THUNDER AND SUNSHINE (part 3)

Alastair met another friend, Rob, in Magadan and the two planned on riding together to Yakutsk.  Magadan was an industrialized city, with lots of huge apartment buildings and factories.  A not-so-subtle aura of decay permeated the place and there was quite a bit of garbage lying around.  At first, Alastair couldn't locate a place to stay while getting organized for the next leg, but a friendly priest invited them to camp out in his church.  Once again, everyone he consulted about bicycling the 727 miles to Yakutsk said it was out of the question and totally impossible.  The local name for the very rough road was the "Road of Bones", in recognition of the millions of Russian citizens who had died building it in the Stalin era.  It crossed soggy forests, vast stretches of taiga, and crossed innumerable rivers, and traveler accommodations were non-existent.

So the two decided they'd give a try, naturally.  The first night they couldn't get their bullet-proof stove to work and the only wood they could find was wet, so they didn't get a whole lot of sleep.  The weather was just on the edge of becoming winter, when temperatures could plunge to forty degrees below zero, so they were a bit concerned about surviving the long nights.  But they got the stove operational by the suitable use of lip gloss(he wasn't very clear about this), donned all their clothes, and forged ahead.  They made it to Kolyma after days of dogged pedaling and found it more or less deserted.  The town appeared ravaged and decrepit, completely lacking in resources or information.  The first stroke of bad luck occurred in a small village named Tomtor:  one of the bikes broke the rear derailleur frame.  Alastair caught a ride from a truck driver back to Magadan and found a local welder, Sergei, who was able to devise a new frame for it.  His comment:  "in Russia we just have to fix things".  From this point on, they stayed nights in hunting huts, in the homes of villagers and sometimes with miners, trying to avoid camping out in the intense cold whenever possible.

In Ust-Nera they stayed with an amiable English teacher and practiced bicycling on ice and learned the Finnish word for "calm determination":  Sisu.  Later they followed along, riding in the tracks of a tank for a while and got acquainted with some of the local Yakut indigenes, who were very helpful and appreciative.  They managed to ride 15 hours a day, knocking out the miles in spite of becoming aggravated with each others personalities, in a sort of "cabin fever" situation.

At Yakutsk the pair turned south toward Tynda and struggled on in the increasing cold and miserable terrain.  When at last they had covered the 620 miles of rugged road leading to that city, they changed direction again and headed back toward the coast.  Several days later they were passed by a couple of inebriated miners driving an old truck who stopped and  robbed them at gunpoint (according to the Yakut people, all Russians were drunk all of the time).  They forked over 50 pounds to get rid of them and, squashing their righteous feelings of rage, continued on.  Then they came upon a cafe that had just burned down and was still smoking.  One person died.  At Vanino on the edge of the Strait of Tartary they arranged for transport to Hokkaido on a ferry and rode across to another ferry to mainland Japan.  It rained a lot and they stayed in railroad stations quite a bit.  Rob returned home and Alastair continued on to Tokyo.

Alastair stayed for three weeks in Tokyo, touring monasteries, watching a Sumo match and a soccer game and gave 30 slide shows of his trip up to that point.  He biked through a tunnel under Mt. Fuji.  After a peaceful ride along the coast he came to Kyoto and practiced meditation in the Ryosen-an temple.  Rob rejoined him and they continued on to Fukuoka, where Alastair took a ferry to Qindao, China.  Alastair loved Japan, finding it a neat, safe place, populated by bonkers people.

China was 180% different from Japan:  the traffic was insane, intense and the people were rather messy even though their food was delicious.  He got lost in the city, biking for an hour and arriving at the identical place he'd started.  Once on the highway, the drivers were inconsiderate and the few persons from whom he asked directions gave him erroneous ones.  And it was hard to find a place to camp because of the population density.  He discovered that gas station owners were amenable to renting him spaces in their garages to stay overnight, so he did that a lot.  He was a bit disconcerted about the total lack of privacy and it didn't take long before he came to understand that China's "great leap forward", advertised world-wide at the time, applied entirely to the upper 1% of the residents.

Beijing had bike lanes, a wonderful conception, and there were lots of skyscrapers and kites.  After wading through "a labyrinth of bureaucratic pedantry", he was allowed to travel west.  It only took one mile for the modern industry of developing China to be submerged in the ancestral China, consisting of small villages and local farms.  He was making 90 miles a day and the landscape seemed never- changing.  He was caught in a snowstorm once and spent the night next to a pig sty.  He noted the deep poverty everywhere.  The contrast with the jets flying frequently over the area was telling.  Most of the villages were pretty squalid, with lots of spitting and garbage thrown around.  Trucks loved their horns and Alastair invented a word for it:  claxongrabulation.

Eventually he reached the end of the Great Wall and continued into Uighur country, following the Silk Road, having pedaled 2300 miles from Beijing.  Crossing the Taklamakan desert on the recently paved road, he saw a dot in the distance that rapidly grew in size:  it turned out to be a racing cyclist in full regalia, cap and all, pedaling like a demon through the sandy desert, going about 25 miles an hour.  "Looking good!" he said as he blew past.  One of those eternal mysteries...

In Urumqui he found that the direct route to Kazakhstan was closed to tourists so he took a side road instead and rode into deep snow.  That day he made only 2.5 miles, the least day's progress of the entire trip.  He was glad to get out of China and into the high plains of central Asia with its vast grasslands and snow-capped ranges and lower population densities.  In Almatty, he waited for three weeks, trying to get a visa to enter Iran, but it never was approved.  His current visa for Kazakhstan was expiring so he decided to head north to Kyrzygstan.  He was accompanied by two other cyclists, Marlin and Christine.  They were stunned by the beauty of the country, especially by lake Issyk-Kul near the capital of Karakol, the second largest alpine lake in the world and a tourist magnet for sight-seers. 

After a 30 mile climb over the mountains they stayed with a Kyrgyz family in a yurt for a night and learned about a small dirt road leading into Uzbekistan.  Alastair was worried about the police and border crossings because his visa was expired, so he took the side road and the guard let him through with even looking at his papers.  By this time, Alastair was experiencing a lot of road numbness, just wanting to get home and just being tired of talking and relating to curious strangers.  There was also a lot of unrest in the area he was in, with revolutionaries and soldiers parading around the various city streets and directing hostile glares at interlopers.

He found out in Tashkent that his visa was only good for 7 days in Turkmenistan, so he had to make time in order to avoid being arrested by the somewhat bellicose police.  He made it to Samarkand and was duly impressed by the Registan, the blue-domed tomb of Tamerlane.  In Bukhara he toured a 900 year old minaret and observed that the area had the least Russian presence of any Central Asian nation that he'd been in.  Racing through Turkmenistan, he fought the permanent headwind and experienced the worst roads in Central Asia.  Turkmenistan was a dictatorship whose ruler had arranged for his corpse to be shot into space after he died for all the world to admire.  Alastair was pedaling like a demon, drinking 10 liters of water a day and at the same time dealing with mechanical difficulties.  One of his bike rims split over 4 spokes and his tires were about worn out.  At the Azerbijan border, the guards tried to charge him 480$ for leaving the country, but he just laughed and left and was glad he wasn't shot.

Staying at Baku in Azerbijan, he luxuriated at a Red Roof Hotel for a couple of days and enjoyed watching television.  There was a lot of money in this country due to oil exploration and production, and the population seemed happier and less antagonistic.  But there was a lot of pollution, and many Mercedes Benz autos were evident, being driven around by nattily dressed natives wearing expensive suits and high dollar dark glasses.  Alastair had a friend in England ship him some bicycle parts so he was there for a while.


Entering Georgia was a treat, with great food and small farm holdings that reminded him of the fruit and tea farms he'd seen in Colombia.  He crossed the Caucasus mountains and was relieved to find himself once more in Turkey.  He did have an altercation with a truck driver who got mad at him for hanging onto the back of his truck while climbing a steep hill, a practice that he'd become expert at over the last few years.  In Istanbul he stayed with the same family he'd lodged with four years before, and recalled the hundreds of talks he'd given to thousands of school children at that time.  He crossed the Bosphorus Strait and made it into Greece, where he saw how much more expensive Europe was compared to the rest of the world.

Albania was rainy as well as being the poorest country in Europe, but Alastair greatly enjoyed pedaling through the pine scented forests and industry-free mountains.  The Adriatic Coast featured medieval townships replete with Venetian/Baroque architecture.  The people were quiet and civilized, but when he entered Bosnia, he had to be wary of landmines and the citizens seemed more truculent than what he'd been used to.  He got into a disagreement with a driver who punched him twice and kicked him the stomach. "Bosnians are the most reckless drivers in the world", was his comment after a few days in the state.  Crossing the Julian Alps his bike began ailing.  A chain broke, the front wheel was warped out of shape, and the bottom bracket(the axle and bearings connecting the pedal cranks) was worn out.  The back brake didn't work, he had three flats, the derailleur would only give him a couple of gears and he was having trouble keeping his stove working:  necessary for making tea while camping.

But he persevered, crossing the Dolomites and the Alpine passes into Geneva, where he lingered for a bit, enjoying the many bookshops in that city.  In France he began worrying about what he'd do after he finished, to the point that he almost missed the ferry across the channel.  He met his family, waiting on the dock for him but continued riding up through cold and wet England to Yorkshire.  On the last long day, his derailleur cable snapped, leaving him with one very high gear for the last 30 miles.  At 15 miles to go, the bald tires slid in some gravel and he tore his pants and cut his knee.

Alastair's final thoughts were that "integrity is the basis of happiness", "the world is really a good place" and that his greatest discoveries were about himself.

After reading the book and typing out my impressions, i feel like i've done the trip myself!  But it was a lot of fun and informative and interesting as well...  If i hadn't of already read it, i'd read it again!  Alastair is a good writer and has the gift of maintaining the reader's interest, which is not found in all travel books.  I'll probably read more of his output:  he's written quite a few books...