by Bishop, John
I knew Melanie had arrived a few hours before, so I eagerly looked out for her as I entered the arrivals lounge, scanning the airport with a mixture of anticipation and apprehension. Our relationship had always had an element of volatility, and as Melanie was now building a new life in Dubai there was every reason to suspect that any little argument could see her decide her life was elsewhere and that she wanted to end things with me. I also had to admit that, though I was prepared for this, I was a 25-year-old man who had not seen his girlfriend for months and who had spent weeks anticipating sleeping together again, so I just didn’t want it all to be over before the first night. If she dumped me in the morning I knew I would be able to cope a lot better.
The moment I saw her, though, all my doubts melted. She looked wonderful. She was wearing a pair of dark trousers and a white shirt with a patterned collar, her hair was much richer-looking than I remembered, and her skin had the glowing sheen of a new tan. I walked over and held her in my arms, and the distance between us disappeared in an instant. We kissed, then she looked into my eyes:
‘God, John, you look shit.’
Although I thought this was a rather negative thing to say within the first thirty seconds of our reunion, as I stood there in kung fu pumps, a washed-out green T-shirt and a pair of canvas trousers that had managed to become colourless in the same way as well-used dishcloths do, I knew she had a case.
One other aspect of spending the vast majority of your time alone is that you quickly forget how you may appear to other people. In my defence, it is also difficult to carry anything that you may regard as an extensive wardrobe on a bicycle. My hair was the worst problem. I have hair that just seems to get thick before it gets long. As a result of eight weeks’ cycling, during which I had barely looked in the mirror, let alone considered visiting a barber, I now had a helmet-shaped hairstyle. I looked like a Beatle tribute act dressed for the worst festival in the world.
We stayed for a few nights in the Carlton Hotel, which further exacerbated my sensitivity over my appearance as the staff would only let me in if I was accompanied by Melanie; when I arrived at the hotel alone, they would call the room to ask her to vouch for me, no matter how often I had been in the hotel that day. Eventually, Melanie became tired of this so she took me to buy clothes and get my hair cut. I felt like I was 10 again in the week before school term started, being made respectable by my mum.
Towards the end of our week we were joined by David Swift. I played football with David’s brother and, during a conversation after one game, he had mentioned that he was in a rut and would be keen to join me on the ride. It was one of those situations where a brief conversation had become a commitment, and he had actually come out to Singapore to ride the rest of the way home with me. I had told him that there were no guarantees that we would get on as we didn’t really know each other and that if he managed to come he could ride with me until one or both of us decided it wasn’t working.
The truth was, I was now used to being on my own and I preferred the idea of carrying on alone. However, when someone has travelled across the world to join you, it’s not an easy thing to turn around and say, ‘Sorry, mate. I want to do my own thing now.’
A cock-up involving the Indian High Commission losing my passport meant I said goodbye to Melanie twice: once when she was leaving after our week together, and then again when she returned a few days later for work as I was about to set off with David. The second time, we were also joined by Jimmy and Diane, as she worked for BA and he had tagged along on a flight to say hello and offer his usual misplaced advice:
‘If you can get a gun in Thailand, it might be handy in case someone tries to rob you with a knife.’
‘What if they have a gun?’
‘Then it’s a shootout!’
Saying goodbye a second time was made easier because Melanie had received her roster and was scheduled to fly into Bangkok on 28 April. This gave me a month to get there and something to look forward to, along the way.
• • •
Although I wasn’t sure how long I would last with David, we rode out of Singapore on 25 March. As it was, we rode all the way to Bangkok together. When we split up in India, six weeks later, there was nothing to say we had fallen out, although there was not much to say we had bonded, either. This was probably in part my fault. I was so used to riding all day and not talking that I didn’t speak for hours without noticing. I was also a few months further on in terms of cycling fitness. All the stages we did through Malaysia and Thailand were long distances, so David had to work hard to keep pace right from the first day, which to be fair to him he did, but it took a lot of effort.
There were two reasons for having to keep the pace up: David was only given a 14-day visa at the Thai border, which put pressure on us to make the distance to Bangkok and deal with all the other matters we had to do, prior to going on to the next stage in India.
I was going to be a father. Melanie had informed me during a call from somewhere in Malaysia that her period was late but, as an unmarried woman in Dubai at the time, was not allowed to take a pregnancy test until she returned to England, which was to happen before I saw her in Bangkok.
The news turned everything on its head for me. I was a 25-year-old man enjoying the adventure of riding a bike around the world. When my dad was 25 he already had four children, so the notion of ‘getting something out his system’ had never been there. For me it had been the purpose of doing the ride, and now, all of a sudden, everything had changed.
What I was afraid of – commitment – was staring me in my face. A child was a lifetime’s commitment, but I was overwhelmed by excitement at the prospect. Whatever I had had to get out of my system went after that phone call. I now had another priority. There was something else more important than me, and now I just wanted to get home in one piece.
This was a feeling which was even more acute when cycling in South East Asia, where the ability to drive seems to be mainly dependent on how prepared you are to pick a direction and keep going along it, regardless of obstructions such as other cars, pedestrians, cyclists or even buildings.
This was most apparent in Thailand, where huge, colourful lorries populated the roads with designs on them that looked like they had been modelled on the carousels you find at fairgrounds. These trucks were invariably driven by men who looked 12 years old and who all wore flip-flops.
I don’t want anyone to misunderstand my flip-flop comment here. Now, I like flip-flops: they can look great with shorts in the summer and stop your feet getting too hot or having small stones hurt the soles of your feet. However, I think when you are driving an over-laden, 40-ton lorry, you need to have footwear on that is unlikely to slip when you are deciding when to accelerate or brake.
Progressing through Thailand, it was not unusual to find a truck abandoned in a ditch, on its side like a wildebeest that had been injured and was now waiting for the vultures to feast on the carcass. Having experienced the driving in Thailand, I was not surprised so many of them had crashed, but what was strange was that it was always on straight roads, where you could imagine the driver would have seen any oncoming hazards. However, the straight roads were also where all the overtaking went on, which basically meant that every driver was engaged in a giant game of ‘Chicken’. This worked by one truck trying to overtake another truck with-out really considering the oncoming traffic. Either someone would give way or they all went for it to see who died first.
With my new change in circumstances, I would regularly move into the side of the road. Once or twice, I ended up in the ditch, but figured that climbing out alive was better than staying on the road and being dead. David, on the other hand, had a very British attitude to the situation and would regularly just continue on the line we were cycling, despite the oncoming tons of metal in front of him. At one particularly hairy moment, I looked up from out of the ditch to see the oncoming truck swerve to miss him by a matter of inches, whilst its horn blared, along with every oth
er vehicle on the road. When I asked him why he hadn’t moved out of the way, he just replied, ‘It’s my right of way.’
There are many occasions when I think it is admirable to stand up for your rights. But, to my mind, riding on a bicycle towards a 40-ton truck driven by someone who can’t even tie shoelaces is not the time to do it. I didn’t want my future child to be told, ‘Your dad is not here and he never managed to see you because he was squashed on a road in southern Thailand. But it was his right of way!’
Knowing that I could see my potentially pregnant girlfriend the following week meant I wanted to do all I could to move quickly, and with his visa restrictions David was happy to up the pace. About 150 kilometres south of Bangkok, however, the road forked. We could either go straight to the capital, or north to Kanchanaburi and from there get the train into Bangkok. This would allow us the opportunity to avoid riding into one of the world’s most polluted cities and choking to death on the way. And it would also allow me to do something I had promised Melanie’s dad I would do if I could.
Kanchanaburi is a regular tourist destination because it is within easy reach of Bangkok and is home to the famous bridge over the River Kwai, which was another reason for wanting to go. Upon arriving in the town, we made our way to the Chungkai cemetery. It could only be reached by a ferry, which was a five-minute journey across the river.
I had been expecting white crosses. Instead, each soldier in the cemetery was commemorated with a small, neat, white gravestone upon which was written their rank, name, the date they died and their age. After searching for hours, I found what I was looking for.
The headstone simply read: Brigadier C V C Cornall. Died 15.9.43, aged 31.
I was standing at the headstone of Melanie’s grandfather. He had gone to war when Melanie’s dad was one year old and had been captured by the Japanese. He had suffered horrendous treatment in the POW camps that had built the railway but which now proved such a profitable tourist attraction. I was the first person with any connection to the family to have ever been to the grave and, as I stood there, I realised that that connection was potentially growing by the day.
When I called Melanie’s dad to tell him where I was, he thanked me for making the effort (little did we know that a few years later we would go there together to stand at the grave of the father he never knew). He then said, ‘I believe congratulations are in order.’ Melanie came to the phone to say she was definitely pregnant and would be returning to Dubai to hand in her notice.
The anticipation that she may be pregnant had buzzed around my head since we had spoken two weeks earlier. Knowing it was a reality made that buzzing explode, and whatever doubts we had both harboured about our relationship were now replaced by the knowledge that, as parents, we would be bound to each other for life through the child we had created. All of a sudden, everything had a new meaning, our relationship had a purpose and my life had a point to it that it had lacked previously. I could not have been more in love.
That night I told David my news and we went out to celebrate in a bar in Bangkok. It was also a celebration of finishing the South East Asia leg of the journey. We were beginning to work together on the road and the long silences no longer felt uncomfortable. I was also pondering the prospect of fatherhood and all that this meant. It was one of those moments, for both of us, where you know your life is going to change and you are sharing that moment with someone who you think is the most likely person to understand. It was probably the closest we ever got on the trip, and we may have bonded more had a woman on the bar not started firing ping-pong balls at us – without using her hands. There is only so much introspection anyone can do under those circumstances.
When Melanie arrived a few days later, David had already gone to India – where we would meet later – his visa having run out. I was overwhelmed when I saw her enter the hotel reception. She looked radiant, and I spent as much time as I could in those few days together stroking her stomach, which showed no sign of pregnancy but which I knew would when I saw her next. Melanie was keen that I should complete the trip, despite our change of circumstances. We calculated that she would be seven months pregnant if I kept to my timetable and returned home in September.
During our short time together in Bangkok, I took her to her grandfather’s grave. The continuity of life can never be more transparent than when a granddaughter stands at the grave of a grandfather that neither she nor her father knew, whilst the next generation grows inside her.
It was hard to say goodbye to her when she left. I knew she had been enjoying her life in Dubai and would not have returned had the pregnancy not happened. But we also understood that the indecision that had surrounded our relationship was now over. There was no more ‘Will we, won’t we?’ because we had, and now we had to get on with it. Part of me wanted to go home straight away and prepare for fatherhood, but a greater part of me knew that this time would never come again. I would never have just me to think about. I needed to complete the journey because I had made the commitment to do so for the charity, but I had also made a commitment to myself. Now that my future looked so different from how it had when I left England, I knew I would never get this unique opportunity ever again.
CHAPTER 16
INDIAN DAYS
When I arrived at Calcutta airport on 4 May, I thought the pilot had got it wrong and had just landed in a car park somewhere. There was nothing ‘airporty’ about it: the steps from the plane looked like a decorator’s step ladder; the terminal was better than a shed but less impressive than a disused garage. When I tried to change $20, I created 35 minutes’ work for seven men, who each had to count the money and sign a piece of paper to say they had done so before the person standing next to them did exactly the same.
David met me at the airport in a taxi that was held together with string and hope. We drove through the night streets with no lights on, not because the driver hadn’t turned them on but because a tangle of wires was hanging from the front of the car where the lights should have been. David and I sat in the car and prepared to die.
We spent a few days in Calcutta trying to sort out the bikes and to allow David time to get over a stomach bug. The brief pause enabled me to explore the city and to form an opinion of it that I also ended up extending to the whole country. In my view, India is like onion-flavoured ice cream: it has the potential to be something special, but no matter how good the good bits are it still leaves you with a bitter aftertaste.
People have said to me that you can love and hate India within the same minute, but I don’t think it takes that long. The biggest issue I found in the country was the poverty. Even though you could see some people had money, the level of accepted poverty was incomprehensible. People would use the main street as their toilet, and I’d see children with twisted limbs that had been bent at birth by parents who had sought to give them a chance to earn some money begging on the streets.
It was the poverty that the children faced that upset me the most. How could you blame them for chasing Westerners for change to buy food? I hated the fact that you would see children no older than five living on the streets and wearing rags, with nobody to look after them, as they scrambled for whatever food they could get. But what I hated most about India was that I got used to this level of poverty; so used to it, in fact, that I found myself waving children away as they stood with their hands out. There were excuses: there were too many of them; I had often been riding for hours in oppressive heat; it is wrong to reward begging as it confirms to them that that is their lot in life. There were many excuses, but you can’t help feel some small part of your soul dies when you refuse a child some pennies.
David and I split after the first day in India. His illness had taken its toll and he needed time to recover, but I needed to press on home. It was evident within the first few hours that India was going to be hard work. The drivers made the lunatics in Thailand look like grannies on a Sunday afternoon. This was proved within the first hour when we rode past a s
martly dressed, middle-aged man lying in the middle of the road, with deep red, almost black blood oozing out of him, the injuries making it clear he was taking his last breaths in life. Around him people paused for a second, then carried on with their day. The driver of a truck with a smashed wing mirror stood by, smoking a cigarette. There were no sirens, no police or emergency services, just a man dying on the road. A reminder, if I needed one, that our hold on life is so fragile it can be broken at any time, and I owed it to more than myself to try to ensure the same did not happen to me.
I continued alone. Mistakes such as riding 100 kilometres the wrong way due to misreading road signs did not enhance my enjoyment of India. In each village or town I rode into, I was immediately surrounded, mainly by men who just stood and stared. There is nothing stranger than walking into a chai house or shop and turning around to find 30 or 40 men standing within five feet of you, staring intently. Being English, I assumed the locals could speak English. This proved wrong as, even if I spoke to them, they just continued to stare. Which was good practice for a future life where audiences did the same.
In a town called Bankura, I needed to find a hotel and decided the train station would be a good place to ask. The station in Bankura is like many in India, the best building in the town, a proud Victorian construction and a monument that stands as an indication that the British once ruled and that, despite the persecution and theft of the country’s natural resources, we did at least give them a decent railway.
I went to the transport office and spoke to a proud, uniformed man with a neat moustache. ‘Can you tell me where there is a decent hotel, please?’