The Long Hitch Home

by Jamie Maslin

  “He call friend at next town and I give forty euros to buy heroin.”

  “Did he inject or smoke it?” I asked

  “No, he, err,” Miodrag struggled with the words, then mimed snorting. “He say, ‘At Lyon I give you money,’ I think ‘Oh yeah’ but at Lyon he call friend and give me fifty euro! After that I try to tell him if he need he can keep. I was so surprised.”

  We chatted for a while about the drug problem in Serbia.

  “We have big problem in my country with drugs. The police sell the drugs. You can sell but only if you work for police. We have officer in my town drive around in new Mercedes S Class. How this on 500 euros?”

  The further we drove together the more we talked, and after a while, when we were skirting about a mile north of Bosnia and Herzegovina, I decided to ask Miodrag about the Yugoslav Wars of the nineties, and whether he was involved. We began with generalities of the conflicts, with Miodrag quick to stress that atrocities were carried out on all sides, including NATO, and then moved onto his personal involvement.

  “I was youngest solider in the Serbian army—thirteen years old. I have pictures of me in newspaper. I was youngest and I was sniper. One man from special forces showed me how be sniper. I was three years; no, two years and couple of months fighting. When sniper you have complete control, sometimes waiting two or three days.”

  “Did you see much action?”

  “Yes. When I shoot man first time I was like this—” He mimed looking through a gun-sight, then cringing and looking away before pulling the trigger. “I look through optic after and no smile, only dead. After I was not good for couple of days, very sad. But after time it like shooting signs. You lose human feeling for another.”

  He rolled up the legs of his jeans, and showed me two bullet wounds, then lifted his shirt and showed me wounds from a mine and another bullet on his stomach. Miodrag went on to describe many of his experiences during the war, but the most poignant and remarkable was his time in Sarajevo. Here he had been given the task of going from house to house in a district where just about everyone was dead to make sure there were no enemy forces. During this process he came upon two small children alone in a house whose parents had been killed. His concern was immediate. Directly outside was another soldier—also clearing houses—with a notorious reputation for unjustified killings, who, if he saw the children, would have executed them. Terrified for their safety, Miodrag implored the children to be quiet, hiding them in the basement. The solider outside asked him if the house was clear. “Yes,” replied Miodrag, but moments later a clanging noise from inside alerted the soldier to their presence. In he went, dragging out the children, drawing his knife ready to slit their throats.

  “They are just kids,” protested Miodrag.

  “No. They are Muslims,” scoffed the solider, about to kill the first one, only stopping when Miodrag, who was just fifteen at the time, drew his pistol and threatened to shoot him if he didn’t let them go.

  A stand-off followed, but eventually the children were let go, who ran and clung to Miodrag for dear life.

  “This isn’t over!” stated the other soldier, but he died of natural causes soon after—well, in warfare a bullet in the head is pretty natural.

  The children stayed with Miodrag for the next twenty days, even sleeping with him in the same bed as if they were, as he put it to me, “my own kids,” before the UN came and took them away to safety. Both he and they were inconsolable to be separated. In fact, this big tough guy was nearly in tears recalling this and I wasn’t far off too.

  “After this twenty days I be very sad,” he told me. “I don’t know, I can’t explain feeling. These kids only shine point of war for me during robbery, shooting, kill. They like angels.”

  Despite trying to locate them since, Miodrag has sadly never seen or heard of them.

  It is a very long shot, but I told Miodrag that I was writing a book, and offered to recall his story, including details of the children’s names and location that he last saw them, in the hope that someone reading it might know where they are, or is in a position to go through the relevant records to find out. And so, on the off chance that someone can assist in a very special reunion: the boy’s name was Amir, the girl’s name was Azra. Miodrag found them in Sarajevo in 1992, and they were collected by the UN in Vlasenica. Although far from certain, Miodrag thinks they were taken to Tuzla. Miodrag’s army unit was the A.O.D. If anyone can help, please contact me through my publisher.

  I said goodbye to this brave and humble individual at the border with Slovenia, where, once again, Miodrag encountered paperwork issues, only this time ones that he seemed certain would take him hours to resolve.

  I pushed hard for the rest of the day, hitching and trekking through Slovenia, with its glorious alpine scenery of snow-capped peaks, bejeweled around their lower reaches by the bright new growth of birches and the more reserved evergreen hues of pines. Picturesque villages came and went, sprinkling the scene with traditional farm houses, quaint little white churches, and old barns with giant piles of wood out front. By late afternoon I entered Austria, twisting my way through thickly forested terrain towards the floor of a great valley, where I picked up a busy autobahn. Soon I was heading north towards Germany with excellent ride after excellent ride that deposited me at gas and service areas along the way. By the time I passed into Germany it was dark, but I pushed on, watching as the miles rushed by in a blur on the country’s beautifully maintained multi-lane autobahn system. I secured my final ride of the night with four Romanian men on their way into a service station restaurant near Munich, who, on seeing me, came over and offered me a lift, but only once they had bought me a meal. After a large platter of sausage and chips, we headed off into an endless stream of head and tail lights, snaking their way across the country in endless illuminated processions, producing a trance-like effect on my tired and travel-weary eyes.

  At 4 a.m. they dropped me at a service station near Karlsruhe, less than ten miles from the French border. Battered with fatigue, I made my way to an adjoining field and threw my nifty ex-army bivvy bag onto the ground. I put my sleeping bag inside it and crawled on in, bedding down to the constant drone of unrelenting traffic. Two hours later and I was up again, determined beyond determined to make the night just gone my final one away from home: come this evening I would sleep in my own bed.

  I entered France near the north eastern town of Forbach, in a car driven by a Polish man carting a mountain of toys back to Paris for his nieces and nephews. Flat agricultural fields dominated the landscape now, on a sunny springtime day that had me bursting with excitement. The Pole and I said goodbye outside the city of Reims, where he dropped me within walking distance of the highway heading north. It would be my final stretch of continental road. Having a toll section to wait at, it was the perfect place to pick up a ride, and as I bounced my way towards it I noticed a most welcome destination on its overhead road sign: Calais. People swam the channel between England and Calais. Calais was as good as home!

  “Home.” I said it aloud and smiled, a smile that held a deep and hard fought satisfaction.

  “Woohoo!” I cried into the air, and began clicking my fingers in frantic excitement as I ran towards the toll.

  As I waited on the other side I spotted cars with U.K. number plates. Could I get a lift all the way back, I wondered?

  A French car was the first to stop, pulling up way beyond where I stood, forcing me to run towards it. When I was a few feet away it pulled off, its occupants flicking me the finger and bursting into fits of laughter. It was the first time on my entire trip that it had happened. But no Frenchman was going to dampen my spirits today. I was on my way to England.

  It didn’t take long before a camper van with kayaks on the roof stopped. It was another French registered vehicle, so naturally I was wary it would pull off, but the middle-aged couple up front did the decent thing, staying put until I arrived, and giving me a lift to a service station three-quarters of t
he way to Calais. By now it was late afternoon, and as I waited for another ride I hoped I hadn’t missed the last ferry. Twenty minutes later a car driven by a smart-looking man wearing suit trousers and an unbuttoned white work shirt pulled up.

  “Where are you going?” he asked through the window.

  “Calais.”

  “Me too, get in.”

  And with that, I knew I’d done it.

  The driver was François, and on our way there I told him of my trip and excitement at surprising Emily when I returned.

  “You think it is a good idea to arrive without telling her?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “Maybe she is with another man.”

  Ah, the French.

  François took me all the way to the ferry terminal, and after thanking him and posing for a quick photo together, I made my way inside where I bought a foot passenger ticket for, as luck would have it, a ferry that was leaving in the next ten minutes. Approaching the U.K. border control section, I handed over my passport to the British official.

  “Just been across for a day trip, Sir?” asked the border guard, looking from my passport to me.

  “Hardly,” I replied with a smile.

  Compared to the Indonesian ferry with its cockroach infested dormitories, and the Kazakh coal train-lugging cargo ship, the ferry to Dover seemed like a luxury cruise, with bars, restaurants, duty free shops, and cafés. I took full advantage of the latter, indulging, as any self-respecting Englishman would, in a delightful cream tea. (For readers from foreign shores, that’s a pot of tea, served with scones, strawberry jam, and lashings of clotted cream.)

  Lovely.

  When I’m in England I’m all too often finding ways and means of leaving the place, but having traveled so far to reach her, I was feeling rather nostalgic for good old “Blighty.” Sitting back with my feast by a window seat at the front of the ship, I put some Noel Gallagher magic on my MP3 player, and took it easy, thinking back over my journey which was now very nearly at a close.

  It had been an amazing trip, a once in a lifetime hitchhike across three continents and nineteen countries, encompassing four gradually morphing seasons. Summer had been in full glorious swing on departure in Australia, autumn had arrived in southern China, winter in northern China, and spring in Europe. A seemingly endless stretch of road had taken me through barren desert, tropical jungle, towering mountains, vast agricultural lands, and gentle temperate greenery. Wonders man-made and natural had come and gone, but the real highlight of the journey was undoubtedly the people who had drifted in and out of my life on the road. Several times on my long hitch home I had bonded with the strangers who picked me up to such an extent that by the time they dropped me off they parted with the same message: “Jamie, do not forget me.” Some I never would, but, after over eight hundred rides, many more had inevitably blurred in my mind, intermingling into a happy collective outpouring of itinerant goodwill. I might not be able to remember them all individually, but I would never forget the gift of having met so many wonderful people from such different backgrounds and with such varied lives, whose generosity in sharing their bike, car, truck, SUV, yacht, food, drink, and home was a blessing I would carry with me always. Culture, nationality, and ethnicity might have changed often and dramatically en route, but a common generosity of spirit and a shared humanity linked so many of the people I had met. Mine, I concluded, was a pretty charmed sort of life, thanks in no small part to the accident of my birth that gave me a British passport. Having traveled through so many poor regions to make it back to Europe, it really hit home just how fortunate I was at having been born in a wealthy part of the world. So many of those I met along the way would never have the opportunity to do what I had just done, which in a sense made it all the more important for me to continue doing such things, to make the most of the opportunities I had been given, and to fight for a life of intensity and rapture.

  Hitchhiking is a funny old business really, a dying art in the industrialized West, but one with so much to offer. I’m amazed more people, especially those in monotonous jobs, don’t just grab a pack and hit the road. My first foray into hitchhiking came out of financial necessity, a need to get from A to B with little funds to do so. However, I soon discovered that it was, in so many respects, the ultimate way to travel. You might not get first class luxury, but there is no other means of travel that I know of where you do so not only for free, but as a matter of course get to meet and spend time with locals, often experiencing their lifestyle and culture in a real and intimate way—something people seem more and more willing to pay good money to attempt to do on contrived “cultural tourism experiences.” With over a billion vehicles in the world, a giant, continuously shifting circuit of adventure and opportunity stretches across the planet that as a hitchhiker you can plug into at any time.

  Thirty minutes into the ninety minute ferry ride to England, and I struck up a conversation with two Dutch brothers, Gerrit and Richard, sitting at the table next to mine, who were heading to a funeral in Reading, just outside of London. When I told them about my trip and that I planned to hitch from Dover to London, they offered to take me in their car. With that, my hitchhiking journey was over. Soon after I got my first glimpse of the famous white cliffs of Dover, rising above a gray seascape of the English Channel. By the time we docked and rolled off the ferry it was dusk, pulling off onto the left hand side of the road for the first time since Thailand. God, it felt good to be back. Classic FM welcomed me home on the car’s stereo as we drove towards London. To reach Reading, Gerrit and Richard needed to skirt around the capital on the M25, but so long as they could leave me near a tube or bus route, then it was good enough for me. Much head scratching followed as to where the best place to leave me was, but in the end it became clear that the only feasible option was Heathrow Airport. So I arrived back in London at the same spot as if I had flown home. Not that I minded; in fact, I rather liked the irony.

  Darkness had long since arrived by the time we pulled up outside Heathrow, and as I stepped out of Gerrit and Richard’s car onto British soil for the first time in months, I was tired but over the moon to be back: within the hour I would be in my apartment. A quick walk through the bustling airport terminal and I jumped on the tube, riding it to Chalk Farm station, where I checked the balance on my account at an ATM to work out how much the last three and a half months of traveling had cost me: $1,900—food, accommodation, visas, everything.

  Not bad, I mused.

  I walked the last bit slowly, savoring the spring time blossom hanging from the cherry, pear, and apple trees of my street that I knew so well, breathing in their sweet aromas as a smile stretched across my face. My timing was perfect, Emily would be out at her weekly Salsa class, giving me time to shower, shave and make myself respectable for her return. As I unlocked the door to my apartment a strange realization hit me: I didn’t have to go anywhere tomorrow; I could potter around all day, and then do exactly the same thing the following day, and, if I chose, the one after that as well. There would be no struggle to the city’s outskirts or the long road ahead; I had finally made it. My nomadic lifestyle would be on hold for a while.

  And it was exactly what I needed.

  As the water from a steaming shower rained down on my tired body, a deep fatigue washed over me. The two hours of sleep I had grabbed since Serbia was not nearly enough. Bed was calling my name, and it wouldn’t be denied. Before crawling beneath its familiar covers, I retrieved a Kazakhstan baseball cap from my pack that I had purchased in Aktau, and placed it outside the bedroom door.

  As soon as my head hit the pillow I was out, drifting off into a blissful sleep, broken an hour later by the sound of keys unlocking the front door. I stayed where I was listening as the door was opened, followed by a gasp and then silence.

  It was Emily, and she had spotted the hat.

  “Are you home?” she asked excitedly through the empty sitting room to our bedroom beyond.

  I was. And felt
it now.

  And so it begins. Sea hitching out of Tasmania.

  Photo credit: Jessica Nilsson.

  The perfect breakfast stop. Wineglass Bay, Tasmania.

  Photo credit: Wolfgang Glowacki

  Posing with one of Billy’s multiple firearms.

  Robbo smoking a little crystal meth.

  Uluru.

  To infinity and beyond, Australian outback.

  Aussie road train.

  Looking down on the Tengger caldera.

  Photo credit: Wim Vanderstok

  Borobudur, the world's largest Buddhist temple.

  One of many rides on two wheels in Indonesia.

  Indonesian vegetable patches.

  Ferry dormitory on boat to Malaysia.

  Traditional Malaysian wedding with Ann and family.

  Thaiboxing corner man for Owen. Opponent’s foot in left hand corner.

  Time for some RR in Thailand.

  Phimai Temple.

  Breakfast with Mao and Mai.

  Almsgiving, Laos.

  Scenic splendor, Laos.

  Eye of newt and toe of frog. Laos market.

  Traditional Laotian home . . . with massive satellite.

  Asia’s largest animal market, Kashgar.

  Photo credit: Etienne Margain

  Night market, Kashgar.

  Photo credit: Etienne Margain

  Indulging in a shave at Kashgar's animal market.

  Photo credit: Danilo Gartner

  Tired. So very tired and cold.

  Photo credit: Manon Margain

  Journey to Shipton’s lost arch.

  Photo credit: Danilo Gartner

  Sheer perfection. Shipton’s Arch in all its glory.