Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In a last ditch effort I swung my arm violently to the right and hit something. The
bike suddenly felt lighter, giving me the chance to break away. I realised that we
were riding on a gravel surface. It must have been the main road, but there were
no streetlights, and the few motorbikes that chugged by were blinding us with their
headlamps.
'Let's find the edge of the road!' I yelled, between breaths. A few more stones
hit the road near our bikes, but soon we were in the outskirts.
We cycled until we hit a smooth surface and made for the ink-black sky and
earth ahead. When the town lights were finally out of sight we pulled over and
made camp.
As we retired for the night, I surrendered to the fact that we were merely tourists
in Mongolia. The only thing we could know with certainty was our cycling routine.
We were, in effect, just passing through; and I wasn't sure that I liked it.
We woke to a miserable morning. The lack of forest seemed to let the clouds
press close to the earth. A light rain fell, and it occurred to me that the narrow
corridor between the overcast sky and the ground was liquefying. Something
overnight had turned inexplicably stale between Chris and I, and I pedalled behind
him without a word. It was close to freezing and I watched my bare kneecaps
slowly turn pale blue in the wind. Ten minutes later the cold in my toes returned.
It was probably coincidental that cold weather had arrived on our first day in
Mongolia, but the logical reason was that Mongolia is a large plateau sitting at an
average altitude of 1600 metres. From here on we could expect colder temperatures
from which there would be no escape until we dropped down to the plains near
Beijing, 1600 kilometres ahead.
By the time I caught up with Chris my big toes were already numb. The frostbite
from winter had left the tissue especially susceptible to another dose; I stamped
around before putting on my heavy hiking boots. 'I really can't afford to risk frost-
bite again,' I said. 'My health is more important than getting to Beijing by bike. I'll
walk the rest if it means avoiding frozen toes!'
'Yeah, well, there's no way I'm not riding to Beijing!' Chris snarled. He was
already counting down the days.
Soon, I noticed a bizarre trend in the road signs. The numbers indicating kilo-
metres travelled from the official starting point of the road were decreasing. After
consulting our compass and map, we realised that we were three kilometres from
the Russian border at Kyakta. We were heading back to Russia. True professionals,
I thought, as we spun around and headed back towards Mongolia.
