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clouds. As the unseen sun dimmed, the clouds drooped and cloaked the earth in
fog.
Just before the evening faded into black we turned into a small cornfield to make
camp. I leaned my bike against a lone tree, and didn't bother to look for cover. I
just stood, unmoving. There was no escaping the discomfort. The tent was soaking,
my sleeping bag was drenched and all my clothes were soggy. I pried a pocket open
to find the swollen remains of a Chinese biscuit and lifted it slowly to my mouth.
Chris stood nearby, up to his ankles in a puddle. He was trying to shrink into his
Gore-tex coat and hide, but it clearly wasn't working.
I took a quick look around and just hung my head. I started shivering. Our
little cornfield was besieged by a railway line, busy roads, factories, cluttered brick
homes and giant power lines. A heavy clanging noise came through the fog from a
nearby factory, and every few minutes a loud explosion boomed. A thousand cars,
motorbikes, trains and trucks filled the air with a dull vibration that I knew would
never quieten. The solitude of the taiga forest and the empty Mongolian steppe
seemed worlds away. Long ago, I thought, there would have been a spirit to the
land, but it had been wrung dry by the grip of civilisation and a heavy-handed re-
gime. The sky wasn't dreamy and the true landscape was masked by what man had
carved out of it. There was little vitality, just a race to produce, develop and sur-
vive.
Clenching my fists, I tried to imagine life beyond this moment. What would it
be like to throw away these shoes held together by the laces alone? To wear fresh,
clean clothes, and not sleep in that dank tent? To wake in the morning and have
a shower and rub myself dry with a towel? To store food in something other than
rank old pannier bags? What was life like without the constant worry of getting a
puncture or fixing the brakes? And what about life without meeting daily distances
and the agony of tortured thigh muscles?
I tilted my face into the rain and let the drops hit my tongue. In all the discom-
fort, it suddenly occurred to me that I wouldn't have it any other way. We had lived
the dream and spent our energy. All that remained was the exhausted shell of our
journey and the task of nudging it over the finish line. I had left my heart behind the
moment we dropped off the plateau into this so called 'land of the living'. Now that
we had been through the hardship of living a simple life, my passion was spent.
Down here in the bustling plains, everyone rushed about, oblivious to the
serenity of a campfire in the taiga, the humour of Baba Galya and the hospitality of
our friends on Lake Baikal. They didn't understand the luxury of stepping off the
