Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle

by Russell McGilton

  ‘You go this way,’ he said. He drew a map of the road and wrote the names of the villages in Chinese, the distances between them, and their elevation.

  I was planning to cycle over the Sichuan-Tibetan Highway into the Tibetan highlands. Only open to foreigners since 1999, it was a barren landscape of hills and harsh, cold winds, and held the auspicious factoid of having 200 freezing days each year. I had been told that the highway was one of the world’s highest (over 4000 metres) but was also quite dangerous due to frequent landslides. The view, though, was apparently to-die-for, which I am sure many already had.

  I would set off tomorrow from Zhongdian, at the beginning of the Tibetan plateau, and work my way north through remote upper reaches to Litang, one of the highest towns in the world (4680 metres above sea level – 400 metres higher than Lhasa,). I would then head east towards the next major city, Chengdu in the Sichuan Province – a total of some 1400 kilometres and of course some serious uphill cycling.

  Chushi normally took foreigners through this area in a four-wheel drive, and he was quick to signal his doubts about my ambitions.

  ‘Here and here,’ he said, pointing to two dots on the map. ‘No town for 180 kilometre. Not much car. Snow big.’

  This worried me. With the mountainous terrain at altitudes as high as 4900 metres, it was likely that it would be as many as three days before I would see another town. Add to this the fact that I had ditched my exploding Pakistani fuel burner, to cut down on weight before the flight to Hong Kong and now had nothing to cook food with, I was feeling nervous about doing the trip at all. I imagined being wrapped up in my sleeping bag, a howling wind buffeting the tent as I lay exhausted and hungry, my body later found and nibbled on by herds of wild goats. And, there was the snow factor, which would be getting worse as the days went by.

  Chushi finished making his map for me and wrote his mobile phone number on it in case I needed his help.

  ‘You. Crazy man. Much snow.’

  ***

  The next morning, the air was as sharp as knives and I stuffed my face with pork dumplings to somehow deflect their impact. Shortly into the ride, I was again going through the routine of jumping off the bike and doing a quick dance in my cycle shoes to warm up my feet. I put my hiking books on as they seemed to be much warmer and easier for pushing the bike up hills.

  The climbs were relentless and I stopped often and for any excuse: take a bite of some bread, check the map, adjust the seat, a photo snap. But this left me open to mistakes. After climbing for half an hour I realised I couldn’t find my left glove. I’d taken it off to check the map and now it was missing. After a frantic search through all the bags I realised it could only be in one place – back down the road! I thought about leaving it, that somehow I could just alternate hands but then realised that this was a stupid idea and whizzed back down, scanning the road like a mine clearer until I found my blue Gortex glove lying on its back like a dead spider.

  By mid-afternoon I had covered some 35 kilometres to Wushan, a small, rundown town where I stopped for some noodles in a dark, musty hut. While I sat slurping up the bowl and confusing myself over a map, a filthy man leaned over me. He pointed to further up the road, then made a slitting noise while motioning across his throat.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’

  It was hard climbing, 75 kilometres in all, taking me the whole day at five kilometres an hour. By the late afternoon the light had begun to fade. I saw a number of small abandoned huts up ahead on the hillside and decided to sleep in one of them. Inside, the hut was littered with toilet paper, bottles, cigarettes, a pair of shoes and yak shit. The floorboards in the next room had been wrenched up and used for firewood. I guessed that these huts were for road or timber workers, though judging by the state of the denuded hills, I wondered exactly what they were going to hack down – a few tallish rocks?

  I ripped up the remaining floorboards and set about trying to make a fire. An hour later, I was still fanning smouldering embers with my journal, coughing in the room now thick with smoke, my eyes stinging as I cursed and swore at the top of my voice. I heard a truck go around a corner and I became instantly paranoid, remembering the man in Wushan mock-slitting his throat. I tried to think logically but my imagination got the better of me: ‘You could be robbed of everything. You could be killed. No one would know.’

  It was freezing. I squeezed into my thermal underwear, beanie on, and snuggled up in my sleeping bag. But soon I was cold, and so I put all of my clothes on and stuffed myself back in the bag ’til I looked like a Chinese egg roll.

  Despite feeling exhausted, I couldn’t sleep. I was anxious that someone might knock on the door, and I debated whether I would answer it or simply ignore it. I moved my large spanner to within easy reach.

  I lay there in the dark, breathing in the dampness of the hut that was thick in my nostrils. I could hear somewhere down in the valley the faint gear changes of trucks as they slowed around bends, until there was no sound at all, as if someone had suddenly pressed mute. It was so quiet I dared not breathe – just so I could keep on hearing nothing. And when I became aware of this, the emptiness and peace of my world was quickly filled with my noisy and restless thoughts. When those thoughts faded, eventually, I drifted off.

  Until … BAM!

  Something falling hard had woken me up with a jolt. I reached for the spanner and flipped on the torch. Nothing. I got up and slowly opened the door.

  The moon was out, revealing a blue-black world of the Hengduan Shan Mountains. It was still deathly quiet. I took a quick pee from the doorway and went back to bed. Well, back to the floor.

  In the morning when I opened the door of the hut, rolling hills of whiteness surrounded me.

  Snow.

  It had dropped heavily during the night and I couldn’t recognise the green trail I had cycled up. Trees and shrubs had turned into brittle skeletons. I wheeled the bike out, got on and tried to balance it through the frozen mud, an almost impossible feat.

  I was closer to the pass than I had thought – a mere four kilometres, an hour’s ride. The road was caked with snow, and my wheels sloshed and spun in the snowy slush, making muddy lines in the virgin whiteness. I bounced down a 20 kilometre descent, my body rattling with the bike, the front wheel flicking up icy-cold muck in my mouth while the rear spat at the back of my neck. I had to stop often to stretch out my hands that had become cramped from the cold, but also because of the constant squeezing of the brakes.

  At the bottom of a valley, I sloshed and skidded into the small town of Charshway. And when I say small I mean two restaurants. The town’s sole purpose was to service the muddied traffic scrambling from Zhongdian and Xiangcheng.

  I slid the bike up against a wooden fence next to one of the restaurants and stumbled in, my head dizzy from the cold ride and no breakfast. Seeing me wobbling into tables like an oversized toy, a Tibetan man ushered me into sit by the fire in the kitchen, where an attractive Tibetan woman with a ponytail fought with her cooking over a hot wood-fired stove. I was given tea, and soon a plateful of hot potatoes was warming my insides.

  When more travellers – Tibetan men in fur hats – arrived, I was lost in the noise of frantic cooking. Customers sat on small stools, chewing, spitting and dropping hunks of bone onto the floor. I slumped there for an hour-and-a-half in a tired daze, not wanting to cycle on. In retrospect I should’ve stayed, lying in bed reading under warm covers. However, I was impatient, and so I ordered another plate of potatoes, wrapped them up in a plastic bag and walked towards my bike.

  A French couple, wearing identical Roy Orbison-inspired sunglasses, sat outside the restaurant and watched me pack. They warned me of the slush up ahead.

  ‘No, no, no! Ah, it is very difficult. You should take the bus.’

  ‘Please, don’t put that idea in my head. I’m a weak person!’

  Two English guys had better news.

  ‘There’s another cyclist heading your way. He’s
from New Zealand and cycled from England. He’s in Xiangcheng. He should be leaving today. You’ll probably see him.’ One moved closer to me and said, somewhat conspiratorially, ‘Lots of weed by the road if you’re interested, man.’

  I rode up and up the bumpy road with no end in sight. After 35 kilometres of climbing, the day was coming to a close and again I found myself high on a mountain in failing light. Jagged snow peaks fanned out the light over the mountainscape, leaving brilliant golden rays and pink hues. It was truly magnificent.

  As I cycled around a bend I got a shock to see a large shaggy-haired creature in the middle of the road. ‘A YETI!’

  Two long horns swung out from the back of the animal like oversized antennas.

  ‘Oh, maybe not.’

  This ‘grunting ox’ or yak, as the Tibetans called the male ones at least, are known to inhabit the Tibetan Plateau in China but also Nepal and Northern India. They’re apparently friendly and easy to domesticate, but on seeing me this one ran like a hippy on fire, causing miniature landslides in its wake. As it ran I couldn’t help but think that it looked like the long-haired animated dog, Doug, in the Magic Roundabout.

  I would bump into another one moments later, almost hitting it, and instead of tearing off the road, it ran ahead of me, a mass of hair, horns and hooves, snorting and galloping before charging into some bushes.

  In the distance, I could see the road winding up near a hut, but the sun winked out as I made the next turn, and I lost sight of it. I carried on head down, dodging rocks on the unsealed road, puffing steam like a train, sweat trickling down my back and my father’s voice loud in my head. ‘Come on, son! Get the lead out of your pants!’ When I looked up again some time later, I realised something was amiss. I should’ve seen the hut by now. I scanned up the mountain, to the side, the left, the right, then … down.

  ‘Oh, no!’

  There it was, the small roof of the hut some 200 metres below. I had missed it completely; understandable, as it was off the road and up a small track. I didn’t want to go all the way down again; it had been too much work just getting to here and, like the hell of renovating your house yourself, you only want to do it once!

  I looked up. Surely the pass wasn’t that far away, but what then when I got there?

  The more I vacillated, the darker it got. I decided it was now or never and set off for the pass.

  In the darkness, I fumbled for my head-torch in my front pannier, found it and switched it on. The battery wasn’t working so well in the cold and it gave only a dim view of the road.

  An hour later, the weather changed for the worse. A horrible wind screeched up the valley, its cold teeth tearing through every part of my body, nearly pushing the bike and me over. After an hour of this, I broke through to the pass and wished I’d gone back down to the hut: just over the edge of the road was a deep ravine dropping hundreds of feet into a cold black emptiness. I nearly shat myself.

  Cautiously, I eased the bike down the bumpy descent to almost a walking pace, ice crunching under the wheels, mud sucking and pulling on the tyres. I envisaged myself going off the edge, straight over, squealing all the way ’til I disappeared into nothing. I cursed myself for being so stupid. Why didn’t I go back down?

  But then, in the distance I saw a light that I first took to be a truck, but then turned out to be a candle in a window of an elongated hut. I stopped outside and knocked on the door.

  ‘Hello! Nǐhǎo?’

  A group of men came bounding out with torches, and were soon helping me with my bike, taking me into the kitchen and sitting me down by the fire. They gave me hot water to drink. Soon the kitchen was filled with ten Chinese teenagers in ragged jackets. A big pot of mian stared at me. They all stopped chattering when a smallish man in a thin jacket crept in.

  ‘Hello. How are you?’

  ‘You speak English?’ I asked.

  ‘Little.’

  His face was cold, expressionless.

  ‘I am a teacher,’ he said.

  Through my pocket dictionary, we gained some idea of each other. I asked what they did up here, to which he brought in some roots and pointed to a packet of cough drops: Antiseptic. I could only imagine that they fossicked around these hills for roots for months at a time for a herbal-remedy company.

  The noodles, slightly spicy, were served up with some potatoes and tiny bits of meat. The men all slurped their noodles noisily as if trying to outdo each other. No one spoke. On the wall hung racks of meat so old that when I first saw them I thought they were blocks of wood.

  As more mian was slopped into my bowl, the teacher offered the kitchen for me to sleep in.

  ‘Xiè xiè (Thank you),’ I said.

  But I soon discovered that they weren’t doing this as a gesture of kindness. One of the teenagers rubbed his fingers together and pointed to a word in the phrasebook.

  ‘Poor?’

  ‘Yes. China poor,’ said the teacher. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a one-yuan note.

  ‘Money?’ I asked.

  ‘Shì! (Yes!)’

  He made a gesture to indicate eating, then one for sleeping, and then said, ‘Breakfast.’

  ‘Duōshăo qián? (How much?)’

  ‘Yìbăi.’

  ‘One hundred!’

  It was $AU18, which doesn’t sound like much but was more than I had paid anywhere at any time in China. I had come in from the cold and the snow, and I felt like this guy was trying to take advantage of the fact.

  ‘Ten. I’ll give you ten.’

  He waved his hand in disgust. ‘No.’

  ‘I go,’ I said and got up slowly. I put my jacket on, preparing to face the cold again.

  ‘Fourteen,’ he said.

  ‘Fourteen! Sure!’ I sat down.

  ‘No,’ he said, needing to clarify. ‘Forty.’

  I got back up again. ‘Thirty.’

  ‘No.’

  The wind creaked up against the glass. I took my jacket off, sat down and fumed, staring at the fire.

  ‘Okay. Forty,’ I said.

  He went outside while some of the boys made up a bed – two bench-seats on logs. Eventually they left and I was alone to stew over what had happened. But then the decision to leave was made for me: one by one, starting with the cook, the boys slinked into the kitchen and made gestures indicating that I should give them some money, speaking in hushed whispers, ‘Shí yuan (ten yuan).’

  ‘Meiyou!’ I could see this going on all night, or worse, waking up with all my gear stolen. I got up.

  The teacher came back in as I was putting on my jacket, gloves and helmet. I grabbed my bike.

  ‘Fourteen! Fourteen!’ He put his hand up.

  ‘I go. You just want my money.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I stopped, took out my wallet and put a five-yuan note in his hand.

  ‘For mian.’

  He took it at first but then gave it back to me, I guess to save face.

  I got to the outside door; it was bolted. I tried opening it but couldn’t.

  ‘Open the door!’ Now all of them were around me, trying to get me to stay.

  ‘OPEN IT!’ I kicked at the door. In retrospect, this was a dumb thing to do – ten of them, one of me.

  The cook jumped up and unbolted it and a cold brick of wind hit me in the face.

  ‘Well, 40 yuan is not really so bad …’ a cold voice piped up in my head. But I was determined to make a point.

  I gritted my teeth and pushed the bike down the ramp and onto the snowy, slushy road, the wind biting and finding channels into my body. They yelled after me but I kept going until I could hear them no more.

  The moon was out and I could at least see the road. Some way down, perhaps only a kilometre, I found an abandoned rock enclosure, perhaps once used for yaks.

  I set up my tent, furious at my experience in the hut, thrusting the rods through the seams, my profanities echoing through the valley while the pale moon looked on, somewhat amused.

/>   In the morning, I shook the ice off the tent. My water bottle had frozen and the tyres on my bike were covered in a thin veneer of ice. My fingers numbed as I struggled to get the tent and my gear onto the bike.

  The sky was a clear blue, and I could see the whole valley of rolling dry hills and pined slopes. As I was taking in the view, I saw a cyclist plodding up the hill.

  We stopped and chatted. It was the New Zealander I had heard about.

  ‘Feel like a bickie?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure.’

  We sat by the side of the road and munched on his dwindling supply of biscuits. His name was Mark and he looked more like a biker than a cyclist – his hair was cropped, and he wore a Gortex zipped jacket and wind-stopper pants that hugged his thick, muscular legs.

  Mark had cycled to China from England; he had recently travelled my original planned route from Pakistan through the Taklimakan Desert just days before the border to China closed, and he was now on his way back to New Zealand. As I listened to Mark’s stories, my grand detour back into India began to sound like a blessing in disguise.

  ‘It was a nightmare on that desert. Sandstorms, headwinds. I was doing five kilometres an hour. I had to hide behind rocks for ten hours. I wanted to die!’ He chomped into a biscuit. ‘Met some great people, but … never again. I can’t wait to get out of here and into Laos.’

  Here I was, thinking I had done some pretty hard cycling. Mark made my experience seem like a ride round the block.

  ‘Don’t know anywhere I could get a new cassette? Chain’s rooted. Slippin’ all over the place.’

  ‘Kathmandu?’

  ‘Mm. Not where I’m goin’. I’ll see if I can get one in Kunming.’

  He got on his bike.

  ‘You don’t wear a helmet?’ I asked.

  ‘Nah. Don’t tell my mother. See ya.’

  He told me about conditions on the road ahead – they were rough – and we parted ways without once looking back. Soon, I was going to be very glad I had kept my helmet on.

  The road was mostly downhill to Xiangcheng, but I wasted little time enjoying the glorious descent as I hurtled along, gritting my teeth with every pothole and bump. Suddenly, around a bend, a yak, startled by my rattling approach, darted out onto the road.