The promised land gets more promising: China, I beat you!!!

November 20, 2014

The ~~pnultimate~~ ~~pinultmate~~ ~~pnultamate~~ last-but-one morning in China brought as much stress as any other, despite the fact that Alex and I were back on speaking terms and the promised land of Laos was so close we could almost reach out and grab it. The stress was caused by all the usual factors - the steep hills, the endless beeping, the way Alex's top wasn't long enough and the way his shorts kept falling down leaving me with a view of the crack of his ass.

We reached the end of the 218 at MengXing and in this town we stopped at a supermarket which excited both of us a little bit because it was the first we'd seen in a very long time. As we sat on a bench outside eating Alex noticed that there was a phone shop next door and asked to use their wifi for a minute. I didn't really care about using the wifi myself, but seeing as Alex had the password I thought I'd just check my messages and flipped open my laptop to do just that. I had a message on my guestbook from a name that I didn't recognise. At first the message seemed a little strange, mostly because it was from a bicycle. I know my bicycle talks sometimes, but have you ever seen a bicycle type? What an absurd notion! Anyway I read through the message and as I did so it soon dawned on me who the message was actually from and just what it meant. Here's the message, it's a good one!

"Hey there two-wheeled fellowI hear you´re about to enter Laos after racing through China the last couple of month; yes, rumours are running fast around here. I´m a blue, sporty bike from Vientiane. I´ve been standing outside a shop with a "For sale" sign long enough to be bored and eager to get back on the road agian. Today I really tried to look attractive when a young woman came to the shop looking for a bike, you know bending to the side on the foot stand, let the front wheel fall to the left side in just the right angle so that the metal cathed the sunlight. It worked! The young woman took me for a ride, was very pleased and bought me. She looked rather strange to me, very tall, white skin and yellowish hair that she for some reason had cut short in one side while the rest was long. She didn´t talk to me - yet! I guess it takes some time and some kilometres on the road through mountains, rain, breakedowns, loneliness and heartbreakes before you start doing that - so I´m not sure about what she´s up to, but she bought rack and panniers too, so I hope she´s planning a longer tour round the country. I heard her talking to the shop owner about going all the way up north with busses tomorrow and then start cycling. The shop owner found it kind of funny to buy a bike and then put it on a bus, and I agree, but what am I to do about it? Anyway, it might mean that we´ll be driving around the same roads in a couple of days and I thought it would be nice to meet and go together for a while?`
I could use some good stories and advice from an old, expert like you to get started again (and I think my girl could use some experienced advice from your guy too, seems to be the first time she´s going on an long tour on a bike), and after several months racing through the northern asia alone with Chris I suppose you could use the company of a two-wheeled fellow who knows what it´s like to be a humble vehicle for a crazy human?
What do you say?
Happy wheelturns!"

What a message! Incredible! You'll have to forgive the spelling mistakes, it must be difficult for a bicycle to type. But the important thing is what the bicycle was telling me, and what it was telling me was that Dea, the most beautiful girl in the world, was a little bit completely crazy! When we had met up in Lanzhou we had talked about the possibility of her coming and cycling with me in Laos, but she had decided that it was a bad idea. I assumed it was because of my inability to use chopsticks, which was fair enough, and I'd accepted her decision and thought no more about it. But now, if this message was to be believed, she was not only coming to cycle with me in Laos, but she was already in Laos, and not only was she already in Laos, but she was in Laos with a bicycle, waiting for me! The promised land just got a whole lot more promising! A massive grin came over my face and I fist-pumped the air. I couldn't help it. It was as if the whole weight of the world had just been lifted from my shoulders, all of the stresses of the morning melted away in an instant and I was as light as air. Leaving China the next day wasn't just going to be good. I wasn't just going to be leaving China behind and going somewhere better. I was going to be going somewhere MUCH better and I was going to be cycling with the most beautiful girl in the world! Wahooooooooo!!!

I was so happy I just had to tell someone. There were several Chinese men gathered around us in curiosity and they'd smiled at my joyous reaction, but trying to explain things to them would have brought more frustration than satisfaction, so I turned to Alex to share my good news. He was too engrossed in his emails to have noticed my initial euphoria, but I quickly and enthusiastically told him what had happened. His response was a dour "Yeah, good for you" without ever lifting his eyes from his screen. Maybe that was partly my fault though. Perhaps I shouldn't have opened by saying "Sorry but I'm going to ditch you" with a massive smile on my face.

It's the strangest thing but China started to seem like a most wonderful place after that. Alex cycled on ahead again and we didn't talk much, but he stopped and waited for me outside a restaurant at midday so that we could eat together. At the exact moment that I arrived and we were reunited a massive downpour began and we dived for the cover of the restaurant. "Seriously, we have really got to stop cycling together," I said, "this is going to keep happening!"

Neither of us could say 'eggs' in Chinese, but luckily Alex was a very accomplished artist, and we got what we wanted

Almost as we were finishing up our bowls of rice and eggs the waitress lady brought us over a salad and placed it on our table. It was a little late, we were almost done eating, but it looked very nice so we both took a bit onto our plates. Alex took a bite first and opened his eyes wide "ooo, it's a bit spicy" he said. I really should have taken that as fair warning, but come on, it was only a salad, so I took a big mouthful of mine.

Now, I don't know what we did to piss that waitress lady off, but whatever it was, she had taken her sweet revenge on us here. As Alex had warned me it was indeed a bit spicy at first, but soon the true effects of this devil salad took a hold of us. Never had I known such an intense burning pain throughout my body until I devoured a bit of this salad. The salad came to possess me, it overtook my senses. No longer were my thoughts my own, no longer was I me. My whole body was on fire, I had to stand up, walk around, I went outside and stood in the rain to try and cool the sweats and extinguish the pain. Through blurred vision I saw Alex across the room staggering in similar fits of convulsions and agony. This was the salad from hell.

One way or another we got back on our bikes and continued. The rain was still coming down heavily but that was okay now because we both needed something to cool us and bring our bodies back towards normal. Soon our little road began to run parallel to a bigger road, and the two would continue in such fashion for the final hundred kilometres to the border. According to Peter it was fine to cycle on the bigger road and so we switched onto that and, although the dozens of 'no cycling' signs did seem to disagree with Peter's implication, we stuck with it because it had a good shoulder and was surely faster than the smaller road.

There were, however, quite a few tunnels on this big road and through the tunnels there was no shoulder. It was interesting to note how differently Alex and I responded when confronted with this difficult situation. I put on my hi-viz reflective vest and switched on all of my lights, and then hopped up onto the footpath and cycled on that. These tunnels were pretty new and the footpaths mostly in relatively good shape. Which made Alex's decision to cycle in the roadway with no lights or reflectives even more perplexing. At the top of a climb we went through one very long tunnel, still going up. The lights in the tunnel weren't good and the ventilation was even worse, exhaust fumes choked my lungs as I crawled uphill on the bumpy path. The tunnel went on and on and there had been no indication at the entrance as to how long it was going to be, so it was a huge relief when it turned a corner slightly and I could finally see the daylight of the exit ahead of me. Alex, having pushed on ahead, was waiting for me again. "That was terrible!" he said. "Yes," I agreed, "I'd prefer to go back on the old road I think."

But there was no sign of the old road, which must have taken a longer way over the top of the mountain, so we freewheeled down on the main road. Alex disappeared ahead again and, when the old road reappeared and I came to an exit where I could move onto it, there was no sign of him. The main road ahead had a lot more 'no cycling' signs and the old road looked so inviting that I turned off onto it. I guessed Alex had probably gone on with the main road, seeing as he ignored everything I said, but that didn't really matter. I thought I'd maybe catch up with him outside of the town of Mengla. As it turned out though, my old road went up over another high pass whilst the main road took another tunnel, and it took me such a long time that he was nowhere to be seen by the time I got to Mengla. It was a great decision to take that old road though, because there was no traffic at all and I went through a nature reserve, so the surroundings were actually natural rainforest instead of banana and rubber tree plantations.

Although it was pretending to be the C213, I knew the old road was really the G213, the one that I had often followed since Lanzhou. Every kilometre had one of these markers, counting up the distance since that city. Had I really come so far in four weeks?

At Mengla I was actually able to switch back to the main road because it was now flat and there were no more tunnels, and so cycling was permitted. No, seriously, it was actually flat! I had terrible trouble finding somewhere to camp though, with everything being cultivated, and ended up sneaking into someone's rubber tree wood next to a house. At three in the morning there was someone nearby who kept doing the gross hacking up flem and spitting noise. In the middle of the night! God, I was ready to leave China!

My last morning, now Alex-less, brought heavier rain than ever. I still blamed him.

One last effort to make me laugh, China, and it worked. I could have done with more of this.

The skies brightened and so did my mood. The end was finally here!

My legs felt so tired. My whole body felt weak. China had come so close to breaking me. But it hadn't broken me. It was my last morning, the last few kilometres to the border, the last few kilometres before something so much better in the promised land. I had done it! I had f*cking done it! Without question this had been the hardest few weeks of the whole journey. Forget Siberia, forget Mongolia, forget the Desert Dash across Turkmenistan, this was the hardest. The toughest mentally, the toughest physically. China was brutal. No doubt about that. I daresay a lot of that opinion comes from the fact that I stubbornly insisted on cycling the whole way as usual. I don't want to generalise too much about China. I can't summarise it. It's too big. From the vast desert to the snowy mountain plateau to the rainforest, this huge country had challenged and pushed me to my limits. Too much air pollution, too much noise pollution, too much construction. At times the people were great, often they weren't. You can't generalise about 1.4 billion. I'll stop trying. When I entered China I didn't know anything about it. It was a complete mystery to me. It confused me. And now, two months later, as I finally cycled up to the last border guard and prepared to leave, I felt exactly the same way. China remained a mystery, an enigma. I had absolutely no idea what was going on, and now I felt no desire to ever return to China, and yet, at the same time, I had this feeling that at some point in the future I would come to miss China on some weird and unexplainable level, and I would have to go back.

Which is lucky actually, because Mori is in China isn't it?

20/11/14 - 91km

21/11/14 - 56km (48km in China)

Today's ride: 147 km (91 miles)
Total: 34,092 km (21,171 miles)

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