Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The road ran straight through the centre of this unexpected lake, on top of a
massive, banked-up causeway that stretched to the horizon. A roaring gale whipped
horizontal sheets of rain and hail over the road and we struggled right into the teeth
of it. Stinging streaks of water and ice lashed my arms and legs, forcing me to pull
my cap down hard to shield my face from the barrage. I was being rained on from
underneath too! Eventually, I realised that it was the bizarre wind currents created
by the causeway that was tearing water from the surface of the lake and hurling it
vertically up at me.
I struggled along, pedalling in my smallest gears and wobbling dangerously
around the road. Tim was somewhere behind me, no doubt finding it tough going,
too.
The countryside changed but the weather remained uncertain. Day after day, we
travelled south-east. Soon we'd passed through the southern extremes of the taiga
forest and into the vegetation region known as the semi-steppe. Fields of long wild
grass replaced the endless expanse of pines and spruce trees and all around stood
small and medium-sized forests of white-barked birch trees. There were no fences
and the spring leaves were a glorious, fresh bottle-green. We would leave the road
after our day's ride and bounce, often for miles across the open plains to find the
perfect camp site on the edge of a forest. Sometimes, a curious stockboy on horse-
back would drive his herd of lazy cattle towards our campfire for a chat. Often, we
saw thin tendrils of smoke rising skyward from a village on the horizon.
We were woken at dawn on one such morning by the sound of a horse's hooves
outside the tent door. I looked out to see a young guy who'd visited our camp the
evening before. One of the cows from the village herd had wandered off and he
wanted to know if we'd seen it. We hadn't, but it didn't take him long to find out
where it was.
The cow had been killed by a truck on the road during the night, and as we
wheeled our bikes out of the forest, we saw that an old woman was already busy
gutting and skinning the carcass. She was anxious to get the meat preserved before
it went to waste. Helping her was a man who'd brought a tractor to haul away the
remains. Our young friend, the cowherd, was standing nearby in tears. He told us
that he'd have to work for six months without wages to repay the owner. We gave
him a bottle of vodka that had been given to us by an overexcited driver a few days
before. Maybe he'd be able to sell it and start raising the sum that way, or maybe
he'd just try to find a solution at the far end of the bottle.
