MONGOLIA

My way is something close to a mess. I know where I have to get, but how and by where, where I’m gonna stop, where I sleep and so on, these are things completely unknown to me. The free will is, in my case, free as a bird. Marcel seems to know a little more than I do, but this applies only when he is not busy fainting in the heat.

Therefore, here I am, stupendously riding to the Russian-Mongolian border, at more than three thousand and something kilometers away. I get to the check-point called Samara. I have to admit this is a veeeery beautiful name. I decide to rush towards downtown, as I have five letters that weigh heavy in my pocket and I really have to mail them soon at the fast post office aka internet. I reckon that a wireless or an internet café is not that hard to be found. I don’t reckon too well, as I only manage to get lost in a sixteen-lane mega-crowd and I decide on riding that I should go back. This adventure of looking for the internet in the chariot full of Russians is out of my league. OK, but what should I do in the future? The same, a little poking about and then taking off the same way I came in? I won’t understand in a million years why I had to make this detour. These are questions impossible to answer to. I’d rather don’t bother. Let’s get out of here as soon as possible, as it’s getting nasty.

At the exact moment when I was hardly trying to run away from the answers, here they are: the answers are following me in the traffic, among cars, until they get in front of me and make me a sign to pull over. I do as I’m told. These answers, of today’s fundamental questions, come in the shape of a guy riding a blue Yamaha YBR 125. He tells me his name, but I’d rather call him ‘Maniac’. OK. Maniac is a tall, beautifully to wonderfully shaped, blonde guy, with the typical Russian physiognomy and with a big smile on his entire face. He asks me if I need help, in English. Before answering, I thank God and him with all my heart that I finally meet someone I understand. Then I try to answer but I can only articulate a fainted ‘Aaaa…’ He goes on – if I need a place to sleep, I can come to his home, and if I need a service shop for the bike, well, he is just in his way to the best and cheapest service shop in Samara. Umm… what would you have answered to this? Would you have said ‘No, I have to leave and I don’t have the faintest idea where to’? Yeah, I thought so.

Alexander looks like a German, he owns a garage full of tools and a beauty, a KTM LC8. A Kawasaki taken to pieces lies on his working station. That Kawasaki is immediately removed to make room for the white horse registered in Hunedoara. I explain what aches, that the front brake disk is crooked and the telescope is running. The possibilities are being evaluated. Maniac takes me outside to talk me into going out and having something to eat. He tells me the motorcycle is the last thing to think of at this moment. I’m his guest in Samara and few things are going to happen to me. And Alexander makes and unmakes motorcycles ever since I wasn’t even born.

- We’re going to my place, you take a shower, we take something to drink and then we go to Volga’s river bank and we stay there until morning comes.
- Well… I want to leave in the morning.
- Yeah, this is what that Englishman we picked up at the train station used to say. And he left two weeks after. We’re gonna have girls also, you’ll see.
- You know, I haven’t seen that thing with the Russians drinking vodka up to now. More beer so far.
- You’ll see it.
Umm, I’m already kind of sorry I’ve said what I’ve said.

He tells me all kind of stories and I am all ears. About motorcycles, booz, his life, Samara and girls. Ah, girls. I try to explain to him that I’m not here for the girls, but it’s like talking to the walls. They know Romanian, also, he says. Really? Yes – pula (i.e. Romanian word for ‘dick’). Meanwhile, all kind of bikers keep on going and leaving. Among them, Alexei, a short guy with spectacles, who seems very nice. The phone rings, it’s Alexander. Maniac sums up for me. You have two options, he says, either you go with no front brake until Novosibirsk or you stay at my place for two days until someone tries to straighten the disk up. Well… Yeah, this is what I’m trying to tell you, that you really have only one option.

Doyle remains inside the garage and I become passenger on Alexei’s back sit, also on an YBR 125, towards Maniac’s house, where the show seems to get starting. The boys are riding extra-sporty and I smile like a crazy man. We get there. I’m alone for a while, until they take the beasts to the garage. They finally appear, pretty late for how close the garage was supposed to be. I find out the reason. They tried to find few girls, but didn’t make it. We leave, with a clear target: supermarket. There are three of us and the order sounds like this: two bottles of vodka and six beers. Ooops, I believe that I’m dealing with “the Vodka Hostage Taking Situation” itself this time. I admit I’ve heard about it. We go home, the table is laid and we begin. A toast for us, one for the motorcycles, one for dreams, art and love, all of them with vodka, followed by pickles. We commit group suicide, all these with Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana on the background. We finish the first bottle until you say half-of-fish. I find out that it should be placed under the table and not anyhow, but upside-down. My guide tells me that we should go to Volga to take a bath. This is the moment when this Russian movie is not only black & white and mute, but also cut here and there. I took a bath, that I know, and I also know that we had started to get on better and better one with the other, no matter the language. And that the paths we were wandering through were not quite straight and that in the end we got home, the eighth floor, view to Volga. We simultaneously fainted on the beds.

The second day, spontaneous meeting in the kitchen, to quench thirst, at about eleven. I stretch my hand towards the water. Wrong, black ball. That is not gonna help you. And they offer me a beer. Ah… The mere thought of a milligram of alcohol getting (again) in my blood and it makes me shiver. I’m shivering anyway. Standing is an Olympic test and seeing… well, not even the pineal eye is too productive. I’m still drunk. Maniac cooks some super fried eggs and pours, damn, some vodka. In three glasses. I firmly declare that it’s the last drop of alcohol I put in my mouth today. My unintended joke is appreciated with laughter. The boys ask me what I’d like to do. I confess with utter sincerity that I’d like to sleep if I’d have to choose. OK. Meanwhile, they’ll go to the market to try making copies of my lost keys. I collapse and my boys awake me after an hour. And they are, wow, manga*. They’ve done some tricks on the road. They hand me the keys, that won’t work, as I’m to find out in few days.

Everything is spinning around. My head heavily aches and I’m confronted with a strong feeling of, sorry, puking. But it’s alright, Maniac has the solution: I have to drink! No way! Alright then, though it’s not how you’re supposed to do. There is this recipe number two, if it’s really serious. And it is. Lots of water, two spoonfuls of honey and two aspirins, as I’m tall. I get over it and then I have to drink. I usually don’t take pills, but now I’m truly in agony. I follow the recipe and in about an hour I begin to feel myself, but very slightly.

My schedule says I should go to a beer factory here. It’s as old as the world and it produces the best beer in Russia. We go on the river wall. There are two kilometers until there. It seems close though and walking is more than good, in the plight I’m in.

But it only seems close, as you make three hundred meters in two hours when you’re with Maniac. Every, but absolutely every, group of at leas two girls should be asked something. Maniac has his ways. He has a special style of doing this, which I find fascinating. How he stops them, he turns them from lions into lambs, what he says to them and then takes their phone numbers… I don’t get it. I wait with Alexei ten meters away. I distinguish that he says something about motorcycles and bikers in the opening. Then something about Romania and Mongolia. Ah, and I explain him again in the breaks that he should stop if he’s doing this for me, as this is not the reason for my being here. He explains me at his turn that I cannot deeply understand Russia unless I taste this and that I should guide after the 3F rule in life: Find, Fuck, Forget. We don’t get along. And please don’t you get me wrong. The Russian women are more than very beautiful and the beach of Volga in Samara is an open exhibition. But my journey is about a different thing. I don’t know precisely what that different thing is.

We get very late to the factory, by bus actually, otherwise the evening would have caught us on the road. We take a five-liter can plus three glasses of the freshest and greatest beer in Russia and we go to savour it in a high place, from where we can see the sun saying farewell to us. Then we go on in Rock Bar, where we eat, with live groh strains in the background. In Samara, and elsewhere they say, every car is a taxi. You stretch out a hand on the street, the car pulls over, you give fifty rubles to the driver and he takes you wherever you want. Home, in our case, to end the longest day. My guys don’t really get a thing, but I’m ok, oh thank you God.

In the morning, I’m sincerely congratulated for not drinking the day before. I understand the congratulations, judging by the way the guys look. They apologize by saying this is how things are in Russia, once you start drinking, you can’t stop too soon. Awakening is necessary at ten in the morning, as Alexander waits for us at eleven at the garage to give me my horse back. We get dressed, put our shoes on, I press the door handle and Maniac says: wait, wait, you don’t do like this before big departures. So he brings one more chair and we sit for a minute in the doorway, clothes and shoes on. Then we stand up and leave. They wisely decide not to take the bikes, as they love their lives and they’d only play with them if riding in their present state of mind.

8,600 rubles, that is 200 Euro, is the price for the manual labour and four liters of oil. This isn’t much. The hole in the budget doesn’t exist at all, as I wasn’t allowed to pay for anything these days. Then I’m invited to lunch, again from the house, and then that’s it, I have to leave, as the road is my home. The brake disk has been somewhat straightened up. It’s not straight-straight yet, but it’s not like it was before either. Anyway, Yevgheni, a good friend of the boys, is waiting for me in Novosibirsk. And he can manage to make a new disk for me at a factory. I’m riding full of confidence. Farewell, Maniac! Spasiba!

After few kilometers, God All Mighty grants me a seat in the front row at one of the shows He’s so good at. It’s a road that is not from Earth at all. It’s like the wind of a different world is blowing. And the sky is fantastic. I slow down and enjoy every second of it. I stop and then I leave again.

The end-of-the-show signal is blown by the truck before me, which is braking. I’m also braking and… Fuck! I only think I’m braking. I grasp the front brake and nothing, but I manage to slow down safely. Keeping the distance from the one in front of you is a rule that I respect. I throw an eye to the guide fork. Aaaaa… horror! Right signal and I pull over in five meters.

You see, this is why I believe that Someone up there is taking care of those who dare. And this is why I also believe that Doyle has a soul and takes care of me, as I also take care of him. One of the two screws the guide fork is fastened with is loose. The guide fork is hanging and the screw is kept there only by a force that’s not within my limits of understanding. If I walked one extra meter, I would have lost the screw. Five meters closer or a descending road and I would have banged the truck. We are both in one piece and a wrench clasp away from being like before. We fix the damage, make one big cross and go on, as we’ll get sleepy in no time.

We start the look-for-a-place-to-sleep dance. I’m in Fortune’s hands. I mainly hunt for the truck drivers’ places. I stop in few such places, but I don’t even ask, as I’m not thrilled with the view at all. I have no idea how they say or spell place to sleep/ motel/ hotel in this language. I’m just looking at them, waiting for the inspiration to hit. At about one hundred meters from the last place I leave from, again without asking anything, I see, yeaaah… tents in the woods, on a riverbank. Except there’s no way of getting there. I go for a kilometer, I go back, I go in the opposite direction. Nothing. It seems that I have to go around the Earth and then cross the river somehow to get there. I only find a road where it says no trespassing. That should be it, for sure. And it is. I get to the crossing barrier, with lodge, where it says the price of entering by car. The barrier is lifted for me, with smiles and for free.

I’m on the river bank, I put up the tent, I eat beans & smoked chop from a can I carried for about four thousand kilometers and heated on my gas primus. And I wait for the stars to appear, so that I can park this tired body of mine. I have no idea where I am. The frogs sing so gracefully to me. They sing a good night song.

*manga = slang word for ‘dead drunk’