Until next time...

Photos from the exhibition in Phnom Penh.

 

Two months to the day since I rolled those last kilometers into Phnom Penh, I have had quite some time to digest the incredible experiences of my epic cycling adventure. It's hard to put such a journey into words as each and every day was so different from the previous one, the terrain, the weather, the people, often the food. It's hard to summarise such a journey, in fact, I don't think I need to! I think what will stay with me the longest is just how incredibly similar we humans are, everywhere, what we don't know about each other we are scared of, this is the cause of so much misunderstanding. Traveling gives us the perfect opportunity to know what we don't have to be scared of. I'm often asked how it felt to arrive, to reachmy goal. As I cycled those narrow and busy roads through the buffalo lined, rice paddies and on to my destination I guess I felt mostly sadness that the adventure was over, no massive sense of achievement, just the end of the road....till next time at least.
I hope that you have been able to share at least a portion of the joy that this trip has brought me, certainly the comments I have received from so many have helped keep me going. I have loved hearing from you all! Let the next next adventures begin....

 

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Ni hau (or not)

 

The bed bounces as the grating sound of poorly sung karaoke seeps through every corner of the room to make sleeping a far off dream. This relatively expensive Chinese hotel room provides little comfort to tired cyclists.
Chinese hotel rooms will have, without fail, cable TV, free soap, comb and shampoo, dirty walls and condoms. Bath tubs, air conditioning, vibrators to quote: 'make your pleasure with or without your sex partner', buzzing switches, mosquitoes, nightclubs and noisy sex next door are all part of the surprise when you get to the room (or try to sleep). The price varies wildly depending on who you ask, what is written on the wall is never the actual price and the price has no connection to the quality of the room, this is China!
A month in China was enough to see that this is a country full of history and cultural diversity. I had been a bit unsure about cycling here as I had heard lots of stories of communication difficulties and hassles with hotels etc. This certainly wasn't the case for me. People reacted quite differently to a hairy white guy, many just stared as if I wasn't human, these people usually reacted to a wave or hello. It became a bit of a game to try to guess who wouldrespond to my "Ni hau" (Hello) and those "or nots" who chose to ignore me and leave me wondering what they were thinking as I whizzed past. The Children were shy but wonderful as always, and if you could break the ice, which didn't always happen, were very curious and generous with their affection.
China was a wonderful combination of good food, good people and very tough cycling. I hope to return some day for more.

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But wait, where are the leaping tigers?

 

A whistle from above brings us to a halt. We turn to see the old man waving us back, the road we are on isn't right and we must descend the steep zigzag track to the brown, fast flowing river below. Carefully negotiating each corner so as not to loose our bikes down the steep slope, we reach the sandy river bank below. The old man calmly sweeps the area around a small room carved out of the cliff while a small baby in a sling on his back follows us with his eyes. He indicates for us to wait for the ferry to come. Meanwhile on the far bank, a horse is loaded on the rusty boat before pushing off from a safe landing place. The current carries the boat swiftly downstream until the roar of the engine brings it around and back up the where we wait. We load ourselves and the bikes and pull out into the current. The thump thump of the engine is all familiar sound of the standard Chinese engine.
With a scrape and crunch we arrive at the far side, our bike are unloaded onto a rock ledge with a near impossible access way leading to the washed out road above. We portage the bags and bikes in several goes across the boulders before pushing the 2 km up to the road above. Tiny lizards dart here and there as we disturb their peace. The rock strewn track indicates the infrequency with which this crossing is used.
We are now entering the Tiger Leaping Gorge with an incredible 2500 m or more between the peaks of the surrounding mountains and the raging torrents of the river below. After years of work, a road has successfully been blasted into the shear cliffs making for a great days ride along the length of the gorge.
The mountains ease back to rolling hills as terraced farmland takes over. Harvest time is in full swing as we loose altitude, fields are filled with workers harvesting, threshing and winnowing rice to feed the nation. Men run with huge bags to catch the abundant crickets between the fields, women replantthe next crops while men carry huge bundles of rice stalks to the roadside. It is like watching an ant colony from the outside, everyone is highly skilled at the task at hand and teamwork brings the food to the table. It's an incredible sight which stretches for hundreds of kilometers of the ride. I fell small and insignificant as my mind projects this incredible amount of activity to the entire nation where some 800 million farmers feed the soaring population of 1.3 billion in the same way.
After all this I had a relaxing week with old Chinese colleagues that I worked with in Sweden at their research lab at a military hospital in Chongqing. I was treated like royalty during a wonderful week of good food, good company tough table tennis matches.

 

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