The horseflies have replaced the kamikaze magpies as my chief tormentors. Unlike the birds, though, they are out for fresh blood, and I’m the best living source for miles around, so they’re as relentless as a herd of buffalo following a receding watercourse. Even the headwinds fail to deter them. Drafting close behind me allows them smooth access to my posterior, on which they rudely settle and nip at with their mandibles, like tiny pairs of scissors. My natural reaction is to slap them away, which makes for a wonderful scene: me, pedaling at a desperate pace, while slapping at my behind with one hand, a bit like “giddy-up horsie.” Come to think of it, this may be why I have been getting so many friendly honks and waves.
OCTOBER 2, 2012
I’m surprised to find a “border” between East and West Australia and wonder why the government feels it’s necessary. The official who flags me down to check my saddlebag is a large mannish woman. She quickly sniffs out the bag of oranges I purchased at the start of the Nullarbor, when I rightly guessed there would be next to no affordable fruit or vegetables on the highway itself. Every piece of fruit I’ve seen for sale in the rest stops has been the price of a full meal in Naples, so I’ve been savoring just one of my prized oranges every day. The service stations that offer the only food and water along the highway appear on the horizon only every 125 miles or so, so they can—and do—charge whatever they want. I almost cry every time I have to hand over ten dollars for a bottle of water.
“You cannot bring fresh produce across the border,” the official informs me sharply, whisking away my last five oranges and plonking them onto her desk through the booth window. I know my precious fruit is destined for her lunch break.
“Wait! What? Why?”
My questions seem to irritate her. “It’s the law,” she barks impatiently.
“I didn’t even know there was a border, so I certainly didn’t know that I couldn’t take fruit through it. I’m sorry. But for future reference, can I ask why?”
“You don’t need to know why. It’s the law. But they can carry foreign germs and bacteria” is her clipped explanation.
“Ah, I see.” She is not the kind of woman you would want to get into a fight with, and yet . . . “Can I have my oranges back, please?”
“I told you! You cannot carry them across this border,” she answers, exasperated by my importunity.
“I won’t. I’ll eat them now. Before I cross.”
She clearly did not expect this and pauses uncertainly. There is no law against what I am suggesting. Eastern Australian oranges can still be eaten in eastern Australia. With a grunt, she retrieves the bag and grudgingly hands it over. I walk a few yards away, methodically peel and eat every last orange within sight of the guard, then roll across the border with a huge smile and a swollen belly.
Cyclist 1, official 0.
OCTOBER 5, 2012
Today I am emerging from the Nullarbor and heading back into semicivilization, where there are phone signals and the price of food and water is merely unreasonably expensive, as opposed to highway robbery.
The first thing I do upon arriving in the little town of Norseman is to enter a café and order two of everything: chocolate cake, muffins with jam and cream, pie, and coffee. The woman behind the counter, uncertain I’m serious, hands me the food one plate at a time, in case I can’t finish it all. I grin through the whole meal, noisily cramming down unseemly mouthfuls like a feral woman just rescued from years in the wild.
Rolling into Salmon Gums, I hit the milestone of 9,011 miles cycled: halfway around the world! It has been seventy-five days since I left home, seventy-two of which have been spent on the bike. All things considered, I am still in pretty good shape, with no serious sickness, aches, or pains. As I tell friends who ask how I’m managing the long hours in the saddle, “I’ve become comfortably numb.” For the first time, I’m starting to believe I might just make it all the way back to Naples. There is only one way to celebrate reaching the halfway mark: two brownies and a cold beer. I am just a few days from Perth, where I will catch a flight to Singapore. Given the severely diminished state of my bank account, Asia cannot come soon enough.
OCTOBER 9, 2012
Another ex-kid, Kylie, lives in Perth and owns a couple of restaurants with her partner. They’ve generously arranged a night at the Margaret River Resort hotel, along with a free dinner at the Maharaja restaurant next door. After ten days in the desert, the hotel bed feels like divine intervention. Antonio and I share a room and a hearty meal with a bottle of wine in celebration of another continent crossed. He films a video of me to post online thanking all my friends and supporters who’ve sustained me until now.
“I’m sorry I’ll have to go home so soon,” Antonio tells me. I’ll fly to Singapore, while he plans to stay a couple more days in Perth. “It would have been fun to follow you through Southeast Asia. I’ve never been.”
Southeast Asia is the part of the journey I’ve been most looking forward to. I’m curious what my impressions will be like, returning to the countries where I spent my childhood.
OCTOBER 10, 2012
I ride into Perth airport, ask an official there to sign my logbook with the time and date, then head to Kylie’s for the night, to find she has prepared an amazing spread of food and drink to welcome me and Antonio. The way people have rallied around my journey, helping me however they are able, is all that has kept me on the road. The small cash donations and the constant offers of a bed and a meal en route have enabled me to get this far. Maybe there is a bit of wanderlust in each of us, and while not everyone would quit their day job to travel around the world, people like Kylie have done everything they can to ensure that I will.
FINALLY ASIA!
OCTOBER 12, 2012
It’s still dark when I land at Changi Airport, Singapore. A double breakfast and two coffees later, I reassemble Pegasus and wheel him out of the fresh, air-conditioned lobby. Outside, the hot air is so humid it’s difficult to breathe. Even when I’m not moving, beads of sweat soon run in rivulets down my neck and back. Cycling is preferable to standing still, because at least the warm wind brings some relief. I hit the highway as the sky begins to lighten with the first purple tints of dawn.
Cycling across the whole of Singapore takes about as long as crossing a large city—a few hours at most. In fact, the entire country really is just one extended city. The roads are pristine. I’m on the highway that heads due north to the border, to avoid passing through the city center, where I’m sure I’d get lost and meet heavy traffic. There are hardly any cars on the highway, as it’s still early.
By the time the sun has fully risen over the horizon, I’ve already pedaled the length of the country and have crossed the border into Malaysia. Everything seems poorer here, as well as noticeably Muslim. The roads are dusty and pockmarked with potholes; the buildings are dingy and run-down. Women are covered from head to toe, and I feel uncomfortably out of place in my cycling shorts and bare arms.
I’m unsure whether cycling clothes are acceptable here but soon learn the answer from a plump girl standing behind a 7/11 service station counter. She raises a pudgy finger to point at me, eyes bulging from her round, puffy face, lips open in a wide O. Uncertain whether this display of shock and horror is directed at me, my bicycle, or both, I slink out of the shop and wheel Pegasus, bags and all, into the toilets around back.
The “squat” toilets give me reason to smile. Growing up in Southeast Asia, I never sat on a toilet with a seat until I was fourteen. To this day I still prefer to squat; propitious, since I’ve used more bushes than toilets on this journey. Locking the door, I dig out a pair of calf-length trousers and slip them over my shorts.
Oh, the unbearable heat! It soaks my clothes and chafes my skin, which has already broken out in a heat rash, something I’ve not experienced since I was a young child. I remember, before going to bed as a toddler, my mom would slather pink calamine lotion over the itchy red bumps that covered my body. I feel transported back to my chi
ldhood. Despite the discomfort, I’m decidedly at home in these tropical surroundings. So many memories flood into my mind, triggered by the sights and smells. Recollections of train journeys from Thailand to Malaysia. Climbing tamarind trees to pick the pods, cracking open the thin brown crusts, and working the sweet-and-sour flesh off the black seeds. Gardens of banana, mango, and jackfruit trees, giant red hibiscus flowers, pink bougainvillea. The honeysuckles I loved to pluck off one by one to suck the sweet nectar from the thin stalks.
At the first roadside coconut stand I see, I pull over for a drink. They have a sugar-cane press to extract bucketloads of sweet, light green liquid from the long stalks.
“You cycle, this very good. Very fresh,” the mother of the little family business tells me, holding out a clear plastic bag full of chilled sugarcane juice.
It goes down a treat in this heat, and I feel instantly revived. I could drink two, were it not for the hassle and time I’d waste stopping at public toilets every time I needed to relieve myself. Male cyclists have a clear advantage in this respect. Every toilet break for me ticks off ten minutes as opposed to their two. So it’s a fine balance between drinking enough to prevent dehydration but not too much to need the loo. In this heat, I find it preferable to err on the side of overdrinking. Another cyclist once told me that you can cycle 20 percent longer on a semifull bladder. I’m not sure whether this is true, but it makes holding it for long stretches less objectionable.
I’ve yet to see another cyclist on the road in Malaysia. As a foreign woman alone on a bike, I’m an anomaly and therefore a curiosity. People approach very politely with their cell phones to take selfies with me whenever I stop. I’m used to being stared at now; I just blank out other humans unless they speak to me.
Perhaps I’ve spent too much time in my own head, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to engage in anything more than the most basic human interaction. Alone all day, with only my thoughts for company, I’m as solitary as it’s possible to be, barring living in a hermitage. I’ve learned a lot about myself in the long periods of silence. Without the usual comforts and safety of a familiar environment, stripped down to just the bare necessities, with no one and nothing to rely on but myself, I’ve felt myself changing. I’m less willing to compromise with myself or others, and less forgiving of weakness in myself. I have no time for the day-to-day trivialities that I once felt were so important, like personal grooming, petty gossip, and caring what other people think of me. I’m increasingly unable to make small talk, too. After hours of silence on the road, when I finally open my mouth to speak, I now notice how much nonsense comes out. How little of substance is ever said. Everybody talks, but nobody really says anything.
“I listen to people talk, and I can’t relate,” Hendri once confided to me. He had been alone in the wilds of Africa for so long that coming back to civilization was a struggle. “I’ve been trying to speak more and have been surprised by the amount of bullshit that comes out of my mouth at times. Makes me think I should be quiet more. So rarely does speech satisfy.”
Sometimes words are inadequate to describe a certain moment, like standing on top of that proverbial mountain and feeling completely alive: when the world beneath looks so small, when reality seems to hang by a very thin thread, when existence and the realm of possibility feel limitless. Those moments cannot be explained, only experienced. It’s inside those perfect moments when I feel happiest, when I feel at peace. But they are also when I feel most alone. Strange that I should be most lonely whenever I am most happy.
OCTOBER 13, 2012
Most of Malaysia’s roads are without any hard shoulders, full of dust, rubbish, motorists, animals, and pedestrians. Giant trucks pass so close that their crosswinds almost push me into the gutter. So I’ve decided to cycle up the E2 highway, which runs from the border with Singapore all the way to Kuala Lumpur, as it has a wide shoulder and the tarmac is perfect. But while this is the most efficient way of getting from point A to B, it’s also the most illegal.
Several hours and a lot of fast miles up the road, a yellow highway patrol truck drives in front of me, blocking my path. Two policemen get out.
“What you do?” says the plumper of the two.
“I’m cycling to Kuala Lumpur.”
“No, no! You no cycle this road. This is highway.”
“My navigator told me to take this road.”
“No, this road no good. You no can cycle highway.”
“This is highway?” I say. When in doubt, play dumb.
“Yes, yes!”
“Oh. So how can I get to Kuala Lumpur?”
“You must exit. Exit ahead. You take local road.”
“Okay. But I don’t know where is the local road.”
“You come. Follow us.”
They guide me off the highway and back onto the old potholed road on which I set off this morning. Bugger.
They stop at the crossroads and get out of the truck. “This the road. You follow this road.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“You take photo now, please.” He pulls out his phone, and both cops take turns posing next to the crazy foreign woman on a bike. “Okay, very good. You follow this road now. Okay? Bye.”
I wave as they drive off. The moment their truck disappears from view, I ride to the next highway entrance and get back on again. If I could think of a safer way to reach Kuala Lumpur, I would take it. At least I’m making good time, even though I’m interrupted every few hours by a new patrol car that escorts me off the road. Every time I feign ignorance, apologize profusely, pose for selfies, then promptly return to the highway to do it all again.
I finally reach Kuala Lumpur late in the evening. Navigating through the city is a logistical nightmare. By night it looks like a party town, with flashing billboards and colorful neon lights. All the roads are similar, the one-way system is confusing, and after getting lost and turning around repeatedly, I eventually flag down a taxi driver for directions. An old friend from Kampala is now based in the city, and she has kindly offered me a bed for the night at her apartment. I show the driver the address, and he nods and signals for me to follow him. It turns out I’ve been really close, going around in circles for a couple of hours. I try to tip the guy for his trouble, but he just smiles and waves me off. I find the key to Kirsten’s apartment hidden under a giant pot in the apartment complex entrance, just where she said it would be.
Kirsten is one of my oldest and closest friends. I think of her more as an older sister. She helped me get set up and figure things out as I learned to navigate my way through the world. I was twenty-three and living in Uganda when I decided to leave the cult. Not the easiest country in which to make a start. Most of the foreigners living there worked for NGOs, banks, or multinational corporations, or else they had started their own businesses. I had no formal education or qualifications, so Kirsten helped me write up a CV and apply for my first real job, managing a large nightclub in Kampala. She was always there whenever I needed help or advice. She is another of those people I call family, even though it has been years since I have seen her.
She is not home when I arrive, but a bag of takeout food is hanging on the door for me, along with a note. Typical Kirsten, always thinks of everything. Her shower is huge, and the variety of shampoos and soaps are a luxury after days of washing with just water. Occasionally, I will use bar soap from cheap motels and hostels. My hair looks and feels like straw. I chopped it short before starting the ride, knowing that hygiene and personal maintenance would be very low on my list of priorities over the next few months.
Body scrubbed and belly full, I collapse onto the king-size bed and fall into a deep sleep.
OCTOBER 14, 2012
Kirsten came home at some point during the night, but I never heard her. It’s late in the morning by the time I awake, and I don’t head off before midday. There’s so much catching up to do, it’s hard to pull myself away and get back on the road.
It’s early afternoon by
the time I reach the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, at which point the clouds explode in a torrential downpour. I keep on pedaling until Zeus-worthy lightning bolts start tearing through the sky, striking the ground just yards away. It would be rather silly to be hit by lightning. A unique way to go, granted, but I wouldn’t want people shaking their heads over my ashes, muttering, “Only an idiot cycles through a lightning storm.” So I join a group of motorcyclists under an overpass to wait it out.
When the worst rolls over, I get back on the road, hoping to cross the Thai border and make it to Hat Yai before dark. Dallying is not an option. If I were to stop every time it rained, I would hardly move. The monsoon season is coming to an end, but there are still afternoon showers almost every day. To keep the water out of my gear, I tie a plastic bag around the saddlebag, which mostly seems to work. Between the rain and the endless sweating, there is never a moment when my clothes aren’t totally drenched. I don’t mind the wet, though, because at least it keeps my body from overheating.
I spent almost four formative years of my childhood in Thailand—from nine to twelve years old—and again, briefly, when I was fourteen. A small part of me still thinks of the country as home. I called so many places “home” when growing up that each one holds a claim on some part of my past and some facet of my identity. Some days I feel like an alien who belongs nowhere; but at other times, like today, I feel that I belong everywhere. I suppose I am a child of the world in the truest sense of the phrase. Today feels like coming home; I am looking forward to so many things. The food, the people, the beautiful beaches, the culture . . . but if I’m completely honest, I would have to say mostly the food.
I cross the Thai border around midafternoon and have just reached a little town near Hat Yai when the dark skies explode once again. The streets flood with so much water that they soon empty completely of people and traffic. It becomes dangerous to pedal, so I decide to join the locals and call it a day.
This Road I Ride Page 11