Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
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We rode south along the railway with only one more village and 220 kilometres of
unknown tracks between us and the Chinese border. At lunchtime, the day after we
left Sainshand, we were passed by a motorcyclist on an expensive Japanese ma-
chine. The driver said he was heading to the next town of Ulaan Ule and, as that
was also on our route, I figured that we could forget about our own navigation and
simply follow the distinctive tracks of his slick tyres through the sand for the next
100 kilometres or so.
It was a relief, for once, to forget about picking a route along the myriad inter-
secting tracks. We hadn't seen a road sign since leaving Russia; and our map usu-
ally only showed one road where, in fact, there were many.
For the past month I'd been keeping an excited count of the days left until touch-
down at Sydney airport. There were only twenty-nine and a half days to go before I
would be reunited with Nat. In a week or so, I would let myself move on to count-
ing down the hours …
Paradoxically, the closer we got to the end, the slower I felt like going. The
plane ticket was booked and the urge to constantly keep on moving had disap-
peared. Beijing was less than 1000 kilometres away - we'd get there now, come
what may. In the meantime, I was content just to cruise along, meeting people, day-
dreaming about the year ahead and enjoying the challenge of crossing the Gobi.
Tim, too, had resigned himself to going home. For both of us, the challenge of
the past year had been an enormous physical and mental strain and I sensed that
Tim was also ready to finish travelling - at least for a little while. He was still re-
turning home to a large debt and uncertainty about his future, but in his own words,
he was 'ready to finish up, consolidate, then move on to the next thing, whatever
that might be'.
I pedalled lazily under the sun, following the motorcyclist's trail and gazing up
at the long, fluffy trails of white jet vapour from an aeroplane that was crawling
steadily across the sky. I kept going until I found a nice-looking camping spot out
of the wind and close to the top of a low rocky hill, where I waited for Tim.
When he arrived, he was mad. 'What the bloody hell do you think you're do-
ing?'
'Huh?'
'The railway tracks! Look back there at the bloody tracks, mate! The map's got
the road following along the tracks on the
other
side of the bloody railway line.
And now we're way to buggery off to the west.'
