Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
appearing again fifty metres later. It seemed that they hadn't built the bridges yet,
either.
We carried on, riding along the sandy tracks on either side of the embankment
and sometimes, where piles of gravel and missing bridges allowed, up on the
smooth, flat dirt of the embankment. Our slow pace was frustrating Tim. He was
pining for his highway, but in a complete reversal of what we'd been feeling three
or four months earlier, I was enjoying the challenge of the dirt; the slow pace suited
me perfectly. It was 16 October, well into autumn and perilously cold, but I was
due home on 1 November.
That gave me another sixteen days and 600 kilometres of riding, and while I was
looking forward to seeing Nat again, I was beginning to feel nervous as well. While
riding, we were getting twelve hours' sleep per night and the days were flying by.
At our slow pace, 600 kilometres could take twelve days (I had this all counted out)
and twelve days with twelve hours' sleep per day would simply whiz by. Then -
a couple of days in Beijing, a day and a night on the train to Hong Kong, and an
overnight flight to Sydney - I'd be back home to Nat. Sixteen days! The numbers
meant everything, because they took my mind off their meaning. I was dying to be
with Nat again, but scared about what would happen to our relationship as we got
to know each other again. I thought down to the heart of the matter and realised my
most basic fear. After a year apart, a year when I hadn't been there, would she still
love me?
Late the next day the dirt road ended and the countryside underwent a drastic
change. For over two months - ever since climbing up and out of Russia - we'd
been cycling at over 900 metres above sea level, across the vast Mongolian plateau.
Now we'd finally reached its edge and were about to start a long descent to Beijing
and the Yellow Sea. Directly below us, although still six to 800 metres above sea
level, was Hebei Province and the promise of a different China.
The bitumen reappeared and we raced down a long, winding hill. At the bottom,
we emerged into what seemed like a new world. Mud-brick houses clustered to-
gether in little villages. Here and there were fields that had been harvested and
ploughed in a flurry of activity before winter set in. Winter! There was a startling
thing in itself. We'd woken that very morning to find our water bottles frozen solid.
The sparse grass on the plain had been dead and brown and the few trees stripped
to their bare branches. Now, sixty kilometres further along the road and a few hun-
dred metres down a hill, we seemed to have overtaken the seasons. All around were
hills and mountains. There were a few streams and along their banks, more trees
