Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
street nearby and managed to hide behind a fence before they saw us. Tim stayed
put and set up the video camera while I prepared to ride over to them.
They didn't see me until I was quite close. One little girl, seeing the look of
amazement on an older boy's face, turned around to see me riding straight towards
her. She screamed and ran away. I pulled up, and the rest of the group stood stock
still, looking at me in astonishment. Their ball rolled into a puddle, unnoticed. I
cleared my throat, a little self-consciously, and prepared to break the silence. 'Um
… I wonder, can you tell me what village this is?'
They all took a shocked step backwards: It talks! Then a few of the older kids
held a brief, whispered conference. The younger kids stared even harder, some
starting to look a little afraid. It talks
funny
too, they must have been thinking. I had
to remind myself that my bike was probably the weirdest thing that any of them
had ever seen. It was almost certain that none of them would have encountered a
westerner before, either. I wondered for a moment whether their reaction would
have been much different if I'd landed in a
UFO
.
The whispering ceased and one of the boys stepped cautiously forward. 'This is
Ishimka,' he said slowly, an urgent question burning in his eyes. 'Where are you
from?'
'Oh,' I answered happily, 'we're from Australia but we've cycled here from Pet-
rozavodsk in Karelia.' Another silence. Some of the kids would not have heard of
these other places.
'Tim, come here,' I yelled back over my shoulder. Tim trundled up, and the kids
seemed to forget me as they surged forward to see him riding. I overheard some of
their excited whispers as they scrambled past me.
'It's amazing. Where do you think the motor is?'
It didn't take long before most of the kids had overcome their nervousness and
were swamping us with questions. The crowd was growing too. In less than ten
minutes, the group had swelled from ten to about thirty - every kid in the village
must have come running, it seemed.
We grabbed a couple of the braver-looking of our new friends and plonked them
on the bike seats. Ten-year-old legs strained hopelessly in an effort to reach the
pedals until the kids were lying horizontally, clutching the handlebars and staring
with excited eyes at the sky. We asked them to take us to the village shop and
jogged along, pushing the bikes and holding them upright while the two thrilled
little drivers zigzagged crazily down the road.
