by Danny Bent
After I had pulled over for a second time, a woman stopped and got out of her car. In perfect English she asked if I was OK. She explained she was a local English teacher. “Do you want a lift into town?”
I declined her offer saying I was happy to camp just behind these bushes. Her beautiful smile faded as she said “It’s too dangerous.” She wouldn’t elaborate to explain whether it was the people or the beasts who were dangerous. Dad had warned me before I had left that bears and wolves still roamed the woodlands in the Soviet countries, and Mum had sent me an email stating that she’d just been watching a program about the number of black widow spiders now to be found in the Ukraine.
I wasn’t getting in a car - not now, not ever. I was sure to face danger later on in the trip, so I had better get used to it sooner rather than later.
I put my tent up and was feeling confident that I’d found a nice spot when nightfall came. I’ve never been great at camping without grown-ups. As a kid we used to camp out in the garden but I’d always get too scared and end up waking Mum and Dad and sleeping in my normal bed.
Tonight was no different. My fear heightened my senses. Any noise was magnified by ten. Initially I’d hear a mouse scurry and that would sound like a body being dragged through the woods. The wind whipped through the trees.
Then I started hearing the footfalls. Thud, thud, thud. In quick succession, but regular enough for me to completely freak out. When things started being thrown at my tent, I was petrified.
My Swiss army knife lay by my side, blade glistening. A torchlight flicked across my tent and I was preparing to fight. My heart was in my mouth until I realised I had kicked my own torch.
Slightly relieved, I was able to pull myself together. I thought I’d try and make it sound like there were more of us in the tent than me alone, so I pulled out my faithful ukulele and played a few numbers, singing as though I didn’t have a care in the world, but really with my throat tighter than a camel's arse in a sandstorm. This seemed to calm the onslaught.
I lay down, and with the tiredness that ran through my legs, was able to fall asleep. Occasionally I would wake up when something crashed around me but no one was trying to enter my tent.
The next morning I woke and the sun evaporated my fears. Popping my head out to see how my neighbour’s party had gone overnight, I squinted without my glasses to discover a mass of litter strewn all round my tent. I rummaged around blindly for my glasses and popped them on. It wasn’t litter. It was apples. Thinking what a strange kind of party, I realised how foolish I had been. The footsteps I had heard, and the stones that had been thrown at the tent, were all apples, big juicy red ones, matching the colour of my embarrassed face. I pulled one inside and bit down on it. The juice ran down my chin. The taste was delicious.
Chapter 9
I collected up a couple more apples and decided to celebrate the fact that I was alive. All my lucky trinkets - lucky star, stone, shell, bands, coin, fungal cream, and lamb that were now taking up at least one pannier - were invited, along with the pictures of all my family and friends. It was pretty special. Everyone had as many apples as they could eat. My lucky star had one two many and went a nasty green colour. Then the fungal cream said he had to be going otherwise his mum would be worried.
I played some rock and roll on the ukulele again. The stone, who obviously had no eyes, asked if it was an angel singing. He was impressed when I told him it was me.
The Ukraine hasn't quite cashed in on the ginger biker tourist trade, and accommodation was kinda hard to find. After cycling for six hours, I finally saw a street sign indicating that there was a hotel in one kilometre. It was perfect timing, I had started to 'bonk' - also known as hitting the wall - a condition caused by the depletion of glycogen stores in the liver and muscles which manifests itself by precipitous fatigue and loss of energy. I toppled off my bike exactly where the hotel should have been, only to find a house in ruins before me. I clambered back on and further teasing signs led me to closed, ruined or full hotels for another fifty kilometres. My nerves couldn’t handle another night in the tent, so when I saw a restaurant closing up I thought I’d pop in to ask where the nearest hotel was. Using English was futile, so I opened my arms wide looking left and right and used the word for hotel – gostinitsa - making the word rise in pitch at the end to indicate a question – an intonation used by students up and down the UK when speaking about anything.
They said no, no gostinitsa, laughing at my miserably drawn face. They then pulled a chair out from under a table and urged me to to sit down. My shaky legs and gaunt face must have indicated quite obviously that I was hungry and, as they turned the lights on, they began rustling me up a feast fit for a king. As I tried to resist licking the plate, they told me “No money” and showed me to the car park where I could put up my tent.
I had assumed that as the countries got poorer as I headed east, the generosity and kindness might dwindle with it. The Ukraine proved this hypothesis entirely wrong as the next day people on the side of the road selling apples and pears tried to force me to take all their fruit for no charge. Two older ladies even got into a bit of a scuffle as they tried to fill my panniers with apples.
I was able to repay the favour the following day. An old man with a hunched back, pale skin, but a full head of blond hair, thumbed me down and asked if I’d cycle back a couple of miles to pick him up some petrol. His Lada had conked out. By the look of things it could have been many things other than lack of petrol that were stopping this car from moving. He said it was forty years old. It looked it. What cars nowadays last that amount of time? Not many.
My father had a Lada when I was a kid and used to drive us around in it. I was a little embarrassed. Other dads had soft tops and Jaguars. What I didn’t realise then, but am so thankful for now, is that he used to drive a Lada because his needs ranked far below ours. He needed the money to make sure we had everything we desired. This car still got him from A to B (usually), so he saw no point in upgrading it.
Instead of cycling back two miles, delaying him and me, I was able to offer him the petrol in my stove canister. It was finest unleaded, and somehow this Lada was able to burn whatever fuel you fed it. Once topped up with the little fuel I had, he turned the key once and vroom, the engine started first time. To repay me, he gave me four cooking apples which I wasn’t able to cook because he’d taken all my fuel. They were, however, great weapons for throwing at the wild dogs.
* * *
Tooting one's car horn can mean a number of different things on the roads. A single short sharp toot says 'Coming through, watch yourself there, little cyclist'. A prolonged series of toots means 'You’re making me mad'. A tuneful combination of the two means 'Nice bum'. There were other variations I still needed to learn, such as the toot for 'I’m carrying a frigging big combine harvester behind me'. I only heard the 'I’m coming through' toot as the truck sailed past, so I relaxed until the combine harvester blades brushed past my shoulder, trimming one side of my flowing blonde hair.
Of all the dangers I’d considered before coming on the trip - bandits, thieves, extremists and wild animals - combine harvesters hadn’t featured too highly, and missing in its entirety was the mould that was accumulating in my water bottles, my biggest concern as I made my way across the ex-Soviet Block. Having taken quite a liking to Coke, I had been pouring it into my water bottles to give me the energy to get though each day. Unfortunately, Coke seems to be a favourite of the lesser green and red mould that only toilet bleach can destroy.
When I had finished the liquid, the mould would reveal itself and I’d give it a look of revulsion and disgust. When I pulled into a hostel in Kiev after three days and 560 kilometres without a shower, the receptionist gave me a similar look. Showing me round the hostel, she paused at the shower room stating I could use it as soon as I liked. When I did, the water came off brown.
Kiev used to be the most powerful state in Europe during the tenth and eleventh centuries. It was weaken
ed by internecine quarrels and Mongol invasions, then ruled by Lithuania and Poland before gaining its autonomy for some time until the Russian invasion. The depth of history to Kiev is amazing but the architecture is exclusively post-war. The Germans destroyed the city in its entirety, knocking every building to the ground. Now it is a mix of post-war Comintern architecture intermingled with spiralling shopping centres and rings of restaurants, cafés and European boutiques. Everywhere I looked there were older Western men accompanied by Ukrainian beauties. I began to think this might be the city to grow old in.
That evening it was time to check out the best of what Eastern Europe has to offer. The club scene is renowned for being trendy, playing cutting edge tunes. It can be overly expensive and pretentious too. There was one issue: I had nothing but shorts to wear. You will remember Till and Rob from L’viv. Sitting in the hostel as I arrived in Kiev, they promptly started the jibes about the size of my legs. Till, a Swiss guy about my height, grabbed me a pair of his jeans and watched as I pulled them over my knees, realising it was impossible to get them over my thighs. I think it helped me make my point about the benefits of cycling.
As we walked towards the clubs, I continued to see older men with young girls. Till and Rob told me not to stare. “Their pimps are probably following”. I looked around then realised what they’d said, and everything made sense. These girls were prostitutes that could be hired by the day, week, or month. How stupid. I had been thinking these old ugly greasy men were attractive beyond their wallets.
It also brought to my attention the fact that the men were probably sex tourists - an expression heard a lot in Russia and Asia - as Till and Rob had suggested. People argue that the girls are making money and they are funding their children's education, but these men were taking advantage of these women’s position, encouraging them to do it.
Entering the club, it was clear that some of those girls were here looking for new clients intoxicated by the music. I made my way to the dance floor and started cutting shapes that could be used in a shape and space maths lesson. The last time I’d danced I’d been at our end of school disco. Surrounded by 7-11 year olds, in my head I was moving like Justin Timberlake. In reality it was probably like Brent, from 'The Office'. The children around me were telling me that I was embarrassing myself. It was all the encouragement I needed. I burst into my break dance routine, popping like a worm on the floor. As I flipped to my feet in a crouched position, I found myself face-to-face with Lucy. “You’ve gone too far this time, Sir”.
Back at the club in the Ukraine, my dancing was having the opposite reaction. Gorgeous girls came up to me and danced, but I didn’t know whether they wanted my attention or my wallet. Till and Rob looked on, giving me the thumbs up. 'Go for it!'. I couldn’t get out of my mind the idea that they were looking at me as if I was a bank vault. I couldn’t imagine anything more insulting. People can like me for my heart, my passion, my love, my brain, dashing boy band looks (READ: ginger-bearded runt), but for my money, no way.
I moved from the dance floor and stood in a corner on my own, confused, wondering. Till and Rob had downed some vodka and were now on the dance floor surrounded by girls. A guy came up to me and said “You’re Danny, right? You’re the crazy bastard who’s cycling to India?” It made me happier being approached in this way than by a tight booty swinging towards me. He said word was beginning to spread and he’d spoken to a number of people in Russia about a guy who was heading this way on a bike. Awesome!
Chapter 10
The floor is throbbing beneath my feet and my ear drums are vibrating. In front of me are thousands of men jumping in unison, chanting.
Having spent the day in embassies sorting out visas, I returned and readied my panniers to leave. As I sat preparing myself for the next round, Till and Rob came in waving football tickets in my face. Ukraine were playing Turkey in an international friendly. It’d be rude to turn down the ticket, right?
The fans were hardcore, to say the least. When they bounced, so did the floor. Our allocated seats were in a quieter section but we’d made our way across barriers to get where the crowd action was.
During half time I exchanged a few words in Russian with the person whose seat I was sitting on. I used the phrases I knew, explaining that I liked the Ukraine, that I was travelling by bicycle and that I had a fondness for cheese pies. He responded asking which part of Russia I was from. Dig my pronunciation!!
* * *
As I had pulled into the hostel three days previously, I had noticed children at the window of the building opposite, an orphanage full to capacity. Their faces looked on with such longing each time I walked up and down the stairs outside the building. Leaving the hostel early in the morning on my bike, I bumped into two American couples who had formed a relationship with the orphanage through the Christian church. They were accompanied by a Ukrainian and two young children. They talked in strong Dallas accents. They were adopting the two children. What a change. Moving from a hostel, where food is scarce and hygiene limited, to Texas, the home of the cowboy hat, fake tan and shed loads of money. It was going to be a strange transition but what a transition it would be. I smiled at the couples and introduced myself.
As the young orphaned boy edged past my bike, he caught his very small suitcase on the car. His new father snapped at him to be careful, which left me wondering whether the child was so lucky after all.
With each mile I cycled away from Kiev, firstly the roads became smaller and more rural, then the housing changed to bungalows with ancient roofs and exteriors. When I stopped for food, the local shop which was selling fresh produce and a few sweets used an abacus to total up my bill. An abacus, for those of you born later than the nineteenth century, is a primitive counting frame using sliding beads on wood to perform arithmetic processes. In every small village was a church surrounded by blue crosses, symbols of the Blessed Mother worshipped in the Catholic faith. These fields of crosses were surrounded by sunflowers. In the heat they looked as though they needed a nice drink as the stems were sagging lamentably under the weight of their heads.
Outside a church, a large man came and stood by my bike. He was driving a suped-up Skoda 4WD. It looked awesome. He took tourists on adventures in the Ukraine and spoke English fluently. He insisted on giving me a lesson in Ukrainian “ …. so you don’t insult us speaking Russian’. One word he said I had to know was кайф, pronounced 'kauf'. It has no direct translation into English but represents the feeling you have when you look at a beautiful view and think 'this is living'.
As my first adventure unfolded before me, it wasn’t long till I was feeling кайф.
The male in the leading role enters the film shot. He’s riding a bike, as any great lead would in such a story, whilst carrying another bike. (That's right, he’s riding two bikes - one resting on the handle bars of the other).
I need to set the scene. The morning of my twenty-eighth day, after four weeks of cycling, I met a Spanish girl. Chatting, she mentioned the fact that the Ukrainians don't smile very much. I defended their corner assuring her that people had come out of their homes to give me sausages and waved to me as I went by. But in all honesty I agreed with her a little bit. Ukrainian life was all very serious.
That evening, with a row of trees hiding me from the main road, I set up my tent, the air full of diesel and dust, and the sound of passing trucks ringing in my ears and making the ground shake ever so slightly. This was the moment our hero joined me. He was over six foot, and handsome in a wrinkled George Clooney way. He was wearing a pair of illegally short denim shorts and had the physique of a man who’d spent a great deal of time working out and doing heavy labour.
Hearing him approach as he wobbled up the lane that I had mistakenly set my tent up in the middle of, I stepped out of my tent and greeted him. He smiled. I showed him that I too had a bike, asking "Do you speak English?"
"Yes," he replied.
He beckoned me to put my tent away and follow him to his hous
e. Why not? It had to be better than staying by the side of the road risking another attack by a tree. It could be a malicious tree this time and then I’d be in all sorts of problems.
After I had re-attached my panniers, he forbade me to carry my own tent, adding it to his heavily over-loaded bicycle.
We set off towards his home and I began to quiz him again. “You speak English?”
“Yes”.
“Are we going to your home?”
“Yes”
“Are you sure it is OK?”
“Yes”
Silence ensued.
“What’s your name?”
“Yes”
“Your name is 'Yes'?”
“Yes”
“What is the name of your village”
“Yes”
I may be a little slow sometimes but it was starting to dawn on me that maybe my new friend, Yes, didn’t actually speak the Queen's English. I made a mental note that if I asked someone whether they spoke English and they replied “Yes”, it didn’t mean ‘Yes, I speak English fluently like the Queen’, it meant 'Yes is the only English word I know.'
As he made a phone call – yes, he was cycling with another bike, my tent and a mobile in one hand to his ear - I looked at the sunflowers I had taken pictures of earlier, heads drooping towards the ground as if sadness was overwhelming them. I'd thought about comparing them to the Western sunflowers I'd seen - heads held high, full of colour, as if smiling. As I looked at these greying sunflowers, I noticed that every so often I saw a fantastically bright one - one that would stand out amongst their Western brothers. I wondered to myself whether this man was one of those flowers amongst Eastern men.