Riding Home through Asia
Page 4
The barge came gently alongside the riverbank. Tom was saved! The man on the barge beckoned for him and his bike to climb aboard. Tom didn’t need asking twice. He didn’t care where the barge was going so long as he didn’t have to cycle back all the way he had just come.
With hand gestures and a bit of pointing, Tom managed to explain that he wanted to cross the Yellow River. The man smiled, turned the barge towards the opposite bank and puttered slowly across the river. The little engine was too weak for the big barge and the current was swift. So they drifted downstream as they crossed.
Soon the barge bumped gently onto the opposite bank. Tom jumped down onto the riverbank. He smiled and shouted “xie xie! Thank you!” The man waved goodbye and motored down the famous river.
The boy had no idea where the boat had come from, nor where it was going. He was always grateful but no longer surprised by the kindness of strangers on this adventure. It was weird how often funny little things like this happened to help him when he was stuck.
Tom scrambled up the muddy riverbank and heaved his bike up through the fields on the other side of the valley. It was exhausting work. By the time he reached the lip of the valley it was late afternoon. He was dripping with sweat and filthy with mud.
He was definitely not expecting the view that greeted him when he looked over the rim of the valley: a gigantic city, with huge power station chimneys belching black fumes into the sky.
The city was not on Tom’s map. He had expected wilderness. This was a brand new city that had been built since his map was made. New cities like this, in the middle of nowhere, are springing up all over China. This explained the road that Tom had had all to himself: it was a road to this city. But the city was so new that the bridge to link the city with the road hadn’t been built yet.
In the fields all around were roadsigns that showed junctions and roundabouts. They had not been built yet either, but the signs were already in place. Tom camped in a field next to a signpost for a roundabout. In a few months’ time, this quiet field would be swallowed up by roads and buildings.
That night, to celebrate crossing the Yellow River, Tom ate both his remaining bananas. He could buy more food in the brand-new city.
Weeks later, Tom rode into a region of China known as Inner Mongolia. The land here is flat and empty. Far away across the plains Tom saw a shepherd with his flock of skinny sheep, his face wrapped in a scarf to protect him from the fierce, cold wind. The wind blew clouds of stinging dust into Tom’s eyes as he struggled on, mile after mile, into the fierce headwind.
It was tough riding. But in the distance Tom spotted something that made him smile. He span the pedals as quickly as he could, although this wasn’t very fast because of the wind. Nevertheless, Tom couldn’t contain his excitement: it was the Great Wall of China.
Reaching it at last, Tom leaned his bike up against the most famous wall in the world. He had arrived! At the Great Wall of China! Because the headwinds were driving him mad; because there was nobody for miles around; and because it seemed such a fun idea, Tom decided to stop riding early and sleep on top of the Great Wall of China!
It was a struggle to climb the wall, but well worth it. Tom pitched his tent on top of the Great Wall and grinned. This was one of the best campsites ever. He took a photo, just to make his family jealous.
As evening approached, the wind dropped and the air became still. Tom sat outside his tent, on top of the Great Wall, and looked around. The view was brilliant.
To the north, the rolling plains stretched off into the distance towards Mongolia. Far away in the west, where the sun was setting, was a tall range of snow-covered peaks – the Tien Shan mountains – that Tom still had to get across. Stretching away in front of him towards these mountains was a great desert, the Taklamakan Desert.
He blew up his inflatable globe. With his finger, Tom traced the route of the Great Wall of China. It was incredible that something man-made could stretch for such a distance.
The boy found where he was on the globe, then spun the globe in his fingers until he could see his home. Tom had a long way to go still, but in his travels he had come much further already. He smiled to himself, enjoying the sunset on top of the Great Wall.
The Taklamakan Desert
Tom first spied the desert from the top of the Great Wall of China. In olden times, the next stage of his journey would have been fearsomely difficult. In the local language the word “Taklamakan” means “the person who goes into this desert will not get out the other side.” That’s one frightening name!
But Tom’s journey would be easier because now there is a proper road through the Taklamakan. He still needed to carry a lot of water and be careful, but the desert wasn’t nearly so scary these days.
The desert was, however, still lonely. Tom missed his family and friends. He met lots of interesting people on his ride, but because he couldn’t speak their language he couldn’t have a chat.
Instead, in the desert, he found himself talking to animals. This might sound crazy. But animals understood as much or as little of what Tom was saying as the people in China did. And vice versa.
“Maybe I am crazy,” Tom said to a camel. “But if I don’t talk to you, who can I talk to?”
The camel stared back, looking cross. It chewed some desert grass and drooled down its big droopy lips.
“Are you in a bad mood?” asked the boy.
The camel scowled and chewed. It was a Bactrian camel, twice as tall as Tom, with two big humps and a thick shaggy coat.
The camel did not reply. This conversation was not going very well. The camel blew through its big floppy lips and turned away.
“No need to be grumpy like that!” Tom shouted at the camel’s retreating backside, which swayed from side to side as it walked.
“Why have you got the hump?!”
Tom laughed at his own joke. But the sound of his laughter was swallowed up by the lonely desert.
“Maybe I am going a bit mad,” Tom said out loud. “First I’m talking to camels. Now I’m talking to myself …”
“That is a bit bonkers,” replied Tom. With a start of surprise and a burst of speed, the boy picked up the pace to ride fast towards human company.
When you are crossing a desert you become used to certain colours. The sky is bright blue and the land is different shades of orange, red, yellow and brown. So whenever Tom came out of a desert he was surprised to see the colour green. If you have not seen trees or grass for a long time, green suddenly seems a very weird colour for much of the planet to be covered in.
The small oasis town he arrived at was built around a natural well of water, which meant that trees and crops could grow here. The plants smelled wonderful. Deserts have almost no smell, and Tom’s nose twitched at the sweet smell of grass and flowers.
Vines grew over the streets, providing welcome shade from the fierce sun. The world became suddenly noisy: birds sang in trees, bees buzzed around fields and trees rustled in the breeze. Normally, a desert is a silent place except for the sound of the wind.
Tom was looking forward to finding people. He rummaged in his bags for the Chinese-language flash cards, then entered a café clutching the one that read: “I am really hungry. Please can I buy a big plate of food?”
The people chuckled, as always, as they watched Tom use his chopsticks. The boy was so hungry that he was even messier than usual. A waitress brought a large steaming bowl to the table. He shook his head, too full to eat more. But she was not bringing food.
The waitress pointed at Tom and wrinkled her nose in disgust. She thought that he was very dirty and needed to wash his hair! She pointed at the large bowl of hot water, then plonked down some shampoo.
Tom certainly was dirty: he had not had a shower for thousands of miles, and his hair was crusty with desert dust. He laughed. He had never washed his hair in a restaurant before!
It was summer now. The high, snowy Tien Shan mountains looked cold in the distance, but Tom was down low, where it was boiling hot. He was riding through one of the lowest and hottest places on Earth. The Turpan Depression is actually below sea level.
Tom gulped loads of water. His clean hair was a thing of the past as he became soaked with sweat. He dreamed of the sea. But Tom was further from the sea here than anywhere else on the planet. In a straight line, nowhere else in the world is further away from a beach than the Taklamakan Desert.
He rode past jagged hills striped with colourful rock which had eroded into hundreds of sharp gullies. The rocks were bright red and orange. As the setting sun shone, they glowed like flames. The Flaming Mountains – for this is what they are called – were a breathtaking sight.
Normally Tom dreaded riding uphill, but soon he was grateful; as the road climbed, the temperature dropped. He began following a small dirt track which he hoped would lead him over the mountains to the next country on his map, Kazakhstan. After a few hours of pedalling uphill, the temperature was perfect!
Unfortunately, he had not finished climbing. The road continued to ascend, and after an hour Tom was a little chilly. Two hours later, he was cold. Three hours later he was shivering, and the track was covered in snow.
But still the track rose, rising up towards a high pass. By the time he reached the pass the snow was as high as Tom’s head! He pitched his tent and shivered unhappily. Yesterday he had been too hot. Today he was too cold.
The following morning, Tom needed to descend down the other side of the pass. It was too snowy to cycle, so he had to haul his gear by hand. There was too much to carry at once, so first of all he stumbled through the snow carrying his bike. He put the bike down and returned to collect two of his bags. Then he repeated the process over and over with the rest of his heavy, heavy bags.
By the end of the day Tom was wet, tired and in a very bad mood. In all, he had progressed fewer than two miles. As he shivered in his tent for a second night almost at the snow line, Tom looked forward to riding down into Central Asia and putting China far behind him.
The next day, he freewheeled down the track, away from the cold and towards warmer lands below. He zoomed through alpine meadows thick with flowers and purple lavender.
Cows watched the strange-looking boy who sang loudly as he cycled. Tom crossed bright blue rivers and waved at men saddling horses. Those final miles of China were fantastic. The third biggest country in the world had saved its best for last.
Tom had loved his China adventure, loved it as much as his Russian and Japanese ones. In all three of these fascinating countries he had eaten strange foods, met curious and friendly people, and learned a whole host of new skills. Woohoo!
Cycling the Stans
Central Asia is made up of countries like Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. “Stan” means “Land”, so these countries are the Land of the Afghan people, the Land of the Kazakh people and so on. Central Asia’s borders twist and turn around each other. There are even patches of one country that are completely surrounded by another country. It is a complicated part of the world.
The people in these countries speak many different languages (though most people speak Russian too, and all Muslims greet each other with the Arabic phrase “Salaam aleikum!” that Tom remembered from the Middle East). They are from many different backgrounds and wear a brilliant variety of funny hats.
Tom struggled even to spell some of the Central Asian countries, let alone pinpoint quite where they were on a map. He was learning a lot as he crossed them on his way towards Europe and home.
Today, heat folded around him in every direction. The sun pounded down on his head and pulsed upwards from the road. Smelly mopeds roared past, giving off clouds of fumes.
When the temperature grew unbearable, Tom pulled off the road and flopped down on the veranda of a café, hiding under the shade of some vines. A sympathetic café owner brought him iced water and refreshing pots of tea. Donkey carts pootled slowly past even in these hottest hours of the day and Tom raised a weary hand from the shade to wave to the drivers as they passed.
One constant in these countries were mosques of all shapes and sizes. Each has the symbol of a crescent moon on the roof. At dawn, mosques ring out with the call to prayer. Tom remembered this from his time cycling through the Middle East.
“Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!”
“God is great! God is the greatest!”
This call is the same at all five prayers of the day, except at dawn when people are also urged to:
“Hurry to worship. Prayer is better than sleep!”
Though Tom had never been here, Central Asia felt more familiar than China. A lot of the signposts were written in the Russian script he had learned, so at least he could read roadsigns again. He recognised some words from Arabic and Russian, too, and some of the food was similar to Turkey’s. Tom decided that his travels had taught him that all countries in the world are a mish-mash of their own culture – plus the good bits they’ve borrowed from other countries.
The calls from the mosques, the noisy motorbikes, the loud Arabic music playing in shops and cafés: it was fun to be in a busy bustle of people again after the emptiness of western China. Girls played with skipping ropes. Old men hunched over games of cards. Boys rode their parents’ rusty bicycles, helping out with errands. The bikes were too big for them and to reach the pedals they had to sit on the crossbars instead of the seats. Butchers cycled between cafés on special tricycles kitted out with meat racks. Haunches of mutton dangled and swung to and fro as the butchers pedalled through the streets.
Each morning Tom began riding at first light, woken by the call to prayer from the nearest mosque. He liked cycling as early as possible before the day became too hot. But after only an hour he was forced to stop. He tried to keep going, but he could not help himself. For the air was filled with one of the most delicious smells in the world: freshly baked bread. He stopped riding and followed his nose to a village bakery.
Here, ovens are outside because it is too hot in the bakery. They are made from bricks and clay and about as big as washing machines. There is a big hole in the top of an oven and the insides are curved. The baker sticks the dough – which is round and flat like pizza – onto the hot inside wall of the oven until it is baked. Tom never quite understood how the bakers didn’t burn their fingers.
Each baker decorates his dough with his own special pattern of pinpricked circles and swirls, then sprinkles it with seeds. Sesame, poppy or cumin seeds are the most common. Tom’s bread was so hot that he had to juggle it between his hands as he carried it into the shade to eat.
His favourite time in the villages was the evening, after the heat had faded from the sky and the temperatures became pleasant again. People set up barbecues in the streets, lit by dangling lightbulbs. They fanned hot coals as skewers of lamb kebabs – shashlik – sizzled on grills.
Café owners wheeled pool tables out onto the pavement so that people could play outside in the cooler weather. Moths swirled round the lights as Arabic music swirled round the air. Tom sat happily munching kebabs, enjoying the discovery of this new part of the world that he had known nothing about until he had pedalled up and over that snowy pass from China.
Riding through Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan was brilliant. Herds of half-wild horses galloped across the endless, rolling grazing pastures called jailoo. Snowy mountains shimmered in the distance. Storks clattered their long bills from high, scruffy nests. Camels stared at Tom, their mouths constantly moving as they chewed. Tom had learned his lesson about trying to chat to camels, so he just waved as he passed.
Men worked the fields, swinging scythes to cut the long grass. Sweating in the heat, they loaded the grass onto gigantic trailers. This hay would feed their animals over the long winter months ahead.
At night, Tom camped in soft meadows filled with pink and yellow flowers; on lake shores; or in shaded, fragrant orchards. Apples originally came from Central Asia. In fact, the name of Kazakhstan’s biggest city – Almaty – means “Father of Apples”.
Ladies with colourful headscarves and gold teeth smiled as he passed, and Tom stopped to buy fruit from them. They sold buckets of strawberries and pyramids of plums beside the roadside, alongside huge mounds of watermelons. Every few days Tom treated himself to a watermelon.
A sticky slice of watermelon is one of the most delicious things in the world when you are boiling hot. Tom dreamed of chopping a watermelon in half and shoving it onto his head like a cool, juicy helmet. The only downside of a watermelon is that they are massive and really heavy to carry on a bike.
Less delicious than watermelon were the drinks of kvass that Tom was sometimes offered. Kvass is a slightly fizzy drink made out of brown bread. Kvass was at least a bit nicer than kumis, a sour drink made from horse milk served inside a goat skin.
Each village had a communal water pump. Yanking a long metal lever up and down makes water glug from the spout. Whenever he saw one of these pumps, Tom stopped to fill his bottles. He learned the trick of pulling the handle up and down whilst his head was under the spout. The chilled water felt delightful on his hot, sweaty head!
Nomads along the Silk Road
Many people in Kyrgyzstan are from nomadic backgrounds. They do not live in the same place all the time; instead they move around, following the seasons and the best grazing pastures for their precious animals. They were very curious about Tom’s own nomadic adventures.