TravelStream™ news feed for member dynamo on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/dynamo en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Tue, 07 Oct 2008 08:44:10 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1206537060/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1206537060/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1206537060/tpod.html Tue, 07 Oct 2008 08:44:10 -0400 Cycling to Australia, unsupported, untrained and unprepared. Idiot.

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Padang, Indonesia

Once properly in the mountains, the scenery became truly breathtaking. Between Parakumbuh and Bukittingi, there was a relatively level plateau, with villages cultivating rice and sheer rocky outcroppings. I stopped in Bukittingi for a couple of hours and visited it's rather dubious tourist attractions: a Dutch colonial structure called 'Fort De Kock' which was unimpressive, despite having an amusing name, and a zoo with some very unhappy looking elephants. Their covered market was lively though, and I was given some fruit I couldn't identify. (An odd thing; dark, pear shaped, but with a crispy, shell-like skin, covering a hard, tart fruit; if jackfruit is natural winegums, this was like the natural sours). From Bukittingi it was forty gorgeous kilometers to Lake Maninjau; This was a slight detour, and took me off the main road. Climbing and descending on a narrow lane through emerald rice terraces bordered by craggy limestone cliffs. This was the definitive rural idyll. Until I reached the lake, which was even better. Maninjau is inside a 30km wide volcanic crater. Coming from Bukittingi there was a 10km descent into the crater, down 45 outrageously steep hairpin bends. The views on the way down were spectacular. Clearly, they were also distracting. Hairpin number 5 (they were all numbered), not far from the bottom, was the scene of much commotion, as the wreckage of a car was being retrieved from it's precarious 'italian job' position. The driver was already in hospital, (just a couple of broken bones, apparently), so I joined in the rubber-necking for a few minutes.I found a lakeside bungalow for 5USD. This was the most 'touristed' destination I passed through in Sumatra. I saw an English family and another European couple in the village. The following day I met two of the guys I'd met in Penang, Malaysia, partaking of the only tourist 'activity' available- renting pushbikes and riding around the lake... They were doing a full kora; I was heading for the outflow river on the far side. This was easy to spot: steep crater walls formed a complete barrier around the lake, apart from the narrow cleft where it emptied. The lakeside road passed through even more magnificent scenery, before turning off to follow the quick, clear river 30km down the mountainside to the west coast. The coast road to Padang was quiet and flat, with only occasional views of the beach and ocean. Mostly it cut through more oil-palm plantations. Padang was smaller than I'd expected, since I knew it was one of Sumatra's biggest cities. I took a sunset stroll along the corniche and found a local restaurant. Padang cooking (Masakan Padang) is the most common kind of restaurant in Sumatra and Java. I was already very familiar with the form. The system was as follows: you sit down and look hungry. Combining this with eating gestures (specifically, eating-with-fingers gestures. Mime using a spoon and terrible confusion awaits), and pointing at food will eventually persuade the owner that you really did come into their restaurant in order to eat food. At this point they bring a bowl of rice, a bowl of water, and a collection of dishes, consisting of some (or all) of the following: several different fish, chicken and boiled-egg curries, an omelete, a couple of pieces of boiled and fried beef, fried chicken pieces, fried fish, chilli and tomato paste, raw vegetables. You help yourself to as much of this assortment as you want, spoons are provided, for transferring food from bowl to plate. You use your right hand to get it from there to your mouth. (hence the bowl of water).When you're finished, you ask for the bill. The owner surveys the remaining dishes, sucks his teeth like a mechanic giving a quote, and plucks a number out of thin air. There was very little consistency between meals, pricewise, but since they were always less than 2USD I didn't mind much.The Masakan Padang in Padang was no better than elsewhere, sadly, but there was a superb variety of streetfood in the centre. It was here that I re-discovered a treat to which I subsequently became seriously addicted. I'd first had it in Malaysia, bought on the street in the middle of nowhere, and never seen again. In Indonesia, it was ubiquitous: a thick Scotch-pancake-ish base, but with yeast, cooked on one side only, and sprinkled with a generous handful of sugar. As it cooks it bubbles up, so it has the unsealed, spongey absorbance of a crumpet. It's then buttered and sprinkled with more sugar, crushed peanuts, chocolate chips, sugar, condensed milk, sugar and sugar. Folded in half, brushed with butter on the underside for good measure, portioned and served. The vendor offered to add grated cheddar to this mix. I laughed in his face and accused him of insanity, and possibly witchcraft. But in the next town, I was offered the same thing. Clearly this was normal here- a local speciality- it'd be rude not to. Rude and, it turned out, very foolish. Strange as it may sound, the cheese was the piece de resistance. Pure genius. A little bit of savoury to balance all the sugar, and the uniquely appealing stodge of unmelting cheese. (I was riding pretty long days at this point. It's possible my body had begun to respond exclusively to calories and water) Whenever I bought one, the other customers in the queue were invariably parents with several children. I suspect that conventionally one of these puddings feeds an entire family.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1206103380/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1206103380/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1206103380/tpod.html Tue, 07 Oct 2008 06:35:22 -0400 Cycling to Australia, unsupported, untrained and unprepared. Idiot.

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Duri, Indonesia

My plan, coming to Singapore, was to apply for a visa at the Indonesian embassy there and catch a boat to Sumatra. Unfortunately, the Indonesian embassy required an exit ticket and 70USD to issue a 2month visa, and I could supply neither. Instead, I caught buses back to Melaka and checked back into the same hostel, to the surprise and delight of the manager. I explained I was planning to catch a ferry to Sumatra.-Oh- I can sell you ticket!-No, that's ok, I'll buy at the dock.-Ah, Ok,. No problemSomewhere in this conversation I made an egregious tactical error. I failed to illicit one vital piece of information, as a consequence of which, at 8am the next morning, I missed the boat. It took 2 hours to see all of Melaka. After 4 days, I was ready to move on.The ferryboat to Dumai was quick, though sadly not quick enough to curtail the enjoyment of the 'in flight entertainment' - Mr. Bean. Customs were accommodating. I'd neglected to bring 20USD for my visa on arrival, but they were happy to hang on to my bike and passport while I took a motorbike-taxi to the nearest ATM. The main reason for the existence of this port, and indeed this town, was to export the vast quantities of gas and oil extracted near Pekanbaru, 200km away. Consequently it was a small, functional, industrial town which reeked of petrochemicals. A smell, familiar from GCSE chemistry classes hung over the whole town, the smell of burnt ruler. I didn't linger. I rode, instead, to Duri, 80km away, a similarly unappealing but less pungent habitation. A dormitory town for oil workers. Judging by the presence of three shabby but not rotten hotels, I guessed it was also an occasional destination for foreign managers or inspectors. This theory was lent credibility when I went to search of food. I found a streetmeat vendor, selling chicken sate sticks with glutinous rice, and sat at his wooden bench to eat. Two men in overalls were already there, picking their teeth. I said hi.-Hey! You Caltex?-No, no.-Halliburton?-No, I'm a tourist!-What? -Tourist. Visitor. -Hmm.I'm not sure they understood. Quite possibly there's a rumour spreading through Duri that a new corporation called Turis is moving into town. +++++++++++GEOGRAPHY LESSON: YOU KNOW IF YOU NEED IT++++++++++++++++++++++++Sumatra is the worlds 6 largest island. It stretches from about 200km west of the Thai/Malay border (across the Melaka strait) in the north to 50km (across the Sunda strait) from Java in the south, about 3500km in total. Dumai, where I came ashore, is a little south of Melaka, almost exactly halfway down the coast, about 300km north of the equator. The island has a long chain of extinct volcanoes forming a north/south spine, near the west coast, while the east of the island is low-lying plantation land. There aren't many towns or roads in the east. The area is marshy and prone to flooding, so, except where there's oil, its mostly not worth it. My route was to ride about 500km west from Dumai, over the mountains and down onto the west coast. Follow the coast south for another 500km or so, cross the mountains again and follow the main north/south highway, which hugs the flat land as close as possible to the eastern slopes of the mountain range, another 500 odd kilometers to Bandar Lampung, the main city in the south. Having only a one month visa, and no clear idea of how, when or from where I'd be leaving Indonesia, I was keen to make it to Jakarta as quickly as possible, so as to have as many options open as possible for moving on. (Jakarta is the capital of Indonesia, situated on the north coast, 100km from the west coast, of Java. Java is Indonesia's main island, housing half it's 250 million population and most of it's industry and infrastructure. It's oriented east/west, about 1000km long, and lies about 1000km due south of Singapore). +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++So, I rode the 2100km to Jakarta in 17 days, with no rest-days. This was partly out of necessity, but also because there is very little tourist industry in Indonesia in general, and in southern Sumatra in particular. (guidebooks only mention two towns south of Padang, and then only to tell you which buses to catch away from them). If you were not riding through, there would be no reason to stop anywhere in southern Sumatra. However, riding through is an excellent reason to go there. The roads were great, there was very little traffic, and the scenery, whether palm oil or coffee plantation, jungle, mountains, or golden deserted beaches in sheltered coves, was always stunning. It felt similar to Laos, but with a coast, and with the kids shouting 'hey mister!' instead of 'Sabadi!' A rest day would have been spent in a small, undeveloped town without facilities or entertainment; I preferred to be on the bike in the countryside.The ride from the east coast to the mountains was consistent. Low hillocks in marshy land, covered in oil-palms. The road was flanked by gas and oil pipelines for most of the route. Apart from a couple of afternoon storms, which always cleared up in time for me to dry out, the weather was baking. I picked up two flats on the second day in Indonesia, and another on the third. Two of them, more distressingly, were in the hitherto indestructible front tyre. Closer inspection revealed that while the tread still looked new after 23000km, the side-wall had split. The rear was already booted with puncture-repair patches, so I decided the time had come to retire both, and re-tyre. I stopped at the very next village, which was small but heaving with crowds- it was market day. As I'd hoped, and had good reason to expect, there was a small bike shop, which had bargainous 26" tyres. 6USD for two nylon, Indonesian knobblies, (compared to 90USD for Bontrager slicks in Singapore, or 140USD for the Schwalbe Marathons they were replacing). Peter had spent a lot of breath in Tibet telling me how slow 2.25" tyres are, (he never mentioned them without adjectives like 'fat', 'chunky' or 'porky'. I argued that they were reliable, and had a great personality...) I could sense his approval as I finally replaced them. Arriving in Pekanbaru involved crossing a wide, deep river on a very high bridge. The river is navigable- you can catch ferries from Batam (near Singapore) direct to Pekanbaru. Even with this reassurance however, I was very worried when a kid climbed up onto the railings and jumped, without hesitation, into the brown swirling water a long way below. Apart from anything else, the river was in spate (half the town was flooded), so there could have been logs or any other detritus being carried downstream. Honestly- where are the parents...I found a room fairly quickly, but food was trickier. The main problem was that the flooding had cut off several of the subsidiary roads near the river, so I could see food, but I couldn't reach it. I wasn't about to complain though. The locals who'd been flooded out were either carrying on regardless, living in up to a foot of unclean water, or sleeping on an open platform near the highway.Two days later I began the climb into the hills. The land here was less thoroughly exploited- there was some kind of jungle left, and plenty of monkeys on the road. The climb was steep, a gratifying change of pace after a long period of flat rides. I was in high spirits. According to my calculations, just before the top of the pass, I would cross the equator for the first time. In some way's, I'm a romantic. I liked the idea of popping my equatorial cherry by bicycle. I made a guess at the exact spot, took some photos, and did a skipping kora around the bike to appease the god Shi-Ma-No.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1205651400/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1205651400/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1205651400/tpod.html Tue, 07 Oct 2008 05:56:47 -0400 Cycling to Australia, unsupported, untrained and unprepared. Idiot.

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Singapore, Singapore

Pawel and Magda left me sleeping in the end. I'd lost track of time chatting to a couple of backpackers and gone to bed at 4am. We didn't even exchange emails. Such a waste. When I finally woke up, finding the others gone, I felt disinclinded to do anything, so nominated the day 'void' and went back to sleep. This meant that the following day I had to ride 180km to be sure of reaching Singapore in time from my rendezvous. The highway was fairly flat, if busy. Apart from occasional torrential downpours, which were always early enough in the day that I would be dry before dark, and were therefore not overly troubling, the only significant inconvenience was the fruit stalls every 200yards. This may not sound like a big deal, but the stalls had only one fruit for sale: durian. The foul-smelling fruit of woe. As far as I know it's not sold outside S. E. Asia, because nobody would buy it. Even in Malaysia, where it's pretty much the national fruit, it's banned in any half-decent hotel. A spiky green fruit, about the size of a pineapple, Durian has, once cut open, the most pervasive, invasive, nauseatingly over-sweet stink known to mankind. It's like breathing sick. Worse, in the interests of cultural immersion, I had to eat one. I knew I was in for trouble when the seller looked incredulous at me.-You like durian?-(the bold front) Sure, I love durian. My favourite. Can I have a small one please.-You're sure?-Sure I'm sure- I love it I tell you. I need a bag. I take away.Safely around the corner and out of sight, I pulled apart the thick, spiky rind and picked out one of the soft, fleshy segments of fruit. Holding my breath, I bit. I expected the appalling taste, I did not expect the large, hard stone just under the surface, and almost wrenched out an incisor. It was pretty clear durian and I were not going to get along. I left the rest.The following day was supposed to be an easy 60km roll into town. In fact it was a hot, shadeless 60km to the border; Singapore city was a further 20km across the island. The border controls were simple enough. There are toll booths at each end of the main bridge, except there's no toll, instead- immigration. As usual, after the border I was funneled onto an expressway to cross the island. Unusually, however, after a couple of kilometers the police stopped me. This was unprecedented.-You cannot ride on the expressway-I don't want to ride on the expressway-Oh. This extreme cooperation stalled his flow, so I pressed my advantage, keen to avoid a relapse into officiousness and potential fines. -I don't know how to find Singapore city. All the signs point this way.-You cannot ride on the motorway-That's fine, I don't want to, but can you tell me which way I should go?This they did, and escorted me off the wide, clean, empty hard shoulder, and onto a four-lane thoroughfare, replete with bus stops, unpredictable traffic and cycle-trap traffic lights (where the junction is so wide the lights can go from red to green before you're across, releasing 4 lanes of impatient automobiles to smash you broadside). As an introduction to Singapore, this was quite appropriate.Singapore is not like Asia. The roads are superbly maintained, even theroad markings seem to be touched up daily. There are rules, and theyare obeyed. The police are smartly dressed and appear to spend theirdays enforcing the law. Traffic obeys traffic signals instead of ordinary human instincts ofcare and caution, and cyclists are not merely considered illegitimateroad users but also devoid of physical presence. Singaporeans showed a lack ofconcern for cyclists rivalled, on this trip, only by the British. Nonetheless, I made itinto town. The city is clean, even the traditionally'colourful' quarters such as Chinatown and Little India, and properous.I only came across five beggars in four days there. This is unprecedented. Iwas nervous of leaving the hostel, lest I break some unexpected law andbe fined or imprisoned. I kept remembering the law against jay-walkingwhen halfway across the street, which led to potentially lethalhesitation. However, I had to leave the hostel. I had thingsto do. More importantly, I had people to see. For the first time innearly two years away, friends had come to visit me. (Parents andgirlfriend are special cases and don't count). They claimed they werecoming here anyway and our meeting was pure coincidence, but I knowbetter.I checked in to the 'Cozy' backpacker hostel and spruced myself up (such as Ican). This partly out of respect and appreciation for my good friends, who I hadn't seen in nearly two years, but mostly forfear of being thrown out of their posh hotel.In the end, the hotel didn't bat an eyelid, but Jenna nearly threw me out when I made the mistake of removing my shoes when I entered their room. I usually cycle in sandals. I'd washed my clothes, prior to arriving in Singapore. I'd showered half an hour ago. I was clean. Either my body has developed an unprecedented capacity for foot odour, or my shoes have absorbed such vast quantities of sweat and stink that they will now release fumes of doom regardless of temporary mitigating circumstances.We had three days together, so we saw most of Singapore. The Arab quarter, little India, Chinatown, the colonial districts (old, full of period architecture, and new, full of shopping malls and fast-food joints) and the botanical gardens. The gardens were a good call. As well as the expected array of tropical mega flora and orchids for the photographers, we spotted a monitor lizard, terrapins and a spider big enough to induce arachnophobia in other spiders. In terms of economy, infrastructure and cultural diversity, Singapore was similar to Hong Kong, but without the element of crazy that defines the latter. Hong Kong is Singapore on speed. Or Singapore is Hong Kong on Ritalin.Mostly it was just great to be with proper friends again. We drank beer and put the world to rights. The highpoint, for other's amusement purposes at any rate, was the visit to Chinatown. We'd strategically timed this to coincide with dinner time, and efficiently located 'food street'- a short walk lined with restaurants and street vendors. We took a 'lucky dip' approach, which started out brilliantly with some fantastic fried wantons and chicken satay. We were on a roll. I was feeling in need of some bulk, so I slid back to the sate stall to fill up on sticky rice. Leaving Kieran and Jenna to fend for themselves, and to resolve  one of the most amusing domestic disputes I've heard in ages:J- I want an omeletK- OKJ- Don't be sillyK- I'm not being silly, it's fineJ- Kieran!K- What? Get omelet!J- But you hate eggs!K- Yes, obviously I'm not going to have an omelet! J- So!K- So I'll get something else!When I came back, they each had an omelet.My rice didn't hit the spot, and the eggs looked good, with fat, juicy prawns in the mix, so I followed suit. What I had failed to notice, and they had failed to tell me, was that along with, (more correctly- adhering to), the egg and seafood, was a mysteriously glutinous substance.T-  Erm.. Guys... What's this?K- Jen reckons it's some kind of doughy stuffT-  Are you sure? At this point, I should have left the question standing. If I had another suspicion, I should have kept it to myself. My permanent calorie deficit inverted the usual dietary concerns, and Kieran's congenital skinniness (and being a boy) kept him from caring, but I should have realised the mentally destabilising effect the following four words would have on Jenna:T- It looks like fat.Jenna froze.J- What?T-Well it's all clear and stringy. Does dough go gooey like this?Jenna slid her half-empty plate across the table. J-it can't be fat. There's a sign on the cart that says they don't even use cooking oil!T- fair enough. Although... if you had big lumps of fat, you wouldn't neces-K-I'm sure it's not fat. Look, it's doughy. Stringy, glutinous dough.J-  I feel sick.T- We can resolve this quite simply. All the ingredients are in those pots- we can just look. J- You look.The pot that didn't contain eggs or prawns was full of small, white, 5mm cubes of indeterminate origin. Not totally unlike lard. Jenna was looking green though.T- I'm not sure. Kieran, you have a look.He looked.K- It, erm...  it could be fat...J- Oh god. How much did I eat? That was most of the plate! It was only a one-egg omelet! How many calories is a plate of fat? Oh god. I want to be sick. Can we, can we please go back? Can we walk back instead of taking the tube? Fortunately Kieran has an infallible sense of direction and Jenna was motivated, so we crossed most of the city pretty quickly, stopping occasionally to take photos, or to mentally revisit the scene of the crime.K- It can't have been fat. Not that much. T- You're right, it was something else. It was just exactly like fatJ- Oh godFor the next two days Jenna had a distracted, haunted look in her eyes. She sent me an email from Singapore airport's free internet terminals, where she'd had time to do one google search before their plane departed.It was dough.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1187074260/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1187074260/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1187074260/tpod.html Tue, 07 Oct 2008 04:25:14 -0400 Cycling to Australia, unsupported, untrained and unprepared. Idiot.

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Darchen, China

11:PQ appears and shits in campsite. ride to ford before darchen. too deep to cross so wait til morn.12:ride to darchen. many fords. arrive 2ish13:1st half kailash kora, with swim..14:2nd half KH, with pass and long dayWe made a slow start in the morning, since we had catching up to do. Before we made it back on the road another cyclist appeared. He pulled over as soon as he saw us, so he was clearly another soloist. He said a quick 'hi' and then shat in our campsite.He was another English cyclist called Peter, we found out when he'd recovered. A university lecturer on a two month skive, riding from Kashgar to Lhasa. He was also an environmentalist and a vegetarian, and yet was not insufferable. We ended up riding all the way to Lhasa together, in which time he managed to make eating less meat seem like a reasonable proposition. Vegetarianism remains self-evidently daft. We reached a small settlement, Moincer, in time for lunch, and took advantage of our numbers to eat in the Chinese communal style, sharing a variety of dishes. Peter broke ranks and ordered an additional plate of noodles for himself, which act of shameful defiance of the communist ethos would cost him dear 45minutes later, as he spewed them all back up again. We rode on, Peter and I so immersed in conversation we left Pawel and Magda behind again. We were heading for Darchen, the town at the foot of Mount Kailash, the holiest mountain in the Hindu, Buddhist and Bon religions. Kailash is a very recognizable mountain, a cliché of all things mountainous, having a pyramidal peak, permanently snow-covered, with sides facing north, east, south and west, and flanked by two 6000m peaks. Kailash has never been climbed. A while ago, the Chinese government, with typical cultural sensitivity, granted permission for a European team to attempt the summit. When the climbers arrived and saw how important the mountain was to people, they called off the expedition. The proper way to treat a holy mountain, it turns out, is to walk around it. Not to avoid it, that is, but to circumambulate it. There is an annual quota of Indian pilgrims allowed into China, assigned by lottery, to complete the 50km circuit (called a kora) as well as a steady stream of Tibetans and occasional tourists. One full kora of Mt. Kailash will wash away a lifetime's sins. 118 Koras will get you instant enlightenment. I felt one was enough. I didn't want enlightenment before I'd had the chance to commit a lifetime's worth of sins.Unfortunately, before we could wash our souls we had to wash our feet. About 30km before Darchen a ford had risen to potentially dangerous (and certainly cold) levels. The time required to ferry all our gear across would have precluded reaching Darchen before dark at the best of times, so we pitched our tents on the river bank. The ford was swollen by the day's snowmelt, so it would also be lower by morning. Peter and I chatted 'til pretty late, occasionally interrupted by Peter's noodles.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1184941740/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1184941740/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1184941740/tpod.html Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:59:16 -0400 Cycling to Australia, unsupported, untrained and unprepared. Idiot.

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Xinjang - tibet hwy, China

Pawel and Magda have a great&nbsp;talent for looking&nbsp;kempt and respectable in any circumstances, but&nbsp;this is not easy.&nbsp;Every hose&nbsp;or stream is a hair and clothes washing opportunity not to be missed. I joined them, at first, freezing my&nbsp;hands and skinning my knuckles&nbsp;replacing sweat with silt in my riding clothes, before abandonning the pretence and acknowledging that, at&nbsp;heart, I'm&nbsp;a child who likes getting dirty. It was great to&nbsp;ride in company, but as the road deteriorated even further, coming to resemble a dry riverbed- big rocks on loose gravel- Pawel and Magda's skinny tyres and road wheels became a serious hinderance. It was while waiting for them to push their bikes down a descent that I realised we would have to split up soon. We'd managed to lose Stephan. He fell behind on the road out of Mazar, a tiny truck stop that was the first 'town' on the map after the Kudi checkpoint. He'd been talking about splitting off and doing longer days, in order to reach Ali in time to extend his visa, so we reasoned that if he was going to do that, he'd catch us up. (I, in particular,&nbsp;reasoned this whenever Pawel and Magda looked inclined to wait for him). Two days later he waved to me from the passenger seat&nbsp;of a passing truck. It took surprisingly little time to develop a rhythm.&nbsp;I woke up each morning, cooked porridge with as many&nbsp;'extras' (raisins, peanuts, bits of biscuit, fruit, sugar) as I could spare, and coffee or tea (Pakistani grains with milk and sugar, until they ran out and were replaced with green&nbsp;jasmine tea). The dry air and light fabric meant dew or ice evaporated quickly in the morning sun, so I waited for the tent to dry before breaking camp. Most days I was camped near the beginning of a climb, so would spend the morning grinding up a pass, with the afternoon devoted to reaching the next climb.&nbsp; Since villages tend to be located in valleys, this rhythm meant that if there was a village, I would reach it around lunch time. If there was no village, I made do with biscuits and sweets.&nbsp;I averaged around 70km per day, albeit slowly. The only consistent feature of the&nbsp;almost entirely unsealed&nbsp;road was its shoddiness.&nbsp;The variety was simply whether&nbsp;I was stuck in sand, snow&nbsp;or mud; jolting over corrugations, potholes&nbsp;or aggregate. &nbsp; Ngari (west Tibet ) was one big campsite. In the wilds, the nomadic way of life has remained unchanged for much of the population, despite the Chinese influence on the villages. The 'Chinese influence' has been to build new towns adjacent to existing Tibetan settlements, constructed out of flat-slab concrete and painted yellow. I assumed these were intended for Chinese settlers. It wasn't until much later that I discovered the insidious truth: Tibetans were compelled to spend their own money (or borrow) to build 'modern' houses, replacing their current homes. That this policy was bankrupting many Tibetans and depriving them of their traditional, culturally and environmentally appropriate, family home was an appalling discovery. To find that one of the rationales was to make Tibetan towns appear more 'modern' for visiting tourists (viz. me) was&nbsp;galling. Several times I wandered aimlessly through a newish, smartish ghost-town in search of food or accommodation, before realising that everything I actually wanted was two hundred yards away in those scruffy dwellings behind. The best Tibetan houses, where they could be found, looked ancient by design- one or two storeys, generally with strong, inward sloping walls to stand up to the weather, washed-white with red-decorated lintels. In Ngari,&nbsp;wooden shacks and canvas tents were more common. Most homes had a courtyard for their livestock. In more agrarian areas the houses were second-storey bungalows, with the animals housed below, warming the living quarters with their body heat, while the drying wheat harvest provided roof insulation. &nbsp; Inside there would be&nbsp;one or two rooms, a huge wood- and manure-fired iron stove on which water was boiled, hands warmed, food cooked. A chimney would snake its way through the room and out the roof, providing central heating to the space. Low bed-benches, spread with bright, yak-hair blankets,&nbsp;lined the walls. Unlike the Chinese buildings, the Tibetan homes did not jar with the landscape. The Chinese&nbsp;concrete constructions seemed to decay before they were finished. They were generally too large and inefficient for the climate&nbsp;and had ambitions to plumbing and heating that were undermined by poor workmanship. &nbsp; Any discussion of Tibetan towns must emphasise the distance between them. Riding two or three days between tiny villages was the norm, so I had to be totally self-sufficient. Fortunately, as a camper, it was often possible to be a beggar and a chooser, and hold out for a pretty patch of grass away from the road and near a stream. I pitched the tent about an hour before dusk and immediately started cooking dinner. I was always famished. I abandoned the packets of instant noodles, with a sachet of dried taste and neither calories nor vitamins to commend them. Instead I bought proper, flat noodles and cooked them with a random selection of extras. Spicy pickled vegetables from a foil sachet were a staple, as were shrink-wrapped cooked chicken legs, shrink-wrapped dried marinated tofu, raisins, peanuts and some 'chicken stock', which was mainly MSG. This diet represented&nbsp;total cultural immersion, since noodles with whatever is available is Tibet 's second national dish, after <i>tsampa, and is called <i>thenthuk. <i>Momos, widely available among exiled Tibetans in Dharamsala, were surprisingly hard to come by. Where I could buy Tibetan food at all (in many villages the only restaurant was Chinese-the Tibetans have no culture of 'eating out' and not much by way of cuisine) it tended to be rice either with vegetables and offal or yak chunks and potato. <i>Tsampa was the real Tibetan taste. Roasted barley flour, mixed by hand with yak butter and yak butter tea until it formed a dough. This was either sticky with grease or dry and flaky depending on how much butter was used. Both ways it ended up a gluey, insoluble, unswallowable bolus. I never acquired the taste. <i>Tsampa is eaten all day everyday, washed down with&nbsp;the almost as execrable yak butter tea. On the other hand, a delicious breakfast of <i>kyo-ma (<i>tsampa porridge made with yak butter tea, sugar and on a very good day, raisins) was occasionally available from locals. Tibetan homes tended to double as a kind of shop or restaurant, but one with little interest in actually selling anything-more like a storeroom really. If they had what you needed, and could be persuaded to part with it, then you could have it. Availability of <i>tsampa was never an issue if there were people around, nor was communication in the normal sense- I could pronounce <i>'tsampa' and <i>'kyo-ma' without too much trouble. The problem was persuading people that I honestly wanted it. They were so firmly convinced that foreigners wouldn't like their food that even pointing to the sack, holding out money, making eating gestures and saying (more or less) the name of the food, I still came away empty handed. A couple of times, after the householder, in great trepidation and scepticism,&nbsp;duly provided me with <i>kyo-ma, they were so shocked and delighted to see me tuck in they refused my money.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1186555620/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1186555620/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1186555620/tpod.html Thu, 31 Jul 2008 04:58:54 -0400 Cycling to Australia, unsupported, untrained and unprepared. Idiot.

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Zada, China

A few kilometers from my campsite I had to make a decision. I could either continue on Highway 219, or I could turn right, climb out of this valley, over three passes, down into a low desert plain, visit the mostly destroyed remnants of a kingdom I'd never heard of until a week ago, hack out over two more passes and rejoin highway 219 about 50km down the road a week later. It wasn't really a 'decision'. I turned right. That this was not going to be a stroll in the park was clear from the outset. It took me a while even to identify the road, mistaking it for some time for a stream (it was the six-inch deep water flowing down it that confused me). Pushing up this initial waterfall was sufficiently hard work for me to feel committed; 100m further on the road was properly blocked by a deep, fast flowing river. Perhaps it was a ford first thing in the morning, but by now it was a torrent. There was a semi-permanent tent by the river, I suspect making a living feeding stranded people (else feeding on them). The occupants watched in amused silence as I removed all my baggage, changed into sandals, waded across the river and back six times, ferrying everything across, always one careless step from irredeemable (and un-redeeming) baptism. Having invested over an hour to struggle 200m from the road, there was now nothing that would make me turn back. The road, little more than a track, (though amazingly this was the 'navigable' route taken by supply trucks) Followed the narrowing river up into the mountain for about 5km, a pleasant ride in the sunshine. It then crossed the river on a small, handbuilt drystone archway, and switched back. I knew there was a double pass to climb, and I knew it was around 5000m. I didn't know my altitude at the bottom, so this information was functionally useless. I couldn't even guess how long the climb would be, let alone how hard. As soon as the second hairpin took me out of sight of the river and out of the protection of it's small valley, I was exposed to the fast deteriorating weather. I could see what appeared to be the first pass above me, but it was a three hour slog to reach it. The track was soft earth, rideable but slow, and tiring. A strong cross wind alternately helped and hindered (though by 'helped' I mean 'didn't hinder' and by 'hindered' I mean 'wrecked'- twice stopping me dead). There were a multitude of alternate tracks, where 4x4s had rejected the shallow gradient of the truck road in favour of a more direct route. Twice I attempted to climb one of these 'short cuts', which shows how slow a learner I am; the first attempt was disastrous, with me pushing, backsliding and exhausting myself far more and for far longer than if I'd taken the proper road. The second attempt was worse. By late afternoon I reached the point where the road had seemed to cross into a new watershed, and found that in fact it merely went around the mountain. From here I could see the first pass, about as far again as I'd just climbed. However, about a kilometer away, in the crook of a natural hairpin, so slightly sheltered by the mountain, was a drystone-walled goat-pen, sans goats. I camped as close to the wall of the pen as I could, which took the edge off the wind, and tried to ignore the pungent fact that I was sleeping on several inches of sheepshit. The climb the following morning was better only in that it was morning. Anything hard is easier if you have all day. The pass I could see from my campsite was another mirage, and it was a good five hours before I reached the true pass. I was foolish to have been deceived- passes are always 'adorned' (littered) with prayer flags. These are red, yellow, blue and green squares of fabric, or long white scarves of cloth, with Sanskrit prayers printed on them. They are strung together and left on passes, or sometimes over rivers, in thanks and supplication. Not that Buddhism is a religion, of course... The weather was clear, but it's always cool at 5000m. A 4x4 full of Chinese policeman, apparently on an excursion, reached the pass while I was there; they were amazed to see me, and filled my pockets with sweets. The descent was only a few hundred meters, and the second pass was lower than the first, so it wasn't long before I was descending properly into the green, sandy valley. This time there were no fences. Apart from the road, which was barely distinguishable, there were no signs of humanity. There was no wind; When I stopped, the stillness and isolation were palpable. While riding, however, the silence was cracked by increasingly troublesome noises from my transmission. An experienced biker would have recognized this as a sign of trouble ahead. Not that they could have done anything about it, any more than I could, so in this case ignorance was bliss. I followed the valley for a couple of hours; the going was flat and, apart from one wide but shallow ford, where I resupplied my water, uneventful. Around 3 o'clock the road turned in towards the valley wall. It seemed too soon to camp, though I had no intention of climbing three passes in one day. The prime real estate below the climb turned out to be occupied by some Tibetan nomads, whose dogs chased me for about 20meters, while their children kept up for about a kilometer. It was astonighing how fast these kids could run at this altitude. Or perhaps how slowly I could cycle. Chased from the verdant pastures, I decided to start the climb. It was a long pass, so there was likely to be a tent-sized patch of flat earth somewhere on the way up. Beware of ill-conceived faith in flat earth. Another three hour hack and I made it up to the third pass. Hairpins all the way, with a steep cliff on the inside and a sharp drop on the outside. About halfway up I came head to head with a fuel tanker, occupying almost the entire road. I was stuck on the outside edge, clinging on with my toes as the lorry edged past. I kept an eye on it's descent as I climbed (switchbacks allow this), convinced it must be stuck, else plunge. Of course they made it, there's a town at the other end of this road and they must receive regular supplies, but this road was right at the edge of navigability, from start to finish. It was already 6pm when I reached the third pass. And I needed to reach a campsite before dusk. Fortunately the descent mirrored the first climb, long and steep, first swerving down switchbacks and then a long slide down a river valley. I rode another 25km in no time, which brought me out onto a huge open plateau, stretching to a jagged horizon of snowcapped Indian Himalayas. There was suddenly no shortage of flat camping ground. I came to a junction, which I didn't expect. There was a sign I couldn't read with arrows I couldn't fathom. Keen, under the circumstances, not to take the wrong road, and having ridden more than enough for one day, I pitched camp near the junction and left the decision for the morning. While I was eating my porridge a 4x4 appeared from the direction of Hwy219. I ran to the road and, after some highly convoluted mime, discovered that the driver spoke English. He pointed me in the right direction (left. I'd been leaning towards going straight, so was delighted with this help) and gave me a beer.&nbsp; Fortunately he drove off without insisting that I drink it right then, so I stashed it in a pannier as a reward for arriving in Zada. Call me soft, but beer and porridge just didn't appeal before an 8hour bike ride. The left turn descended to a river which cut a deep gash through the plateau and climbed back up the other side. Fording the river was tricky and provided much amusement to the small crowd of 4x4 passengers who'd stopped by the river for breakfast. (There was a Tibetan tent serving food. Again. Clearly the 'fordside tent' is the Tibetan equivalent of a 'cornershop'). Zada is at an altitude of about 3500m. I'd descended a a long way yesterday after the third pass, but not 1500m. Before long the road led off the plateau. It followed, and often merged with, a rocky river-bed. In parts it felt like a canyon, with sandstone cliffs close at each side, more resembling the Karakorams than the Tibetan hills. With the lower altitude came real heat, also reminding me of Pakistan. From this corner of Tibet it's a short hop to Ladakh. It's not even that far from Daramshala, which was a thought I didn't like to dwell on. English guidebooks sell the destination of this road, the remains of the ancient Guge kingdom, partially hollowed out of the rock. Chinese guidebooks, or at least the Chinese tourist board, are just as interested in the surrounding geology. What is rendered in Chinglish as 'stone forests', and refers to waves of 50m+ high sandstone protrusions, weathered into fortress-like systems of buttresses and pinnacles, folding the landscape for hundreds of miles. The descent into Zada (the town near Guge) mostly followed the path of least resistance between two such waves. The path out of town, did not. I arrived in the afternoon; the narrow gorge opened into a wide river valley, totally barren. Zada was visible across an arid, stony plain on the far side of the river, smaller and even more incongruous than Ali. The street was paved, which made me smile. The first hotel I tried was full, and the second expensive. While I was regrouping , chatting to a Swiss long-term resident of the hotel, a couple of Chinese girls came over to chat (they do that). One of them, Ada, spoke fluent English; They were also looking for a room, so we joined forces. A little further down the street we found 'The Letter Always Arrives Hostel', which was offering a dorm bed for 40Yuan, which seemed fine to me. Nonetheless, Ada bargained on my behalf as well as her own. A protracted negotiation ensued, which revealed why I'd had, and would continue to have, little success at bargaining with the Chinese. Whereas in India you basically name your price and wait, in China you have to persuade. You have to give them a reason to come down that doesn't lose them face, and this really requires language. Ada found the clincher: -Tim, are you a student? -Yeah (more or less) A little more discussion and I had a dorm to myself, with TV, for 30Yuan. Ada, the other girl, whose name translated as 'Blue Sky' and Dan were on a jeep tour around China. The other two spoke no English, but through Ada we managed sufficient communication to be friends, and Dan (whose jeep it was) offered me to join them visiting Guge the following morning. Not relishing the 22km out-and-back detour over an atrocious surface, I jumped at the offer. Conveniently for me, the following morning Dan had to get his jeep fixed, which freed up enough time for me and Ada to visit the crew of Swiss restorers working on the local monastery. (They'd suggested this while I was loitering yesterday) This was a belated effort to mitigate the effects of the cultural revolution. Their project was permitted, though neither funded nor encouraged, by the Chinese authorities. Tibetan monasteries are typically built as a complex, with both domestic and spiritual functions. There's usually one or two main 'chapels', which are large halls with high ceilings supported by a forest of wooden pillars painted crimson. The walls are painted black or red, with scenes from Buddhist mythology either painted in huge, intricate murals or stenciled in repeating patterns, often gold. The focal point of the chapel is a statue of the Buddha; covered in gold leaf, it is invariably the best of it's type (tallest 'sitting Buddha', heaviest 'fasting Buddha', widest 'reclining Buddha facing east' etc). This is often surrounded by other, less remarkable statuary of important Buddhist folk. (Gods? Surely not.) The chapel at Zada was empty, save for a couple of plinths and some scaffolding. Zealots of the cultural revolution, after ransacking the place, threw wet slurry on the walls. The Swiss team were engaged in the laborious task of scraping the walls with scalpels, to chip off the clay and reveal the original artwork. We distracted them for an hour or so, before returning to check on the state of the jeep. Something had been fixed and we set off immediately. After the initial novelty wore off, jeep travel transpired to be a surprisingly tiring and uncomfortable way to go. I can't say I'd ever envied the landcruiser tours, but now I almost pitied them. We were shaken like nuts in a tin, clinging on to the handholds for stability. On the other hand, it was air conditioned and quick. The final approach to Guge involved a stretch of deep mud. Dan got out and manually switched to 4WD mode, and we blasted through without trouble. On the bike, it would undoubtedly have been, well, gooey. The Guge kingdom itself was surprisingly rewarding. The surviving remnants of the kingdom were the heart of what was a thriving trade centre back in the day. It was strategically located on the now totally defunct trade route between Tibet and Ladakh. The king lived in a 'palace' at the top of a 400m hill. This was divided into his 'summer palace', a pretty humble effort of maybe ten small rooms built on the summit, and his 'winter palace' a system of tunnels and caves hollowed out of the rock over 5m below the summit. The caves were tall enough to stand in, the tunnels bent me double. The surviving structures below the palaces, some built of brick, others carved into the hill, were primarily living quarters for the ruling monastic elite. This gave the ruins a more 'lived-in' feel than those other famous rock-carved remains at Petra, where all that's left are tombs. The kingdom fell when the king took too close an interest in the teachings of some Jesuit missionaries; the monks feared for their position, and invited the neighbouring Ladakhi's (fellow Buddhists) to invade. There is a lasting monument to this, in the form of a thick wall halfway up the hill, which serves no apparent purpose. When the Ladakhi's invaded, they took most of the low ground without too much trouble, but the hill was impregnable. Instead of a futile attack, they enslaved the people they'd already defeated and forced them to build a wall at the front line. As they worked themselves to death, the slaves were simply built into the wall by their friends and family. Suffice to say that they were not a happy bunch. The plan was for the cries of his suffering people to force the king to surrender, which he eventually did. It is worth remembering that, the illegality of the Chinese invasion notwithstanding, Tibet has never been an idyllic land of peace and brotherhood. Before the Chinese invasion, which has made it an oppressed, occupied territory with isolationist tendencies, exclusively ideological education, and with wealth and resources dominated by a foreign elite, Tibet was an oppressive, feudal theocracy with isolationist tendencies and exclusively religious education, with wealth and resources dominated by a domestic elite. If they had oil, they'd be a rogue state. &nbsp; The Dalai Lama has effectively acknowledged this, by campaigning for a democratic autonomous government in which he would have no part. He would be unlikely to garner much international support for a return to absolute rule by 'god-king' dictat. One has a sense that, left to their own devices, Tibetans may well have followed the Nepali and Bhutanese model of peaceful transition to democracy, but this is of course pure conjecture. Anyway, I digress... As well as living quarters there were several chapels with surviving artwork and partially surviving statuary. Several statues (grotesque demon-gods made out of something colourful and lacquered) were still standing but had gaping holes in their bellies where their straw innards were ripped out. It wasn't clear, from Ada's translation of the guide, whether treasure was secreted in these cavities, or whether the looters just thought it was, but the effect was the same. The clarity and quality of the 500 year old murals was fantastic though. After wandering the ruins for a while, we ambled down a streamside path to a cave containing 100 year old, incompletely decayed, human remains; without heads. No one knows who, or why. We were back in Zada before dark, so I had time to meet up with the Swiss restorers again for drinks at their favourite haunt. This was a pavement table outside a Tibetan restaurant; they were clearly regulars, and had a great rapport with the middle aged and matronly proprietress. They explained to her that I came by bike, and she smiled. -Very nice.&nbsp; I couldn't do this- I have very bad knees. You can't really impress Tibetans with feats of endurance. They live in Tibet. I left Zada early the following morning, aware that I had to climb around 2000m before I'd be back on Hwy219. The road out of town followed the river for a couple of kilometers and was mostly sand. However, while coming into town had followed a ravine, leaving crossed them. Worse still, the trucks don't use this route. The promise of humane gradients was broken, and very soon I was facing a steep ramp of soft sand. I tried to make a run at it, but a 4WD appeared at the worst possible moment and gunned past me, forcing me off the bike and nearly off the road. There was no way I could build momentum again, the rear wheel just spun in the sand, so I pushed and slid. From this point there was almost no respite. I deflated my tyres to half pressure for grip, and after a while the gradient softened enough for me to make enough traction to ride again, but this was little faster than walking. The sand and bare rock reflected and intensified the heat. I saw no more vehicles, and there was no water. It took seven hours to hack 25km out of that valley; I've since ridden ten times that distance and felt less exhausted. The final kilometer onto the plateau was like trying to ride up a dry waterfall, huge rocks, loose shale, steps so steep I had to push the front end down to keep it in contact with the path. Already utterly worn out, I was prone to carelessness. I failed to spot a deep pothole in the path, which my front wheel missed, but the rear did not. The saddle fell away under me, before the rear wheel slammed into the side of the pit, jerking it up, and forward. The agony was excruciating, and combined with a unique sense of shame and violation that comes with being involuntarily buggered by your own bicycle. At least this was a parting shot; the worst was done and I could sit at the edge of the green plateau and admire the view of the 'stone forest'. A couple of kilometers further on there was a river, again cutting deep through the plateau and providing shelter as well as water, so I pitched camp. Most of the next day was spent crossing the plateau, which was gratifyingly cool, green and flat. There was a pass, but the climb had been so gradual over about 60km that I was surprised by the appearance of prayer flags. This subtle climb was followed by a real descent. Clearly Shi-Ma-No, Tibetan god of cyclists, felt I was overdue a blessing. There was a river below the pass, as usual, with a perfect flat campsite just above it. So perfect, in fact, it was littered with the trash of previous occupants. There is debate about the most responsible thing to do with litter, when wild-camping, with thought generally divided into three camps: 1) bury it 2) bin it in the next town or 3) burn it. Since nearly all the litter I generated was, thanks to the Chinese love-affair with shrink-wrapping, plastic, burying didn't seem very ecological. The difference between binning and littering tended to be one of agency rather than effect, since most towns just dumped their rubbish somewhere nearby. So, as a rule, I chose option 3. I think my logic was sound, but then again... I do like burning stuff... The god of cycling clearly felt that he'd overdone his largesse. The following days ride, through a relatively lush valley and over a tough but not extreme pass should have been the good kind of hard. I'd climbed approximately ten feet of the pass when the first spots of rain fell. Rain on sand can firm up the surface and improve rideability. The last three days had been nothing but soft, powdery sand. Today was dirt. Hard and quick when dry; slippery, cloying, clinging, chocking clay and slurry when wet. The good road quickly became unrideable. I managed one or two kilometers before the sticky mud started to cling thickly to the tyres, jam in the mudguards and dump all over the transmission. Twice I fished out my toothbrush (the one in the toolkit, not the one in the washbag) and cleaned all the crap away, and twice it took two pedal rotations to foul everything up again. I had to admit defeat and push the two kilometers to the top of the pass. The descent was a little better, since I didn't need to pedal, but&nbsp; I did need to brake. This was merely hard rather than impossible, so I did ride most of the descent. At one point the mud was two feet deep, half brown water, half sucking slurry. A small traffic jam of 4WD had formed each side of the 100yard stretch, the drivers not sure if 4WD was enough. I changed into sandals, bit the bullet and trudged through. The jeep passengers were mostly concerned with their own troubles, but a European couple (probably Swiss) did give me some sweets. At the bottom of the pass was a clear brook, ankle deep, so&nbsp; I stood the bike in the middle of it and spent half an hour cleaning the accumulated crap away before carrying on. Finally I rejoined Hwy219, which I was shocked to discover was still asphalted this far from Ali. I made good progress in the afternoon, over a gradual climb past Bauer army camp and onto an open plain. I could see stormclouds ahead, however, and didn't fancy an exposed campsite, so I pushed on, hoping that either the storm would pass overhead or the scenery would change. Just as the storm hit the road dropped into a long, gradual, paved descent. If you could wish for any kind of road while touring, this is it. It was probably unique. So of course, it had to be raining. An hour or two later the rain was clearly not going anywhere. The valley had narrowed and I was on the lookout for any vaguely suitable place to camp. Suddenly I spotted some flat ground, below the road. It caught my eye because there was already a tent on it. A tent I recognised. I'd seen that 'Stormshield' logo every morning for weeks: -Pawel! Magda! What the hell are you doing here? -Us? What the hell are you doing here? We thought you'd be in Lhasa by now! -I took the detour. I take it you came straight? -Yeah, we tried but with our tyres, it was no good. How was it? -Awesome. Absolutely the best thing I've ever done... (for any non-traveler types, this is the standard response when asked about anything that you've done and the other guy hasn't) -Yeah yeah -Anyway, can I camp with you? Dunno if you've noticed but it's a little damp out here...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1183439160/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1183439160/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1183439160/tpod.html Thu, 31 Jul 2008 04:16:58 -0400 Cycling to Australia, unsupported, untrained and unprepared. Idiot.

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Kara Kul, China

The sky was bright, but we left Tashkurgan under a cloud, having picked a fight with the guesthouse we spent the night in. We had discovered that there were rooms, nearly identical to those we stayed in, available for 5 yuan cheaper&nbsp;than ours, which we hadn't been told the night before. We claimed we should have been offered that rate, and refused to pay more. They argued that we'd agreed to a price and now must stick to it. They were right, and we pushed our luck further than we should have. Eventually we agreed to split the difference, and were able to push on, but I felt guilty about the whole episode.The road out of Tashkurgan was a joy to ride, almost empty of traffic, in pristine condition and through a wide, open, gradually declining valley. The Kunjerab pass divides the Karakoram from the Pamir mountains, and the change was evident immediately. The steep gorges&nbsp;of golden rock were replaced by high-altitude hills, later descending through the aptly named 'Tiger Mouth Gorge', with red walls and snow-capped mountain 'teeth'.There was a low pass between us and the long descent to Kashgar, although none of our various maps could agree about where or how high it was, one even&nbsp;claiming there were two passes.&nbsp;As it happened, we knew when we'd reached&nbsp;the pass- we could see the rest of the day's ride in one glance- down a series of hairpins and then following our noses, skirting the edge of the&nbsp;stunning giant, 7500m&nbsp;mount Mustagata. The quick pace, open spaces and beautiful, slightly alien scenery lifted our moods and we had a great days ride, taking posed 'on the go' photos with Mustagata behind us, and racing down the hills. I was&nbsp;taken&nbsp;with the&nbsp;altitude; the clear, dry, thin air suited me, despite chapped lips, and&nbsp;I loved the deeper blue of the sky and the strange dissociative feeling of seeing most clouds side-on.Our destination for the day was by far the most beautiful campsite so far on this trip, and quite possibly the most beautiful anywhere. On the shore of Kara Kul lake, facing the still, clear-blue waters. On the left a serrated horizon of high peaks and deep, glacial valleys,&nbsp;while opposite the&nbsp;breathtaking Mt. Mustagata rose up from the water.&nbsp;A couple of sand dunes screened the nearby village and more distant town from view, and sheltered the rear of our camp from the wind. Our camp was on a shallow rise, a meter or so above the level or the lake, so the lakeside path was obscured from us, and we from it. We could even&nbsp;swim and&nbsp;wash in the lake's outflow. Perfect. As if we hadn't already hit the jackpot, Peter managed to score some bottles of beer from the village. We sat outside the tents, drinking in the view along with&nbsp;the beer&nbsp;and&nbsp;chatting aimicably. It's not every&nbsp;day you can look at yourself&nbsp;and say 'there's nowhere I'd rather be than right here, right now' (and&nbsp;it's even rarer for those to be&nbsp;days you woke up alone). This was very much one. As the night drew in around us, we noticed a bright light coming from behind the shoulder of Mustagata. -What's that light?-Dunno. It's bright though. Town?-There's no town on the map-Could be an army base-Big army base, especially for out here-Maybe its a&nbsp;<i>secret army base-It's really bright!-Yeah. <i>Weird!-Maybe we should hike over there tomorrow, see whats there!-Yeah!Luckily the beer didn't addle us for the whole night, and we didn't go for a day's hike in search of the moon.Pawel and Magda had saved for their trip by working in the UK, so naturally the conversation turned to how they were scrounging immigrants milking the system and taking jobs from honest&nbsp;dole-claiming British bigots. I happened to mention the&nbsp;chagrin of&nbsp;Bulgarians&nbsp;I met at being admitted to the EU but denied the freedom to travel to UK for work. Pawel sympathised.P- You know, most Polish were upset at EU expansionMe-&nbsp;Really? P- Yeah, they're afraid&nbsp;the Romanians are all gonna move to England and take Polish jobs...We had to drag ourselves away from Kara Kul, and with the next day's ride characterised by the most brutal, soul-sapping, energy-draining headwind I've ever experienced, I regretted that we had. We were pedalling hard downhill for much of the day, which is never a good sign. Tiger Mouth Gorge was dramatic, and gave every impression that on a clear day it could be&nbsp;a highlight of&nbsp;the KKH trip, but the high peaks were obscured in cloud, the mist drained the colour from the cliffs and the headwind&nbsp;blew away&nbsp;our enthusiasm. We ended up camped in a road-builders ad-hoc quarry, a bleak and&nbsp;windswept campsite&nbsp;unsheltered from the falling&nbsp;drizzle.One of the great things about mountain weather, is that if you don't like it you have only to sit still for a few minutes and it'll change. The following days ride, down into Kashgar, was&nbsp;clear and bright. We were soon back in civilisation,&nbsp;with crops either side of the road and occasional villages.&nbsp;We stopped for Uighur bagels, which were on sale in giant stacks every couple of kilometers. Dense, salty and with a brick-hard crust, these provided excellent bike-fuel so long as we were careful not to chip teeth. One of the villages we passed through was having their market day; it seems the famous Kashgar Sunday market roves the surrounding area the rest of the week, and this was what we had stumbled upon. The road was crowded with donkey carts, rickshaws and pedestrians, most of whom were dressed in their finest and looked in festival mood. We loitered for a while, enjoying the ambience and allowing the photographers (Peter and Pawel)&nbsp;to molest the locals.Kashgar turned out to be a city with streets too wide for it's traffic, which made it seem quite calm and a tad underpopulated. We cynically put this down to the Chinese government designing roads they can drive tanks down if need be. Xinjiang province, being one of China's more recent territorial 'acquisitions' (Previously, very briefly, 'East Turkestan Republic' and before that 'Kashgaria'), is mostly populated by Uighar Muslims, who periodically make trouble for the government. China took swift advantage of the unofficial international moratorium on human rights for Muslims post 9/11, and cracked down on Uighur dissidents. This may explain why the town seemed so quiet.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1184335140/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1184335140/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1184335140/tpod.html Thu, 31 Jul 2008 03:54:33 -0400 Cycling to Australia, unsupported, untrained and unprepared. Idiot.

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Yecheng, China

We rode for two more days skirting the edge of the Taklamakan desert. This is not the land of rolling sand dunes, and for the most part even seemed quite fertile. There was a 50km stretch with no water available, which I had not foreseen (there had been regular drinks shacks and villages, which came to an abrupt and unexpected halt about 5km before I started feeling thirsty...). This stretch hammered home once again&nbsp;one of the main lessons I've learned from this trip: skipping breakfast is a rubbish idea. By the time we finally reached another village I was ready to eat my&nbsp;own face and drink anything&nbsp;liquid.We camped one night next to a crystal clear&nbsp;canal. The site was&nbsp;too sandy for&nbsp;me and the Poles, but naturally Stefan was carrying special 'sand' tentpegs. This was where Sandra, who had appeared quite grounded, revealed her darker side. She and Magda&nbsp;went to the canal for a wash, but she reappeared after only a few minutes, striding into 'camp' wearing just a t-shirt and knickers. Without a word, she pulled on some shorts and strode out again, only to re-emerge two minutes later chasing two shepherds shouting."why you looking! Why you looking! I call police!"I had a fair idea why they were looking, since it was pretty clear that she'd been exposing culturally inappropriate amounts of flesh in a public place, but still she asked. And chased them about half a mile through the fields before storming back in high dudgeon.We reached Yecheng, the last legal staging point before we reach Ali. At Yecheng the Xinjiang - Tibet highway, highway 219, diverges from the&nbsp; southern silkroad. About 100m down Hwy219 we passed a banner signpost reading 'No foreigners without permits allowed beyond this point'. We carried on. After a few days, we had internalised what we'd been told: the police and the army don't care what foreigners do, and the Public Security Bureau are less ubiquitous and tend to turn a blind eye. On this first day though, every time a police car or army convoy passed us we felt as if the game must be up, and refused to stop and ask for water at the army camp we passed. The truth is that while crossing into Tibet this way is illegal, the law evaded us far more than we evaded it. There was even a checkpoint in the first 100km, at a village called Kudi, where we were asked for our passports."Where are you going?""Mazar" -the name of the next town"OK".On this occasion, we were expecting the spanish inquisition, and recieved a less invasive grilling than most online registration forms.We'd lost Sandra, who had decided to catch a bus to Ali (further proof of the lax enforcement of the permit requirements for this road) in order to extend her visa or finish her trip quicker. Stefan had cemented his place in my bad-books. The morning of our departure, I was woken from a deep sleep by the sound of his voice saying"Tim! Tim, do you want to get up now?"Being awake, I submitted to the inevitable and roused myself, stifling the urge to shout"NO!&nbsp;I'M ASLEEP! If I wanted to get up, I'd be awake wouldn't I? If I'm asleep, you can probably take it as&nbsp;given that I do not, in fact, want to get up now!"But I never forgave him.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1185977640/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1185977640/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1185977640/tpod.html Thu, 31 Jul 2008 03:44:52 -0400 Cycling to Australia, unsupported, untrained and unprepared. Idiot.

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Xinjang - Tibet hwy, China

The first couple of passes on hwy 219 are arguably the hardest climbs on the road. In only 2 days, including one not insignificant descent, we climbed from about 1000m above see level to about 4,300m. The&nbsp;road was unsealed after day one and for the most part poorly maintained, resulting in painful juddering stretches of corrugated earth. Provisions for sale were meagre and sparse. The environment, however, was stunning. Whether climbing a rocky&nbsp;gorge, admiring a stack of sweeping switchbacks (with pride or anticipation from above;&nbsp;with dread or mourning from&nbsp;below), descending into a wide, green, unpopulated valley or struggling across a barrren, windswept plateau, there was no escaping the power and the glory of&nbsp;Tibet's&nbsp;western wilderness. The altitude made for&nbsp;cool temperatures and&nbsp;rarified air which evaporated perspiration and&nbsp;extinguished most odours. This was&nbsp;a great advantage, since I camped&nbsp;every night until&nbsp;I reached Ali&nbsp;a fortnight later and I don't recall washing. And while Tibet is all climbing, there is a trade-off. There's The Promise. The unwritten (or, come to think of it, possibly even written) rule, that while a road in Tibet may be unmaintained, corrugated, and surfaced with greased ball-bearings a halfmetre deep, it will not be steep. This is not for the benefit of illegal intercontinental cycle-tourers, but for the shitty Chinese trucks, which have to stop for a breather every 100 yards when climbing anything steeper than a snooker table. Unusually for me, I&nbsp;was prepared for Tibet. I'd pestered Peter about his experiences for three months, sought advice from online cyclist forums, bought 10kg of food supplies in Kashgar and printed out several different sets of notes compiled by&nbsp;previous&nbsp;cyclists on this road.&nbsp;To put it more simply, I was scared.&nbsp;I'd managed to get this far with relatively little&nbsp;challenge. The bike had held up, the going had been relatively easy,&nbsp;the weather had been mostly clement and&nbsp;I'd never been more than a couple of hours from some kind of help.&nbsp;From here on in, the weather would be unpredictable; the road unreliable, slow and arduous; even small villages could be several days ride apart and in the unlikely event that help was available, being technically outside the law&nbsp;could make it even harder to obtain. The KKH had been a baptism of fire and had, apart from anything else, improved&nbsp;my conditioning enough to face the climbs ahead, but it was never a wilderness.&nbsp;I'm sure I recall a wise man saying that sufficient preparation&nbsp;will go unnoticed. Certainly, in the event, crossing&nbsp;Tibet was&nbsp;not frightening. I don't&nbsp;remember feeling in danger, or being stranded, or without food or water.&nbsp;Looking back, however, I realise that&nbsp;all of&nbsp;these things were possible.So, we climbed the craggy gorges&nbsp;to the Kudi and the Chiragsaldi passes, camping mostly near the road on whatever flat ground was available an hour&nbsp;before sunset. We climbed slowly, all of us weighed down by even more luggage than usual (some more than others...), but we made steady progress.&nbsp;Attempting to ride alongside Pawel and Magda,&nbsp;stopping for rests when they did,&nbsp;I found that my legs seized up every time and getting started was always harder than if I'd not stopped at all.&nbsp;This demonstrated a universal truth. Cycling together is all&nbsp;very well, but you have to climb alone. Climbing at anyone else's pace will&nbsp;inevitably exhaust and frustrate. I found it far preferable to settle into a comfortable rhythm and climb, albeit at little more than walking pace, without stopping.&nbsp;I found waiting for the others&nbsp;at the top of a pass for an hour or two, wrapped in most of my clothes, eating a chocolate bar&nbsp;and, on one occasion, drinking a pot of tea, an added bonus rather than an encumberance.One of&nbsp;my strategic purchases in Kashgar had been a phial of&nbsp;iodine, since I'd been recklessly drinking stream water&nbsp;since Islamabad and had almost&nbsp;certainly only avoided a plethora&nbsp;of&nbsp;parasites by&nbsp;requiring a&nbsp;strong course of antibiotics for my infected sores. My logic at the time&nbsp;was that while there are&nbsp;myriad&nbsp;waterborne diseases which can&nbsp;kill a man in a variety of unpleasant ways, none of them are as&nbsp;swift,&nbsp;unpleasant, or immediate&nbsp;as dying of thirst. It was good logic, though&nbsp;not as good as 'realising this would happen and buying iodine in Islamabad'. However, as I've said, for Tibet I was Prepared.&nbsp;Pawel: "It's Gardia"Me: "It's what?"Pawel: "Gardia! How&nbsp;can you not know what&nbsp;gardia is? It's&nbsp;endemic in the water of all these regions!&nbsp;Are you not carrying medication for it?"Me: "No! I've got every other poxy pill.&nbsp;Will anti-malarials do? Anyway, how do you know it's gardia?"Pawel and Magda: "The smell!"Magda:&nbsp;"It's in one of the guidebooks. Eggy&nbsp;wind and burps = gardia. It gets worse, and then there's the running and the vomiting."Me: "running?"Magda:&nbsp;"Yeah, you know... running.&nbsp;In the night time, you have to.. you know... run"Me:&nbsp;"oh."Magda:&nbsp;"We have&nbsp;a spare treatment, don't worry"Me: "But you&nbsp;might need that..."Magda: "It's worth the risk to stop you making that smell"Me: "Thanks"I started the course, probably antibiotics, that evening, but it was too late to save me from&nbsp;my fate.&nbsp;We'd camped&nbsp;on a patch of grass&nbsp;between the road and&nbsp;a stream flowing down from the Chiragsaldi pass.&nbsp;Apart from it's proximity&nbsp;to the road it was an excellent pitch, as evidenced by scorched stones and holes in the ground&nbsp;left by previous tenants. I ate a noodle-based concoction for dinner,&nbsp;despite feeling a little unsettled and producing occasional, eggy emissions, and retired to my tent. This was premature,&nbsp;since,&nbsp;as predicted,&nbsp;I had to... run.&nbsp;Five times, between 8pm and 2am, each more urgent than the last,&nbsp;each preceded by a bout of&nbsp;noxious, sulphorous gas that would have made the devil retch. The final&nbsp;run&nbsp;had the inevitablity of the apocalypse. I'd had no time to&nbsp;pull on clothes or shoes, barely enough even to get a hygeinic distance from the tent, before squatting over a dent in the ground.&nbsp;That&nbsp;the only lorry to pass all night should appear at&nbsp;this moment&nbsp;was&nbsp;a coincidence too&nbsp;cruel to&nbsp;be&nbsp;anything other than malevolent divine tinkering.&nbsp;I'm not sure who, ultimately was the more wounded.&nbsp;The Uighur&nbsp;driver, eyes casually following the&nbsp;yellow headlamp beams as they swung around another sharp corner, cannot have been prepared for the horror he witnessed.&nbsp;I watched helpless&nbsp;as they swept towards me and&nbsp;fell, lingering, on my naked, pale, knee-hugging, anguished form at&nbsp;the precise moment that all the vilest&nbsp;stench and filth of hades exploded simultaneously from face and arse.At least my friends' rapid diagnosis saved me further discomfort, as all my symptoms were bearable the following day, and gone thereafter.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1181475120/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1181475120/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamo/cycle_tour/1181475120/tpod.html Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:18:36 -0400 Cycling to Australia, unsupported, untrained and unprepared. Idiot.

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Indus Kohistan, Pakistan

Riiiiiiiiight! Back in the saddle... (so to speak)It's been a while, and memories shift and fade, but I shall try to begin at the beginning and work from there.Once back on the KKH, I had to face the dreaded Indus Kohistan. This region, basically everything between Islamabad and Gilgit, has a reputation among travelers in general and cyclists in particular, for hostile locals. Children throwing rocks and other projectiles&nbsp;is an inconvenience not limited to any particular country, but to particular children. My luck has been fairly good, and only&nbsp;three previous&nbsp;occasions spring to mind: in England, Egypt and India. But&nbsp;in Indus Kohistan,&nbsp;according to conventional wisdom, the parents join in. And stand above the road so rocks too big to throw can be utilised. A scene from Lord Of The Flies springs to mind... The ride itself was no joke either. The road climbed inconsistently, undulating so that for every 100m altitude gain&nbsp;I had to&nbsp;climb 200m. The sun blazed. From about an hour after sunrise until sunset the heat was unrelenting. And there was no shade. For the first couple of days villages were fairly regular;&nbsp;streams waterfalled in cool showers onto the roadside, providing the only relief (and wash) available until Gilgit. The upper section of IK was bare, baked rock. Absorbing and re-emitting the scorching heat of the sun, reflecting it's blinding light and offering no relief. The streams dried up. The greenery disappeared. &nbsp;The Indus though! Another of the worlds great rivers! Another romantic idea of a place, like the Nile and even the Danube were. It's brown, which I didn't expect, laden with silt from the karakoram mountains. Being constricted by the rocky terrain it flows fast and foamy until it reaches the plains of northern Punjab. All along the first section of&nbsp;KKH I was accompanied by the muted thunder of&nbsp;the descending torrent.With all this to look forward too, it was naturally with some trepidation (and&nbsp;three 1.5 liter bottles of water) that I set off from Manserah. As it transpired, and not in stark contrast with previous nuggets of received wisdom,&nbsp;Indus Kohistan was not populated exclusively by would-be&nbsp;murderers. There were a couple of stone lobbing kids, and since they use the same skill to drive their cattle, and play cricket every spare second, they were capable of surprisingly long and accurate throws. But for every stone thrown there was a kid who would run behind the&nbsp;bike, put his shoulder to a pannier and push me up the hill for 100m, just for fun. The biggest irritant for me was the incessant refrain of "One pen! One pen!" from every child who saw me. Do I look like a mobile stationers? I should be sponsored by WHSmith. On the second day out of Manserah, I stopped for a drink at a petrol station 5km from my intended destination. The kiosk was manned by a couple of kids in blue shalwars who took typically keen interest in me and the bike. Their English was limited, and my Urdu non-existant, but it quickly&nbsp;became clear that I was being invited to stay the night. I was dubious about their authority to make this offer, but was&nbsp;eventually persuaded at least to loiter until the offer could be reiterated by the kids' father, Mohammed (it may seem like everyone I met in Pakistan was called Mohammed. This is because everyone in Pakistan is called Mohammed).&nbsp;I was taken to what I was assured were the families guest quarters;&nbsp;two rooms on one side of a small courtyard. I sat on a charpoy reading until the father appeared. He confirmed my invitation, and seemed sincere, so I relaxed and abandonned my backup plan. However, it quickly became clear that my stay was not entirely convenient. Three traders had arranged to meet in the room that I was assigned to discuss the purchase of some pipes, if I understood correctly. I lay on a bed and tried to be inconspicuous. Before long dinner was brought, having been&nbsp;prepared, presumably, by a woman somewhere in another building. Delicious local rice, chicken karahi, palak and salad provided the best meal I ate in Pakistan. After dinner, Mohammed explained that his brother was coming home that evening, after three months in South Africa, making me feel even more of a burden. This is why I very rarely accept random offers of hospitality. "What was your brother doing in S. Africa?""He was having meetings with our Islamic brothers.""Right-oh"I wasn't sure how keen I should be to meet this man, clearly at least devout. Devotion has a reputation, in Indus Kohistan. This concern was irrelevant. He was coming, I was there. We would meet.When he eventually appeared, the first thing I noticed about him was his smart, well trimmed, brilliant white beard. A beard is more than mere ornament, in Pakistan. Having a network of spies and informants consisting of two fourteen-year olds reading backpacker blogs, British intelligence assesses the level of Islamic extremism in the Pakistani armed services by watching their passing-out&nbsp;ceremonies and&nbsp;counting how many new recruits have beards.&nbsp;Ahmed was a tall, imposing man who looked young to have a white beard. We were introduced in due course, and Mohammed, Ahmed, and four friends took seats in the courtyard for the post-trip debrief. Eventually I was brought&nbsp;into the conversation."Hello""Hello""I'm Tim. I was riding past and your brother kindly invited me to stay the night.""Pleased to meet you.""I hear you were in South Africa?""Yes, I was there to discuss Islamic principles with our Islamic brothers. I've also spent three months in Ghana. Do you know Ghana?""Well... as it happens-""We were&nbsp; travelling around, people were coming from the villages wanting to become Muslims... we hadn't even gone there to convert people. But we couldn't find any food, we had to make our own chapatis!" If I could have got a word in edgeways, I would have sympathised. Fufu is an acquired taste..."You are Christian?""No- no religion. Sorry. Can I still stay here?"Of course! There is a story in the Qur'an, a&nbsp;traveller came to Abraham and Abraham offered him food and drink; then he asked 'are you Muslim?'. The stranger said not, and Abraham took his food and drink away.&nbsp;'I'm sorry, I can't share food with a non-muslim.'The traveller left.&nbsp;After this&nbsp;Allah was angry with Abraham and said 'I've fed and watered this man for&nbsp;50years, and you&nbsp;refuse to feed him for one night!' So Abraham chased the man down and begged his forgiveness and asked him to&nbsp;come and eat with him."I was delighted that the&nbsp;first reference to the Qur'an was to quote a passage about tolerance.&nbsp;&nbsp;"There was another English man here once. He was making a documentary, but he was also a runner. I raced him up to one of the villages on the hill, I nearly beat him, and he was in running shorts and I in clothes like these!" He indicated his pristine white shalwar. "When we reached the village and they saw him in his shorts, I had to tell them he was helping get fresh water to the area!" This provided me with an opportunity I'd been hoping for; "Are these trousers acceptable in this area?" My three-quarter length trousers were supposed to be the perfect demure compromise&nbsp;between the requirements&nbsp;of conservative countries and of not getting caught in my chainrings. "Yes yes, they're fine- anything below the knee is ok. What does your father do?" "He's in shipping. And my mother is a vicar""a what?""A vicar. Like an Immam, for Christians."I thought&nbsp;this bombshell might prove provocative, but neither the idea of a woman working nor a female immam seemed to phase him. Instead his only reaction was"So you're mother is Christian?""Yes""And your father?""Yes""But you are free!""Yes indeed".Interesting choice of word that. I was reminded of a note in my copy of the Qur'an, which explains that 'muslim' literally translates as 'slave' (of Allah). "Right. We have to go now. We have a meeting of our Islamic brothers. To discuss our Islamic principles.""Right-oh. Nice to meet you"When they returned, a couple of hours later, the friends whose names I hadn't caught invited me to stay with them. Unfortunately, I only realised that this was what was going on after they'd given up and gone away. I&nbsp;slept in the same room as the kids who'd invited me, as the traders were in the other. I slept poorly, it was a hot night and there was no fan, and I was woken up with the kids in time for the morning prayer. Looking at their faces, I saw little evidence that prayer is indeed better than sleep. Even after waiting for breakfast (on the insistance of my host), I managed to leave shortly before dawn. There was a brief parting conversation;"Thanks again for having me, you've been so generous!""You're welcome. Where are you going now?""I'm heading for Dassu""Be careful. Here, everyone is good, but in Dassu,&nbsp;maybe 50% of the people are good. You shouldn't stay&nbsp;with people&nbsp;there. Stay in a hotel..."&nbsp;The first hour of riding was bliss. In the cool morning air I was soon wide awake, enjoying the&nbsp;quiet roads and waking wildlife. But like most really pleasant sensations, it was fleeting. Soon the sun was in the sky, the road was melting and the trucks were blaring their horns as they cut past. None of this, however, could detract from the stunning mountain scenery above me&nbsp;and the&nbsp;surging Indus river below.
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