Following five months in Beijing, my bank account is a few pounds richer and my body a few pounds fatter. I arrived just as winter was setting in and made the decision to work and save for the season instead of immediately continuing north to Mongolia where the weather is significantly colder (Ulaan Baatar is the world’s coldest capital).
Many things have struck me during my time in Beijing. One of the most pleasantly surprising things is the ease with which a foreigner can arrive and quickly build a life. Admittedly, I did have one contact which helped but it took just two weeks of dabbling with part time English teaching/tutoring before I found a full-time, salaried job.
Location: Beijing, China Day 516 Miles on the clock: 18,115
Delving into rural China again; Guanxi Province; the G322 road from Nanning to Yangshuo; countless conical limestone karsts with lush skins of greenery serrating the horizon; the glowing emerald carpet of flat farmland connecting the karsts in the golden late-afternoon light; tidy little sheaves leaning together in freshly harvested fields; a long stretch of hopelessly pot-holed road; a meal of boiled starfish skin with an indifferent “chef” smoking, hocking and spitting a couple of yards away; a village woman spying from behind a tree as I perform my morning defecation al fresco; the northerly headwind which I was to battle most days on the ride to Beijing; a ten minute conversation with a women using online translation that ended in her asking if I speak Chinese for a third time; a road over rolling hills, loosely tracing a river, that brought me to Yangshuo.
Village children in jungle near Angkor Wat, Cambodia
Location: Nanning, Guanxi Province, China Day 461 Miles on the clock: 16,265
Leaving Bangkok. Leaving crowds. Leaving chaotic streets. The small back roads to Cambodia were rutted and quiet. One last night in a Thai monastery. I was left to my own devices and shared a simple rice breakfast with the monks while two cats, both bald in patches, and one limping, stalked each other around a heap of laundry.
Day 400 Location: Bangkok, Thailand Miles on the clock: 14,720
A few days at a friend’s house in Kuala Lumpur were passed predominantly by eating cereal and cowering from the soaring outdoor heat. However, I reluctantly allowed myself to be swept up with the stop-start traffic trickling out of the city and onto the road to Melaka which I reached after two days and a boring amount of punctures. The small port city was conquered by the Portuguese in 1511 and then again by the Dutch in 1641 before the Union Jack was planted in 1824. An arterial river snakes through it and is home to hundreds of monitor lizards. The largest I saw was only 5ft but they can grow up to an imposing 9ft and live off rats and the occasional unfortunate cat.
Day 328 Location: Kuala Lumpur Miles on the clock: 13,180
I left the town of Luang Nam Tha (in northern Laos) during the Pii Mai (New Year) festival and rode west towards the Mekong. Evening celebrations struck up in the villages. People set off homemade fireworks, danced to loud Laotian music and drank plenty of Laolao (strong rice liquor). I was beckoned to a party and plied with food and drink for an hour. We ate from large communal plates of pork fat with spinach and bamboo shoots. Every few minutes a different person would work their way around the table pouring water down the back of each person's neck. This gesture is done slowly, and surprisingly tenderly, using the spare hand to gently pat the person’s chest while muttering the words "Sabaidee Pii Mai" (Happy New Year). The water is to wash away the demons of the old year.
Day 279 Location: Luang Nam Tha, Laos Miles on the clock: 11,305
The train arrived in Kunming carrying a significantly heavier and healthier me than when I arrived in Beijing almost a fortnight before. I spend a couple of days in the calm, leafy provincial capital visiting a museum about the province’s numerous ethnic minorities, meeting other travellers, and tinkering with my bike which contracted its first snap in the frame while riding around the city. In a market I snacked on street food, trying not to be nauseated by the extensive tables of pig heads, pig tails, pig balls, pig penises, fatty sheep buttocks, buckets of squirming eels, eggs with half-developed foetuses and many other unidentifiable “delicacies”.
Having successfully slipped past my first checkpoint, I rode on in the darkness. By sunrise I was 10 miles on and snaking up switchbacks towards a 4980m pass near which I camped; insulating my tent by sealing any gaps between the canvas and the ground with snow. A vividly red Chinese flag imposingly marked the pass and I climbed a little way by for a view of K2 (the world’s second tallest mountain at 8,611m) straddling the border with Pakistan.
Day 249 Location: Beijing, China Miles on the clock: 10,610
My typical winter’s morning in Tibet: my watch is tucked under my hat so I can hear the alarm which wakes me with a groan. The sun hasn’t yet risen but it is light enough to see in the tent without a torch. I stare with resignation at the glistening few millimetres of frost that have formed on the tent’s inner sheet. Vainly, I try to avoid knocking it off while wrestling with the three drawstrings and two zips that lock me tightly inside my two sleeping bags. I retrieve the warm pair of gloves from the crotch of my thermal leggings and put them on.
Day 174 Location: Kathmandu, Nepal Miles on the Clock: 9,385
Delhi is a shock to the system. Rich smells; poor people; beggars and vendors; hawkers and shouters; astonishing vibrancy of colour in clothes, food, buildings and markets.
Day 143 Location: Delhi Miles on the clock: 8,44 With Iranian visas secured, Ashley and I left the Turkish town of Erzurum. It was after about ten miles of heavily militarized roads that Ash realized he’d left his passport behind so nipped back while I tinkered with my bike.
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