Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
My spirits soon lifted. We crested a high saddle and before us the land panned
out in a sublime, silky blanket of green. The clouds had begun to rise, revealing
the treeless landscape and the smooth bitumen road that shrank into the distance.
Mountains rose to high, rounded peaks. Time and erosion had mellowed the earth.
The beauty wasn't raw and spectacular, but all the same it was awe-inspiring. We
rode down and up, saddle after saddle. When sunlight came gushing through a
break in the clouds it was warm enough to remove my jacket. Then, as the misty
white clouds rushed to fill the gap, I was cold again; such was the fragile balance.
With this fragility came a heightened sensitivity to everything. I likened it to the
feeling one gets atop a lofty mountain summit.
The only breaks in the view were tiny white flecks -
ger
tents scattered sparsely
across the steppe. The
ger
is the traditional home of Mongolians. It is a round, col-
lapsible tent made of felt and canvas. Tendrils of pale smoke rose from the
gers
,
horses and sheep milled around. From this distance they looked like armies of
grazing ants. There were few major scars to the earth - even the
gers
were im-
permanent. Several times I heard the muffled pounding of earth and turned to see
a horseman galloping alongside. The men sat straight-backed and smiling while
their horses chose the path. Their faces bore round prominent cheekbones and wide
slanted eyes. Some wore velvet hats with a golden point rising well above the head.
Most were wrapped in a long maroon felt cloak called a
dele
. Intricate decora-
tions of silky ribbon lined the cuffs and seams, and they wore knee-high leather
boots with similar decoration. All I could do was wave and smile back. Although I
couldn't communicate, I didn't mind - it seemed to play into the hands of a country
graced with simplicity.
What struck me most was the absence of fences. Come to think of it, the border
had been the first real fence we had seen since the beginning of the journey.
Without artificial boundaries, the natural lie of the land became clear. I rode a good
distance behind Chris and went through much more film than usual. As the bike
rolled smoothly along the slick surface, I raised my eyes so that neither the bike,
my legs, nor the road was in sight: it felt like flying. Perhaps, I fantasised, we had
entered a long forgotten kingdom in the clouds.
It rained almost without break for the next three days. The dampness and a
growing exhaustion rubbed out the novelty of the landscape after two days. I
sweated profusely beneath my raincoat but my toes still went numb. Although we
had ridden approximately 8000 kilometres, and our legs had become stronger, I
was acutely aware of each painful crank forward. Distance, it seemed, was undeni-
able. The land doesn't lie, and there were definitely no shortcuts by bicycle. Like
