July 26, 2012
Heading for the canyon: Rubezi - Zabljak
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LOOK AT A MAP and you will see we are riding north on a south-westward journey. There is a reason.
Before we left, my friend Chrissie, a former workmate in London, asked if we planned to visit the national park to the north of here. I'd said we didn't, that it was in the wrong direction and involved two mountain passes to get there. Things like that don't matter in a car.
But then so many people said we were wrong and that Chrissie was right, including four Swiss riders in Split, that we changed our mind. So we are now riding away from our destination rather than towards it.
Do we mind? No, we don't. Why? Because we are on beautiful, tranquil back roads four metres wide. Our way is lined with stone walls or fallen rocks from which cornflowers, luminous blue thistles and a small bright yellow plant on a long, green stem blow in a light tailwind.
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To our left are the mountains, mauve-blue, that we crossed in a thunderstorm. We see a car every 20 minutes, sometimes fewer. It is silent, not even birdsong.
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Water is a problem on an unrelenting climb like that, especially with the temperature nearer 40 than 30. We ask a woman we pass carrying vegetables up a hill but she has none to spare at her house down in the valley. We ride on, across a plain of grass that looks cropped by sheep but probably never grew any longer than that at the altitude. People must have lived up here all year once but now most of the shed-like huts are empty.
The countryside has changed from rock to plain. It rolls in small, wind-rounded mounds, like moorland with aspirations to be a golf course.
"It's bringing home how far we've come across Europe," I say to Steph, trying to explain why I think that way. And then, going further, I add: "This is like all the pictures I've seen of people riding the plains of Asia."
"Or the 'stans," Steph adds, more realistically.
Off the road, a dark-skinned couple stand in front of a single-storey shack. She is in the doorway, wearing a cover-all, and he is cutting wood with an axe. She is rounded and even plump and he is wiry, in a red T-shirt with sweat patches. We walk over, leaving our bikes by the road.
"Voda?" he asks. And then adds, in English: "Certainly. Come."
We walk back down to the road. He smiles, his teeth shy of getting too close to each other.
"Deutsch?"
"Français.
"Ah, French. I speak very well German but no French. Just a little English. Come."
We walk another 50 metres, over springy grass that bounces on peat. He walks with a gentle lope and faster than he looks. He picks up a hose running from a hole into the ground and towards a small patch of vegetables.
"The water is very cold. It is from the ground."
"Is all this yours?" I ask, pointing at the crops.
He shakes his head and points to a house with a circle of tractors parked outside in a semi-circle.
"No, I work for them in the summer. I am looking after their baaa."
"Sheep?"
"Yes, their sheep."
"And you come from here?" I want to know if his background is Turkish, since his appearance is.
"No. In the winter I live in Podgorica."
He apologises again for his English, which humbled my own grasp of his own language, and said again that he was better in German.
"For five years I work in Germany. In cars. You know Mazda?" He pronounced it Muts-dah. "I worked there. And I have three brothers who live in Belgium."
We walk back.
"You want to drink coffee?" he asks.
Reluctantly we decline. We have a long way to go.
"How many kilometres you go?"
Steph once more gets out the route map. She translates the country names from French to English.
"You do all that? On bicycle? This is very too much. Very too much."
He asks where we sleep, how we cook. And then he becomes more serious and says: "You must be looking. At night you must be looking. Not for dog but for Hah-wooh." He throws back his head.
"Wolf?"
"Yes, wolf. There are many wolf. Not good."
"Dangerous?"
He shrugs.
"Maybe not. But you must make much waaaah! and then they go away."
We exchange names.
"Ibrahim," I say. "That's a Muslim name."
"Yes, sir, I am Muslim."
"Salaam alaikum," Steph and I say together.
"Wah alaikum-salaam," he replies gently.
A lovely man, Ibrahim.
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