by Bishop, John
He just shook his head at me, looking slightly bemused.
‘Do you know where I can find a hotel, please?’
Again a blank look. So I raised my voice, repeated the question and started to engage in a game of charades where I acted out sleeping in a building with a roof called a hotel.
‘A HOTEL. I need a HOTEL. With a BED to sleep. Do YOU know a HOTEL with a BED in it?’
He creased his brow again and then replied, ‘Walk half a mile down this road, take the first right and the next left and you will find a reputable establishment. If you are in India, you should learn to speak English. I am sure you will find it very useful.’
CHAPTER 17
A DAY IN BUXTON CHANGED EVERYTHING
I rode across the border at the Nepalese town of Hetauda after a long day riding in the late May sunshine. The heat of the days and the dust on the roads in India had begun to take their toll, with my eyes feeling constantly sore. I was hoping Nepal would allow some respite from the assault of my senses I had experienced in India, yet my mind was preoccupied with getting to Kathmandu to speak to Melanie again. I could only call her from a telephone shop where you booked a long-distance phone call, and these facilities only seemed to exist in larger towns.
I immediately liked Nepal, and it was to become my favourite country on the whole trip. The mountain ranges provided a beautiful and inspiring backdrop, and with the increasing altitude the air felt fresher and so cycling was not the same, grinding ordeal it had felt like in India, despite the difficultly of riding uphill for hours on end.
The level of poverty seemed similar to India, but there was a much greater sense of community there. This was illustrated one night in a village on the road to Pokhara where I had taken a room in a guest house for the night. The house utilised the fact that it was clinging to the edge of the mountain by having a squat toilet – a hole in the floor through which you could see the mountain pass below. If you didn’t want to go before you walked in, you certainly did shortly afterwards.
I bathed using a bucket of water and was about to go to sleep to recover from the long day’s ride when I heard a commotion outside in the village square. I walked out to see virtually the whole village in a huddle watching something with much excitement and amusement. Not wanting to be left out, I walked over to find the source of the entertainment. It was a cockerel attempting to have sex with a duck. Now there is something mildly amusing about the thought of a cockerel attempting to have sex with a duck, but it is only mildly amusing at best. In a Nepalese village in 1992, it entertained the whole village and an English cyclist for at least an hour.
My first night in Nepal was spent in the Hotel Avocado, which at the time was run by a dwarf who could not see the funny side of me suggesting that the bucket of water he gave me to use for a shower might be enough for him, but I would need two. I was to discover later that the hotel had a guest book in which a number of cyclists either coming from or going to Kathmandu had written. After spending weeks battling through India alone and preoccupied with Melanie and the baby, it was nice to feel a connection to other people, even though some were clearly mad, like the Danish couple who had visited as they cycled around the world and said they had been on the road for two years. There was a photograph of them beside their entry: they were well into the sixties and were sitting on a tandem. Can anyone who is married imagine being on a tandem with your partner for more than a Sunday afternoon, let alone two years? It’s hard enough being married and looking at the same face every morning over breakfast; imagine looking at the same arse all day long! And, if you’re at the front, how can you know if the person at the back is peddling as hard as you? What a great way to get your own back: just lean back, read a book and let the other one do the work. I’m sorry, it’s a great idea, but to make it work you both have to be slightly mental. Or Scandinavian.
The reason the hotel was popular was because it was at the bottom of the old road to Kathmandu. The new road took most of the traffic, so this one was quiet when it came to cars. It took you over the Daman Pass, famous for being one of the highest passes you can cross on a bicycle at 2,488 metres, from which there is an observation point where you can see Mount Everest.
I rode the 150 kilometres up to Kathmandu in 14 hours and arrived exhausted but happy. The height of the pass sounds impressive, but another reason the old road is attractive to cyclists is that the gradient of the climb is reduced by the road being cut into the side of the mountain at a shallow angle, so that you zigzag up, increasing your altitude steadily. This made it longer and slower than a more direct route, but also scenic and enchanting. It is the route that has been used for centuries, and when Kathmandu was closed to the world the Nepalese used it to reach the capital to bring their goods and animals to trade. I had experienced something unique: a bike ride you would never repeat in one of the most interesting places in the world.
I had said that I would phone Melanie when I reached Kathmandu, but as I didn’t know when that would be, I had not been able to arrange an exact day, and so I was not unduly concerned when there was no answer when I called the following day. I took the opportunity to see the city and catch up on some rest.
One of the first things I wanted to do was to go and visit the American Express office to see if anybody had used their mailing service to send me any letters. When I got there, however, the man behind the counter told me that he had sent all the letters to Delhi as apparently I had written to him to ask him to do so. The fact that I wasn’t in Delhi obviously confirmed that I hadn’t actually written to him, but he was able to show me a fax that had come from the American Express office in Delhi requesting that the letters for David Swift (which would have been written to David Swift care of John Bishop) be sent to Delhi. Deciding that if David Swift wanted his letters there, then perhaps John Bishop would do too, he had sent the lot.
My disappointment was immense. I knew Melanie had written during the days we had not been able to speak on the phone and I was desperate to read those thoughts. I had also not picked up any mail from anyone else for over a month, so to know that I would never read what was in them was a crushing blow. There is no greater loneliness than the feeling of never knowing what has been said.
In desperation to have some contact with home, I booked another call at the phone shop and tried to get Melanie.
When she answered the phone, I knew. As she broke down, she told me she had lost the baby. I was standing in one of five phone booths in a shop in Kathmandu whilst people either side of me held conversations in various languages, and my world collapsed. I couldn’t speak. The thing that had been a surprise had become all I had thought about for weeks. Surprise had turned into excitement. Excitement had turned into hope. And now it was gone. I was on the other side of the world trying to speak through a piece of plastic to heal a broken heart in England, and as my five minutes of call-time passed by in a flash, the line went dead.
I was unable to book another call due to a long queue, so I walked into the streets of Kathmandu in a daze. I was lost, confused and lonelier than I ever imagined possible. I could only imagine what Melanie was going through. Our future had been changed by the pregnancy and now it had been stolen from us.
I decided that I had to see her. I was ahead of the schedule I’d imposed on myself, but now all my motivation was gone. I just needed to put my arms around her. I found out that there was one flight a week to England, and that was not due again for six days. So, the following morning, I went to the airport and with the aid of a $20 bribe managed to get a seat on the only plane travelling to Delhi that day.
In Delhi, I bought a ticket to London via Frankfurt from a man in a shop in the city centre who sold household goods such as brushes and dustpans, and airline tickets. I was not convinced till we were in the air that he had even sold me an actual ticket, although my promise to come back and murder him if he was ripping me off may have convinced him it was worth making sure my ticket was valid.
Melanie
had no idea I was coming but, just over 24 hours after leaving Nepal, I walked into the back garden of her father’s house where she was sitting in the sunshine. She saw me and, after a second’s hesitation, she ran into my arms. We said nothing, but just held each other for an age. We both had our own personal pain and disappointment to deal with, but in that hug we allowed ourselves to share our loss together for the first time.
I could have turned around and gone straight back because, in that moment, all my questions were answered; whatever happened, I wanted to be connected to Melanie for the rest of my life. I stayed for a week in England without letting anyone except my family know. During the time home, I went with Melanie to a guest house in Buxton. I had already asked her father’s approval and so, after emerging from the shower one evening, I went down on one knee and asked her to marry me.
I must say that when I asked her father for his daughter’s hand in marriage, I never mentioned I would pop the question with all I had to offer on show. Had I told him, I am not sure he would have granted his approval, but I think it was the best way to do it, nothing hidden. I had no doubt that I loved Melanie, and I wanted us both to have something to replace what we had lost, something for us both to look forward to, something to move our relationship on to another level. I guess I wanted the commitment I had run away from months before.
She said ‘yes’, and I returned to continue my journey through Nepal and India a man engaged to be married the following May.
Had Melanie not become pregnant, she would not have lost the baby when she did and I would not have proposed when I did. I was beginning to learn that, in life, circumstances often shape you and not the other way round. Had none of those things happened, I think it’s unlikely this book would ever have been written. I am writing this book because I am a comedian. I am a comedian because I married Melanie. I married Melanie because I learnt I loved her. I learnt I loved her because we lost something special.
Naked on one knee in a guest house in Buxton, I planted the seed that led to you reading this book, when I was actually supposed to be on the other side of the world riding a bike.
CHAPTER 18
A YANK CALLED JOE
After returning to Kathmandu, I rode on to Delhi with renewed vigour. Like the pregnancy before it, the marriage gave me a sense of purpose. I wouldn’t be riding a bicycle for months on end again because I was getting married less than a year after I returned to England, so I knew I had best enjoy it.
The final leg of my trip began in Istanbul. In 1992, it was virtually impossible to get from India to Europe on a bicycle, unless you were mental and wanted to risk death or imprisonment in one of the various countries that bordered India. Melanie, for her part, wanted us to move on to the next stage of our lives and though she was very keen I should complete the ride, she didn’t want me to take unnecessary risks, which was why I had decided to fly from Delhi to Istanbul to continue the next leg of the journey; a leg which was to take me through more countries than any other and which was to be influenced by one person more than any other.
I knew of Joe’s existence before I met him, because when I first checked into the youth hostel in Istanbul I saw his unique bicycle chained against the railings behind the reception desk. It was unique to me because it had a mountain bike frame and wheels with multiple panniers, an extra-thick seat and the drop handlebars of a racing bike combined with the newer aero bars of time trialists, rather than the straight bars of a normal mountain bike.
I also heard Joe before I spoke to him. I was returning to the hostel on the second day after purchasing a long-sleeved shirt to combat the refreshing coolness of the European night (it was so refreshing, it was almost giving me pneumonia). Behind me, I heard the loud American accent of someone speaking about his cycling trip so far. So, I eavesdropped as he told the assembled group at his table that he had set off from Germany in the winter, had moved down through Italy before spending some time in Greece, and was now taking a bit of time to rest in Istanbul having spent three months cycling in eastern Turkey.
I casually looked in the direction of the American accent. The speaker was on the edge of his seat, oozing enthusiasm about riding in eastern Turkey where they all wore Reebok trainers and nobody spoke English, even those who had MTV. His dark, shoulder-length brown hair was unkempt and parted in the middle, so that it looked like a set of curtains that framed a round face upon which sat a goatee beard. The face was tanned from sun as well as with an obvious genetic connection to some European country, and I would have guessed, as much from his American accent as anything else, that he was of Italian stock.
He also seemed to have a thick frame, which made me believe that he spent more time talking than cycling. He wore the clothes of a latter-day hippy: tie-dye baggy Turkish pants and an open-necked, collarless sweatshirt under which lay a leather string, holding a stone around his neck.
His overall appearance gave me the impression that he was, in fact, a wanker.
I resolved to avoid the loud Yank and make my own plans to leave as soon as the bank’s computer released my funds, which had been held up since I arrived. Yet, as before, fate intervened to my great benefit.
On the third day in Istanbul, I woke in my bunk to be greeted with rain, so I decided to spend the day phoning the bank, checking my bike and planning a route. It was while sitting at a table, drinking coffee and looking at a borrowed map, that somebody joined me at my table and said, in a strong American accent, ‘Hi, I’m Joe. Are you the other cyclist?’
I looked up to see the wanker. ‘Yeah, how did you know?’ I replied.
‘The lady at the desk told me,’ he said. ‘Where are you going to?’
‘West, back to England,’ I replied.
‘Really? Me, too. I’m sort of heading that way, although I really fancy going to Eastern Europe. Man, that’s got to be a place of interest.’
Two hours later we were still talking, and the wanker was now becoming a friend. I felt guilty about my prejudices as I rapidly became a disciple of his new-age cycling church.
When it came time to leave Istanbul, it seemed natural that we should ride together. Joe had impressed me with his knowledge of cycling and his openness of character, but we had no illusions about how long we would stay together. After all, we both had different agendas.
I was riding back to England and had 12 weeks to reach Liverpool on the date I had set when I had originally left in January, six months earlier. Joe had spent the last seven years on and off his bicycle and was in no rush to go anywhere. The only date he had to keep was to meet some of his family on holiday in Switzerland in July.
We camped in his blue igloo tent on the first night, after riding 130 kilometres along the scenic coast road. The next morning, we returned to the main road, only to see a sign saying it was 40 kilometres to Istanbul. The first day had been nice, but not worth a 90-kilometre ride in a circle.
Joe was a very strong cyclist so, in spite of the detour on the first day, we made steady progress towards the Bulgarian border, even though the head wind seemed to be permanently in our faces. At one point, I was beginning to suspect that in order to keep the Turks out of Bulgaria, the Communist regime had built a giant wind machine to blow everyone back.
After a final night in Turkey, we approached the border, not knowing what to expect. We were both children of the Cold War and had been educated that those countries that lay behind the Iron Curtain were police states in which Westerners were at best treated with suspicion, or at worst simply disappeared. The demise of the Soviet Union had happened barely 12 months previously, and it was not an unlikely suggestion that we would be amongst the first Westerners to cross from Turkey to Bulgaria: certainly the first on bicycles.
After having our passports stamped out of Turkey, we cycled the 500 metres or so to the building that represented the Bulgarian border. The gun turrets were unmanned, but the armed guards who greeted us acted as though they would happily return to pointing their weapons across the bor
der.
Our passports were handed to a woman at the reception desk who had a face that looked like it had been trained to never smile … ever. Without saying anything, she disappeared into an office. A few minutes later, a large man followed her out. He had a thick moustache, stubble and an eye that suggested he had just left a bar-room brawl to deal with us.
‘Who is the American?’ he asked.
Before Joe could say anything, I answered: ‘He is.’ If one of us was going to be thrown into jail for being a citizen of a Western imperialistic capitalist nation, then it was not going to be me.
‘Welcome, my friend. I have personally stamped your passport,’ he said, flinging his arms out to Joe and slapping him on the back in a kind of border-side-male-bonding session. Without bothering to turn to me, he said, ‘British citizens have to pay for a visa. It is thirty-three US dollars.’
I couldn’t believe that Americans, who had spent the Cold War pointing nuclear missiles in the general direction of Bulgaria, were able to enter for free, whilst the British people who had spent the Cold War making James Bond movies had to pay to get in.
We had crossed the border and had started the descent into the first border town of Bulgaria when Joe signalled for us to stop. Out of his pannier he pulled out two bottles of Turkish beer, the last things we bought at the border to use up the remainder of our Turkish currency.
Joe proposed a toast: ‘Look at us, man, drinking Turkish beer in Bulgaria. Our only problem is finding a place to sleep. Haven’t we got life by the balls?’
I could hardly argue with that.
CHAPTER 19
A TOWN THAT DIDN’T EXIST
I was to learn that being American first and from New York second made Joe a celebrity everywhere we went in Eastern Europe. People would continually ask us questions about life in the West, but it was always Joe they wanted answers from and it was always Joe who they thought would be best placed to help them get in contact with their uncle, cousin, brother or school friend who had managed to escape to the West and from whom all contact had stopped. I, on the other hand, was just a source of minor interest, somebody who was travelling with ‘The American’. That was, until we reached a town that did not exist.