‘Bloody hell, I’ve lost the escort,’ I muttered, chuckling.
Everyone was looking concerned when I eventually arrived at the school gates. From there, under close guard, we cycled across a large square and came to a halt next to some classrooms that looked like rows of army barracks.
Before going any further, Xiao Wei translated the orders from the police. ‘You are to tell the children how to study English and something about your homeland. Okay, then, you are welcome. Go in.’
Putting my foot into the classroom was like stepping onto a trigger. There was a hysterical shouting and wild cheering. It was overwhelming, deafening, consuming. I turned to face the students with a triumphant smile; I just couldn’t help it.
A sea of faces. Boys, girls, just faces from wall to wall. There were probably over 100 students squeezed into a tiny room, all staring wide-eyed. More children were climbing through an open window and somersaulting onto what seemed a mass of humanity. Suddenly, the expensive fine we had copped seemed irrelevant.
Everything took on a slow, dreamlike quality. Chris followed and the jubilation continued. A surging mass of students from outside almost knocked the police off their feet and through the door.
‘Hello, I am …’ I started, but more cheering washed over me.
Eventually, the crowd grew silent and Xiao Wei stepped forward to address them. ‘These are our guests from Australia. They will introduce themselves, and please use the opportunity to ask them questions in English.’
Then it was over to us. We spoke about our journey, Australia, and what had happened to us along the way. Chris even recited ‘The Man From Ironbark’. Everyone just gazed, spellbound. Quite possibly no one understood a word of what we said, but it didn’t really matter.
After about twenty minutes Xiao Wei broke in with an emotional address to the children. ‘Students, do you understand that our Australian friends had much trouble coming to our town. They were taken by the police. Students do you know that our town is closed? That foreigners are not to come here?’
‘Yes!’ cried the children.
‘They have had much trouble with our police, but they have asked and got permission to talk to you. This is a great opportunity so ask questions,’ she continued.
I was so caught up in the euphoria that I jumped onto a table from where I pointed out our route on a map.
I was angered when the police finally called an end to the presentation. Following them back through the town, I cursed and swore under my breath. It was then that I realised we weren’t heading for the police station.
We pulled up outside a shop and the policemen loosened their collars. It was a restaurant. A table had been booked and orders placed. Several familiar officers were already sitting around the table, waiting.
It was as if the policemen were temporarily leaving behind their jobs. Even the man who arrested us smiled as he flicked through photos and calendars of Australia. Questions were asked and laughter flowed as Xiao Wei translated our answers. The meal was on the police, and I could only feel a little guilty for disliking the officer for doing his job. He was human. And he was interested. Perhaps he was as much a victim of the system as anyone else.
As I slurped down noodles and drank a shot of wine, I couldn’t help feeling that we had once again been graced with unbounded hospitality. It wasn’t deserved, asked for, or even expected; and it wasn’t something that we could ever repay. We were living our dream, perhaps a selfish one at that, yet people were willing to support us! I felt like the luckiest person alive.
After the meal we headed for the train station, where a group photo was taken before we boarded the train. Xiao Wei’s last words summed up the whole occasion perfectly: ‘Goodbye and good luck. We have to go back to work now!’
———
Just before dark the train pulled into Jining station, sixty kilometres or so from Houqi.
Chris and I alighted and dashed for the exit, wheeling our bikes and dragging all the gear. Our aim was to get out of Jining before being spotted.
I packed and was ready before Chris. A curious crowd was already forming, ‘umming’ and ‘ahhing’.
Chris was having problems with his rack so I went off to hunt for potatoes and noodles. By the time I came back the crowd had grown and, much to my horror, a group of uniformed men were standing over Chris. He was still working away, oblivious.
Finally, he was ready. An unseen face in the crowd handed out some potatoes. I took them, yelled out a thank you and cut a path through the crowd. Someone volunteered to lead us out of the city on a motorbike. I turned onto the street and powered after him. The motorcyclist picked up speed. Ignoring leg pains, I accelerated too. I was flying, blinded by a blur of lights, weaving between a throng of rickshaws, motorbikes and cars that tooted in a shadowy chaos.
Chest heaving, legs ballooning, heart trying to beat its way out of my rib cage. But I couldn’t feel it. I was an engine and all I had to do was click into a higher gear before overtaking cars and shooting off into the night at a blistering pace.
After some time I turned to look for Chris but was blinded by headlights. He must be there. Just keep going, Tim, you can’t afford to stop!
Then came a distant call from inside this swirling mass of speed, lights and rampant urgency. ‘Tim, waiiiiiiiiiiiit! Tiiiiiiim! Waiiiiiiit! Fuuuckiiing biike brokeen!’
As I stopped, everything snapped back into focus. The blur of lights was suddenly a stationary glare. The world was catching up! ‘C’mon Chris, c’mon, c’mon!’ I yelled.
There was a problem with his back wheel, which prevented him from going further. ‘Piss off, Tim. I am trying!’ he called.
With the bike lying down on the busy street, people flooded in, keen and curious. The crowd swelled at an alarming rate and spilled onto the road. Within minutes three lanes of traffic were blocked. Tooting, yelling, cars banking up by the second, lights, a mass of commotion … and we were in the middle of it. So much for being subtle.
Finally, Chris was ready. I jumped aboard for our last chance to escape.
My bike stopped one metre later. ‘Chris, hang on! My brakes are stuck!’
I thrust my hands under the mudguard and yanked and fiddled but they refused to loosen. A thousand faces breathing down my back and 2000 eyes, the end, just half a kilometre from the station.
Then finally the brakes loosened. ‘Let’s go!’ I stood up to see a policeman’s face centimetres from mine. But I didn’t stop. ‘Excuse me, get out of the way!’ I urged.
Twenty minutes later the rush of traffic had diminished to a few trucks and cars trickling out of the city. We turned off onto an exit ramp into the safety of darkness.
We continued for hours as the temperature dropped to below zero and my ears burned in the intense cold. At a roadside café we stopped for a meal, and later avoided a police checkpoint. To get around it we had to lift our bikes over a fence, push through a dark field and rejoin the road 300 metres or so further on. Finally, we rolled into the quiet of the countryside. At some point my back wheel went flat and we decided to give up for the night and make camp in a ploughed field.
Next morning I rolled out of bed feeling groggy. Chris was still snoozing, so I took the opportunity to write in my diary. In recent days I had fallen behind and feared that if I didn’t get the events in Houqi down on paper, I never would.
Eventually, Chris rose and went about cooking breakfast. For him, waiting was the activity he hated most. Even if it was for half a minute, his anger and frustration seemed to simmer. On most occasions it didn’t matter because we could leave at different times and catch up later in the day. But with the risk of getting arrested, we decided that it would be prudent to ride together.
I was acutely aware of this as I rushed to finish scribbling my notes. I was also aware that we were most prone to arguments in the morning, especially when we were extra tired.
Chris finished his porridge and packed up the tent as I continued on in my own world.
‘Tim, how much longer will you be?’
‘Oh, probably about ten or fifteen minutes.’
I didn’t have a watch, but I was longer than that – a lot longer. Chris asked again and I underestimated yet again. In hindsight it was understandable that when I looked up for the third time he was preparing to leave.
‘Hey, Chris, you can’t leave, mate, it’s too risky!’ How dare the bastard jeopardise the whole trip just because his ‘happiness’ was temporarily compromised.
‘What! I’ve asked you several times, and I’ve done everything I can. I can’t stay here any longer or I’ll go crazy!’ he yelled.
‘What do you mean? We can’t afford to split up. It could stuff up the whole trip. What if one of us gets arrested?’ I said.
‘Oh, piss off, Tim! I’ve given you your chance. Fact is you just say one thing and do another. You’re a bloody hypocrite. At least if I say something I stick by it.’
‘Bullshit, mate! All right, I was wrong. But c’mon, sometimes I have had to wait for you and I never complained. It’s bloody life! Usually you can just leave when you want, but this is an exception. My diary is important at the moment. Anyway, you also don’t do everything you say.’
The argument spiralled out of control. Without the energy to return to a more civilised debate, it seemed inevitable that it would only become worse. Although we had argued on a number of occasions during the journey, there was something about the malice in our voices on this occasion that told me we had stooped to a new level. We attacked each other for shortcomings that we had never brought into the open before. Even as I yelled obscenities at him, it scared me on the inside. How could we ever reconcile after treating each other so badly? He was one of my best mates and there I was, calling him the lowlife of this world. His insults struck home, too, and welled up as feelings of anger and sadness. Was that what he really thought of me? God, was I really such a bad person? Could I be so wrong? But I couldn’t stop. I had lost my head and so had he.
Eventually, he rode off in a stink and we flung final insults across the fields until the words would no longer carry the distance. Then he was gone, out of sight, over a hill on the road towards Beijing.
I was left shaking, suddenly unsure of what had happened. After thirteen months or so, and with less than 400 kilometres to Beijing, had I blown it? Would Chris ride into Beijing on his own?
Looking back now, I guess it was a time during which we were both at the point of mental and physical exhaustion. The end was tantalisingly close, and yet we still had to get there. Maybe we were just letting our guard and our diplomacy down too early. Or maybe it was just natural that after such a long time of trying to tolerate each other’s differences, we spoke out.
Whatever the case I couldn’t help feelings of hatred as I took off fifteen minutes or so later, a terrible energy throbbing through my veins.
Cycling, as always, was a good remedy for working out the important things – you can’t waste energy on being angry on a bike because you need all you can get just to keep riding! You can yell, curse, feel bitter, whatever, but you live in the knowledge that it’s not getting you anywhere. If you want to restore some inner peace, you just have to come to terms with it.
After an hour or so I calmed down and the paranoia of being caught returned. Just about every second car on the road seemed to be a police vehicle.
Since leaving Houqi we had entered an entirely different part of China. Gone were the sandy tracks and isolated mudbrick villages – in fact, in this new environment they were almost unimaginable. We were still high up on an arid plateau, but even so we had obviously hit the rim of fast-developing China.
The road was a wide, smooth bitumen highway complete with large signs, heavy traffic and impressive bridges. Fleets of Chinese trucks rattled along with all kinds of goods, and expensive Japanese cars often zipped by in near silence. Everything was shiny, new and prosperous. This was an alien world, unlike anything we had seen in Russia and Mongolia.
By early afternoon there was still no sign of Chris. I tried to not let it bother me and pedalled on, content to eat my biscuits and marvel at the changing environment. The road wound through steep hills which, in turn, rose into rugged desert mountains. Most of the yellow-red slopes were cut neatly into a series of terraces. On rare occasions, I spotted old men walking behind cattle, directing drays. In general, though, it was a barren, sparsely populated place. Between the slopes, where you would usually expect to see streams and moist gullies, there were deep, eroded gorges with sandy bottoms that looked like the savage, random cuts of a giant machete.
When my biscuits ran out, I began to worry about Chris. With each kilometre that passed, terrifying thoughts began to manifest. Had he really decided to go it solo to Beijing? Had he, in fact, been arrested? If so, how on earth could I find out? I spoke no Chinese, was travelling illegally, and was utterly alone.
I continued until the sun was nudging the rugged mountain skyline. The air was cooling fast, and with it waned my energy. I was bordering on tears, partly out of anger and partly out of fear, but mostly from exhaustion and the thought of having ruined the end of the journey.
Chris, where are you? Where the hell are you? But the empty landscape had no answers.
Eventually, I stopped, lay down on a terrace and chewed on a raw packet of noodles. It settled my nerves and restored some rationale to my thinking. Well, if he hasn’t gone ahead, then he’s either been arrested or somehow I’ve passed him. In any case, I am not moving.
After finishing the noodles, I put on some warm clothes, rested my head on the bike, and let my eyes drift with the dimming sky. I wondered what Chris was thinking at that moment.
Although we had been travelling together for over a year, the fact remained that we were very different people. As individuals riding bikes we had lived parallel lives, but for much of the time it had been a solitary journey. It wasn’t like a rowboat, where the hardship is split among several rowers; we had to ride every inch alone, and come up with the motivation and energy by ourselves; we battled through mental turmoil of different kinds.
Now that it was all winding down, were our parallel lines diverging and leaving nothing but memories?
As staunchly independent people, our relationship had never been one of dependence. Nor had it been reliant on us agreeing with everything the other thought. Beneath our conflicts and differences was surely something stronger than just a wish to ‘see it through’. For even below the differences, at a grassroots level, we shared a lust for life and a will to be the best we could. We had convinced each other that living out a childhood dream was possible, and that in the end, we only needed permission from ourselves to do what we wanted. It hadn’t been easy, but life wasn’t supposed to be.
Our differences had also been our strengths. It had given us the opportunity to feed off each other and grow as individuals. Alone on that terrace, I suddenly missed him.
I had fallen into such a reverie that it took several seconds for me to react to the black couch on wheels that went whizzing by. ‘Chrriiiiiiiiis!’ I screamed.
He returned, panting heavily. Even in the dark I sensed that his smile reflected my own.
‘You silly bastard!’ I giggled.
———
Early next morning the road was littered with patches of ice. The air was biting cold under a clear sky and even with Gore-tex mittens for socks, my toes began to freeze. I found it fitting that we had almost come full circle since being dragged off the street with frostbite in Babushkina. Once again, birch trees in Russia would be blazing with colour, leaves ready to drop.
Upon arriving at the peak of our first high mountain pass for the day, I set up the video camera on the bike to film us going down the other side. Then, releasing the brakes, we began to roll effortlessly downwards. Soon we were rocketing along with the rush of air in our ears. After ten minutes the bottom was still beyond view, so I stopped to put on an extra layer of clothes over my stiffened limbs. Never had we
encountered such a long downhill slope. An unspoken thought lingered between us: This is it! This is the final plunge down from the plateau, safely into the haven of warm weather. Surely nothing can stop us now! I turned off the video camera. These were moments to savour.
Eventually, we hit flat ground and rolled into the fierce sunlight of the valley floor. It was another world.
Aspen trees lined the road, their canopies thick with green leaves. Rice paddies and crops of corn formed neat squares and cut a patchwork quilt into the land. The road widened to allow for four lanes of traffic: two for conventional cars and the others for hordes of cyclists, donkeys and carts, rickshaws, tractors and an array of small engine-powered contraptions. On every spare space of concrete or tarmac, people were spreading out wheat grain for drying and sorting. We were startled by a fleet of motorbikes that zoomed past, each with about five live sheep strapped onto the front and sides. Their legs and heads were dangling perilously close to the ground and had been grazed on the bitumen, leaving a trail of blood.
It wasn’t a town or a city, just a dense band of population. The land above had been a comparable wasteland.
With spirits high, it felt like we could join the throng and be swept away to the end; as far as we knew, it was only another 200 kilometres or so.
After a brief stop for lunch we hurried towards a halo of smog in the distance. We weren’t too concerned about the police anymore. If the law was widely enforced, then we wouldn’t have made it out of Jining. Since then we had probably passed 300 or so policemen, and most had given us a friendly wave. Presumably, it was only a law exercised in closed areas.
Off The Rails Page 33