Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
desperate. Alexsei and his son were wildly drunk, and his wife turned on me after
I broke her one and only threading needle.
Finally, the bike seat was ready. I worked feverishly with Chris to sort out the
tube situation. The Russian glue and cut-up rubber just wasn't working, and neither
was Alexsei's vulcanising repair system. After some desperate searching, I found
deep in my coat pocket a stray patch. It was our last chance. I applied it to the punc-
ture with glue, put the tube in the tyre and pumped it up. Suddenly the air came
gushing out - I had ripped the valve from the tubing.
Chris pumped up a tube for the twenty-third time and something unprecedented
happened - it stayed inflated for more than three minutes. We put on a smile and
announced our departure. The family strode out of the vegetable garden to shake
our hands and have a group photo taken. Twenty metres from the vegetable garden
my tyre was already dead flat, but I was determined to keep going. I continued to
wave and pedal until I passed out of sight behind a fence. At least we had officially
left Zvyozdni.
Two hundred metres on we stopped to eat lunch and discuss our problem. 'I had
a cycle touring manual once and it was useless,' said Chris, 'but I do remember one
thing. An emergency technique in the event of a ruined tube is to stuff your tyre
with grass.'
The thought of riding on a grass-stuffed tyre for 500 kilometres to Lake Baikal
was enough to inspire a final puncture-repair attempt.
I took a small piece of copper wire from my tool kit and retrieved the tube with
the severed valve. I was then able to wind the wire around the rubber and valve,
working it like a mini tourniquet. It was a long shot, and Chris had little hope the
idea would actually work. But, miraculously, it did. And so we rode off with the
certainty of our journey as fragile as ever.
———
For the first time in weeks we had a smooth, unbroken few days. The view along
the Niya valley was supremely pristine. The nearby trees, with twisted, gnarly
fat trunks, were dressed in thick shoals of moss, and the forest floor was like a
spongy mattress of multi-coloured mushrooms. The road had fallen away in many
places and there was negligible traffic. The terrain became increasingly hilly, and I
began to anticipate the Baikal Range, the mountains that surround Lake Baikal like
enormous castle walls.
