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Tim grinned and slapped me on the shoulder. 'That's the way; good to see. Now
that you've got your head screwed back on …' He nodded towards the sandy creek
bed. 'I'm afraid it's time to start pushing!'
A routine emerged that reminded me of school footy training with the scrum
machine. We'd pack down, right arm and shoulder braced around the rear packs on
our respective cycles. Then, bent down, left hand extended to clutch at the handle-
bar, we'd bury our heads into the smelly, dirty covers that had kept the dust and the
weather out of our gear for the past year and start pushing.
Laboured steps. Thighs and calves pumping. Driving forward with heaves that
buried my tattered sneakers under the surface and filled them with sand. Breathing
hard, my legs burning as I inched my bike slowly forward. It was unsustainable.
Unendurable! Thirty steps, max. Then a rest. Pausing, slumped over the bike now.
Sweat streaming off my face and my heart hammering maniacally. Like it was try-
ing to escape! Wishing it was already in China?
Then again. An endless cycle that seemed to go on and on. A taste of the ulti-
mate punishment. A taste of hell.
I started out following Tim, but later he was behind me. Hours and hours, and I
was still able to look back to the hill near Ulaan Ule where we'd begun!
Suddenly, somehow, it was dark. The torment had ceased and we were making
camp. We'd come about five kilometres in the past five hours. That, I thought, was
flying !
'Well, mate, what do you reckon?' Tim asked as he took a slug of water from
one of the dirty old soft drink bottles he'd picked up beside the road in Russia. 'At
one kay an hour, that's about …'
'Ninety hours to the border!' I completed his thought. 'And we only have
enough water for …'
'Two more days.'
'Yeah.'
We sat and watched a passenger train go past. It was the Beijing-Ulaan Baatar
Express. It had probably crossed the border a couple of hours ago and now we saw
a blur of snapshots as lighted windows flashed by: men playing cards and drinking
beer. Kids jumping up and down on their sleeper beds. A girl - just a glimpse, but
she was probably a foreigner - drinking orange juice and reading a novel. The din-
ing car: a fat man in a suit with a meal and a laptop in front of him.
And then it was gone. The clickety-clickety-click of the train was receding into
the distance and we were left staring past the tracks at the dark shadows of the
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