Dodging an elephant, numerous potholes and wallahs pushing a large barrow stacked with bricks, I found myself in a race with two teenagers – one with particularly large glasses and a vibrant red fez – on bicycles. Trying to gain a few lengths on these boys, I swung out of the traffic, overtook a taxi and found myself in a suicidal collision with an oncoming truck. I slammed on my brakes, causing the back wheel to lock me into a terrifying slide that ended when I smashed into the door of a taxi. I expected the driver to erupt from the taxi in a rage but he merely wobbled his head when I apologised.

It was peak hour and the streets were choked with traffic and accompanied by insane, erratic beeping and blaring. I battled through it, coughing and sputtering through the exhaust until the traffic eased and my lungs began to clear.

When I got back to the hotel I hauled the bike over my shoulder, trudged up three flights of stairs, threw the bike against the wall, then went to the toilet and threw up. I then washed my face, flopped on the bed and passed out, overcome with Mumbai’s polluted breath.

I awoke the next morning to the phone ringing. I picked it up.

‘Omelette jam?’

2

BOMBAY/MUMBAI

January

On my past travels I have noticed how residents of each country have a different way of going to the cinema. In Thailand, patrons stand with hands on hearts when the King’s picture is screened, while in Zimbabwe, locals face their country’s flag and sing their national anthem. But in India… people run!

Swarms of people were squashed up against the padlocked steel gate of the Regal Cinema, an Art Deco building crumbling silently in the night. When the gate opened it was on for young and old and I felt the crush of bodies push past. Over ten million people across India go to the cinema in a single day, and at this moment it felt like they had all decided to come to this one. I shrank up against the wall, spilling my soapy tea, while old ladies jostled and elbowed their way as if to reclaim a dowry from a recalcitrant daughter-in-law. I didn’t understand the rush; 50 rupees got me a reserved seat, didn’t it? I soon realised my mistake: the seat numbers had worn off over the years of attentive neglect but no one had bothered to mention this to management, who were happily giving out numbered tickets and dutifully directing patrons to their seats.

Inside, chaos led the way. Families were jumping, running and throwing themselves into chairs, then valiantly fighting off newcomers. One man was barking directions, pointing at vacant seats and waving what appeared to be his immediate family, his extended family and his extended-extended family through to fill the row. Or maybe there were just a lot of people following one guy; it was hard to say.

Up in the stalls, I jumped into the nearest seat and languished in my dilapidated comfort until a curt-bordering-on-rude voice said, ‘This is not your seat.’

I looked up, prepared to sneer at any seat-bumpers, but instead it was the usher.

‘How do you know? There are no seat numbers.’

The usher ignored my protests and led me upstairs – right up the back and next to a gang of jabbering youths.

‘How do you know this is the right seat?’

‘It is on your ticket!’ he said as if I were a blind idiot.

‘But there’s no seat number on the seat!’ I protested but he was gone, moving people who were, to their surprise, in the wrong seat.

A family of five stood in confusion at my row. Another usher came up to me and demanded to see my ticket. He flicked his torch on it.

‘Your seat is not correct.’

‘But—’

‘No, this is the wrong number to the seat.’

‘What?’

‘The ticket is correct but the seat is not. Come with me.’

He deposited me on the far left of the cinema behind a pillar.

‘This is your correct seat.’

‘Are you sure about that? There are no seat numbers here. How can you give me the right seat if there are no numbers? Hmm?’

His body rocked like a wave.

‘It is correct,’ he said and floated away into the darkness, delivering people to their seats with an unnerving self-assuredness.

The trailers began. Screeching, distorted noise hurt my ears as a community film about residents not rubbishing their neighbourhood clunked across the screen. We saw a man about to spit, another about to urinate, girls throwing rubbish on a beach, and a housewife liberally turfing scraps out of her house onto the street. The solution to this terrible depravity was to put the rubbish in a bin, which in India seemed to be like trying to find a vindaloo curry that wasn’t hot.

I was here to see Raju Chacha, a typical Bollywood film. As a genre, Bollywood created itself out of other film styles; this genre is known as the ‘masala format’ (named after a culinary term for a mix of several flavours in a single dish). Everything is thrown in – musicals, comedy, horror, action, romance, cartoons and even science fiction. All except pornography. In fact, the most you’ll ever see of that kind of business is a wet, gyrating sari or a naked shoulder. You’re lucky if there’s even a kiss. In fact, the leading actors seem to be pulled out of shot by stagehands just as their moist lips are about to daringly meet.

Raju Chacha’s claim to fame was that it was made with one of the biggest budgets in Bollywood history: 35 crore, the equivalent of $US7.22 million. Like Hollywood films, however, a bigger budget didn’t necessarily mean a better script. I sat trying to piece together threads of the story amid its tiresome slapstick but am still to this day not entirely sure what I saw.

I vaguely remember something about a rich architect widower and his three brattish kids living in a garish pink-and-gold mansion with a rainbow-gravel circular driveway and Graceland-style guitar steel gate.

The plot was hatched along the lines of ‘evil relatives plan to kill father and take over his millions’. One minute we were watching the father (who had an uncanny resemblance to the TV host Daryl Somers) dance around the house, and then, in the next second he had suddenly morphed into a Lion King cartoon.

But what really surprised about this experience was, unlike going to the movies at home, where even the slightest crackle of Maltesers received hails of sharp abuse, in India it was entirely the opposite. The audience yabbered loudly at each other, got up to stretch, went outside, banged doors noisily, sang to themselves or yawned. This was refreshing and if I knew what the hell was going on I would’ve joined in, being a loud person myself.

Afterwards, I hailed a taxi. As it sped through the empty, dark streets, Mumbai seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, as did its poorer inhabitants who slept where they could – on pavements, roundabouts, or on the bonnets of their taxis. Some were still working, like the wallahs clearing rubbish onto small carts pulled by donkeys. I felt a twinge of guilt for going back to a comfortable hotel.

‘If only India was like a Bollywood movie’, I thought wistfully. ‘Everyone dancing and singing their way out of poverty.’

* * *

The next morning I found myself in the rear of the Naval Office.

‘You are vanting a map? You can try the CD-ROM,’ said the Government Tourist Officer, whose skin was the colour of coal and his mouth too small to accommodate his crowded teeth.

When I went over to do just that, it wasn’t working. When I told him of this he smiled as if he already knew.

‘You can try the brochure.’

‘But I’m after a map of India.’

‘There is a map in it.’

He passed the brochure across the desk and I flicked through it. There were pictures of the usual tourist spots: the Taj Mahal, Jaisalmer Fortress, and hill stations. But one that caught my eye was a title declaring ‘Come and see Wild Asses!’ I immediately thought of bums cavorting and whinnying around a paddock. I laughed so loudly that the Tourist Officer broke from his chai, looked at the brochure again, and then stared at me with curious, skewed eyes.

‘What’s so funny?’ I heard an English accent waft up from a leather couch. A young British couple sat with exhausted defeat. I pointed to the brochure and showed them my ‘Wild Ass’.

‘Oh, I see,’ a young man said, unimpressed, and went back to reading his guidebook.

Jesus! What’s wrong with these people? The very core of British comedy is built on bum humour. Carry On Up the Khyber, I say.

‘Just arrived?’ I enquired, with a hint of authority in my voice, trying to wash away my apparent faux pas.

‘No. We’re finishing up the trip. We’ve had enough,’ he replied, shaking his sandy locks.

‘Eh?’

‘Culture shock,’ he said. ‘Can’t deal with it, man. It’s all too much. Delhi was  ’orrible. Goa was better. More our scene. Lyin’ on the beach, chillin’. What are you doin’?’

‘Cycling.’

‘Cycling!’ said his girlfriend with a weary look. ‘Mate, you’re mad.’

‘Yes,’ I raised a proud eyebrow. ‘I know.’

‘No, no. You’re mad,’ she said seriously. ‘I’m tellin’ ya, it gets to ya. The starin’, the ’assle, being ripped off, same questions every bloody day. We were on a bus most of it. God knows what it would be like on a bike.’

Hassle? Staring? Culture shock? What were they on about? I’d hitchhiked through most of Africa. I’d survived typhoons while motorbiking around Taiwan. I’d nearly been shot at in Uganda. I’d been chased with machetes in the Congo. And I’d even eaten sandwiches on British Rail! I was tough, baby.

But as I was to discover, no matter what a travel legend I thought I was, nothing would ever prepare me for the challenges of mother India.

3

MUMBAI – NASIK

Mid-January

Like a partly buried orange, the morning sun struggled to free itself from the scrim of haze that hung over Mumbai. Blue ragged houses lined the already busy highway, where large trucks and buses jockeyed for position. The outskirts of the city were flanked by swampy marshlands littered with never-ending industrial gas pipes, while new apartments were already succumbing to the growing mildew on their walls and windows.

I was on a bus headed for Nasik, a small city some 200 kilometres northeast of Mumbai, taking the memory of carbon monoxide, nausea and gridlocked traffic with me.

Yes. I know. That’s cheating.

I had struggled with the idea, but when it came to my health I overcame my ego of cycling every kilometre of the trip. I could not see the point of spending another day trying to find my way out of the city and falling victim to the noxious fumes. Hopefully I would get to the town of Yeoli today then to Aurangabad before heading north.

An hour out of Mumbai, the land dried up; marshlands evaporated into dead brown fields while industrial zones receded from paddy fields and scraggy scrub. The bus pushed upwards through the snubbed noses of small hills.

Laughter ricocheted around the bus from a group of young men behind me.

‘What are you thinking of Bombay?’ one of them asked me.

‘I thought it was called Mumbai?’ I said quickly.

‘My friend, this is India. We call it what we like. Besides, the name is only for Maharashtrans.’

They were a happy, rowdy bunch. We got chatting, and they told me they were off to a sales meeting in Nasik. I asked them about Bollywood films, why they are so Western – the clothes, the houses, all so unrealistically clean and nothing like the India I had seen so far.

‘Because it is everything what we want in life to be,’ he said. ‘How we wish to see it. And this is how you may see India. You can’t have someone tell you this is how India is or what you read. You have to find your own picture of India.’

He was all of 23 and I found him refreshingly wise. Alas, I forget his name now.

‘There is no kissing in Bollywood films,’ I said. ‘Why is that?’

‘Yes, you never see this. Very rare. They will have dancing, singing and a bit of vulgarity but no kissing. We are still a very conservative people here in India. In the West you show your love by kissing. We also, but with commitment. When you marry in the West maybe you only do it for a few years. For us it is seven lifetimes.’

‘Seven? Seven lifetimes?’

‘Karma. Next life, next life and so on.’

‘But what if you don’t like each other?’

‘They have to work it out. Family and relations are very important.’

I’m not particularly close to my family, something of which, in my experience, is common to many Western families. Indians, on the other hand, seem more socially connected and supported, out together at night in restaurants talking loudly to each other, children falling off them or running around, babies sound asleep in their arms. We are so atomised in the West, so cut off.

‘What do you think of Western women?’ I asked, curious about the Indian perception, with the influx of American movies and the Internet in India.

‘We think that they are not true. They would not be true to you. They would go with another man. You have a wife?’

‘Girlfriend.’

‘Why is she not with you now?’

‘She’s travelling. I mean, she will be travelling, in Thailand.’

‘In India for a woman to be travelling alone is not allowed.’

‘Things are different in the West,’ I said, deciding to leave it at that.

It would be four long months before I saw Rebecca again. She was now in Broome, in north-western Australia, awaiting the birth of her sister’s baby. I suddenly realised how much I missed her.

* * *

The bus slowed to a halt at Nasik. As I exited the bus I was buzzed by a swarm of auto-rickshaw drivers who pulled at my arms, bartered in my ear but then dropped me like the clappers when they saw I had a bike.

At the tourist office, looking for a local map, the staff suggested I see the Buddhist caves.

‘These are very wonderful,’ said a man with a sharp, thin moustache and a happy round stomach. He handed me a warm cup of chai. ‘They are the Pandav Lena Caves. Two thousand years old! Very beautiful. Many foreigner come see them.’

‘Is it very far?’

‘Only six kilometres backside.’

‘Backside?’ This was something I would find Indians often said when they meant ‘back’, ‘behind’ or ‘rear’. ‘The toilets are backside!’ I tried to stifle a laugh.

‘Better for you to stay in Nasik and go to caves.’ He slurped his tea. ‘It is too late for you to be cycling. It is now two o’clock. Too much late, isn’t it?’

He was right. It was getting on and, although it was January and we were still in their winter, it was warm enough for drops of sweat to trickle down my back.

‘You must come to Nasik again. We are going to be having a big party.’

‘When?’

‘In 2004 years.’

He was talking about Kumbh Mela, one of India’s most auspicious festivals. As legend has it, Vishnu was carrying a kumbh (pot) of the immortal amrit (nectar) when a scuffle broke out with other gods. Drops of the nectar were spilled and fell to earth at tirtha or ‘fords of a river’ (a place where the devout can cross into the celestial world) at Ujjain, Haridwar, Prayag and Nasik. Every three years, millions of pilgrims converge on the banks of the Ganges at these chosen places in accordance with the Hindu calendar.

This year the holiest of all Kumbh Melas – Maha Kumbh Mela – had been held at Allahabad. I had watched some of it on television from the safety of my hotel room in Mumbai, catching sight of thousands of Naga Sadhus (Hindu holy men) running stark naked into the Ganges, penises beating a path through the crowds, dreadlocks dancing behind them.

I repacked my bags, put on my helmet and got on the bike which felt (as it was my first day with the bike loaded), inordinately heavy, like driving a truck. With a wobbly start and wondering how I could possibly do this with so much weight, I rode out into Nasik’s traffic and within seconds nearly had my first accident when an auto-rickshaw cut me off and buzzed to a sudden stop. I fell heavily onto the headset of the handlebars with my groin. A woman in a lemon-coloured sari with Nana Mouskouri glasses gently stepped out of the auto-rickshaw, paid the driver, turned and cleared jets of snot from her nose, then looked at me oddly as I massaged myself back into shape. Just as I was about to resume, something beeped and roared behind me. It was a TATA goods-carrying truck.

These trundling orange relics were so numerous and of the same design (it hadn’t changed since Independence) that I felt that I was being followed by the same truck. They were bulky, heavy and sported large mudguards and broad cabins. Eyes were painted under the headlights to ward off bad luck and decorations of a karmic afterlife emblazoned the sides. Inside plastic flowers climbed over the windscreen, wisps of burning incense curled over pictures of deities, while a growling motor strained under the weight of the truck’s billowing cargo.

The worst feature of the TATA truck was its klaxon, which not only chimed the most absurd sounds like that of a child’s toy (only worse) but was so loud it blasted out all of my past lives. I tried wearing earplugs but soon sweated them out. Following the noise was the noxious cloud of diesel exhaust.

I veered right at a roundabout and headed up a gentle climb towards the Pandav Leva Caves, and dodged traffic that simply ignored that I even existed. Traffic moved faster here than in Mumbai and I wished for bicycle lanes but I doubted any of the drivers here would’ve bothered respecting them. Road rules, it seemed for most drivers, were meant for someone else. Cars and trucks failed to indicate, overtook on blind turns, laughed at stop signs and ran oncoming traffic off the road. No wonder, according to the National Crimes Record Bureau of Delhi, there were over 80 900 people killed in car accidents in India in 2001.[vii]

To this day I don’t know how I ever got through India alive.

The surface of the road was surprisingly good and, being the afternoon, it was thick with schoolchildren on bicycles. Within seconds two teenagers pulled alongside me on their clanking Indian bikes – heavy things with no cables that squeaked mercilessly and were ironically called ‘Hero’ – yet I couldn’t imagine any of these bikes saving anyone.

One of the teenagers spoke. His name was Devendra and he offered to take me to the caves.

‘But first let me take you to my grandmother’s house for some lunch.’

‘Well, I’ve really got to get going…’

‘Please, it is my duty.’

As I would find out, Indians are some of the most friendliest and hospitable people in the entire world and think nothing of inviting you into their homes and preparing a meal for you. To our great shame, I could not imagine Indian people receiving such generous treatment in Australia.

I followed Devendra and the other boy to a simple house in a quiet street with lazy eucalyptus and palm trees. The house had a large open lounge room with a high ceiling, and stairs leading up to a terrace. I would almost call it palatial.

Devendra’s aunt, a small, crumpled woman shadowed by a pink veil, came out from the kitchen to welcome us. I attempted to shake her hand but she put her palms together and bowed. I immediately felt stupid; I hadn’t quite adjusted to the social gender disparities.

Women in India, it seemed, were almost invisible. Men dominated the streets in large numbers, hanging off each other, laughing and talking loudly. Rarely did I have an opportunity to converse with women.

‘May I go?’ asked the boy who had followed us.

‘Yes, of course!’ I said, apologetic, and he left.

‘Indians. Always late,’ said Devendra derisively. Perhaps I had misread the situation. I thought the other boy had been his friend when in fact he had just tagged along. I wondered whether there had been some caste tension between them, as Devendra had seemed reluctant to let him past the door.

Like the class system in Britain, caste determines your station in Indian life. If you weren’t been born into one of the top three ranking castes – Brahmin (priests and teachers), Kshatryas (rulers and warriors), Vaishyas (merchants and cultivators) – and into anything else such as the Shudras (menials) or harijans (untouchables) then life was pretty much pitted against you even before you learnt how to walk.

Devendra’s aunt returned with dahl (lentils), rice, poppadums, roti (flat wheat bread), spicy potatoes, raw onions and water. We washed our hands and shovelled the food into our mouths.

‘Would you like some water to drink?’ Devendra asked. I was a little reluctant, my Western hysteria questioning whether the water was safe to drink. I relented.

‘Sure.’

He picked up the cup but instead of bringing it to his lips he held the cup above him so the water poured into his mouth in a controlled stream. I tried to copy Devendra’s example but the water missed my mouth entirely and sploshed up my nose and down my neck.

Devendra laughed.

‘This is Indian way. Not your way.’

Devendra and I thanked his aunt for lunch, said goodbye and then headed for the caves. We walked through a parched paddock that housed a number of families in tarpaulin shacks. Women, dark as chocolate, stared out expressionless while others hid their faces as we passed. A thick smell wafted off the hot bare hills.

‘Look out for the drops,’ warned Devendra.

He pointed to a fat brown shape the size of a rat. They were everywhere, dotting the hills like full stops on a page.

‘Much shitting here in India,’ he said, embarrassed. ‘These are simple people.’

‘Well… where else would they go?’

Then for some reason, Devendra steered the conversation to where I least expected it.

‘Western women… will they dominate me when they are wanting the sex?’

‘Dominate? Hmm,’ I didn’t know what to say and said, really, the wrong thing. ‘No, you have to pay more for that…’ I joked as I skipped over a brown lump.

‘Hello?’

‘No. No, they won’t.’

‘If I don’t like her but she wants sex with me because she has drinks, what should I do? Will she be angry with me or make problem for me?’

I couldn’t believe it. Here I was lecturing an Indian teenager about female domination in a minefield of shit! Where was he getting this from?

Most likely the Internet.

Internet cafés, to my surprise, were in most parts of India, sometimes even the smallest of towns. Thus, access to hard core pornography was freely available to anyone anytime and often I would see groups of grinning young men in Internet cafés around one terminal screen in awkward aroused silence. One man, embarrassed by my disapproving looks, said, hand in the air, somewhat desperately, ‘It is only… for the knowledge!’

It was no wonder that sex was often asked about by most men I met in India, sometimes within minutes of meeting them: ‘Much fucking in the West, isn’t it?’ which had me retorting with, ‘Actually, I think there’s much more fucking in India. You’re the ones with over a billion people!’

‘Devendra. You’re getting a little ahead of yourself.’

He returned a confused stare.

After climbing a small hill, we arrived at the Pandav Lena Caves. Devendra pointed to a large cavern about the size of a garage; unlike the others, it was bare of carvings and statues.

‘It is for the elephants,’ he explained.

In another cave, a solemn-looking Buddha sat serenely, left hand cast to the side, rolled locks crawling up his skull like a cluster of grapes. The caves, built to house monks, dated back to the first century when Buddhism was flourishing. However, the only thing flourishing here at the time of my visit was the smell of damp urine from bats.

It wasn’t particularly ornamental, a feature perhaps in keeping with some of the philosophies of Buddhism: its non-attachment to world objects, its bare asceticism.

This of course made staring at the caves about as exciting as, well… staring at a hole in the wall. We sat on a rock by a eucalyptus tree listening to the insects buzzing in the dry afternoon heat, and watching clusters of auto-rickshaws screaming past each other in the wide city streets of Nasik.

On another rock, local women were placing flowers by a carving of a dancing figure.

‘What are they doing?’ I asked Devendra.

‘Making prayers.’

‘To whom?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Could you ask them?’

‘No. I don’t know their language,’ he said with an air of indifference. I wasn’t sure whether he simply didn’t want to talk to them or he really didn’t know their language. After all, there are over 18 official languages in India, not to mention hundreds of dialects. The women looked up, aware that we were talking about them. I smiled but they shyly turned away.

‘I think it is time to go,’ said Devendra. The light was beginning to fade. ‘My auntie will worry.’

Devendra took me to a hotel. The manager led the way upstairs and opened the door to a room with boils. Yellow paint bubbled and popped across the wall while a cracked window pointed to the ensuite with a big, dirty wall fan turning listlessly. Rank water sat in the squat toilet.

‘One hundred and fifty rupees,’ the manager said.

‘A hundred.’

‘No.’

‘One ten?’

‘No.’

‘Okay.’ So much for my bartering skills.

Devendra and I looked around for the switch for the overhead fan and found ourselves staring at a panel of buttons, the envy of a 747 cockpit (this was a common feature of hotels in rural India). Devendra hit every one of them; none worked. I don’t know why there were so many switches; there were only two things we could possibly turn on: the fan and a naked light bulb. (When the generator kicked in later that night, I woke with a start to find myself with wind gushing in my face and the night suddenly day).

Devendra helped me lug the bike and bags up the stairs and then, as quickly as he had arrived, was gone. I felt suddenly alone. It had been a week since I had really spent any time talking to someone and now his company had vanished like the days behind me.

* * *

In the morning I was inordinately tired. My body creaked. My eyes hurt. I had spent most of the night in a frustrated rage fighting off mosquitoes that burgled their way through my net.

The next town, some distance away, was Yeoli, a tiny dot on my map just before a slightly bigger dot representing the city of Aurangabad, known for its Taj Mahal imitation, the Bibi Ka Maqbara. Yeoli was only 80 kilometres away but in cycle terms, it was a good day’s ride. My guidebook, however, gave me few clues (Yeoli wasn’t even listed), so I decided to stock up on bottled water, and spent all morning fighting the bluey haze of Nasik trying to find some.

For environmental reasons, I wasn’t overly hip to the idea of buying countless plastic bottles, but I didn’t have much choice. Ground water in rural areas had been contaminated by the over-use of pesticides and heavy industry, and in some parts of India, such as Uttar Pradesh, nearly 70 per cent of the population lacked access to safe drinking water.

In a ramshackle store, I came across rows of bottled water that were out of date, unsealed and ringed with dust. Most Indians can barely afford to buy bottled water, and at 15 rupees a throw, it was more than I was prepared to pay. I went to another store.

‘Water?’

The assistant looked confused. ‘Water?’

‘Water. Pani.’

‘Oh, water! Yes!’

‘How much?’

He went off to consult with his boss then came back.

‘Fifteen.’

‘It’s ten everywhere else.’

‘No. Fifteen.’

As the morning was getting on, I gave in. ‘All right. I’ll take two.’

‘No. Fifteen.’

‘Yes. Fifteen. I’ll take two.’

‘No two. Fifteen.’

‘Yes! Fifteen! I want two.’

‘Two?’

‘Yes!’

‘Moment.’ He went off behind the counter and consulted his boss. A crowd began to gather round me. He came back.

‘I am sorry. Fifteen.’

‘Wait a minute…’ I thrust 30 rupees in his hand and made a two-finger gesture.

‘Ah! Two!’ He pulled two bottles of cold water out of the fridge and plopped them down, to the applause of the crowd.

As I put on my helmet, a man, late 50s, dark, torn shirt and big potbelly held out his hand.

‘Baksheesh.’

I waved him off but as I did I stepped in a big pile of poo – and the worst kind, human, by the smell of it. The beggar boomed a big baritone laugh.

‘I bet you’re thinking “fate, mate”,’ I smiled. He raised his eyebrows and laughed again. I shook the shit off and squelched the cycle shoe cleat into the bindings, bits of soft brownness flying off as I pedalled toward Yeoli. Disgusting, no?

* * *

‘Everywhere is different in India,’ Deejay had said to me on the plane. ‘Different culture, different language, different looks.’

I thought of this now as I cycled the rural plains of Maharashtra. The people became darker, shorter, thinner, eyes more deeply set. The fierce sun, it seemed, had dried the people out as well as the countryside. The sparsely vegetated forest floor was bare of any ground litter, picked and stripped for firewood. It was hard to imagine that this area was once a rich, lush forest. Most of India’s forests are now just tiny green freckles on the national map.

I stopped at a crossroads to ask directions from an old man sitting on his haunches and sporting a Nehru style pillbox hat.

I pointed to the left. ‘Yeoli?’

He wobbled his head. I pointed to the road on the right. ‘Yeoli?’

More wobbles so I tried saying it in Hindi. ‘Daein (right) or baein (left).’

He smiled. Arms crossed, I pointed in opposite directions at the same time. More wobbles. Finally, somewhat frustrated, I raised my voice. ‘“This way!?” or “That way?!”’

‘That way!’ he pointed to the left, suddenly standing up. ‘You go that way then take the first roundabout and go straight!’

‘Why didn’t you tell me that before?’

He wobbled his head.

At lunch time I stopped at a dhaba (restaurant), which was really just a shack with plastic white chairs. While the cook worked a big pan over a kerosene burner that sounded like that of a fighter jet taking off, eggs bubbled and popped, a war of oil and yolk. An assistant took orders in the hot chaos while the cook threw dolas (fried potatoes) into a big pan of green oil. I ordered some eggs and sat down.

‘Hello, my friend. Which country?’ I turned around to see a group of well-dressed men passing around a small bottle of whisky. A portly man wearing stylish glasses offered me a swig but I declined.

‘Australia.’

‘Ah! Cricket. Shane Warne. Very good.’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t really follow it.’ I mean, really? How could anyone? ‘And here comes Ricky Ponting in for the bat… and yet again nothing has happened, ladies and gentlemen. Surprise, surprise, surprise…’

‘You don’t? Here it is another religion! We are off to a wedding. You must come and join us.’

I declined, pointing to the bike.

‘No, really. I prefer to cycle.’

‘You are bi-cycling India?’

‘Yes, both ways.’ I turned around to see a hedge of eyes bearing down on me. When I sat down to eat the crowd of men followed, sat down within a foot of me and gawked at every move I made.

‘Namaste,’ I said, smiling. No return hellos or smiles. Just more stares.

‘They are thinking you are a movie star,’ the man with the glasses said. ‘They are very curious about you.’

‘Ah…’

I was no stranger to being the stranger, being stared at in a strange land. In Zimbabwe, I had woken one morning to see the whole village outside my tent. They, however, had said hello and kept a reasonable distance. But in India, staring was in a league of its own. It was naked, expressionless, up close and personal. It was like I had told a really bad joke and they were waiting for me to explain it.

I must admit that I did give the locals at least some small cause for wonder. I was wearing a long-sleeved yellow cycling shirt, blue cycling gloves, baggy shorts and cycling shoes. To cap it off, I was wearing a silver helmet, wrap-around sunglasses and my sarong spun around my bald head and neck. I wasn’t exactly Incognito Man.

‘So,’ I said to the man with glasses, still feeling hungry. ‘What’s good to eat here?’

‘All is good. But I will order you something that is not spicy,’ he said, and then broke off to explain to the waiter. He slapped me on the back. ‘Bye, bye.’

The troupe of wedding drinkers jumped into their Jeep and sped off. Shortly afterwards my lunch arrived. Roti, a side order of onions and tomatoes, and a peculiar green dish with cottage cheese called palak paneer. I broke off some roti, dipped it in the paneer and bit into it.

I screamed.

‘This ISN’T HOT?’ I gasped and downed a glass of unbottled water. I stood up and paced up and down the restaurant, waving my hand in front of my mouth. ‘JESUS CHRIST! HOT! HOT! ARRRGHH!’

By the time I got to my bike, another crowd was happily snapping the gear levers back and forth, pointing at the multiple cogs, punching the tyres and playing with the zips on the bags.

I took off, clanking and crunching the chain, curious hands having reset the gears. It wasn’t long before their withered frames shimmered and then vanished in the bleaching heat behind me.

* * *

I arrived at Aurangabad the next day, the largest city I’d seen since leaving Mumbai, and the following morning I went for a ride up to the Bibi-Ka-Maqbara mausoleum, a copy of the famous Taj Mahal. Completed in 1678 it was originally intended to rival the Taj but lack of resources rendered it a pale comparison.

It had recently been made a World Heritage site and because of this the Indian Tourist Commission now charged tourists entry fees from $US5 or even $US10 to all World Heritage sites, a fact not lost on the ticket seller.

‘Indian people five rupees (US 10c), foreigners $5 US dollars,’ he said, enjoying the disparity way too much.

‘But I’m Indian,’ I joked. ‘I know I look white but really, my father was a Punjabi. You may have heard of him: “Mr Singh”.’

‘You are a white man. Foreigner,’ he said contemptuously.

‘I–I’ve been out of the country for a while.’

‘It is $5 US dollars!’ he spat.

It was a small amount of money but now I didn’t want to give my money to this man.

‘I’ll show you, sunshine.’ I cycled to the rear of the mausoleum and thought I’d climb the wall! But as I leaned the bike on a barbed wire fence I heard a hissing sound.

‘Cobra?’

I looked down. Sticking out from the front tyre was a huge thorn. I’d parked the bike right on to a thorn bush. I didn’t have my pump nor my puncture repair kit with me so I jumped on the bike, tore down the hill desperately in search of a bike shop. I found the next best thing: an old, grey stubbled man sitting on a stool in the doorway of another shop surrounded by twisted loops of bicycle tubes. He smiled a toothless grin and adjusted his topi (Muslim cap). He was a puncture repair wallah.

For five rupees (10c US) the old man took out the tube like a hardened snake handler, buffed it with sandpaper, smeared a huge wad of glue on the hole and then with an equally sized patch, squeezed it together, then whacked the pair with a mallet over the handle of a screwdriver and with such ferocity that I thought he’d cause another puncture.

As I was to discover, there were thousands of these puncture repair wallahs dotting the roads throughout India. They were ever so helpful and I used them so often that after a while I started to refer to them as the I.R.A., not in that Gerry Adams kind of way (well, they both blew things up), but rather as ‘Indian Roadside Assist’.

All repaired and pumped up I rode back to the rear of the Bibi-Ka Maqbara and thought I’d get a photo before climbing the wall again. Surrounded by goats and boys squatting their lunch out, I lined up the perfect shot when I clicked the frame over and the film started rewinding! So, I headed down the hill again, got another roll of film, set the bike up for a National Geographic pose when I went over another bloody thorn!

Defeated and deflated, I wheeled the bike around to the main entrance.

‘Ah, you are back?’ said the ticket seller, pleased with himself.

‘Yeah, yeah.’ I handed over the money and then under my breath, ‘bloody karma.’

4

AURANGABAD – KHANDWA

Mid-January

‘After many years of torture, he finally asked for the curd. He took it and his head exploded.’

‘Exploded?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was the curd… off?’

‘It was poisonous! Come.’

Mesmerised by the story and also the tufts of black hair sprouting from my guide’s ears, I followed as he walked further into the fortress of Daulatabad, a short ride from Aurangabad.

The lethal-yoghurt victim I had been hearing about was Abdul Hasan Tana Shah, the last Galconda ruler, who was imprisoned for 13 years in the late 17th century by the Moghul emperor Aurangzeb. Abdul Hasan Tana Shah’s headless corpse was dragged behind an elephant to Rauza before being entombed.

Built in the 12th century by Raja Bhillamraj, Daulatabad is a fortress carved out of a cliff face. But the fortress wasn’t known merely for this natural geological feature: it was infamous for its array of booby traps, moats, unclimbable walls and sheer sadistic ingenuity. It was the whispered talk of soldiers’ nightmares, a veritable hell, and was thought for many years to be impregnable until the Sultan of Delhi invaded it in 1308. Even today it seems an impossible accomplishment, and I was mindful of this as my guide led me past two huge doors with long horizontal spikes.

‘These are to stop elephants charging,’ said the guide. ‘But the enemy is thinking it is possible to get in, so they sacrifice camels onto the spikes. But once past here they have two doors; one big one and a smaller one. Of course, the enemy thinks that he must take the bigger one, as surely this is the way into the city. But no, my friend. It is a trap. It is a dead end and men with hot oil lay in wait for them. Notice the path as we go? It is staggered in steps and turns so that the elephant cannot get a run up.’

We continued on and he directed me onto a shaky ladder leading up a turret. He remained on the ground and called up to me.

‘You see the cannon? See how beautifully carved it is? It is the Kila Shikan. You see that the cannon can only be moved 180 degrees. This is so that if it were captured it could not be turned and used on the palace. They think of everything!’

Down a small tunnel, a torchbearer led the way over steps.

‘If they got past the gates and the cannon and the hot oil and then went down into these caves, they would find themselves impaled on spikes laid on the steps.’

He said something to the torchbearer, who then blew out the light, leaving us in complete darkness.

‘Imagine trying to attack your enemy and you cannot see him? Here there are two tunnels. The enemy think they go in different directions, but no. They connect and so they end up killing each other. Magnificent, yes?’

The torchbearer flicked a match and we could see again. A window of light shot into the middle of the darkness.

‘Once they had realised they were killing each other, they would stop then head to this light. As their eyes tried to adjust to the light, the palace guards would attack them. Very clever!’

The guide led me out of the cave through a narrow opening.

‘See how you have to move your head out first? A guard would be standing here to chop your head off. Come.’

‘Not exactly The House of Fun, is it?’

‘Oh, no, no, no! Tis not fun!’

We were outside now, the sun blinding.

‘The palace is on the top of that cliff; it has been carved flat so that iguanas could not climb up.’

‘Iguanas?’

‘Yes, they were used to secure ropes for the men. But this is too steep for them; no grip with the claw. In the moat they kept the crocodiles. You had to cross it to reach the Bala Kot citadel. At the top you can see the Baradi residence of the queen, Yadavi. You may go to the top. I am an old man, as you can see, so I will not join you. Goodbye and I hope you enjoy India.’

The ‘old man’ turned and bounced vigorously down the narrow steps. Perhaps it wasn’t the several flights of stairs that had sent him packing but the rush of loud, happy schoolchildren tearing down towards me. They pushed past, laughing and pointing at me and my big, cumbersome SLR camera.

Some years after the first invasion, the Sultan Muhammad Tughlak ascended the Delhi throne. Tughlak was so impressed with nasty little Daulatabad that he ordered the entire population of Delhi to move to the new capital. No one was exempt, and thousands died on the way. Fifteen years later the Sultan, having had his fill of this place, suddenly changed his mind about the new address and ordered the whole population to move back to Delhi.

Outside the fortress, I went to my bike, which I had left locked up at a police traffic gazebo and in the care of three boys hawking gifts.

‘Hello, sir. Look, special trinket,’ one of them said, showing me a small gold carving. ‘Key ring,’ he said. A closer look revealed a man thrusting into a woman from behind.

‘Cute,’ I said. ‘But will it unlock my bike?’

I swung my leg over the bike and got as far as the small farming town of Phulumbria, where trucks laid siege to a large paddock of cut sugar cane, their trays overflowing like stuffed scarecrows. I found the only hotel in town, which was run by a man with a cyst the size of a golf ball under his chin. Later, in the restaurant, he served me spicy dahl in the dim flickering light of a solitary kerosene lamp.

‘Yes…’ He leered, his cyst waggling back and forth like a hypnotic metronome, his eyes never leaving me while I ate. ‘Yeees.’

* * *

The ride out of Phulumbria was flat at first, but then as I neared the Ajanta Caves it became quite hilly and I was forced to slog up a long, arduous slope, sweating and groaning in India’s springtime heat, which was already uncomfortable by nine a.m. I could only wonder what it would be like when summer finally arrived in April, just over two months from now.

More emptiness greeted me when I reached the top. I coursed down the hill, the rush of warm air cooling me, to the entrance of the Ajanta Caves. Built in the same period as the caves of Nasik, the Ajanta Caves were said to be the most detailed Buddhist caves in the world.

At the cave’s entrance, Indian tourists flocked around souvenir shops, drink sellers and samosa stalls. I decided to leave my bike somewhere and pay someone to look after it, but no one wanted a bar of it, not even the bag handler with a big stick and attitude to match. A sign read ‘UNLOCKED BAGS WILL NOT BE CHECK IN’, and, as my panniers were unlockable, he wouldn’t take them.

‘Where am I supposed to put them, then?’

His explanation was a hefty wave of his stick, so I was left with one option: stay the night at the Ajanta Hotel.

I took a single room and slept for two hours, avoiding the afternoon heat. Upon venturing out, I came across a large man. He was deeply lined, grey-moustached, with a yellow turban around his head and a large stomach protruding from his camel safari suit. When I asked to take his photograph his grey moustache shot out either side like antennae.

‘Forty rupees!’ he demanded.

‘Really?’

‘People from all over the world – Holland, Denmark, Germany – come to see me and they pay,’ he said, hand to the side, in a half wave.

I politely declined and instead took photos of grey haired and black-faced langur monkeys, hanging lazily from the trees above. Named after the Hindu monkey god, Hanuman, they are sacred in India and thus left alone. This fact, however, was lost on a group of rowdy children who took pleasure at throwing stones at them. The monkeys barked to life and took off, leaping on to the rocks, their grey tails propelling them.

Though the afternoon sun had peaked, the rock face of the caves radiated an intense heat, and I took cover in the coolness of a deep cave. This was just one of the 28 caves that had been carved out by hand as a permanent place of worship for the monks, supposedly to protect them from the heavy monsoons.

This particular cave housed various murals. Flaking away from centuries of neglect and recent attempts to restore it, one mural showed sailors being seduced by Sirens who later devoured them; on another mural, limbs and heads were being cooked in pots. This wasn’t exactly the sought of thing I expected to see in a Buddhist monastery, and I half-wondered whether these horrid images were perhaps intended to scare off unwelcome guests (notably school children, who were now testing the reverberations of the cave with high-pitched squeals). Apparently these murals told the story of Buddha’s past lives to illustrate certain virtues (I would have thought that eating each other was an obvious no-no, but perhaps some wayward monk had grown tired of vegetarianism and decided to have a chomp on someone).

I flitted from cave to cave taking photographs, dodging postcard sellers and more tourists. Parched by the heat, I grabbed a Sprite and got talking to a rock seller who had a large grey beard and a woven topi.

‘These Indians. They know nothing,’ he said, sweeping his hand derisively towards the stallholders, who were now packing up for the day.

‘Er… aren’t you Indian?’ I asked.

‘No! I am Muslim. They are Hindu.’

But before I could say, ‘But that still makes you Indian, doesn’t it? And oh, what do you mean by “they know nothing?”’, he was waving his next thought at the growing shadows around the valley.

‘You should go with your bicycle and cycle around here while it is getting cool. It is very wonderful to cycle now. You can see many things: monkeys, birds, tigers—’

‘Tigers? Here?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘You’re saying that I should cycle, with tigers about?’

‘Do not worry, my friend. They only eat monkeys and goats.’

The bespectacled manager of my hotel had a different take on the matter.

‘No! Do not walk here at night. There are tigers. It is not safe,’ he warned like some Agatha Christie stooge before bolting like buggery for the crowded Jeep.

I was surprised that there were any tigers in this area, as there was hardly a bush or tree for them to hide under. A hundred years ago, there were at least 40 000 tigers on the Indian subcontinent. But now, following decades of tiger hunting under the British Raj, human encroachment and poaching, the tiger numbers in India have reduced to less than 2000.[viii]

The caves were shutting down and tourists were told to step on it by the baggage man with the big stick. Stalls packed up, samosa shops closed their dusty shutters, and the hawkers, 20 at a time, jumped onto and hung off Jeeps. In less than an hour, the once-busy entrance was quiet. In fact, it was so quiet that I would have one of the most peaceful sleeps in India on my entire trip.

To beat the heat, I got up at five a.m. When I went to the bathroom I pushed the door open to see a small Asian woman shaving her head. She was a Korean monk and told me that she had been here for a week to meditate by the caves. Early mornings were best, before the hordes of tourists arrived.

With the bike now loaded, I felt the rush of cool air, quiet and fresh on my face. I heard a growl somewhere in the darkness.

Tiger?

I turned to see three dogs racing towards me. I jumped off, putting the bike between their gnashing teeth and me.

I reached for the sugar cane stick strapped under the bags. An old woman had cut it for me the day before for me to eat, sitting sidesaddle on a motorbike while her son slowed so he could chat with me as I rode in the afternoon heat.

The leading dog lunged and I swung the cane, causing the dog to recoil and bark more ferociously. The other two, obviously inspired, had a go too, so I started swinging blindly at all of them.

‘Good luck!’ A voice called out from the top floor of the hotel. It was the Korean monk. She beamed a bright smile to me.

‘Thanks!’ I yelled back before taking another swing at the dogs, which were now chorusing a hellish din. ‘GO AWAY!’

‘Much good fortune for you!’

‘Right!’ I jumped back quickly as a jaw made a lunge for my leg.

‘Bye, bye!’ she shouted, waving.

‘Yep! See ya,’ then at the dogs, ‘Would you just PISS OFF!’

I backed the bike down the road, swinging the cane at the dogs as they followed, but then they all stopped as if contained by an invisible force field. I had been evicted; one by one they wagged their tails and went back and curled up under a truck.

I lurched into the darkness; every crackle, leaf turn and ant step had me switching around and twitching with fear.

‘What was that? JUST WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?’

But no tiger was out that morning, and I cycled back over the Ajanta Range. I moved out onto the main road to see farm workers getting ready for the day brushing their teeth with neem[ix] sticks by antiquated pumps. Women in beautiful purple and red saris balanced tin jugs of water on their heads, children played in the dust with sticks, water buffalo moved aimlessly down the quiet road, dogs eyed me suspiciously as they twigged to the faint cackle of my chain, and men combed their hair as they huddled around a smoky fire fuelled by dried cow manure.

I cycled through the cool morning and had the wonderful experience of cycling through a forest somewhere past the town of Pahur.

I was pleased with my run: I had cycled 60 kilometres in about two hours. This had much to do with a truck, stacked with sugar cane, driving in front of me at 40 clicks and acting as a windbreak.

‘Wow! This is faaantastic!’ I yelled to myself, marvelling at the speed until I realised I had missed a turn-off some 15 kilometres back.

I had been quite lucky with the road. Most of Maharashtra state was well sealed, even on the smaller roads, which meant that I (as a cyclist) could go a lot faster. That was until I neared the border of Madhya Pradesh, where the road disintegrated into bitumen scabs.

The bike shook and my teeth rattled as I slowed from a smooth 30 kilometres per hour to a bumpy ten. It frustrated the hell out of me and forced me to dodge pothole after pothole. I threw the bike into the rough, hard shoulder but this proved to be no better, with fist-sized boulders waiting to catch my wheels, jarring my shoulders horribly.

I soldiered on until about an hour later I felt something mushy under the back wheel, like I had substituted the tyre for a sponge cloth. I looked behind. The tyre was almost completely flat.

Conveniently, the tyre blew when I was under a huge tree that shaded a chai stall but inconveniently, no puncture repair wallah was about.

Setting to work, I threw off the panniers and bags. A crowd gathered; some played with my tools as I reached for them, while others fetched me water and helped me pull the bike apart. A truck stopped and the driver got out, squatted beside me, and from what I could gather from his excited finger and thumb gesticulations, was telling me to put my bike on his truck and go to a whore house.

‘Yes,’ I raised an eyebrow, ‘but that’s not the kind of hole I want to fill right now!’

I took out the tube, stuck on a patch, and stuffed it back in.

A man with slightly greying hair and stained and broken teeth came over.

‘I am Asif.’

‘As if what?’ I joked. But he didn’t get me.

‘I am the mayor of this town.’

I looked around at the dusty shacks. ‘Town? What town?’

He wobbled his head.

‘Here, I pump you.’

‘Excuse me?’

He grabbed the bicycle pump and began thrusting the handle back and forth.

‘You must have many wives.’

‘Why’s that?’ I asked. He leered and continued pumping.

‘I have four wives. Ten children.’

I didn’t understand what he was saying. He pumped the tyre harder, making noises and grinning.

‘You been talking to that truck driver?’

‘Many wives! Strong man. You. How many wives?’

‘I’m not even married!’

‘No. You must have many!’ he said and began pumping so vigorously that I had to stop him in case he burst the tube.

He gave me a cup of chai and I lay down on some rubber straps criss-crossed over a bed frame. These beds are a common feature in rural India, and I often found truck drivers and their jockeys on these beds, limbs asunder, unconscious once the speedy effects of chewing betel nut had failed to keep them awake.

Lying there, I realised I couldn’t feel the upper left side of my back nor the fingers on my left hand. I tried to stretch the wretched pain out when my left shoulder shrieked. My tendonitis, an ailment that had been dogging me for two years, was back and it would never leave me alone for the entire trip.

Now this is something that nobody really ever tells you about cycle touring; pain.

They’ll mention everything else – the sights, the beautiful days, the heroic climbs, the traffic, a great café, but they never tell you about how their body ached, how they stopped countless times to adjust the handlebars to take the weight off their bottom, the numbness in the hands, the stiff thighs. No wonder Lance Armstrong has a team of chiropractors on Le Tour de France. Asif did give me a shoulder rub – but somehow it just wasn’t the same.

But there was another thing that wore me down more than the rocky roads in India: the constant attention.

Stop to check the map, adjust the brakes or sit down at a chai stall and you’re soon mobbed. At the beginning of the trip, this level of curiosity was refreshing, but now, almost two weeks on, I felt like I was an infectious disease that was constantly being swamped by white cells.

With the crowds came the inevitable questions, the same questions and almost in the same exact order and often when I had to repair the bike:

‘Hello, sir. Which country?’

‘Australia.’

‘Oh, Australia! Cricket! Shane Warne. Ricky Ponting!’

‘What are you doing in India?’

‘Cycling.’

‘What is your good name?’

‘Russell.’

‘Hello, sir. Which country?’

‘Australia.’

‘Oh, Australia! Cricket! Shane Warne! Ricky Ponting!’

‘What are you doing in India?’

‘Cycling.’

‘What is your good name?’

‘Russell.’

‘Hello, sir. Which country?’

‘Australia.’

‘Ah! Cricket! Shane Warne! Ricky Ponting!’

‘What is your good name?’

‘Russell.’

‘What are you doing in India?’

‘Cycling!’

‘Hello, sir. Which country?’

‘AUSTRALIA!’

‘Ah! Cricket! Shane Warne! What are you doing in India?’

‘CYCLING!’

It was like someone saying ‘Have you left the iron on? Have you left the iron on?’

Cycling away offered no escape and I was often almost killed with kindness: motorists, excited upon seeing me, would drive alongside and unwittingly force me into the hard shoulder of dust, turds or other vehicles while cheerily inviting me for lunch or tea.

Now, I appreciate the fact that seeing me, a Westerner on an expensive bike in their country, was a novelty and indeed a gift in these rural parts. And I appreciate that my Hindi and their English was limited. And I understand that these were poor people. I get all that. I really do. But the constant attention and the same questions were like the relentless commercials on Australian television – you never quite got used to it.[x]

I hate to say it but those ‘naïve Brits’ back in Mumbai were right. It was getting to me.

However, all this would soon be the least of my concerns.

I said goodbye to Asif, thanked him for his help and the chai, and got back, somewhat reluctantly, on the bike.

I struggled through the late afternoon heat and got as far as Burhanpur, another dusty, derelict town like many I had seen so far in India. They were all starting to look the same: a blur of chaotic traffic, noise, tobacco booths, staring crowds and street stalls selling fruit, chai and sweets.

I swung the bike past some gates to a swanky hotel called the Monsoon Palace. It was the cleanest hotel I had been in for some time – the sheets looked as if they had been changed at least once that month. The hotel was so glitzy, in fact, that management nearly didn’t let me put my bike in the room with me. Now, there was a first.

I had a shower, washing away the day’s dust and grime, then took a swig from a chilled bottle of beer, stretched out on the king-size bed. I felt a warm flush over my face, something I had noticed in the evenings of late. ‘No! It can’t be! I’m too young for menopause… wait a second, that’s a lady thing…’

In the morning, I felt like someone had made off with all my remaining energy during the night. My hips ached and my eyes were so sore that I was sure someone had been using them as bulls-eyes on a dartboard.

I struggled to load the bike. Everything felt heavy. I wheeled the bike out, got on and coasted on a rough, patchy road through the town, my shoulder aching.

I hoped to get to Khandwa, some 75 kilometres away, though I wasn’t sure I was even going to get as far as the next kilometre, as every push on the peddle drained me as I climbed a small hill. A TATA truck revved behind me, easily making it, the driver tooting cheerily but I could not muster an acknowledgement. Three boys, aged about eight, herded goats down the road and decided that this was a good moment to yell and make stupid faces at me. I swore which only seemed to encourage them.

Exhausted, I found a shady patch under a eucalyptus tree and climbed off the bike. Looking up at the gum leaves, I felt like I hadn’t left Australia at all. From under the backpack I pulled out the blue tarpaulin, unfolded it and stretched out for a quick nap.

Peace at last. It was a quiet road. And no wonder, with a road like that.

I felt myself caught in that mousetrap of sleep and consciousness, half-dreaming, half-floating, when a motorbike zoomed past. I heard it turn around and stop. It idled.

‘Oh, no,’ I groaned and pushed my head under my sarong, trying to disappear. The engine coughed to a gasp, the kickstand slammed down. Footsteps in the dust – crunch, crunch, crunch – got louder then stopped. Silence.

What were they doing?

I recalled a story of a bikini-clad woman sleeping on a beach in Goa who woke to find four men masturbating over her. I wasn’t wearing a bikini, but… surely they weren’t… these shorts weren’t that exciting… I mean… what could they be…?

I peeked up from the sarong. It was worse than I’d thought.

‘Hello, sir,’ asked a smiling face bright as the sun. ‘Which country?’

5

KHANDWA

January

Eventually, I flopped into Khandwa.

I found a room at The Motil, a hotel so narrow that you had to squint just to see it. I crossed a narrow plank over road works to get to the foyer and hauled my bike up narrow stairs, continually bumping my head on the low ceiling. As the porter opened the door, a flurry of mosquitoes whizzed around the room while a heady smell of stale urine rose out of the squat toilet in the adjacent bathroom. It was so horrible I just had to have it and soon I was asleep.

However, I was woken shortly after by the sound of pigs fighting somewhere below me while boys played cricket up against the wall – THUDUNK! THUDUNK! A train tooted and thundered as if it was right next door. That’s because it was. I had the good fortune of choosing a hotel right next to the Khandwa Train Station.

Somehow, I went back to sleep but then was woken up through the night by the train announcements that blared through my window, trailing off departure times and arrivals to every unpronounceable town in sub-tropical Asia. Diesel trains thrummed through my ears, letting off baritone shots from their horns.

My body ached deep in my hipbones. My face was on fire. I fought to untangle myself from the mosquito net, which I kept getting caught up in like a fruit bat.

I got out of bed and popped two aspirin. Soon I was asleep but the fever burned through as soon as the aspirin wore off. Every two hours I downed more. Lying there in the dark, stale room, sweating and itching, I wondered if I had malaria. And if I did, was it the dreaded cerebral malaria, the one that would travel through my blood stream, attack my brain cells, put me in a coma and then force me to wake up dead in the morning?

Perhaps that hijra in Mumbai had cursed me after all.

* * *

In the morning I went in search of a doctor and found a small clinic behind the arse of a cow that was happily chewing on the curtains. A nurse raced out and beat it with a broom until it lounged away swishing its tail shamelessly. Ah, ’dem cows!

‘Doctor?’ I asked.

I half-expected her to say, ‘No, it’s a cow,’ but thankfully she pointed me to a very serious-looking middle-aged woman with a bindi (red dot) in the middle of her forehead and a shawl draped around her as she sat at her reception–desk-cum-examination-area.

‘What do you want?’ she asked flatly.

‘I think I have malaria.’

‘Sit.’

I did.

‘Open your mouth,’ she ordered, then shone a torch down my throat.

‘You have an infected throat.’

‘Yes, it’s sore.’

‘We shall do blood sample. Go,’ she said, waving me off to a small man with a thin moustache. She went back to her paperwork as I followed him into a room where nurses were standing over a woman in a purple sari lying on a table.

‘No!’ the doctor yelled at me. ‘There is someone there.’

‘But you just said to go—’

‘Sit. You must be waiting.’

So I sat and stared at the floor. It was a small, quiet hospital and there only seemed to be me in it. When signalled to go in, I presented my arm. Three nurses took turns at tapping it until a bluish vessel reared up obediently. They popped the vein and bent the needle ridiculously, ignoring my worried face. One shouted out and an older nurse came in. She yanked hard on the syringe and filled it with my red insides, reminding me of the mosquitoes that had sucked my blood out in the first place.

I returned to the doctor’s desk and sat down.

‘Go now. Be back here at three p.m. sharp.’

When I did return, a happy, 50-something man (moustache, receding hair, round paunch) was sitting in her chair.

‘I am the husband of Dr Chawla,’ he said, shaking my hand. ‘Dr Chawla.’

‘Ah, the same.’

‘Not the same. Different,’ he frowned at me. ‘She is my wife.’

He put on his glasses and showed me the blood-test result. A Latin term was badly typed across a thin piece of paper.

‘Plasmodium falciparum. It is a strain of malaria. There are four types: Plasmodium vivax, ovale, malariae and the one you have – falciparum – the killer malaria!’ he said, smiling. His wife’s indifference was matched only by his joy at my illness.

‘Right,’ I said, trying to digest all of this as I replayed being bitten on the ankle in the hotel in Mumbai, the bites through the night in Aurangabad, the bites on my neck in… somewhere.

‘Injection! Injection is best for you! Inside!’ In the same manner as his wife, he waved me away to a cubicle.

They laid me out on the table in the foyer of the hospital, flung a blanket over me, and popped a saline-solution drip into my surrendered forearm. The drip hung there draining itself like a bloated tick while, outside, the noxious sounds of traffic horns tore past.

I began to think of other times I had been ill in foreign lands. The worst of it had been in Egypt, in the back of a taxi on the way to the temple of Abu Simbel, hot as hell in the middle of the Aswan desert. I had stabbing pains in my stomach and had been vomiting and crapping all day. A 40-something Israeli woman had an enlightened solution.

‘Russell, to take your mind off the pain, what you need to do is to masturbate!’

At the time, I almost considered it, but I did wonder how well that would have gone down while middle-aged Americans in big shorts posed in front of the giant statues of Ramses II while I shat, vomited and jerked myself blue into a furious cloud of dust by their ankles… ‘George! What’s he doing? Do you think I should give him baksheesh to make him stop? It’s getting all over my Nikes!’

As if to muffle such thoughts, a nurse came over and put another blanket over me. I didn’t realise I had been shivering. The nurse smiled, patted my arm, then disappeared upstairs, her purple sari waving behind her. Wishing for the soft hand of Bec to palm my forehead and tell me everything was going to be alright. I had dozed off to sleep when I heard: ‘Ah, you are awake!’

It was Dr Chawla.

What does he call it when your eyes are opened?

He handed me a prescription and told me to go to the Pharmacy Market.

In Khandwa (and like most towns in India), goods and services were demarcated: textiles occupied one street – furls of blue, white, red and chequered patterns sailed on the footpaths – while metal goods – hooks, chains, cases, hardware products, nails and tools – were up the top end near the chowk (intersection). Behind the chowk and near the town square was the vegetable market, and nearby, the milk shops bubbled and frothed sweetened milk in huge woks as patrons munched on sweets, chatting, laughing and wiping away their milk moustaches.

The Pharmacy Market was in the next street, occupying most of it with small shops only big enough for one man. Packets of drugs were lined up, sitting in the sun. I’d heard some were most likely copies of the authentic product or, worse, contained not the drugs at all but turmeric. One company had apparently had so much trouble with their products being copied that they had to change their packaging three times in a year.

‘Hello. Where are you from?’ called an English accent. I snapped around to see a thin Indian man with glasses smiling from inside his tiny pharmacy. He wobbled his head and I thought instantly of a praying mantis.

His name was Sunil and his father had immigrated back to India from England, hence his clear Manchester accent. He was the oldest of his siblings and was therefore responsible for looking after his parents. His father was a doctor and Khandwa was his hometown.

‘Here is a very dusty place, very dirty,’ said Sunil from inside his shop.

‘Oh, but I find it positively cosmopolitan,’ I said. It was busier than most of the small towns I had been to in India in my brief two weeks of travel.

‘Sure, it may be a city, but you know there’s nothing to do here. People are concerned about working and making money. They don’t want to talk about other things like the rest of the world.’ He stopped and looked at me. ‘You look tired. You should get some sleep now. Come back later when you are rested. I like meeting people like you. Where are you staying?’

‘The Motil.’

‘Near the railway station? Ah, it’s not very nice there. There is a better place I know. Very clean rooms. The Rinjit Hotel. The food there is very clean.’

‘But I’ve been eating at the food stalls all through India.’

‘You shouldn’t! The food is poor quality, and then there are the flies!’

Later that night, I met Sunil at the Rinjit for dinner, the kitchen now firmly open and serving piping hot meals. As the night progressed, while we ate outside in the restaurant garden amid burning oil lanterns, Sunil’s accent glided out of his smooth English to its natural Indian staccato.

‘Eighty per cent of the people of India,’ he said, chewing on a chapatti, ‘and I’m sure you’ve seen them, are terribly poor. The common man here, if he is lucky, will have five rupees in his pocket. Not even enough to buy soap!’

Sunil was right. India still has the world’s largest number of people living in poverty in a single country. Of its nearly one billion inhabitants, an estimated 350–400 million live below the poverty line.

‘Do you think,’ I began, ‘that using the soap will get rid of the germs after… you know, after you’ve been to the toilet?’

‘Sure. Most of them.’

‘You think it’s hygienic?’

‘Very hygienic!’ He raised his hand up as if asserting a high truth.

‘Then why does everyone eat with their right hand?’

He looked dumbfounded for a moment then shot back with, ‘It is the custom!’

* * *

The news of my malaria travelled fast.

Sitting at an Internet café, where the owner had blessed every computer before letting me sit down, friends and family were understandably concerned. My sister, a nurse, consulted a doctor and said that I should be okay once I had taken the drugs, as the strain I had caught only stayed in the blood, unlike others that resided in vital organs such as the liver even when treated.

Alan suggested that I come home, in case ‘you end up six feet under’, while Bec begged me to return. But it was my mother’s response that beggared belief: ‘I hear you’ve got a touch of malaria,’ she wrote in her email. ‘Anyway, bought a new couch last week and—’

A touch of malaria? A touch of… what the –!! What did she think I had? ‘A tickle of bubonic plague? A sniffle of AIDS? Got a bit of a rash from that nasty Ebola business, luv?’ Muuuuuuum!

After a week of lying in bed at the Rinjit Hotel reading and watching Bugs Bunny in Hindi (which gave my feverish deliriums a nice kick) I was back at the Doctors Chawla to collect the last of my antibiotics and Chloroquine. The aches and fevers had gone and I was feeling almost normal.

The doctor, to my surprise, was not so concerned about my health but about something much more pressing.

‘Tell me,’ he said coyly, looking around the room, then, smiling (or was that leering?), ‘I hear the sex in your country is… free.’

‘Free?’

‘Yes. Free.’

I looked around the clinic. His wife wasn’t around.

‘Well… you’ve got to buy them a drink at least,’ I said.

‘Ah, drink. Hmm.’

His wife walked in and sat down at the desk. He shifted in his chair and put his glasses on.

‘Tell me,’ his said, quickly changing the subject then scrutinising my bald pate, ‘where did your hair go?’

I blinked at the remark.

‘South America.’

‘South America? I don’t understand.’

‘I’m bald, Doctor. Pure bald.’

‘Yes, I see. You can be having the hair transplant,’ he smiled, evidently finding the thought of having hair plugs butchered into my scalp a pleasing one.

‘No, I don’t want to have that,’ I said. ‘Besides, they don’t really work. My father had one and he ended up getting a toupée. A wig,’ I added for clarity.

‘A wig? This is ridiculous. Why would you want to worry about such things?’

‘I’m not sure…’ I stared at him, noting that he had tried every possible manoeuvre with his remaining hair to cover his balding pate – from the back, the sides, a little from the front – it looked like a coffee scroll and he was telling me not to worry about baldness?!

‘Anyway,’ he said sitting up, fiddling with his glasses and affecting a professional air, ‘you should not cycle with this malaria, Mr Russell.’

‘But I’m feeling fine.’

‘No. You must not cycle. You must rest.’

‘For how long?’

‘Another ten days at least.’

‘Really? I’m feeling quite chipper. I had a ride today and felt great.’

‘No! Not advisable. Here, take this course of tablets.’

He dumped a pile of boxes on the desk and fixed a hard stare over his glasses.

‘Finish them all. And no cycling!’

But when I went to bed that I night I lay there thinking, ‘Ha ha, Doctor! I’ll show you! I’ll show you what hardy creatures we Australians are and get back on that bike! Ha ha! You’ll see! YOU’LL SEEEEEEE!’

6

KHANDWA – UDAIPUR

January

I took the train.

Yeah, I know. That’s cheating. Again.

But the good doctor was right. I really didn’t have the strength yet, so I jumped on the overnight train for Udaipur, a city by a beautiful lake, some 800 kilometres northwest, and a perfect place to recuperate. And it was the next major city where I could perhaps have another blood test done – just to be sure.

With my bare feet up on the opposite seat, my fellow passenger, Abul (a producer for a biotech company, his business card told me), helped himself to my bicycle handlebar bag, examining the map inside the waterproof plastic sheath while I helped myself to his English newspaper.

‘English, yes, but Hindi, no,’ he had said, smiling. For the first time since arriving, I was with an Indian who didn’t understand Hindi, which comforted me greatly. I felt that we were comrades in arms against the ongoing confusion around us. But then again, understanding Abul’s English was another matter altogether. When I pressed him to tell me more about his profession, I couldn’t understand either the terminology he was using or his taut Tamil twang.

In contrast, sitting opposite me was Asilya, a well-spoken farmer with a sad countenance and droopy moustache. He owned and operated a farm growing soya beans, sugar cane and rice. His father was a lawyer and a farmer, a family tradition by all accounts. He spoke with an indifferent manner, which was a refreshing change from the obsequious attention I was often greeted with.

I asked Asilya whether he used genetically modified crops.

‘No. I have no time for this business. This is the south.’

I was curious, as I had read Stolen Harvest by environmentalist and activist Vandana Shiva. She detailed how, in the late 1990s, hundreds of farmers took on a new biocrop offered by multinationals that would supposedly double the farmers’ yields. The catch was that if farmers wanted to replant, they had to buy more seed from the company, breaking a tradition of sharing seeds in the farming collectives. The crops failed, and, unable to repay the debt, over 400 hundred farmers killed themselves by consuming pesticides. This spurred a movement called ‘Monsanto, Quit India’ campaign in 1998. Alas, the suicides have continued and are now more than 25 000.

Asilya’s wife, a quiet woman with a gentle seriousness about her, sat opposite with their shy nine-year-old son. She was particularly affectionate to her husband – something I had not seen in India until now – resting her hand on his thigh in a relaxed, loving fashion, sometimes slapping it to punctuate a thought.

They were absolutely lovely and they temporarily adopted me. They shared their lunch with me – alu (spicy potatoes) and homemade chutney. When the train stopped at stations, Asilya would ask if I needed anything (to which I replied that I didn’t) and then disappear and return with sweets to share.

The afternoon brought a dusty heat into our compartment and soon we were all yawning, flopping on each other’s shoulders. I tried to read but the train shook the words off the page and I surrendered to the slow breathing around me.

This equanimity was a far cry from when I first bordered the train, flopping about with my six bags like a Christmas tree. My straps caught on doorknobs and other people’s luggage, and snared small children, taking them further and further into the bowels of the train, screaming all the way.

I had had trouble with the parcel office clerk, a thin man with a tea saucer of baldness at the back of his head, who insisted that my bike would not be delivered to me until the following week.

‘But it needs to come with me now.’

‘Then you should have come here a week ago to book it.’

‘But I didn’t know that I was going by train a week ago.’

He sat back among the piles of paperwork stacked high in boxes. Ragged station hands loaded hessian-wrapped packages onto a barrow. The clerk sipped his chai and went back to filling out a lengthy form. Clearly, this needed a different tack.

‘Look. I’ve had malaria. I mean, I have malaria. I need to get to a hospital for treatment. Urgently.’

‘Then this is a problem for you,’ he said, not looking up.

‘Right. Er, look, is there any way, any way at all that I can get my bike on the train with me?’

No answer.

‘Well?’

He looked up. ‘Express.’

‘No. I’m not putting it on the Express.’

‘Express—’

‘I said “No Express!” With me!’

‘Express postage. Fill this in.’

‘Oh! Will the bike go with me? I mean, on this train?’

‘Yes. One hundred and seventy rupees. Special charge,’ he chimed.

I filled in the triplicate forms, which he then stamped and sealed with hot wax then attached them to the bike.

I tried not to wonder whether the parcel office clerk would later sell bits and pieces of my bike down at the market, and tried to forget his eagerness for me not to lock the bike up. My fears were allayed when I heard the welcoming sounds of ‘BRRINGG-BRRINGG!’

A crowd of station hands were milling around my bike and playing with the bell. (The fact that it was an Indian bell hadn’t dampened their enthusiasm).

At the town of Indore, a man with a broken wrist and a weasel’s nose boarded. He barked instruction at a younger man who threw his luggage on our bunks. This caused some consternation from the farmer’s wife and some apprehension on my part.

I curled up on a bunk – not my bunk; Weasel-man had taken that – and I eventually was gently rocked to sleep by the clunking tracks.

7

UDAIPUR

Early February

‘I was lying naked and she was reading. At first I thought it was her shaking the bed making some kind of joke. But the whole building is shaking and I wonder what is happening. She says to me, “Quick! Get up!” I run down the stairs totally naked!’ he laughed. His partner interjected.

‘In the street, cows were running up and down, people were screaming, running into each other. The vibrations started small then bigger and bigger. We kept falling over. When it had stopped we went back upstairs to grab our things and a woman started screaming at us to get out, “Aftershocks! Aftershocks!”’

Hannes and Hayley, a young Swiss (Hannes) and Welsh (Hayley) couple, had been only 120 kilometres from the epicentre of India’s worst earthquakes in years. The city of Bhuj, in the north-western state of Gujarat, took the brunt of the quake, which levelled 90 per cent of the city and killed over 17 000 people. It had happened on 26 January while I was in Khandwa watching the crowds celebrate India’s independence.

Hannes and Hayley looked tired and gaunt and hadn’t slept for the past four days. They had ended up staying out in the open at a schoolyard, where locals had generously given them blankets, food and water. Most of the roads out of Bhuj were closed, but Hannes and Hayley had been lucky enough to get a ride out and were taken over the last remaining bridge out of Bhuj.

‘In the town,’ Hannes said, ‘there is this horrible silence.’

I felt a twinge of guilt here in Udaipur, a town in the north-western state of Rajasthan, as I sat in comfort on the balcony of the Lakeside Hotel and enjoyed the scenic blue splendour of Lake Picola. I had only arrived by train that morning from Khandwa. Rajput porters, in their red turbans and dhoti (white ankle-length cloth) jostled past other passengers with my six bags of luggage, their proudly large moustaches leading the way, bangles dangling obediently by their wrists.

It was strange to see the Rajputs portering considering that they were known as the warrior Hindu caste. In the past, they dominated the area for thousands of years until, unable to solve inter-clan disputes and unite, they were eventually defeated by the invading Moghuls in the 12th century.

Udaipur was indeed the best place to recuperate from malaria (well, except that it had more mosquitoes) and I spent most mornings on the rooftop patio sipping pots of tea, munching on banana pancakes and gasbagging the days away with other travellers.

The town was famous not only for having a beautiful Moghul palace, the Jag Niwas, its white ivory domes and arches reflecting in the middle of a lake, but also because it was where the James Bond movie Octopussy was filmed. Banners hung from the narrow cobbled streets advertising free viewings of the film in restaurants while the ubiquitous drones of Bob Marley wailed endlessly from cafés and German bakeries.

In the late afternoon, I watched two hawks circle around a minaret, flying on the heavy heat only to be scared off by the call of the salat from a bearded muezzin. Below me, white-tufted and black-faced langur monkeys hung from the adjoining wall, playing with each other’s tails. My neighbour, a woman in brown salwa kameez, picked up a long stick and began tapping the bricks near the monkeys, trying to move them on. The leader bared his teeth at her and then bounced over into a neighbouring yard only to be chased by another woman with another long stick. The troupe of monkeys followed, teasing her as they passed, clanging and bouncing over the tin roofs.

While the muezzin’s call was to remind Muslims to pray, at five o’clock most afternoons I too was summoned. But not with such reverence.

‘Hot Pants!… Hot Pants! HEEEEYY!’

Several metres below my balcony and on the flat roof of their house, Manarge and Lanarge, ten-year-old pigtailed twins, sang and danced like James Brown. They clapped their hands, spun around and moved up and down like yo-yos before doing synchronised hip drops.

‘Ah, my prodigies!’

I had taught them these moves and now every day I had to join in which I did with gusto. Their mother, impressed with the attention I had given them for the past week brought me coffee, throwing her sari over her face, laughing.

Raku, a girl of eight in a red dress, climbed up the six-foot wall with a devilish grin on her face. ‘Photo! Photo!’

I took some more shots though I already had umpteen photographs of these kids. I offered lift-ups to the smaller ones, and sometimes two at a time hung off my arms as they swung back and forth like fat little plums. They were delightful.

‘Okay! Enough!’ I dropped the kids. It would be dusk soon but already mosquitoes were hovering over a vast buffet – my bald head. I went inside, put on long trousers and a long-sleeved shirt and fumigated myself with mosquito repellent. Once bitten, twice shy. I set off for the hospital to have another blood test.

‘Just to be sure,’ Sunil’s father, a doctor, had emphasised. ‘You don’t know if they are doing the tests properly in this small town.’

The sky was ablaze with corrugated orange clouds, giving a soft peachy pink hue to the palace and blurring the strong lines of the towering triple-storey havelis – ornate houses – some of which were hundreds of years old.

A scythe of colour suddenly streaked across the sky, ricocheting through the valley like mortar fire before crackling to nothing. Fireworks.

It was the wedding season, and every night these pyrotechnic celebrations coloured the desert night. Brass bands played through the streets, the musicians adorned in smart maroon tunics with gold ornate lacing. Male party guests danced wildly at the front of the procession while women followed, clapping in their beautiful, brightly coloured saris.

I followed the procession, clapping with the guests, my happiness unwrapping my smile. Sitting on a flower-covered horse, the groom wore a bright orange turban and a beige suit. He looked nonplussed about the whole event; in fact I dare say he even looked bored.

‘Are you nervous?’ I asked him.

‘No. Why should I be?’

‘Well… getting married. You know. No second thoughts?’

‘No. It is all fine.’

The procession stopped and a wild frenzy of dancing overtook the wedding guests. For the first time since I arrived in India, I saw men and women sharing an activity other than eating: dancing. Before I knew it I was being dragged into the melee and whirled in a circle at high speed. The guest who had ‘invited me to dance’ bobbed up and down and I followed his lead. We spurred each other on, faster and faster, much to the excitement of the crowd. I sensed that we were reaching our critical speed and I lost his grip, catapulting him into a crowd of old women in red saris. Hauled up by the old women, who laughed at his plight, he rejoined the dancing.

The women were incredibly beautiful, one in particular in her blue sari and gold jewellery smiling with the other women. Our eyes met and I smiled. She laughed and shyly hid herself beneath her sari.

The band was paid on a per-song basis. The men danced with ten-rupee notes in their hands, waving a circle over their fellow dancers’ heads, and then, when the music ended, gave the money to the bandleader, Ruzen, who ordered his band to whip up another song.

‘You must come with us to another wedding,’ he told me. ‘You are a good dancer.’

‘I can play the trumpet.’

‘Really?’ He took a trumpet from one of the band members, washed it with mineral water and presented it to me.

‘Play.’

The last time I had played the trumpet was when I was 14, so things were going to be interesting. I put the mouthpiece to my lips. The piece was smaller than what I was used to and, with cracked and sore lips, I found it difficult to get a good note. I tried playing ‘It’s Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White’ but it came out sounding more like a sacred cow being slaughtered. After a few attempts and more splutters, Ruzen swiped the trumpet from me.

‘Okay, okay.’ He whipped the trumpet back to its owner, who drowned the mouthpiece with water in case perhaps my bad playing was infectious.

I went off to the hospital, got a blood test and returned to the patio of my hotel to find Hannes and Hayley showing off wedding clothes – their wedding clothes. This wedding business in Udaipur had rubbed off on them. Hayley sashayed, proudly showing off her embroidered pink sari while Hannes stood awkwardly in his elegant pointed burgundy shoes and grey suit.

‘I asked him to marry me,’ said Hayley proudly. ‘He was like “Okay”. So, I rang my parents and he rang his, and we’re all meeting up in Delhi.’

‘Congratulations!’ I embraced them.

‘How was the malaria result?’ Hayley asked.

‘Negative.’

‘Wonderful! I’m so pleased for you.’ Hayley hugged me back.

And with that news, I left the next day for the blue city of Jodhpur via Ranakpur, known to have one of the most elaborate Jain Temples in the world.

8

UDAIPUR – JODHPUR

February

There I was climbing the Aravalli Range, the trees thin and stark like upright skeletons, when the desert came alive with dark figures appearing from nowhere as if emerging from the dry earth itself. As they neared I saw that they were children, some of them teenagers and all seemingly stuck together with filth. They chased me as I rode.

‘Namaste! Namaste!’

Eventually I was stopped by a group that blocked me by walking in front, one of them yanking at my pack-rack, jerking me to a sudden, violent stop.

‘ONE PEN! ONE PEN! ONE PEN!’ they demanded.

‘Sorry, no pen. All gone,’ which was true. In Udaipur, I had given them all to Lanarge and Manarge, who were probably now doing James Brown dance spins and twirls on the patio –‘HEEEYYY!’

‘ONE PEN! ONE PEN! ONE PEN!’ They tugged at my arms, my pack, my shorts, and my handlebars. I tried to move off but they gripped tight to the pack-rack.

‘ONE PEN! ONE PEN!’

I looked around. Dust rose in swirls over shale and broken rocks.

‘What exactly are you going to write on?’

‘ONE PEN! ONE PEN! ONE PEN!”

I managed to prise their little fingers from the bike, slip on the gears, and break from the pack, hearing their voices eventually turn into soft squeaks. But this was not the end, oh, no. Up ahead, more children had gathered and, like a dark storm cloud, descended the slope screaming ‘ONE PEN! ONE PEN! ONE PEN!’

I picked up speed again, my bad knee burning at the sudden pedal work. Thankfully, a downward stretch hastened my escape and again I was free. But, as I slowed to climb the next hill…

‘ONE PEN! ONE PEN! ONE PEN!”

‘Oh, hell!’ I sped up again, my lungs burning, my knee a hot knot of pain and threatening to pop off my thighbone. Over the hill and… silence. Well, almost. Ahead, I saw dark shapes bumping around. They were too small to be children. As I neared, a huge dark shape glided over me and landed in the middle of a water buffalo carcass. It suddenly flew off, squawking, having been chased by the low growl and snaps of three rabid-looking dogs.

Vultures.

I stopped the bike. Across the road there were over 200 of them, hawing and squabbling. They may have been graceful in flight but on the ground they hopped and bounced around like Edward G. Robinson[xi] in a gangster movie. ‘Hey, you guys lay off! This cow is mine, seeeee! Yaaah! Miiiiiiiiine!’

The dogs were busily ripping the carcass to pieces, finishing off the tiny bits of red meat, blood smearing and matting their snouts. I was more afraid of the dogs than the vultures, and was reminded of the last time I saw a dog so hellish, in Madhya Pradesh. I had passed a water buffalo by the side of the road and presumed it was asleep until I saw a mangy dog ripping the buffalo’s rear end out, pieces of flesh the colour of red wine dripping into the dust. The dog flashed its teeth at me, making every hair on my neck stand up and my legs pedal faster.

I left the vultures and the dogs to their carrion meal, and, upon entering a small dusty town, I too was ready to eat. I sat and had gobi mutter (cauliflower and peas) and a dodgy-looking samosa sinking in an island of oil. A taxi missing a wheel was slumped by the side of the road. The passenger, a large fat man with a nose like a red mushroom, got out and sat at my table.

‘Tyre. Is broken. I vait for fixing,’ he said in a thick German accent and then looked at my bike as if he wanted to swap places. He yelled at the driver, ‘TAXI FUCKING!’ The driver smiled and continued to smoke his small cigarette.

I left him there, tut-tutting at his swearing, riding the high moral ground not knowing that very shortly I would be in a far worse situation. A few kilometres down the road I felt my lunch taking hold and the awful immediacy that goes with it. I pulled the bike under a shady spot, careful to avoid thistle thorns that have caused many a puncture. I got the loo paper ready, looked around, hoisted my pants down and let gravity do the talking.

Just when I was halfway through this number I heard the unmentionable – ‘ONE PEN! ONE PEN! ONE PEN!’ – and snapped around to see what seemed to be the entire population of Indian children smiling and staring at my groaning, spluttering arsehole.

Dear reader. I wish I was more understanding about the curiosity of these poor children. But I wasn’t. Not with my pants down. I swore, I raged, I hurled unmentionable profanities.

And you know, it didn’t have any effect whatsoever! It encouraged them! They moved in a circle around me, some holding their noses, others laughing.

‘HAVE YOU NO SHAME!’ I screamed at them, trying vainly to shoo them away with the scraggy piece of loo paper.

‘ONE PEN! ONE PEN! ONE PEN!’

‘ARRRGHH!’

Perhaps because of the rage in my voice, the burning mad stare in my eyes and not to mention the diarrhoea that had sparked up in volcanic velocity since, the kids’ expressions blanked into a panic and they ran in the direction from which they came.

‘What the hell would they want a pen for?’ I chewed on these words like the gravel I was now riding over. ‘They’re most likely illiterate anyway.’

Thankfully, I’d calmed down by the time I’d got to Ranakpur which consisted of nothing more than a chai stall… oh, and a 15th century marble Jain temple standing out like a monstrous three-storey wedding cake.

It was late in the afternoon and Jain monks were quietly walking the sandy grounds of the temple in their white robes, some brushing away debris in front of them as they walked while some had small rectangular masks over their noses and mouths to avoid breathing in insects. They were following the path of ahimsa (non-violence) to the extreme and thus avoiding harm to jivas or souls that not only lived in all creatures large and small but also in the four elements – water, air, fire and earth. It is a religion that is older than Buddhism and similarly these ascetic monks have relinquished possessions, attachments, wrong thoughts and most difficult of all, family.

This temple was devoted to the first of the 24 tirthankaras (enlightened beings), Adinath, and, as I walked through some of the 29 ornate rooms, I found friezes depicting his life, including, to my surprise, erotic carvings. Well, if large-breasted figures and a devotee with a large penis is erotic as such. It must be hard being a monk around this temple!

It was magnificent and, because there were no tourists, sublime. However, before I knew it, the temple was closing up and although I could’ve stayed with the monks in their quarters (on a mat, actually) I chickened out and instead had a wonderful quiet rest at the Hotel Shipli (well, except for the geyser in my bathroom that blew up in the middle of the night like a wet grenade).

* * *

I struggled with the idea of seeing the temple again the next morning but it opened at ten o’clock – too late for beating the heat of the day. Regrettably, I left.

By lunch time the next day I realised I wasn’t free of something – Pen People. Arriving in Jodhpur I saw that tourists were being jumped, grabbed and followed by gangs of children demanding you-know-what. Strangely, this made me smile.

I was told later that the kids were not demanding pens for literacy reasons but because they wanted to resell them, and that ‘One pen’ was another way of asking for money.

‘Manarge and Lanarge! You’ve sold me up river!’

I had originally been lured to Jodhpur by the incredible photographs by travel photographer Steve McCurry in his glorious photologue called Monsoon. Jodhpur was known as the ‘blue city’, named because, well, it was blue. Well, the old city at least. The walls had been painted blue not for aesthetic reasons but to combat termites and other pests. McCurry had captured the vibrancy of the town by framing proud Rajputs in their red turbans standing in front of the blue walls. However, some years had passed, and as I stood in the Mehrangarh Fort that towered over the city, the iridescent blue had now faded to a soft mauve.

The fortress was the fourth-largest in India and had been built on a high rocky outcrop with thick imposing walls. One intriguing story in its construction was that the founder, the Rajput ruler of Mandore, Rao Jodha, buried a man called Rajiya Bhambi alive in the foundations to ensure its good luck, though not for ol’ Ray. ‘Guys, somehow I don’t know think this in the Occupational Health and Safety Guide – glop, glop, glop.’

That night, I enjoyed an exquisite Rajasthani dish of chakki-ka-sagh (dumplings in gravy) on the terrace of the Haveli Guest House while the Mehrangarh Fort faded into the background like an enormous black backdrop.

I might have stayed longer in Jodhpur if not for the hordes of touts and tourists pawing off each other, a mutual exchange of gain and disdain. I was starting to gather that I was least happy in touristic areas; local people I met usually had an ulterior motive. This was felt particularly when it came to auto-rickshaw drivers who harangued tourists mercilessly. ‘No,’ seemed to mean, ‘Yes, ask me again if I need a lift.’

However, one night, the tables turned – I actually got to drive a rickshaw! A rickshaw driver, the big smiling Mr King, drove up as I walked and showed me his half completed rickshaw. It was like in the tram in the film Malcolm. The front shield was there, welds still fresh, no license plate, while the motor, chassis and crankshaft were exposed and quite naked.

‘India’s first! You come.’ He sat me down on the seat on top of the engine and started it with some rope wrapped around the flywheel.

I grabbed the handlebars and let the clutch out. We lurched into traffic.

‘Shlow… shlow.’ He forced me to ease back on the throttle. We bounced and zipped through the dimly lit narrow streets. I saw two large tourists, one with ‘MONTANA’ emblazoned across his shirt.

‘YOU! YOU!’ I hissed, makes kissing noises at them like I’d seen so many rickshaw drivers do. ‘Rickshaw? Rickshaw? Good price! Good price!’

‘No, thank—’

The American turned around and burst out laughing when he saw me. Later, King dropped me back at the hotel and just when I thought this had all been just a bit of fun he turned around and said, ‘Now, how much you want to pay for the ride?’

Just before I left Jodhpur the following morning, I went to the bank. Now, I’d been warned about how inefficient banks were in India. As I was to discover, it wasn’t that, exactly. After waiting in line then getting a special token from the teller then told to go upstairs and wait, I was finally, after an hour, led into a small office. Files lay this way and that, numerous piles stacked and falling over in lazy lumps. The bank manager, a man with a grey moustache, the ends white as if they’d been dipped in flour, looked at my traveller’s cheque, my passport, then suddenly put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling.

‘Is something wrong?’

‘It is tea break!’ he remonstrated as if I should’ve known and pointed to the clock on the wall. ‘Ten o’clock.’

Shortly thereafter, in came the chai-wallah with glasses of chai. The manager said something and a piping hot chai was placed in my hands.

‘Dunubud (Thank you).’

We chatted and at exactly quarter past ten the manager animated back into life and processed my cheque. Now, why can’t all banks be like this? Cup of tea, biscuit, bit of chat and a laugh. Oh, we have lost so much in the West!

* * *

I took the back roads on the way to Jaisalmer, known as the Golden Fortress with its sandstone walls and intricate carved havelis. It was of particular interest to me as I’d had to prepare a catalogue for it for our college project and it would be wonderful seeing the real thing at last.

It was a hard ride. The roads disappeared into sand drifts and I found myself pushing the bike for hours through the sand and the interminably hot sun.

And so, after eight hours of cycling, I found myself in the tiny town of Shergarh with not one tourist in sight.

Sand swam in the streets, and children played in it and within seconds, I was surrounded by the entire town. Elders, teenagers and small children covered in dirt, all smiling, all very curious about the bike and me.

‘Oh, gear cycle! Gear cycle!’

A young man sashayed through the crowd and introduced himself.

‘I am Rikesh,’ he said, his English impeccable. ‘You are the first foreigner here in a long while. Come, I will take you to the best hotel in Shergarh.’

And it was the best hotel in Shergarh… because it was the only hotel in Shergarh! Well, calling it a hotel was a bit generous. It was a storeroom-cum-dorm above the restaurant. I was to share the room with an old Rajput who wore an enormous yellow turban, dhoti (wrap around pants) and sported a pointy moustache that belonged more on someone called ‘Brigadier Reginald Dwyer’.

A proud Rajput with fierce eyes owned the restaurant. He sat at a cooking slate on his haunches like a vulture, rolling wads of chapattis in his big bony hands. With his woollen cap and sweater he looked more suited to the sea, at the helm of a fishing boat in a typhoon, than in the dry, calm sands of Shergarh.

‘Take your seat,’ he ordered, pointing his cooking knife at me.

As I ate, a crowd of adolescent boys giggled and stared at me while holding each other’s legs, hands and waists like couples on a date. Later, I chased kids up and down the dunes and gave piggyback rides and pretended to be an albatross, much to their heady delight.

Rikesh told me that no foreigner had ever stayed in Shergarh. ‘And so everyone here thinks that you are like a movie star!’

He was a medical student and all of 18 but had the maturity of someone much older.

‘Come. I will take you to my brother’s shop.’

His brother’s shop was a stall, which sold chewing tobacco and a locally made mouth freshener. He told his brother to prepare a mouth freshener for me, getting bits of what looked like crystal, yellow powder, and different types of herbs, and placing these onto a banana leaf. Rikesh told me to empty it onto my mouth. I did. It was sweet, fragrant and slightly bitter and left my head buzzing.

‘Spit.’ I did, watching the brown red goo hit the dust.

As the moon turned the desert into rude round shapes, music blared out from a small shack: ‘WHOAH! WE’RE GOING TO IBIZA! WHOAH! BACK TO THE ISLAND!’

I couldn’t believe my ears. I regarded the Rajasthani Bullet Beer I was now drinking with some mistrust. But there it was. British pop music in one of India’s most backwater towns, where asking for a bottle of Coke got you a confused enema grimace from shopkeepers.

I was dragged up by Rikesh and the boys and urged to dance. Thankfully, the track soon finished but not until it rapped into some hardcore techno tunes that sounded like IKEA furniture fucking. Eventually, I tried to ‘rave it’ which to me meant shaking your hand around as if you had snot on the back of it. The lads cheered me on.

I bought a tape – not because I liked it – but as a way of blocking out the din of dogs fighting so I could sleep.

* * *

In the early hours of the morning, I awoke with a start at the sight of a face trying to push itself through my mosquito net like the stalker from the film Halloween. The face pulled back. It belonged to a young man. He jumped on the end of my bed, swinging his legs back and forth like a child and speaking Marwari (I presumed), the local dialect. When I didn’t respond he leapt up and started playing with my bike up against the wall in the room, ringing the bell.

‘BRRINGG-BRRINGG! BRRINGG-BRRINGG!’

Duli, the town’s vet who lived in the next room, called out to him. He jumped up and left. Duli came in.

‘I told him to go,’ Duli said.

‘Thank you. It’s an Indian thing isn’t it? No idea of privacy.’

‘Indian thing! Hah! I don’t like it either!’ he erupted. ‘I do not like it when they walk into my room without announcement. These are very illiterate people. You must tell them to go!’

And, as if on cue, the old Rajput with yellow turban barged in, sat on my bed and stared at me.

‘Go!’ I pointed to the door. He frowned at me quizzically then babbled at Duli.

‘He says you owe the owner two hundred rupees,’ Duli said.

‘Two hundred?’ It seemed a trifle much, especially I paid that much for a nice, big room at the Haveli Guest House in Jodhpur.

‘Fifty per night, fifty per day, twenty-five for each meal. So, now you give him two hundred.’

Not wanting to cause offence, I handed it over.

At breakfast I was invited to meet with Mr Prakash, the principal of the local school. He was a squat, rolling man in his early 50s and was in the habit of leaning against the back of his chair. He immediately unburdened himself of his worries to me: the four-year drought, bores having to be dug deeper and deeper every year and the bleak future of the town without water. But then, when I told him of my journey and my malarial fevers he uttered the most curious of suggestions.

‘Drinking your urine is very beneficial for your health.’

I blinked. ‘You’re drinking your own urine?’ I dipped my stale biscuit in my tea, hoping he had given me tea.

‘Yes,’ he smiled. I tried to get a glimpse of signs of uric contamination on his teeth.

‘You’re taking the piss!’ I teased, but he didn’t get me.

‘Yes. I am taking the piss since 1996 and I feel much better for it. I am stronger, much vigour, and I have not been sick once since the treatment.’

‘What does yours taste like?’

‘Depends on what I eat. Sometimes if I have too much tea it is a little bitter and—’

‘Okay, okay, okay!’ I waved him to stop. He ruffled through his drawer and flapped out a rough copy of a book called The Golden Fountain by Coen Van Der Kroon. My first thought was, ‘Those fucking Dutch!’

‘It is all in here. Go on. Read it.’

Urine, Van Der Kroon claimed, could cure anything: herpes, athlete’s foot, skin problems, sunburn, indigestion, diarrhoea, even cancer and AIDS. But what really got my attention was that urine could cure baldness.

‘Yes, yes,’ Dr Prakash smiled. ‘You put urine on the scalp and the hair should grow.’

‘That would require spectacular aim, Mr Prakash.’

‘No, no. You have to use old urine.’

‘Old urine?’ I had images of trying to milk geriatric men. Or worse, bowing before them in public urinals. ‘All I’m asking is for you to…’

‘The urine has to be four days old and left out in the sun, then applied to the affected area,’ he said, making a rubbing motion on his scalp.

‘Yeah… but the smell.’

‘Sure, but if you want the benefit, then this is a small price.’

When I gave a look that suggested that the author had been drinking too much of the stuff, Mr Prakash lit up.

‘Anyway, you should use it to treat your malaria. There is this woman who was close to death. She has the leukaemia. She tries everything but nothing works. But then she is given the urine treatment – no food, just urine – and she is cured.’

‘What is she doing now?’

‘Oh…’ he sighed. ‘She is dead. Hit by a bus.’

Mr Prakash took me outside to watch the school assembly. The students marched ankle-deep in the sand of their quadrangle, then sat in rows and prayed to Saraswati, the Goddess of Knowledge, who was depicted above them in a picture in which she played a long-necked string instrument called a veena. I watched a male lyrebird fly down from a wall behind the students and peck at morsels of food left in the sand.

What struck me the most about the assembly was not the pressed blue shirts that were so remarkably neat and clean in such a dusty landscape, but that there were only 25 girls among the hundred or so boys and they sat in segregated lots. When I asked the principal about the disparity he said, ‘Families do not think that girls need education. They will only get married or work on the farms.’

I spent two nights in Shergarh and on the morning that I was leaving I had tea with Rikesh at his house. His parents, in their 60s, sat in the shadows like old furniture.

‘When will you come back?’ asked Rikesh.

‘I’m not sure. Thank you for everything,’ I said. We hugged and I wheeled the bike through sand until the bitumen resurfaced like a buried elephant’s back.

I turned over my shoulder to see Rikesh still there, shrinking in the distance. He had been a good friend for the past two days, showing me around the town and introducing me to his friends. He had a gentle kindness, a quiet humility I immediately felt when I first met him. I hoped to see him one day again.

The quietness of the desert reminded me that I was now alone again. My only company was the knocking gait of my chain, the slow sound of my breath drawing in and the odd shift of tools in my luggage.

Faced with no one to talk to, I talked to myself and sang. For some reason, old television commercials crept up from my childhood vault.

Up, up and away with TAA, the friendly way to FLLLYYYY!

Not long after this, I found another part of my body singing, as I squatted, pants hoisted down, stomach grumbling its own sonata over a small cactus. The sudden eruption seemed to settle things down… for a while, until again I found myself stirring up an aria over a culvert. I felt decidedly ill.

In my haste, I had punctured the front tyre on a thorny branch. I searched around in my front pannier for my tools when The Golden Fountain flopped out.

Now, I hadn’t been overly impressed by the principal’s suggestion of drinking my own piss, but something in The Golden Fountain made sense. It said that urine, being a natural antiseptic, would kill germs in the digestive tract. Hmm. And I needed to pee.

I took my drink bottle from its cage on the bike, drank the rest of the water and looked around. No one. Furtively, I whizzed away and felt the warm urine crawl up the bottle. I looked inside; it was the colour of a beer including bubbles floating around the top. No wonder they call beer ‘piss’ where I come from.

I held it to my mouth.

I can’t be serious!

But I was. I closed my eyes and, with a sigh and a gulp, took in the hot ‘Golden Nectar’… then spat it straight out!

‘Corr!’

But I was determined to give it a go. I knocked it back once more and grimaced again. I washed my mouth out with a fresh bottle of water.

Within minutes my stomach settled. I stretched out on my tarp and relaxed. I heard a Jeep approaching in the distance. And in my stomach I felt something else approaching.

My insides lurched and I puked a jet of yellow vomit across the bike just as the Jeep sailed by. I looked up. A ‘Friends of Gujarat Earthquake’ banner waved across the Jeep, which had now stopped.

‘Are you okay, my friend?’ A thick German voice reached out.

Why do people ask you if you’re okay when clearly you’re not? You could have your head hanging off by a scraggily vein and they’d still go, ‘You alright?’

‘I’m fine. WHHHARRRPPP!’

‘You sure?’

‘Absolutely. WHHAARR-RRGGAHH!’

‘You eat somezing bad?’

‘Well, “eat” isn’t exactly the verb here… I’ll…’ I really couldn’t tell him what I had done. ‘Really.’

He tapped his driver on the shoulder and they were gone. I watched the scarf of dust head towards Shergarh, and imagined the principal smiling and laughing to himself. Who indeed had been taking the piss?

* * *

After fixing the puncture, I got back on the bike, the bitter taste of vomit grinding on my molars. I felt awful. I was sneezing and felt like I was getting a cold. I hoped it wasn’t malaria again.

I passed scabby bush, sand and towns with the usual foray of men hanging off each other in dhaba shacks, watching the day vanish in dust swirls.

I could see adversity spreading itself over the bitumen up ahead – sheets of sand drifts. I sped up, thinking I could skim over them on to the next island of black tar, but I quickly found myself bogged in a sand trap. I got off and pushed.

A bus passed then stopped. The driver motioned me to get on and through hand movements indicated that the road was like this for some time. But I was made of stronger stuff, I told myself. I smiled back and waved him on, shaking his head at this mad bloody foreigner.

What have I done?

I went back to pushing the bike through the sand. Four hours later, the sun blistering down, I was still at it – riding for a while then dismounting to push the bike. I was exhausted. And I was running out of water.

Eventually, the road cleared up and I made it to Phalsund, the only major town between Shergarh and Shiv. But I was worse for wear. I had a blinding headache that felt like it was cracking my skull in two.

In a restaurant I lay on a bench. Someone turned on a fan and felt the caresses and licks from the slight whooshing of its rotations. Outside, I could hear a crowd of young men around my bike, prodding and poking it, the bell rung continuously.

CRUNCH!

I sat up to see to a tall plump young man knocking about a young boy by the ears who was stuck under my bike having tried to ride it. I laid back down, forearm resting over my eyes. Moments later I felt my arm being tugged off my face. Upside down in my vision was the tall plump man.

‘You have a beautiful bicycle,’ he said, looking down at me. ‘I want this bicycle. How much you give to me?’

‘It’s not for sale.’

‘I am much wanting your gear-cycle.’

‘I said it isn’t for sale.’

‘But it is so beautiful. What price can you give me?’

‘No.’

‘Tell me.’

‘No!’

‘But I am wanting your bike.’

‘I told you. IT’S… NOT… FOR… SALE!’

He blinked. ‘Yes, yes. But how much you want to give it to me?

‘PLEASE! GO AWAY!’

He slinked out and went back to staring at my bike.

I swung my arm back over my eyes, trying to wrestle the headache. I began to shake uncontrollably.

The malarial fevers had returned.

9

JAISALMER

February

In the late afternoon of the next day, I wobbled into Jaisalmer a shaking, sweaty mess and half delirious. I’d spent the night in the desert burning up in my tiny one-man tent and right now all I wanted was a bed with clean sheets. All I wanted was to be cool. All I wanted was a bit of peace and quiet, to be left alone. All I wanted was to just cry! That’s all!

But, oh no.

First, I had to get past a large American tourist in a loud Hawaiian shirt (let’s not live the stereotype shall we) in the foyer of our hotel, standing there like some kind of Lara Croft Tomb Raider goon. As I wheeled my bike in he belted me about the head with questions.

‘OH, MY GOD! ARE YOU LIKE, CYCLING INDIA!?’

I blinked. ‘No.’

‘NO? OH, HAHA! I SO WANNA DO THAT! WHAT KINDA BIKE YA GOT?’

‘Can we do this later?

‘SO IS IT SAFE? HOW MANY KILOMETRES CAN YOU DO A DAY? HAVE YOU LIKE, BEEN ROBBED OR ANYTHING?’

‘No, look – I’m not feeling well. I’ve got malaria.’

‘MALARIA? I HEAR THAT’S PRETTY BAD. I DIDN’T GET IT WHEN I WAS IN KOREA. YOU BEEN TO KOREA?’

I went upstairs, his questions biting at my heels, the last of which was ‘HEY, SINCE YOU’RE NOT USING YOUR BIKE, COULD I HAVE A RIDE?’

I snapped around.

‘WOULD… YOU… FUUUUUUCK… OFFFFFF!’

He stood there, his face like a big child. ‘No need to be rude, buddy. I was just askin’.’

But things got even worse. As I lay there burning up in my penthouse (okay, it was a bungalow on the roof of the hotel), an Australian woman, sitting near my window, barked racist views about aboriginal entitlement to other travellers for what seemed hours. In the morning, she dropped down at my table like a dirty bomb.

‘I hear you’re from Australia.’

I looked around and saw the American fumbling through his Lonely Planet. I felt betrayed. In a low voice I said ‘Who told you?’

‘Ya don’t sound Australian. Ya must be from the toff end of town.’ And then, for some reason, went on in great detail about her constipation. Which was ironic because just listening to her gave me the screaming shits!

It was only after feigning death that I managed to be free of her, and escaped to get another blood test. It came back negative, the doctors at a loss to explain my strange fevers.

When I felt well enough, I explored Jaisalmer. I weaved in and out of its narrow streets and ornate havelis, dodging cows slouched at street corners like bored teenagers on holiday, strolling through market stalls dripping with silver trinkets, leather bags before finding myself surrounded by a sea of embroidered wall hangings lapping at my feet.

I was in a textile shop and the owner, Madan, sported hair cropped short while a long plait hung down from the top of his skull. It was the Brahmin custom when a father died.

For some reason we got talking about the 1998 underground nuclear tests, detonated 200 metres underground and 100 kilometres from here in the Thar Desert.

‘They used onions,’ said Madan, making a patting action with his hand, ‘to control the… how do you say? The boom? Metric tonnes from all over India. Normally onions are six rupees a kilo, then the price go up,’ he whisked his hand up like a salute, ‘to sixty rupees per kilo! Very bad. The poor use the onion to take the heat out during the summer, but they cannot get.’

Onions. It was the strangest thing I had ever heard. I imagined hapless farmers being buried alive by piles of burnt onion rings falling from the sky.

I decided on two blood-red-and-ochre embroidered hangings that, according to Madan, were made up of pieces from the traditional wedding dresses of Rajasthani tribal women. Some designs were garish – mirror beads and elaborate stitching – while others showed images of elephants, peacocks and flowers.

We began a battle of wills, wits and wallets as we bartered the price, passing the calculator back and forth, tapping out figures.

When it was all over he shook my hand but then became sullen.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘You cut my head off.’

‘What?’ I didn’t believe him. Textile sellers were notorious for their shark-like behaviour in Jaisalmer. He carried on with the act.

‘Maybe you should go into the textile business. You want parcel?’

I agreed. He turned to a worker who had only one good eye and told him to make a parcel for the hangings, a sewn cloth sealed with wax, and stitched me for the service four times the going price!

Madan put his hand on my knee.

‘You want camel safari?’

‘No, thanks,’ I said automatically. Every five minutes I was pestered for a camel safari. I couldn’t go anywhere without a tout hanging off a doorway or an auto-rickshaw driver whistling at me.

On the way home I stopped off at a government authorised bhang (or marijuana as we know it) shop. Bhang was sold openly at stalls around the town and it was government authorised, because apparently the Hindu god Lord Shiva used to take the male plant for its slow effects (unlike the more hallucinogenic female variety). The bhang was mixed in lassi (watered-down yoghurt).

I downed three of them, and with great effort stumbled back to my room only to dream all night of camel touts coming out of the sandstone walls demanding I take a camel tour.

* * *

As the sun rose the next morning I looked out across the golden brown desert while in the distance, eight wind turbines clocked slowly over.

‘They do not work,’ said Suresh, the owner of the hotel, Laxmi Niwas, waving his hand at them. Suresh had a cheery, cherub face, grey hair and a round belly. He reminded me of a happy baby hippopotamus.

‘Sometimes moving, sometimes not. These are unreliable.’ He shifted his feet and the conversation. Wind power may have been unreliable (according to Suresh) but so was India’s fossil fuel power. Blackouts were caused frequently by poorly maintained grid structures and, as Suresh told me, the ‘power thieves’ who illegally re-routed power for anyone with some flappable cash.

I had ridden out to the wind farm the day before and met Kamal, the engineer. I sipped chai with him in a cramped space in one of the supporting poles while the sound of the whirring blades cut through our conversation.

‘We are waiting for the – WHOOSH! – hot season,’ said Kamal. ‘Strong winds – WHOOSH! – and we expect – WHOOSH! WHOOSH! – maximum output. Oh, but then. It is so – WHOOSH! – hot! Oh, much – WHOOSH! WHOOSH! – wind!’

Even now, in late February, a cloud of brown sand rose a metre high above the desert, scourging the city, blasting sari’d women who huddled in groups by the side of the road and hid their faces in their veils, and whipping the legs of shorts-wearing tourists as they ran to the nearest curio in the vain hope that it all might end.

Though I was feeling better I was struggling to decide whether or not I should cycle to Pushkar, a small town by a lake and surrounded by sweeping hills. Though the fevers had gone, strenuous cycling seemed to bring them back. And there was another thing: to get to Pushkar I would have to pass through Pokaran, a town near the atomic test sites. I asked Suresh to help put my mind at ease.

‘Ah! Very safe!’ he implored, chewing on a betel nut. ‘This is just newspaperman make this for story to sell paper. Yes, very safe. No problem. They do the test 20 kilometres from the road. Remember, we are only 65 kilometres from the blast and we are fine.’

‘Aren’t you worried about the contamination?’

‘My friend, we don’t worry about such things.’ He reached over and put his hand on my shoulder to reassure me. ‘This is India.’

10

PUSHKAR

February

I took the bus.

I know, I know.

And as punishment, getting to Pushkar was hellish. It wasn’t just the overnight bus ride through Pokaran – contaminated, no doubt, by radioactive killer dust, me trying not to breathe when the bus stopped there – but having to cycle over a sizeable mountain at three in the morning when the bus terminated at Ajmer – 15 kilometres short of Pushkar.

My headlamp barely shone the way as I pedalled on a flat road before beginning an ascent with dogs upon me, barking and biting at my bags. Two shot up ahead then veered me into the hard shoulder. I swerved just in time, avoiding a deep pothole but colliding with the leader’s tail, causing it to give a startled yelp. I made off into the night, the rear pannier nipped at by a determined straggler. I could taste an exhausted rawness in my throat and sweat trickling off my helmet.

But my troubles weren’t over: four more dog attacks followed before I reached Pushkar. During one, when I was surrounded by the sound of barks somewhere in the darkness, I picked up some rocks and began throwing them wildly around, sparking off the bitumen. Just when I had scared the dogs away, I went to get back on the bike and lost my balance and went over, falling hard on the road. It was the dogs’ perfect moment to surround me and bark inches away from my face.

As if the journey to Pushkar were not bad enough, the fever turned up, hitching a ride from Jaisalmer with a bounty on my health, no doubt. When I went in search of a doctor, a Brahmin priest was suddenly by my side thrusting a flower into my hand. He didn’t look like a priest of any sort – well, not in that Catholic kind of way. He wore normal clothes, and the only thing that gave him any sense of spiritual legitimacy was a sandalwood marking daubed in the middle of his forehead.

‘Come down to the water and make puja. Many good things for you.’

I don’t believe in a god, but I had tried everything else to get rid of this fever – medication, Ayurvedic herbs, my own urine – so why not a prayer? If divine intervention was going to… well, intervene, then I was willing to be the most religious zealot you had ever set eyes on.

The priest led me down to the steps towards Pushkar Lake, past an archway filled with langur monkeys lazing in the sun like clothes hung out to dry. The lake was so small that it should have been called Pushkar Pond and once so infested with crocodiles that Brahmin priests had been known to knock a few on the head with a stick while they went through the morning rituals. Under British rule, the army had had the crocodiles moved rather than shot, to respect local sensibilities.

‘Many good things for you, sir,’ the priest said, then smiled like one of the evicted crocodiles, ‘if you give donation for puja.’

Ah, there was always a cost for one’s faith.

‘How much?’

‘Two thousand rupees only.’

I scoffed.

‘Many good things for you, more like it,’ I said and moved to go, but he grabbed my arm, firmly.

‘How much you want to give?’

‘I am not Brahmin. I am just looking.’

‘Does not matter. We are same, same. Eyes, legs, arms, mouth. We are same under God.’

‘That’s an interesting theological point, but I’m going now.’

He grabbed me again.

‘One thousand rupees!’

‘No!’

‘But this is great blessing for you. Good karma.’ He cut me off, moving up the steps towards my hiking shoes, which I had been urged to take off and was now quite worried about.

‘Okay, how much you want to pay?’

‘Let’s see… nothing.’

‘Nothing is no good for Brahmin. Many people give to me for blessing.’

‘That’s because they don’t know about charlatan Brahmin priests.’

I ducked passed him, then managed to get to my boots and started lacing them up.

‘You are not good man. You come here and disgrace my sacred water.’

I looked at the sacred water – a stagnant pool of grubbiness.

‘Okay, 500 only,’ he said.

I got up and started walking up the stairs.

‘Okay, okay, 250!’ He grabbed the back of my shirt and this time I snapped his hand away, hard.

‘Leave me alone!’

This enraged him.

‘You, chelo! (go!) You… you… European!’

I escaped up the broad marble stairs. Strangely, the altercation with the Brahmin priest made me feel better.

Unable to find a doctor, I browsed through a bookshop looking for anything on malaria but instead nearly bought a Hindi phrasebook. I ‘nearly’ did because I was unsure how useful it would be to ask, ‘Will I need to wear a wool jacket tomorrow?’ or ‘Have you cleaned your musket?’ or ‘Order your sepoy to dig me a mine’.

But the fever flushed through me again and I headed to an Internet café. When I opened my email account, I received a shock – there were over 30 messages. I opened one from my sister:

I thought your last email didn’t make any sense. You were really rambling from one thought to the next. You sounded confused. I strongly urge you to please get to hospital, and take this seriously, your health is more important than writing the book.

What was going on? Why so many emails? Finally, I found out:

Dear everyone,

Please urge Russell to get proper treatment now, before this strain of malaria contaminates his body. If he must get medical attention outside of India, then so be it. Sorry about the doom and gloom but I’m sure you’ll recognise the importance of acting now.

Alan

Alan! Goddamn it! What was he doing scaring everyone? All I said was that the fevers had returned (in retrospect, this was actually cause for alarm though I didn’t see it at the time).

I spent half the day sending off emails to everyone that I was fine. Bec, of course, went nuts, so I called her and promised that I would go to New Delhi immediately.

Thus, I found myself on the Shabti Express to New Delhi to see a ‘real doctor’, a doctor recommended by my travel insurance company and who would cost me two hundred times the going rate for a blood test that would reveal nothing. Dr Singh reassured me that I did not have malaria, and that if I did then I really didn’t.

Yes, I was confused too.

‘Then, why do I keep getting the fevers?’ I asked Dr Singh.

He sat back in his leather chair, hands behind his turban, and lorded his 30 years of Western medical advice: ‘I don’t know.’

11

DELHI – BUTWAL (NEPAL)

Early March

I liked Delhi, or, rather, Central New Delhi, as soon as I arrived. Unlike the old city of Delhi, which was a sprawling crowded mess of gridlocked traffic, Central New Delhi had wide and well-sealed roads, large green gardens, tree-lined boulevards and cafés.

This made it easy to cycle around, which was a relief from the chaos of other Indian towns (though it must be said New Delhi’s roundabouts often had me swinging into unplanned orbits).

I was on my way to the centre of town near the granddaddy of all roundabouts, Connaught Place, when something hard and wet hit me in the ear. Stunned, I spun around to see that children had thrown a water bomb at me from their apartment balcony.

I got off my bike, furious. A Sikh auto-rickshaw driver stopped.

‘Do not worry. This is not serious.’

‘Not serious! I nearly fell off my bike!’

‘They are only playing. They are only excited because Holi is coming.’

‘Who?’

‘Holi. A celebration.’

Holi. Of course. The Water Festival (also known as the Festival of Colour). Every March, Holi is celebrated during a full moon or Dol Purnima to bring good harvests and ward off evil spirits. Water and brightly coloured gulal (powder) are thrown at passers-by by intoxicated participants (or kids, for that matter). I had seen pictures in travel books of smiling Indian men (the women didn’t seem to get involved) covered in red powder and practically assaulting each other with dye and water.

As I cycled off looking over my shoulder, I had to admit that the kid that had got me was a pretty good shot.

I took a private room at the Ringo Guest House. Well, a closet with a fan that nearly took out the walls to complete a revolution. It was a narrow hotel, the stairs giving me no leeway as I bumped and squeezed my loaded bike past guests.

To my surprise I saw another mountain bike locked up against a post on the patio. I eventually met the owner, who was urged on by a 50-something, big-bottomed Yorkshire woman with fangs.

‘Go on, luv! ’Ere’s your chance. Ask ‘im.’

A shy-looking bespectacled man with a pigtail greeted me.

‘Hello. My name is Uros.’

Uros was a 25-year-old Slovenian engineering student who had just arrived in Delhi. He had, he admitted nervously, never done anything like this before and had no idea where to go. He was thinking about going south, but I warned him off it, as it was getting hotter by the day. I spread my map of India out over the table. His eyes swirled over the runnel of red lines and brain-like contours. A worried dint appeared between his eyebrows.

‘Best to head north, out of the heat,’ I said then added, ‘I’m heading to Nepal if you want to come along.’

He brightened immediately. ‘It is okay? I am not very fast.’

Just as I was pointing to a suggested cycle route on the map, a purple splog exploded across south India. Another hit the breast of an Australian woman, Sharon.

‘Owwww!’ she clutched her chest.

We jumped up from our chairs to see an Indian boy from an apartment roof above us waving and laughing before throwing another dyed-water bomb.

‘Right!’ I declared to everyone at the table. ‘It’s war!’

With my posse in tow, which included me, Uros, and a young British lad, Ian, we set off to exact revenge. We clambered up the apartment, whisking from one hallway to the next until we reached the top. Half a dozen or so Indian men and boys were filling up buckets, making water bombs filled with dye, throwing them at each other, laughing, one holding another down while another poured the hose over him then smeared green paint over his face.

‘Let’s get ’em!’ I cried, and we set about wrenching the buckets and hoses from the locals, throwing ourselves into the water fight, laughing and sliding over each other on the wet tiles.

Our victims gave it back as good as they got, and before too long we had joined sides, making water bombs and flinging them at the Ringo Guest House.

‘Bombs away!’ Ian shouted as we heard the water balloon popping onto the patio. Sharon got up from her hiding place and showered us with abuse.

We cheered her back. ‘YOU LOVE IT!’

Anyone walking below was of course fair game, copping a bucket of cold water from seven storeys up. Downstairs, neighbours were throwing more dye and water, and when we finally dared to go there, we were set upon, held down and had purple, green, red and blue smeared over our clothes and faces.

‘Happy Holi!’ they cheered, and a rotund man grabbed me in a bear hug. ‘Be happy, my friend. Here in India you are my guest. It is my duty to look after you,’ and then squeezed my spleen into mush.

He dragged me by the wrist into his house and shovelled spoonfuls of chickpeas into my mouth, and then with the same spoon into Ian’s and Uros’s. Our host then plied us with more drink and then in a flourish we were led into another house and given plates of food: dahl, chutney, poppadums and rice.

After a few chillum pipes and several glasses of scotch, we absconded back to the hotel as wet and very stoned multi-coloured bandits.

‘I’m not impressed with you lot,’ Sharon glared at us in her fresh clean clothes.

‘It’s okay. You’ll never see us again,’ smirked Ian. ‘And that is the joy of travel.’

* * *

Early the next morning, feeling somewhat seedy, we took turns guarding our bikes outside the hotel while the others went back upstairs to retrieve the gear then pack for our 1200 kilometre trip to Kathmandu.

‘You have many things,’ Uros said, observing my six bags strewn along the wall. Uros had only two panniers, a handlebar bag, a tent and a sleeping bag. I had to remind myself that he had only come for the summer.

He poked at my rear rack. ‘Aluminium. It will break,’ he said with glee. ‘Mine is steel. Very strong, and I can get it welded here.’

‘Yes, but mine is lighter!’

‘Yes, but mine is stronger!’

‘Yes, but you’re a much big-ger dork!’

He laughed. We downed some curd and chai at a café then got on our bikes.

‘Remember, this is my first time, so I don’t know how far I can go today,’ Uros said. I don’t know why he was so nervous. After all, he had cycled through 20 kilometres of horrendous traffic from the airport.

I placed the New Delhi map in the clear plastic on my handlebar bag and sorted out my bearings. We had to head due east towards the next major town, Moradabad, but would probably only go as far as Harpur, some 70 kilometres away. After that, and after a few more days of cycling, we hoped to enter Nepal at its most far west border, the town of Mahendranagar, before continuing along the Mahendra Highway and into the Terai – a region known for its once rich sal forest but also, I groaned, malaria.

‘You are more experienced. So you go first.’

‘Yes, yes I am!’ I said with slightly more arrogance than was necessary. ‘This is the way, Belvedere!’

An hour later, I had both of us totally lost.

We were still in New Delhi, having been swung in the wrong direction by those damned roundabouts. Through a number of wrong streets, building sites and the back of the Mogul Red Fort, I eventually got us over a bridge and onto a double laned road, Highway 24. We coughed and wheezed through the soupy haze, the first I had seen since arriving in Dehli. Apart from this particularly polluted day, New Delhi’s air had improved dramatically since a Supreme Court order decried that all auto-rickshaws, taxis and buses be converted to gas or CNG as it was known here.[xii]

As the highway narrowed to one lane, trucks and buses came towards us in the opposite direction, running us off into the dirt as they passed approaching traffic.

Uros shook his fist at them as they missed him by inches. I laughed, seeing now what I must have looked like all these months.

The built-up, drab estates of Delhi fell behind us as the urban greyness gave over to green rice paddies and wheat fields. We passed small villages, their houses made from straw and mud, children playing in the dirt with sticks, women pumping water into large silver pots and carrying them on their heads as they walked past ten-foot high dome structures under palm trees: cow pats, meticulously stacked and shaped, and used as fuel for cooking.

‘Maybe it is from one very big cow,’ Uros mused. He didn’t say much, and I don’t know whether it was because he had only a moderate grasp of English, was out of breath, or just wasn’t talkative.

On a vast, flat field, wallahs laid out huge white sheets in the sun as a rusty goods train, as long as the horizon, grumbled through the heat.

By mid-morning we had outdone ourselves, having reached Harpur in a few hours. We stopped for lunch at a dhaba shack plastered with blue Pepsi signs. Under one, a reassuring tag line read: NO ADDED FRUIT, ADDED FLAVOUR. Inspired by the liberal use of chemicals and none of that dreaded natural fruit stuff, Uros ordered a bottle.

‘No Pepsi,’ the waiter replied. We returned a befuddled stare. The restaurant was walled with so much Pepsi signage that there was no space for anything else. Their reaction was like us going into McDonald’s and asking them for a Whopper.

Instead, we ordered brown curried eggs and chai. When we had rested for half an hour we got on our bikes only to discover that Uros had a flat rear tyre.

‘Ah! My first day and I get puncture!’

He was mortified that his first day was not perfect.

‘Ah! You need the I.R.A.!’

I explained my invented acronym as he rolled his bike over to a puncture repairer – but it was lost on him. In this short time, a crowd of 20 men stood around – close, poking at the gears, at our bags and at us.

‘What are they staring at?’ Uros scowled.

‘They are thinking,’ I put on an Indian accent, ‘you are the movie star!’

This too was also lost on him. But not on the puncture wallah who could not hide his annoyance.

‘These are crazy people!’

We continued out of the stench of Hapur, a horrible industrial place, to enjoy a growing rarity in India, a forest, before it became a soft green memory as it disappeared from our gaze, dissolving into chemical factories, sugar cane mills and brick kilns.

Brick kilns were a disturbing sight, and not just for the thick, dirty plumes of smoke bellowing out of them. We watched ten-year-old boys in ragged shirts and shorts haul bricks onto trucks.

Child labour in India, despite efforts to end it, flourishes. According to a Human Rights report (‘The Small Hands of Slavery – bonded child labour in India’), of the 250 million children working in hazardous conditions around the world, almost half work in India – the highest number in the world. Though moves are afoot to end such work practices, local as well as international companies continue to exploit children for profit. So much for corporate responsibility, the bastards.

By the time we reached the small town of Garh Mukteshwar it was only one p.m. and we had topped 110 kilometres. It felt like nothing.

I told Uros I was going to find a doctor.

‘You are not so good?’

‘I’m fine. It’s just that they usually speak English, and that way we can find out where a hotel is.’

I found a doctor under a Red Cross sign in a crowded clinic. He told me that there were no hotels in this town and advised us to go back onto the highway. We did, and found ourselves trapped in a gridlock of bicycles, motorbikes, trucks and cars at a railway crossing. A train slinked past, taking forever it seemed, and I started to feel claustrophobic in the fumes and the heat while the metal clank of train wheels passed over the gaps in the track. Traffic crowded so heavily on both sides that when the gates opened no one could pass. Everyone pushed, shoved, beeped and yelled until the chaos eventually subsided.

On our way to the highway we caught sight of a hotel, and not just an ordinary hotel but the Happy Tourist Hotel. It boasted a sign that read ‘service with a smile’. I went inside and saw the manager who looked at me glumly, no smile in sight.

‘A room. Double. How much?’’

‘Two hundred and seventy-five.’

‘Can I look?’

We went off silently, still no smiles forthcoming. He showed me a modest, dull room. I agreed to take it. Uros, happy as a puppy, wheeled his bike in. I followed, unclipping pannier straps. Uros fell onto the bed.

‘Ah! At last.’

The manager came back into the room, no knock at all, and announced, ‘This room, three hundred and seventy-five.’

‘You said “Two hundred and seventy-five”.’

‘No, no. I take you to other room.’

I followed him into another room, which was smaller and duller than the first. I hazarded that he was playing for extra cash.

‘No. I don’t want this room. You say “two seventy-five” not “three seventy-five.’

‘No. This room, three seventy-five.’

‘We’ll go, then.’

‘Okay, you go.’

He left. I looked at Uros. He was spread out like a bed quilt, eyes beginning to close.

‘He’ll change his mind when we cycle up the driveway,’ I said, absolutely sure of myself.

Uros’s eyes split open and he groaned, reluctantly gathering himself up. He packed his things without a word and we wheeled our bikes past reception. I waited for the ‘Okay, okay, two seventy-five,’ from the sullen manager but nothing came. I made a loud coughing noise, pretending to adjust the gears. Nothing.

‘Bugger him,’ I said. ‘How do you feel?’

He yawned. ‘Okay, I guess.’

‘We can make Moradabad easy,’ I said with mad optimism. ‘It’s only 60 kilometres. We’ll be there in three hours. It’s only two o’clock. We could make it there by six.’

However…

Four hours and 184 kilometres later, we arrived at Moradabad, utterly shattered and coughing up dark phlegm from the clouds of diesel exhaust puffed into our faces. It was dark, and for the next hour we were blinded by the high beam of trucks and for contrast, near misses with local cyclists who tore out of the darkness like wraiths. When we found a hotel, we hauled our bikes up two flights of long stairs, heaving with exhaustion.

‘How much is it for a room?’ I asked breathlessly, dark spittle around my mouth, streaks of filth across my face as if I had been run over by a convoy of trucks.

‘Four hundred and seventy-five rupees,’ replied the manager with a dark toothless smile.

‘Uh-huh,’ I exchanged a defeated glance with Uros. ‘That sounds about right…’

We showered then collapsed on our beds, aching. Every minor movement seemed a colossal effort. I was summoned to fill out numerous hotel forms, leaving Uros to trying to make sense of The Smurfs jabbering in Hindi on the television. One question on the arrival form nearly gave me an aneurysm: ‘If left Indian, when’?

When I returned, Uros, corpse-like, croaked up. ‘You said to me we only do 50 kilometres today…’ He trailed off and fell asleep, and soon I was with him in an achy unconsciousness.

During the night, I had a slight fever and reached out for my drink bottle only to grab something warm and meaty.

‘AAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!’ I screamed.

‘AAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!’ came another scream.

It was Uros’s hand, also reaching out for his bottle of water! We lay there laughing like boys on a scout camp.

* * *

In the morning, we were stiff as ironing boards as we roused our way out of Moradabad, a crowded town full of blue ruin. I couldn’t stand the smell, the feeling of sandpaper in my lungs, opening me up for cancer or something else horrid and terminal.

‘Let’s do not so much,’ Uros said tonelessly through a mask of tiredness.

‘Kichha is only 70 kilometres away,’ I said. ‘Should be there by two.’

Up ahead we happened upon a crowd staring into a pond. A TATA goods-carrying truck had overturned and lay half-submerged. It seemed lucky that anyone had made it out alive, but the driver was standing by the edge laughing and gesticulating the story to an eager crowd. A rainbow slick of fuel floated on the pond like a visual aroma.

Nearly every day I’d seen a wrecked vehicle of one kind or another. Most of this is attributed to trucks and two-wheelers, drunk driving being the major cause. Perhaps this is why the driver of this mashed truck couldn’t seem to care less.

We continued on, climbed a hill and as we coasted down it, Uros explained the Slovenian national anthem called ‘Zdravljica’.

‘There is this writer, France Prešeren. He is in love with this rich woman and she not want him, so he write a song about her and it become our song. It is a drinking song.’

‘Now that’s my kinda national anthem!’

He burst into an uplifting rendition. I was hooked, and by the end of the day we were singing joyously through villages, scaring water buffalo and inciting ragged children to chase us with stones.

Kichha turned out to be just like Moradabad – a pool of pollution, traffic, beeping taxis, samosa stalls and decrepit buildings. It was five o’clock and we had covered 92 kilometres.

‘You said 70 kilometres!’ Uros accused me then stopped his bike. ‘Ah, a puncture. Again! Second time in two days.’

Within seconds, Rent-A-Crowd swamped him like a dark cloak, and all I could hear were his muffled cries becoming fainter, ‘What are you looking at? It is only a puncture! What do you want? Russell! Russell! What do they want? WHAT DO THEY WANT?’

* * *

Kathmandu is actually lower latitude-wise than most people think. I had it firmly plucked somewhere in the heavens, an unattainable Shangri-La, lost in a mist of mountains, way north and away from the heat. The reality is that it is actually lower than New Delhi, thus, as we cycled through the treeless humid farmlands of sub-tropical Terai, oppressively hot. None of which impressed Uros.

‘In Delhi you said going this way would be getting colder, not hotter.’ He wiped a huge drop off sweat out of his eye.

I tried to look incredulous. ‘Did I say that?’

Hard to believe how the weather had changed since we crossed the border some days ago, bracing ourselves as the wind blew through us, the rain spraying our faces and bare legs. It was liked we had suddenly opened and closed a door into a new world, for even the traffic disappeared and along with it, the stares and the crowds.

The Nepalese just seemed to be too concerned with their own existence than with us: cycling to work, heating up chai, carrying heavy baskets of wood roped over their foreheads while women in their red saris drowned in waves of green tendrils of yellow fields, disappearing momentarily as they bent over to pick up their babies.

The only attention we received was from children who ran after us in their red uniforms yelling ‘Goodbye! Goodbye!’ but then ran away when I pulled out my camera.

‘I don’t know if I want to cycle India again. Here, this is little. I like this,’ Uros pointed to the greenness, the hills, the quietness. ‘I don’t like India with all the trucks and bad roads.’

However, Uros, like myself, whether we liked it or not, would cycle India again.

* * *

We were now on the edges of the Bardia National Park and following a battered Jeep driven by Mundi, the manager of the Racy Shade Hotel, on the suggestion of a Belgian woman, Anit, who had insisted that it was the ‘best in the park’. (The fact that Mundi was her boyfriend had of course not influenced her recommendation at all.)

I had heard that we could catch a glimpse of tigers, and Mundi had promised us as such, and included a day’s rafting.

An hour later the Jeep stopped outside a collection of simple but pleasant mud huts with a garden and an outside dining area. The Racy Shade Hotel had no electricity, so kerosene lamps waiting by our door lit the night in dim quiet glows.

We took a small but cool mud hut. It was surprisingly comfortable and clean, and boasted new mosquito nets on the bed heads. We showered, then headed to the open dining area and ordered a meal. A group of young French women noisily sat down around us as we ate. They played ‘Saint Germaine’ on a tiny Walkman with tiny speakers, and passed joints around while hanging off their Nepalese lovers – guides, Jeep drivers and hotel staff. It was like one big love in.

Mundi gave us the lowdown on the safari.

‘This is tiger you are going to see,’ he said with a big feline smile, ‘Is not pussycat. Okay? Do everything your guide say. Also very danger, is rhino. Very fast. If you get in the way of the rhino it will be the full stop for you! Hahahah!’

‘I’m starting to get worried,’ Uros said, turning to me. ‘You say to me this safari is safe.’

‘It is,’ I reassured him. ‘Mundi, we are doing this in a Jeep, aren’t we?’

‘Oh, no, no, no!’ he laughed. ‘Too expensive. We go on foot.’

Uros and I blanched.

‘What are you going to give us to protect ourselves?’ I asked.

‘A stick and a packed lunch,’ he smiled.

‘How are we supposed to protect ourselves with that!?’ my voice shot up. ‘Throw the lunch then while it’s eating it whack on the head?’

‘Don’t worry. Nothing can happen,’ Mundi smiled, then said as if offering a guarantee on a set of steak knives, ‘After all, I am your guide!’

The next morning we waited by a waterhole. There were two others in our group, a lovely New Zealand couple, student doctors Mark and Anne. The air was thick and hot with the smell of sal trees burning in the midday heat.

Sal trees – tall, big-leafed, and gnarled – were found along India’s Deccan plateau and as far as Assam and Burma. Buddhists and Hindus worship them because, it was claimed, Buddha attained enlightenment among them. However, as Uros and myself had seen before the national park, encroaching agriculture and illegal logging had reduced what was once a lush area to scattered lonely patches, all the way to the darker blue-browns of the Himalayas.

Mundi, in his green fatigues and a floppy hat, climbed a tree and scanned the forest with a pair of battered binoculars while a younger guide sat above him on a higher branch. Uros sat in the shade with binoculars around his neck, head to the trees, looking desperate for a cigarette to fall into his mouth.

‘Where are they?’ he huffed.

We had been here for four hours and had had no sight of a tiger so far. And not surprisingly either, thanks to poachers and illegal loggers destroying their habitat. There were now less than a hundred breeding tigers in Bardia National Park.

Just as I was dozing, head resting on a log, langur monkeys started barking somewhere above us.

‘Tiger!’ Mundi whispered hoarsely. ‘The monkey. He go crazy when tiger is near.’

Behind us, elephants roared and trumpeted. Their keepers whacked their hides with sticks as they snaked along a tiny track.

It was deathly quiet. The hairs on my neck stood up. Uros was ghost-white. He handed me the binoculars. I scanned the forest and saw something orange move.

‘There!’ I whispered. ‘Straight ahead.’

But when I tried to re-focus, it was gone.

We waited another hour before Mundi suggested we try another waterhole, as we had most likely scared the tiger away.

‘We scared the tiger?’

Mundi said he felt guilty that he hadn’t shown us a tiger and promised to show us something at least worthy of some danger.

‘Up ahead are rhino. Grass very long. I go first.’ He looked at us hard. ‘If I see rhino I will say “RUN UP TREE!” So you must RUN UP TREE! No ifs or buts.’

Mundi pushed on, trudging knee-deep across a small river, and on to the other side. Anorexic trees, their trunks as wide as my forearm, dotted the plains. Mundi and his young scout disappeared into the long grass and we followed cautiously after them.

‘Ah, I bet we see nothing again!’ Uros sighed, his back pressed with sweat, binoculars bouncing around him. We walked for some time when all of a sudden we heard:

‘RUN UP TREE!’ Mundi was running towards us, pointing upwards. ‘RUN UP TREE! NO IFS OR BUTS!’

Everyone ran up a tree, everyone including Mundi (who got up his first, I must point out), everyone… except me!

Because the trees were quite thin they kept breaking! Or others limped over like forgotten carrots in a fridge crisper.

‘STOP FUCKING AROUND!’ Uros yelled at me. ‘THEY’RE COMING!’

Finally, I found a tree with some girth and frantically latched onto dry branches that snapped as I tried to pull myself up, scratching my legs, grazing my head and snagging my shirt. My hiking boots stripped at the bark.

‘HURRY!’ the guide yelled again.

Fear shot me up the trunk, which swung from side to side like a rubber stick, taking the sudden weight. I heard a crack.

‘Shit!’

From my vantage point I could see two pale grey rhinos, some 30 metres away, charging in. They stopped, looked around, snorted loudly to catch wafts of our scent before charging again and repeating the process. Later, I asked Mundi why they charged only three times.

‘I don’t know. Maybe…’ he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Maybe they can’t count to four!’

I tried pulling out my camera but nearly lost my footing completely.

They came nearer, stopped again and sniffed the air.

It was at this point I realised why rhinos have such bad eyesight. It’s because they’re a bit cross-eyed. Well, you would, wouldn’t you, with that big fuck-off horn in the middle of your face, always distracting you, always there! No wonder they’re almost extinct. Probably always banging into things, knocking each other out, trying to mate with their double vision.[xiv]

The larger of the two rhinos looked around suspiciously, and then huffed as if to say, ‘They’re up in the trees again, aren’t they?’

‘Yep,’ replied his smaller friend, digging the ground with its foot.

‘Wanna stand under that Australian?’

‘How do you know he’s Australian?’

‘I can smell the Blundstone boots from here.’

‘Oh. What do New Zealanders smell like?’

It took a large breath and grunted. ‘Disappointment’.

We were only free of the rhinos when one of them got distracted by something really important. ‘Look, Albert! A butterfly! Let’s chase it!’

And off they went bashing diagonally through the long grass and small trees.

* * *

Leaving Bardi National Park a few days later we cycled to the windy town of Butwal. Pronounced Butt-well, our arrival couldn’t have been any timelier as I had developed, ahem, a scorching case of haemorrhoids.

‘Butt-not-so-well,’ I grimaced at Uros, clutching the area in question. He was in his own haemorrhoid mood – face taut, a blue vein bulging out of his temple. He demanded to know where a hotel was and when I told him I knew as much as he did, he popped and deflated there in front of me, limp and lifeless. We were two-thirds of the way to Kathmandu and the 100 kilometre days were taking their toll.

At a medicine shop (or, rather, a wooden shack with dusty pills spilling over benches), I tried to explain my delicate condition to a small Nepalese man.

‘Haemorrhoids!’ I pointed like one of those ‘Eat at Joe’s’ neon signs, arm going back like a piston to my rear. He stared glumly then fetched a box of laxatives.

‘No, no!’ I handed them back. He swapped it for another box – suppositories.

‘No! Um…’ He gave me a piece of paper and pen. I wrote out in big block letters like you do on a tax form: H-A-E-M-O-R-R-H-O-I-D-S. He took it and gave it to a well-dressed man and his well-dressed wife standing at the far end of the counter.

‘Haemorrhoids!’ the well-dressed man erupted as if he had just won bingo.

‘Yes.’ I said quietly, not wanting the whole world to know. It turned out that the well-dressed man was a doctor.

He uttered an explanation to the pharmacist whose eyes lit up immediately and jumped to the back of the shop. He returned eagerly with a tube of cream with an extra-long nozzle. It looked like an enormous dart.

The doctor explained how I was to… er… to apply the remedy by making lots of upward movements as if stabbing an imaginary villain to death.

‘Anything else I can help you with?’ the doctor asked.

‘Yes,’ Uros said. ‘Do you have any Vaseline?’

‘No, Uros, no!’ I wanted to say. ‘You’re giving the doctor ideas! Me with my sore arse and you wanting lubricant!’

Fortunately, the doctor didn’t have such a base mind as mine and procured the Vaseline.

* * *

‘It’s seven o’clock.’ Uros opened the door the next morning. A fearful wind had struck up overnight and dark clouds hung over the gorge-cradled town. Lightning crackled and I caught a glimpse of it forking into the mountains. Uros turned, said nothing, flopped back into bed and threw the covers over himself. I followed his lead, curling up under the blankets. I hadn’t wanted to cycle and had been thinking of all kinds of excuses not to. And so we hid from the day… well almost.

‘I need a bell for my bicycle,’ Uros told me as we battled the bluster of Butwal’s foul afternoon winds. ‘Like yours.’

‘Believe me, Uros. There’s no going back. Once you’ve got that thing on there, every Indian in the country will ring it night and day.’

‘But everyone moves when you ring the bell.’

‘That’s because I’m also yelling.’

‘Oh… but I must have one, Russell!’

‘All right, all right,’ I said and pointed to a bicycle stall. Uros fumbled among an assortment of bells fastened on a rail; some were as big as a satellite dish, others too flexible in their construction to withstand a day of hard ringing. He decided on the loudest. Happy with his purchase, Uros almost skipped back to the hotel, where he spent the next hour trying to attach the bell to his bike. His pride and joy quickly turned on him.

‘Bloody bell!’ he muttered as he moved it again, trying to find a place where his handlebar bag would not ruin the finely tuned clanging resonance. After a while, he found the spot and stood up triumphantly.

‘My new bell!’ he beamed and rang it again.

The next day as we rode through the cool morning, Uros finally got a chance to use his bell as an old woman hobbled across the road with a load of wood on her back. He flicked the bell but all that came out was the sound of a cricket caught in a jar.

‘They sell me shit!’

‘You can go back and get a refund,’ I teased. It was a good 30 kilometres back to Butwal. ‘I’ll waiiiiiiit!’

He scowled and we continued on, fading into the heady heat of the Terai.

12

NARAYANGADH – KATHMANDU

March

Nepal is flat. I don’t care what anyone tells you. It is flat. FLAT! FLAT! FLAT! Those mountains you keep hearing about are FLAT! Believe me, as I believed the Nepalese when they told me this, as I, in puddles of sweat, heaving and wheezing, walked deliriously with a glass of chai in my hand, spilling most of it down my arm as I waved to where I had just come from, down there, in that mist called a deep valley.

‘Yes, flat! You go Mugling. Bicycle, no problem,’ Govinda assured us. We were just short of Narayangadh, a crossroad town that fed traffic from India up into Kathmandu through two routes. ‘You not take the Hetauda way. Very hill. Oh! Too much!’

Govinda was a Nepalese farmer who had kindly let us stay the night in his house after we had brazenly knocked on his door and asked if we could camp on his lawn. The light was fading and the buses seemed to be getting bigger at every near miss. After the town watched us put up our tents, Govinda invited us to stay in his house.

Appreciative as we were, there was a price for Govinda’s generous hospitality. For most of the night, Govinda pestered me to get him a visa for Australia, and he made us stay in a room where unimaginable things crawled across our faces, both of us bolting upright in the night shouting, ‘What was that? Just what the hell was that?!’

Govinda’s plump wife and his mother made us chicken, spicy vegetables and dahl bhat (lentils and rice). The family – they had three small children – watched us eat before beginning their own meals.

Afterwards, I entertained the kids by drawing cartoons while Govinda tried to teach me Nepalese numbers, tapping my knee every time he drew a numeral. He showed me a photograph of his parents; they had lived in Japan for some time, a world away from the mud huts and small towns of Nepal.

Two weeks had passed us by since we had left Delhi. To avoid the heat, which was growing interminable, we spent our mornings cycling and our afternoons lying on bench seats in mud hut restaurants until the heat had given up.

Despite less traffic in Nepal, we had seen more accidents here than anywhere else on the trip: buses overturned on corners and down ravines, or horrid head-on collisions on perfectly flat, wide roads.

Perhaps the high number of accidents had to do with the way Nepalese vehicles were slapped together rather than constructed. I had seen buses hurtling along, barely able to stay on the road, their chassis skewing off in one direction and the undercarriage in another, as they took turns suicidally fast, occupants bouncing along inside, hair and clothes flapping around them.

As a cyclist, I had absolutely no idea where to throw myself when one of these strange aberrations of the road came bearing down on me – I opted for closing my eyes, gritting my teeth and repeating, ‘You’ll get through! You’ll get through!’

And it wasn’t just trucks that looked for fatalities. The day before, we passed a pile of rags lying on the road in the shade of a tree. An orange TATA truck blared past it and rags flew up to reveal an immobile lump – a body.

We parked our bikes and reverently inspected it.

‘Is she dead?’ Uros asked. We saw no sign of injury, though it wouldn’t be long until she would be squashed by a careening bus.

‘Namaste?’ I asked, and the figure stirred and looked up. It was a woman. Her hair was cropped short, her dress was dark with filth and red sores dotted her brown legs.

‘Hello? Namaste?’

She barked then rolled over. A bus approached in the distance, tooting. I grabbed her arm, trying to pull her off the road.

‘Move! You’ll be hit by the bus!’

‘Nah!’ She pulled her hand back, scowling. I grabbed it again. She sat bolt upright and yelled, her sudden energy startling me. The bus tooted and boomed past, missing her bare ankles by a few feet. I pulled at her again but with more force.

‘Come on! MOVE!’ She snapped her grip away and buried her face in her arms.

‘She wants to kill herself,’ Uros said. Another vehicle, an orange TATA truck, swung around the bend, tooting. I motioned it to slow down. Miraculously it did, and then stopped in front of the woman momentarily before driving around her. We stayed for the next hour trying to get her to leave, but she wouldn’t. In the end we gave up, trying not to look back when another bus passed us.

It was later that day that another traffic hazard erupted. Trying to cheat the blast of wind from a truck, I bent my head down, only to look up to see a water buffalo, scared by the truck, bucking and kicking towards me. I froze and coasted quietly towards it.

I waited for impact, mouth agape; at the last second, with wild eyes, it switched direction and galloped across the road, down into a gully, tripping and crashing through small trees and paddy fields.

So after saying our goodbyes to Govinda and his family, we rode the easy ten kilometre distance into Narayangadh. Over a breakfast of curd, jalebis (deep-fried treacle), masala omelette and a hot glass of chai, we discussed which way we would go, as I wasn’t convinced of Govinda’s Kathmandu via Mugling route. Instead I proposed going through the town of Hetauda and up a very hilly 60 kilometre climb.

‘There’s less traffic,’ I argued. ‘And the ride is supposed to be good, according to the guidebook.’

‘But it’s uphill 60 kilometres! The other is flat.’

‘Yes, but the Nepalese version of flat is hills! How many times have they told us it was flat when we’ve spent hours on a hill?’

Outside, a calamity of buses hooted and braked. ‘And I don’t want to face that.’

‘But you are faster than me on hill.’

‘No, we get our energy at different times. You’re in the morning and I’m in the afternoon.’

Which was true. I had my bursts of energy lying flat out on benches in mud hut restaurants, swatting flies off my knees with a dinner plate.

So, we set off towards Hetauda through the heavy traffic; it eventually thinned out and we were soon among paddy fields, where farmers were up to their knees in mud, water buffalos ploughed through brown water, and women planted clumps of iridescent green rice like hair transplant surgeons on a giant balding scalp.

Hetauda was a busy, noisy town and, like Narayangadh, it intersected highways to India and Kathmandu. We found solitude at the Avocado Hotel, which had bungalows set among a spacious garden for 500 Nepalese rupees per night. Uros baulked at the price.

‘Do you have a special rate for cyclists?’ he asked the manager.

‘Cyclists!’ the manager lit up. ‘Yes, for double, only 300 rupees!’

We were in heaven. The room was moderately sized with an ensuite, and was quiet (well, except for the sound of someone snotting out their entire frontal lobe). It would be our first glorious long sleep since Bardia National Park.

Showered and dressed, we plonked ourselves down in the restaurant. ‘I’m going to order a steak,’ I said to Uros, who was busy combing his long wavy locks, now free from his ponytail. He looked like a Renaissance aristocrat.

My legs were killing me, as was my bottom from the bike seat. I ordered a beer, a plate of finger-chips, lassi, tandoori chicken (there was no steak!) and, unnecessarily, nan bread. Despite my exhaustion, I was in a good mood. The manager came over and dumped two notebooks on our table.

‘Cycle books.’

I opened the dog-eared notebook to find a collection of stories from cyclists – German, Dutch, French, Australian, Welsh, Singaporean – who had cycled the world, but most messages were about Kathmandu. Someone had underscored entries with ‘wanker, tosser, bollocks’ at the horror stories of climbing the Tribhuvan Highway. One entry had me in hysterics:

You think that ride was hard? You should try pogo-sticking. I’ve bounced non-stop from Paraguay on my 17-speed Cannondale super-spring Pogo-Tourer. No punctures for me, amigos. Next year I am unicycling to Yugoslavia. Tom Paddy from Swanbourne, UK – a little village in England famous for nothing, and Phil from Swanbourne, Australia – a little village in Tasmania famous for even less.

A number of entries cursed Blackburn pack-racks, which frequently broke. This made Uros smile. ‘These are the same as yours!’

‘Shuddup, fuckface!’ Ah, we had become firm friends!

Interestingly enough, I came across an entry by a friend of mine, Krista, who had passed through this very hotel some years ago. She had cycled from Melbourne, up through Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, India and through to here. She hadn’t been having a good time of it, lonely as the road was for her thus far.

Ah, the next day, day of rest. I sat in a gazebo and wrote furiously for the whole morning. I ordered a pot of tea, pancakes, poached eggs on toast, a cup of coffee and a ham-and-cheese sandwich. Uros busied himself by trying to find an Internet café. When he returned and looked at our bill, he said with dour accusation, ‘You eat a lot.’

‘I’m making up for the crap we’ve had to eat for the past two weeks. Besides, tomorrow is a big day and I thought I’d get in early.’

The Tribhuvan Highway (popularly called The Rajpath) was the first highway to connect Kathmandu with the rest of Nepal and India. My guidebook suggested we tackle the 150 kilometre distance from Kathmandu so that we could enjoy the 60 kilometre descent from the 2322 metre pass. That’s fine for those coming from Kathmandu, but, as we were heading to Kathmandu, it meant a full day of relentless climbing.

‘It is like Everest,’ Uros moaned, sketching up an altitude profile with his ruler with the skill and efficiency of his upcoming career as an engineer.

And so, the next morning we were up at five a.m. and as it was still dark, I led the way with my head torch. At this hour, locals were already walking along the quiet road. It moved into a stiffer climb, out from a gorge. We cycled slowly, conscious of not exhausting ourselves, while behind us a thin grey line – the road we had traversed – followed the river, a good 500 metres down. Mid-morning, we stopped at a little roadside shack, where an old man and his rather attractive daughter cooked us two boiled eggs for breakfast.

‘I marry you?’ I joked. She laughed then hacked her sinuses out.

‘Doctors without Borders, Cyclists without Manners!’ I shot out a fart that echoed down the valley. They all laughed.

Ah, farting. The unrecognised international language. Take that Esperanto!

We ate samosas while I lectured Uros on the benefits of nibblies instead of large meals when trying to keep energy levels up, then stuffed two boiled eggs in my mouth and kept them there in my cheeks while we cycled. I looked like a bullfrog with mumps. I slipped into my Marlon Brando impersonation from The Godfather.

‘I gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse!’

‘Eh?’

‘He sleeps with the fishes.’

‘What?’

‘Sonny! Never tell anyone what you’re thinking.’

‘What is this?’ he laughed. I tried to explain but… all was lost in the translation as they say.

Up and up we went, leaving the grey, cataract haze of Nepal’s hot season. The sun peeped through, a few feet above the ridge, and we felt the heat strike our skin. Above us on near-vertical hills, women were busy chopping down the last remaining bits of trees for firewood, the rustle of dead bush revealing their whereabouts, while grubby children – faces caked with sticky stripes of snot – ran alongside our bikes in a grating chorus of ‘Goodbye! Goodbye!’

We both tried to ignore them until Uros, the cool Slovenian rock, split in two.

‘Shut up!’ he snapped at one of them. But the child kept at it until he could run with us no longer.

If we weren’t racing away from kids, we were racing away from each other. It had become apparent that Uros and I were caught in an undisclosed race to be ‘King of the Mountain’.

I must admit that I had started it. I had led most of the morning, leaving Uros way down the mountain, struggling with every turn, his dripping face looking up to see me smiling back at him as I crammed my mouth with chocolate. Just as he neared, heaving and wheezing, his red face imploring me to rest, I would say, ‘Uros! You made it! Let’s keep going while you’ve got your momentum!’ and then jump back on my bike, tear ahead of him and repeat the whole routine again, his curses chasing after me.

But as the day wore on, my quick spurts got the better of me, and I stopped on a turn in some shade, sweat dripping off my helmet and onto my sunglasses, when Uros tore past, leaving me with the sound of his steady panting. When I caught up to him, he was resting on a big rock, splashing water over his hat from his aluminium water thermos.

Before I could put my foot down to rest, he was gone, leaving me breathless with exasperation.

The road became rough, disintegrating into patchy scabs and so steep in places that my front wheel, though loaded with 12 kilograms’ worth of baggage, lurched upwards over the bumps. I was forced to walk the bike.

When I caught up to Uros again, he was having a smoke and munching on a samosa by a stream. When he saw me he quickly got on his bike.

‘Wait!’

‘What is it?’ he stopped.

‘We need water,’ I said.

‘We do?’

‘Yes! Absolutely!’ I got out a collapsible water bladder from my pack, filled it up from a small stream above us and gave it to him.

‘You want me to carry it?’ he protested.

‘Why, of course. You have less stuff and I have nowhere to put it.’

He begrudgingly packed it.

This will slow him down… excellent, Smithers!

But if anything, it made the bastard go faster! When I did see him again, his bike was leaning up against a battered sign that read ‘2480 metres’. We had reached the very top, 60 kilometres after we started.

Uros was changing his sweaty shirt for a dry one. He threw on a fleece.

‘This is the most physical thing I have ever done’, he erupted as I took a photograph of him. I imagined that, somewhere in Slovenia, his mother was proud of him.

We cycled a little way down the mountain to the town of Daman and stayed the night in a small guesthouse, me regaling Uros with stories about all the jobs I’ve been fired from, notably from the film industry.

‘Perhaps,’ Uros motioned, clasping a beer. ‘And this is just a guess, my friend, but perhaps you shouldn’t tell the producers to go fuck themselves.’

‘Ya think?’

* * *

Rising early, the morning air bracing our souls, we bumped, braked and jarred over the rough tarred road to the town of Phalsong for mid-morning breakfast, up another climb and eventually down to Naubise.

Naubise intersected with Govinda’s ‘flat Mugling route’, and, just as I had thought, it was a nightmare of trucks and buses racing each other around blind corners. And it wasn’t flat. There was yet another towering hill in front of us. We stopped at a shack for lunch.

‘Let’s see your racks,’ Uros said eagerly. He bent down by my bike and shot up, triumphant. ‘Ah! They are broken!’

Sure enough, the rear strut had broken from its weld.

‘Ha-ha! I tell you, steel is better. You cannot fix this now!’ Uros laughed loudly.

I smiled back. ‘Oh, really?’

I pulled out my pencil-case full of spares – cables, patches, screws, nuts, clips, brake pads, tape – and found an adjustable hose ring. I bent the ring around the broken weld and screwed it together.

‘Fixed,’ I said, returning an even more triumphant grin.

‘But it will not last…’ He pulled at the strut, but it was as immovable as the welded one.

I had been advised to be prepared for such a thing. I hadn’t told Uros because I wanted to enjoy this moment when it arrived. When I explained this to him, laughing of course, he scowled, ‘You are a very, very bad man!’

Climbing out of Naubise, sweating through the sticky afternoon heat, we made the last pass by late afternoon and, with relief, screamed down the valley into Kathmandu, a basin of blue smoke, green paddy fields and decrepit three-storey buildings. We followed the choking traffic of trucks, buses, motorbikes and three-wheeled belching taxis.

We headed for Thamel because it was there, my guidebook told me, I could get anything to eat from around the world. Now, this may sound trite or may seem like I am denying myself the authentic traveller’s experience, but, quite frankly, I had had just about enough of dahl bhat (it was, as its name suggested, dull). My Western tongue had been spoilt. I yearned for steak even though I was predominately vegetarian; I wanted beer but I preferred wine; I could devour spaghetti though lasagne might do; I craved chocolate cake or a donut; something savoury, something with punch.

We took a bell-shaped room in the Cosy Corner Lodge.

‘We must celebrate!’ I said to Uros, elated, happy, complete as I dried myself from the shower.

‘Yes! We must party!’ he replied.

We went to La Dolce Vita Restaurant across the road, which (as its name suggested) had black-and-white photographs from the famous Fellini film plastered across the walls. We ordered up: a big steak, chips and a bottle of Australian red wine (you can get anything in Kathmandu!).

‘Cheers!’ We clinked glasses and drank.

‘We must really drink tonight!’ Uros said excitedly.

‘Absolutely, my friend! Let’s hit the town, go to a nightclub, dance and get absolutely right royally drunk!’

‘Yes!’ We clinked glasses noisily again and downed another glass.

Half an hour later, we were back at our hotel, face-down in our fat pillows, snoring loudly and very much dead to the world while the street, rowdy with travellers, celebrated for us.

* * *

I stared at the naked woman. Her legs were wrenched back near her ears in an impossible yoga position. Yet, despite this extreme pelvic flooring, she wore a somewhat comical smile.

This gnarled wooden form on the strut of the Jagannarayan Temple – located in Dunbar Square in a part of south-eastern Kathmandu known as Patan – was supposed to be erotic art, but rather than thinking of soft pleasures, I could only imagine splinters.

On another strut, a couple indulged in a ‘comfortable from behind’ position and, unlike their gymnastic neighbour, shared a deer-in-headlights expression. Other carvings were more adventurous and bestial: supplicants rogered by smiling donkeys, large-breasted women masturbating wide-eyed men, and couples copulating with wild abandon, their ecstasy frozen in chiselled gapes.

There was no clear explanation for the explicit carvings (perhaps revenge from an underpaid contractor?), but I did hear one interesting story. Apparently the Goddess of Lightning, a virgin who was shy despite being able to fry a pine tree in the blink of an eye, was scared off by the lewd manoeuvres crawling up the struts of these ancient temples. Similarly, in Cathedrals of the West, hidden away in the dark corners of arches were also carvings of devilish indulgences.

We spent the rest of the afternoon like two schoolboys, clicking and snapping our cameras at anything with a smooth lump or bulge.

‘Where are the carvings of fucking?’ Uros scrutinised the other side of the temple. ‘Ah! Here! More fucking here, Russell! More fucking!’

‘Where? Where?’

Two Nepalese men looked on with a smear of disdain at our slobbering performance and continued with their work of erecting a huge red banner across a temple. Chairs and microphones were being set up below, and when the banner unfurled, I realised that we were in the midst of something that had been on my mind before we left for Nepal.

‘I think there is no more fucking left,’ Uros said with a heavy air of disappointment. ‘What is this?’

‘Maoists.’

On the flag above us, the hammer and sickle rippled in the breeze.

Early on in 1996, the radical left of the dissolved Communist government, the Communist Party of Nepal, led an insurrection aimed at abolishing the monarchy and establishing a people’s republic based on a multi-party capitalist democracy. The party was made up mostly of students, oppressed lower-caste Nepalese and farmers. They wanted the most basic of requirements, such as clean water in rural areas, health and medicine for everyone, cheap access to seeds and fertiliser, land ownership, equality for women, and an end to the caste system and the monopoly of foreign capital.

Their movement had originally started off with peaceful protests, but when the government didn’t respond, the party took up arms against state institutions, police, soldiers and individuals in mid-west Nepal.

I wondered what this meeting was about and, more importantly, what the Maoists would do next.

The following morning our bikes needed a tune, so from Durbar Square we went in search of the Annapurna Bike Shop, which had been recommended in the bike journal at the Avocado Hotel.

God only knows how we would find it. All I knew was that it was near the Ason Chowk, and from there we would have to ask for directions. Kathmandu had grown out of a series of town squares and streets, fusing into one another, and as a result no specific addresses were evident. When we did arrive at Ason Chowk, I asked at a shop lined with antique gym equipment. A closer inspection revealed them to be Chinese interpretations of mountain bikes – oversized shock absorbers, chunky steel frames, flimsy vinyl seats. The bike industry in the West was definitely safe from these things taking over the market.[xv]

From inside the shop, a small man with a limp took us down a side street and into a small, signless room the size of a closet. It was filled with dusty rims, tyres, assorted parts, old bikes caked with more dust, and a very long and blue tandem called ‘Friday’, which we would later learn had been left behind by two Peace Corps volunteers.

A stout, silent man named Narendra took hold of our bikes. He trued our wheels, tuned our brakes and showed me how to install a new cassette (a ‘cassette’ it is not, as I first thought, an audio tape. In bicycle parlance it is the cluster of multiple sized cogs on the rear hub of the bike that allows different gear ratios. These often wear out and can cause the chain to slip).

‘We’ve cycled 1300 kilometres all the way from Delhi,’ I said, puffing out my chest. Not looking up from greasing the brakes he handed me dog-eared copies of news clippings about a Portuguese–Swiss couple cycling some 14 000 kilometres into China, about a French cyclist tortured in Bosnia, and about a Canadian couple in their seventh year of cycling the world. No wonder Narendra didn’t seem impressed.

As we were leaving, I bumped into a giant trying to climb into the closet. A six-foot American woman, Pru, crouched over and in one lunge had her Hero mountain bike inside.

‘Hi!’ came a big southern American drawl.

She told us she was commencing a two-year study on child nutrition then smiled. I was mesmerised. She had more gums than teeth.

‘Bill Gates is sponsoring it,’ she said.

‘What? Your teeth?’ I said without thinking, and then quickly got on my bike, trying to escape my embarrassment.

* * *

The Maoists had been planning something the day that Uros and I had seen them in Durbar Square. A general strike had been called across the country – shopkeepers were forced to close their stores, everyone had to remain indoors, no one was permitted to drive, and no vehicles (including buses and taxis) were allowed on the roads.

This had robbed me of my usual delight of watching Nepali life: rickshaw drivers play-fighting, smiling and laughing; shop owners throwing things at each other – continuing a daily game; and children, though ragged and poor, laughed and hugged each other. Somehow they were all able to remain happy despite their adversity.

News of the strike weighed heavily on Uros. He had planned to leave the next day and now lay out on the bed ill, thinking through the consequences of what ‘those Maoists’ might do.

‘I don’t want to be here another three days,’ Uros groaned. We had already been here for a week and the traveller’s itch was eating him alive.

A crease cracked his glum face as he searched the ceiling for an answer, hands under his head, glasses askew.

‘What am I going to do?’

‘The same thing you’ve been doing for the past week – lying in bed.’

‘Yes, well. But I must get to India,’ he said, and then told me of his travel itinerary for the umpteenth time, though I never grew tired of hearing it.

‘I take the bus to the border, maybe cycle to Varanasi then Agra. Maybe a bus to Delhi. Then I take my plane to Bangkok and meet my… friend (he had ceased referring to Malitta as his girlfriend), then we cycle to Malaysia then to Australia and buy a motorcycle!’

Simone, a German woman I had met in Delhi, walked into our room with a quiet bump on the door and, to put Uros at ease, said, ‘You know, the Maoists just killed thirty-five policemen!’

‘No!’

‘Yes! And they take 25 hostages!’

‘Where?’

‘In Dolpa.’

He looked to me for an answer. ‘How will I get my bus?’

I shrugged my shoulders.

‘You know, it’s like waiting for a typhoon,’ I said, recalling a night in Taiwan some years ago while trees crashed around us in the dark and for added effect, high on LSD. ‘Just waiting for the storm to arrive. People stocking up on food, hiding in their houses. How exciting!’

‘Ah, yes, we should go for a drink tonight,’ Simone said in her singsong Frankfurt accent.

‘Uros?’

‘What?’ His eyes had barely left the ceiling.

‘Want to come for a drink?’

He looked even paler than usual, his long hair latching onto pillows and walls. ‘No,’ he said darkly like Marvin the Paranoid Android.[xvi] ‘I think I will lie here and think about the Maoists.’

13

ANNAPURNA CIRCUIT

April

Uros did leave the next day, taking his luggage and angst with him. Not that he really had reason to worry – the Maoists conveniently called off their strike earlier that morning.

He stood outside the bakery, admiring the reflection of his newly bought safari hat – park ranger style.

‘I ride to the bus station and take the bus back to Butwal, then I cycle to Varanasi.’

‘Ah, yes,’ my sphincter clenched. ‘Butt-well.’

He gave me a hug. ‘I learn a lot from you. You are a good friend.’

He swung his leg over his bike and waved as he pedalled through the near-empty streets, before the turn of a building consumed him. I had enjoyed our travels together and was going to miss him.[xvii]

It was now time to meet up with Bec, so I took a taxi to the airport and stood for some time among the anxious crowd huddled outside the arrivals doors. An hour passed and I was beginning to wonder if Bec was going to arrive at all. Did I have the right day, the right time, and the right flight? Soon, a trickle of Westerners came through the doors. I then saw, at the end of this long line, a blonde mop of hair searching this way and that. An electric shock ran through me at seeing her.

‘Bec!’

She looked beautiful, eyes blue and skin lightly tanned. She dropped her luggage and ran up.

‘My baby!’

We kissed passionately while shy Nepalese looked on, curious at such public displays of affection.

‘God, I’ve missed you!’ we both said, then smiled and laughed at each other.

I grabbed her backpack and we walked hand in hand in search of a taxi back to Kathmandu city.

In our hotel room, I popped a bottle of champagne I had chilled (you can get anything in Kathmandu!) and poured us a glass each. We clinked glasses, kissed and lay on the bed, her telling me of her awful flight on Air Dhaka. It sounded like some kind of bad American sitcom. There had been a fight and men had jumped over seats, punching their antagonists, insulting each other’s wives. The air stewards did nothing to restrain them, so common were these mile-high stoushes.

It was heaven to finally be in her arms after four months apart. As we lay on the bed and kissed, drinking each other in she said, ‘Russ, you know how you said you’d always love me?

‘Yes, darling. Of course!’

‘And that if I ever had anything to tell you, you’d understand?’

‘Yes?’

‘And if for whatever reason our plans changed, that would always be okay with you?’

I looked up. ‘Er… y-y-yes.’

‘Well… I want to cycle with you!’

‘What?!’

‘I said, “I want to cycle with you”. All the way to Beijing!’

‘Oh, um…’ my voice began to break. ‘I thought you just wanted to hike Nepal for a month and then off to Europe.’

‘Yeah. But… well, can I?’

Where was the ‘Oh, I only want to travel with you for a month. I want to travel on my own. I want to experience the world my way’ deal? This was a surprise!

But why was I being like this? Wasn’t this what I wanted, to be with the woman I loved? Hadn’t I talked her into this very idea in the first place?

Perhaps I had enjoyed my independence just a little too much, and maybe this romantic adventure with Bec wasn’t just a gallop around the Himalayas anymore, it was something else: COMMITMENT!

But looking into those dazzling blue eyes I weakened: ‘Ssssurre. It’ll be… it’ll be… great!’

* * *

The Annapurna Circuit, a trekking route on the Tibetan Plateau of the Himalayas, was extremely popular: 16 000 visitors trekked it per year[xviii] – yet ironically their very presence contributes to the loss of the environment. Forests have been cleared to make way for guesthouses, bridges, and for Westerners’ needs: fuel to cook their food and heat their showers. (It takes 1.5 kilograms of wood to heat a Westerner’s shower; this amount would supply a Nepalese family’s needs for a week.) Nepalese women now travel up to four hours at a time to collect firewood.

Bec and I did our best not to impact on the environment – no showers, meals by kerosene stoves – and we took our own canteen bottles rather than buying them and contributing to the growing rubbish that dots the trekking trail.

After we dumped our heavy packs and sat down at a teahouse, we heard a strange tapping sound. I turned around to see trekkers wrapped up in bright Gortex jackets and gloves, clacking up the rocky path with ski poles. They reminded me of the machines from HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds and looked just as alien when passed by a Nepalese porter wearing thongs and carrying a fridge.

One of the Gortex crowd, a smiling German, stopped to catch his breath.

‘The ski poles,’ I asked, ‘are you expecting snow, like, soon?’

‘Ah! Ze poles give me balance,’ he said. ‘And zey transfer ze veight onto ze arms by as much as 25 per cent, which gives more energy for ze trekking.’

I wished I had poles! Though I don’t know why they did. These trekkers had porters carrying all their gear, leaving them to carry only a sandwich, a bottle of water and a smile. And, no wonder – it was incredibly beautiful here with the snow-capped peaks looking down on vast open valleys.

They continued on, each trying to jump in front of the other. It became apparent that the trekkers were in some kind of competition, taking the name ‘Circuit’ quite literally, leaping and practically running up eroded hills and cliffs. I’m sure we were lapped several times. As we sat around tables at tea–houses, Herculean stories abounded.

For instance, there was a British traveller who had jogged around the circuit, even up the fatal 5416 metre Thorung La pass through snow, mud and loose slate in a mere ten days. Then, there was a German couple that had apparently done it in seven days. When I mentioned this startling factoid to a middle-aged Israeli couple, they erupted with glee, the husband slamming his fist down on the table, scaring everyone in the guesthouse.

‘THAT WAS OUR SON!’ they shouted.

‘No, actually, it was two Germans who—’

‘AH, OUR SON! YOU HEARD ABOUT HIM TOO, YES?’

‘No, actually, it was two Germans who—’

‘YES! HE JUST GOT OUT OF THE ARMY!’ They looked at each other, smiles so big and bright that I almost had to put my sunglasses on, their chests pumped up like blimps.

‘HE WAS VERY FIT! HE GOT UP AT FOUR A.M. EVERY DAY!’

‘NO, IT WAS 3.30 A.M.!’ his wife corrected him.

‘NO! IT WAS FOUR A.M.! IT WAS ARMY TIME!’ Once they had argued out this important detail, they resumed.

‘YES, HE GOT UP… EARLY. HE WALKED TWELVE HOURS A DAY, SOMETIMES AT NIGHT. HE SAID IT WAS BEAUTIFUL! THE MOON SHINING!’

‘But these Germans, two of them, they did it in seven—’

‘AH! HE SAID IT WAS HARD, IT WAS GOOD, BUT HE’D NEVER DO IT AGAIN!’ He ended the story with another thump of his meaty fist on the wooden table, spilling our tea. Silence filled the tiny teahouse and a fierce wind picked up outside, whistling cheerily to itself through the gaps in the wall.

‘Your son,’ I wanted to say to them. ‘Was he German with multiple personalities?’

Such impatience to complete the Annapurnas in the shortest possible time would some day become a reality. A road going right around the Annapurnas was currently underway so that one day you’d be able to drive the entire 250 kilometre circuit in a matter of days.

Though I could see the benefits for the local people (access to towns, medical services, schools) I could also see how it would ruin local economies for porters and the like. Traffic – like it has done everywhere around the world – would bring with it noise, pollution, rubbish and accidents. The joy of taking your time trekking, being present, feeling part of the incredible landscape, would evaporate in the need for speed.[xix]

Anyway, Bec and I managed to avoid getting swept up in Le Mans trekking, and instead got swept up in each other. We walked slowly together, holding hands, getting to know each other once more, having slow breakfasts and making love in the afternoons while the rain and harsh winds pelted at our door.

One day she said something that cast doubt on the possibility of us at all.

‘Everyone was telling me before I left that I was mad to have a relationship at my age. That I should, while I’m travelling at least, have lots of sexual experiences. But you know I don’t want to have all those cheap experiences like you had.’

‘I wouldn’t say they were cheap!’

‘What? You don’t regret any of it?’

‘Why should I?’ I smiled broadly, then kicking the rest of the sentence into the gravel, ‘I was young, good looking, I had charisma! I had fun!’

She was silent, kicking the gravel back at my shoes, then stopped.

‘I wish I had had all those experiences!’ she said, then trudged ahead, sulking.

How could I blame her? She was 23 and I was 32. The difference in our ages had often led to a difference of opinion.

Oh, dear. Oh, dear indeed!

14

NEPAL – INDIA

May

‘What happened?’ I asked a Nepalese man wearing oversized glasses and standing at the edge of a torn embankment. He was a dot in the crowd of hundreds who were clambering around the wreckage, some ten metres below.

‘A motorbike was coming this way, the bus was overtaking, and the bike hit the front,’ he pointed under the bus. ‘There. You can see the dead people.’

The impact of the head-on collision had caused the bus to shimmy off the road down a steep embankment and gouge a deep brown scar into a flooded paddy field. The bus lay on its side, the lip sipping the muddy water around it like a stranded fish.

Next to the bus, a body had been covered with a woollen blanket, as if to warm it up. Though the external damage to the bus was minor, six people died in the crash when the seats crumpled into rib-cracking dominoes, their weak seat-mountings breaking loose in the collision.

Fifty metres from the bus lay a red motorcycle helmet, upturned and half-filled with brown water, a solitary island in the muddy pond. The helmet’s owner laid some 100 metres away on his twisted back, head upturned, staring at nothing. Blood trickled from his mouth, across his forehead and over his spiky black hair. He must not have had time to even look surprised as his body took the brunt of the bus’s full force when it took the corner. The impact had knocked both his shoes off, revealing pilled blue socks, one with a hole in it.

Yet, his injuries, like the bus’s, appeared to be somewhat superficial; a mangled lip was the only mark that showed he had kissed death at all. Miraculously, his passenger survived and was now in the midst of being driven, just as madly as the bus that had dislodged him from his seat, to a hospital in Pokhara, a town Bec and I had just come from.

Our three weeks of trekking done, we had taken the bus for Kathmandu, screeching through the mad, winding hills when it suddenly halted and became part of a long line of vehicles. Despite no wreckage blocking the road, no one could move on until the police arrived. We had been there for an hour already.

Local vendors selling popcorn, beans and coconut soon took advantage of the calamity. Restaurant shacks were filled with bored, hot customers fanning themselves in the two o’clock heat as they sipped chai, clumped dahl bhat into their hands and fingered it into their mouths, or chewed tobacco. The excitement and horror of the crash had apparently left them with a gnawing appetite.

The bus driver was nowhere to be seen, having legged it over the hill in fear for his life. As is the custom in Nepal, if a driver causes bodily harm to his fellow passengers or pedestrians, they have every right to beat him to death. This begs the question of why, if you were a bus driver with 40 people sitting behind you who might just want to beat you to death for any traffic discrepancy, wouldn’t you just drive a little bit more safely?

This obvious truism was something I wished to impart now via the medium of a clenched fist to our driver. Despite the horrors we had all just seen, he was, now that the police had arrived and cleared the traffic, already wildly taking on blind corners, the back wheels struggling to stay on the road as trucks intent on obliterating us swerved out of the way at the last second. The worst of it was when our bus and another of the same company cut off a rogue taxi that had failed to give way to them. Arrowing him into the middle of the road, they stopped traffic in both directions. The bus drivers both leapt out and took turns yelling and shaking their fists at the taxi driver, who shrank into his leather seat, then under the dashboard.

‘It is far safer,’ I said to Bec as we passed yet another crashed bus, its body disintegrating into a rock cutting, ‘to ride a bicycle.’

* * *

Relieved with our safe arrival in Kathmandu, I was soon struck with a horrible realisation that I’d be most likely be going back on a Nepali bus again: my visa was about to expire.

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Bec.

‘Well, I don’t want to take a bus. It’s at least three days’ ride…’

I dashed off to a money changer and made an illegal transaction (well for Nepal) – I changed Nepali rupees for some hard American cash.

‘You’re going to bribe them?’

‘Yeah,’ I said with an arrogant wave of my hand. ‘This country is skanky with it.’

Two days later, at the border…

‘Your visa has expired.’

I blinked at the grey, weary eyes of the Nepalese immigration official.

‘Today is the 13th May. You entered on the 13th March. Sixty days only.’

‘No. Two months. The visa is for two months. It says there.’

‘You have to apply for a new visa. Fifty dollar US and one dollar US for each day over. Total fifty-two dollar US you have to pay.’

Time for Plan B.

‘I don’t have that much money on me. How about… I give you some money?’

‘No.’

‘Say,’ I reached inside my wallet, ‘ten dollars?’

‘I cannot.’

He was silent for a moment, flicking my passport, my life, in his hands. ‘You go to India without exit stamp. Okay?’

‘Sure.’ I went to pick up my passport, but he held onto it, causing me to trip.

‘Fifty-two dollar you have to pay. Fill out form…’

As he handed it to me, I protested again.

‘That’s so much money. How about… twenty dollars US I give you?’

‘No, no. New visa.’ This went on for some while but just when I was about to give up and start filling out a new visa form, he got up and said, ‘You stay here. My friend. He’s at hotel.’

An hour passed before the official returned with his smiling friend and ushered me into the office. The friend filled out the paperwork, writing my passport details in a book.

‘You arrived on the twenty-third.’

‘Right.’

‘Money. Twenty dollar,’ he said abruptly without looking up, and I counted out the one-dollar bills. With his pen, he did something that I could have easily done at my hotel – he scrawled over the date, replacing the 1 with a 2.

We cycled over the southern border of Nepal into the town of Rauxal in Bihar, India. Bec came to a wobbling stop as she tried to get used to her new bike laden with gear. Her bike had already done a marathon cycle, Narendra told me, having travelled over 9000 kilometres from Germany to Kathmandu and to make sure it would survive our trip, he replaced the cables and bearings, the whole deal costing $US200. Panniers were much harder to come by, but we eventually found an ambitious bag maker who, unlike others, did not wave us away into the rain.

Like my first day with Uros where I thought he wouldn’t mind cycling 184 kilometres in one day, for some reason I thought Bec, a novice at cycle touring, wouldn’t mind cycling up 30 kilometre long hills (the hills that Uros and I had struggled over) for days either.

What was I thinking?

We argued of course, and after one particularly tough day, she lay next to me shaking and crying, declaring she wasn’t going to cut this cycling malarkey.

‘You’ll be fine,’ I reassured her. ‘Wait ’til we get to India. It’s flat there and it’ll give you time to get your cycling legs. You’ll enjoy it then. Really.’

But it was me that would find this leg of the trip the most challenging.

‘India is spice,’ I said to Bec, catching the familiar smell of curries brewing and chai boiling, the fragrant noxiousness of kerosene burning, and the dark cloud of diesel from trucks. The assault on my senses reawakened my first memories of India. But these soon faded as the realities hit: the swarms of people, the rickshaw bells ringing like lost phones, the broken roads, the blaring of celebratory songs through huge speakers on broken wheelbarrows.

On the way in, we passed a sign on a battered government building: PREVENTITIVE CUM CONTROL SUPPLIES.

‘What is it? A hammer?’ I joked to Bec.

‘No, your personality!’ she teased.

As much as I loved being back in India, I was a bit nervous. I had heard that Bihar was the most lawless state in all of India, parts of it being run by Thakurs, a caste-based mafia. No one travelled on the roads at night. I had also heard that dacoits (bandits) flourished here, and that if they didn’t get you, the police would. I had been told a story of a foreign tourist relieved of all of his money by the police, then his car and finally, his clothes, as he encountered checkpoint after checkpoint.

On a bench seat down a steep set of stairs outside a building lay the immigration officer, a fat man wearing a singlet and shorts. His hippo belly hung over the side, rising up and down as he snored. An immigration journal next to him flapped in the silent breeze.

‘Welcome to India!’ I smiled at Bec as I minded the bikes, watching her while she went down the stairs and woke him. He sat up abruptly, wiped his eyes and, without concern for present company, hawked out his sinuses and spat a long stream of gooey mucus behind him into a room full of broken bricks.

As if for contrast in this scene, another immigration official in a grey safari suit and a white beard came and sat beside this fat, unshaven slob, delicately smoking a tiny cigarette and sipping a small glass of chai.

Bec returned and I went down to fill out my passport details while she went up the stairs to mind the bikes. The old man looked up at the crowd that had swarmed around Bec within seconds.

‘Is she your wife?’

‘Yes.’ I lied.

‘Hmm.’ He stared at the staring men. ‘She told me she was your girlfriend.’

A smile creased my face. ‘We like to think we’re married.’

‘Hmm. You go there. It is not good for her with all these men,’ he said. When I got to Bec, 20 or so dark faces were fixed on her and she had backed up against a wall like a cornered doe unsure where to jump.

It was oppressively hot, hotter than I had ever remembered India to be. It was May and the monsoon season was upon us. We baked as we stood in the heat amid the flies, the dust and the noise. Down an end of an alley we dodged rubbish until we arrived at the reception desk of the Ajanta Hotel.

A white man with a beard, an albino Indian, processed our details with an indifferent air about him. With some staff help, we lugged the bikes up the stairs and unloaded and wheeled them into the room. We stripped off immediately, freeing our bodies from our damp, hot clothes, showering every five minutes or so and splashing water over ourselves to survive the furnace heat of our room.

This heat did not abate even at nightfall and to make matters worse the ceiling fan had given up with the last blackout. We were forced to open the windows to the hallway, though only slightly, from where cool drafts of air could reach us.

I don’t know what possessed me, it was the last thing on my mind as we lay naked, our bodies glazed with sweat… but Bec looked so beautiful there and, yes, so lethargic and, well, helpless, that I thought it might be a good idea to, well… er… sort her out!

So, there we were in the throng of hot, sweaty passion, our quiet moans humming in each other’s ears, when I looked up into the eyes of another man (not the visage I’m used to when having sex, I can tell you!).

‘What the —!’ A fat, moustached man in a singlet scampered down the hallway. We shut the windows. Thinking that this was enough to send the slime away, we resumed, but more quietly.

However…

When I looked up sometime later, there he was again, having pushed the window open, staring like a naughty schoolboy.

‘YOU BASTARD!’

Again he scampered off. I got up and slammed the window shut again.

‘I feel sick,’ said Bec.

‘So do I.’

Unfortunately, sexual harassment would become a daily and ongoing nuisance in India, even when we least expected it.

As we rode along with an old man on quiet rural country road the next day he asked if Bec was my wife. When I told him she was my girlfriend he asked ‘So, you are having the sexual intercourse?’

Then as we rode out along past lagoons and palm trees, two men on squeaky Indian bicycles rode behind us, sniggering like schoolboys, then grabbed Bec on the behind. She screamed and I chased after them, caught up to one and rammed him off the road with my front pannier bags. He bounced and clattered onto the grass down an embankment.

Later that day in a small town, we happened upon some kind of festival in full swing. Pink-faced men staggering around the street carrying garish gods on podiums. When we arrived on our laden bikes, the town stopped and we were instantly mobbed by a mass of men. Police moved into the throng with big sticks, hitting a few to disperse the crowd.

A man made his way in between Bec and me and promptly accidentally-on-purpose poked Bec in the breast. I slammed him hard and he fell back. The crowd rose up, and for a split second I thought they were going to descend upon me, but instead they grabbed him and cuffed him about.

The worst was when Bec and I fought about her cycling alone, and when I did cycle off and stop up ahead, I turned around to see her some way behind me being hassled by two men on a motorbike. I dropped the bike and chased them, my cleats in my cycle shoes causing me to skip and trip along the asphalt like a drunk Fred Astaire. The cowards, seeing this madman tap dancing and barking all kinds of violence at them, zipped the motorbike around and tore off in the opposite direction.

‘It is because these are illiterate people,’ a hotel manager explained to me. He had made the mistake of asking me how I was enjoying India – ‘Pfff!’

‘Yes,’ I countered sourly, ‘but how does squeezing my girlfriend’s breasts help them read?!’

And while I could only reason that this was a product of a sexually repressed society where women were seen as chattels, it did not make it right.

‘If I went around groping Indian women you guys would set me on fire!’

‘Yes, of course,’ smiled the manager. ‘Or worse!’

Thus, I became increasing agitated when any man dared to come near us and I would often scream, ‘NO! THE SEX IS NOT FREE!’

So it was ironic, after all that we had experienced over the past few days, that we found ourselves, of all places, in an ashram of the self-proclaimed sex guru Osho, better known as the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh or ‘Master of the Vagina’ as one ex-cult member called him.

He had once led The Orange People cult and preached ‘free love, anywhere, anytime’. In the 1980s the group caught quite a deal of attention, not for the fact that Rajneesh arrived every day in a Rolls Royce (he had nearly a hundred of them) at his Oregon ashram to give a ‘silent discourse’ (had he forgotten his notes or was it just a long pause?), but also for claims that the Rajneeshies tried to poison the Oregon water supply. His personal secretary, Ma Anand Sheela, got worldwide coverage when she uttered the words, ‘Tough Titties’ when quizzed on 60 Minutes about the opposition to more ashrams in Australia.

However, this ashram was largely deserted and what was left was a kindly and withered old man, Swami Prati. He stood behind a walking frame, having broken his leg in an energetic meditation some weeks before. He invited us in and gave us a room for the night.

Photographs of Rajneesh adorned the walls but also some nonsensical aphorisms:

I AM ME. YOU ARE YOU. WHY THINK OF FUTURE?

THE PATH TO ENLIGHTENMENT CAN ONLY BE ATTAINED THROUGH HAPPINESS, PEACE, LOVE, SINGING.

I asked Swami Prati about Rajneesh. Was he really just about free love?

‘Free love? No,’ said Prati. ‘Love is love. You are love. I am love. God is in everything – nature, you, her. He did not believe in marriage. You enjoy the love, and when the love finish, you say “Namaste” and you go.’

‘That’s just the sort of thing you’d go in for, wouldn’t you, Russ?’ Bec said later in our room with an air of accusation. ‘No commitments, no marriage… that’s your kind of religion.’

Oh, that commitment thing again! I had made the mistake of revealing to her that I didn’t want to get married. Paradoxically, this didn’t stop me from introducing her as my wife to locals in an attempt to avoid any further questions about our sex life.

‘Ah, well,’ I said changing the subject, ‘I’m more curious what the meditation is like. He said it was too energetic for us to join in.’

‘Probably an orgy, which you’d also like,’ she said, flinging her bags on the floor. What was with her today?

In our room the overhead fan kept the mosquitoes at bay, but it was still too hot in the ashram to sleep. I lay listening to the tapestry of noise outside: boys noisily walking home, bullocks’ hooves walking unsteadily on broken bitumen while the hay they were carrying grazed and twisted along the wall outside our room, their owners whistling sharp commands, dogs barking in a rowdy din of dog-bark time (always at 11, just as I was nodding off), and drunk men stumbling, struggling to hold their footing. When the generator sputtered its last gasp for the night, the fan stopped. The stillness of the air became thick and immovable, and we edged our bodies away from each other on the small bed, desperate to find a patch of coolness. Bec soon drifted off, mumbling to the night world.

In the morning I was awoken at five a.m. by the SINGING, DANCING, LOVING music for meditation. Singing – yes. Dancing – sounded like it. Loving – hmm, who knows? I got up to check that bit out.

Swami Prati was sitting down under the expansive veranda, hand on his walking frame, large belly hanging out under his white singlet and over his sarong.

‘No one came,’ he said, pointing to the clouds. ‘Too much rain.’

The cool change had blasted into our room, banging the shutters and cooling our bodies.

‘You can go and look in the temple. My servant will show you the meditation. Take a torch with you. Read what it says on the walls. It is all in English,’ he chortled. ‘Go.’

In the temple, a large room with parquetry floors, numerous photographs of Rajneesh taken when he was much younger lined the wall, each showing a different expression. Back then, his beard was black and his face was much fuller; hell, apart from the hair colour, he was a dead-ringer for Grover from Sesame Street.

The squat servant stood in the middle of the room.

‘Meditation. First! Breathing!’ He flicked his head back, took a deep breath and snorted in big sweeping gasps, hands flicking passed his head, eyes closed. He did this for five minutes until his sarong fell off, revealing red under-shorts. Bec and I dared not look at each other for fear of laughing.

‘Second! Dancing!’ He looked around the room sheepishly. ‘No music.’

He put his hand up. ‘Third! Meditation… peace.’ He closed his eyes for a moment then shot them open.

‘Fourth! Jumping!’ He bounced up and down around the room, arms reaching for the sky.

‘HOO! HOO! HOO! HOO!’ He whooped until his sarong fell off again. He picked it up, embarrassed.

‘Five! Stillness.’ He stood there staring at us until we felt uncomfortable.

‘Okay?’ he said.

Bec was a little suspicious of the whole ashram, especially after I told her that Rajneesh had gone to jail for tax avoidance and conspiracy to murder the mayor of Oregon. I mentioned this to Prati.

‘The Pope and Christians in America,’ Prati said as we prepared to leave the ashram, ‘did not like him because he criticised them. This is why he went to jail. And there, he was poisoned – slowly – until he died in India. Talented people, scientists, tell us this. Ah, yes. He was a master. Yes. He could do many miracles. I have seen it with my own eyes. He could make the rain stop. Yes. Just like that!’

Couldn’t keep himself out of jail though, could he? I thought ruefully.

Prati embraced me. ‘Be happy. Love yourself as God loves you. See with truth.’

We pedalled off through the increasing heat and the evaporating pothole puddles.

My comments about Rajneesh’s jail term turned out to be prophetic; later that day we ended up in jail ourselves.

The light was fading and we had borne the brunt of another hot day. We were exhausted, and at our current rate we would never make it to the next town, Padrauna, some 15 kilometres away.

At the police headquarters, police officers sat around a table outside, some getting changed and ready for their shift – putting on uniforms, attaching belts and loading guns – while others washed under water pumps or lay around on outdoor beds.

A tall, strapping, moustached policeman walked over. I asked if we could sleep the night. He spoke with the other policemen, who were now sitting up staring at us, and they agreed.

His name was Arun, and he organised a room for us, an empty bungalow out the back behind the offices. Though he tried to make us feel welcome, I soon developed an uncomfortable feeling about the place. None of the villagers came near here. I started recalling things I had read about India’s corrupt cops – the kidnappings, murders and extortion rackets. They sounded just like the Australian Police!

Just to lighten the atmosphere, my mouth started asking Arun stupid questions I did not really want to know the answers to.

‘Have you ever killed a man?’

‘Yes,’ he said blankly. ‘Here. Robbers. Murder. Hold up. It is my job to kill if I see robber.’ His face avalanched into coldness.

A boy of about 16 was led out of a cell while a young girl was escorted to a table by a visiting female police officer.

‘He is here for rape,’ the policeman said coldly.

The rapist walked right past the victim, whose eyes were downcast; no concern for her plight was shown by anyone.

It was a bizarre place. During dinner, which we ate in a room while sitting on mattress-less beds, the chef – a dwarf with two thumbs on one hand – frisbeed chapattis onto our plates, then did a little dance on request from one of the portly policeman. I half-expected David Lynch to morph out of the candlelit shadows and announce in a droll tone, ‘We’ll just do that take one more time until I can’t explain it.’

We sat in the hot room munching on curried vegetables and rice.

He offered me wine but didn’t offer Bec any. When I asked why, he said, ‘It is not allowed for women to drink.’

Rebecca stormed off to the room. I joined her shortly thereafter.

‘I’m sick of this sexist bullshit!’ Bec said, the fan blasting us as we lay in bed. ‘I don’t exist. I hate it.’

‘Yes. I hate it too,’ I said and tried to console her in the wake of yet another day surrounded by men.

15

INDIA – DECCAN PLAINS – LUCKNOW

May

If India was to test the depths of how low I could go, then she would need a very long stick.

There we were on the hot Deccan plains of Uttar Pradesh, trucks, buses and car whooshing past us on the Grand Trunk Road when the memory of Butwal wore its way back like a bicycle seat made of sandpaper.

My haemorrhoids had been playing up (‘Would you guys get down from that tree!’) and it felt as if they were eating me from the inside out, causing me horrendous pain. I needed a secluded spot to administer the Preparation H cream, so Bec and I stopped for a rest next to a small track.

But as I fumbled for the tube in my bag, I heard the squeak of a bicycle, the quiet farts of a stopping motorcycle and the nearing flip-flop of thongs. Before too long I turned around and saw a silent crowd of 40 men within two feet of us, not saying a word or giving a smile but staring like seagulls waiting for a single fried chip.

‘Chelo! (Go!)’ They moved closer. ‘CHELO!’ They moved closer again. ‘For fucksake!’

‘Just do it, Russ. Don’t worry about it!’ said Bec, fed up. ‘You see them shitting all the time.’ She had a point; I had seen all manner of ablutions on this trip.

‘Hurry up so we can get out of here. I’m getting nervous.’

‘Alright, alright.’ Hiding the tube inside my shorts, I tried to quickly squirt the cream in, but it went all over my shorts. ‘Jesus!

The crowd ventured closer.

‘Would you just…’

Now, I am not giving excuses for what I did next – just reasons. I am still embarrassed and ashamed about it. But after a month of being whistled at, sucked at, yelled at, laughed at and grabbed at, my temper burning up like the 45-degree days that melted the roads before us, what I was about to do just made perfect sense.

‘Right. That’s it! You guys want to see something? I’ll show you something!’

À la Demtel commercial, I demonstrated the smooth head of the nozzle (which was long for obvious reasons) and made plunging actions towards my rear.

‘HEEEEEEERE WEEEE GOOOOO!’

Without much ado, I hoisted down my shorts and rammed the tube between the cheeks of my arse. It stuck out like a crashed rocket ship.

‘HAHAH!’ I laughed, bent over and seeing Bec upside down in my vision. ‘Have they gone yet, Bec?’

‘Actually, Russ, they’ve moved in for a closer look.’

And so there they were and looking on with thoughtful rectitude.

‘Oh, God. Is there no escape! Someone, please. Just shoot me!’

Later, we tried to take refuge from the crowds under the coolness of a fan at the back of a teahouse. Within seconds, another crowd swamped us again. A smiling fat man came bounding up like a Labrador. By now, I was ropeable.

‘Hello, sir,’ he said. ‘Which country?’

‘Israel!’ I grinned menacingly, hoping that the somewhat maligned reputation of Israeli backpackers would scare him off.

‘Oh. What is your purpose in India?’

‘Pakistani spy.’

‘Tourist,’ Bec said, sharply.

‘How are you finding India?’ he asked Bec.

‘HAHA!’ I huffed. ‘Don’t get me started!’

‘People are very friendly,’ Bec said, ‘helpful—’

‘In your fucking face all the fucking time,’ I mumbled into my sleeve.

Children crowded around, choking the last of any cool air in the fleapit teahouse. I scowled at them. They scowled back, then laughed.

‘Can you teach us some Hindi?’ Bec asked.

‘You want to learn Hindi!’ His eyes nearly popped with a child’s excitement. In a flash, he had a pen and paper out.

‘Sure,’ I winced, fearing he would start teaching the alphabet until the sun set, then I wondered if he could teach us a Hindu phrase for, ‘No, I really do mean fuck off!’

But Bec had a politer request, God love her, and within minutes he had a list of phrases compiled.

‘This one here means, “Please don’t look”; this one means, “Please move back”, and this one means, “Don’t touch me”.’

Ah, the key! Yes, why didn’t we think of this before? Learn a few words of Hindi and, presto! They’ll vanish!

‘Thank you very much!’ I said, suddenly interested in the guy, and shook his hand. He smiled, waved goodbye to us and got on his motorbike.

But later, when we were swamped outside a bank, our attempts at Hindi seemed to have the opposite effect, and once again we found ourselves escaping on our bikes, me hurling more and more abuse.

‘You know, isn’t it funny,’ Rebecca clamped her arms on her hip like a gunslinger, face twisting up, getting ready to say something about my shabby behaviour. ‘How “arsehole” rhymes with “Russhole”!

I hated to admit it but she was right. I had become the love child of George Costanza, Russell Crowe and Eric Cartman from South Park: ‘GODDAMMIT! WHERE’S MY CHEESY POOFS?’

I loathed myself.

Now, as a travel writer you’re not supposed say that you don’t like the country you’re in, but right at this moment I wasn’t liking India one bit, and when I told Rebecca that night she said, ‘Then why stay here and complain? Let’s take a bus!’

‘Because I’m writing a book! I can’t call it “Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle” if I took buses, trains or planes all the time. It’d be called “Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle… sort of”.’

‘But it’s not even called Bombay!’

‘I’m working on that!’

‘But it’s just distance for distance’s sake. It’s not even fun.’

‘Look. Let’s try one more day. Things could get better.’

‘Get better! Hah! I’m hot, I can’t sleep, every day some dickhead grabbing me on the tits… how could anything get better?’

* * *

But things did get better and what happened next reminded of how wonderful India and Indian people can be.

Rudauli was a small splot on my map in the middle of Uttar Pradesh. When streams of people surrounded us, a plump man in a tracksuit stepped forward and urged them to go.

‘I am Dr Pushkar,’ he announced and shook my hand. ‘Please, come and have dinner with me tonight. But first I will arrange for you to sleep.’

He showed us to a government bungalow, used by officials ever so rarely that nothing at all worked. But it was clean, large and kept in a reasonable state of repair by two caretakers who appeared to be continually stoned on charas.

That night we sat outside Dr Pushkar’s house with his wife, a gynaecologist, and their family, sitting in the boiling, soupy heat, going through the pleasantries. Suddenly, there was a large flash of light that split across the sky and released an almighty explosion.

‘Ah, the power has arrived!’ Dr Pushkar smiled cheerfully, wobbling his head while servants, nonplussed by the crackling light, flapped square fans to cool us. ‘It is the transformer. He is melting.’

Within minutes, the power came on. Wooden fans were dropped in our favour for electric ones and everyone at last relaxed and sat down. The family seated us at the table and only ate once we were well and truly stuffed.

‘This is the Indian custom,’ Dr Pushkar smiled. ‘It is our duty to look after our guests like a god. We must accept you like a storm – we do not expect it but we welcome it.’

He had a wonderful relationship with his children – two daughters and a son. Often I would find him laughing and playing with them in the morning while he tried to shave, chasing and tickling them around the house, or up at four a.m. to take his son and his friends for a jog, even though it was already quite hot at that hour.

Bec and I felt happy just being near him, and our annoyances of the past few days melted away.

Some days later, Dr Pushkar took us to a local wedding. Under a huge tent, relatives and friends gathered to see the bridal couple, who were perched on a stage several feet away from each other. The groom was accepting red envelopes, relatives touching him on the feet as a sign of respect while his bride, in a bright red dress and adorned with gold nose-rings, sat quietly, eyes downcast.

‘She doesn’t look very happy,’ I said to Dr Pushkar, who looked dashing in his camel safari suit.

‘No! She is very happy!’ he asserted.

‘How can you tell?’

‘Ah, you see, if she is smiling, then everyone will be thinking that they have already made the marriage!’ He flashed me a big smile and a wink.

Perhaps the bride was unhappy with something else; perhaps a dowry that was sending her parents bankrupt. It is still the tradition in India (even though it was prohibited in 1961) for the bride’s parents to provide a dowry of money or gifts, or education for the bridegroom. Not just on the wedding night but for the duration of the marriage.

I saw something big, shiny and metallic under Dr Pushkar’s jacket.

‘What’s that?’ I pointed. He lifted his jacket back.

‘It is my gun,’ he said innocently.

‘But… you’re a doctor! You’re supposed to protect life!’

‘Yes, I know. But, if someone wants to take my life, then I will take his!’ he said, laughing. Banditry was apparently rife around these parts, and Dr Pushkar was a target when driving around in his Jeep with his family.

Right about the time we had planned to leave, Bec became ill with what Dr Pushkar called ‘heat diarrhoea’.

‘Ah, you should have come to me sooner,’ Dr Pushkar scolded me. I suddenly felt the weight of being a man in this country; by their standards, it seemed, I was responsible for Bec in every way. ‘And you should have boiled the water then put in the electrolyte.’

‘But it’s bottled.’

‘Still. Maybe problems. Some bad people are changing the water.’

All night, Bec was filled with antibiotics and electrolytes through an IV drip. We huddled under the overhead fan, trying to find relief in the moving hot air until it sadly stopped moving when the power cut out.

The next day I too got diarrhoea and because of this we took the ‘slow train’ (was there any other kind in India?) to Lucknow, the next town, just over 130 kilometres away. Halfway there, rattling in the heat with our bikes, a thought struck me.

‘Bec, have you seen my money belt?’

Four hours later, I was back on the train to Rudauli. I was sure I had left my money belt under the mattress of the bed in the government bungalow.

I sat panicking, wondering if all my money, my passport, my credit cards, everything, was gone. Three-and–a-half hours and 120 kilometres later, I was back at Rudauli. I leapt off the train and ran, making a beeline for the bungalow.

I motioned to the caretakers to get the key. When they cracked open the padlock, I burst in and made straight for the bed. I looked under the mattress. Nothing.

‘Aagghhh!’

‘Sir.’ I heard a child’s voice and turned around; Dr Pushkar’s son was standing in the doorway. ‘Your money belt. My father has it.’

I yelped with joy, hugged the little guy and repeated over and over, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you!’

‘I’m sorry. I could not run fast enough to catch you from the train.’

‘Ah, you are having much happiness to you,’ said Dr Pushkar, smiling a broad grin as he sat cross-legged on a table. He was wearing a singlet and shorts and was shaving by a mirror. ‘We are very good friends, isn’t it? I get a call from your wife about your money belt and I run to the guesthouse with no shoes because I am worried that a thief might take it.’

He slapped me gently on the knee.

‘We were surely brothers in our past lives. God has blessed us. Sit. Have some tea and food.’

Tears welled up in my eyes ’til I could no longer see India at all.

16

LUCKNOW – RISHIKESH

Early June

If India had been giving us the shits, it was Harold Weinerman that was going to give us the colonoscopy.

‘I am known as the man that makes the cocks grow!’ the old American hippy said proudly, his lined face tightening like a tree knot. What was left of his hair stuck out from the side of his head like question marks.

‘Grow?’ I asked.

‘“Crow!” Each rooster was in a cage, and, as I passed, they crowed. I have this magic that moves through my heart chakra,’ he pointed to his spleen, ‘and through the petals of my cranium. I hear birds sing,’ he grabbed his lower abdomen and his eyes bulged, ‘here!’

Bec had met Harold at a bank in Lucknow. He had kindly invited us to stay at his house, and, going by what he told me of his Afro–Cuban jazz collection and his 30 years chasing the hippy trail in India, I was looking forward to hearing his stories. And, because he was a hippy, I thought he would have kaftans full of dope; not that I’m a prodigious smoker of the precious weed but I was beginning to wonder why so many Westerners smoked the stuff here and I came to the conclusion that it was to anaesthetise themselves from every reality that India had to offer.

Alas, Harold, to my horror, did not have any. ‘Aspirin? Do you at least have fucking aspirin, Harold?!’ What he did have a lot of was conversation, and that was neither pleasurable nor, thankfully, addictive.

Harold could talk for hours without a break and had ideas so disconnected it was like trying to listen to a scratched CD that had been frisbeed through a bead rack.

The only good thing about our experience with Harold was that he had taken us to the Hanuman temple where we spent three hours with other worshippers chanting ourselves into a delirious trance.

‘Sai Baba abused his magical powers!’ Harold went on, chasing another incoming tangent. ‘You know, they say the reason he looks so young is because he jerks off little boys and drinks their sperm. Anyway, he used it against me.’

‘What? The sperm?’

‘No! His magic!’ He rose up. ‘I’d arrive in towns and people would just act weird towards me.’

‘Oh, really?’ I said, edging away from him.

‘Yeah! He was jealous that I was more enlightened than he was, that I could tune people, take them 20 miles above the earth with my magical powers—’

‘Harold,’ I cut in, ‘how many times have you dropped acid?’

‘What? Er. Oh…’ He looked to the ceiling, eyes swirling about in his skull. ‘About 500. At least.’

‘Couldn’t you suppose, and, hey, this could just be a long shot, but couldn’t your self-possessed powers and enlightened “beingness” be, say, the effects of all the drugs? Hmmmm?’

He became flustered. ‘Well, one might think that. Sure. Just be quiet and let me explain.’ He then began a longwinded rant about being able to hear bells in his liver and then of all things, his ex-wife ‘losing’ her orgasms like loose change that had fallen down the seat of a taxi.

We leapt up in the middle of it and said that we suddenly had to take a bus to Rishikesh.

‘Why?’

‘I feel Mother India calling us from the Ganges, Harold, a… a spiritual awakening that has struck us since talking to you. Your enlightening wisdom has shown us the way.’

‘Really? Well. You know, I was trying to tune you—’

‘No, don’t get up, Harold. Thank you, thank you for everything!’

We rode away from his house as fast as we could and jumped on the overnight bus to Rishikesh. But that turned out to be trading one form of madness for another.

India is hell, I tell you. Hell!

Both fighting diarrhoea, speeding off our heads on too much Imodium, heads banging on the steel seat rungs in front of us as we tried to sleep, while the bus overtook into the pathway of countless trucks, we also had to fight the conductor of the bus who wanted to charge us the same price as the tickets for our bikes (420 rupees). The most I had ever paid was 30 rupees for my bike and this really felt like we were being shaken down because we were white.

I yelled at them. Bec urged me to calm down. ‘I’m not paying full price for bikes that I put on the roof myself!’ I asserted. ‘Screw them, the thieving bastards!’

But this purgatory didn’t end when we got off the bus in Haridwar, some ten kilometres short of Rishikesh.

As I got the second bike off the roof, I felt myself being lifted then pushed up against the side of the bus. It was the conductor and the driver who, after making puja (prayers) by the peaceful River Ganges, were both now incarnated with Kali – Goddess of Destruction.

‘He says you must give him 420 rupees for the bicycles,’ said a smiling moustached old man who I recognised as one of the passengers. Indians, it occurred to me, always smiled when bad shit was going down.

‘We’re not paying 420 rupees. This is robbery.’

‘Yes,’ the old man agreed, smiling again, goddammit. ‘Robbery. But if you don’t… they are going to beat you!’

‘Ah! Well, why didn’t they say this before!’ I started searching for my wallet. It must be said, I’ve got a bark but I’ve got absolutely no bite.

Bec was ever so supportive.

‘Don’t pay them,’ she ordered, and then disappeared.

They moved closer. I smiled.

‘I’m a guest in your country. It is your duty to be good to us,’ I cheesed, half winding them up and half sucking up. ‘Right, guys?’

The driver punched the bus panel near my head and made cutting noises towards the bikes, which I had unwittingly left at the rear of the bus. He climbed up onto the driver’s seat and started the engine. The conductor pulled at my shirt and screamed incomprehensibly.

‘Peace! Calm down,’ I said, putting my hands up. ‘Shanti, shanti. (Peace, peace.)’

‘Don’t talk to them, Russ!’ Bec shouted as she reappeared. ‘Don’t pay them!’

‘Don’t worry. I won’t. Absolutely not.’

Two minutes later…

‘Why did you give them the money?’ Bec’s voice was sharp, accusing.

‘They were going to fuck up the bikes.’

‘They wouldn’t have fucked them up.’

‘Oh, you’re so sure, aren’t you!’

‘And you were sure you weren’t going to pay them.’

‘Bec,’ I raised my voice. ‘I was too tired, too sick to fight them, okay? And really, is it worth getting our bikes mashed for twenty bucks?’

‘You could have just said no.’

‘Let’s not argue about this now. We’re both tired.’ But stupidly, I continued. ‘You so fucking know, you’re so cocksure.’

‘They just wouldn’t have.’

‘What do YOU KNOW?!’ I erupted. ‘You weren’t there with two guys threatening to beat your head in, trying to get money out of you.’

‘Russ,’ she said calmly. ‘Why don’t you ride up ahead?’

‘YOU GO AHEAD! PACK YOUR BIKE AND LET’S GO!’

Bec stared back at this rabid-dog man, this mad beast, and put her hands up, facing me with firm resolve. ‘I don’t want to be around you right now.’

Then all that heaviness that had been getting heavier every day since I met Bec in Kathmandu came tumbling out: ‘AND I WISH YOU’D NEVER COME WITH ME!’

17

RISHIKESH

June

‘Get ready for eyeballs’, said our Sikh Yogi master, his eyes first wide and centred, then darting from left to right, down and up. He wore shorts and a singlet and had removed his turban to reveal a small bundle of hair under what looked to be a jam preservatives cloth.

Twenty or so other Westerners were sweating it out under fans that wobbled menacingly from cords high up on the ceiling. A small bat darted around the temple before skitting off into the night.

We were staying at the Ved Niketan Ashram in Rishikesh, at the foothills of the Himalayas. The ashram was founded by a 96-year-old Swami who, if you believe the literature in the reception area, ‘can be still seen to this day labouring with workers building the new ghats (stairs to a river)’, though all I had seen him do so far was sit in a small chair in the office and stare at the wall.

The ashram wasn’t exactly a welcoming place. It was high-walled and wired, and various statues of deities were locked in steel doghouses to keep the prying hands of rhesus monkeys from making off with the fruity offerings.

In fact, the only difference I could see between the ashram and Stalag 13 was the fresh coat of gaudy yellow paint adorning the high wire fences; I could almost hear the Hogan’s Heroes brass number playing as we walked up the stone path. And, if this wasn’t enough to let us know that we were entering some form of imprisonment, signs around the place were hardly shy about the fact:

INMATES WILL RETURN TO THE ASHRAM NO LATER THAN 10 P.M.

NO PLAYING OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS, SINGING, TALKING AFTER 4 P.M.

NO NAKED BATHING NEAR THE ASHRAM.

NO PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION OR REVEALING DRESS ALLOWED.

NO TAKING OF DRUGS OR ALCOHOL PERMITTED.

PEOPLE FOUND SMILING WILL BE SHOT. DONATIONS WELCOME.

Well, not really the last one, but it felt like it.

It was here in Rishikesh, in this town of hippies, sadhus, spiritual healers, yoga retreats, meditation ashrams, and once-Beatles hang out, that I thought Bec and I could at last find the peace that had been eluding us in India.

But after our horrid bus fight, and despite my profuse apologies, peace was the last thing on Bec’s mind and she shut me out for days, not saying a word. Thus, like the broken spokes on Bec’s rear wheel that always seemed to snap when we argued, we were breaking apart, the tension between us too much and our relationship buckled.

Then one evening, she surprised me with this revelation: ‘You care more about writing this book than me.’

‘What?’ I did a double-take. ‘Are you jealous?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

I wouldn’t be surprised if she was. I gave my journal an inordinate amount of time: I had long conversations with it in restaurants while Bec stared out of the window with boredom; I fed it anecdotes while Bec waited impatiently up ahead; in the middle of the night, Bec would catch me poring over it, pages indecently asunder. It was like I was having an affair right in front of her with this… this A4 mistress.

‘Anyway, I’m toying with the idea of only going with you as far as the Pakistani border,’ she said finally.

‘I see.’ I thought for a moment. ‘In light of things, that may not be a bad idea.’

She began to cry and I hugged her, feeling her tears on my face. I softened.

‘It’s just that not once have you said, “Bec, don’t leave me, I love you”.’

She had a point. We had only been cycling together for six weeks and I was already growing restless; more restless with each passing day, taking walks by myself, trying desperately to find my own space. To be alone.

‘Let’s work it out, Bec. Okay? Come on,’ I said soothingly.

We made up and, later, headed for a restaurant.

Even at dusk it was still humid in Rishikesh. Sadhus sat by the walls of ashrams, walking sticks propped by them like rifles, eating alms out of tin pots. A middle-aged sadhu with brilliant chocolate-coloured skin shiny with sweat passed us while combing his hair, handsome in the dying light.

There are around five million sadhus in India, mostly men and made up of different sects. Their aim is to achieve enlightenment by focusing on the ‘higher reality’, and so they renounce worldly pleasures, cut ties with family and possessions, wear little or no clothing, and abstain from sex. (Some sadhus go to great lengths to achieve this last requirement by wearing steel chastity belts or a chain around the scrotum and penis.)

A sign at our ashram warned against mingling with sadhus, claiming that a tourist had been murdered by one. I doubted this and saw the ‘warning’ as just another one of the ashram’s attempts to control their ‘inmates’ and steer them clear of indulging in hashish (which the sadhus openly smoked). I was told that this practice was part of their religion: Shiva, the god of creation and destruction, apparently smoked hashish, and he was reverently referred to as the ‘Lord of Hash’.

We had dinner on a rooftop café and watched candles float down the Ganges River, their orange lights disappearing in the distance while women, some bare-breasted, bathed at the ghats (steps at the edges of the river).

‘We’ll be all right, Bec,’ I said, squeezing her hand. ‘We’ll make it work.’

* * *

The ride out of Rishikesh was beautiful but hard, and we were thankful to be up on the undulating highlands, allowing us to avoid long, all-day climbs. Like the temperature, our tempers dropped. We weren’t being stared at by hordes of men anymore, and this made a huge difference to our peace of mind.

The monsoonal clouds undressed the Himalayas; revealing green-forested breasts and terraced bottoms. In case we got too excited at such metaphors, a traffic sign warned us to contain ourselves:

Laughing, we enjoyed a giddying descent but then faced another slow, arduous climb. As I pedalled I watched a pregnant woman softly whip the rump of a water buffalo.

‘Le, le, le, le!’ she urged it, but it ignored her and clomped lazily up the road, sometimes stopping to eat the long grass.

Over the coming days we battled the numerous hills to Chambra and then, to our relief, coasted over quiet potholed roads through sal forests and green-terraced fields to the hill station of Mussorie. It was here we caught glimpses of the Himalayan snow ranges to the northeast, down the valley to Dehra Dunn and, somewhere beyond it, Haridwar where I’d been shaken down by the conductor and bus driver.

Eventually, we rattled into Solan – a busy, noisy town pouring over the slopes like a giant cowpat. A festival was in full swing and thus crammed with tourists, cars, motorbikes, donkeys and trucks. Every hotel was full and expensive at 500–700 rupees ($US20). To add to our woes, ominous clouds curdled above us like a bruised face. A flicker of lightning, then the inevitable thump and growl of thunder echoed through the valley.

‘Better make it to that village,’ I urged Bec, pointing to a cluster of shacks at the bottom of a small valley. ‘Sounds like God is moving furniture again.’

The rain came hard and fast, soaking us so quickly we hardly had a chance to put on our raincoats. Thick ochre coloured runnels washed mud and rocks on to the road and I became wary of landslides, common as they are at this time of year.

The water from the road had turned the village into a brown lake. We pedalled through it, legs frothing the water like egg beaters, panniers dragging in our wake, the brown water coming right over our axles. I felt like a boy again and enjoyed seeing the bike create giant waves.

Villagers sat up on plastic white tables in the flooded dhaba cheerily sipping chai, feet dangling in the water. We found an ‘island’ and ordered a chai. The chai wallah, up to his groin in water, fired up a pot of milk, unperturbed by his new aqua surroundings.

‘Oh!’ Bec groaned. Like the clouds above, Bec was dark and threatening. She wasn’t enjoying this wet business one bit. ‘It’s hard today.’

‘I know.’

‘It’s hard every day!’

‘I know.’

‘Stop saying, “I know!”’

‘Yes, dear.’

‘Don’t you “Yes, dear” me, you patronising bastard!’

‘Sorry.’ I put on an Irish accent, trying to charm her. ‘Why don’t we find a hotel and have a nice hot shour for an hour.’

‘A what?’

‘Shour… shower!’

‘Oh.’

‘Or a place to camp.’

‘Oh, great!’ she moaned, her feet splashing back into the water. ‘Camping! Well, that’s just going to be a load of fun, isn’t it?’

Bec’s mood was to be expected whatever the weather. Afternoons were her worst whereas mornings were mine. We often played opposites, one comforting the other. Or rejecting the other.

Chai-ed up and slightly recovered, we peddle-paddled out of the flooded village and climbed into the hills, as the rain pelted us. Halfway up the climb, a spoke on Bec’s rear wheel broke.

‘Ah!’ she screamed. ‘You know why it didn’t work, Russell?’

I was going to say because we were arguing again. (I’d replaced nearly half of the spokes so that gives you an idea of how many arguments we’d had). Instead I said, ‘Yes, yes,’ knowing what she was going to say, ‘“Because it’s made in India”’.

It sounds harsh, but this maxim had proved to be true. Though I admired the willingness of Indians to fix anything, the issue was the bike wouldn’t stay fixed for long. Indian spokes broke frequently, tube valves shot out, tyre beads ripped under pressure and puncture patches popped (I ceased using the I.R.A for this reason).

Light falling, I looked for a flat piece of ground in the valley below, hoping to find a place to pitch our tent. But the mountains were steep, forcing trees to cling desperately to their slopes. Around a bend, I spotted the last hotel I could see in the valley. I cycled up the drive past new Toyotas and Hondas. A Sikh family was having tea at a large table. I asked the manager if we could stay the night.

‘Sorry, sir. Full.’

A grey-haired woman got up from the table of Sikhs and trundled over to me. Her name was Arti, and her warmth reminded me so much of my Nan that I wanted to cry into her soft, wrinkly hands.

‘Any luck?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘Where have you come from?’

‘Solan. Before that, Nahan.’

‘Oh, my! That is so far. You must be very tired. Would you like some tea?’

‘That is heaven to my ears.’

I explained to Arti that we had a tent and asked if she thought the hotel staff would mind if we set it up behind one of the rooms.

‘Oh, let me see what I can do. We have done them a big favour today. They cannot refuse us!’ She bustled off to see the manager and made grand remonstrations with her hands at him until the two of them smiled and laughed at each other.

‘There. It is done,’ she said as if casting a spell. ‘You can pitch your tent.’

Arti turned to a tall, plump man who was hovering around our bikes. ‘This is my nephew, Vinnie, who has just come back from Melbourne.’

He stuffed his chunky hand into mine.

‘I have many friends there,’ he said. He got out his black notebook and began listing names while looking for shimmers of recognition on our faces ‘Scott… Burwood? Jeremy… Bayswater?’

He put the book away when I gave a blank look and rocked back on his feet while he watched us set up our tent. He then followed us into the hotel restaurant.

‘All the hills,’ he said, pointing outside as clouds mushroomed in the twilight, ‘were bare until the British came and planted trees. There were only grasses here before and there was much silting of the rivers. This hotel was a hill station like many you see around here. They were built for the British troops, as the generals found that after two years their troops would die. They would be stationed in Calcutta in their woollen uniforms in the heat and this would eventually kill them off. This hotel was a barracks to keep the troops in good health.’ He pouted, happy with his facts. ‘Actually, things were better under the British. Here is so corrupt. The minister for Bihar has been accused of rape 52 times, yet they do noth—’

‘Are you talking nonsense again, Vinnie?’ It was Arti. She put her hand on his shoulder and eyed me. ‘He is out of step, stupid boy. We love him… well, most of us!’ she laughed.

Vinnie’s face twisted. He adjusted a large bangle around his wrist, known as a kara.

‘You are Sikh,’ I asked, ‘but you don’t wear a turban?’

‘That is because Arti cut off all my hair!’

Arti smiled. ‘Yes, we are all Sikhs but we do not bother with this turban business.’

‘Does that cause problems with other Sikhs?’

‘I don’t care if it does. We are who we are,’ she disappeared to get herself more tea. Ah, another class unto themselves, a bubble floating above the heads of the masses.

Rebecca, pale with tiredness, yawned.

‘I’ll let you rest,’ Vinnie got up. ‘Tomorrow, I could give you a lift in my pick-up truck to Shimla if you like.’

Later that night in the one-man tent, we lay together with hardly an inch to turn. It was hard enough when I had last tried it on my own in the desert of Rajasthan crammed with pannier bags around my ears. Now, we could barely move. Bec was hot, her body burning up with exhaustion. It began to rain lightly.

‘Ah, how nice,’ I whispered to Bec and we cuddled closer. Soon those light drops became heavy balls of water bouncing on the tent. This prompted me to recall bumping into a couple on the Annapurna Circuit who erupted with the oddest of coincidences.

‘I know the guy that sold you that tent and feels bad about it.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, there was a recall on it. Apparently it fails.’

‘Fails? Like how? Does it burst into flames? What?’

‘Dunno.’ They went back to stuffing their faces with apple pie.

I soon felt the ‘fail’.

‘There’s water leaking in here!’ Bec said it as if it were my fault. ‘All down the side.’

I splashed my toes in a growing puddle. The tent channelled water along the seams regardless of how I adjusted the guy ropes.

It rained. All night. And we were wet. All night. All night long. We didn’t sleep a wink. When we crawled into the dawn, a puffy face beamed down into our soggy tent. ‘So, how about that lift to Shimla?’

We all squashed inside the ute, bikes and bags loaded in the back, Vinnie excusing himself as he searched between my legs for the gearstick.

‘Hey, that’s not the gear stick!’ I joked. Vinnie laughed. Bec rolled her eyes.

After the 20 kilometre windy drive up to Shimla, Vinnie arranged a room for us at the YMCA, a rambling old hotel overlooking the Himalayan valleys of Himachal Pradesh. Our room was large, and we draped our wet things everywhere we could: over the mantelpiece, the window skirting, light fittings; we spread the wet tent under the bed. The room soon stank like a wet dog.

In the afternoon, Vinnie took us on a tour of Shimla (named after the god Shamla Devi). Set amongst pine and oak trees and located at over 2000 metres, it was by far the most British looking of cities I’d seen in India. Tudor-styled buildings, like the Shimla Town Hall, were common while The Gaiety Theatre (which still held plays) was more of a Gothic design. Not surprisingly, Shimla had once been the capital of India, or, rather, the summer capital for the British Raj since 1864.

Every year trainloads of civil servants, soldiers and government officials would transfer their families and offices to the cooler, greener hills from the unbearable swelter of Calcutta. Now, bungalows and mansions for India’s nouveau riche dotted the valley as well as numerous cafés, restaurants, cinemas and shops.

On the Mall, we passed a sign at an intersection which read ‘Scandal Corner’.

‘Why is it called Scandal Corner?’

‘Because people come here to gossip.’

‘About what?’

‘Anything and everything. That is why it is called “gossip”!’

Actually, it had more to do with the fact that Shimla had once had a reputation for adultery. Many unattached soldiers (and women) during the British Raj would come to Shimla to escape the heat – and instead found torrid affairs. Thus Scandal Corner was a catch up point (though I found it odd that the council had wanted to advertise the fact).

I noticed a family of rhesus monkeys on a nearby stone wall, grooming each other for fleas.

‘Don’t look at the monkeys!’ Vinnie warned. ‘They’ll attack you. They’re pests. They should have them taken away for animal experiments.’

‘What!’ Bec lit up. ‘You seriously want these monkeys harmed?’

‘They are a nuisance. They steal things, tear your clothes, spread rabies.’

‘Oh!’ Bec huffed and stormed off ahead of us.

‘I don’t get it,’ I said. ‘Hanuman is your monkey god.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you revere Hanuman.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you say that most Indians hate monkeys.’

‘Yes.’

‘So why do you revere a monkey as a god if you hate monkeys?’

‘Hmm,’ he thought for a moment. ‘I don’t get it either!’

At the Indian Coffee House, we sat among a crowded table of men wearing tweed jackets, smoking pipes and sipping coffee. Waiters flittered through the haze of smoke and thick laughter in their white uniforms and crimped crested caps. It didn’t look like much had changed since India’s independence. The posters were from the 1940s and most of the decor was from the same period. I liked the smell of the place – a lazy, relaxed smell harbouring dust and memories.

‘Things were much better when the British were here,’ Vinnie bemoaned again, then, looking around, I presumed for Arti, continued. ‘Things ran better. They had respect. They knew how to run the country. Not like Indians.’

‘But wouldn’t you prefer your own people ruling rather than a foreign power exploiting the country?’ I asked.

‘No! Most Indians would agree with me. The government is so corrupt. Nothing is maintained. Look at this place. It used to be a cantonment for the British Army. It is falling to pieces. People are selfish. They think only of themselves. Just look at the litter.’

Vinnie’s distaste for Indian rule was surprising to me. But it wasn’t just him. Even the YMCA manager chimed in, telling us, ‘the reason there is no hot water is that the Indians leave the hot water tap open!’

But it was spiritual leaders for whom Vinnie reserved a special distaste.

‘Gandhi was a Gujarati. He didn’t care what happened to us here in Himachal Pradesh. He was a spineless jellyfish. He concocted with Nehru to do away with the Muslims. We hate him in these parts.’

‘Oh. Then, what’s that doing here?’ I said, pointing to a picture of a benevolent Ghandi proudly hanging behind him.

Vinnie grimaced. ‘It is a relic.’

18

SHIMLA – KINNAUR REGION

June to July

‘Hi! Where’re you going? Where’re you going?’

A thin woman, late 30s, wearing a yellow bandana, sunglasses and long shorts, slid her mountain bike to a halt in front of us.

We were in the Kinnaur region (which had only recently been opened up to tourists), where the western Himalayas connect India to Chinese-occupied Tibet. Already we had travelled for five days, hoping to get to Tobo, where there was supposed to be the best-preserved Indo–Tibetan art in the world, then to Manali. This was according to two excitable Australians we had met in Shimla. What they had failed to tell us about was the veritable building site we would have to cycle through to get there.

The Indian government and the World Bank had been building a hydroelectric dam for the past seven years, leaving a trail of gravel trucks, narrow dusty roads and cement factories. Colonies of French, Italian, British and German were perched and walled off next to shanty towns and decrepit villages. And now, with monsoonal rains turning the rocky banks to waterfalls of mud and eventually landslides, the chances of completing our circuit seemed slim. And dangerous. During the previous year, seven bridges had been swept away, and the year before that an entire town, Wangtu, had been destroyed. The Indians blamed the Chinese for the catastrophe, citing an extra release of dam water, somewhere up there, in those bare hills above us.

‘Have you come from Sangla? It’s a hike up there, isn’t it?’ Her English Midlands accent was thick and elastic in my ears. She looked at my bike.

‘Christ! You’re carrying a lot of gear. What’ve you got in there?’

‘Er…’

‘You should ride like me,’ she said and swung her head back in the direction of the two plump panniers on her bike. ‘I’ve been all through India with just this. That’s all you need. A pair of flip-flops, a shirt, a sleeping bag and a hammock. That’s it. Not all of THAT! Got any water?’

‘Let me see,’ said Bec and fumbled for her water bottle.

‘I’m so dehydrated! ’Ere. Know anything about bikes?’

‘Well, I’ll have a shot—’

‘Can you fix my front wheel? I had a bingle on the way down from Gangotri. An old guy with a mallet mashed it back into shape but I got a problem with one spoke. The thread’s hanging out.’

I began tightening the troublesome spoke.

‘I don’t bother carrying any tools myself. I let the Indians do it. They’re amazing with bikes. They can fix anything. Although…’ and then she went into great detail about how a number of bicycle mechanics had stripped the threads on her new pedal cranks, mashed a derailleur with an oversized chain link, and sold her tyres that exploded on braking.

‘When something breaks, I just get parts sent over. You don’t need all the latest crap, stuff you just don’t NEED.’ She threw another look at my bike.

‘Oh, I hate bicycle snobs, don’t you? This Irish knob says I’ve got to have Shimano XL speed whatsit, or a multi-tool that can flick heads off beers, or German tyres with the snake-belly double-ridge something-or-other—’ Her head snapped down at my wheels. ‘Ooh! Those tyres won’t stand up to this road!’

‘They’ve done me fine, thank you,’ I said.

‘Nooo! They’re not thick enough,’ she pulled a grimace then plucked her ear. ‘No traction, luv. Walls too thin. Should have ones like mine!’

Two Indian men came up and stared; one carried a plastic bag containing two Coke bottles. She turned around to them and poked the bag.

‘Shouldn’t drink that stuff, mate. Too much sugar. Bad for the teeth.’ She opened her gob and tapped her gnarly nicotine-stained pegs. She turned back to us.

‘So. Fancy a cup of tea?’

Our wily friend introduced herself as Toni. She had been coming to India since 1996, living in Goa for most of it and spending time cycling around the south.

‘This is a waste of time up here. Karnataka! Karnataka! That’s where it’s all at, man,’ she said, slurping her chai while we huddled out of the cold in a tin shed posing as a chai shop.

She talked us out of going any further.

‘The road’s ’orrible, the people are worse, and I stayed in the only guesthouse in Puh, aptly named, I think, because it’s a shitehole, with big rats running over my feet and a fucking Indian who stared at me all night. Besides, the road’s gone. Well, I mean the bridge. You have to go up and up and up this switchback road that’s gravelly and potholed.’

She poked her ear again and scraped out a small ball of wax.

‘Anyway. Who wants to see indifferent Buddhist monks floating around a monastery? I don’t get on with Buddhists. Hindus are my thing, man, not this austere silence shite. People go on about “Oh, Tibetans wanting to free Tibet”, but they don’t want to go back. It’s an inhospitable place. I got as far as Nako, right near the border. They were a right bunch of wankers, rude as all fuck, like those Israelis!’

She rubbed her face.

‘I keep putting sun block on but keep getting burnt on my nose. Why aren’t you burnt?’

‘‘Cause we’ve got helmets with a visor.’

‘Ooh, you don’t need that!’

Toni soon left us, waggling her unbearable lightness of being up the hill. Convinced that it was just as horrible as Toni had told us we went in search of a truck to hitch back to Shimla.

Over a rattling suspension bridge, past a weigh-station of diesel trucks and buses we cycled, through the dust and rock while the Sutlej River threatened to burst its fragile banks.

Ahead of us, a man on an old bike, carrying nothing more than a cheap green knapsack over his shoulders, stopped.

‘You’re the first cyclists I’ve seen since leaving Delhi,’ he faltered in a Gregory Peck drawl. Toby was from Michigan, his hair was grey and he wore thick glasses. He must have been at least in his late 50s.

‘Hey, you’re carryin’ a lot of stuff there, now ain’t ya?’

And then I realised that I was in the midst of what touring cyclists do to one another when they first meet: they behave like dogs. ‘Hmm! What’s that you’ve got there? Sniff, sniff, sniff. What are you carrying? Which tyres do you have? Which gears? Sniff, sniff, sniff.’

He rocked his bike to the side, an old thing with large shock absorbers that looked like they had been stolen from a Polish tractor.

‘I got this lock. It’s not much,’ he said, pointing to a piece of wire with a padlock, ‘but at least it’s light. I guess if they want to take it, they’d have to cut it’.

And they could – with a toenail clipper.

‘I made this bag myself.’ It looked like it. Thread hung out everywhere.

‘Have you lost your shoelaces?’ I asked. He was wearing black office shoes with no trace of lace.

‘Oh, they seem to fit me okay without ’em. Keeps the weight down.’ He pointed to the rear wheel. ‘I took the front derailleur off. Also to cut down on weight.’

‘How do you change gears?’

‘Well, I gotta stop and pull the chain over the larger cog.’

I wondered what Toni would make of him. ‘You don’t need that bag. That’s waaaay too much. You don’t even need that… that wheel. Just the ’andlebars and imagination, mate. That’s all!’

Toby rattled off his travel stories, telling us what the road was like even though we told him three times that we had already come from there. Then, with a small puff, he was on his way, his creaking bike carrying him up an arduous, lonely road.

I would later hear from other cyclists that Toby would make it to where we had failed, touring onwards around the dry, inhospitable Spiti Desert, the potholed roads, the landslides, on to Manali, up to Leh and then over the highest highway in the world, the Khardung La (5578 metres). All in the space of three weeks and covering more than 2000 kilometres!

‘The next cyclist we meet will be riding a unicycle,’ I said to Bec, speaking of the laws of diminishing odds.

‘And wearing only a G-string made out of dental floss,’ she smirked.

* * *

Back in Shimla restlessness returned, uninvited as always.

For some reason, we got along better when we were moving and we didn’t have to deal with each other. Bec and I fought, as we had done more and more over the past month. Largely, I blame myself for our ructions. I wanted to travel on my own. But I was stuck with the worry of what would happen to Bec, alone with her bike in India surrounded by men. I felt responsible and I resented it. I became moody, horrible and difficult to be around. A right bastard.

‘I want to do my own trip,’ Bec finally said, but when I agreed that she should, tears fell from her eyes. Unlike the promises I made in Melbourne about making love in balmy monsoonal heat while it rained outside, instead, we sat on opposite ends of the bed, gripped in our private storms.

Bec looked out from our hotel room window over the bruised sky of the Kullu Valley.

‘I just don’t know where to go.’

19

MANALI – LEH

July

The mist wet our eyelashes and made us look like clowns. We had climbed the 30 kilometre road through the vast, changing landscape of lush green hills towards the barren terrain of the Rohtang Pass (3978 metres).

Despite leaving half our luggage in Manali it was still a tough ride. The road was muddy, narrow and slippery. Sporadic streams of four-wheel drives, tourist buses and trucks passed us, leaving us to cling on to what space was left of the road.

I was in a foul mood. To my wounded pride,[xx] Rebecca was way ahead of me, effortlessly going up and up and up like a motorbike, disappearing in and out of the clouds. She waited for me by a stream, not showing any fatigue whatsoever.

‘Oh, this is sooooo beautiful, Russ! It’s so great to be able to sit here and take in the view.’

‘Yeah, right!’

‘How much further?

‘Another five ks.’

‘Oh!’ she said brightly, ‘is that all?’

And off she went, helium it seemed, in her tyres. I grunted and followed after her, up another switchback, past a stream until we finally reached the settlement of Marhi – a weary collection of tented blue tarp restaurants bubbling big pots of dahl, chick peas and rice.

We were heading up to the town of Leh in the Kingdom of Ladakh, the north-eastern region of Jammu-Kashmir, a distance of 473 kilometres from Manali.

Set in a high-altitude desert between the Karakoram and Himalayan ranges, Leh is only accessible during the warmer months of the year; the pass was, well, impassable in heavy snow. The highway to the town was one of the highest in the world (5328 metres) and offered spectacular scenery: from the lush green hills out of Manali to the jagged, snow-capped mountain ranges as the road headed through a lunar landscape, a vast plateau towards Tibet. It was here that a variety of Tibetan sub-groups had lived in virtual isolation from Chinese and Indian influence.

However, enticing as all of this was, it was dangerous. Only a week ago, an Austrian cyclist had died on a 2500 metre pass. There were also frequent rockslides.

Bec and I were still together… for now. We would continue as a couple until we went in our different directions: Bec, low on funds, would go to Taiwan to teach English, while I would start a Vipassana Meditation course at a retreat near Dharamasala.

Our biggest obstacle of this trip was that we didn’t have a tent, as I’d ditched the other one after The Night of the Slow Drips. The other issue was that distances between towns were at least 70 kilometres and, with an average of 5 kilometres an hour uphill, it was more than likely to take us most of the day just to squeeze 30 ks out. Then, of course, there was the issue of scarcity of water. To address these issues we bought a big tarp to put over the bikes to act as a tent and bought extra bottles, filling up in towns as much as we could.

Now in Marhi we ordered up big – veggie soup, dahl, fried rice, gobi mutter and coffee. The dahl was hearty, warm and just the thing we needed after a cold ride as we contemplated a wet cold night under our tarp. An Israeli with hair like spider legs and quite cheekily cooking up his own meal in the restaurant with his friends, told us of a bunked room – the waiters’ quarters – that was available.

We took it despite the state it was in – chopped brown cabbage in the corner, cigarette butts on the floor, assorted clothes and blankets strewn on beds. We hitched up on the top bunk together, Bec spreading her sarong over a wire cord across our bunk for privacy. Later, that night, needing a pee, I had to step over the waiters as they puffed and snored before eventually climbing out of a window and through muddy puddles in bare feet. As I relieved myself, I watched the fog settle over the black rocks and around the camp. It was eerily quiet and yet somehow wonderfully magical.

In the morning, an overly exuberant Frenchman jumped around us taking photographs of our bikes, his camouflage pants whooshing around us like falling trees.

‘Wow! Zis is amazing! You really cycling up here? Man!’

He was part of a French documentary team on a quest to find the burial site of Jesus Christ.

‘Er… aren’t you a little off… target?’

‘No, he died here in India. In Kashmir.’ Jesus, he believed, had come to India and learnt yogic breathing from a master that helped him survive his crucifixion.

‘There was no resurrection. He was always alive. We will find his grave!’

He jumped into the back of the Jeep and was gone.

We started slowly in the falling rain, and fortunately, by the time we get to the Rohtang Pass, the rain had cleared. In Tibetan it is called the Rohtang La and its literal meaning is ‘pile of corpses’ due to the high number of people who have perished trying to cross in it in bad weather.

Today it was living up to its reputation: a cold and bitter wind shrieked up the valley bringing flakes of snow like dandruff and adding to our altitude headaches. This didn’t seem to put off day-trippers who were wrapped in rented yak skins like strange black wraiths while their photos were taken by relatives. Behind them tourist buses tore through the mud as they returned to Manali.

We zoomed down a 15km descent to Khoksar and spent the night with the smell of unwashed potatoes that were piled to the ceiling in the next room.

* * *

Before us, a clear blue sky stretched across from the snow-capped mountains down to a tumbling, rugged lunaresque landscape. It was a glorious day and we were literally jumping out of seats with the sheer joy of being in it.

To celebrate, Bec had a novel suggestion.

‘Get your gear off!’

I threw the bike off the road and behind the rocks, I stripped off. Bec stood ready with the camera and took pictures as I posed à la Priscilla Queen of the Desert, my sarong billowing behind me.

‘Now me!’ In a second Bec was also naked, her smooth white curves an erotic contrast to the sharp, jutting, rocks behind her. She danced among the waves of shimmering heat, skipping from rock to rock, arms flailing around, singing ‘I’M NAKED! NAA-AKED!’

Putting the camera on self-timer, we posed together and waited for it to go off (the camera, I mean!). Just as the camera clicked, a truckload of Indian road-builders sailed past, then groaned to a halt, then began to reverse. We scampered for our clothes, struggling to get them on quickly – arms through this sleeve and that, shorts on backwards, one shoe on – before jumping on our bikes, skipping and slipping on the pedals.

The truck snorted a dark cloud of disappointment and drove onwards, eventually eaten up by a massive rock as it turned.

With a slight gradient in our favour, our tyres hummed on a straight road to Sarchu, one of the numerous tented cities that existed only during the warmer months. We could not enjoy this any other way but on bicycle, the air and the landscape washing through us, an electric feeling of being alive.

In Sarchu (another collection of battered tents) we met two English lads, Harry and Keith, who had just rolled up on new 500cc Royal Enfield Bullet motorbikes. These were British motorbikes dating back to 1949 and their popularity in India had been signalled by the need to patrol their new neighbour, Pakistan. By 1955 a factory had been set up in Madras and, when the parent company ceased production, India Enfield continued to make them based on the old designs.

Harry had had a collision with a truck, smashing his headlight. While he and Keith went about fixing the damage, an Indian man with a keenness for motorbikes stood behind them, watching their every move.

‘I have an Enfield too,’ he said to Harry before succumbing to what appeared to be either a terrible sinus condition aggravated by the dust or Tourette’s.

‘I rented one years ago from Manali up to the Rohtang Pass – SNORT! SNIFF! GRUNT! WOOF! – it was a wonderful feeling – SNIFF! GRUNT! – I fell in love with it instantly – WOOF!’

‘Uh huh,’ Harry said, attempting to unscrew the headlight casing.

‘I could get it up to 50 miles per hour.’

‘Right.’ The screwdriver slipped out of Harry’s hand.

‘SNIFF! WOOF!’

Helmut, an Austrian cyclist in his 50s, was sharing a tent with the British lads. He was dressed in tights and a cycling shirt, and danced about the campsite like Peter Pan.

‘Ja, I came up from Srinagar to Leh. So many trucks! Army everywhere. I go upstairs 500 metres first day,’ he said, taking out a small notebook. ‘No, 550. My altimeter says I climb 1250 metres,’ he said proudly. He was carrying 35 kilograms on a touring bike (bigger wheels and heavier than a mountain bike) and dozens of water bottles fitted to the frame. ‘Ja! Because I neeeeeeed it!’

The next day, we passed a sign: ‘21 loops’, indicating the number of switchbacks.

‘Oh, dear God!’ Rebecca complained.

‘We’ll take plenty of breaks. Don’t worry.’

The only thing that lightened our mood was another one of those bizarre Indian traffic signs:

I laughed so much I nearly crashed into it!

‘Hey, Bec. I bet TATA truck drivers must be thinking about that as they go hurtling over a cliff: “OH, SHIT! I’M GOING TO GET A TICKET!”’

But nothing, it seemed, could lift her out of her exhaustion.

But it wasn’t the climbing that was the most difficult part. Apart from having to dodge convoys of trucks and falling rocks, it was the heat that exhausted us faster than anything else. It fried everything – even the road.

As I rested my bike against a cutting I noticed it shrinking before my eyes. It was sinking in a pool of tar. I quickly pulled it out. Up ahead, the road sweated; it was literally melting before us. We got back on our bikes and continued cycling, struggling with the soft tar, our tyres sounding as if they were rolling over Velcro, the road clutching at them, fighting for them to stop.

Our wheels were soon layered with pebbles and small rocks that clung happily, waiting for their moment to puncture the tube. The snaking mess continued for several kilometres and we were forced to get off and push the bikes, the tar collecting so thickly on the tyres that it collided with the frame at each revolution. We had to stop frequently and tear off bits of soft tar and gravel before getting on and cycling again.

By the afternoon, the heat continued to intensify, zapping through us and, with no shade, we both began to feel nauseous and light-headed. We gasped and stopped for breath every ten metres while ‘upstairs’ at 4500 metres. What’s more, our water was running out quickly, and our thirst impossible to quench in the dry air.

But then the cavalry arrived. A convoy of 30 camouflaged Isuzu four-wheel drives stopped, each one sporting an Israeli flag and occupied by middle-aged men and women. Hands stretched from the vehicles, bearing gifts – water, food, crispy things, chocolate and even Scotch. We thanked them profusely.

One of the Jeeps stopped and the driver, a young man, jumped out, smiled warmly but then recoiled with horror.

‘What?’ he said in his thick Israeli accent, pointing to the forks of my bike. ‘No shocks? What are you? Stupid!’

‘Yes, I’m absolutely crazy!’

Our Israeli friend cocked a questioning eyebrow at me and jumped back in the Jeep and followed the rest of the yellow snaking convoy, disappearing over a hill.

Later on, thinking that the next blind corner would reveal the pass, we were crushed to find more turns leading to a steady, unclimbable slope. I was hoping that this would unravel the road to a giddying descent into a cool, cool valley. But no. It wasn’t there.

‘Come and sit in the shade,’ Bec said, soothingly. Shade. Ah, there wasn’t much of that dark stuff about. I was feeling sick and said so to Bec. My eyes were punched up, my mouth was dry, and my lips were chafed and sore. I didn’t want to go on. There was another 5 kilometres to go – at least an hour. But we had to keep going.

The bikes clack-clack-clacked as they carried the valley’s stones in the tar stuck to our tyres. A Jeep passed us and veered off up a rough dirt road. We followed up the loose gravel, heaving, slipping, trying to push the bikes up when I stopped, and flopped over the handlebars, crucified.

‘Give me a minute, Bec.’ I was struggling to breathe.

‘Let’s go back down,’ Bec said.

‘No, we’ve committed ourselves. Just give me a minute.’

Halfway up, I saw an old campsite – used tar drums and a flat space surrounded with rocks. Bec suggested that we camp there, but as we tried to construct our new tent – well, a large rainbow tarp strung over our upside down bikes like a lean-to, we both felt dizzy as the high altitude and the sun bit holes in our heads.

‘At this altitude, so near the pass, it’s dangerous to sleep here,’ but Bec had already half-constructed the tent. ‘We will have to go over the pass.’

‘But you don’t know how far it is.’

‘It’s one kilometre.’

‘The map could be wrong.’

I took my pulse; it was going crazy. I felt a stabbing pain in my chest.

‘I DON’T FEEL WELL! I MUST GET DOWN FROM HERE!’

‘All right, all right!’

We packed our bikes and pushed the bikes around the next bend and there it was: THE PASS!

An altitude marker was covered in bedraggled but colourful prayer flags. The flags go by the Tibetan name of Lung Ta (wind horse) and are symbols of spiritual goodwill for those who erect them and for those who pass. (If the flags are hung on the wrong astrological date, however, they apparently have the opposite effect, so I hoped that whoever hung these ones hadn’t got their leap years mixed up.)

Around a turn was the moment we had been waiting for – the descent!

I thought the tar would simply fling off as we gained speed, but instead the wheels whipped the frame with their stone teeth. Our bikes chugged away, rattling themselves into nervous breakdowns until we arrived at the bottom of a small valley. The town of Gata, as it appeared on my map, was in reality one large, drab, dirty tent with rusty tar barrels scattered around it. Filthy road-builders oozed out and clumped over in their tarred-scuffed gumboots towards us.

They weren’t the most welcome sight considering that we had fought their handiwork all afternoon, our tyres now resembling hairy Ferris wheels, not to mention being surrounded and whistled at by another group of workers earlier in the day. The men watched as we struggled with our bikes – throwing them upside down, flipping the tarp over, placing rocks at the ends of the tarp and anchoring the bikes with rope – and did not leave until we went inside our bike tent. Sometime later, a Tibetan man – shiny red cheeks, dark-bronze tan – sat outside our tent clutching a plastic bag.

‘Namaste!’ he said and broke into an elfin grin.

‘Namaste,’ I replied. He sat there grinning, rocking back and forth on his haunches. He muttered something, scraped the ground with his hand and then pointed to the mountains.

‘I don’t understand.’

He grinned again and then in a whisper vanished into the cold night.

When I awoke the next morning, I looked around the tent: shoes were tied to spokes, clothes hung on pedals, and bags were scattered along the base of the tarp. The tent had worked extremely well. Except for one thing.

‘I’m wet,’ said a basket of gnarled blondeness.

‘Darling!’

‘No! Everything is wet,’ she snapped. Condensation had trickled all over Bec and her sleeping bag. I, on the other hand, was crispy dry, having enjoyed the airy apex of the tent, though a handlebar had kicked me in the ribs most of the night. Again I had slept badly, catching only a few hours between midnight and four a.m. Bec complained of a ringing headache.

‘Just as well we hadn’t camped up on that peak,’ I said cheerily (or was that smugly?).

Rebecca growled.

‘Right!’ and I went off and made us lumpy porridge with honey for breakfast before setting about attacking the hardened tar with a screwdriver.

‘If there’s tar on that road, I don’t want to do it; I’m throwing the bike on a truck.’ Bec seethed, angry at the two hours it had taken to clear the tyres of tar. Once de-tarred, we set off… well, pushing the bikes up the potholed and rocky road.

Halfway up, an Israeli couple in purple tie-dyed shirts and dreadlocks passed us on a farting and overloaded Enfield. The girl’s curly locks trailed behind her with the exhaust. She waved.

It was only nine a.m. yet the sun was already cutting through my wet sarong, glaring off the mountains and giving us sharp headaches. It took us another two hours to climb this monster, but once over the peak, we sailed down through an amazing narrow gorge of honeycomb walls, swirling rocks and towering tufts that rose out of the sandy slopes like gods. It was truly magnificent and it was at times like these, as a sense of euphoria washed through, that I felt all the pain and struggle had been well worth it.

That evening we stayed at Pang, another tented city. Foreigners sat around the impromptu courtyard, propped up in plastic chairs, while the drivers of goods-carrying trucks dozed in their cabins, legs poking out of windows.

Bec and I stayed in a large tent with a parachute roof. The tent was owned by a Nepalese family who tended to their guests, cooked chow mein over a kerosene stove, sold potato chips and chai, and issued bedding. The family made enough money, according to 18–year-old Jangpur, to last them through the Nepalese winter, and they would return to Kathmandu once the season ended in September. Her 12-year-old sister, Sampa, helped with the chores, but most of the time she entertained us.

‘Natural gas, no problem!’ she said, then lifted her leg, pointed her finger like a gun and made a farting noise with her mouth. We all laughed.

‘See what you’ve done!’ Bec laughed. ‘Teaching kids bad jokes.’

The joke was a hand-me-down from my father and I was happy to see it cross cultural borders. It was funnier still when Sampa repeated the routine, shooting foreigners in the middle of the night as they staggered off the bus in search of hot drink.

As darkness consumed the ragged cliffs, Bec and I watched the night sky; it was clear as glass. Holding hands, we went back inside the communal tent, and under the covers, began making love. Everyone was sound asleep… we thought. It was only after we had finished that we realised that Jangpur’s mother had been there the whole time, happily watching us from the corner while she knitted a baby’s jumper!

The last of the arduous climbs was the Tanglang La Pass (5328 metres), the highest of all passes on this highway. It was only 20 kilometres from Pang, and by the late afternoon we were over this scary beast’s rocky head. We stopped, posed and took photographs.

This pass had been an important trading route for trans-Himalayan traders for centuries, connecting it with Tibet and the rest of China. We took in the incredible snow-capped view and took some photos before bouncing and bounding down the other side on a rewarding 30 kilometre descent.

The road zigzagged into an expansive green plateau. In the distance, nomads herded their goats, the odd truck disturbing them as they crossed the road. Terraced crops of barley and mustard, Tibetan manis (a long wall of rocks painted with ancient scriptures and prayers), and large white bell-like stupas flashed by us.

I turned to see Bec some way behind me, checking something near the chain. I stopped by another roadside tent, filled with weary travellers. Their Jeep had collided with a truck and they were now adamant about flying back to Manali.

Bec glided in.

‘Something’s wrong. The pedals keep moving.’

She pushed the pedals and the rear cogs spun. However, the back wheel ignored it.

‘Oh, dear,’ I said, bewildered. Something quite complex had gone wrong inside the free-hub and I had no simple answers.

‘Guess we won’t be cycling together again,’ said Bec, smiling weakly.

We managed to get a lift on a goods-carrying truck, our usual traffic foe. A jockey roped our bikes on top of the truck’s cargo.

‘What’s in the truck?’ Bec asked the driver as we lurched slowly up a hill.

‘Semen,’ he replied.

‘Semen?’

‘Yes, semen.’

‘Whose is it? King Kong’s?’ laughed Bec.

‘Are they medical supplies?’ I asked, trying to decipher what he was really trying to say.

‘No, um, horse… horse…’

‘Horse!’ Bec squealed. ‘Jesus! Imagine the size of its balls!’

‘No!… living… inside.’

‘Oh! House!’ The penny dropped. ‘Cement! It’s cement!’

‘Yes, semen,’ the driver said, shaking his head at our raucous laughter, while the truck strained under its heavy load, creaking and rattling through the dark mountains towards Leh.

20

LEH – MANALI – DHARAMSALA

July

‘Man was not like how we know him now,’ said Antony, over a plate of quiche. ‘He was 30 feet high and made of jelly.’

‘Jelly?’ I replied, trying to remain straight-faced.

‘Yes, he was around the time of the dinosaurs. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.’

I could only imagine giant jelly men sploshing and slipping over themselves, trying to take on Tyrannosaurus Rex, chunks of their jelly heads bitten off. I wanted to say, ‘You mean to say the world was run by confectionery?’ but I stopped myself; there was some sense about Antony (unlike crazy Harold Weinerman) even if what he had just said sounded completely insane.

Apart from dropping acid while skydiving, Antony had led a rather sensible, sane life throughout his 59 years. He had been a paratrooper with the British army based in Nepal and Burma, a marketing manager for General Motors in New York, and a media man for Fox.

But now he was ‘living vertically’, as he put it, having given up the hard drive of horizontal living – the acquirers, the movers and shakers, the spiritually bankrupt, the morally dark and destructive. Instead of moving stock reports, he was now moving subtle energies with his enigmatic girlfriend, Ljuba, a 52-year-old former nuclear physicist from Russia, now a clairvoyant and miraculous healer of the rich. She was in Russia waiting for money to ‘arrive’.

We had met Antony at the Avista rooftop café in Leh while Bec and I wrote on separate tables, trying to scrawl some space away from each other.

‘If you don’t work out the connection between your father getting his cancer and the tendonitis in your arms, then you’ll have this condition for the rest of your life. Believe me. It’s the way that the universe is telling you that writing this book is not for you,’ and with that he left, the wind lapping at his trousers as he walked down the market square, leaving me with questions.

Bec and I went for a walk up to the derelict Leh Palace that sat over a granite ridge above the town. Built in the 16th century by Buddhist kings, the palace bears a resemblance to its medieval Tibetan cousin, the Potala Palace in Lhasa, and the Royal Ladakhi family lived here in this nine-storey building until the 1940s. And you could see why – the place was falling apart. Rotting beams and cracked mud flaked in the wind and into its gloomy depths.

Leh was a harsh place, and as prayer flags flapped above us, we could see vast tracts of desert meet the snow-capped mountains. Clouds of dust billowed through the town, causing townspeople and tourists to quickly hide in shops or doorways or behind trees.

Tourism had doubled the size of the town since the 1970s, and Kashmiri traders, unable to get a hold of that illustrious tourist dollar in their own territory, splayed their wares in makeshift shops and tents by the road, selling Kashmiri jumpers, carpets, curios and hashish. Tibetan women walked around the markets selling trinkets and jewellery, and some passed Buddhist stupas in a clockwise direction, mimicking what was believed to be the passage of planets in order to ward off evil spirits. Travellers congregated in groups, flitting from restaurant to restaurant, bookshop to bookshop, German bakery to German bakery. Some took treks up into the mountains. They were laughing, smiling, happy.

Bec and I sat. Not saying a word.

* * *

A week later, we clambered into Dharamsala then to McLeodganj, Bec’s broken bike bouncing around on the roof of the bus like a corpse.

It was here that the Dalai Lama took up residence in 1960 after fleeing Chinese persecution in Tibet. These days he gave discourses on Buddhism to spiritual tourists who not only stood in line for hours to hear his lectures but flitted in and out of bookshops.

I went into one.

It was well-stocked with prayer wheels, mandalas, postcards and numerous books on Buddhism, of course, and self-help. One book I came across was called Heal Your Body: The Mental Causes for Physical Illness and the Metaphysical Way to Overcome Them by Louise Hay. It was a guide to using affirmations to cure ailments. I did have to wonder if Ms Hay was having a laugh. For example, a urinary infection was, apparently, caused by feeling ‘pissed off’, the solution for haemorrhoids was ‘to let go’, and gaining confidence in your testicles was to affirm that it was ‘safe to be a man’.

Dervla Murphy had stayed in this town for six months, convalescing from a terrible bout of dysentery and away from the summer heat of Delhi. It was up here, after writing Full Tilt, that she managed to pen another book, Tibetan Footholds. During her stay, Dervla cared for Tibetan children at a school, while their parents were off building the long, winding roads to Mussoorie that Bec and I had sailed over, bumping and cursing their now-crumbling state.

Thirty-seven years later, McLeodganj bustled with traffic, snared at junctions to Dharamsala. Beggars seemed more prolific here than anywhere else in India and were stationed at every corner, hotel entrance, market and newspaper stand. One old woman in particular wailed incessantly in a deep, cackling voice as we passed her –‘Pleeeasse, Sir. Moneeey, to eeeat!’ – every morning, despite us giving her money only moments before.

We could not ignore it, the lepers with no fingers or legs, Western guilt getting caught in our throats. How could we possibly end the plight of not just one individual but also thousands?

We walked up to the town of Dharamkot, then up a short, steep, slippery road, to the Vipassana Meditation Retreat. The course was starting, and this was our last day together.

We stood outside the retreat among the tall pine trees, the monsoonal rains having briefly stopped, giving us a respite for our farewell.

Bec cried as I hugged her for the last time, her tears wetting my shirt and my cheeks.

‘Does this mean we’re splitting up?’ she asked. ‘I mean, not just from travelling but… from us?’

I didn’t know what to say. The past week had been good, having taken the bus down to New Delhi to enjoy romantic evenings together, and fine dining (like Pizza Hut where you had to book, line up and be seated by the maitre d’). I felt horrible leaving her like this.

‘No.’

We kissed for the last time. Then she left, the whoosh, whoosh of her trousers following her descent back to the cloudy wet hills of McLeodganj, leaving me with guilty thoughts.

21

DHARAMKOT

August

‘Staaaarrrt agaiiin… staaaaarrrrt agaiiin! Start at the top of the head, going from head to feet, from feet to head, part by part, piece by piece, observing every sensation upon the body… anicca, anicca… everything changes. Understand the importance of impermanence.’

The basso profondo voice of Vipassana guru SN Goenka boomed through the speakers from an audiotape. I tried to get comfortable, propped up amid a mountain of pillows, struggling once again with the lotus position, my left leg having gone completely numb. I looked at the clock on the wall of the Dharma Hall. Ten past four – in the morning. It was the fifth day of the Vipassana course, and from four in the morning until nine at night, I had been sitting here trying to meditate, going piece by piece then going to pieces while the same wretched thoughts kept poking my third eye:

This is insane. I’m soooooo bored! When’s breakfast? How many hours left until I can leave? Who’s that swine who keeps grunting behind me? ‘SPC Baked Beans and Spaghetti, for hungry little—’ SHUT IT! Damned TV commercial. Mmm. That girl in the back row has really nice breasts… When’s breakfast?

I wasn’t supposed to, but I opened my eyes and looked around the hall. Forty other foreigners sat around me, eyes shut and as still as Buddha statues. All I could hear were the in and out of breaths from other meditators like we were all in one big womb.

It should’ve been a peaceful experience, all this quietness was driving me crazy. It was so frustrating, so tedious, so… sexually arousing! I really had to stop myself from jumping up and screaming, ‘Come on everyone! LET’S FUCK!’

I had done Vipassana courses before, some eight years ago, and somehow I had conveniently forgotten the hell that I had gone through. But now it all came back. It was a disaster. Half of the group left. One meditator had snapped and tried to ninja the teacher during a group meditation before running out to the car park screaming, ‘I’M THE GINGERBREAD MAN, CATCH ME IF YOU CAN!’

What the hell was I doing here? I had been desperate for some kind of peace, but now I wondered whether a big joint would have sufficed.

For ten days I was here to learn once again the fundamental teachings of Vipassana, which are based on the teachings of Siddhartha Guatama, who advocated meditation as a basis of attaining enlightenment. As legend had it, Guatama sat himself under a pipal tree at dusk determined not to move until he had attained Supreme Enlightenment. By dawn, having fought his inner demons (and probably a numb knee to say the least), he arose as the Self-Awakened One, Buddha.

For the first three days we had learnt anapana, which meant observing the breath around the nostrils. By the third day my nostrils were like wind tunnels and I could hear them (and everyone else’s) blowing through my ears. Next, vipassana, a method whereby we sensed every part of our bodies by the square inch – a pulse here, an itch there, any kind of sensation, up and down the body.

We were supposed to undertake all of this with the austerity of a monk and thus were segregated according to sex (‘I like it standing up’, ‘This line on the left, please’), not allowed to talk, do any form of illicit drugs, harm any living thing, steal, tell lies or indulge in any sexual misconduct. (I had a problem with the last one. I mean, could you at least, ahem, have sexual misconduct with yourself? After all, ten days is a looooong time!)

Though a compulsive talker, I took to the no-talking rule like a duck to water. It opened up a world of possibilities: you could slam doors in people’s faces, push in line, trip them over, steal their meditation cushions, set their kaftans on fire… and they couldn’t say one little thing about it! They were powerless! (Though, I did begin to have a growing sense of dread as I seemed to be attracting a large number of glares.)

But, back to the Dharma Hall. I adjusted my cushions once again. After an hour, an old man got up on stage, sat cross-legged and turned off the tape.

‘You must be here on time or I will have to ask you to leave,’ he said, addressing us all. ‘And absolutely no talking. You must not break the Noble Silence. We are here to meditate.’

He was our teacher and he meant what he said. He had already thrown out a Frenchman who had turned up late. I was not surprised to learn that he had been a colonel in the Indian army for 40 years, during most of which he had been stationed in Ladakh fighting the Chinese. He of course went by the name ‘Colonel’.

Despite Colonel’s stern warnings, and much to my annoyance, Indian participants were overlooked as they regularly whispered to each other, handkerchiefs drawn to the side, sending messages like errant spies. On one occasion when I went to see the Colonel after a meditation (we could talk as long as if it was directed at the teacher), I passed two of the talkers as they left. The Colonel sighed once they were finally out the room, ‘Oh, I just cannot get these Indians to shut up!’

Sometimes I felt as if I were living in a paradox. While the monsoonal rains bucketed down, signs sprang up around the bathrooms:

DUE TO A WATER SHORTAGE THERE WILL BE NO SHOWERS TODAY

I could see my fellow meditators looking up at the dark sky, rain splashing in their eyes, looking at the signs then mouthing, ‘I don’t fucking believe this!’

But I did eventually settle down. Despite the fire in my knees, my sitting bones numbing to mush, and my back creaking like a splintered door, I remained, to quote Goenka, ‘equanimous’. The key was to not react to the pain with revulsion, so as to not create more samskaras (mental reactions), but to examine it objectively while keeping in mind that everything is impermanent.

This helped me become acutely aware of what was going on with my bad shoulder. It vibrated violently, sometimes in spasms, and I thought about what Antony had said, and wondered whether this heat, this throbbing that was now pumping out of my shoulder, was the anger I felt over my father’s death. I was angry that he died when he did (he was only 64), and perhaps I was still carrying this anger around with me, taking it out on India, taking it out on Bec (though it must be said my relationships had all been disasters, one so bad that the girlfriend in question had tried to run me over with her car! Which was odd because I was in the kitchen at the time!).

It had been a hard four months together: the heat, the crowds, the traffic, the sheer human maelstrom that overwhelmed Bec and me. I had found India the most difficult of all the places I had travelled. It hadn’t helped being in a relationship that was failing. Or, rather, had failed.

This was all apparent to me when Bec left that day in tears; I was worried and concerned about her, now alone on a bus to Delhi, and though I felt sadness, I also felt relief.

I had fallen out of love with Bec and I wasn’t sure when it had happened. Perhaps it had evaporated on the hot Deccan plains, in the rocking madness of a crowded bus, or in the leer of mobs of men, or perhaps it was swept away by the Ganges while we fought near it. Wherever it had gone, I couldn’t see it returning, and I struggled for days as I walked through the wet pine trees on my meditation breaks, trying to console myself with the practical reasons for parting with her, things we had talked about and agreed on.

We were incompatible… she was too young… she needed to travel on her own… we had nothing in common.

We had planned to meet up yet again, this time in Taiwan, and then perhaps travel again together. I knew now I couldn’t carry on this lie. I had to tell her, as much as I dreaded it. But tell her when?

I unwittingly would choose the worst day possible.

Anicca, anicca. Everything changes.

22

DHARAMSALA – AMRITSAR

July–September

While I was having lunch at a dhaba halfway towards Amritsar, a grey-haired man in white pyjamas sat down next to me.

‘Christian?’

‘No.’

‘I am from the Pentecostal Church. You must pray to him. Pray to God.’

‘I don’t believe in God.’

His hand snapped up as if stopping traffic. ‘Pray! To the Lord! He will save you!’ He shook his finger in my face. ‘Come!’ he said and grabbed my sleeve. I grabbed it back.

‘I’m sorry. I don’t believe in God.’

‘No God?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m Buddhist,’ I lied. He stared blankly at me for a moment.

‘No God? No God!’ He shook his head, turned on his heel and disappeared into the sun.

Though saying I was Buddhist wasn’t exactly a lie. Since leaving the Vipassana course I had made a pact with myself that I would try, at least, to have a more Buddhist outlook.

I decided I had to accept things the way they were in the world, that I had the power to change the way I felt about things and not manifest my own pain. This would only create more samskaras that I would eventually have to work through again. I promised myself that I would react no more but observe the feelings ’til they left.

So far, I’d kept that promise. I hadn’t lost it since leaving the Vipassana course. I’d remained equanimous when I’d been overcharged at my hotel or surrounded by locals as I changed my tyre – one nicking off with my multi-tool, or when my rear panniers tore off earlier that morning from all the books I was carrying (books are cheap in India).

The most testing experience was when I waited over a week for my new tent to arrive at the post office. Every time I went in to collect it, the clerk told me it hadn’t arrived. Eventually, I insisted on looking for it myself and found it under the very desk the clerk was leaning on!

‘Just as well you have come to collect it,’ he scolded me. ‘That parcel has been sitting there two weeks and we were about to send it back.’

Equanimous, equanimous – I wanted to slap him– remain equanimous, equanimous.

On the plains of the Punjab, it was still in the thick grip of monsoonal fever, a whopping affront to my senses after a giddying descent from the cooler Himalayas. The mountains sank into fields of green crops, and Sikh farmers, their orange turbans like helmets, sailed through them on shiny new tractors.

It was strange not to be cycling with Bec, and unconsciously I found myself looking over my shoulder, waiting for her, looking to see if she would magically bundle around the next corner. I would think about her every day.

When I arrived in Amritsar later that day it was like many other Indian cities I had encountered: a cacophonous mess of traffic. That was until I pushed the bike up a ramp into the Golden Temple. Of the many gurdwaras (Sikh temples) around India and the world, this one, known as the Harmandir, was the spiritual centre of Sikhism.

The Harmandir is a three-storey structure inside the temple, rising above a man-made tank. At night, the Harmandir shimmers its gold-leafed exterior over the still water and marbled floors. It was built to house the Adi Granth (the ‘original book’ of scripture), which, in the late evenings, is taken out, passed hand to hand and read aloud.

Sikhism was founded by the Guru Nanak some 500 years ago, drawing on elements of Islam and Hinduism. Nanak was against idol or blind worship and emphasised that all paths lead to God. Today there are over 20 million Sikhs worldwide and Sikhism is ranked as the world’s fifth-largest religion.

What struck me immediately about Sikhism was its sense of egalitarianism. Anybody could stay in the gurdwaras regardless of religion, sex or caste for a maximum of three nights; the accommodation was free, and food was provided twice daily in the langar (communal kitchen), also free of charge. Prayers were not set at any given time and could be performed at home. What a contrast this was to that pushy Pentecostal devotee!

A tall, smiling Sikh carrying a spear led me down a corridor and into a large room. On beds rammed together, various nationalities were sprawled under overhead fans while lines of washing danced above them. Korean girls and boys laughed into the fruit they were eating, Germans curled in corners with Stephen King novels, and – ah, the British section – pale bodies snored with their mouths open.

I saw a mountain bike slumped up against the wall. I got speaking to its owner—

Pedro, a diver from the Canary Islands.

Pedro had cycled from Morocco and through Europe to India in less than six months. Like me, he had had his share of adversity. First he got hit with malaria in Iran, then dysentery in Pakistan.

‘Ah, I was in the hospital – so hot! So hot! And the power would go. No fan – oi! I so hot, so hot! I have the fever, headache, and dysentery. The doctor tells me I have malaria.’

He loved Iran but wasn’t impressed with the East.

‘A Frenchman cycling had only one arm. They laughing at him. Try pushing him off his bike. Terrible!’

Among the mess and the heavy heat I spotted a man wearing a turban and a familiar face under it – Philippe, an engineering student from Germany whom I had met during our time at Vipassana. He was a lively character, throwing himself into the culture wherever he was. Now that we were in Amritsar, the Sikh capital, he was sporting white pyjamas, a turban with a Sikh emblem in the middle of it, and a small dagger around his waist. He made a prayer gesture.

‘Namaste!’

‘Namaste, Philippe.’

‘You get here in two days! So fast, man!’ he said in his characteristically pepped-up voice. But no sooner were we chatting away when he turned and jumped on his bed and began meditating, such were his impulses.

Back in McLeodganj, these impulses had him running every five minutes to stuff his face with strudel or banana cake, and when he had downed that he would run off to the next German bakery, screaming ‘Ah, I must have some more CAAAAAKE!’

With no cakes to be found in Amritsar, it wasn’t before long he developed a new love: ice cream.

‘Ah, Russell! You must come to zis ice-cream shop! Zey have REAL ice-cream!’ And he would grab me by the arm, knocking children out the way and causing rickshaws to veer into each other as he led me across the street to a dubiously named ice-cream parlour, ‘Mr Softy’.

I spent the day trying to have my rear panniers fixed. The hooks had torn out of the back and I had had to bungee them together. After trying various sheet-metal places, I had no luck until I met Hardey Singh in an Internet café. Hardey was 21 going on 40. I jumped on his scooter and we zoomed around the side streets, zapping from one hardware store to the next to get the required parts.

Hardey was a devout Sikh and spent most of his time at the Golden Temple. He was also involved in bringing over American Sikh kids on an exchange program, to show them the history of their religion.

‘The turban is to protect the head from the sun energy,’ he told me. ‘The beard, to collect moon energy. The bangle around my wrist is to remind me why I use my sword, and the small dagger around my waist is to protect the weak.’

He told me these items were worn by members of the Khalsa (Sikh warriors) and are known as the five Ks: keshas (uncut hair), kangha (a comb), kirpan (a sword), kara (a steel bracelet) and kaccha (a pair of shorts). The Khalsas were created in the late 17th century to defend the Sikh faith against the dogmatic and ruthless Moghul ruler Aurangzeb, who reimposed a non-Muslim tax and ordered Sikh temples to be destroyed.

As a testament to such persecution by the Moghuls, the Sikh museum housed depictions of torture and slaughter of Sikh martyrs: men sawn in half, women forced to wear garlands of their massacred babies, and martyrs with their eyes hanging out. Children next to me danced and laughed around these horrible images. Bullet holes still cracked the wall, a stark reminder of Indira Ghandi’s ill-fated attempt to quash the militant Sikh leader Bindranwale by blowing up the Golden Temple. (This attack was to spell her own end, when two of her Sikh bodyguards machine-gunned her to death.)

‘We are never to be without a dagger to be ready to fight,’ Hardey said. It was true: that night I watched a Sikh man clutch his dagger between his teeth as he hung on to a thick chain to submerge himself in the Golden Temple pond, while another swam near him, a glint of steel winking from the folds of his turban.

I had dinner that night with Philippe, Pedro, Yuki and three Korean women with the most un-Korean names I had ever heard: Cindy, Maria and Stacey.

‘I like zis restaurant,’ said Philippe as he waved a hand at the grimy walls, the yellow filth, the unwashed tables, the oily food bubbling on coal stoves and the rank smell of leaking gas. The waiter in a stained white shirt came over and slopped more food into our bowls.

‘Our last night in India before Pakistan. And here we are in a real Indian restaurant!’ Philippe smiled, full of love and joy for it all.

‘Yes, very Indian!’ I said, and then remembered myself. ‘And this is why we came here.’ We got up and paid. ‘Not coming for a drink, Philippe?’

‘No, I don’t drink,’ he said darkly, then put his index finger to his head like a pistol. ‘Drinking is poison for your mind.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. I don’t like. Bad for your spirit, your karma.’

‘What about ice-cream?’

‘No! Definitely not ze ice-cream.’

His self-righteousness floundered a week later when I caught him on a rooftop in Lahore, Pakistan, stoned off his head on charas, crowing inanely at the moon.

He wiped the sweat off his brow.

‘It’s so hot! Man, I’m sweating all ze time.’

‘Take the turban off.’

‘Hey! I like my turban. Zey love me. Zey think I’m Sikh.’

In Pakistan they didn’t really go for his new look. In fact, he nearly didn’t get into the country because of it.

‘Maybe,’ I said to him later in Pakistan, ‘it’s because you look like something they’ve been fighting against for the past 500 years, eh, Philippe!’

‘Ah, maybe you are right!’

And the next day this proud Sikh would unravel his turban and don the salwa kameez – pyjamas and a topi – Muslim cap – in one hot, hurried breath as he stepped over into Pakistan.

23

AMRITSAR – ISLAMABAD

September

A large red rooster strutted across the Grand Trunk Road, puffed its chest, slammed its foot down several times, did several high kicks, stopped, then waved its crest aggressively as if to say, ‘I AM THE FUNKIEST ROOSTER!’

This incensed a tall, black rooster opposite and it immediately tried to outdo the red rooster: it stomped the ground harder, kicked its legs higher, then crowed furiously, ‘NO, NO! I AM THE FUNKIEST ROOSTER!’

A phalanx of blustering red and black roosters followed, goose-stepping and barking causing the crowd to cheer and jeer respective chooks.

I wasn’t at an illegal cockfight but it might as well been.

You see, I was at the Wagah Border observing the lowering of the flags ceremony between India and Pakistan where the Border Security Forces of India (wearing large red crested hats) and the Pakistan Rangers (wearing large black crested hats) performed this marching spectacle every day and have done so since 1959.

It had the atmosphere of a football match, my neighbours exploding into hails of abuse at the Indian side. When I shouted out ‘CARN THE BLUES!’ they cheered, slapping my back as if I too had joined in on the abuse.

However, unlike a football match there were deep chasms of hatred on both sides, a fault line that ruptured all the way back to the 1947 partition where nearly a million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs butchered each other in a scramble for land. Since then, India and Pakistan have been involved in four wars with each other, border skirmishes and stand-offs, not to mention the ongoing conflict over Jammu-Kashmir. So no wonder I thought there was going to be an all-out riot[xxi] (or war for that matter).

At the very end of the ceremony, after all this chest puffing and shouting, the Pakistani and Indian soldiers shook hands with each other then lowered their respective flags exactly the same time.

‘Why at the same time?’ I asked my neighbour, a large man with a grey peppered beard and topi.

‘It would show great disrespect! And big problems for the Indians!’ He grinned broadly as if he wanted it to happen.

The soldiers slammed the border gates shut with a loud bang and it was all over. Soon the crowds got back in their Jeeps, buses and autorickshaws and went home whereas I cycled the few kilometres to a small town and slept the night in a road side hotel where not one of the lights worked. On the upside, the plumbing was totally electrified, a discovery that was ‘shocking’. Oh, stop it, you!

In the morning I faced the vast open plains before me. The road stretched right out into the distance like a cord of liquorice.

Pakistan. Land of the Pure.

I looked behind me. Though I’d had mixed feelings about leaving India, I was glad to have left her now; so much so, that at the Indian border, the immigration official had stamped my passport, uttering, ‘You are looking very happy.’

‘Yes, I am. Very, very happy!’

‘Acha! You much enjoying India,’ he smiled.

‘Baha! Well…’

He fixed me with a stare as I collected my passport. ‘Be careful in Pakistan!’

Little did I know I’d be back in India within three weeks whether I liked it or not.

But now I was in a new country and with that, the thought of a new beginning. I reminded myself of my vows to be a calmer person, a person full of patience, more empathetic, understanding, a – OW! WHAT THE FUCK!

WHOP! PING! CLANG!

The bike suddenly clanged with metallic staccatos and I felt sharp stabs to my right cheek and shoulder.

I looked up to see two teenage boys sitting on a large muffin of hay with a pile of stones in their hands while a sad-looking donkey pulled them along in a wooden cart. I tore around them like a hornet, hurling abuse, shaking my fist, Buddhist vows lost an instant. The boys just shrugged at my mad protestations and threw more stones, one bouncing off my helmet.

I had no idea why they did this.

An hour or two later I coasted into the outskirts of Lahore and slipped off The Grand Trunk road and onto the Canal Road, named thus because a tree-lined canal ran alongside it. I then swung onto to The Mall, a broad boulevard that drew a long bow to the Champs Elysees and perhaps why Lahore has been ambitiously known (amongst other names) as ‘The Paris of the Punjab’. And all this time I thought Lahore was French for ‘Ladies of the Night’. Ah, my friend! You want la whore?

Toyota Hiace vans careened in and out of lanes, beeping, pulling over, ticket men hanging out the door, smacking the roof, yelling destinations, then suddenly alighting as a large truck thundered towards them.

To say that Pakistani trucks were much more colourful than the orange TATA trucks of India would be an understatement. They were glitzy, garish and tarted up as if they were going to be the star float at a Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

Every inch of the vehicle was detailed in array of colours, patterns, pictures, ornaments, carvings, portraits of loved ones and murals, while words in English hugged the mudguards – ‘GOD TAKE CARE OF ME’. Jewellery that looked like it had been stolen from belly dancers dripped along the outside of the undercarriage in long chains. Headlights were heavily massacred while above the cabin, a huge Julian Clary[xxi]-like collar jutted forward, enmeshed in metal lattice. Seeing a convoy of theses painted beauties often made me feel like jumping off my bike and starting to dance.

Past the Regale Chowk (roundabout) I arrived outside a white run-down looking four-storey building, The Regale Internet Inn. I’d chosen this hotel as other backpackers had said in Amritsar it was the only place in Lahore where the staff didn’t rob you!

Though calling it a hotel was stretching it a bit. It was actually the house of an ex-journalist, Malik, and bodies of weary souls from around the world decamped in what was the living room on mattresses piled on the floor: two chain smoking German brothers, David and Paul; Gavin from Yorkshire; two Danes – Skippy and Orsa; and a Korean, Kar. It wasn’t the cleanest of places and I headed upstairs to get some fresh air. As I ducked under a laundry line of underwear, T-shirts and towels on the rooftop I heard, ‘Ah, Russell! You make good time again!’

It was Philippe, chillum in hand and now in a light blue salwa kameez. ‘Ah, you are strong, Russell!’

‘What’s this?’ I smiled, pointing at the pipe.

‘This? Oh, this is charas. You want?’

‘Sure,’ I took a drag and immediately felt a slight buzz from the hashish. ‘But isn’t this “poison for your mind?”’

‘No! It is good for the mind! Very shanti, shanti.’

‘I don’t think that’s Urdu.

‘Huh?’

‘Urdu. The language here.’

‘No, no!’ he laughed, ‘I ’eard you!’

Over the next few days Philippe and I perused the streets of Lahore: relieving ourselves from the heat in the marbled The Badshahi Mosque; eating at the night markets, gorging ourselves on meat, something which wasn’t all too available in India; and embarrassingly, spending an inordinate amount of time at the new Western style shopping centre, something we both got too excited about.

‘Chocolate, Russell, they have chocolate from Germany!’

There was certainly a different feel to Pakistan. It seemed more relaxed, laid back than India and speaking to Pakistanis, they seemed less bothered about their neighbours. Unfortunately, the streets were dominated by the presence of men.

On one particular day, Malik, after getting us (the men at least) kitted-out in salwa kameezes (which were refreshingly light and oddly cooler than wearing T-shirts and shorts) led us through the narrow busy streets of Lahore to one of the most famous and oldest Muslim shrines in Pakistan, the Data Darbar or ‘Shrine of the Giver’. Built by the Sultan Zakiruddin Ibrahim at the end of the 11th century, the marbled tomb holds the remains of Sufi saint Daata Ganj Bakhsh (also known as Syed Ali Hajwairi), a Persian scholar who is believed to be a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. According to legend, a peasant woman gave Daata Ganj Bakhsh a jar of milk and when she returned home, her cow gave an endless supply. Thus today, countless people – business people, teachers, beggars – come to kiss the mausoleum for good luck, including numerous Pakistani leaders such as President General Musharraf.

‘Basement,’ Malik ordered and we followed him down some marbled steps. In the middle of a large hall and sitting on a green platform in rows were the humnawa – eight musicians (all men) – playing tablas (hand-drum), dholak (two-headed hand-drum), the lead singer pumping a harmonium (an accordion) with his feet while singing out his soul. I found it mesmerising and like others around me, clapped my hands and chanted. Soon, a bizarre coterie of men in robes launched themselves out of the crowd and began dancing, spinning and the strangest thing of all, violent head shaking as if they were trying to shake out really bad thoughts.

‘It is called Qawwali Music,’ said Malik. ‘These Sufis, they are trying to reach god with the dancing and the singing.’

And by all accounts, lots of hash.

Sufism is the spiritual side of Islam commonly known as Islamic mysticism. Because they worship saints, not to mention having a good time (dancing and singing), it has not made them popular with fundamentalist groups like the Taliban.[xxii]

One of the Sufis, a man that looked like Colonel Gaddafi, entered the fray doing Russian kicks while two older men circled him: one sporting a cape and ribboned George Clinton-style coloured dreadlocks; the other, who I will call Cat Weasel (green shirt, pants and thick locks of hair and beard), shook his head back and forth so fast that he reminded me of an oscillating electric tooth brush.

Of course, he couldn’t keep this up and he tripped and fell into Gaddafi who was none too pleased at having his leg kicking interrupted and fists came out, each one swinging madly like drunks. George Clinton and his Funkenstein crew separated them like boys in a kindergarten. Gaddafi soon went back to his dancing while Cat Weasel had to be consoled with hugs from George Clinton and his consorts before he would raise to the same fervour as before.

Having not danced enough, later that night, Malik piled myself and other travellers into a Subaru for more Sufi dancing at the Baba Shah Jamal shrine, a few kilometres away from Data Darbar.

Malik led the way in a gait that was hard to catch, groups of men following, falling over and elbowing each other out of the way, desperate as they were to catch a glimpse of us. Down a street of vendors selling sweets we followed the sounds of beating drums and soon arrived at a muddy field where our followers stopped to retrieve their sandals caught in the sticky mud.

Around a fire, a man dressed in a blood-red shirt and black jeans, hair flopping over his eyes and sticking to his forehead, seemed to lead the drummers. He’d stared at them, lost in a deep trance, and then, with a twist of his hand, sent the beat in a different direction. Sweat dripped off his face as he shook his head back and forth like a mop on a pendulum. Other dancers joined him, including Philippe, who jumped up and down like bouncing top.

I left the group and wandered the crowded streets alone before coming to a performance stage. Women dressed in saris danced with hints of repressed sexual energy while a skinny man with no shirt and tight jeans pranced around them and bizarrely, grabbed his crotch as if he were Michael Jackson. One of the women pushed him off stage and then the girls vanished into the doorway of a cylindrical structure.

At the top of it, people were looking down on to something. I followed others up the stairs and looked down to see the women in the middle of the cylinder, dancing slowly as two motorbikes and a Subaru hatch drove faster and faster until the centrifugal force had them vertical to the floor.

The driver in the car took his hands off the wheel. The audience cheered. When the motorcyclists let go of the handle bars the audience instinctively stood back and relieved an ‘OOOH!’ sigh.

I rejoined our group who were still with the drummers and there I found Philippe shaking up and down like Jim Morrison, stoned off his face, laughing and jumping, and surrounded by Pakistani men. He passed me a joint and I too was soon bopping up and down trying to catch the beat. Other dancers around us shook their heads; some were so violent with their shaking I thought their very faces would come clean off.

Then, to confirm my imagination, a man with wild tribal-looking hair shook his head like the others but when he stopped his face was horribly disfigured. In fact, half of it was missing, presumably hacked off. Open raw holes in his face where his nose should be stared back at me. I couldn’t steal my eyes from him and later that night at the Regale Inn as I slept heavily after too much charas, I couldn’t shake the faceless man from my mind, and woke up with him in my nightmares, hot pools of sweat collecting in the dints of my collarbone, filling like questions of what he must’ve had done or didn’t do to receive such a brutal disfigurement.

* * *

In the morning, I said goodbye to Philippe who reproached me for taking the bus to Islamabad.

‘But Russell! You must cycle all the way!’

‘I know, I know! I just rather spend my time somewhere more interesting than on a freeway.’

Dervla Murphy may have cycled every inch, every puff of dust and every back street but I’m sure some 40 years ago she didn’t have to contend with today’s traffic and pollution.

When I arrived in Islamabad later that day I realised it was just like Canberra, the capital of Australia. I haven’t been to Canberra and I’ve no intention of going but I’m sure it’s exactly like it because it was stuffed with bureaucrats, roundabouts and embassies. The streets were nice and wide and the Tourist Campsite I plonked myself down in was quite pleasant and filled with a conglomeration of the Swiss travellers in their camper vans and Jeeps loaded with solar panels, laptops and satellite TV.

However, I was warned off talking to a Frenchman who kept a Bactrian (two-humped) camel near his truck.

‘Don’t take photos of his camel,’ Greta, a Swiss doctor told me. ‘An English couple came over not knowing any better and he came out and demanded 40 rupees. Then another couple, German, took a photo and drove off. He chased after them trying to stick his head through the window screaming “YOU GERMANS SHOULD BE ALL KILLED!” Ja, he is crazy.’

I looked over at the camel roped to an old truck that looked as if it had once been owned by gypsies.

‘He says he came here with no passport for the truck,’ said Hans, Greta’s partner. ‘When he got to the border of Afghanistan and they asked him for his passport he said to them, “I have come from the stars and looking for paradise”.’

As I set up my tent a large four-by-four station wagon pulled up and I got talking to a blond man with a receding hairline and blue eyes. I thought he was American until I heard his accent.

‘I am Nacho.’

‘Like the chips.’

‘Yes,’ he smiled. ‘Like the chips. I am from Madrid.’ He’d been an advertising executive, but due to the stress, decided he and his wife needed to break from it forever.

‘It take my life. Now I am photographer. I mean, I try as I have only just started.’

He’d started in the US then into Alaska, had the car shipped to Thailand while he backpacked through South America and Australia, drove through India up to Ladakh and would’ve continued into China if they hadn’t wanted him to pay $US6000 to hire a driver and stay at their tourist hotels. His wife had joined him for six months but left as the driving got to her.

‘What did she think we were going to do?’ he pondered. ‘Sail a boat?’

We shared similar stories of travelling with our partners. ‘And look us!’ he laughed. ‘We are now travelling on our own!’

* * *

I was really looking forward to this next stage of my trip – cycling the Karakoram Highway. It was supposed to be the crème de la crème of cycle touring: gorgeous ravines, stunning views of the Hunza Valley, snow-capped mountains and friendly villagers. I hoped to get to Kashgar, Xinjiang Province, Western China, some 1200 kilometres away from Islamabad. I expected it to take at least three weeks, as it was quite mountainous, the highest point being Khunjerab Pass at 4693 metres.

As towns were somewhat far from each other I was going to need another burner, one that would easily work on dirty kerosene and so I found a shop in the ‘Urdu Bazaar’ in Rawalpindi (some 15 kilometres away south and the former capital of Islamabad) to fashion a smaller one, as all I had seen so far were cumbersomely large cookers. As I sat and explained what I needed whilst having tea with the owner of the shop, Falzal, a man of about 60 shuffled in and said a few words causing everyone to laugh.

‘He is making a poem about you. About your head,’ said Falzal. The old man turned to me in his green salwa kameez.

‘I not fun you. You are a guest in my country. I say that “To go with no hair must have much enjoyment in the city.”We say a man that cuts his hair is ganjaa.’

‘Eh?’

‘He is making the joke about your no hair. Bald. Ganjaa.’

‘Oh!’ I laughed at the remark and told him not worry as people do everywhere, especially at home.

On the way back in the minivan, squashed with other men, a billboard caught my eye:

I burst out laughing then nearly barfed up a lung when the next sign flashed passed:

KEEP YOUR

CANNT GREEN

Fellow passengers laughed at me, one with very good English. I tried to explain, tears rolling down my face.

‘CANNT?’ said the young man, confused. ‘It means “Cantonment”. This is an army area. The Britishes used to have headquarters here. So this is why.’

Strictly speaking, ‘cantonment’ means ‘a temporary military headquarters’ though I’m sure to the local population it didn’t feel like the British were here just for the weekend when they invaded in 1849. In fact, this area became one of the largest and most important military garrisons of the British Raj until partition for almost a hundred years. Hardly ‘temporary’. Anyway, for whatever reason, the term ‘cantonment’ has become a permanent part of the Pakistani lexicon. As for my interpretation of the abbreviation… well…

On the way back, I popped into an Internet café. Rebecca had emailed wanting to know if I was going to teach English with her in Taiwan and then later travel with her through Spain. In short, would we be together?

I spent the next few days in a dark, dark anguish. I could see the same problems unfolding if I travelled with her again. And yet, despite how I unpacked these issues with cold logic, I realised that I still loved her.

But I wasn’t listening to my heart that day and typed the reasons why we should split. I don’t know why I didn’t call. Cowardice I suppose. I pressed ‘send’, but, rather than the relief I had been seeking, I could only feel that I had done something terribly wrong, not just to her but to myself.[xxiv]

It was only when I returned to the campsite in Islamabad among Swiss and German Land Cruiser owners that I realised what a horrible day it had been for everyone else.

‘Ah, Russell! Four American planes have crashed into the World Trade Centre!’ gasped Greta, glued to her satellite radio. ‘It is so terrible!’

Hans, was less charitable. ‘Zese stupid Americans. Zey can’t even fly zeir own planes for shit!’

Of all days to break up with someone, I had chosen a day that would penetrate the consciousness of the world – September 11.

Campers flung their concerns around the campsite like jigsaw pieces.

‘They are saying it is Bin Laden.’

‘Afghanistan!’

‘Ah! It is only 300 kilometres from here!’

‘We must head for the Indian border before they close it.’

‘They’ll kidnap us!’

Within two days the campsite emptied itself as Land Cruisers and vans sped to the Indian border. What was once a lively little campsite of clothes hanging off car doors, barbecues, and foreigners sitting around in fold-up chairs discussing the merits of Swiss catalytic converters, was now deserted. Only myself, the mad Frenchman and his two-humped camel remained, pondering our fate. As much as I wanted to leave, I couldn’t: my passport was with the Chinese Embassy awaiting a visa.

Urged by Alan to register with the Australian Embassy, I went to the next-best thing – the Australia Club, an expatriate bar behind the Australian Embassy which ‘registered’ all too well with me.

The bar was filled with red-faced bureaucrats barking through thick Australian accents (why do Australians overseas always seem sooooo Australian?) and dressed, as Spinal Tap would say, ‘like an Australian nightmare’.

I got talking to an embassy official who bore a striking resemblance to the Australian Immigration minister, Amanda Vanstone. And like Ms Vanstone, she was as wide as a caravan and dressed as a fruit salad.

‘I’d wait a few days before continuing on with your trip,’ she said. ‘We just don’t know what’s going on yet.’

Next to her was Phelan, an Irish engineer who had been evacuated that morning from Afghanistan. He had been working for a Non-Government Organisation called Concern.

‘Very bloody Concerned!’ he spat into his beer, then eyed me suspiciously. ‘You’re not a journalist, are you?’

‘No. Cyclist. Was it really that dangerous there that you had to leave?’

‘No, not really. The bombs have a minuscule chance of hitting NGOs. It’s the fall-out from locals that’s the problem.’

When I told him I was headed for Sost, way up along the Karakoram Highway, he said, ‘Do you know that you’re going through one of the most fundamentalist Muslim areas in Pakistan? And not only that, it’s only eight kilometres from the Afghanistan border!’

I turned to ice, especially after he said I’d need to get on a bus and get a police escort through some of the tribal areas. What was I doing?

* * *

The next day, business was as usual, except for one paranoid white guy on a bike. However, it seemed clear that Pakistanis felt that they were being coerced by the United States, and apart from Pakistanis’ general dislike of the United States, the Taliban had threatened neighbouring countries with reprisals if they acquiesced to George W Bush’s demands.

Feeding on the growing tension, I could not stop sweating and fidgeting and looking over my shoulder, especially when big, moustached men called out ‘Hello, AMERICAN!’

I was beginning to feel like a target, and sometimes when entering restaurants or packed mini-van-taxis, I found myself blurting out, ‘I’m not American! NOT AMERICAN! Australian! AUSTRALIAN!’ And then, when Australia became involved in the war, I changed this to ‘New Zealand, bro! FROM NEW ZEALAND… CHOICE!’

I was still on my China idea. It was 800 kilometres away, over the mountainous Karakoram Highway. I figured I could probably do it in three weeks – surely enough time before the United States started bombing? Although, stuck in my throat was that fundamentalist Muslim issue that Phelan had mentioned.

None of this washed with Alan, as his latest email showed:

Three weeks won’t cut it! By the time you get to the Chinese border it will likely be closed. Not only that, there is talk of tension between India and Pakistan starting another war. That border may also be closed. DON’T BE AN IDIOT! GET OUT OF PAKISTAN NOW OR I’LL USE YOUR GROUP EMAIL LIST AGAIN!

I decided that I was going to finish this trip, despite Alan’s warnings, though even externalities – ‘the universe’ as Antony would probably say – were suggesting otherwise: my new camping stove kept bursting into flames like a downed MiG fighter jet; my rear tyre was suddenly frayed causing the tube to stick out like a big, fat testicle. So I bought a Chinese-made tyre but the bead (the wire on the inside of the tyre) tore out as I pumped it up (I later bought an Indian tyre). Lastly, to add insult to injury, my Chinese visa was restricted to two months, which meant I wouldn’t be able to complete all of the trip on bike. Yes, something was conspiring against me and maybe I should’ve listened.

The last thing that I had packed for the trip was… a gun.

I know. Not very Buddhist but before you judge me let me point out that Dervla Murphy had cycled with a handgun and it had saved her bacon a number of times.

My reasons were just as admirable. Sort of. Kind of. Nearly. Alright, not at all!

You see, I wasn’t going to put up with stone throwing youths like I had when I first arrived in Pakistan and especially after what I read on the Internet in Lahore:

‘I had one kid throw a rock the size of my head,’ said a New Zealander. ‘It hit my front wheel, luckily. I got off and chased the little bastard. He could’ve killed me.’

A German recounted a similar story. ‘I went to cycle off, and zis man tried to put a stick through my wheels as I rode. I fell off and hurt myself badly. Why they do this?’

A man on two wheels, for some reason, sent some Pakistanis wild – like dogs barking at cars.

So, in a dusty little hardware store, I bought a gun from a smiling gold-toothed gentleman in Rawalpindi, who was more than happy when I lied to him that I was going to India with it.

Anyway, on my first day leaving Islamabad it came in handy. There I was, huffing and puffing up endless, steep hills, some 34 kilometres from Muree (a town only a short distance from Islamabad), when a group of boys of various ages were standing by the side of the road laughing and pointing at me. This had been happening all day – boys leering and saying God knows what. (Female cycle tourers of the world, I salute you!)

As I neared, they suddenly went quiet, as if a schoolteacher had suddenly entered a rowdy classroom. I felt instinctively that they were going to do something unpleasant. And I was right. Just as I passed, I felt a pair of hands trying to push me off my bike.

‘Bugger off!’ I spun round. The culprit, a lad of about 14, dodged behind a friend. I shook my fist at him and kept riding. A stone flew past, just missing my ear.

‘RIGHT!’

Furious, I reached for my gun in the back pocket of my cycle shirt and waved it about, giving it my best Quentin Tarantino:

‘YOU WANNA PIECE OF ME, MOTHERFUCKERS!!’

The kids screamed in terror and tore off in different directions, some throwing themselves down the rocky embankment below. I pulled the hammer back and took aim.

POP!

A plastic pellet flecked skyward before rolling impotently onto the road then into the gutter.

Oh, come on! As if I would use a real gun!

Days later, the children had their own revenge. Sitting in a hotel room, replaying the event and laughing to myself, I stupidly aimed the BB gun at the wall and pulled the trigger. The pellet ricocheted and hit me squarely in the forehead. When I tried to reload it, it broke.

I was still some distance from Muree as the sun faded, so I camped on the lawn of Mullard’s uncle’s house. Mullard was a 17-year-old student who had approached me to stay with him. Just like Govinda in Nepal, Mullard waited until I had set up camp and got myself snuggled up in my sleeping bag before popping his head through to say, ‘You can sleep in my house if you like. Not safe here.’

I declined. I wasn’t going to pack this thing up in the dark. Everything would be all right. After all, my bike was locked up to the security bars on his garage window. And by now I was tired of having to return answers to the usual questions that were asked of me (‘Why are you cycling?’ ‘Where are you going?’ etc.) and wanted a night of peace.

However, I should’ve gone in with Mullard for I dreamed that night of a shadow behind a window staring at me. It scared me so much that I awoke briefly to the sound of clanging metal. I thought that a member of Mullard’s family must have been opening the gate… except there was no gate.

In the morning when I went to unlock the bike, I saw white flakes of paint scattered like dried leaves around the bike. The rubber had been cut off the D-lock and chisel marks had left dints in the casing. I was shocked. It was the first time on my trip that someone had tried to steal my bike. In their last desperate attempt to get the bike free, they had given the frame a good yanking, which had woken me up.

Mullard looked at the mess. ‘These are a simple people here. Some bad.’

Later that day I arrived in the small hill station of Nathiagali, some 2500 metres up, on the Karakoram Highway. I had noticed military jets flying around this area all day.

A Pakistani man in neat Western clothes approached me as I sat down at a chai stall. I asked him if he had heard any recent developments.

‘They have given the Taliban seventy-two hours to give up Bin Laden.’

‘What?’

‘They will start bombing after this time.’

There was no way I could reach the Chinese border before this happening. Panicking, I jumped on the bike and dashed down the mountain to the town of Abbottabad. (Now famous for where Osama Bin Laden was assassinated. I like to entertain the idea of him dyeing his beard in the mirror while my reflection cycled through in the background, startling him, thus spilling the dye all over himself. Alas, he apparently didn’t live here until 2005.)

When I checked my email that night, my inbox was again stacked with pleas for me to leave Pakistan. And news reports on the BBC only got worse: the border to Afghanistan was now closed.

I decided I would take the bus to Sost, which was as close as I could get to the Chinese border. So the next morning as I waited at the bus station (well, a restaurant with a broken chair out the front of it), a middle-aged German man slipped off a bus that had just arrived.

‘Ze Chinese border is closed,’ he told me. ‘Half an hour before I get zere zey close it! Zey stop everyzing – trucks, buses, car, cyclists… everybody.’ He looked at me through his big glasses and smiling face. ‘Are you going to ze Chinese border?’

We sat together in the dusty, rattling bus on the way back to Rawalpindi. Passengers fell asleep sideways on their seats; some chain-smoked, their arms going back and forth to their mouths like pumps. My new German friend was called Winfred.

‘Ze India–Pakistan border is ze only one open now and zis may close too,’ Winfred said. ‘I have to change my air ticket. It leaves from Beijing back to Germany. Ah! Zis is the third time zis has happened to me in zis country! In nineteen hundred and sixty-six with ze overthrow of ze king in Afghanistan, ze Indo–Pak war, and now zis. Ah, such a shame. So beautiful. You know, in ze sixties zhere were two places to go to on ze hippie trail: Kabul and Kathmandu. In Kabul zey would give you your hotel key and a block of hashish. Everywhere! It was amazing. Zose were ze days before ze king was overthrown.’

Winfred was a keen traveller and carried only a small briefcase with him.

‘Zis has thirty years of travel experience,’ he said, patting it. ‘I don’t take much. I have documents and one change of clothes. Only eight kilos.’

He opened it up and took out a lighter shirt to change into.

‘Zese documents here,’ he said, pulling out an IBM plastic pocket, ‘are details of ze highlights of ze day; what ze hotel was like, ze food. Very brief. Only one page. Every page counts, you know, with ze weight.’

‘Wow! How unGerman of you!’

‘Hah! Vot do you carry on ze bike?’

‘Well…’ and I told him, in great detail, every little thing I was carrying.

‘Zis…’ he looked at me as if I’d just loaded my entire luggage into his brief case. ‘Zis is too much. You need to have more discipline!’

In Islamabad, Wilfred took the next flight back to Germany whereas I took a very comfortable air-conditioned bus back to Lahore full of, I presumed, middle-class Pakistanis as some of the women wore jeans and didn’t wear the hijab.

While the movie ‘Independence Day’ played on multiple video screens above, a stubby American man in his 40s living in New Mexico, Todd, spoke at me in an endless monotone about the bombing being the worst since Pearl Harbour, that he couldn’t understand why anyone would attack the US of A, that people are so racist towards Americans, that Americans were the most law-abiding God-fearing people on the planet and that America never started a war that wasn’t right.

His concerns weren’t helped when there was an explosion of applause from passengers as they watched the White House being vaporised by an alien ship.

‘Now that is just not nice!’ he grumbled. To cheer him up I said, ‘Hey, Todd. What if the big windscreen of the bus suddenly became the movie itself so that the driver had to drive through the corny plot, huh?’

He grunted, then buried himself in a heavily censored Pakistani version of Newsweek.

After staying the night at the nearly deserted Regale Inn, Malik looking most forlorn, the next morning I cycled the 25 kilometres back to India from Lahore. At Immigration, the very same official that had processed my passport when I left India was now holding it again.

‘Ah… we have met before, no?’ he asked as I whisked the bags off my bike for a customs check.

I sighed heavily. ‘Yes.’

He smiled into his chai as he re-stamped my Indian visa. ‘You much enjoying India to come back again so soon, yes?’

‘Well…’

I crossed the border and that that ‘favourite thing’ happened – I got a puncture and within seconds I was swamped by hundreds of men.

24

AMRITSAR – HONG KONG – YANGSHUO

September–October

‘You’re going to fawkin’ China?’

‘Yes.’

‘On a fawkin’ bike?’

‘Yes.’

‘Christ! Don’t talk to me about fawkin’ China!’ said the lanky Lancashire lad, Gavin, wiping sweat from his brow as we sat in the Beer Bar Restaurant in Amritsar, chewing on Tandoori chicken. He eyed his drunken mate, Trevor, who nodded heavily with his beer.

‘We’ve just spent three months there just to make sure we wouldn’t have to do it again. The people are rude. It’s expensive, polluted. They’ve nothing much to see, and if there’s anything of interest they’ve got Chinese tourists running all over it and you’ve got to pay all the time for everything. They could have a plastic dragon in a bucket and they’d make you pay 20 quid to see it, for fawk’s sake. They’re bas-tards! I went to a tourist office in Xian and asked the guy if he spoke English – and, mind you, there are signs everywhere in English – and he says, ‘Méiyŏu’ (don’t have). ‘Méiyŏu’ is all I fawkin’ hear in China, and this is a tourist office! So we started nicking signs after that, started acting like bas-tards back to them, pushin’ in lines. You can’t go somewhere else?’

‘No. Well… you see, I’m trying to write a book called Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle.’

‘So?’

‘It’s got to have the “B” in it.’

‘Oh… I know! What about Bombay to Birmingham! “You awwwright there, choock?”’

China wasn’t sounding promising. Not one foreigner I had met so far had had a good experience there. What’s more, Philippe, who had managed to get to Ürümqi in China’s far west before the Pakistan border closed, emailed me desperately with ‘They have no caaaaake!’

No cake… oh, hell.

Some books I had read had not exactly given a glowing report of China, either, claiming that the Chinese saw themselves as the centre of the world, did not accept refugees unless of Chinese blood, and maintained a dual pricing system for foreigners. And, finally, there was Douglas Adams of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fame who had described his experience in China in Last Chance To See: ‘They just stare at you as if you were a dog food commercial’.

Staring. Not that again!

Why indeed was I going to China? It sounded just like India.

But the need to finish what I had started had sunk its teeth into me. I tried to console myself with the fact that, because I could only get a two-month visa, it would be a shortish trip. A train or bus would have to help me complete the journey in that time. Most of me felt relieved, some of me felt cheated.

But…

Who would have thought my first impressions of China would be formed while sitting with a beer in hand and enjoying a balmy night surrounded by limestone pinnacles and calm lakes? I was in Yangshuo, a small town in the Guangxi Province of southwest China. It was lush and green, and the air was clear. I soaked up the lazy days cycling through the old towns under sweeping roofs, climbing Moon Hill Mountain, which gave stupendous views of the valley, and gorging myself at the lively restaurant markets. Sometimes I would cycle further out of town and find myself on a farm sharing tea or a meal with farmers. Often I would go for a long swim in the Lijiang River in the midday heat. It was glorious. China was a godsend. Since I had arrived from Hong Kong everyone had been friendly and helpful, patiently listening to my faulty Chinese and giving me directions.

And I needed all the help I could get. Getting here over the past month had been hectic.

I had cycled from Amritsar to Delhi – a featureless experience along the flat Grand Trunk Road, clocking 150 kilometre days – then took the train to Calcutta (so jammed with cholesterol-coloured taxis that I was sure the city was going to have a heart attack) where the monsoonal rains were so heavy that I had to trudge waist-deep through the foyer of my hotel to get to my room.

Unable to get to China by land, I ended up securing a flight to Hong Kong, where I inadvertently got stuck. I had, en route, come up with the brilliant plan of shoving my tools and pedals down my bike shorts and wearing my trousers over the top, to avoid paying for excess luggage.

How could I have been so stupid?

I was caught by the metal detector, which binged excitedly as I went through it for the umpteenth time. I was forced to strip by two Calcuttan guards (one toting a machine gun), in front of other passengers. The guards confiscated tools, baulking at my clipless SPD pedals, stuffing them into envelopes and telling me I would be able to collect them in Hong Kong when my flight got in.

Seven days later they arrived, me going spare over my lack of spares, and I took the next bus to Yangshuo.

Unlike India, this touristy spot was divine: it did not have touts strangling my arms and my attention; the streets were free from rubbish; the air had none of the ‘China grey’ I had been hearing about in big cities and I was left alone pretty much most of the time.

The days were bright and warm. People smiled. Cafés mushroomed with tourists dressed with bum bags and ill-fitting T-shirts. They gorged themselves on café mochas, fat banana pancakes and steaks and took guided tours.

With all the comforts of Western life, it didn’t seem quite China, and I didn’t mind that. Especially as I was chatting to a cheeky and attractive waitress, Fulong.

‘You are a stupid!’ she laughed.

‘Why?’

‘Because I say you are!’

Ah, how refreshing it was to be in a culture where women regularly insulted me. I had found it difficult in India, where it was nearly impossible to talk to women at any great length. Rather than the demure Chinese women I expected, they were quite the opposite. Women were out there driving taxis and rickshaws, farming, and running businesses rather than being shrouded and whisked away under the smoke of the nearest kitchen. They were pushy, mischievous, charming and sometimes violent to each other (in a village I had seen two women beating each other with sticks). What was all this business about not losing face?

As the nights progressed I got to know Fulong better. I liked her and soon we were spending warm nights together, her arms brushing mine as we strolled. She had flawless skin, beautiful brown eyes and a rapid wit.

‘I had a Belgian boyfriend. We lived together here for two years—’ she faltered. ‘Then he left.’

I entertained notions of staying here getting to know Fulong but stuffed it up after I asked an Israeli woman for a light of a cigarette and the next I thing she had annexed our conversation like it was the West Bank. Soon we were joined by other travellers, joking and laughing loudly until Fulong sunk under a sea of English words and disappeared. I never saw her again.

* * *

The next day I left for Guilin, where I was told I could find a bus to take me to the city of Kunming. Due to the limited time, I’d thought I’d try and see the best parts of China. As I read up and talked to more people about it, the Yunnan Province seemed idyllic for cycling.

It was away from the encroaching mess of urbanisation that had eaten away at the eastern seaboard of China; it was up in the hills; it was cooler; and there were numerous minority groups to see and old cities to explore.

And so the next day, I cycled out of Yangshou. It was muggy, hot, Karst mountains peeping through the monsoonal mist while farmers were bent over in their paddy fields burning the remnants of cornhusks. As I rode past, one stood up to answer his mobile phone.

Heading north along the Lijiang River, I took the east road, a dirt track, and already I was sweating profusely. I had set off at midday, not the best time in this weather. An hour later, I stopped for a bowl of hot noodle soup at Xingping, a small town by the Lijiang River. I enquired about taking a boat all the way to Guilin but was told by a group of forlorn travellers that boat operators had got themselves in trouble with the police for carrying foreigners. I hopped back on the bike and continued north out of town. Several well-meaning locals tried to get me to turn back even after I showed them where I wanted to go on my map.

‘Bu yao (Bad),’ they said.

I assumed they must have thought I was a lost tourist, so I kept going, my Chinese/English map leading the way. I rarely found myself lost in China as after a while I started to recognise the Chinese characters.

As I cycled along these quiet farming roads, the karst mountains seemed to dance in the distance. They obviously toyed with the minds of the locals too: on my Yangshuo tourist map, the mountains were given names that really stretched the imagination: ‘Tortoise Climbing Up Hill’, ‘Fish Tail Peak’, ‘Glove Hill’, ‘Lion Watching Nine Horses’, ‘Lonely Lady Rock’ and ‘Happy Marriage at Biya Hill’. It was somewhere near ‘Something I Made Up While On Opium’, that I found myself climbing up a road that disappeared behind brown hills.

Below me sat a lake and a small typical Chinese village – sweeping roofs and tiled beams. Remarkably, this style has changed little over thousands of years.

Above me, the faint sound of a motorbike struggling through its gears whispered through the mist. It was already dusk and I knew I would not make it to the top before the light was gone. I headed back down, bouncing on the gravel road, past a square-tiled school and several houses. The town appeared to have no centre, no place to buy groceries, not even a noodle shack. I followed a track and ended up at a double-storey house where a bald old man stood out the front, smoking the stub of his cigarette.

I pointed to ‘hotel’ in my pocket dictionary. The old man looked over then waved his hand.

‘Méiyŏu!’ He could not read, it seemed.

He pointed to his house, offering, I presumed, a place for me to stay. On a couch in the living room sat another man; round, grey and slurping rice.

‘Chī fān! Chī fān! (Eat! Eat!),’ old man urged. He whisked over a bowl and chopsticks and ordered me to eat what was in the wok on the coffee table. He clumsily funnelled a strong-smelling white liquid from a 20-gallon container into my glass.

‘Compai!’ The three of us clinked glasses and drank. It burned my throat and I winced. They both laughed. It was rice wine.

‘Chī fān! Chī fān!!’ the old man urged again and I did, shovelling the Chinese cabbage and pork into my mouth. This ritual continued – drinking quickly, eating quickly, the old man shouting and spitting rice and an hour later I was well and truly pissed. Somehow the three of us ended up singing some garbled mush like wailing dogs.

When his friend departed, the old man and I were left staring at each other until he interrupted the silence by shouting and spitting rice at me again. He must have been at least sixty-five and had deep-set eyes, tanned skin and a face that was set in a deep scowl. To be honest, he looked bit like the bald villain, The Hood,[xxv] out of the 1960s TV puppet show, ‘The Thunderbirds’.

His bachelor farming life pervaded the living room – hoes, buckets, baskets, boots, bags of rice, tarpaulin on the walls and to my surprise – a wide-screen television and a DVD player.

The old man pointed to the television, then poked the remote, indicating that it didn’t work and that perhaps I could have a go at fixing it. I got up, looked behind the television and saw the problem – it wasn’t plugged in! I hesitated for a second, thinking that maybe someone had unplugged it for a reason and if I did plug it in now maybe it might blow the television up and then God knows what would happen.

I did it anyway. The television instantly flickered to life causing the man’s eyes to burst wide and embrace me with a big laugh.

With the babble of the television, his relatives and friends piled into the house from next door, some wearing trousers and no shirts. They stared at me for a brief while but then, bored with this, fixated their attention on the screen.

After they left, the old man pointed to the bathroom, indicating that this was where I could wash. He turned the taps on and stripped to his white boxer shorts. He motioned me to wash with him but I stepped back and left him to it.

When I yawned, he showed me my room, which was large and had a double bed. I had a wash and retired to my room. Stretching out on the big bed, I was dreaming of the beautiful countryside I had experienced – the karst mountains, the paddy fields, the Lijiang River, the quiet roads and sparseness – when there was an almighty BOOM!

The door exploded. The old man charged in shouting and then sat on the edge of the bed in his white boxer shorts. He leant over me and I curled away further up the bed, wondering what he wanted.

He sat back, barking in the dark. I pretended to sleep as I waited tensely for his next move. He then did nothing but yawn loudly for the next half-hour before he eventually left.

I got up and shut the door behind him. Two hours later…

BOOM!

He was in my room and again sat at the edge of the bed and yawned. This time he only stayed for ten minutes and then went back to his room. At three a.m. I was woken up again, but not by him – by Sylvester Stallone.

I could not believe my ears. Stallone?

But then I realised that Stallone was mumbling something to Harvey Keitel in the movie ‘Copland’. The volume was pumped right up, and even though the door was closed, it sounded like the television was next to the bed. The old man indulged in this for an hour before yawning loudly and shuffling off to bed for good.

I tried to sleep but I was edgy by now and didn’t know what he was going to do next. When I did fall asleep, I was woken up again, this time by the sound of knives being sharpened.

Oh, fuck! He’s going to cut me up like some victim in a Roald Dahl novel. Or is it the Public Security Bureau coming to take me away?

‘HAAANGG YOUUUU!’

What?! He’s going to hang me? Huh? International Rescue, where are you?!

I looked outside and sighed with relief to see it was the local butcher. Knives hung from his belt and a pig lay in a wheelbarrow, its body cut in half, legs indecently spread. People were already coming up and taking portions home.

I got dressed.

The old man was up, smoking a short, rolled cigarette and feeding muffled quacks in a trough. He tried to get me to stay for breakfast and I could only think what would he expect after that!

‘No, no. It’s okay!’

Eyes full of red no-sleep, I thanked him, then left, cycling into the mist of the jagged green hills above the village.

25

GUILIN – KUNMING

Mid-October

I woke up bouncing up and down on a bed, which in itself is not a bad way to wake up. It only became a problem when I hit my head on the bunk above me with a loud thud.

Disturbingly, a small Chinese man next to me jerked and convulsed.

What the hell is he—?

Then I noticed in other beds, bodies shaking, heads rolling and limbs falling out the side of their metal railings.

Oh my God! The old man has put something in that rice wine and now I’m in some kind of group exorcism! Or worse… they’re gonna take my kidneys!

And then, I realised where I was: I was on a ‘sleeper bus’.

Instead of seats, the bus had bunks, and when I first boarded it in Guilin I thought that I would have a comfortable, sleep-filled 24-hour journey to Kunming.

As I was to find ‘sleep’ and ‘bus’ were mutually exclusive terms. They were not compound nouns rubbing up against each other all nice and snug. No, sir. This was some kind of Orwellian oxymoronic double-speak.

For three days loud, ultra-violent Hong Kong films blared through the bus. For three days, we were ‘gassed’ by the constant thick haze of cigarette smoke and I was forced to spend most of the time like a Labrador with my nose jammed out of a small sliding window. For three days we lay, crammed up against each other’s bunks just above us like we were on a slave ship. For three days we were bounced and bashed by the bad roads. For three days, I was left with the memory of the smell and revulsion of eating dog-meat-soup at a bus stop restaurant.

It felt like I was on a bus full of political dissidents bound for a labour camp and this journey was part of the ‘softening up’ process.

To my surprise, on the last day, and out of sheer exhaustion, I did sleep. When I awoke the next morning my handle bar bag had a big hole cut along the side of the zip.

My camera was gone.

When I told my neighbour, or rather ‘communicated’ this, he gave me the oddest of reactions – he laughed! I could only rationalise that this was how Chinese people cope with bad news (well, when it happens to other people) for I remembered a time when I lived in Taiwan something similar happened. When a photo-lab ruined all of my Cambodian travel pictures of Angkor Wat, rather than apologise, they giggled. Bizarrely, the more I got angry, the more they laughed.

I told the bus driver of the theft and in the next town several short, plain-clothed policemen in badly-made Miami Vice-like dinner jackets turned up and searched all the passengers. But I wasn’t the only one to get nabbed by thieves. An amorous Israeli couple (who hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other for the entire trip!) had $US200 stolen from their bags. Alas, our thieves had slipped off in the night at one of the many stops.

Eventually we arrived in Kunming in the middle of the night and I took a room at the very comfortable Camellia Hotel. When I told the receptionist of my theft she said and did the kindest of things.

‘Oh, I am sorry for you. I hope you do not have bad feeling about China.’

‘No, no. It could happen anywhere.’

She said something to her manager who nodded. ‘You can have one night for free,’ she smiled.

How lovely was that? It’s moments like these that can make your heart sing with gratitude.

‘Xie xie ni (Thank you very much).’

‘The Bicycle Porter will take your bicycle. The Key Porter will show you to your room.’

A squat woman with a face so old it was probably listed as a UNESCO site burst out of her cubbyhole and marched me to my room, keys and locks jingling off her belt like a prison guard.

* * *

The next morning, I went looking for a new camera and walked into a shop and found myself staring at a vagina.

How was I supposed to take pictures with that – and, what’s more, where was the flash?

There it sat – shrink-wrapped and lonely in its white box, the words ‘VAGINA’ emblazoned across it just so you knew what it was and not some kind of mechanical calamari. Next to it an enormous red vibrator stood to attention like a ballistic missile about to launch.

This is what happens when your camera is stolen in China – you end up in a sex shop, face to face with rubber sex toys.

It didn’t look like your regular sex shop. No red walls, lacy underwear or plastic-wrapped magazines littering shelves. It was somewhat innocuous – full of plain white boxes stacked in a great wall on top of each other. They could’ve been selling shoes for all I knew. The sex toys were just a bonus! Adding to this clinical affair were the staff who walked around in white laboratory coats with the seriousness of scientists. They glared at me when I walked in as if I’d just interrupted an important experiment.

I ducked out of the sex shop and bumped into breasts: large breasts, small breasts, saggy ones and perky ones, before and after. It was a breast-enlargement clinic.

Obviously I’d been given bum directions and hoped not to come eye-to-eye with the pneumatic one.

It was a big surprise to me to see sex shops in China at all, but then again it was another sign that the social mores were loosening up.

After the communists took power in 1949, the People’s Republic had suppressed overt sexuality, reviling it as a plaything of the idle rich. Sex education went only as far as hygiene, or cloaked in political rhetoric. Masturbation, for instance, was condemned as ‘sapping the revolutionary will’ (and perhaps why Australia has never had much of a rebellion!). Homosexuality, until recently, was denied as even existing by many Chinese, though literature in the Ming and Qing dynasties showed that it was quite prevalent, describing sodomy as ‘playing with the flower in the back chamber’; its common name translated as jijian – ‘chicken depravity’. (Obviously using more than just the feather there.)

As China continues to modernise, increasing numbers of unmarried couples are living together, talk shows are openly discussing sex, and there are now telephone hotlines for gay and lesbian people. Permissiveness, once the fashion in the 20s but unthinkable under communist China, was making a comeback.

In some ways it was perhaps no mistake I ended up in the sex shop district. You see, the Chinese were seemingly obsessed with my sex life. Or lack thereof.

Some locals thought it in my best interests that any time I happened to sit near the opposite gender I should consummate the seating arrangements. On the sleeper bus, a man on the bunk above mine, while smiling and spitting pumpkin seeds, made lewd gestures with his finger and thumb then pointed to the woman on the next bunk. When I nodded, understanding what he meant, he laughed.

Or, as I would find later, cycling up in the Tibetan Plateau, truck drivers would shout out, ‘I LOVE YOU!’ as they nearly ran me down with their 40-ton cargo.

It wasn’t just the men doing the classy Benny Hill act. While I sat in a noodle shop waiting for the bus in Guilin, a woman pointed to another woman on the table I was sitting at, made funny eyes and enacted the same routine with her finger and thumb.

What the hell was going on? Did I simply look too eager about everything?

Also, the recent departure of my camera seemed to fit a new pattern I had developed of late – losing things. In the past two weeks I had lost luggage, my glasses, shirts, my camera and, worst of all, a journal. Gone, it seemed, were my travel survival skills – I was paying too much for hotel rooms and bus tickets, and getting on wrong buses.

I eventually did buy another camera. I walked about the city and unlike the hell I had been told about Chinese cities (namely that they were very polluted), Kunming was clean, organised, with tree-lined boulevards and markets and set amongst the green rolling hills of Yunnan.

Everything looked new. Flashy new buildings – five-star hotels and glass-marbled malls – blinked in the overcast sky, and designer labels spread across posters of European models with stern smiles, tight jeans and clean shirts. From billboards on nearly every street corner, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Neanderthal blockhead endorsed washing machines with a muscular thumbs-up. Couples hung off each other in Italian copy shirts, shoes and push-up bras while bored shop assistants folded and refolded clothes.

But despite the appearances of Western living, it all stopped at street level. While architects sweated over the latest eye-catching designs, public toilets had not yet been fashioned into anything more creative than a drain.

At one particular public toilet, four-foot high walls separated me from my neighbour, allowing enough privacy for us to pick the food out of each other’s teeth and listen attentively to each other’s bowels explode. An open drain passed under each mini-cubicle, and when the cistern was pulled at the other end a tidal wave pushed the output of other patrons towards me until something resembling the archipelago of Indonesia sailed past under my feet. It was a struggle not to fall into it while I retched.

This was positively lavish compared to another public toilet I’d suffered on the long bus journey. In the darkness and armed only with a roll of toilet paper all I could see was not a hole but a giant slide! It disappeared into the darkness and god knows what else. There were neither handles nor privacy to speak of and if you lost your grip, you weren’t going to get out in a hurry.

* * *

‘Things are changing so fast in China,’ said Alex, part owner of the Wei Pizzeria. Alex’s large Dutch frame dwarfed many of his customers and staff as he played with his two kids, giving them piggyback rides, chasing them around the restaurant, making them squeal and giggle.

He and his Chinese wife had owned a bar some years ago, but because of the frantic rush to develop Kunming for the International Horticultural Exposition in 1999, they were forced out despite a ten-year lease with the landlord.

‘“You come back after it is rebuilt”, they said. But when we wanted to return they put the rent up 250 per cent. Such a shame. We had a really good travellers’ bar there.’

Although Alex had lived here for the past six years, he was still on a tourist visa. ‘It is because I go at least every year or so out of the country, and I cannot stay here for the full two years,’ he said, smiling. His wife came up, said hello and collected the kids for bed.

‘My wife’s mother was not happy with our marriage, but once we had our first baby she had a 180-degree turnaround. She must have thought after that I was not just out to fuck her daughter. Here, I’m always on the outside.’

He turned to one of the waiters, a small, thin woman, and tendered her change out of his money belt. ‘Where do you go after here?’

‘Dali. I’m cycling.’

‘Ah! I also am I cyclist.’

Here we go. He probably cycled up to the shop for some fags. But he surprised me.

‘First I cycled from Holland to Greece in 1991, then I took the plane and cycled from Bombay to the south over to Hampi, up to Rajasthan then Delhi. Then, on another trip, I cycled from Islamabad—’

‘Did you have any problems in Pakistan?’

‘Yeah! They tried to kick me off my bike, put sticks in my spokes and threw stones. It’s like they have some kind of duty to do it. Maybe this has got do with it becoming more and more religious, more fanatical. I dunno. Anyway, where was I? From Islamabad we went to Kashgar along the Taklimakan Shamo Desert. I was with a girl, and a boy. We were lucky. We had a storm behind us, the wind on our arses, so we were in the top gear all the time. Then I cycled on my own back along the Taklimakan Shamo Desert.’

‘But there are no towns out there for hundreds of kilometres!’

‘I know. I ran out of water and was forced to drink from one of the aqueducts by the road. I mean, I shouldn’t have drunk it; it’s only for washing your feet and your clothes. And I got very sick! Fever, the shits. But it was only for two days. That’s the great thing about cycling: you sweat out the sickness. I was so fit then.’

He now had a generous spare tyre hanging around his waist.

‘If you’re going to Beijing, you should really take the train from Chengdu. There’s nothing to see except factories. And very polluted.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Yes. Even from here, it is bad. Too many cars.’ He picked up his son, who happily poked him in the face. ‘You should take the bus to Dali. Much nicer ride from there.’

‘Oh, no, no,’ I scoffed. ‘I’m a cyclist.’

And so, early the next day, bike shining in morning light, all oiled and tuned, I cycled a few metres from my hotel and… put it in the bus cargo hold and got on!

26

DALI – LIJIANG

October

From the Dali bus station I cycled north along Erhai Lake, named thus because the local people of this area, the majority of the ethnic minority, the Bai, believed the lake resembled the shape of an ear. Though looking at it on my map, that was if that ear had belonged to Dr Spock and had been clawed by a Klingon.

It was the late afternoon and the sun had long disappeared behind the jagged Cangshan Mountains, casting a dark curtain over the National Highway I was cycling along. By the time (a good 16 kilometres) I passed through the arch of the imposing South Gate – a large wall supporting two very large distinctive Chinese-style roofs – a pinkish hue hung over the ancient city of Dali.

According to my guide book, the Wombles, sorry, Mongols trashed the city but it was rebuilt in 1382 by the Ming Dynasty which struck me as odd because Flash Gordon hadn’t been invented until 1934.[xxvi] In a lot of ways Dali was like Yangshuo – wide streets, markets, and it had the dubiously named Foreigner Street (let’s not make any hay about ‘not fitting in’!). It was here you could get a decent coffee, eat vegetarian food and, because you couldn’t get enough of it, the sounds of Bob-effing-Marley.

It was, to my great pleasure, car free. I was surprised what a difference to my peace of mind it made, that streets, unlike shopping centres, somehow were friendlier places to be in once vehicles were not in them.

Another thing that struck me was that many of the staff in restaurants and shops spoke, to my shameful relief, good English.

I hadn’t realised how isolating China had become (I could only speak the most basic and important of Chinese – Wo zhi yao yi pin, ‘I again want one beer!’) until I hit these touristy areas. In India there was always someone, somewhere close by and conversations flowed easily. But in China, while I was enjoying it, it was often a lonely adventure. It didn’t help that I was somewhat over talking to other travellers and the inevitable responses: ‘Hello? Where are you from? Where are you going? You been travelling long? Etc, etc, etc.’ I longed for ‘normal conversation’ and I started to withdraw.

Having said that, that night after checking into my hotel room that looked like it had once been used for the pornographic film version of Willy Wonka (a large double bed with a gold coloured head board and purple velour bed cover… Oooh!) I bumped into some Swiss travellers at my hotel – Analiese, Serge and Margrit. I had first met them in Yangshuo and now chased the loneliness away with good conversation, good food and countless bottles of Tsingtao beer, a beer so high in the carcinogenic preservative formaldehyde that when you died your body would immediately be interred in Mao’s Mausoleum.

As an attractive waitress with a pigtail deposited another tray of beers, Analiese gave her a predatory look, then said to me as she left, ‘Wow. She’s so beautiful.’

‘Well, she is Bai.’

‘Really? How can you tell?’

‘Just by her face.’

‘Eh?’

‘More Tibetan looking.’

‘Oh, no, I mean—’

‘I know what you mean. But imagine if you were bisexual here. You’d be Bai-bisexual!’

Quite rightly, there was collective groan at my terrible joke. And it got worse. ‘Saying farewell to them would be difficult too. “Bye-bye, Bai bisexual!”’

The Bai were not known for going both ways but if Marco Polo is to be believed in his travelogue, The Travels of Marco Polo, their attitudes to sex were quite liberal for the 13th Century: ‘The natives do not consider it an injury done to them when others have connection with their wives, providing the act is voluntary on the woman’s part.’

When it wasn’t voluntary things could take a tragic turn. As legend has it, a woman jumped into a fire rather than have sex with the king. To honour such a tragic end, every year the Bai and other minorities in the Yunnan Province hold what is called the Torch Festival.[xxvii] People light torches in front of their houses and around the village square and go around making a ‘Splashing Fire for Blessing’. If you happen to bump into someone with a lit torch they’ll sparkle resin from the torch on you for good luck (and to perhaps remind you that if you don’t want to bonk some ugly aristocrat don’t go burning yourself up).

The next morning, all suffering the Tsingtao beer dry retches, my Swiss friends hired bikes and we cycled to the edge of the lake to see if we could take a boat to the Wase Market on the eastern side. Apparently it was supposed to be amazing but when we found out that it was 80 yuan ($US16) for the trip, its ‘amazingness’ immediately left us.

Instead, we watched fishermen in their canoes, surrounded by lily pads, tie snares around the necks of their cormorants, which quite rightly flapped and squawked in protest. Cormorant fishing, you may be surprised, is not unique to China. Indeed, it was used in England and France up until the 19th Century and was once a flourishing industry in Dali but now only serves the interests of tourists who like to see half-strangled birds cough up their lunch.

Seeing us, two small boys jumped down from the canoe, and demanded we pay two yuan even though we had not taken any photographs. When we refused they threw stones at us.

* * *

With the clouds burping into giant white cauliflowers over the mountain range above me, I left Dali early the next morning and cycled northwards towards Lijiang, some 187 kilometres away and roughly 200 metres higher (2415 metres) than Dali (2200 metres) and apparently one of the most beautiful ancient cities in China.

Up a stiff climb, I realised that all this bus riding had taken its toll on me. I had become so unfit that I was forced to push the bike, and wheezed and panted as I did so. To rub in this fact, a bus bounced noisily around a bend and farted thick inky plumes into my face making me wheeze even harder. It didn’t help that I also had to fight a headwind.

Two hours later, my face a red puddle, legs shaking, I stopped at a roadside restaurant. Men in crumpled grey suits watched the simian expressions of George W Bush on television. One man shook his head, yelled something at me, and then left.

‘Àodàlìyà! (Australia!)’ I yelled back, desperately trying to clarify that I was not a warring imperialist, but he just waved me off.

I sat heavily down at the table. My skull felt like it’d been tattooed from the harsh UV rays and when I checked it in the mirror I saw that my bald head had a series of uniform red marks from the holes in the helmet. It made my scalp looked like it had been hot-pressed by a waffle-maker.

I ordered a stir-fry meal by pointing at my neighbour’s meal then to myself. Some minutes later, a big plate of broccoli and spinach and a huge bowl of tofu and snow pea soup arrived.

‘I didn’t order…’ but maybe my neighbour had ordered these before I arrived.

After lunch, I tore down the windy mountain road, whooshing past trucks, the drivers beeping and waving as I did so. At crossroads, I stopped and tried to decipher a map I’d bought in Dali of the Yunnan Province. While it was all in Chinese, some towns on the map were not here in the real world. I stopped by a house with a door open. No one was around.

‘Nǐhǎo? (Hello?)’

An old woman in a long black dress, splitting an ear of corn, came out jabbering at me with disturbed annoyance.

‘Lijiang?’ I pointed to the two roads. She muttered something, unlocked a steel door to her small shop and roughly handed me a packet of cream biscuits and bottle of apple cider.

‘Er… Lijiang?’ I pointed to the road again.

‘Lijiang?’

‘Wěi (Yes)’.

She pointed to the right and walked off with the curtness of an air stewardess. I followed the road, covering valuable ground as it descended into rolling farmland. By four o’clock the mountains were a glorious green, the light crisp or ‘the magic hour’ as they say in the film industry. It was a bit chilly and I debated whether to stop and put my jacket on when I arrived at a small farming town, (I think it was Xiyizhen but I can’t be sure), some 85 kilometres from Dali.

In a restaurant, I got talking (well, with my English/Chinese dictionary) to a gentle old man in his late 50s, Svee Yin Khan. He was friendly and seemed pleased to see a foreigner out here in a place with no real touristic importance. With a name like ‘Khan’ I was surprised that he had a medallion around his neck that read ‘Souvenir from the Holy Land’ and on the back was an engraved picture of the Virgin Mary. I also learnt that he had three daughters and one son, unusual under China’s one child policy.

I liked the old man and as I ate a large bowl of eggplant, Chinese mushrooms (he assured me they were fresh, pointing to their garden) and a huge bowl of mian (noodles), a small white kitten meowed noisily up to my table and attempted to jump up on to it. Mr Khan knocked it down with a light flick of his hand and it scampered over to a hessian bag and began to tear at it mercilessly.

I asked him if there were any hotels in the area.

‘Meiyou.’ The nearest one was 42 kilometres away Mr Khan assured me. However, half a kilometre down the road I found a workers’ hostel and got a room for ten yuan ($US2.50) all to myself.

* * *

Everything was closed in town, the shutters drawn down like giant eyelids. No one stirred. Not even the chained up dogs that were curled up like giant hairy donuts.

The early morning greeted me with a chilly downhill ride through bluish tree-covered hills, and before long I was heading towards a structure which stretched across the road.

A road toll.

A policeman stepped out and held up his hand for me to stop (or, as I like to think, rehearsing a Village People routine). Officially, foreign cyclists weren’t exactly allowed to be travelling independently and I was suddenly filled with a sense of dread. I squeezed too hard on the brakes and they squealed noisily as if they too were scared of the policeman.

He continued to hold his hand up then, to my relief, waved me to the side, indicating that I should use the far right lane.

‘Nǐhǎo!’ I smiled.

‘Nǐhǎo!’ He smiled back as I brushed through.

At a small dumpling shop I sat around the pots of steaming bean buns, downed a few, and as the dumpling lady was particularly attractive, I’d thought I’d chat her up. I reached for my English/Chinese translation book in my handlebar bag but it wasn’t there. So I looked through the front panniers, rear panniers, loosened the strap to the backpack, took everything out. It wasn’t there either.

‘Mr Khan!’

I had left my book back at his restaurant – ten kilometres back up the hill!

‘Oh, no!’ I packed everything back up, got on the bike and up I went toward the road toll. I tried to think of way to communicate to the policeman why I was going back up, couldn’t, and instead gave him a cheesy ‘aren’t I stupid’ kind of look.

‘Nǐhǎo!’

He nodded, regarding me curiously. ‘Nǐhǎo.’

An hour and half later, I got to Mr Khan’s restaurant and there it was waiting patiently on the restaurant table where I had left it the night before. Before I left, Mr Khan made me have some dumplings; I tried to tell him I’d already had some, but he insisted and stuffed them in my face; I scalded myself on the tea, cursed myself again, and zoomed down the hill to see the policeman with his hands on his hips and staring at me with considered bewilderment. Surely I was testing fate to be arrested.

‘Nǐhǎo?’

He shook his head (and I must say, he did this a bit like my father, ‘What are you? Stupid or something?’), the novelty of a seeing a foreign cyclist for the third time wearing clean off his face.

By lunch time I’d clocked up 40 kilometres and swung into the large and pleasant town of Heqing that to me looked like it had gone all mock-Chinese style as everything looked clean and crisp as if this was a new suburban development.

At a roundabout next to a huge Chinese gate, I heard firecrackers down one end of the street. I cycled closer to see men walking with small white wraps around their heads playing Chinese violins, symbols and small percussion instruments and leading a funeral procession. Going on their Tibetan looks, I presumed I was still in the Bai prefecture.

Behind the men, women held hands, while at the rear and suspended on horizontal poles and carried by four men, was a large black woodened coffin, the size of an old Kelvinator refrigerator. The Bai were once Buddhists, and instead of a burial such as this, they used to cremate their dead until the Han Chinese conquered the area in 1956. In the middle of the three women, a woman wailed, I presumed a relative, and was held with ropes to the women accompanying her. As I watched, some in the crowd smiled at me and waved, breaking the solemn procession.

After a brief lunch I was back into the sun and within half an hour my energy was gone. I stopped by the side of the road and watched women bent over in their fields like Jean-François Millet’s The Gleaners. Where indeed did they get all that energy from, picking the fields like machines?

Inspired by their doggedness, I went to cycle onwards when a puncture deflated my resolve.

I pulled over in the shade of a panel repairer’s shop. The repairer sat there, squatting comfortably and blowing smoke in my direction as if I were an opponent in a game of cards. I flipped the bike over, took off the rear wheel and for the next 15 minutes tried to prise the Indian bicycle tyre off. The bead was so tight, it snapped off the ends of my tyre levers. Thankfully, a pair of rough, sun-tanned hands intervened. It was the repairer. We grappled and grunted over the wheel like wrestlers, causing a crowd to form – five raggedy men with protruding teeth, arms behind them, hanging on to their smouldering cigarettes. The repairer yelled something at them and they stood back. This would be the first and only time in China that I had a gawking crowd. Perhaps this had something to do with the Communist Party banning such behaviour in the 1970s.[xxviii]

Finally, we got the tyre off, the repairer’s efforts stronger than mine, for his blood was left on the rim.

The tube had been punctured because the puncture wallah had removed the rubber strip on the rim. I made a new rim strip by cutting up an old bicycle tube. When I was about to cut a hole for the valve, the repairer grabbed my knife, folded the rubber four times, then cut it with a pair of scissor. Voila! Perfect hole.

I slipped on the foldable Kevlar tyre from my pack that I’d been saving for emergencies and left the last of my Indian nightmares by the side of the road.

* * *

‘Lijiang, a popular destination in Yunnan, is considered a fairyland blessed with fresh air, clear streams, breathtaking snow mountains and an undisturbed landscape inhabited by a friendly group of people,’ claimed an online travel site,[xxix] ‘You will be struck by the peaceful surroundings.’

Yes, I was struck by how peaceful it was. I was so ‘struck’ I had to get off my bike and hold my ears while hard-faced tourist guides with megaphones barked at groups of red-capped Chinese tourists, who were more concerned with bartering with stall holders over ‘authentic’ Naxi (or Nakhi) curios – cowboy hats, necklaces, embroidered bags, pictures and blue aprons – than historical points, it seemed.

This wasn’t what I had imagined as I jostled through the crowds, trying not to fall into the deep unfenced canals. This was some kind of Chinese version of Disneyland and I wondered whether it becoming UNESCO[xxx] listed some years ago had created all the fuss.

But I could see why it was so popular. Once the tourists began to fade away with end of the day, Lijiang revealed its 800-year-old self, though some of it had been rebuilt since a large earthquake in 1996.

The Old City was like a miniature version of Venice with its small waterways, narrow cobbled streets and quaint arched bridges. Willow trees draped themselves over outdoor cafés, foreign-styled restaurants and traditional style teahouses adorned with red lanterns.

‘Russell!’ came a familiar female voice. I looked around and saw Analiese and Sylvia smiling and laughing at me in a small teahouse.

‘Where are you staying?’ I asked.

‘At the Square Inn. Meet us at the Korean Restaurant in the main Square,’ Analiese pointed somewhere behind her.

I wheeled the bike into the Square Inn, lifting it over stairs and a small bridge. A stream ran through the middle of the hotel while my room was below the river itself, the constant sound of the water like that of a toilet cistern not refilling properly. I had a hot shower, washing away the grime and sunscreen of the past two days, and set out to meet Analiese and Margrit.

But I got lost and never found the restaurant and in the end settled for dining alone in a Japanese restaurant while other travellers drank and laughed on other tables. In the morning I bumped into the two women.

‘Where were you?’

‘I got lost.’

‘Hah!’ Margrit waved her hand dramatically to remind us that she had once been to Argentina, ‘I can’t believe you’ve cycled all the way from Mumbai and you can’t even find the restaurant!’

‘Why do you think it’s taken me eight months?’

We went and had breakfast at an outdoor café, munching on bãbã (thick flatbreads filled with meat) while girls tried to sell us polystyrene boats to race down the canal. A line of women in blue capes and caps passed us.

Christina grabbed her guidebook. ‘“The Naxi women here are powerful. The Naxi used to be matr… matrilineal. Meaning that that property was passed on from mother to daughter and women were also the main workforce and made decisions in the community”.’

‘As it should be!’ Margrit added.

‘I’m up with that,’ I said. ‘When I lived in Taiwan I had a psychology lecturer doing a PhD on the stress levels of indigenous tribes. One was patriarchal; the other matriarchal. The one with the most stress was the—’

‘Patriarchal!’ Christina interjected.

‘While the one with the least was the—’

‘Matriarchal! Whooah!’ hooted Margrit.

‘Why is there less stress?’ I raised my eyebrow in a mock flirty way, ‘Because in a matriarchal society… everybody gets more sex!’

‘Nooo!’

‘Yeah. Just ask the Tibetans. They were into polyandry[xxxi] – two husbands or more at the same time. Well, I don’t mean at the same time but you know what I mean.’

‘Yes,’ Margrit looked at me with her serious Swiss gaze. ‘But I think this also would be nice!’

In the past, the Naxi did have somewhat ‘flexible’ relationships between men and women. They had what was called the azhu system – couples didn’t have to get married and if they had children, the mother brought up the child while the man provided support… well, as long as the relationship continued.

Margrit and Christina left that morning back to Kunming where as I took the bus up to Tiger Leaping Gorge. At the town of Qiaotou, the jumping off point for the trekking trail, I let a stream of other travellers go ahead of me in an attempt to not pay the paltry 30-yuan ($AU5) park entry fee.

I’m not sure why I was so tight-fisted but I suspect I was tired of paying fees for everything in China. What’s more, I kept bumping into Israelis who didn’t seem to pay for anything. So when Elan from Haifa told me how to get into the park without paying, I jumped at it. Also, there seemed something really exciting, indeed, something right about cheating Chinese officials (they just looked sooooo uncompromising). And anyhow, by the time I did get to the park, it didn’t look like they were spending money on it at all.

I followed Elan as we snuck up a small inclined path that forked to the left of the ticket office, followed it to a wall, jumped into someone’s yard, then, over a ladder that crossed a stream, before slipping down a gully and on to a road.

I high-fived Elan. ‘Yes! Australia – one, Israel – one, China – nil!’

‘You got through!’ It was Eli, a 19-year-old student from Melbourne I’d met at the Prague Hostel in Lijiang. ‘I got chased by the guards and had to pay!’

‘You know about this too?’ Elan looked suspicious.

‘Everybody knows about it.’

‘But this is the Israeli Network,’ his eyes narrowed, then smiled. ‘Only Israelis are supposed to know!’

We followed the trail through terraced fields, zigzagging upwards through the ‘twenty eight turns’. Signs for one particular establishment littered the path over and over again like a bad song: ‘Sean’s Guest House’, ‘Sean’s Path’, ‘Sean’s River’, ‘Sean is a Trail Blazer’ and ‘Sean is Repetitive’. It was like being stalked by a sign-writer with Alzheimer’s.

‘I’m gonna slap Sean if I ever see him!’ I joked to Elan, which I would later regret saying.

At the top of the climb we finally got a good look at the Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the world’s deepest gorges. Above us, grey cliffs fell sharply into the turbulent Yangzi River below. As legend has it, a tiger, in a desperate attempt to escape a hunter, leapt across the river. Looking at the enormity of the chasm, I could only imagine that the tiger had been catapulted.

That night at the Tea-Horse Trade Guesthouse, a 30-something Canadian, Jason, sat at the dining table in furious debate with a squat Greek woman in her later 50s, his cigarette smoke swirling around him like a force field.

‘Lady, you think you there’s no racism in China!’ he puffed fats clouds at her, ‘I live in Taiwan, right. We were staying at my girlfriend’s grandfather’s house when she hears the window smash. Now, I wasn’t there at the time, so my girlfriend, Xinchin, grabs her grandfather’s Japanese sword and races out of the house to see a guy throwing rocks at the window. The weirdest thing is he doesn’t run.

‘“Why are you throwing rocks at my house?” she asked.

‘“Because you’re betraying our race.” He then looked at her as if to say “What are you gonna do about it?” then left on his motorbike. When I get home we go to the police, give them the licence plate numbers. But instead of arresting him they give us the address and say “If you want to do something here’s where he lives.” So I grab a baseball bat, go to his house and see him through the window. He’s got a ponytail and is feeding his fish. I knock on the door, yell obscene Chinese at him and crack the door with the bat. And you know what he did? He just turned around slowly, looked at me with absolutely no expression and went back to feeding his fish. And that’s what scared me! It was like I didn’t exist. I got the fuck out. Later I found out that I was in a Triad area and his house was right next to one of the temples!’ He swigged his beer. ‘Yeah, no racism in China, lady! Bahah!’

* * *

In the frigid morning air I set off by myself, following the trail towards the river to Walnut Grove. It was here that I got to meet the infamous Sean at his guesthouse. He waved his shrivelled left arm, a legacy, I was to learn, of being thrown in the fire by the Red Guard when he was two. They had taken their frustration out on him when they could not find his father. I felt awful for saying I had wanted to slap him. So I pushed him off the cliff instead! No, no. Just joking!

I had a tea and got chatting to an Australian couple who told me that an Israeli woman had died recently. Apparently she’d had a fight with her boyfriend, set off by herself, slipped and fell down into the gorge. So, aware of this fact, I walked ever so carefully… until I was able to hitch a ride back to Qiaotou on the newly blasted road.

By mid-afternoon, I was back in Lijiang, my face burnt, body sweaty and clothes displaying a history of floral collisions. However, I was off again sooner than I had anticipated.

‘You can’t stay here,’ said the owner of The Prague Hotel, a place I had moved to before I left for the gorge. She was a small, sprightly woman with sticky-up hair.

‘But why not? I stayed here last time.’

‘The police,’ she said apologetically. ‘No foreigners here. I no licence.’

I decamped to another hotel and left Lijiang early the next morning, my panniers filled with hot bean buns for the two-day trip ahead.

27

LIJIANG – ZHONGDIAN (SHANGRI-LA)

Late October

The Mid-October air was fresh and chilly, reminding me that winter was coming and I donned my woollen cap, gloves and jacket. This change of season did not bode well as I was heading up to the town of Zhongdian that was right near the world’s highest and largest plateau – the Tibetan Plateau – also known as ‘the roof of the world’. I wouldn’t be going anywhere near the ‘roof’; more like the first floor, the Dêqên Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.

The bike slowed as I hit a climb on the 214 Highway that hugged the Jinsha Jiang River. Above, the Yun Ling Mountain range closed in around me. I clicked the gears down to the lowest of cogs – ‘Granny Gear’ – which was slightly faster than walking, my head bobbing up and down like a Texan oil pump as I tried to overcome the inertia of the climb. Just when I’d get some kind of momentum my trousers would bugger it up by getting themselves caught in the chain causing my right foot to slip off the pedal and nearly tumble the whole bike right over. So I’d stop, tuck them into my socks, start again, get some speed but sooner or later I’d feel a sharp tug and I’d be off the bike again.

As it was autumn, the valley glowed with brightly coloured rust-orange and yellow trees while, through the dappled light, I caught a breathtaking glimpse of a towering snow-capped peak. It was so beautiful, I got off the bike and took a deep breath and only moved again when the heat from my body faded and I was forced to ride again.

It was great to be alive.

This was despite it being one of the coldest days I’ve ever had cycling and I stopped frequently to warm up my legs, trying to get my knees and toes from going numb. Worse, I had to… ahem… ‘massage’ my crotch because ‘the boys’ had also gone to sleep. This won me toots from truck drivers who yelled and laughed, though some shook their heads in disapproval. Perhaps I shouldn’t have done it so vigorously. Perhaps I shouldn’t have kicked my leg like a dog that was having its tummy tickled. Perhaps I shouldn’t have smiled so much.

Another issue with the cold was it was difficult to regulate my body heat. Cycle up a hill and you get too hot and have to strip down. Meet a small descent you’re chilled into screams.

I stopped at a shack, a restaurant of sorts. Inside, the slatted walls were lined with sheets of rainbow-coloured tarpaulin to keep out the cold. By a small table, a large bird in an extremely small cage squawked and flapped. A large wide-screen television filled up half the room while a boy watched a Jackie Chan movie.

The walls were filled with kitsch posters of Western meals – two hamburgers on a plate, orange juice, coffee, knife and fork. I pointed to the picture to the owner indicating I’d like that. He shook his head and instead slopped a large bowl of oily noodles in front of me.

After almost one hundred kilometres I made it to the town of Xingxin, ending the day on a stiff climb. The town seemed to exist for the sole reason of servicing the electrical sub-station that jutted out the side of the narrow valley like some kind of mutant ram with large horns. I got a small room in a hostel and tried, amidst the thick smoke of chilli burning somewhere in the kitchen of the dining room, to enjoy my dinner.

It was odd being the only foreigner again, where suddenly you become socially disabled. Strangely, I was deliriously happy. I was loving China. Here I could cycle undisturbed, unlike India, which had driven me to short-tempered madness. Or rather my reactions to it.

I was out of the tourist hub where an ‘authentic’ version of what you’re looking for was served up to you like fast food. Here in this town, there was nothing to ease my landing. Just mystery. This to me was freedom. A liberation from what you know. This to me was travel.

The next morning I set off at dawn, trouser cuffs bound up with Gaffer tape to stop their chain-catching shenanigans. It was uphill which I thought was unfair for a cyclist first thing in the morning. I mean, the topography should just reset itself! Nice easy gradient that we cyclists can work up to. But no. At every turn I’d go ‘Aha! Surely, there must be a descent! That would be the right thing to do!’ Alas, it was up, up, up, all day long.

The morning sun was already peeking over the hills, lighting up the valley, revealing army men in tents by the road installing cables. They waved and said hello.

Outside a shack restaurant, old men sat on long benches wearing Russian-style fur hats, sunning themselves in the warm autumn sun and smoking long pipes. The owner of the restaurant invited me in and pulled out a wooden bong.

‘No smoke,’ I said, thinking we were up for a heavy mull session.

‘Shénme? (What?)’ He pumped the wooden bong, which made a dull sickening sound like someone trying to suck-start a goat. He then crunched up some dry green tea lumps, poured in a pot of boiling water and added butter. He pumped it again then presented me with a cup of butter tea. It wasn’t as bad as I remembered it in Nepal, though somewhat salty and fatty. His wife, a smiley happy woman wearing a Nike weathered parka handed me what I presumed to be bãbã – half an inch of thick round bread, the consistency and taste of car seat foam. I had to knock back some butter tea to get it down.

Back on the road, the climb was arduous and I stopped every few kilometres, resting my sore butt, my aching knees and wretched shoulder, which had grown worse in the past hour. No seat changing or handlebar adjustment seemed to help and I was stuck with the pain all day.

By 1 p.m. I had reached the top of the climb. My reward was a 30 kilometre descent and I flew down it with glee until it tapered out to flat plains, corn crops and large farmhouses that looked different from anything I had seen. They were more Tibetan in style, two-storey stone buildings with white painted windowsills and colourful patterned beams, and to mock the primitive style, a large satellite TV dish on the roof.

Hungry, I searched for a restaurant but there was nothing. Instead I asked a farmer and he invited me into his house.

I stepped through the wooden doors and up a flight of stairs to a large dark room with a large potbelly stove. The man asked me to sit by the fire; his wife wore what I took to be traditional Tibetan dress – maroon dress and apron. Though we were still in the Yunnan Province, these were most likely a sub-Tibetan tribe, as I was not far from the town of Zhongdian.

The woman prepared me some butter tea and bread. The husband sat down and we smiled at each other trying to communicate the best we could while his wife breast-fed their small child. To show my thanks for the lunch I gave my Walkman and tapes to my host.

I waved goodbye, sure in the belief that these good people would like Herbie Hancock and perhaps not, as I thought about it, the head-pounding techno of the Chemical Brothers.

From a mountain peak I could see Zhongdian way in the distance and I realised I wasn’t going to make it by nightfall. Instead, I wheeled the bike down a gully behind some trees, away from the road, and wait for darkness. Foreigners weren’t permitted to camp in China though my biggest concern wasn’t the police but bandits. It would be easy to rob me or leave me here for dead.

I waited for a farmer towing a trailer of people on the back of his converted farming hoe-cum-tractor. It was odd-looking contraption. A long handlebar extended to an engine on two large wheels while a flywheel whizzed just above it. Of course, it made an awful noise. Once it was gone I went about setting up my tent, jumped in and settled down to a lovely dinner of hardened nut confectionary and two boiled eggs. Who says I don’t look after myself?

28

ZHONGDIAN – XIANGCHENG

November

By mid-morning, I cycled into the dusty town of Zhongdian and was chased by grubby and snot-faced children in their little woollen peaked hats. I had a slight headache, the effect of the 3200 metre altitude (or was it the screaming kids?).

My first impression of Zhongdian was that it was a dull place, a shadow of Lijiang. One of its attractions was the 300-year-old Tibetan monastery Ganden Sumtseling Gompa. I didn’t get an opportunity to see inside as it was closed for repairs and to my surprise, by the Chinese government. Over 250 monasteries were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, so why was the government, that has never had a great relationship with the Tibetan people, repairing it? Well, here’s a clue.

A year after I left China, Zhongdian was re-named Shangri-La[xxxii] by the Chinese council having being inspired by the 1933 novel ‘Lost Horizon’ by English novelist James Hilton. Hilton described a place somewhere in the south west of China that offered ‘eternity, tranquillity and peace’ – Shangri-La. Despite the fact that Hilton had never set foot in China and that Zhongdian was a shithole, this did not dissuade the council from renaming it in the hope of attracting more of that filthy lucre. The plan worked. By 2005, the town had gone from 20 000 visitors to 2.6 million.[xxxiii]

* * *

That night as I toasted my feet by a potbelly stove inside the Tibetan Café, another generic travellers’ hangout, I sought advice from Chushi, a broad–shouldered, rough ’n’ ready Tibetan guide, over the coming road conditions.

‘You go this way,’ he said. He drew a map of the road and wrote the names of the villages in Chinese, the distances between them, and their elevation.

I was planning to cycle over the Sichuan-Tibetan Highway into the Tibetan highlands. Only open to foreigners since 1999, it was a barren landscape of hills and harsh, cold winds, and held the auspicious factoid of having 200 freezing days each year. I had been told that the highway was one of the world’s highest (over 4000 metres) but was also quite dangerous due to frequent landslides. The view, though, was apparently to-die-for, which I am sure many already had.

I would set off tomorrow from Zhongdian, at the beginning of the Tibetan plateau, and work my way north through remote upper reaches to Litang, one of the highest towns in the world (4680 metres above sea level – 400 metres higher than Lhasa,). I would then head east towards the next major city, Chengdu in the Sichuan Province – a total of some 1400 kilometres and of course some serious uphill cycling.

Chushi normally took foreigners through this area in a four-wheel drive, and he was quick to signal his doubts about my ambitions.

‘Here and here,’ he said, pointing to two dots on the map. ‘No town for 180 kilometre. Not much car. Snow big.’

This worried me. With the mountainous terrain at altitudes as high as 4900 metres, it was likely that it would be as many as three days before I would see another town. Add to this the fact that I had ditched my exploding Pakistani fuel burner, to cut down on weight before the flight to Hong Kong and now had nothing to cook food with, I was feeling nervous about doing the trip at all. I imagined being wrapped up in my sleeping bag, a howling wind buffeting the tent as I lay exhausted and hungry, my body later found and nibbled on by herds of wild goats. And, there was the snow factor, which would be getting worse as the days went by.

Chushi finished making his map for me and wrote his mobile phone number on it in case I needed his help.

‘You. Crazy man. Much snow.’

* * *

The next morning, the air was as sharp as knives and I stuffed my face with pork dumplings to somehow deflect their impact. Shortly into the ride, I was again going through the routine of jumping off the bike and doing a quick dance in my cycle shoes to warm up my feet. I put my hiking books on as they seemed to be much warmer and easier for pushing the bike up hills.

The climbs were relentless and I stopped often and for any excuse: take a bite of some bread, check the map, adjust the seat, a photo snap. But this left me open to mistakes. After climbing for half an hour I realised I couldn’t find my left glove. I’d taken it off to check the map and now it was missing. After a frantic search through all the bags I realised it could only be in one place – back down the road! I thought about leaving it, that somehow I could just alternate hands but then realised that this was a stupid idea and whizzed back down, scanning the road like a mine clearer until I found my blue Gortex glove lying on its back like a dead spider.

By mid-afternoon I had covered some 35 kilometres to Wushan, a small, rundown town where I stopped for some noodles in a dark, musty hut. While I sat slurping up the bowl and confusing myself over a map, a filthy man leaned over me. He pointed to further up the road, then made a slitting noise while motioning across his throat.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’

It was hard climbing, 75 kilometres in all, taking me the whole day at five kilometres an hour. By the late afternoon the light had begun to fade. I saw a number of small abandoned huts up ahead on the hillside and decided to sleep in one of them. Inside, the hut was littered with toilet paper, bottles, cigarettes, a pair of shoes and yak shit. The floorboards in the next room had been wrenched up and used for firewood. I guessed that these huts were for road or timber workers, though judging by the state of the denuded hills, I wondered exactly what they were going to hack down – a few tallish rocks?

I ripped up the remaining floorboards and set about trying to make a fire. An hour later, I was still fanning smouldering embers with my journal, coughing in the room now thick with smoke, my eyes stinging as I cursed and swore at the top of my voice. I heard a truck go around a corner and I became instantly paranoid, remembering the man in Wushan mock-slitting his throat. I tried to think logically but my imagination got the better of me: ‘You could be robbed of everything. You could be killed. No one would know.’

It was freezing. I squeezed into my thermal underwear, beanie on, and snuggled up in my sleeping bag. But soon I was cold, and so I put all of my clothes on and stuffed myself back in the bag ’til I looked like a Chinese egg roll.

Despite feeling exhausted, I couldn’t sleep. I was anxious that someone might knock on the door, and I debated whether I would answer it or simply ignore it. I moved my large spanner to within easy reach.

I lay there in the dark, breathing in the dampness of the hut that was thick in my nostrils. I could hear somewhere down in the valley the faint gear changes of trucks as they slowed around bends, until there was no sound at all, as if someone had suddenly pressed mute. It was so quiet I dared not breathe – just so I could keep on hearing nothing. And when I became aware of this, the emptiness and peace of my world was quickly filled with my noisy and restless thoughts. When those thoughts faded, eventually, I drifted off.

Until… BAM!

Something falling hard had woken me up with a jolt. I reached for the spanner and flipped on the torch. Nothing. I got up and slowly opened the door.

The moon was out, revealing a blue-black world of the Hengduan Shan Mountains. It was still deathly quiet. I took a quick pee from the doorway and went back to bed. Well, back to the floor.

In the morning when I opened the door of the hut, rolling hills of whiteness surrounded me.

Snow.

It had dropped heavily during the night and I couldn’t recognise the green trail I had cycled up. Trees and shrubs had turned into brittle skeletons. I wheeled the bike out, got on and tried to balance it through the frozen mud, an almost impossible feat.

I was closer to the pass than I had thought – a mere four kilometres, an hour’s ride. The road was caked with snow, and my wheels sloshed and spun in the snowy slush, making muddy lines in the virgin whiteness. I bounced down a 20 kilometre descent, my body rattling with the bike, the front wheel flicking up icy-cold muck in my mouth while the rear spat at the back of my neck. I had to stop often to stretch out my hands that had become cramped from the cold, but also because of the constant squeezing of the brakes.

At the bottom of a valley, I sloshed and skidded into the small town of Charshway. And when I say small I mean two restaurants. The town’s sole purpose was to service the muddied traffic scrambling from Zhongdian and Xiangcheng.

I slid the bike up against a wooden fence next to one of the restaurants and stumbled in, my head dizzy from the cold ride and no breakfast. Seeing me wobbling into tables like an oversized toy, a Tibetan man ushered me into sit by the fire in the kitchen, where an attractive Tibetan woman with a ponytail fought with her cooking over a hot wood-fired stove. I was given tea, and soon a plateful of hot potatoes was warming my insides.

When more travellers – Tibetan men in fur hats – arrived, I was lost in the noise of frantic cooking. Customers sat on small stools, chewing, spitting and dropping hunks of bone onto the floor. I slumped there for an hour-and-a-half in a tired daze, not wanting to cycle on. In retrospect I should’ve stayed, lying in bed reading under warm covers. However, I was impatient, and so I ordered another plate of potatoes, wrapped them up in a plastic bag and walked towards my bike.

A French couple, wearing identical Roy Orbison-inspired sunglasses, sat outside the restaurant and watched me pack. They warned me of the slush up ahead.

‘No, no, no! Ah, it is very difficult. You should take the bus.’

‘Please, don’t put that idea in my head. I’m a weak person!’

Two English guys had better news.

‘There’s another cyclist heading your way. He’s from New Zealand and cycled from England. He’s in Xiangcheng. He should be leaving today. You’ll probably see him.’ One moved closer to me and said, somewhat conspiratorially, ‘Lots of weed by the road if you’re interested, man.’

I rode up and up the bumpy road with no end in sight. After 35 kilometres of climbing, the day was coming to a close and again I found myself high on a mountain in failing light. Jagged snow peaks fanned out the light over the mountainscape, leaving brilliant golden rays and pink hues. It was truly magnificent.

As I cycled around a bend I got a shock to see a large shaggy-haired creature in the middle of the road. ‘A YETI!’

Two long horns swung out from the back of the animal like oversized antennas.

‘Oh, maybe not.’

This ‘grunting ox’ or yak, as the Tibetans called the male ones at least, are known to inhabit the Tibetan Plateau in China but also Nepal and Northern India. They’re apparently friendly and easy to domesticate, but on seeing me this one ran like a hippy on fire, causing miniature landslides in its wake. As it ran I couldn’t help but think that it looked like the long-haired animated dog, Doug, in the Magic Roundabout.

I would bump into another one moments later, almost hitting it, and instead of tearing off the road, it ran ahead of me, a mass of hair, horns and hooves, snorting and galloping before charging into some bushes.

In the distance, I could see the road winding up near a hut, but the sun winked out as I made the next turn, and I lost sight of it. I carried on head down, dodging rocks on the unsealed road, puffing steam like a train, sweat trickling down my back and my father’s voice loud in my head. ‘Come on, son! Get the lead out of your pants!’ When I looked up again some time later, I realised something was amiss. I should’ve seen the hut by now. I scanned up the mountain, to the side, the left, the right, then… down.

‘Oh, no!’

There it was, the small roof of the hut some 200 metres below. I had missed it completely; understandable, as it was off the road and up a small track. I didn’t want to go all the way down again; it had been too much work just getting to here and, like the hell of renovating your house yourself, you only want to do it once!

I looked up. Surely the pass wasn’t that far away, but what then when I got there?

The more I vacillated, the darker it got. I decided it was now or never and set off for the pass.

In the darkness, I fumbled for my head-torch in my front pannier, found it and switched it on. The battery wasn’t working so well in the cold and it gave only a dim view of the road.

An hour later, the weather changed for the worse. A horrible wind screeched up the valley, its cold teeth tearing through every part of my body, nearly pushing the bike and me over. After an hour of this, I broke through to the pass and wished I’d gone back down to the hut: just over the edge of the road was a deep ravine dropping hundreds of feet into a cold black emptiness. I nearly shat myself.

Cautiously, I eased the bike down the bumpy descent to almost a walking pace, ice crunching under the wheels, mud sucking and pulling on the tyres. I envisaged myself going off the edge, straight over, squealing all the way ’til I disappeared into nothing. I cursed myself for being so stupid. Why didn’t I go back down?

But then, in the distance I saw a light that I first took to be a truck, but then turned out to be a candle in a window of an elongated hut. I stopped outside and knocked on the door.

‘Hello! Nǐhǎo?’

A group of men came bounding out with torches, and were soon helping me with my bike, taking me into the kitchen and sitting me down by the fire. They gave me hot water to drink. Soon the kitchen was filled with ten Chinese teenagers in ragged jackets. A big pot of mian stared at me. They all stopped chattering when a smallish man in a thin jacket crept in.

‘Hello. How are you?’

‘You speak English?’ I asked.

‘Little.’

His face was cold, expressionless.

‘I am a teacher,’ he said.

Through my pocket dictionary, we gained some idea of each other. I asked what they did up here, to which he brought in some roots and pointed to a packet of cough drops: Antiseptic. I could only imagine that they fossicked around these hills for roots for months at a time for a herbal-remedy company.

The noodles, slightly spicy, were served up with some potatoes and tiny bits of meat. The men all slurped their noodles noisily as if trying to outdo each other. No one spoke. On the wall hung racks of meat so old that when I first saw them I thought they were blocks of wood.

As more mian was slopped into my bowl, the teacher offered the kitchen for me to sleep in.

‘Xiè xiè (Thank you),’ I said.

But I soon discovered that they weren’t doing this as a gesture of kindness. One of the teenagers rubbed his fingers together and pointed to a word in the phrasebook.

‘Poor?’

‘Yes. China poor,’ said the teacher. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a one-yuan note.

‘Money?’ I asked.

‘Shì! (Yes!)’

He made a gesture to indicate eating, then one for sleeping, and then said, ‘Breakfast.’

‘Duōshăo qián? (How much?)’

‘Yìbăi.’

‘One hundred!’

It was $AU18, which doesn’t sound like much but was more than I had paid anywhere at any time in China. I had come in from the cold and the snow, and I felt like this guy was trying to take advantage of the fact.

‘Ten. I’ll give you ten.’

He waved his hand in disgust. ‘No.’

‘I go,’ I said and got up slowly. I put my jacket on, preparing to face the cold again.

‘Fourteen,’ he said.

‘Fourteen! Sure!’ I sat down.

‘No,’ he said, needing to clarify. ‘Forty.’

I got back up again. ‘Thirty.’

‘No.’

The wind creaked up against the glass. I took my jacket off, sat down and fumed, staring at the fire.

‘Okay. Forty,’ I said.

He went outside while some of the boys made up a bed – two bench-seats on logs. Eventually they left and I was alone to stew over what had happened. But then the decision to leave was made for me: one by one, starting with the cook, the boys slinked into the kitchen and made gestures indicating that I should give them some money, speaking in hushed whispers, ‘Shí yuan (ten yuan).’

‘Meiyou!’ I could see this going on all night, or worse, waking up with all my gear stolen. I got up.

The teacher came back in as I was putting on my jacket, gloves and helmet. I grabbed my bike.

‘Fourteen! Fourteen!’ He put his hand up.

‘I go. You just want my money.’

‘Yes.’

I stopped, took out my wallet and put a five-yuan note in his hand.

‘For mian.’

He took it at first but then gave it back to me, I guess to save face.

I got to the outside door; it was bolted. I tried opening it but couldn’t.

‘Open the door!’ Now all of them were around me, trying to get me to stay.

‘OPEN IT!’ I kicked at the door. In retrospect, this was a dumb thing to do – ten of them, one of me.

The cook jumped up and unbolted it and a cold brick of wind hit me in the face.

‘Well, 40 yuan is not really so bad…’ a cold voice piped up in my head. But I was determined to make a point.

I gritted my teeth and pushed the bike down the ramp and onto the snowy, slushy road, the wind biting and finding channels into my body. They yelled after me but I kept going until I could hear them no more.

The moon was out and I could at least see the road. Some way down, perhaps only a kilometre, I found an abandoned rock enclosure, perhaps once used for yaks.

I set up my tent, furious at my experience in the hut, thrusting the rods through the seams, my profanities echoing through the valley while the pale moon looked on, somewhat amused.

In the morning, I shook the ice off the tent. My water bottle had frozen and the tyres on my bike were covered in a thin veneer of ice. My fingers numbed as I struggled to get the tent and my gear onto the bike.

The sky was a clear blue, and I could see the whole valley of rolling dry hills and pined slopes. As I was taking in the view, I saw a cyclist plodding up the hill.

We stopped and chatted. It was the New Zealander I had heard about.

‘Feel like a bickie?’ he asked.

‘Sure.’

We sat by the side of the road and munched on his dwindling supply of biscuits. His name was Mark and he looked more like a biker than a cyclist – his hair was cropped, and he wore a Gortex zipped jacket and wind-stopper pants that hugged his thick, muscular legs.

Mark had cycled to China from England; he had recently travelled my original planned route from Pakistan through the Taklimakan Desert just days before the border to China closed, and he was now on his way back to New Zealand. As I listened to Mark’s stories, my grand detour back into India began to sound like a blessing in disguise.

‘It was a nightmare on that desert. Sandstorms, headwinds. I was doing five kilometres an hour. I had to hide behind rocks for ten hours. I wanted to die!’ He chomped into a biscuit. ‘Met some great people, but… never again. I can’t wait to get out of here and into Laos.’

Here I was, thinking I had done some pretty hard cycling. Mark made my experience seem like a ride round the block.

‘Don’t know anywhere I could get a new cassette? Chain’s rooted. Slippin’ all over the place.’

‘Kathmandu?’

‘Mm. Not where I’m goin’. I’ll see if I can get one in Kunming.’

He got on his bike.

‘You don’t wear a helmet?’ I asked.

‘Nah. Don’t tell my mother. See ya.’

He told me about conditions on the road ahead – they were rough – and we parted ways without once looking back. Soon, I was going to be very glad I had kept my helmet on.

The road was mostly downhill to Xiangcheng, but I wasted little time enjoying the glorious descent as I hurtled along, gritting my teeth with every pothole and bump. Suddenly, around a bend, a yak, startled by my rattling approach, darted out onto the road.

I clipped its hairy rump and fell hard onto the handlebars, and my ‘man bits’ hit the cross bar. The yak bolted down a ravine, crashing madly into the autumn foliage.

I’d had, as we’d say in Australia, ‘a stack with a yak’.[xxxiv]

But my problems weren’t over. Continuing on my merry 35 kilometre descent and whipping up speed, I suddenly felt the handlebars wrenched out of my hands and catapulted into a somersault before landing hard on my back on the hard earth. The bike tumbled next to me with a horrible clang.

Winded, I tried to breathe. ‘What… the… hell… happened?’

Instead of leaping up, I decided to just lie there by the side of the road and enjoy the warm sun on my face. That was until a Toyota Land Cruiser filled with smiling monks in maroon robes burled past and covered me in another layer of grit and dust. Ah, well. At least they waved.

I sat up, wiped the rings of dust from my eyes, examined the bike and discovered what had happened.

A bolt that had held the front pannier racks to the forks had sheared off. This had caused the crossbar over the front tyre to drop suddenly, lock up the front wheel, and flip me and the bike ‘arse over tit’.

I was lucky I didn’t break my arm or worse, my neck. Just as I was about to haul myself up, a raggedy goat herder who had witnessed the whole event picked me up, dusted me off, and rigorously moved my arms and head around as if road-testing a Muppet. He helped me load the front panniers onto the rear of my bike, and several hours later I limped into Xiangcheng. I was covered in dust, one arm on my sunglasses was missing, and halfway to town the front cable snapped and now poked the air.

Xiangcheng was another small town cast up high somewhere among dull brown mountains. It was dusty, and there wasn’t much about town for nightlife. The most it could offer was a restaurant that only sold bāozi (dumplings), and this was where I bumped into Jason again, the Canadian I’d met on the Tiger Leaping Gorge trek and Eli, the university student from Melbourne.

We downed platefuls of bāozi and copious amounts of booze. This brought out Jason’s dark side. Little did I know that he supported free trade, cuts to welfare, and the legitimacy of the United States as the world’s police. I was amazed that I liked him at all and we argued bitterly for what seemed like hours, until Eli, jumped in like a referee and yelled, ‘LET’S DO KARAOKE!’

We stumbled into a bar that was lit with fairy lights, sat at a table and ordered more beer. Women were dancing cheek-to-cheek, cigarettes hanging loosely from their lips, while a short woman in denim overalls wailed into a karaoke microphone.

‘Hello,’ said a woman in faded jeans and a woolly jumper as she sat down with us. Three fat Chinese men with beards and long hair sat in a corner, smoking and staring at the women. One of the women, sporting a sparkly red jacket, approached the men and led one of them down the hall into a dimly lit room. The heavy sweet odour of shit wafted up from the toilets outside.

I slowly realised that we weren’t in a karaoke bar at all. The woman next to me tugged at my sleeve and made that gesture that I’d been getting all this time in China – the good ol’ finger and thumb routine.

‘Sān băi nián (300 yuan – $AU40)?’

We got up and left.

Back at our hotel, we convinced the barman, a thin-moustached man, to open up the bar. This was no mean feat, given that it was two a.m. and we’d brought our crate of beer from the local grocery store. The bar man agreed and even put on the mirror ball. Jason immediately cranked up the CD player and it wasn’t long before Jason and I were yelling at each other in a high–spirited, joyous fashion above the morose tunes of Creep by Radiohead:

‘But why should I have paid?!’ I said, speaking of my stay in the hut full of mercenary root-fossickers on that near-fatal mountain pass. ‘I mean, if someone in the desert was desperate for water, would you charge them?’

‘But it was your choice.’

‘You chose to cycle in the dark. You chose to stop there. Why should he not ask for money from you? China is poor! If I were him, I’d try anything to get money out of you. Hey, this bit in the song is for you!’

And with that he got up and sang, pointing at me, ‘You’re a creep, you’re a weirdo! You don’t belong here!’

‘Ha-ha, Jason, ha-ha.’

In retrospect, he was probably right.

‘Ya gonna miss the climax! Come on, come on!’ Jason pulled up Eli and me and swung his arms around us. ‘SING!’

We did.

The barman joined us, not wanting to be left out, yelling whatever came to mind, it seemed.

We flopped back down and Jason and I continued our merry argument, then, when we went to leave, the barman wanted money for opening the bar. After arguing with me about how I should’ve given money to my ‘hosts’, Jason was surprisingly not as charitable as he professed.

‘Come on, Jason!’ I said. ‘We got him to open the bar and we drank our own beers!’

‘No! I’ll handle this!’ He jumped up and argued with the barman as if they were in a Chinese opera: walking off, swinging his arms up indicating disbelief, then walking back again and rattling off another volley of high Mandarin lilts. He took a drag of his cigarette, listened to the barman for a split second before beginning another round of high-armed gestures. Finally, Jason spun on his heel and rushed back to us with a triumphant smile.

‘It’s okay. WE DON’T HAVE TO PAY!’

We trampled noisily up the stairs to our room.

‘You see,’ he said with smug drunkenness, ‘I understand the “Chinese mind”.’

But shortly after we returned to our room, and while Jason was taking a piss, the barman burst into our room and started yelling at us.

Eli was quick to act: he thrust a beer into the barman’s hand. I stuffed a cigarette in his mouth. He baulked for a moment at the sudden gifts but then took a drag of the cigarette and stood, posing as he did so, showing off his masculine drinking ability, his beer bottle almost vertical as he gulped like a choking cormorant.

‘What the fuck is this?’ Jason had returned. ‘What the fuck is he doing here?’

‘How do we know?’ I said. ‘You’re the one who understands the “Chinese mind”!’

‘Ah…’ and for the next two hours, he nattered to the barman; Eli and I had passed out on our respective beds. Finally, the barman left and all was quiet… until Jason got up an hour later to catch his bus to Litang.

‘See you there, ass-holes!’ he baited us like he was Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda, and stumbled out of the room.

Eli and I staggered out of bed some hours later, worse for wear. My bike looked like it had also been howling all night. The front pack-rack hung askew in the cold morning air. With the help of one of the English-speaking receptionists, Eli and I went in search of someone to drill out the sheared bolt. Sheet-metal workers turned up with empty help; no one had a drill-bit small enough. The receptionist vanished and left me to figure it out.

Fortunately, a man in a crumpled jacket took me to a bus workshop, where engines, differentials, bolts, wheels and chassis were strewn across the oil-stained dirt yard. Mechanics covered in grease knocked bolts into engine blocks, while another whacked a sledgehammer onto, of all things, a printing press. One of them, fitted out in a tracksuit and with a cigarette welded to his lips, came over and looked at the bike then laughed. He examined the wreckage of my front rack, then got out his electric welder and tried to zap away, but it wouldn’t take. I could hear Uros’s wisdom whistling up the valley: ‘Ah, because it is aluminium!’

Not easily dissuaded, the mechanic made a steel plate around the torn eyelets and welded a bolt to the steel forks. For an hour’s work and less than two dollars, the problem was solved.

‘You are a God!’ I exclaimed, almost genuflecting.

He blew smoke from his fag, walked over to a bus axel with his welding gun, bent over and unwittingly exposed the cleft of his bum.

29

XIANGCHENG – SANTWAY – LITANG

November

On a cold mountain pass flapping with prayer flags, I stopped, took off my shoes and massaged my feet. I couldn’t feel them anymore and they looked like they had been mummified. A van whizzed past and skidded to a halt. An overweight man with a white beard jumped out, ran up to me, then whipped out his camera and madly clicked away.

‘You are at 4298 metres!’ he exclaimed in a sharp German accent, and shoved an altimeter in my face.

‘Oh, hey—’

‘I am doing a book on ze source of ze Yangtze River. Last I did ze Yunnan Province. Goodbye.’

He shook my hand, then ran back to the van, jumped in and sped off.

I had only cycled 11 kilometres that morning, most of it uphill, and I was freezing my head off. The day before, I had cycled 54 kilometres of undulating roads from Xiangcheng through endless pine forests that gave way to rocky barren hills. I had stayed the night in a road-workers’ hut (quite a large one), where the husband and wife fed me up on noodles and beef as we sat in the light of a small fire.

In the middle of the night, I desperately needed to relieve myself. I couldn’t find the toilets and as my hosts had gone to bed I decided to relieve myself outside. Just as I was about to squat I heard a savage growl. I turned round to see the guard dog running towards me from the other end of the yard. I leapt up and ran to the door, when there was a yelp. The dog had reached the end of its tether, so to speak. Its barking woke up my host who didn’t look pleased at all when he saw me with my pants half down.

I was neither well nor in the best of spirits. I was tired, and I looked it. Filth crept into everything in a Tibetan, ground-in way. Why wash, the Tibetan logic seemed to be, when you’re likely to get ill?

The only compensation was a brilliant blue clear sky, making the mountains look as if they had been cookie-cut. Soon I was in Santway, some 85 kilometres north of my drunken night with Jason, and ended the day in a room above a Tibetan restaurant. The room was clean, timbered and very comfortable, though no one would have thought that when looking at the restaurant itself. It was walled with newspaper to keep the draught from cutting through the gaps of slatted timber. I dozed off, snoozing under a pink duvet that smelt of rancid yak butter, embedded from hundreds of yawning Tibetan breaths.

Santway had a Wild West feeling about it. The streets were wide, unsealed and raw, and dust devils whirled around the skirts of both Tibetan grandmothers and young, broad-smiling monks. As I sat in a restaurant and watched men swagger in, some in wide-brimmed hats, I waited for the sound of spurs and the spectacle of a bar fight. Other locals wore fur hats and big coats, and stood outside looking at me and at my bike while kids bounced bottles off the tyres.

The owner brought me a large bowl of stew comprised of potatoes, meat and strange herbs the shape of sun wheels. As I ate, I was suddenly struck with cramps. I asked for the toilets and they waved me to a shed way out back. I squatted down on two boards over a hole and relieved myself when I heard a din of squeals. I looked down. I was above a pigpen! They didn’t sound too happy. How could they be? I never ate pork in China again. ‘Hey, waiter, this pork tastes like—’

But it would be my baldness that opened up a new experience for me. Passing oblong stone houses with jutting carved beams and multi-coloured window frames, I arrived at three white stupas about a kilometre from town. A cacophony of drums and horns flurrying and blasting away suddenly caught my attention. Nestled at the foothills of a mountain I noticed a small Tibetan monastery. I followed the sound and snuck in and stood behind a pillar observing young monks sitting down and chanting over aged scriptures while older monks sat on platforms near tall yellow candles.

For all its formality, the scene had a very relaxed air about it. Monks drank their butter tea, hacked off chunks of cheese and nibbled at round loaves of bread as if they were reading the sports pages in a tabloid.

Catching sight of me, an older monk walked over, and I expected to be escorted out. But instead, he took off his maroon robe and put it around my shoulders, then offered me a seat by the horn players. I sat down. He pointed to my bald head and gave it the thumbs–up, as did the younger monks sitting next to me, smiling and laughing.

One of the young monks offered me a five-foot-long silver horn to play, intimating that he would let me know when I had to blow. But it seemed fairly obvious: whenever the drums were beaten in a quick frenzy, the horns followed suit, a blast of noise.

The monks gave me the cue. Now, they didn’t know that I played the  trumpet for four years as a teenager, so I wasn’t just going to give them the same fluff they were doing. Oh, no! I was going to set this place on fire! (Probably not the best thing to say to monks à la Cultural Revolution). I let it rip and out came something that was supposed sound upbeat – ‘Oh, When The Saints’ – but ended up sounding like a yak rolling down a ravine. The monks snapped around, mouths wide.

Oh, shit! Have I made some terrible faux pas?

Thankfully, they all burst out laughing.

Ah, Buddhism. What a way cool relig–

A young monk next to me snatched the trumpet from me and collapsed it like a telescope. Perhaps I really had upset some people. But no, prayers were now over and everyone was leaving. Soon the monks gathered around me and outside we took photographs, arms round each other’s shoulders, laughing and smiling. They then ushered me into a small kitchen and plied me with butter tea (which tasted not unlike my own urine) just to make sure that I would never come back and mess up their trumpet playing again!

I’m joking of course. They were wonderful and despite not being able to speak each other’s language, we smiled, nodded, laughed and simply enjoyed each other’s company. It had been a gift to meet these wonderful monks.

As I walked back up the dusty road toward Santway, I stopped and looked back. Tibetan women washed their clothes in the afternoon light while their filthy children played, one running off with the empty Sprite bottle from my jacket pocket. On a beam hanging from the monastery a mandala billowed in the breeze, while an old Tibetan couple pushed a giant prayer wheel. It had been a glorious day.

As night fell, and back at the restaurant, I couldn’t help myself: I had to teach a Tibetan truck driver to ‘James Brown’, like I had with Lanarge and Manarge in India. The truck driver picked up the moves immediately, shaking and twisting his hips and yelling ‘HEY-YYYY!’ as he played to the audience – a smiling woman, her husband with hat and bung eye, their eight-year-old daughter, the cook, and a sweet 15-year-old hotel assistant with a long plaits and rosy cheeks.

The room was filled with laughter. How happy everyone seemed, sitting by the fire, effortlessly chatting and drinking tea.

Just as everyone was feeling cosy like one big, happy family, the generator was cranked up, the video-CD player was switched on, and the moment stopped. Kids fell to the floor, cheekbones slouched on fists, eyes glazed over and mouths yawned open as an ultra-violent Hong Kong film tore down the warm curtain of comfort.

I went off to bed, feeling alone yet again.

* * *

Out of Santway, I set off with eight boiled eggs (trying to get them boiled was a mission – the cook nearly fried them in their shells in a big wok). The terrain was littered with boulders and large stones, and small pine trees clung to the steep slopes. Shrubs had stopped growing by the edge of the approaching pass, frightened off by the sheets of frigid air screaming up the valley. Ice, in the permanent shadows of the mountain, bled icicles like old men’s beards.

I spent the day on the nude hills. There was absolutely nothing out here, and the sense of total isolation and loneliness seemed all too real, so empty, that sometimes I would stop and scream, just to confirm that I existed. Other times I burst into tears, frightened by my own insignificance amongst the towering mountains (actually, it might’ve been also that I saw numerous large climbs ahead of me!).

Traffic was rare except for a convoy of squat People’s Liberation Army tanker trucks, 50 or so, filing past, leaving me with their diesel breath. I saw this convoy nearly every day; when I beat them to small towns they cheered, and when they beat me up the long inclines… they cheered even louder!

By late afternoon I was struggling up a five kilometre pass, a tail wind freezing my arse off. I stopped and let my body sink over the handlebars, the will to keep going smashed on the barren rocky landscape. I got off and pushed. When I did eventually get to the pass, I saw, to my delight, a road descending into the valley below. At the end of it was a small town, Litang.

I flew down the road, my bike smacking heavily in protest under the weight of my luggage. I popped over irregular bumps, stones and tarred lumps, and nearly lost everything when the road dropped into a huge trough. The land had given way to heavy rain and, instead of re-levelling the road, road builders had simply re-tarred it. It was like riding into a roller-coaster dip and the bike shot into the air. We landed hard but then I had to immediately slam on the brakes as an overloaded truck whipped around a switchback on the wrong side of the road. I threw the bike along an embankment, missing the truck by inches.

After recovering, I took another turn, the free-hub screaming as the bike hit 70 kilometres on the odometer. On a downward straight I came face to face with a police car dozily climbing up the hill. I wondered whether I should stop but then I thought at this speed, by the time they turn around, I’ll be in another province.

I put my head down; the bar grips howling like a dive-bombing Stuka; the police car was in my sights.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!

I flared past the police car’s windscreen, leaving both officers with their mouths wide open like carnival circus clowns. I looked back. They had stopped, but then with a jolt, kept going.

After an hour of this bouncing madness, I had to stop and shake my wrists out from the pain of squeezing the brake levers. I leant over and touched the sidewall of the rim. It was red hot. I got off and checked the pads. I had already gone through two front pads on this trip and, because of an uneven adjustment, had dished the rim on the front wheel. I gave the pads a quick tweak and continued on.

Beyond the tree-lined hills, I could see Litang in the distance, fed by an open, brown, lonely road. It was arid; I could not see crops of any sort, only yaks dotting the vastness.

Litang was a dusty old town with wide streets – another Santway but with more people and one of China’s highest towns at 4014 metres (even higher than Lhasa). Chinese business abounded, lured by financial incentives to resettle here. I was the only foreigner among rough-and-ready-looking men sporting leather jackets, long hair and silver daggers around their waists as they swaggered down the streets. I was in what was once known as Kham (the Chinese renamed it Sichuan). Not surprisingly, the people here were called Khambas, a sub-group of nomadic Tibetans that inhabited the highland plateau from the foothills of Sichuan to the high altitudes of Lhasa. Unrivalled in horsemanship, the Khambas had for over a thousand years maintained a reputation as fearsome warriors, fighting other clans, robbing settlements and trade caravans. Lastly, they had a 17-year war against the People’s Liberation Army.

So why, in all my infinite wisdom, did I end up throwing one of these beefy warriors through a chair?

Well… I was staying at the International Hotel – a dusty, beaten place housing sour Chinese door-bitches who begrudgingly opened the door to my room (they were the only ones with the keys) – when familiar thumping techno music woke me up from a long afternoon sleep.

‘The Vengaboys?’ I groaned. I just had to investigate.

In a bar two doors down from the hotel, women danced with each other while Tibetan men in James Dean-style leather jackets looked on. They invited me over, and it wasn’t long before I was plied with drink. Conspiratorially, we repeated an understood fact.

‘China no good,’ whispered a wide-shouldered man. ‘Dalai Lama very good.’

One of them looked around and put his finger to his mouth.

‘Ssshhhhhsshh! China no good. SSSHHHHHSSHH!’

‘Yes, of course,’ I agreed. ‘SSSHHHHHSSHH!’

‘SSSHHHHHSSHH!’

He looked around again and made a gun gesture with his fingers. ‘China. BOOM!’

I was surprised to learn that the Khambas, with their war-like reputation, were some of the most devoutly religious of all Tibetans. At one time, they had one of the largest monasteries in Kham, but it was destroyed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, along with 250 others in Tibet. The Chöede Gompa is one of the remaining monasteries in Litang and was built for the third Dalai Lama. When I visited the monastery, a tall statue of Buddha towered inside, rumoured to have been carried on foot all the way from Lhasa itself.

Now thoroughly drunk, I encouraged the men to dance with the women. Like schoolboys they shrank away, but I persisted, and soon they were all laughing and giggling while I showed them a few dance moves.

And then I did it.

I made the mistake of trying to get the biggest man in the bar to dance. There he sat, beer in hand, dagger at knee, dragging on a tiny cigarette as he observed the melee with squat indifference.

‘Come on!’ I grabbed him by the hand, which was the size of a rock and required both of mine to grip. I tried to lever the brute out of his chair, but he remained seated, shaking his head.

‘Ah, come on!’ I said and tried again, this time throwing my back into it. He came up halfway out of the chair then fell heavily back onto it. CRUNCH! The leg of the plastic chair split clean off, and he went right over with it.

Shit.

I helped him up. Thankfully, he didn’t look overly upset.

The madam of the bar, wide-shouldered and with a face like a shovel, made a gesture that indicated I was not welcome back. When I motioned to protest my innocence, two of her heavies pointed to the door. I followed their aim out into the frigid dark air.

30

XINDUQIAO – KANGDING

Mid-November

I stopped behind a stonewall and sat down, hiding from an icy headwind. I took out some munchies, which were now a sad collection of broken sesame-and-peanut brittle tagged with bits of yesterday’s baked potatoes and old newspaper. Still, this didn’t put me off. I gnawed round the paper and, when that was gone, I whipped out a plastic-wrapped frankfurter sausage.

Perhaps I was eating a little too eagerly for, when I looked up, six men were staring at me. An old man broke from the group and started making sucking noises at me.

‘Chá?’

‘What?’

‘Chá?’

‘Oh… right! Teeeeaa!’

He motioned towards his garage, and sat me by the fire, where he gave me some rusty hot water with black bits floating in it. Again I was in the situation of only being able to explain the rudiments of my trip and unable to gain information about my hosts. Though, this didn’t stop me from becoming noisier. I had somehow fallen into the habit of articulating each action with a sound effect. Stir-fry was ‘WHOOOH!’; to boil was a gurgling sound; September 11 was ‘BOOM!’ then ‘AARRGG!’ What got me, and I shouldn’t have been surprised, was that they repeated it back at me.

‘So, that was WHOOSH, GURGLE, CLICK, CLICK! What about an entrée of WHHHAAH-BOOINNG?’

I was some way out of the town of Xinduqiao, freezing in the hard air. I had stayed in a small restaurant-cum-hostel the night before, trying to sleep. The sudden barks and jingling of chains from big woolly dogs drew startled screams from drunken men stumbling through the cold darkness. The men slurred back and threw rocks. The dogs barked even more.

Early that night in the small but friendly hostel, I alternated between writing in my journal and watching a young Tibetan boy repeatedly whack his mother on the head with a set of keys while she tried to knit. On his last attempt, she caught him on the downswing and whacked him back. Oh, how that boy howled! I got steadily drunker, my notes becoming increasingly illegible, while a group of Tibetan boys stood behind me, watching every pen stroke, trying to decipher the scrawl that was now somewhere between bent English and Arabic script.

I didn’t have much cycling to go. Chushi, the Tibetan guide in Zhongdian, had been wrong: the distance to Chengdu was 140 kilometres less than he had scrawled on his map. It wiped off three days of cycling, much to my weary relief.

The morning was fresh and icy. Leaving my garage hosts behind, I jumped back on my bike with gusto. I smiled and sang as a headwind froze my teeth. Well, actually, I whined, bitched and complained all the way. Somehow that helped. I couldn’t believe that Mark, the New Zealand cyclist whose biscuits I had shared, had put up with these kinds of conditions for six weeks.

An hour later, I was hiding from the wind under the veranda of a shack while the owner, a squat Tibetan woman, fed me noodles.

While I downed the noodles, I watched a sleeping duck being woken by the curious snout of a hairy black pig. The duck flapped up and quacked, then spun round and bit the pig on the snout. The pig squealed and ran across the road, where it settled into eating potato skins that had been strewn around.

Two Isuzu cars stopped, and the Tibetan woman started hosing down the brakes. A fat man with gold teeth got out, slapped me on the shoulder and (surprise, surprise) made lewd gestures, indicating that I should screw my kind hostess with some degree of savagery.

The woman squirted water at him, laughing, before going back to hosing down his steaming brakes.

After moving on, I only had three kilometres to climb, but it took me an hour to get to the top of the pass, the wind so strong I ended up getting off and pushing. Once I was over the pass, a huge peak – the Gongga Shan, 7556 metres – rose above me like a big blue-white tooth. The valley ahead opened up before me; it was already dusted with the beginnings of winter snow, which was now falling and hitting my face like bullets as I bounced down the road.

Ahead, a convoy of army petrol trucks – the same ones that had passed me on my way to Litang – was winding its way down the mountain as if being slowly digested by the road. It squeezed along until it was expelled on to the flat, open spaces of the Sichuan Province.

I zoomed past. The soldiers cheered. I waved back.

At a small town, I stopped for lunch, groaning at a mountain that I would inevitably have to climb and its endless switchbacks. I ordered some bāozi and as I sat outside on a rickety stool, I could hear two women arguing in the square – one a head taller than the other. This drew a curious crowd: some standing holding their plastic bags of shopping, rooted to the spot; others stopping their cars. Perhaps the village had been waiting to see this spat for some time, and I imagined that these women had been having some feud for months or years and it was all coming to a head now. Was it ‘This is the last time you take my stall space!’ or ‘This is the last time you undercut me on noodles!’ or ‘You stay away from my husband!’?

Whatever it was, the women put on a good show, not at all shy of ‘losing face’. The pitch of their voices rose and fell, when the smaller woman said something in a sharp staccato burst that tipped the taller woman into a red fury. The taller woman launched herself at the smaller woman who held her ground and they collided and struggled in some kind of aggressive Tai Chi dance. Then they stopped, continued arguing, fingers jabbing at each other. The strangest thing about all this was that there was an old woman sitting between them, caught in the crossfire, and pretending to be oblivious while knitting an orange scarf. Was this fight over who caused this woman to drop a stitch?

Eventually, the taller one was dragged away by another older woman leaving the crowd to laugh and yell abuse at her.

Up the hills and down switchbacks, I made Kangding by dusk. Snow continued to fall, now more heavily. My left shoulder was on fire, my feet were dead and I could barely feel my cheeks.

Kangding was bigger than I had imagined. It was a mini-city with high–rises. Two rivers – the Yala He and Zheduo He – surged through the centre of the town. I had no idea where to sleep, so I searched for a hotel. I tried one place and was allowed entry initially, until two Chinese men in leather jackets hulked past and told the women at reception that I had to go somewhere else.

The women explained this eagerly to me in Chinese, and, when I didn’t understand that, they both thought it prudent to write it on a notepad for me – in Chinese!

‘Well,’ I said, smiling and shrugging my shoulders at the note. ‘It’s all… Chinese to me!’

I cycled through the main drag alongside the river, then made a left turn down a less busy street and found myself in front of a hotel. Staff members were bringing themselves bowls of hot casserole from across the courtyard, snow sprinkling their black coats like heavy dandruff. Too tired to fight the price or look for somewhere else, I coughed up 80 yuan ($AU20) for a room I hadn’t even seen. A surly woman with a chunk of keys led me upstairs to a room containing two beds, a television and… a hot shower!

I hadn’t washed for three weeks, and this was the one thing I had been thinking about for days. I let the warm water roll over my face, caressing me as I let those 20 days of cycling grit and cold roll down the plughole. I lay on the bed with the aim of resting briefly, but then awoke suddenly the next morning, looking wildly around the room as if I had been robbed.

31

KANGDING – CHENGDU

Late November

BAM!

I was in the air, flying over the handlebars for a brief, perplexing moment.

WHOMP!

I smashed hard onto the concrete. I rolled over in agony; a sick, sweaty pain. I looked up to see a Chinese man wearing glasses and a suit cycle past, dodging my sprawled mess as if a spread-eagled foreigner were something he came across every day.

A guard waltzed out of his booth and helped me up, and, like the goat herder I encountered on the way to Xiangchen, started moving all my joints around. A small crowd from a nearby restaurant sauntered over and began talking in soothing tones.

What I had hit was a ten-foot pole stretched across the road, just one foot off the ground. I had attempted to pass through a multi-lane tollway, and as with many I had passed through before, I had made for the far lane, the one reserved for cyclists. It was unusual that they had blocked it at all. Adding to the impact was the fact that I had sped up, making use of the flat road towards Chengdu.

As if to re-enact my fall in Mini-Me style, from out of nowhere a toddler came running up to the pole as if trying to tackle a high jump. He went straight over and hit his head on the concrete then wailed uncontrollably. His mother came rushing out from a shop and picked him up.

The guard indicated that I should have gone around the lane like everyone else.

‘Yes… I know… but I didn’t see it…’ I said, dazed. My wrist was killing me; I hoped it wasn’t broken.

This was the fourth time I had come off the bike in two weeks: the broken rack, the yak, and the day before when I had prepared to stop outside a tunnel to put on my head torch on. As I slowed, I clipped a gutter and ended up flat on the ground just in time for my friends, the convoy of army petrol trucks, to drive past my head, missing it by a few feet. They, somewhat predictably, cheered.

Scarier than having my head turned into ratatouille was a tunnel: it was four kilometres long with no lights. It had been built to circumvent the constant landslides caused by every skerrick of land on these mountains being cleared and over-farmed.

My head torch led the way through the darkness. I was terrified of being squashed by the big trucks that growled past me, honking and flashing their lights. But there was something worse out there… at the last second, I dodged a large hole in the road. It was a drain without a cover and was so wide I could have disappeared completely into it. As I continued, I could see that none of the drains were covered, and I passed each one nervously.

But I still wasn’t out of trouble. I rode straight out of the tunnel and was forced to dodge rocks that were flying out in front of me. I braked heavily and a man shouted out from above. Workers above the tunnel were throwing rocks the size of my head – they were widening the road.

From there, I had a nice, breezy descent – until I rode straight into this pole across the road. Rubbing my arm, I picked the bike up and continued on.

Just to make sure that my arm wasn’t broken, when I arrived in Chengdu – a huge mega-city – I went into a well-trodden backpacker bar, Paul’s Oasis, and decided it was high time to get drunk and pick up women. That would, I figured, be the best thing for it.

However, and to my surprise, I had to dodge Jason first, who had just returned from Jiuzhaigou National Park and was in another of his precocious moods, drinking and smoking his face off.

‘Oh, it’s you!’

‘Yes, it’s me. Buy me a beer, you cheap Canuck. And give me one of your cigarettes.’

‘Fucking convict!’ He disappeared to the bar.

I got talking to a beautiful young woman, Stella. Alas, my hopes were dashed in an instant.

‘I’m celibate,’ she said, her flat Australian accent cutting me down.

‘Celibate?’ I said with a measure of disbelief. I cleared my throat. ‘You know, there’s a cure for that affliction. I know a guy…’

‘You don’t understand; I’m a born-again Christian. I’m not having sex anymore, until I get married. I haven’t had sex for two years and I feel so much better for it.’

‘How is that… possible?!’

I explained this to Jason.

‘What? She’s celibate?’ He took a long drag of his cigarette, and then, with some horror in his voice, ‘It doesn’t grow over, does it?’

Inspired by another species that refused to fuck, the next day I went and checked out the pandas.

I squeezed through the piles of Chengdu traffic and the grey smudges of fog out to the Giant Panda Breeding Centre. A large bronze statue of a panda stood out the front. It looked like the ghoul out of the movie Scream.

Inside I walked through the Giant Panda Museum and viewed one of the many dioramas of the natural world. It seemed that the artist they had employed to do the ‘life sized’ models of animals hadn’t quite worked out what ‘sense of proportion’ meant: elephants had been carved into odd brick shapes, sabre-tooth tigers had wooden poles for teeth, and a moose had huge hands for antlers while the rest of its body was the size of a rabbit.

Outside one of the enclosures, I bumped into an attractive American woman, Zoe. She was a zookeeper from the Atlanta Zoo and was here for a four-month term to study the behaviour of pandas. A beeper went off every minute to tell her to tick a box with various codes on her clipboard.

‘“LV” means leave,’ she said. ‘That means that if this one moves at least a metre away, it has left the group.’

I looked at the pandas. They weren’t exactly energetic – two slept and huddled up to each other in a corner while another lay slumped in a tree. Only one panda was walking up and down the enclosure; it had a strange gait, its hind legs lumbering behind it, swaying, and swinging like they would’ve been more suited to a gorilla.

I skipped the preliminaries and got straight to the matter.

‘I hear they copulate 25 times an hour.’

‘Yeah. I’m not sure how many times, but it’s quick, which isn’t much fun for the female. During oestrus, the females go crazy, displaying behaviour to entice the males.’

‘What kind of behaviour?’ I recalled a photograph in the Giant Panda Museum of pandas copulating, the male drooling over the female, smiling to the camera like a 1970s porn star. The female looked out the window, bored.

‘The females do this by lifting their tail up and sitting on the male. The males are a bit slow on this. I mean, the females are way ahead of them. But they eventually get the point.’

‘In the museum,’ I began, ‘it said that the cause of pandas’ low reproduction rate is because the male’s penis is short. Is that the reason it’s hard to get them to mate?’

‘No. They need behavioural interaction. The zoos are leaving the pandas longer with their mothers so they can learn. In the wild the males reside over an area of females in what are now isolated pockets of their original habitat. There are only 1000 wild pandas that exist there. The copulation is very brief. Like giraffes. They’ve really only got one shot at it.’

She continued writing notes.

‘So…’ I smiled. ‘What are you doing later? Do you want to go for a drink?’

‘LV,’ she said, not looking up from her clipboard.

Back at Paul’s Oasis that night, Jason convinced me that I should go to the Jiuzhaigou National Park, some 330 kilometres north east of Chengdu, back into the cold and into the Min Shan Mountain range.

‘It’s like the Rockies – snow-capped mountains and incredible turquoise lakes. It’s the most amazing, wonderful, beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. It is by far the best thing I have seen on my entire trip.’

Fearing that I was missing out on something, I whizzed up there on the bus the next morning to see the most amazing, wonderful, beautiful thing Jason had ever seen.

Entry into the park was expensive: a hefty 80 yuan to get through the gate, and then another 30 yuan for the gas-powered bus. Inspired by my last attempt at Tiger Leaping Gorge, I decided to sneak in.

I looked furtively around the gate, and saw no one. I slinked past the tourist shops, down a lane next to some nondescript buildings, and up an embankment. When I got to the top, I stumbled across a barbed-wire fence. I dropped on to my back and scurried under the fence, commando-style. Once up, I found myself behind a camouflaged hut; I looked around, and saw no one, so walked on my merry way.

Moments later, a mini-van whooshed up, and two guards jumped out and bundled me in while I bumbled at them pathetically. They walked me to the ticket office and made me buy a ticket. But, I was able to wrangle at least one thing for free: the bus.

I snuck a ride on the next gas-powered bus, which was crammed with Chinese tourists. I was finally able to see what Jason had been crowing about; I took one look and headed straight back on the next bus back to Chengdu.

Jason was still in the bar.

‘Pine trees!’ I barked.

‘What?’

‘Pine trees! You made me go all the way up there to see pine trees. Do you know how many pine trees I’ve seeeen on this trip?!’

‘Hey, don’t forget the turquoise lakes.’

‘Whatever.’

‘Man, you didn’t have to go.’

‘Oh, I know. But you made it sound like something I should see, something I shouldn’t miss.’

He shoved a bottle of beer in my hand and threw a cigarette at me. ‘If I buy you another beer, will you shut up?’

I, of course, was being facetious (I actually stayed for two days). Jiuzhaigou National Park was incredible and extraordinary, a fact not lost on UNESCO who deemed it a World Heritage Site in 1992 and a World Biosphere Reserve in 1997. Not to be outdone, the China National Tourism Administration gave it AAAAA for its scenic beauty that has also helped to attract almost 7000 people to visit the park each day.

And you can see why.

Apart from its tree covered mountains (a rare sight in China) now in their brilliant autumn oranges and reds, there are over one hundred turquoise lakes. Brilliant in colour and transparency, the lakes are heavily calcified due to the eons of glacial melts and this area once being under water millions of years ago.

The air was crisp and clear, and as I watched water run through the trees between the lakes, a peculiar sight, I thought it a shame that so much of China’s environment had been lost for the sake of the economy – like everywhere else around the world.

* * *

Recovering from a hangover, I thought the best way to soothe it would be with the soft lilts of Chinese Sichuan Opera. How wrong I was.

As my guide, Wu, and myself locked our bikes, a piercing falsetto ricocheted out of the theatre and shot me in the head. To make sure I felt worse, we went in whereupon my senses were assaulted by garish costumes, crashing symbols and, if that wasn’t enough to induce a migraine, clappers – who sat off stage banging wooden blocks in time with the actors’ movements.

Many of the patrons were quite old. Those at the front sat at tables with peanuts, sunflower seeds, and jars of tea. Most of the patrons wore Maoist dress: blue uniforms and caps.

Nearly all the men smoked, in that special Chinese way. They placed the cigarette at the bottom of their index finger, and then stuffed their whole hand over their mouth and cheek, letting the cigarette lie lazily on their lip. From a distance it looked like they were smacking themselves slowly in the face.

An old man sat next to me. Wu told me that this man was 90 years old, but he looked only 70. He reminded me of a big, fat, happy beetle. He had yellow–brown skin, sunken eyes, a plump face and long, willowy grey eyebrows that hung just above his cheeks and twitched up and down like antennae. I could only imagine the stories this old man could have told about the things China had experienced during his lifetime – the surge of communism, the Cultural Revolution, and now the razor embrace of China’s free market as it joined the World Trade Organization.

Wu explained that the story was about a man and woman who were not allowed to see each other.

‘This was feudal time,’ she said. ‘Very strict.’

Like a Shakespearean comedy, the young man hid himself in the box of his darling heart’s bedroom, only to be caught out by her mother. It was difficult to stay involved in the story, and not just because of the language barrier, but because of the techno music from the roller-skating rink next door shuddering through the performance. Techno was infesting every space in Asia, thumping and bopping its way through glass and brick. I hated it.

Afterwards, Wu helped me check my bike into the Chengdu train station.

It wasn’t the way I had envisioned my entry into Beijing – sailing in on a rickety train – but my Chinese visa was about to expire.

Wu raced from counter to counter filling in forms. She seemed just as confused as me, and looked quite agitated with the process.

‘In China,’ she frowned, ‘always big problem!’

32

THE GREAT WALL – BEIJING

Early December

There I was on the Huánghuā Wall, one of the many derelict sections of the Great Wall of China, hiking up the crumbling steps past small bushes, plants, gravel and broken rock, sometimes stooping, sometimes clambering with my hands, when I turned around to Maria and announced, ‘You know, I will take my gear off.’

For some time, there has been a myth that the Great Wall of China could be seen from the moon. I think what the initiator of the myth really meant to say was that on the Great Wall of China you could be seen to be mooning and right now, I was about to demonstrate this point.

‘Oh, I know you’ll get your gear off,’ Maria said confidently. ‘And I don’t want to be anywhere near you when you do!’

I had met Maria at the Jinghua Hotel in Beijing. Born in Australia to parents from Hong Kong, she worked in the UK as an occupational therapist. Though she may have looked Chinese and spoke much more Mandarin than me, she could not make herself understood by the locals. Surprisingly, my tiny grasp of the language had brought better results.

Sexual tension had been brewing between us since a brief kiss in a taxi the night before, and now we listened to each other’s heaving breaths, which was slowly driving us – and I hate to say it – up the wall.

Mooning the Great Wall of China had seemed a good idea at the time, a streak across the peak, a funny photo to send to friends, a bizarre way of flirting with Maria (‘Look! I’ve got nads! Catch me, Maria, Catch me!’). But maybe I was stepping over the line.

I had cycled alone to the wall, some 60 kilometres north of Beijing’s metropolis, which had abruptly vanished into rolling hills and farmland after I crossed the last of the four ring roads that encircled the city. Maria took the bus and met me later in the day.

When I first arrived in Beijing some days earlier, I was relieved to find that it was not the polluted hellhole I had envisaged. Instead, a clear blue winter sky stretched across the city, perhaps an early sign of the government’s commitment to cleaning up the city in preparation for the 2008 Olympics. Factories had been closed and moved out of town and most buses and taxis were being converted to natural gas.

Beijing appeared prosperous, rich and, as I dodged other cyclists in my cycle lane, crammed with traffic. In the past 20 years, vehicle traffic in the capital had grown from virtually nothing to a staggering 1.5 million.[xxxv]

In simpler days, bicycles were the prime mode of transportation in Beijing, as in most places in Asia. I remembered seeing documentaries of blue-pyjama-clad Chinese workers braving the cold on their single-speed Flying Pigeon bicycles en masse, overtaken by the odd solitary truck. It was hard to imagine that now.

Having said that, during my time in Beijing, I found that it was one of the easiest and safest places for a cyclist. The roads were good, well-sealed and flat, and a fenced lane kept wayward cars at bay. Like Kunming, Beijing was being completely rebuilt and modernised. Bars and nightclubs were hiccupping up along spruced-up boulevards while old Chinese markets were being pulled down to make way for concrete shopping centres, taking the enticing aroma of Peking duck and the steam of coriander noodle soups with them.

As I rode out of Beijing, new high-rises were sprouting up and generations of tenants were being ordered to vacate their homes in the hútòng (narrow laneways) in less than 30 days or spend time in the city’s oldest estates, the gulags. Hútòngs were old-style housing originally built by the Mongol Yuan dynasty in the 13th century after Genghis Khan had destroyed much of Beijing. Some hútòngs have been given protected status but most seemed doomed for development. Meanwhile, on the outskirts of Beijing, new living areas were mushrooming – grass lawns, sculptured ponds, three-bedroom bungalows – in a Chinese version of the ’burbs.

I carried on up into the craggy brown mountains, following an undulating road past a quarry until I stopped at a frozen reservoir. Being from a place where a bit of light frost on your lawn was enough to draw comment from the neighbours (‘Wow! Look how your footprints leave holes!’), I had never seen a frozen lake. I began to think about slipping around on it.

To test the ice’s thickness, I picked up a rock and threw it. It bounced, making a loud dull sound like a bird flying into a window. I grabbed a bigger rock and this time it broke through, leaving a large, horrible hole.

There goes that idea.

I got back on the bike and didn’t stop cycling until I reached Huanghuacheng, a town made up of a small collection of bungalows below the Great Wall.

At a small restaurant-cum-hotel, I took a bed in a dorm room occupied by a band of Irish lads. Well, I was sharing it with their stuff, anyway. They were heading off to sleep on the wall for the night and teased me when I refused to go with them

‘Come on! You’ll love it. We’ll have a few beers, fawkin’ brilliant!’

‘Yes, a few very cold beers.’ He persisted, until I told him my windswept adventures. And so into the night the three of them went, sleeping bags and beer under their arms. I curled up under the blankets and went to sleep, warm as toast.

The following day, I saw it. The Great Wall trailed over the mountains, looking like a dragon’s back across each ridge, bumped and curved. The hills had a brown-grey hue, and already snow sat quietly in the shadows in scattered patches. Maria pointed to the edge of the wall.

‘What about here?’ she said, looking for a perfect spot for my nude run. We were in a corner. I looked behind us to see if there was anyone around.

‘I can do this on my own; I have a tripod in my bag,’ I said. I didn’t want to seem like a complete pervert. I mean, sure, I was, but I didn’t want to advertise the fact. ‘You don’t have to stay.’

‘Oh, no. It’s fine. I don’t mind.’

I gave the camera to her.

I looked around nervously, then whipped off my clothes and… stood there.

‘Do something,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Jump, move around… I dunno.’

So I did. I jumped up and down, my bum to the camera, and skipped down the wall.

‘Right!’ I quickly put my clothes back on. As we climbed a turret, a Chinese man jumped out at me. He was there with his ladder, charging tourists the pleasure of using it.

He pointed to where I had stripped off then grabbed me on the crotch, laughing. It was winter, you see.

‘He was friendly,’ said Maria.

‘Too friendly!’

We continued on our way, until Maria stopped and said, ‘Hey, how about another shot from over here?’

For someone who had been shocked by my request to streak across the Great Wall, Maria was now a happy convert to this ‘artistic and creative element of photography’.

A bit further down the wall, I repeated the performance. But this time as I ran to camera, slipping over snow, I found myself face-to-face with a young English woman. Her partner soon turned up.

‘I see why you wanted to go ahead,’ he said stiffly to her.

‘Don’t mind me,’ I said, pulling on my underwear. ‘Do this all the time, you know, in Oz. When on the Great Wall…’

They scurried down the broken steps without looking back. Maria handed me my clothes.

‘So, Maria. What about you?’

On a flight of crumbling steps stood Maria, in her topless beauty, flaunting it to the ancient bricks.

‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. “Move around”.’

‘No. I feel stupid! Pass me my shirt!’

Soon, the novelty of streaking had worn off and we went back to the normal tourist activity of half-falling down the steep path; much of it had crumbled away under centuries of wind, snow and rain, and parts had been removed to build the rambling houses below. The wall, depending on which history book you read, was either 2400 or 6000 kilometres. It started from the Yellow Sea and went as far west as the Gobi Desert. It took a staggering 2500 years to build, and apparently during one ten-day period during the construction, over 500 000 men perished. Despite the voracity of various dynasties to complete the project, the Great Wall was only partially successful in keeping Mongolian invaders at bay. Genghis Khan was temporarily stopped but managed to break through after two months. Guards were apparently easily bribed. As recently as World War II, the wall was used to ferry troops to fight the encroaching Japanese.

Below us, the wall fell away into pieces. It was difficult to believe that this section, the Huánghuā, was, in its heyday, supposed to be one of the better-constructed parts of the wall.

We stopped at the top of a turret.

‘So… what is it going to take to get me in your book?’ Maria smiled. ‘I mean, what would I have to say or do to be in it?’

‘Hmm… let me see,’ I said, looking at the edge of the wall and trying to think of something acrobatic for her to do. But she surprised me completely.

‘Do I have to shag you or something? Well? Do I? Tell me! TELL ME!’

33

FORBIDDEN CITY

Early December

A strange thing happened to Maria and me on the way to the Forbidden City. Or, rather, I saw a strange thing in the Forbidden City. But let’s face it: the Forbidden City is a strange place. For one thing, there is its name.

It was called thus because, like the name suggests, it was forbidden for almost 500 hundred years. No one was permitted to enter the city walls. Which would have been hard to do anyway thanks to the 22-foot high and 30-foot thick walls, not to mention the moats, and the guards brandishing swords and arrows, which would have been enough to make you think that pretending to be a lost tourist (if they were called such things in those days) might not be such a good idea.

To enter these days, visitors go through Tiananmen Gate, otherwise known as the Gate of Heavenly Peace. This didn’t quite work for me: Gates of Peace leading into the Forbidden City then instant death?

Completed in the 15th century by the emperor of the day, the Forbidden City was the residence of the Ming and then Qing dynasties, until 1911 when Sun Yat-sen’s Xinhai Revolution forced the last emperor, Pu Yi, to abdicate. Prior to this, the emperor and his family were housed behind numerous high walls, and then again in an inner palace complex known as the Imperial City. The design was based on the human body – the Forbidden City represents the viscera and intestines; the outer walls serve as the head, shoulders, hands and feet; and Tiananmen Gate is the protective tissue to the heart.

Maria and I walked through the cobblestoned squares, feeling engulfed by the enormity of the palace, the imposing walls, the sheer ‘forbidden-ness’. It was cold. A stiff, icy wind whipped up. Tourists with their camcorders shrank into their winter jackets while others hid behind statues. We took shelter past the Emperor’s quarters and, to our surprise, found ourselves warming our hands on a Brazilian. I don’t mean a Portuguese-speaking, hip-swinging South American. I mean a Brazilian latte.

It was no pale imitation here, no Chinese hokey going on. Oh, no. We were getting the real thing. We were in Starbucks.

Obviously those British and French Imperialists had got it all wrong when they gunned their way in here with cannons in 1861. Clearly they should have sent in an army of pushy baristas. ‘Latte anyone?’

The café had been set up in what at one time might have been a ruling eunuch’s government office – eunuchs had held high government office during the Ming Dynasty, and ran the Empire – and, considering the cold, I could relate to their surgical fate. But I found this so odd, so bizarre. Where once intruders had been beheaded before the Grand Emperor, now camera-clicking tourists drank Grand Lattes. To have not just a coffee shop here but an American ‘Imperialist’ franchise in the heart of royal Chinese ancestry was incongruous, a carbuncle on the face of Chinese history.

‘And isn’t it interesting,’ said Maria as she slurped froth from her upper lip, ‘that no matter where you find a Starbucks, no matter what exotic location they put them in, the coffee still tastes like shit?’

‘Then why did you drink it?’

‘I was cold!’ She punched me and then kissed me. ‘Let’s get some dumplings.’

As we walked outside the Forbidden City and through Tiananmen Gate, the paradox continued. North of Tiananmen Square hung the dominating visage of the blank-faced and wart-chinned Mao Tse Tung. During the 1989 protests, students managed to smear the old tyrant’s portrait with red paint, giving it an odd Dorian Gray hue. The picture was replaced soon after the Tiananmen Square massacre, though it may not have been what Mao wanted in the end, for now his image was condemned to a communist purgatory, left to stare at one of the most gratuitous symbols of Western Imperialism: the golden arches of McDonald’s. The restaurant was at the other end of the square, and a plastic statue of Ronald McDonald stood outside the store, grinning and waving back at Mao.

It was hard to believe that only a little over ten years ago, hundreds of students were mowed down by soldiers’ bullets and tanks here, forgotten now in the slurp of a thick shake and the slap of a Big Mac. The ‘Capitalist Pig Dogs’ had beaten the Communists, it seemed, and to let it be known to the people that they had sold out entirely, banners proudly hung across busy city intersections proclaiming China’s upcoming entry into the World Trade Organization.

I unlocked my bike and wheeled it out into the grey emptiness of the square (no one was allowed to ride across the square, and numerous police kept an eye on such attempts). Maria jumped on the back of the bike and we cycled off but were soon stopped at an intersection by a scruffy man who began shouting at us.

‘What does he want?’ I asked Maria.

‘How would I know? I speak Cantonese; my Mandarin is terrible!’

He flashed a small plastic badge at us and pointed to Maria to get off the bike. Apparently he was some kind of civilian traffic officer, and dinking[xxxvi] was not allowed in Beijing. We walked the bike for a while and as soon as the officer was out of sprinting distance Maria got back on. We headed to the hútòngs behind the Forbidden City and found a small dumpling restaurant down a narrow, tree-lined street. We warmed up on a bowl of pork dumpling soup.

‘Ah, that’s better,’ Maria said, obviously relieved. She shovelled another dumpling into her mouth then stopped. ‘What are you staring at?’

‘Nothing,’ I said, averting my gaze to my own bowl.

‘Go on. What is it?’

‘No, it’s nothing. Really.’

‘Tell me!’ Maria could be quite forceful when she wanted to be.

‘Well… do you always eat… with your mouth open?’

‘Oh, that,’ she relaxed, stabbing another dumpling. ‘Yeah, friends have told me about that before. I said, “Why didn’t you tell me?”, and they said, “Oh, we thought it was a cultural thing.” I couldn’t believe it! I’d been eating like this for years in front of them. Does it bother you?’

‘No, it fascinates me.’

‘Shut up!’ After that, I did notice she tried to keep her mouth shut while she ate… for a day or two.

We headed back out into the cold to the Xiùshui Silk Market. You could get practically any kind of copied brand name here: Gore-tex jackets, North Face fleeces, Gucci belts, Gap caps and your usual fare of famous-brand watches. I picked out a red satin dress for Bec.

‘Do you feel weird doing this when you’re with me?’ Maria asked while I held her hand.

‘Yeah.’

‘But you’ve broken up with her.’

‘Yeah, but—’ I said, then, trying to make sense of it, ‘I just want to give her something. It’s Christmas soon and I think she’d look good in this.’

‘You still love her!’ She poked me in the ribs, laughing. It was true. I still did.

I haggled a bit with the shopkeeper and bought the dress. After an hour or so of bartering and fighting through the crowds of other foreigners, we left. At our hotel we collapsed in our room, exhausted from a day of cold December winds, noisy traffic and foreign coffee in forbidden spaces.

In the morning we had breakfast at the Waley Bar. The bar was in the hotel, just down the hallway from our room, and it was open all night, every night. In the late evenings the bar was frequented by the hotel manager, a bolshie Chinese woman, Amanda, who would loudly exclaim in the company of her foreign male companions, ‘Noooo! FUCK YOU!’ ever so frequently, before laughing the smoke out of her face. By the look of things, she had been up all night and was now slumped at the bar, a tiny cigarette in one upright hand trailing smoke above her – a signal; no, perhaps a warning, to keep well away.

A waiter delivered our poached eggs amid the mess around us – our luggage. It was our last day in Beijing. We were to take the overnight train together to Hong Kong that afternoon; Maria was meeting up with her mother there and I had to organise a flight to Taipei.

On a table opposite I noticed another traveller reading a map, and I was pleased to see that he was festooned with panniers.

‘Cycling China?’ I asked. He looked up.

‘Yes. I have just cycled Mongolia.’ He had a slight Israeli accent. ‘Now I go to Chengdu. What about you?’

‘Just done it,’ I said pointing to my bags. His name was Athalia and when I told him my name he said, ‘Is your email “russellbike”?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ah!’ his face lit up. ‘I emailed you!’

I had posted a notice on the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree page offering advice on cycling in southwest China, and Athalia had responded.

He seemed quite nervous about heading into the Tibetan highlands, though I don’t know why. In Mongolia he had pushed his mountain bike through rivers, lowered it down cliffs on a rope, camped out in the middle of the desert. He had even made his own panniers, thrown together from scraps of old fabric.

Suddenly our conversation ended when somebody crashed down at our table with a pint of lager and a small glass of whisky. It was a middle-aged man wearing a jacket as worn and battered as his face. He collected himself and just sat there staring at us through his big glasses, stroking his grey goatee and fiddling with a yin-and-yang ring on his finger.

I soon recognised him as the lump in the bed next to mine when I had stayed in the dorm room some nights ago. He slept most of each day. I was told by another traveller that this drunk creature had been here two weeks already and that he was ‘recovering from jetlag’, which of course had nothing to do with the all-night benders he had been on; waking us up, staggering in as if lost in a storm, colliding through the room collecting coat hangers, bags and odd shoes in his wake.

He smiled and pulled out what looked like a small electric shaver and pressed it to a dint in his throat.

‘Where are you from?’ buzzed a robotic voice.

‘Australia,’ I replied. ‘You?’

‘Can’t you tell from my accent?’

I wanted to say ‘Er… Dr Who?’ because he sounded just like a Dalek. I thought better of it. ‘Ireland?’

‘No. Guess again.’

‘Scotland?’

‘Correct. I’m Scottish. My name’s Gilly, short for “Killy”… Killy the English, you know. I hate the fawkin’ English.’

From his garbled squawks I could only piece together fragments of what he was ranting about: fighting in the Gulf War, being in prison, searching for the Holy Grail. God knows.

He took a swig from his whisky, then his lager.

‘Excuse me.’ Gilly unwrapped the cravat around his neck and tended to a small plastic pipe that stuck out from his throat. He pulled out a hanky and cleared sputum from the pipe, hissing and rasping as he did so.

‘How did…’ I asked awkwardly, unable to contain my curiosity. ‘I don’t want to be obvious about stating the obvious, but how did you… how did you lose your voice?’

‘Ah, that’s nothing for you to worry about,’ he said, shying away and taking another gulp from his drink.

‘I was asking because my father had a tracheotomy as well.’

‘Give him me number and we’ll have a chat!’ He laughed, then spluttered and coughed. He wiped his mouth then took another gulp from his drink before reaching inside his leather jacket and bringing out a small crystal attached to a gold chain. He dangled it.

‘It… never… lies.’

Maria, Athalia and I looked at each other.

‘This wee thing told me I had cancer. I tells the doctor but he didnae believe me, of course. Anyways, they did a biop. Had fawkin’ lymphatic cancer, now didnae? Took this huge lump out of my neck and shoulder.’

He passed the crystal over and put the gold chain between my index finger and thumb. ‘Think of somethin’. Somethin’ important.’

I tried. I thought of Rebecca. The crystal didn’t move.

‘Hmm. Now you,’ he said to Athalia. Nothing. Then it was Maria’s turn. The crystal moved.

‘She’s got it. She’s got it!’ Gilly said.

‘Got what?’

‘Got the ability. Yer see, I’ve got what’s called the second insight. I can see the future. And believe me. It’s ’orrible. Fawkin’ ’orrible.’

He passed the crystal back to me.

‘Ask it a different question.’

This time the crystal spun and swayed violently.

‘YES!’

‘Yes what?’

‘Yes, to your question. What was your question?’

‘I asked if my dead father was happy.’

Gilly’s eyes swirled madly behind his glasses as he tried to follow the crystal.

‘He’s happy.’ His Dalek voice crackled as he clasped my forearm and leant forward so I could smell his whisky breath. ‘Happy as a fawkin’ pig in shite!’

* * *

The bike, now sorely loaded up with Christmas presents, was heavy as I wheeled it one last time across Tiananmen Square on my way to meet Maria at the station.

I posed with the bike, trying to look adventurous, while two students took my picture. The last photo of my trip. I looked around the square; my last experience of what was once an idea, late one night in front of an old atlas. I stood there, trying to take it all in.

Travel, they say, changes you. I had been to different countries but was I returning as a different person?

I still felt the same. I had had no spiritual awakening, as people sometimes expect when you go to places such as India. I had not had an epiphany, nor any flashes of magnetic truth, no divine light. But, having said that, the trip had taught me a few things.

India was perhaps one of the friendliest places I’d been to and unfortunately I did not always appreciate that fact. She showed me my own shortcomings as a Western traveller: my pettiness, my lack of patience, empathy and understanding. (In fact, I ended up falling in love with the place, and have been back there twice since this trip).

China and Nepal I had adored; there was less hassle and less traffic, and the countryside was breathtaking. As for Pakistan, I wished I had had more time but I liked what I saw during my stay.

I had fun and met great people such as Uros, Dr Pushkar, the Doctors Chawla, Devendra and Fulong. Nothing had quite gone to plan, which I’d sort of expected, but really not. Malaria in the first two weeks? September 11? Breaking up with Bec?

You may remember my original plan:

This was my actual journey:

Yes, it makes me look like I was smoking crack the whole time! What the hell…

Now, I hadn’t cycled from Bombay to Beijing at all, though I had traversed a sizeable chunk, nearly 7000 kilometres. If I had taken a more direct route I might have done it, but then I might also have missed out on meeting some of the most amazing people and seeing some of the most beautiful scenery I was ever likely to come across.

And there was the book, which, to mark a cliché, was always my real destination. At home there were piles of mailed journals, badly wrapped in Indian hessian cloth, scuff-marked by long, arduous sea voyages and smelling of an exotic past.

Still, not doing the entire trip by bike gnawed at me and the same thought shuffled around in my head: what was I going to call the book now?

I pushed the bike out of the square, mulling it over, speaking out loud to myself.

‘“Bombay to Beijing by…”’

I pulled on my gloves.

‘No, no. “Mumbai to Beijing by…”’

I snapped my helmet on and moved into the cycle traffic.

‘No, I really like the “B” sound. What about “Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle… sort of… kinda”?’

I dodged a woman trying to cross the road with four upside-down chickens squawking in her hands.

‘No! That won’t do.’

I cycled onwards to the train station. ‘“Bombay to Beijing by… by…”’

Struggling with it all I disappeared into the thick crowds and once again, got completely lost.

Epilogue

I eventually did meet with Rebecca in Taipei, but we did not end up together. She did, however, go on to have her own incredible cycle adventures through Europe and Canada.

Maria still lives in the UK doing a hundred things a week, and Uros went on to drive through Southern India in 2007 and has since travelled all over South America, though not by bicycle.

Since Bombay to Beijing, I’ve cycled Slovenia and the South Island of New Zealand. I’ve also returned to India twice – travelling to Southern India and to Mumbai to do a talk on this very journey.

Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle Shows

The one-man show based on this book won the George Fairfax Playwright Competition in 2003, performed by Mark Pegler and directed and dramaturged by Sue Ingleton. In 2005, I remounted the show as a performer and, with the help of Adam Pierzchalskie, the piece was workshopped and directed by Kimberley Grigg. The revised show went on to be performed to a sell-out season at the Melbourne Fringe Festival 2005 and at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2006. I later toured it, dramaturged by David Woods, to the Edinburgh Festival 2008.

For more information on more of my adventures and shows go to www.russellmcgilton.com.au

Acknowledgements

First and foremost I’d like to thank the generosity of the people in India, Nepal, Pakistan and China in those moments that all travellers need – the kindness of strangers.

For the 2012 eBook edition: I’d like to thank my agent at Curtis Brown Australia, Pippa Masson, for her continual encouragement; Joel Naoum at Momentum, Pan Macmillan; Graeme Wiggins for the wonderful map design; my partner Sarah Jane Chapman for preliminary proofs on the manuscript (not to mention her love and support); Jane Koenig for her suggestions; Alan Griffiths, Maria Yuen, Daniel Coward, Mary and Clency Bernard (on behalf of Krista Bernard), and Rebecca Gosling for their generous permissions, and the comedian, Damian Callinan, for his funny suggestions on rhinos in Nepal.

For the 2004 edition: Kath Knapsey, who did a really fantastic job of pre-edit; Alan Griffiths, Samantha Page, Carolyn Court, Lucy Cooper, Fabian Dattner, Louise Swinn, Zoe Dattner, Graeme Wiggins, Trevor McGilton, Simone Metzler, Rick Juliusson, Bradley Hughes, Andrew Gardner, Erika Niesner, Jason Howell, Eli Court, Vineet Singh, Devendra G. Gaidlani, Govinda, Corrina Syke, Eric Svirskis and Celeste Young, who all made valuable contributions and suggestions.

I’d also like to thank travelling companions Uros Pust for being there in Delhi at the right time; Maria Yuen; Dr Pushkar; Dr Chawla; Heather McLean and Tulsicharan Bisht for looking after me when I was ill. And, with the deepest respect and gratitude to Rebecca Gosling for her courage, strength and incredible patience.

Last but not least, thanks to my gorgeous sister Fiona for being there when I was at my lowest and bringing me cups of tea and hugs when everything seemed a bloody mess!

(Throughout the book I have changed and omitted full names of some people for the sake of privacy.)

Cycle Tips for Sub-Continental India and China

A mountain bike is recommended, mainly because the roads are bad in India and Nepal particularly. Roads are generally better in China. Also, a lot of bike shops in India and Nepal only stock 26-inch tubes and tyres but not 27-inch tyres for touring bikes. It’s advisable to get two-inch wide tyres as this will lessen the impact from the road. You could pack 1.5 inch for better road conditions but this is more weight.

Make sure you test out your bike if it’s a new bike. I made the mistake of getting a bike that was too big and not testing it enough. The distance between the headset and the set was too far and caused ongoing shoulder pain.

Plan out your day. In the beginning, four to five hours per day in the first two weeks (80 kilometres per day) should be a good start. I took a four-day trip through the mountainous Dargo Plains near Bright in the north east of Victoria. This clarified for me what I needed to take.

To save on money, a lot of camping accessories can be bought in Kathmandu at a fraction of the cost, though quality is somewhat dubious on items such as the sleeping bags and so-called Gortex Jackets.

Ask locals all the time so that you’re heading in the right direction (though this can be a double-edged sword).

Odometers, while useful, can mess with your brain as you try to beat the kilometres rather than enjoy the scenery.

Pack the heavier things in the rear panniers and leave the lighter things in the front panniers, as it will become harder to turn with so much weight in the front. Also, front racks are not as strong as your rear ones.

Put snacks and food in a place you can get to easily and always make that the same spot so you don’t have to look in both panniers. You’ll be surprised how often you stop to eat, usually every 30 minutes. Also, to save on repacking things, I would put my sleeping bag and winter clothes in my right rear pannier while my summer clothes were in the left pannier.

A handlebar bag is extremely useful for putting valuables in as it detaches easily. I put my passport, money, notebook, camera, and Alien Multi-tool in there (I often had to stop to adjust the bike). Great for when you’re going off to have lunch.

A medium-sized backpack was useful, as I was able to use it for backpacking through Nepal. Get a decent hiking strap (not a bungee) and this should be more than adequate to keep it in place.

In hot seasons, leave as early as possible. I often got up at five am, stopped at 11.30, and then resumed when it was bearable (usually after three p.m.).

Earplugs! Take the best you can find and take plenty. Essential for two reasons. Traffic is often loud and drivers love to toot their super-charged horns. Also, at night, in India particularly, they love to talk… ALL NIGHT!

Get good detailed maps but also follow this up with maps from tourist centres. You might also want to print off some Google Maps.

Wear visible cycle shirts so you can be seen, but they also breathe a lot better than T-shirts.

Dress appropriately for the local culture. Cycle underwear with normal shorts over the top.

Take plenty of sunscreen. It’s hard to come by good sunscreen in China and India.

Maintain your bike regularly. Clean the drive-train daily, and check any loose nuts and bolts before you begin your ride. Grease your cables as often as possible to save on wear and tear. You don’t have to loosen the cable nut at the end but rather move the plastic sleeve casing out of its mounts. Also, check your spokes after every trip, making sure they’re not broken or loose. You can even go as far as taping up nuts and bolts on the bike with electrical tape. This will stop you from losing them.

Perhaps invest in a split-seat as this will take pressure off your perineum.

Write every day even if you’re not going to get it published. Years later, your notes will serve as signposts for your memories.

Take as little as possible! Of course this depends where and when you go. If I were to cycle to India again I wouldn’t take any camping equipment or cooking implements, saving at least five kilos of weight. I’d even take an iPad or ereader so I wouldn’t have to lug books around. Some bicycle tourers I’ve met take a Macbook Air and load videos of their trips straight on to it.

Tools – take a cassette nut or spanner. You may get a broken spoke on the inside of the cogs and there’s no way you’ll be able to replace the spoke. Chain whip – improvise with left over chain links.

My Cycle Equipment (total weight with bike: 40 kg)

The Bike

• Trek II mountain bike (chrome-alloy forks)

• 26-inch, two-inch width, Continental Town and Country tyres (not recommended as side walls went)

• Cycle Odometer

• Four panniers (front and rear). Ortlieb make some of the best panniers and it’s worth the investment.

• Rear and front racks (Blackburn). These broke

• Three water cages and bottles

• Tools – Alien Multi-tool (includes chain brake), cassette nut, shifter, universal spanners, Phillips head screwdriver, flat head screwdriver, spare Allen Keys

• Puncture repair kit

• Cassette (rear sprockets). Purchased in Kathmandu

• Chain

• Foldable Kevlar Tyre

• Four tubes (I did buy numerous Indian tubes which were heavier)

• Four brake and gear cables

• Four brake shoes (wore out the front set)

• D-Lock

• Reflective waist flag

My Camera

• SLR Minolta (analogue)

• 100 rolls of 35 mm film

• Zoom lens (purchased in Kathmandu)

• Polariser (important for snow-covered areas)

• Canon Sure-shot (replacement – bought in Kunming)

• Two lithium batteries

My Camping Gear

• One man tent (leaked and sent back)

• Two man tent (picked up in Dharamsala)

• Sleeping bag (four season)

• Inflatable ¾ mat

• Stove

• Two pans

• Plastic cup

• Foldable water bladder

• Mosquito net

• Head-torch – useful for night cycling but also for when the power went out, which was often in India

• Lighter

• Water bottle bag for hiking (Kathmandu)

My Clothes

• Cycle underwear shorts

• One long sleeve cycle shirt

• Two pairs of shorts

• Hiking boots

• SPD cycle shoes (clipless pedal system – cleats click into the pedal bindings similar to skis)

• Cycle gloves (important – reduces nerve damage to your hands)

• Thongs (flip flops)

• Three shirts (one long sleeve)

• One pair of pants

• Three pairs of socks

• Hiking jacket

• Cycle jacket

• Gortex gloves

• Thermal underwear

• Silk liner for sleeping bag (increases warmth)

• Woollen cap

• Sun hat

• Three pairs of sunglasses (though I soon lost all of these!)

• Scarf

• Two sarongs (useful for sun protection and as a sheet)

My Maps

• India and China Nelles 1:4 ratio

• Other maps from tourist officers

• Notebooks (bought locally then posted back to Australia)

My Books

• Rough Guide to India

• Nepal (bought in Delhi) Lonely Planet

• Pakistan (bought in Delhi) Lonely Planet

• China (bought in Calcutta) Let’s Go!

• Phrase books – Hindi and Mandarin (purchased locally)

My Miscellaneous Items

• Two rolls of Gaffer tape

• Sewing kit

• Plastic tie grips (great for tying cable back)

• Hose bands (for broken racks)

• Sunscreen

• Toiletries

• Pencil cases for throwing tools in

• Passport, travel documents

• Earplugs (essential!)

• Medical kit

• Water proof pockets for documents

• Walkman and ten audio tapes

BOMBAY TO BEIJING BY BICYCLE SHOW

By Russell McGilton

Dramaturgy

David Woods

Performed at Edinburgh Festival 2008

MUSIC: Indian Sunrise

RUSSELL cycles slowly. He is clearly unwell. He passes out and falls.

DR CHAWLA: CONGRATULATIONS! CONGTRATULATIONS TO YOU, MR RUSSELL!

RUSSELL: Thank you, thank you!

DR CHAWLA: Congratulations! You are having the malaria!

RUSSELL: What?

DR CHAWLA: Yes, your blood test is back and we are making the results and it has come up with a positive test for the malaria!

RUSSELL: Malaria?

DR CHAWLA: Yes, yes. Wonderful.

RUSSELL: Is this… cerebral malaria? You know, the one that goes to your brain… then kills you?

DR CHAWLA: No, no, no… at least, not yet.

RUSSELL: (Weakly) What!? (Pause) Tell me Doctor. Do many people die from this around here?

DR CHAWLA: (Happily) Yes, many! So many, yes, so many people dying, dying, here in Pakistan from the malaria. But don’t worry. I will be looking after you.

BLACK OUT

SFX: A JET PLANE TAKING OFF

RUSSELL sits in a chair drinking.

RUSSELL: So after Bombay I’m gonna cycle up through India and onwards to China. Yeah. That’s right. Cycling. On a bike, cycling. (Pause) Because I want to get close to your people, to find the real India—

MUSIC: a sitar plays.

RUSSELL: And it’s a great title for the book that I’m going to write: ‘Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle’. Good, isn’t it? It’s got that wonderful bum-de-bum, bum-de-bum… rhythm to it. Yes, yes I know. Very clever. (Pause) What do you mean it’s not called Bombay anymore?… Mumbai? Bombay is called Mumbai? And that’s a fact. Oh, oh, of course I knew they changed it. It’s just that… didn’t they change it back again? Mumbai to Beijing by Bicycle… oh, shit!

BLACK OUT

We hear someone clearing their nose.

RUSSELL is woken up by the nose clearing. He opens the curtains.

SFX: TRAFFIC.

Horrified, he closes them. He opens them again.

MUSIC: Indian sunrise

RUSSELL: (opens the curtains) Ah, India! Beautiful women floating by in their red and pink saris, sacred Brahmin cows roaming freely, the laughter of children flying kites and the smell of incense blended with the scent of poppadums frying at a corner food store while a man takes a dump in the street. I’ve got to write this down! Where’s my journal? Ah!

RUSSELL finds the journal and opens it.

SFX: SNARE ROLL

JOURNAL marches downstage, salutes.

JOURNAL: Att’n! Alright chaps. At ease. Eyes forward! Now, I’ll be taking you through today’s briefing. I am Russell’s Journal. 500 pages of high quality silk paper sewn and bound together in a bespoke leather cover. Previous owner: Mrs Dwyer, wife of Brigadier-General, Reginald Dwyer of the Royal British Battalion stationed in Borneo 1927. Her last entry reads: ‘Oh, what a cute monkey’. Today, we turn a new page and a new mission to write a travel book about Russell’s heroic journey from—

RUSSELL: Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle.

JOURNAL: At 0500 we set off from—

RUSSELL: BOMBAY!

JOURNAL: – Mumbai then to here, here, here and a slight detour to Kathmandu to achieve our secondary objective, to meet up with his long standing girlfriend of six weeks, the gorgeous Rachael (plays with his nipple). It is in the frisky hills of the Himalayas where we give her a good rogering! (He becomes a humping monkey) Sorry. Monkey bite. Borneo 1927. An Oran-go-tan. Where was I? Oh, yes. The objective. After a month together, Rachael is to carry on with her own trip to Europe while Russell cycles onwards to Pakistan, over the glorious Karakoram Highway then into China. However, time is against us. We must get to Beijing before the harsh winter freezes us in our tracks. All we need to do now is to assemble the bike; the Trek Mountain Bike II! (aside) Very expensive bicycle you numb-skulls!

He points to downstage left. JOURNAL mimes seeing a mangled bike, indicating with his pointer.

JOURNAL: AH! BLAST THOSE BAGGAGE HANDLERS! (picks up a piece which falls to the ground) Pack of terrorists the lot of them! (Addresses the audience) Volunteers to assemble the bike (beat) Right. Two men. Yes, you two. Just pretend it’s a piece of IKEA furniture. Actually, don’t do that, you’ll never get the bloody thing together. (Pause) Never mind. Here’s one I prepared earlier.

He crosses to his left and points at the same spot.

JOURNAL: As you can see it’s similar to the original.

JOURNAL flicks his pointer from one side to the other indicating the imaginary bikes.

JOURNAL: Gosh I looove theatre! Well, that’s it, chaps. Dismissed.

SPOT OFF

He blows smoke and salutes, knocks himself in the head, accidentally dropping his cigarette and bends over.

DR CHAWLA: That’s it. Almost there. A bit further… bit further…

RUSSELL: Aahah!

DR CHAWLA: …Further…

RUSSELL: Aahah!

DR CHAWLA: FURRRRTHER!

RUSSELL: AGH!

DR CHAWLA: No problem Mr Russell! Just a tiny more prick for the malaria. Hahaha! Yes, malaria! Hahahaha!

RUSSELL: You’d be happy if I had any kind of ailment!

DR CHAWLA: Yes! I would. Tell me Mr Russell. This is very delicate question for me. Is the sex in your country (hands in pocket, finger wiggle)… free?

RUSSELL: Free? Well… you gotta buy them a drink at least.

DR CHAWLA: Vonderful! All I need then is to buy them a drink and I can be having the sex! Good, good.

RUSSELL: It’s not as simple as that!

DR CHAWLA: I must think of an excellent drink! Perhaps a cocktail. A Margarita! No. What about Sex on the Beach! Oh, yes! I’d like to make a drink for a lovely Western woman as she lay in the sand, rubbing the coconut oil into her back… her thighs… then turn her over and rub her bikini line and (slips his thumb into RUSSELL’S arse)—

RUSSELL: Ahh!

DR CHAWLA: Oh, sorry, Mr Russell. Ah, yes. Injection.

DR CHAWLA mimes pulling out a huge needle to inject RUSSELL.

RUSSELL: No, no! Not that again!

RUSSELL runs upstage left and smashes out the light.

BLACK OUT

He hides and stands up as DR CHAWLA.

DR CHAWLA: Mr Russell. You have broken the light. Where are yoooouu? I go to infrared.

DR CHAWLA slides infrared goggles over his eyes. He ‘beeps’ where RUSSELL is.

DR CHAWLA: Ah! There you are!

DR CHAWLA harpoons the syringe. RUSSELL runs. We see the syringe flying towards RUSSELL whistling in the air. The syringe finds its target in RUSSELL’S butt. The pain ricochets up his body.

RUSSELL: AAAAAGGGHHH!

RUSSELL morphs into tapping a shower rose. He loosens the tap. Nothing. Loosens it again. Nothing. He loosens again and the whole tap comes off. He whacks the shower rose and water sputters all over him. He blocks it. It shoots out from the tap. He blocks that. It bursts out from under him. He grabs the tap and refastens it just as there is a knock on the door.

RUSSELL: (He covers his genitals) AARGH!

A PORTER walks in, hunched over and stuttering. RUSSELL continues to hold his crotch.

PORTER: Welcome to Bombay, sir. Breakfast. Chai, b-budda toast, omelette, j-jam. You vant it?

RUSSELL: Bombay? I thought it was called Mumbai?

PORTER: As you like.

RUSSELL: As you like?

PORTER: Yes, sir.

RUSSELL: But why?

PORTER: Sir, this is India. We call it what we like.

RUSSELL: I like this place. It’s so relaxed. (One hand on nads) Hey, does that mean that Bollywood could be called Mollywood because it’s now Mumbai?

PORTER: Certainly not! It will always be called Bollywood! Never Mollywood! NEVER! NEVER I TELL YOU!! That is the full stop! No breakfast for you! YOU SHIT OFF TO PAKISTAN YOU WHITE MONKEY!

PORTER storms off. Go round, on the bike.

RUSSELL: White monkey, white monkey. I’m not a white – OOOHH!

SFX: TRAFFIC

He goes into heavy traffic. RUSSELL mimes swerving traffic. He stops and hears a voice.

TONI: (Flirtatious) Hiya! Where ya goin’?

JOURNAL: A thin woman, wearing a yellow bandana and a ring in her nose skids to a halt on her mountain bike. A Trek 7! Very, very expensive bicycle. Bloody upstart!

TONI: (sniffs the air) Christ! You’re carrying a lot of gear. What’ve you got in there then?

RUSSELL: Er… things…

TONI: You should ride like me. I’ve been all through India with just these two bags. A pair of flip flops, a T- shirt and a hammock. That’s it. Not all of THAT! (Sweetly) Got any water?’

RUSSELL: Er, yeah.

TONI: (grabs the water bottle from RUSSELL) I’m so dehydrated!

TONI gulps the water down, sucking it inside out. She hands it back to RUSSELL.

She fixes her eyes on RUSSELL as if he’s insane.

TONI: (digs in her ear) ’Ere. Know anything about bikes? Had a bit of bingle on the way down from the Himalayas. Haha! I don’t carry any tools myself or the latest brands – Ooooh! Those tyres won’t stand up to the road! You need Michelin 501s you do. Hahaha!

RUSSELL: They’ve done me fine, thank you.

TONI: Nooo! They’re not thick enough. No traction, luv. Walls too thin. What were ya thinkin’?

RUSSELL: I—

TONI: You just arrived or somethin’?

RUSSELL: I—

TONI: Thought so. (Toni sees a fly and snaps it with her mouth and eats it.) I’m a Jain.

RUSSELL: Russell.

TONI: Noo! Jain is one of my religions. I’m Toni. (sighs) So… where ya goin’?

RUSSELL: (Pause) Beijing.

TONI: Beijing! Are ya daft! You’ll hate it! The roads are horrible from here on. And what’s more there’s people everywhere in India, everywhere you go, staring at ya, staring at ya. And they always ask the same question: ‘Which country, madam? One school pen?’ Drives me barmy!

RUSSELL: Oh, come on. They’re just curious, that’s all.

TONI: No, no. You don’t understand.

RUSSELL shifts gears, cycling faster, getting away from her.

RUSSELL: (shouting back) No, I understand alright. Travellers like you.

TONI changes gears to catch up.

TONI: Oh, I see. Travellers like me, ya fat twat! You probably think India is this exotic place with Swamis hanging off temples surrounded by incense and flowers. Well, it’s not. It’s one little shit-all town after another. And if it weren’t the fact that I’m enlightened I wouldn’t have maaade it.

RUSSELL: You’re… enlightened?

TONI: That’s right. I’m into the Kundulini!

RUSSELL: Kunda what?

TONI: Kundulini! I’ve been awakened by the female serpent. SSsss!

RUSSELL: Oh, Christ!

TONI: I’ve had all my chakras cleansed. Ha! And now I’m enlightened like a peaceful new born baby.

SFX: HONK (FROM LEFT) TO TONI

TONI: Fawk off ya cunt! (turn head to right) I’m ENLIGHTENED! I tell ya. ENLIGHTENED! (She goes cross eyed. She thumps her head) Christ! Nearly poked out my third eye there (suddenly realising where she is). Anyway. Ya best go. It gets to ya, it does. The noise, the pollution, the staring. Go, Go why you can. GO BEFORE THEY TO GET YOU TOOOOOOOOO!

JOURNAL: Off she went, devoured by the traffic as Russell finally made it out of Mumbai and on to the north bound highway to Rajasthan.

RUSSELL: (naive love) Ah, India! Here I come, my delicate lotus!

DRIVER: HONK! HONK!

RUSSELL backs up to the beep horn to back of stage.

INDIAN DRIVER: You are holding up the traffic you English nincompoop! (spits loudly)

RUSSELL wipes off spit which forms into wiping off malarial sweat. He’s spread out on the sheet. [Keep action in bed. Be listless, no energy through everything] SPOT

RUSSELL’S FATHER: Should’ve stayed at home, Russell.

RUSSELL: (Surprised, can’t believe it) Dad?! What are you doing here? You’re… dead.

RUSSELL’S FATHER: Well, I heard you gotta touch of malaria.

RUSSELL: ‘A touch of malaria?’

RUSSELL’S FATHER: You should’ve stayed at home and got ya self a really nice three-bedroom brick venereal in Ringwood.

JOURNAL: That’s Leith, to you people.

RUSSELL: (honest) DAD!… I’M DYYYING!

RUSSELL’S FATHER: (pause) You right for money?

RUSSELL: Well, actually—

RUSSELL’S FATHER: Is that the time is it?

FATHER turns and deflates into RUSSELL cycling in desert.

SFX: BACKGROUND NOISE OF THE DESERT – CICADAS

JOURNAL is riding a horse. He looks through his binoculars.

JOURNAL: (Aside) Ah, there he is. Somewhere in the wilds of the Rajasthan desert our protagonist continues on his merry journey, pushing his bike through sand drifts, desert heat and countless thorns that puncture his tyres.

RUSSELL: (Mimics puncture sound) SSSSSSSS! Ohh!

JOURNAL: He falls off his bike.

RUSSELL: What?

JOURNAL: (not too nasty) I said ‘He falls off his bike’.

RUSSELL does a lame fall. Get down to floor level but don’t get dirty.

JOURNAL: (Side of mouth) Arsehole! He gets back on and rides through the tireless heat for hours. He gets another puncture…

RUSSELL: No I didn’t.

SFX: SSSSSSSSS!

RUSSELL: Blast!

JOURNAL: Has a stack with a yak.

RUSSELL: There aren’t any yaks in India – MOOOO! AAGGGHH!

JOURNAL: Is chased by pack of wild dogs.

RUSSELL: WHOOF! WHOOF! Get away from me you bastards!

JOURNAL: He unwittingly steps in a human shit.

RUSSELL looks under his shoe.

JOURNAL: And… it’s his own.

RUSSELL reacts.

JOURNAL: It is in the desert we leave him to the long, lonely rides, seeing no one for days, consumed by the empty space of existence.

RUSSELL cycles around the stage or into the audience.

RUSSELL: (straight in, loud and fast) Charlene don’t like it… Rock the Kasbah! Fuck the Kasbah! Rachael don’t like it… Rock… the…Kasbah… (slowing down) Fuck… the… (sadder) caps… bah…

He looks around, tries to trudge on but is overcome by the huge vast of nothing around him.

RUSSELL: Hey… (energy picks up) who’s that sexy lady ahead at that chai stall, (quieter) the chai stall, the, the, chai stall?’

TONI: (Sipping a hot chai) Hiya, Russell, it’s meeeee!

RUSSELL: Ugh! (pedals faster) Phew… (Kasbah tune) I re-ally don’t like her. She’s a wan-ker, I’d love to spank her – Ah!

RUSSELL cycles off and a bit later loses balance and sways, hitting a bad road, bouncing everywhere.

JOURNAL: (To the audience) Ow! (bent over) The one thing they don’t tell you about cycle touring is the pain. First it’s your bottom. ‘Hey! I’m going numb down here.’ So you stop. Adjust your seat. Then your testicles complain (blows up his cheeks) ‘Oi! We feel like we’re being deep sea trawled, mate! Do something about it’. So you stop again, adjust the chaps, ‘Thanks mate,’ get back on, then your hands join in (they give him the bird then attack his face). Everything is fine for a while when your arse pitches in again ‘Oi!’.

JOURNAL: By the time Russell got to the tiny desert town of Shergarth he was walking on his knuckles.

JOURNAL becomes a gorilla, throws his arms up, and then becomes RUPSESH.

RUPESH: (Cork up his arse, glasses – do it a few times, get the audience) Namaste! Namaste! Hello! I am Rupesh. I will take you to the best hotel in Shergarth.

JOURNAL: And he did. It was the best hotel because it was the only hotel in Shergarth.

RUSSELL: (writing in his journal, loving it all) As the sun started to set I walked with Rupesh, a 19-year-old engineering student, amongst the rolling desert hills. I bet Bill Bryson had it this good!

RUPESH: What are you writing, Russell?

RUSSELL: Oh, a book on India.

RUPESH: India? Come then. I must take you to a very special place. (They walk – wait for music as you raise your arm). Is it not vonderful, Russell?

MUSIC: Beautiful Indian music crescendo then fade, continue through scene

RUSSELL: Oh, yeaahh!

JOURNAL: Beyond a sand dune was a grand temple rising out of the desert sands. At its entrance was a huge pair of monkey balls, carved in brilliant white marble and resting in the eye sockets of young virgins.

RUSSELL: What is this place, Rupesh?

RUPESH: It is the temple to one of our most important Hindu gods, Hanuman, the monkey god.

RUSSELL: Oh, I see. Hey, there little fella—

JOURNAL: I wouldn’t do that if I were you Russell. Let’s not forget Borneo, 1927.

RUPESH: Don’t touch the monkeys.

RUSSELL: Why?

RUPESH: They’re pests! They steal things, tear your clothes. We Indians hate them.

RUSSELL: I don’t get it. Hanuman is your monkey god.

RUPESH: Yes.

RUSSELL: And you revere Hanuman?

RUPESH: Yes.

RUSSELL: And you say that Indians hate monkeys.

RUPESH: Yes.

RUSSELL: So why do you revere monkeys if you hate them?

RUPESH: (Pause) I don’t get it either.

RUPESH deflates into RUSSELL pumping his bike.

RUSSELL’S FATHER: Son, you should’ve used your Schrader valves there. Now when I was cycling—

RUSSELL: Daddd!

RUSSELL’S FATHER: And that poofter pump is not much chop.

RUSSELL: Pissss off!

RUSSELL looks around. He is being watched.

INDIAN 1: (mid voice) Hello, sir. Which country?

RUSSELL: (look at audience) Australia.

INDIAN 1: Ah! Cricket! Shane Warne! What is your good name?

RUSSELL: Russell.

INDIAN 1: What are you doing in India?

RUSSELL: Cycling.

INDIAN 2: (high voice) Hello, sir. Which country?

RUSSELL: Australia!

INDIAN 2: Ah! Cricket! Shane Warne! What is your good name?

RUSSELL: Russell!

INDIAN 3: (lips) Hello, sir. Which country?

RUSSELL: AUSTRALIA!

INDIAN 3: Ah! Cricket! Shane Warne! What are you doing in India?

INDIAN 4: (raspy voice) Hello, sir. Which country?

RUSSELL: Australia.

INDIAN 4: Ah! Cricket! Shane Warne! What is your good name?

RUSSELL: Russell.

INDIAN 4: What are you doing in India?

RUSSELL: CYCLING! (pump flies out of his hand)

INDIAN 1: (mid voice) (poking) Gear cycle!

RUSSELL: Hey, don’t touch the gears. They break easily.

INDIAN 2: (high voice) (picking up, looking through it) Camera!

RUSSELL: Ah, could you put that down.

INDIAN 4: (Raspy) (flicking it like an elastic band) Condom!

RUSSELL: GIVE ME THAT! RIGHT! STAND BACK! STAND BACK!

TONI: How do you like it now, ‘travellers like me’?

RUSSELL: AARRRH!

ASIF: Hello, sir. Which country?

RUSSELL: PAKISTAN!

ASIF: (pause) I think you’re lying.

RUSSELL: AUSTRALIA! CYCLING… er… RUSSELL! Okay?

ASIF: Sorry?

RUSSELL: I thought you were… forget it.

ASIF: I am Asif.

RUSSELL: As if what?

ASIF: I am the mayor of this town.

RUSSELL: Town? What town?

ASIF: Bagaha.

RUSSELL: Excuse me?

ASIF: Bagaha.

RUSSELL: You can bugger yourself, sunshine.

ASIF: Acha! You have an audience.

RUSSELL: Yes, I do!

ASIF: They think that you are a movie star.

RUSSELL: (Pause) Oh, really? (He smiles at them) Nooo!! Really? I wonder who the think I am?

ASIF: Acha! Puncture.

RUSSELL: It’s okay. I’ve mended it.

ASIF: Not a problem. I pump you.

RUSSELL: Excuse me?

ASIF: I pump you!

Asif pumps the tyre.

ASIF: You must be strong man cycling India.

He pumps vigorously.

ASIF: Strong man. Yes. You must have many wives. Many, many, many, MANY, MANY – BANG! SSS (tries to blow it back up with his mouth) SSSSS. (Pause) Sorry. Broken rubber. I am pumping you too much. Not a problem. My brother will fix. HAJEE! Come to my uncle’s restaurant. He will make you the best food in India. Something not too hot for your Western tongue.

RUSSELL looks over his right shoulder, worried about his bike. Asif pulls his face to left. JOURNAL enters the restaurant.

JOURNAL: It was your typical Indian restaurant… except for—

MUSIC: TECHNO HINDI MUSIC BLASTS

JOURNAL dances, becomes UNCLE, dances, then stops on needle rip.

UNCLE: Ah, hello sir. You are hungry? You are wanting lunch? We have palak paneer, gobi mutter, chicken markani, …you vant it?

RUSSELL: What’s in the chicken markani?

UNCLE: Er… chicken… yes! And… er… er… markani.

RUSSELL: Okay. I’ll have that. Haven’t we met before?

UNCLE: (looks over right shoulder) No, sir. (To himself to upstage) White monkey!

He exits.

MUSIC: TECHNO

UNCLE: (shouts) CHICKEN MARKANI!

UNCLE dances. He comes back out with the food from same door.

UNCLE: There you are, sir. Palak paneer.

RUSSELL: I wanted chicken.

UNCLE: Palak paneer!

RUSSELL: But—

UNCLE: (menacingly) You don’t like India food?

RUSSELL: Yes, but—

UNCLE: Very good. (He does a half turn and comes back as RUSSELL). Enjoy.

Russell eats the food.

RUSSELL: Mmm… AAAAGGGHHH!!…

Pours glasses of water in his mouth but this makes it worse. He looks for other options to cool down the heat. Bread, salt, then his shirt)

RUSSELL: (squeaking) Where’s my bike? Where’s my bike?

He runs out and jumps on the bike. He rides for a while, calms down but then clutches his stomach (convulses) and gets off the bike. Desperately looks for the loo paper which he can’t find.

RUSSELL: Where is it? WHERE IS IT?!

He pulls out some loo paper, looks around for a place to go, then hoists his shorts down.

RUSSELL is blown across the stage by his own shitting and farting and ends in a collapsed heap. He lets out one horrible fart which is so bad that (wait on laugh then smell it) when he smells it [fight the urge to vomit] he vomits.

JOURNAL: Good lord, Russell. (sniffs) Talk about chemical warfare! (JOURNAL swoons) Oh, dear.

He vomits to the right once, smokes, collapses into RUSSELL then INDIAN 1.

INDIAN 1: (mid voice) Hello, sir. Which county?

INDIAN 2: (lips) What is your good name?

RUSSELL: WHAT THE—

INDIAN 3: (raspy) Sir, just one photo. Please, sir. Please, sir

RUSSELL: AHHHH!!!!

He runs into the sheet and wraps himself up (quicker in getting there). He’s having a ranting night-sweat.

RUSSELL: Aaagh! Noo… my luck numbers one… ooh, eeeh!

DR CHAWLA: (wrapped up in the sheet) Mr Russellss! How are you today? We have taken another blood test. Unfortunately, you are still having the malaria.

RUSSELL: Congratulations!

DR CHAWLA: Congratulations? This is a very peculiar thing for you to say.

DR CHAWLA flaps wings three times then snaps back to DR CHAWLA, smiling.

RUSSELL: (Freaking out) There’s a green lizard on your shoulder!

DR CHAWLA: I don’t see anything (he brushes it off). You must take this serious – YAWK!

DR CHAWLA becomes a chicken. RUSSELL freaks out. Snap back to DR CHAWLA with stethoscope.

DR CHAWLA: This is very (pogo stick – twice) bad news for you, sir. You are not responding (becomes a dinosaur and lunges at audience) to the treatment.

RUSSELL: (hiding behind his hands) Can’t we try something else?

DR CHAWLA: Well, come to think of it, there is an ancient Ayurvedic custom we could try.

RUSSELL: Ok.

DR CHAWLA: (sinister intent) It is called mariji cola.

RUSSELL: What’s that?

DR CHAWLA: You have to drink your own urine.

RUSSELL: Oh, come on! You’re taking the piss!

DR CHAWLA: Yes. I have been since 1996 and I feel much better for it. It can cure many ailments: sunburn, athlete’s foot, indigestion, diarrhoea, gonorrhoea, tetanus, typhus, (pause) thrush, acne, diphtheria, flatulence—

FADE TO BLACK

SFX: PLANE LANDING.

CHAWLA: – Housemaid’s knee, Grocer’s Itch, Spinal Bifa—

RUSSELL looks for RACHAEL at the airport.

RUSSELL: Rachael? Where is she? Where is she? There she is! RACHAEL! RACHAEL! OVER HERE!

RACHAEL: Oh, Russell! RUSSELL! Here!

RUSSELL lunges at her.

RACHAEL: Oh, no! Russell. Not here. No, don’t touch me! Don’t! Don’t touch me!

MUSIC: ‘TOUCH ME’ SONG

RACHAEL: Touch me… Don’t touch me

Touch me soniya

Touch me… don’t touch me…

AH, touch me soniya!

RUSSELL: Teekhi teekhi teri akhiyaan

Chooke chooke behkaati hain

Dekh dekh na yun mujko

Hosh hosh le jati hain

RACHAEL: Chodh chodh meri rahoon ko

Tauba tauba darr lagta hai

Aisi waisi teri baaton se

Ishq vishq sa jagta hai

RUSSELL: Deewana dil kahin kho jaye na

Humse khata koi ho jaaye na

RACHAEL: Touch me… don’t touch me…

Don’t touch

Don’t touch me…

Touch me

RUSSELL and RACHAEL break out into a Bollywood dance number, cooing and jumping about, almost kissing, then not. When the dancing finishes they start fucking.

MUSIC: ‘FUCK THE PAIN AWAY’ by the Peaches

RACHAEL stands; he goes down on her, swings her to the side doggy style. He fucks to the audience, eyes fluttering, a miserable orgasm, vulnerable, sad.

RUSSELL: (apologetic) I’M COMING, I’M COMING I’M…

Rachael disengages

RACHAEL: Oh, Russell! That was fabulous! (she rubs his back) Well done.

RUSSELL: Wasn’t it! Hey, you couldn’t get me a glass of water?

RACHAEL: Sure honey. Back in a minute.

Russell starts writing.

RUSSELL: ‘I’m coming!’ ‘Oh, Russell. That was fabulous.’

JOURNAL: (cigarette) I say, Russell. Took no prisoners there. A real naval engagement.

BALLS: So that’s why we’ve got concussion.

BUM: I had a finger down my throat.

RUSSELL’S FATHER: And I had a stiffy that I could’ve poked a dog from under a bed with!

RUSSELL: Eww! Daaad! Get out of here! All of you.

RACHAEL returns with the water. RUSSELL drinks it.

RACHAEL: Who you talking to honey?

RUSSELL: (hiding the journal) No one.

RACHAEL: Russell, you know how you said you’d always love me?

RUSSELL: Yes.

RACHAEL: And that if I ever had anything to tell you you’d understand?

RUSSELL: (worried) Yes?

RACHAEL: And if for whatever reason our plans changed that that would always be okay with you?

RUSSELL: YES?!

RACHAEL: Well… I want to cycle with you.

RUSSELL: What?

RACHAEL: I said, I want to cycle with you all the way to Beijing!

RUSSELL: (Stricken) Oh, I thought you just wanted to hike Nepal for a month and then off to Europe.

RACHAEL: Well, can I?

RUSSELL: (Pause) Ssssurre. It’ll be… GRREAT! Hahahah… ughhhh…

Falls into malarial fever.

He reaches under the bed and retrieves a water bottle. He tries to drink it but it’s empty. He looks at the bottle, at his groin, at the bottle, then at his groin again. He gets up and back to the audience, tries to piss.

DR CHAWLA: (Whispers) Mariji Coooola!

RUSSELL: (struggle with pissing) This is not going to work.

OBI WAN: (head to left) Use the Force, Luke. The Force!

RUSSELL: (head over shoulder to right) Oh, thanks. Aagghhh!!

Finished, he turns around. He sniffs it.

RUSSELL: (recoils) Ugh!

He moves downstage, contemplates it, then…

RUSSELL: (To himself) One, two, three—

He stops himself. RUSSELL’S FATHER, to the left of him, forces it down his throat, holding the back of his head.

FATHER: (Pause) Come on, mate. It’s good for ya son! GOOD FOR YA! COME ON! Just think of it as… Tequila.

RUSSELL: Hey, Tequila! (visual cue for techs)

MUSIC: ‘TEQUILA’

He dances, offering it to the audience. He pours salt on his hand (to audience). As he goes to drink the water and on ‘TEQUILA’ in the song—

SPOT

The seal breaks and the urine splashes all over him. He reaches for a lemon, eats it then spits it out. A beat. He throws up.

JOURNAL: (coughing, wiping his moustache, feverish and mad) Damn that monkey bite! 1927, Borneo. An O-rang-o-tang. Continuing with their adventure, Russell and Rachael head over the Himalayas and into India. (He coughs) Damn Alpine air. (puffs until he is happy).

RACHAEL struggles, cycling legs swaying in opposition to the swing of her handlebars.

RACHAEL: Are we there yet?

RUSSELL: Not yet. Hurry up.

RACHAEL: I can’t. My legs are killing me. I can’t go much further.

RUSSELL: This is what cycling is all about, Rachael. (Pause) Alright. Let’s stop. Again. (make sure you get this line right for call back)

RACHAEL: (slumps on the bicycle handles – she really doesn’t want to cycle any further so sell it to RUSSELL) Ah, wouldn’t it be nice if we just spent a whole week up here together, in each other’s arms, making love in the mornings, going for walks in the mountains in the afternoons.

RUSSELL: (Logical) A whole week! It’ll be snowing in Beijing if we keep wasting time!

RACHAEL fumes. She looks forward, saying nothing.

RUSSELL: Come on let’s get moving.

RACHAEL looks straight ahead, refusing to move.

RUSSELL looks at her imploringly then at the road.

RUSSELL: Rachael?

RACHAEL: Just go ahead without me.

RUSSELL: (He looks to the road, considering it) You know I can’t do that. This is India. Women don’t travel by themselves let alone cycle alone.

RACHAEL: I’m fine!

RUSSELL: Okay… But can you at least cover your ti… T-shirt.

RACHAEL: I said I’m fine!

RUSSELL: Okay you’re fine, fine… fine! (Russell cycles)

JOURNAL: Half an hour later Russell heard Rachael scream.

RACHAEL: AAAGH!

JOURNAL: A man cycled past.

RUSSELL: (Russell stops) What happened?

RACHAEL: He touched me… on my tits.

RUSSELL: (To the audience) MY TITS! ARRGHH!

MUSIC: CHASE MUSIC

JOURNAL: Faster and faster he went. The tyres hummed, the handlebars howled. Russell was a Flying Fortress from Hell!… (he pushes a button his bike ‘turbo’ and goes faster, his cheeks move back, his eye pops out, hits the sound barrier ‘You are going into another time dimension’) Then he saw him in his sights, one Indian bicycle squeaking on the wind.

SFX: INDIAN BICYCLE SQUEAKING

RUSSELL: YOU!

INDIAN CYCLIST: (staring eyes, husky) I only did it for the knowledge!

RUSSELL: I’LL GIVE YOU KNOWLEDGE! (he grabs a stick and sticks it in his spokes)

INDIAN CYCLIST: AAGGHH!

RUSSELL: (laughs manically)

MUSIC: CHASE MUSIC ENDS.

JOURNAL: (be calm – coolly observes it) Good work, Russell. Reminds me of the Amritsar Massacre 1919. It was dawn. Thousands of Punjabi families refusing to move. Without warning we opened fire. Hundreds killed! I got a Victoria Cross for—

RACHAEL: Russell!

RUSSELL: Yes, darling?

RACHAEL: You idiot.

RUSSELL: What?

RACHAEL: That was completely unnecessary.

RUSSELL: But, but… but they touched you! On the tits!

RACHAEL: I said I’d handled it.

RUSSELL: You mean they handled you!

RACHAEL: Oh!

TONI: Hiya Russell!

RUSSELL: (weakly) Hi.

TONI: (Over familiar) Oh, and this must be Rachael. I’ve heard so much about you.

RACHEAL: (preening – tits out, head side to side – she gives a fake smile) Russell. Who is this? How does she know my name?

RUSSELL: (Pause) Well… it’s like this–

TONI: (chummy) Your boyfriend is a right nutter. Can drink me under the table. And that’s where we like them, eh? Hahaha!

RACHAEL: Oh!

RUSSELL: No! It’s not what you think.

RACHAEL cycles off. RUSSELL cycles after her.

TONI: Laters!

JOURNAL: (binoculars – peering at them) That night Russell and Rachael slept on opposite side of the bed.

RACHAEL: Russell! Don’t touch me.

RUSSELL: (No means yes tone) Oooh! Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!

RACHAEL: (Slaps him) Don’t touch me. I mean it!

RUSSELL: Alright. (Pause) Nothing happened.

RACHAEL: Whatever.

She pulls at the net. He pulls back. She pulls back again.

RACHAEL: Don’t take all of the mosquito net.

RUSSELL: You should’ve bought one in Kathmandu like I said. (Sighs) Just take it then.

BLACK OUT

Mosquito flies at the audience.

MOSQUITO: (Nasally) Zzz. Red leader to blue leader. We have a male and female sleeping. ZZZZEEE

MOSQUITO2: (Texan accent – ‘in for the kill’ psycho) Roger, Red Leader. Going in for the female. ZZZZZZZ

He dives.

MOSQUITO: Pull up, Blue leader! You’re gonna hit the net.

MOSQUITO2: ZZZZZ. I cannnnnntttt! (Give a look of terror) AHAAHAGH!

He splats, face distorted by the net.

MOSQUITO2: Hot-digga-dee.

MOSQUITO: ZZZZ. Oh, dear. Scout four. Try the other side.

SCOUT4: ZZZ. Yes, sir. ZZZ.

He hovers.

SCOUT4: ZZZ. Scout four to Red leader. You’re gonna like this, sir. The male… he’s bald. ZZZ

MOSQUITO: BALD? BUFFET!! (the squadron flies in and starts biting) Oh, look. It’s Ms Anopheles!

JOURNAL: Ah yes, the Anopheles mosquito. The only mosquito that passes on the dreaded malaria.

SPOT

ANOPHELES: (sultry) ZZZ. Stand back boys. He’s mine. ZZZ.

(sings) I am Anopheles mosquito

I’m comin’ to suck on you!

ANOPHELES goes down on an audience member.

RUSSELLfarts and the mosquitoes fly away in disgust.

JOURNAL: The next morning…

RUSSELL’S face is all bumped up from the mosquito bites.

RUSSELL: Rachael! RACHAEL!

RACHAEL: Don’t touch me!

RUSSELL: Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!

RACHAEL: AAGGHHHHH—

RACHAEL turns into JOURNAL on his horse.

JOURNAL: (to the audience) You’re probably wondering right now ‘Is that flabby waste of organs going to make to China?’ (Holds up binoculars). Another month goes by. It is the 30th September – six weeks away from the start of China’s harsh winter. But right now the dreaded monsoon is upon them as they enter Pakistan.

MUSIC: ADHAN – MUSLIM CALL

JOURNAL: It is frightfully hot. The road bubbles and tempers are frayed. (swats a fly off his neck)

RUSSELL is really sick. He’s trying to stay on the bike. A boy stops him, holding up his hand.

RUSSELL: Are we there yet?

RACHAEL: Not yet.

RUSSELL: But my head. It’s killing me.

RACHAEL: That’s what cycling is all about, Russell. Alright. Let’s stop again.

PAKISTANI KID: Hello, sir. One school pen?

RUSSELL: (feverish) I don’t have a pen!

PAKISTANI KID: One school pen, sir?

RUSSELL: I said I DON’T HAVE A SCHOOL PEN.

PAKISTANI KID: Only one school pen, sir.

RUSSELL: LOOK, I DON’T HAVE A SCHOOL PEN, OKAY!

PAKISTANI KID: (pause) Pleeeease, sir. Only one—

RUSSELL: Would you just FUCK OFF!

RACHAEL: (stopping her bike) Russell! Don’t talk to that boy like that. What’s wrong with you?

RUSSELL: Nothing! I’ve got a headache.

RACHAEL: You’re really feverish. Maybe you’ve got a cold.

RUSSELL: In 50 degree heat? Don’t be stupid.

PAKISTANI KID: Just one school pen, sir.

RUSSELL: I’LL GIVE YOU A SCHOOL PEN YOU LITTLE – (goes to pick up a stone)

RACHAEL: RUSSELL! STOP THAT!

BUTCHER: (Slower voice, high status) What are you doing?

RUSSELL: (hiding the stone) He was asking me for… pens.

BUTCHER: So? It’s no reason to come to Pakistan and disgrace her like this. You should be ashamed of yourself. Look at you. A grown man acting like a… a deadshit.

RUSSELL: But he—

BUTCHER: So?

RUSSELL: (Voice changes into that of TONI) His asking for peeeens you know! Drives me barmy!

BUTCHER: You are crazy man! Be calm. (Smile) Smile at them. Let them know that foreigners are good people. (Drop smile) Or leave Pakistan!… Which country?

RUSSELL: Australia.

BUTCHER: Oh… you have one school pen?

RUSSELL: AAAAGHHH!!!

RACHAEL: Russell! Get a hold of yourself. Show some respect.

RUSSELL: What do you know! WHAT DO YOU KNOW?! (RUSSELL starts sounding like a mosquito) I’m so sick of your whining in my ear, slowing me down, zzzzzzzz! Not… not letting me WRITE!

RACHAEL: Yeah, well, some writer you are.

RUSSELL: Ooh! You know something… you know something! I never wanted you to cycle with me anyway!

RACHAEL cycles away, distraught. Minimal.

RUSSELL: That’s it. Cycle off. See if I care… I’m becoming like my dad! (crestfallen) Rachael?… my love.

JOURNAL: (On horse) On the contrary. I’m the one you love.

RUSSELL: What are talking about?

JOURNAL: I knew it the day you walked in to ‘Once Were Rajas’ book antiquarian. The way you picked me up so tenderly and fingered my pages—

RUSSELL: Nnnnoooo!

JOURNAL: You love me more than anything in the world. I am the key to your fame, fortune… day time television. Don’t you want to show the world your brilliance?

RUSSELL: Yeah, I’ll show ’em. It’s all in here.

MUSIC: EERIE – THROUGH SCENE

RUSSELL looks for brilliance in the writing but can’t find it anywhere. It’s all shit.

TONI: Show ’em. Travellers like me. Haha!

RUSSELL: No! I’m not like you.

TONI: Yes, you are ya fat twat!

RUSSELL: Noo!

PORTER: (slowly) Welcome to Bombay. (menacing) Shit off to Pakistan!

RUSSELL: What’s… going on?

ASIF: Bugger ya!

RACHAEL: (lunging out, graceful) Russell!

RUSSELL: (look at three points) Rachael?

INDIAN: Hello, sir. Which country?

RUSSELL: Shut up! Get out of my head! Leave me alone!

DR CHAWLA: (slow) Congratulations. You are having the—

TONI: (snake wave with arm) KUNDULINI!

RUSSELL’S FATHER: Should’ve stayed at home with a stiffy like mine! (woof!)

RUSSELL: You’re dead!

DR CHAWLA: Many people dying, Mr Russell. Here. Drink my piss.

RUSSELL: Naah!

JOURNAL: Go on Russell! Show ’em!

RUSSELL: Yes, I’ll show ‘em. I’ll show THE WORL–

He passes out.

MUSIC: EERIE – END

RUSSELL’S FATHER: (slaps him on the face gently, caring) Get up son. Get up!

RUSSELL: Dad?

RUSSELL’S FATHER: Get on the bike, son. That’s it mate. There’s a hospital half a kilometre away.

RUSSELL: Thanks, dad.

He gets back on.

RUSSELL’S FATHER: And son.

RUSSELL: Dad?

RUSSELL’S FATHER: (pause) I love ya.

RUSSELL: (struggles) I love you too, Dad.

RUSSELL’S FATHER: And son.

RUSSELL: Yes, dad?

RUSSELL’S FATHER: Look out—

RUSSELL runs into something.

END SPOT

RUSSELL: AGGH! Rachael! Rachael! (crying)

Roll then stand up as JOURNAL.

JOURNAL: Pull yourself together, soldier. (hold moment) She’s gone. She’s gone.

RUSSELL creeps up on him

RUSSELL: You’ve ruined everything!

JOURNAL: She’s gone.

RUSSELL sneaks and grabs him.

RUSSELL: I’m gonna kill you!

JOURNAL: AH! What are you doing, Russell? (real horror)

RUSSELL: You’ve destroyed everything!

RUSSELL crushes him.

JOURNAL: (hands around his throat) Now, now, Russell. I… I… I was doing it for you. I had your best intentions at heart. No… no… Russell! What are you doing?

JOURNAL’S shoulder twitches.

RUSSELL rips off JOURNAL’S arm.

JOURNAL: AH! My bespoke leather cover!

RUSSELL rips out JOURNAL’S stomach.

JOURNAL: My appendix!

RUSSELL rips off JOURNAL’S left leg.

JOURNAL: My footnotes! (fall to knees)

RUSSELL rips out JOURNAL’S back.

JOURNAL: Not the spine!

RUSSELL pulls out a match, lights it and sets JOURNAL on fire.

JOURNAL: Ah, I’m burning! (takes quick drags on his cigarette) I’m burning! Burning (not all the way up on knees) AHAHAH!

RUSSELL: HAHAHAHAH!… AGH!

LX44: BRIGHT ‘FIRE’ ORANGE AND YELLOW WASH – FLASH LIGHTS

RUSSELL passes and rolls around on the floor screaming as the character KAVITA.

DR CHAWLA: (Happy) Mr Russell! What are you doing? You have set my wife on fire! Roll, Kavita, roll. (KAVITA rolls) That’s it. Rooolll.

RUSSELL: I thought I was burning my jour— (DR CHAWLA pats the fire out).

DR CHAWLA: Mr Russell, we burn women after they are dead, not before. Except, of course, when they look at another man. (seriously) Did my wife look at you?

RUSSELL: (Putting out the fire) No, no, no, no!

DR CHAWLA: Acha! Anyway, I have good news. Your blood test is back and you are having a negative test for the malaria. (RUSSELL looks blankly at him) You are cured!

RUSSELL: Congratulations!

DR CHAWLA: Yes, congratulations! Haha! Seems that the urine treatment worked… and high doses of Chloroquine. Anyway, Mr Russell, I just want to say it has been a pleasure looking after you.

RUSSELL: (humbled – shakes hands) Thank you, Dr Chawla. Thank you for everything.

End shaking hands.

DR CHAWLA: Not a problem. Russell. Come again. Oh, and Mr Russell. I want to give you advice for your journey. ‘The road is life.’

RUSSELL: Thank you! Is that from an ancient Sufi text?

DR CHAWLA: No! Jack Kerouac.

MUSIC18: HINDI SUNRISE – FADE DOWN WHEN JOURNAL SPEAKS.

JOURNAL: Later that morning, Russell rode out on a wide road heading towards China. Just as he—

RUSSELL: Didn’t I get rid of you?

JOURNAL: (Aside) God no! You were in a malarial stupor. I’m still here. Going strong!

The sun rose like an orange ball. Farmers tended to their fields, woman fetched water in big silver pots and children played by the road… covered in filth. As Russell climbed over the imposing Karakoram range and crossed the border into China he knew that the (make sure you say this) rest of this trip, would be very, very different – BANG! SSSSSS.

MUSIC: HINDI SUNRISE

RUSSELL gets a puncture. He deflates then looks up at the audience.

CHINESE WOMAN: Hello. You want girl?

She make a ‘fucking motion’ with her hands.

RUSSELL doesn’t know what to make of it.

TONI: Hiya, Russell!

RUSSELL: Toni! What are you doing here?

TONI: Goin’ to Beijing. With you.

RUSSELL: What?

TONI: Sometimes you’ve got to follow your feelings… and your horoscope. Actually, did you know—

RUSSELL: Toni! I’m not interested. You’re a hypocritical, two-faced, obnoxious—

TONI: Takes one to know one.

RUSSELL: – new age…

TONI: At least I know who I am.

RUSSELL: Offensive… sexy…

TONI: (smiling) Yes?

RUSSELL: …bag of…

MUSIC: INDIAN ROMANTIC

RUSSELL: …beauty.

TONI: Shall we…?

JOURNAL: Twelfth December. The bike swayed as the wind swept down from the Forbidden City across Tiananmen square. Mao’s face looked like an yellow onion…’ Hang on.

MUSIC: END

JOURNAL: What’s going on Russell?

RUSSELL: What do you mean?

JOURNAL: You’re in Beijing. Your last entry was the Chinese-Pakistan border 22nd November. How could you possibly cover 4878 kilometres in three weeks?

RUSSELL: I had tail wind you see and—

JOURNAL: What route did you take?

RUSSELL: The 785.

JOURNAL: That isn’t a highway. It’s a bus—

RUSSELL: Special shortcut… not listed on maps. We—

JOURNAL: We? Who is we?

RUSSELL: Toni. She’s my new—

JOURNAL: I thought we agreed there was no room for the fairer sex.

TONI: Piss off ya gobshite before I use you for toilet paper!

JOURNAL: Russell?

RUSSELL: (Pause, then slowly) Well… it’s like this—

BLACK OUT

MUSIC: FUNKY BOLLYWOOD.

About Russell McGilton

Russell McGilton is a writer and actor, performing in theatre shows around Melbourne for over ten years. His last show, a live radio play he directed and wrote, Seditious Delicious: A Portrait of John Howard, brought down the Australian government.

As a writer Russell has contributed to The Age, The Big Issue, Get Lost magazine, Metro film magazine and short stories to The Sleepers Almanac. His book Yakety Yak: Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle was first published by Penguin Publishing.

A well-seasoned traveller, he has been to over 30 countries, crossing the vast plains of Africa, to the steamy jungles of Cambodia and Vietnam, and the deserts of China and India. His next adventure is to travel around Australia using dice for directions.

Copyright

First published by Penguin Group Australia in 2004

This edition published in 2012 by Momentum

Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

Copyright © Russell McGilton 2004, 2012

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

A CIP record for this book is available at the National Library of Australia

Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle

EPUB format: 9781743340561

Mobi format: 9781743340691

Cover design by Greg Nelson

Cover photo: Rebecca Gosling and Graeme Wiggins

Maps and profile images: Graeme Wiggins

Edited by Hayley Crandell

Proofread by Sarah Hazelton

Macmillan Digital Australia: www.macmillandigital.com.au

To report a typographical error, please email errors@momentumbooks.com.au

Visit www.momentumbooks.com.au to read more about all our books and to buy books online. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events.

Endnotes

i

‘Beat me with a donkey, Victor!’

ii

A freelance correspondent

iii

Apologies to Ms Murphy. She doesn’t really look like that. To be fair, I have a head that looks like a squashed potato

vi

This figure is now over 20 million

v

See the back of this book for a detailed list

vi

Also known as Churchill’s Sneeze. In 1921, Winston Churchill, after quite a number of drinks in Cairo, apparently drew an erratic borderline for Jordan and Saudi Arabia

vii

In 2012, India has the highest number of road fatalities in the world, at over 130 000 per year

viii

The 2010 National Tiger Assessment estimated the total population of tigers in India as 1706

ix

From the neem tree – azadirachta indica – used for medicinal purposes

x

Australian commercial television is some of the worst television you’ll ever see in the world

xi

Edward G. Robinson was famous for playing tough cigar smoking gangsters and his drawl

xii

Alas, this breath of fresh air was not to continue. In 2011 the WHO listed New Delhi as being in the top ten for the most air-polluted cities in the world

xiv

Actually, they all look a bit like the Liberal politician, Julie Bishop.

xv

2012 – Oh, I laugh now!

xvi

A sad, pessimistic robot from Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

xvii

Fortunately, we would travel again some years later through Eastern Europe and Southern India

xviii

In 2010, there were nearly 80 000 hikers to the Annapurna Conservation Area

xix

The road is expected to be completed at the end of 2012

xx

Okay, okay Bec! I admit it! Noooo!

xxi

In October 2010, Major General Yaqub Ali Khan of the Pakistan Rangers decided that the aggressive aspect of the ceremonial theatrics should be toned down

xxii

Julian Clary – a flamboyant British comedian famous for his outlandish clothes

xxiii

In 2010, the very basement we were sitting in was blown up in a terrorist attack, killing 35 people

xiv

Yes, I had done something terribly wrong. Months later she would fall in love with someone else. I spent the next two years trying to win her back. Stupid brain!

xv

Incidentally, The Hood’s evil voice was that of the Australian actor Ray Barrett

xvi

For those not familiar with Flash Gordon – Ming the Merciless was the villain in the 1934 comic strip

xvii

The origins vary according to different minority groups

xviii

An Australian in China by David Bonavia

xxiv

http://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/lijiang.htm

xxx

In 2007, UNESCO threatened to take away the listing due to over development

xxxi

Polyandry is not as widespread as it used to be and it was usually brothers that would share the same wife

xxxii

It is believed that Hilton has incorrectly translated Shangri-La from the Tibetan word Shambala – “a spiritual land of peace and perfection”

xxxiii

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jun/01/china.travelnews?INTCMP=SRCH

xxxiv

In Australia, to stack can mean to ‘crash’

xxxv

In recent years, this figure has swelled to 4.7 million. Beijing has the world’s worst traffic on par with that of Mexico City. IBM ‘Global Commuter Pain’ (2010)

xxxvi

Dinking – an Australian colloquialism for giving someone a lift on your bicycle

Content

Russell McGilton
BOMBAY TO BEIJING BY BICYCLE

Prologue

1 MELBOURNE – BOMBAY/MUMBAI January, 2001

2 BOMBAY/MUMBAI January

3 MUMBAI – NASIK Mid-January

4 AURANGABAD – KHANDWA Mid-January

5 KHANDWA January

6 KHANDWA – UDAIPUR January

7 UDAIPUR Early February

8 UDAIPUR – JODHPUR February

9 JAISALMER February

10 PUSHKAR February

11 DELHI – BUTWAL (NEPAL) Early March

12 NARAYANGADH – KATHMANDU March

13 ANNAPURNA CIRCUIT April

14 NEPAL – INDIA May

15 INDIA – DECCAN PLAINS – LUCKNOW May

16 LUCKNOW – RISHIKESH Early June

17 RISHIKESH June

18 SHIMLA – KINNAUR REGION June to July

19 MANALI – LEH July

20 LEH – MANALI – DHARAMSALA July

21 DHARAMKOT August

22 DHARAMSALA – AMRITSAR July–September

23 AMRITSAR – ISLAMABAD September

24 AMRITSAR – HONG KONG – YANGSHUO September–October

25 GUILIN – KUNMING Mid-October

26 DALI – LIJIANG October

27 LIJIANG – ZHONGDIAN (SHANGRI-LA) Late October

28 ZHONGDIAN – XIANGCHENG November

29 XIANGCHENG – SANTWAY – LITANG November

30 XINDUQIAO – KANGDING Mid-November

31 KANGDING – CHENGDU Late November

32 THE GREAT WALL – BEIJING Early December

33 FORBIDDEN CITY Early December

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Cycle Tips for Sub-Continental India and China

BOMBAY TO BEIJING BY BICYCLE SHOW By Russell McGilton Dramaturgy David Woods Performed at Edinburgh Festival 2008

About Russell McGilton

Copyright

Endnotes