Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
far, the road connecting the towns and villages along the railroad had been surpris-
ingly good. But the sketchiness of our map and the pessimistic warnings of the loc-
als told us that things could change for the worse.
'A lot worse!' The locals insisted. 'You'd be better to turn back now.' And while
we had no intention of doing anything of the sort, it felt appropriate to put just a
little bit of thought into our plan of attack. I paced some more and scanned the
girders of polished metal.
The rails were smooth, flat and empty; everything, at this point, that the road
was likely not to be. Riding along the rails would be perfect. Endless miles of easy
cruising through pure wilderness. But how to do it was still a problem. For one
thing, there were regular, heavy bolts protruding from the outer edge of each rail
- trains used only the inside surfaces of the rails. Then there were other problems,
including the obvious one that Tim had raised: what would we do if a train came
along?
We talked about the idea the next morning and decided that if and when I could
come up with a practical way of rigging our bikes together so that they could sit
side by side on the rails, we'd give it a go. For the moment, however, the road was
still rideable, the weather good, and the unknown lay waiting for us. We packed up
and rode on.
Fifty kilometres later I dumped my bike on the ground in a screaming panic,
abandoning what had until then been a calm but hurried search through my pack
for a suit of mosquito-proof rainwear. Ahead of me, Tim had almost disappeared in
a cloud of buzzing mozzies, to the point where it was no longer possible to make
out sharp edges. This time it was him who was laughing.
Despite the heat, Tim had sensibly put on all his long clothes half an hour ago,
when we realised we were about to ride through a swamp. He would be sweat-
ing rivers by now, but at least the bites getting through would number only in the
dozens, rather than the thousands.
A commando battalion of darting mini-blood-transfusion units found the unpro-
tected leg hole of my shorts and made a kamikaze run towards the weakest point of
my defences. Painful chafing at the beginning of summer had forced me to abandon
the wearing of underwear, and now, under siege, my control was about to crumble
completely. I killed a dozen attackers in a savage swipe at my left forearm. Then
they struck. I felt the sickening sensation of forty hypodermic daggers sinking into
parts of me usually treated with only the very best of care.
