It started just like any other day, waking up to streams of light on my tent, flitting through pine trees in my woodland retreat. The angel and the devil had their usual argument, the angel winning this one by telling of the wonderful delights that awaited me just around the corner in an exciting new country. As I got up and packed away my things it never even occurred to me that before I reached that exciting new country my dream to travel around the world using only my bicycle and boats might be hanging by a thread.

It was the last day of my Russian visa, the 30th of August 2014, and it made sense to cross into Mongolia early in the day because as soon as one clock stopped ticking another would start. I'd have only 30 days to cycle across Mongolia to the western border with China, a 2,000 kilometre cycle on difficult roads, and I was keen to get as much done early on as possible. Incredibly given the length of the border there were only two ways a foreigner like me could get between Mongolia and China, and I knew that I would not be permitted to cycle across the more frequently used eastern border point. I had researched all the border crossings on my route meticulously to make sure I only went to ones where I was certain that I would be allowed to cycle over. That was, after all, why I had cycled more than 3,000 kilometres across Siberia to get to this one.

My certainty that I would be allowed to cycle across this border into Mongolia began to waver when I rode up past the line of queuing cars to the closed border gates and several men surrounded me telling me that I could not cross the border on a bike and would have to take a lift. They were not officials though and I was very used to unofficial people giving me wrong information at borders. My research told me that it was not permitted to walk across this border, but that cyclists had gone through without problems, so I resisted panicking for the moment. I was also sure that in the worst case scenario I would just have to bribe an official or two and I would be allowed to cycle.

I passed the time whilst waiting for the gates to open changing some roubles into Mongolian notes. It hadn't been possible to do so at any banks in Ulan-Ude and so I took my chances with one of the money changers at the border. Never likely to be the most honest of citizens the shifty man that approached me started with an ambitious exchange offering of 40 tugriks to the rouble. I knew the official rate was 51 so I laughed at him and typed 50 into his calculator, knowing I was never going to get 51. He cleared it and typed 45. I shook my head and said 50. He tried 48. I wasn't budging. 49, he tried. I was sticking to my guns, I was quite good at this. He got to 49.5 and I gave in and agreed. I changed all of my roubles except for 350 (about seven euros) in case I needed to do any bribing.

The border gates opened and I followed a van through, cycling up confidently to the young man in the silly hat and handing him my passport. I assumed he would just take a quick glance at it and wave me on like always happens at the first checkpoint, but he didn't. Instead he shook his head and told me that I couldn't go through on a bicycle. "Niet velociped" he said. He said some other things too but I didn't understand them. He clearly wasn't going to allow me through on a bicycle though, which was a problem, a really big problem. Panicking I reached into my pocket and thrust the last of my roubles at him. It wasn't very subtle. Ryan Gosling would do a much better job of it. The young guard looked at it like it was a stick of dynamite, waved it away and told me to go back and get in a car. Oh this was bad, this was very, very bad.

I walked back to the other side of the gates and took a seat, and was immediately surrounded by the men again, who resumed telling me that I needed to get in a motor vehicle. "Niet machin!" I said, "England to here, no cars! Bicycle only! No cars!" Then they told me I should get in a car, and then I told them "Niet machin! England to here, no cars! Bicycle only! No cars!" Then they told me to get in a car. It was a very repetitive conversation. A man was found who could speak English, and he told me what I had already worked out by now - I was not allowed to ride a bicycle across this border. I asked him why. "Because it is a car-only border." I asked him if he could talk to the border guard, explain my situation, but he had to run back to his vehicle and go on.

Every so often the gates would be opened and two or three vehicles would be let through at a time. There were two guards; the young man in the silly hat and a stern-faced young women dressed all in black who walked around and wrote things down on a clipboard. She looked like she would be of no help to me whatsoever. I could see beyond them that not 100 metres along the road the vehicles stopped and the occupants got out to walk into a building. There was clearly no logical reason why I should need to get into a motor vehicle in order to be driven 100 metres and then get out again. After a while I approached the young official again and tried to be nice to him, asking him his name, telling him about my trip. I'd come all this way by bike, surely there was a way to make an exception for me. I also waved 100 dollars around a bit, just to tempt him. He shook his head. "This is criminal!" he said. 'Jeez, when did Russian officials become so friggin straight-laced?!' I wondered.

"Look, why can't I just go through on my bicycle?"

"It is law."

"Well, it's a silly law."

"Yes, it is Russian Federation law."

Obviously I wasn't going to get in a vehicle just yet. It was still morning, and the border was open for another ten hours yet, so I took up my position just outside the gate and sat and waited. After a while an important-looking woman strode in through the gates and the young official spoke with her and pointed towards me. It seemed like he was asking her if I could cycle through, good man that he was. Her response appeared to be a very swift "No, he can get in a car" and she walked off purposefully towards the building (oh, she was allowed to walk!) to get on with more important things. My hopes died a little bit at this point.

A few times other officials came out of the gates and I tried to talk with them. I succeeded in talking for a little while with an older, balder official who was really friendly, but he was similarly insistent that I had to take a motor vehicle. I asked if I put an engine on my bike could it go through then and we had a bit of a laugh about it, and the younger guard actually said that if it had an engine and a licence plate then it would be okay. I considered going back to town and trying to find a mechanic to fit a mock engine and register me with licence plates, but the idea was fantasy, and I thought it better to wait by the gates in case something happened.

The day moved on and not much did happen for a while. I sat and felt very sad, and thought about how stupid all this was, that my goal of circumnavigating the planet by bicycle and boat was going to end not because of it being too hard, or sickness, or injury, or a beautiful woman, but because of ridiculous bureaucracy. I thought about how I could have not gone back to Russia at all. At one point I'd abandoned the idea of Russia and Mongolia because there was too much could go wrong at these borders, and I was just going to go direct from Kazakhstan to China. But then I found out about some guys that had come this way and cycled this border just the previous summer. I'd even emailed them to check. 'Yeah, you can cycle across that border, no problems!' was the response, and the adventure of Siberia and Mongolia had drawn me in and I'd come. And now I was here, and I couldn't cycle across this border no problems, and my visa was about to expire, and I had no plan B. Hope was fading fast.

The hours ticked by and by four in the afternoon things weren't looking good. Then another official came out, spoke briefly with the guard on the gate and then strode towards me. This was it, this was the moment. He was obviously here to deal with me one way or the other. He was either going to help me or all hope was gone. We shook hands and I knew I had to get this right. He spoke no English though and the conversation went nowhere until he passed me a phone with an English-speaking woman on the other end of the line. "Hello" I said. "Hello" she said. This was it, what she said now was going to decide everything. "The officer would like to tell you that you must get in a car to cross the border. You cannot cross the border by bicycle." My heart sank again at this abrupt introduction as I noticed two other men turn up and shake hands with the officer, but they were in plain clothes and seemed unimportant. I told the woman on the phone about my trip, having done the whole thing without ever using a motor vehicle, about how important this was to me. I really turned on the charm. She asked to speak again with the officer and I handed him back the phone. They spoke for a few moments and the phone came back to me. "I'm sorry, but he says you must get in a car" she told me, "it is the law." I was desperate now, all hope was almost gone. I tried the bribe thing again. "Please, can you ask the officer to escort me personally across the border. I can pay him 100 dollars for this service." The phone went back to the officer. They talked for some time. He seemed to perk up a bit! This was it! I'd got him! Just like in the movies! Saved at the final hour by some swift backhander to a corrupt Russian! Brilliant! The phone came back to me. "The officer says you must not try to bribe people, it is a criminal offence."

The phone left me again and it wasn't coming back. The conversation was over. Then one of the unimportant-looking men in plain clothes asked me in perfect English "What do you want?"

"I just want to go to Mongolia by bicycle."

"You cannot, you must use a car."

"Yes I heard about that" I sighed.

"And if you try to bribe one of my officers again I shall have you arrested."

'Whoa, you're more important than you look, aren't you!'

Suddenly I realised that this was probably the man that I needed to convince, and he spoke English! What a shame I'd made such a terrible start.

"Erm, er, it wasn't really a bribe. Not as such. More a fee for escorting me across the border."

"Call it what you will. Now you will not cross this border by bicycle."

"But why not?"

"It is the law."

"Surely you can make an exception. I have come all the way from England by bicycle. I have never taken any cars in 27,000 kilometres. If I take one now it will ruin everything."

"We won't tell anyone."

"No, I can't do it. Please help me."

"We can help you to cross this border in a car."

"That doesn't help me. Is there another border where I can cross by bicycle?"

"Yes"

"Where is it?!"

"900 kilometres away." He gave me directions to it and said "There you can walk across the border."

"Are foreigners allowed to use that border?"

"No it is for Russian nationals only."

In actual fact that closest border that I could cross was 3,000 kilometres away into Kazakstan, but on the plus side I did know for a fact that I could cycle over it, because I'd already done so once. I only had eight hours of my visa left though, and cycling 3,000 kilometres seemed a bit of a push. Although I'd cross three time zones so it would be more like eleven hours. Still a little out of reach. If I'd had more time on my visa I swear I would have cycled all the way back though, I swear I would have. I wondered what the fine would be if I overstayed my visa by a month in order to do so. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to ask the unimportant-looking important man.

"What happens if I overstay my visa? Just out of curiosity, like?"

"You will have to go to the city, go to court, pay a lot of money, arrange new papers. It will cost you a lot of time and money."

"That doesn't sound all that good."

"Can I see your passport please?"

"Certainly."

"Your visa expires today."

"Yes, I believe it does."

"So you must leave today."

"Yes."

"By this border."

"Most probably, yes."

"So what are you going to do?"

"Doesn't look like I have much choice does it?"

"No, you don't. Would you like us to help you find a vehicle to take you across?"

"No, thank you, I can do it myself."

The gig was up, it was all over, there was no way out. I'd been boxed into a corner. I'd done everything I could. I really did have no choice now. Nowhere else to go. The officials insisted I found myself a lift right now because they didn't 'trust me' and obviously there was no point in waiting any longer anyway so I went to it. There were several pick-up trucks, the first of which was being driven by an ugly woman who I'd seen drive around everyone and cut in at the front and I really didn't want to go with her so I walked around. Behind the wheel of the next pick-up was a relatively attractive Mongolian woman who seemed a better bet and so I tried asking her, but she was a shower of indifference and made little effort to even understand what I wanted. Behind her was another pick-up, this one full of people. There appeared no space for me but a young man was very sympathetic to my plight and insisted it would be fine for me to go with the attractive woman in front, and she nodded, so I threw my bags and bike in her trailer and went to get in the passenger door. There was no handle. The woman indicated I should just get in the back of the cab, so I did.

It was the first time that I had sat in a personal motor vehicle since July 2011. Once in the summer of 2013 whilst working as a pedicabber in Edinburgh I had seen someone smashing up a cash machine and called the police. When they arrived they had wanted to take a statement from me and the officer suggested we sit in his car. "I'd rather not. I don't like cars. Never use them, I'd prefer not even to sit in one," I said, to which the policeman had replied, "It's raining!" and I'd said, "We can sit in my rickshaw if you like!"

In fact I hadn't been moved by any motorised transport on land since May 2012 (the Barcelona metro if you're interested.) I'd had a good run. How stupid that it had to end like this. It wasn't just the end of that though, it was the end of my goal to cycle around the world. Everything was ruined. I sat in the back of the pick-up and an incredibly sad song came on the radio. I thought about Paris, cycling away from the Eiffel Tower with such hopes, about how much had happened, how far I'd come, and how it was all for nothing. Two old women sat outside on a step, Soviet tower blocks behind them. What a bleak, sad, pathetic place to end. The truck started to move forwards and the tears streamed down my face.