MONGOLIA

I had a giant breakfast in the morning, in the company of two drivers with whom I had a long conversation. Needless to say no one understood anything from that conversation. I left very determined to conquer Khaburabot pass (3252m), waiting for me few kilometers away, on the way to Dushanbe. First of all, in order to have all the best cards in place, I have to fuel with that gas which made me return yesterday. I find many comrades lined up on the side of the road and I choose one that gives Doyle a full tank.

I’ve just left and I experience a new sensation I only read about. Actually, Doyle is experiencing it, not me. It’s the so-called “knocking”, that thing that happens when you fuel with a gas with a grade too low than needed, so it self-ignites at compression, before the sparking plug gets to make the job it’s being paid for. I heard a strange thing at the engine, as if there’s a loose part somewhere, but to my luck and especially to Doyle’s luck, this doesn’t happen all the time. Only at sudden accelerating and only under charge. I remember there wasn’t any number written at this dude I bought the trouble from. And I didn’t ask either, it was probably useless anyway, but at his neighbors I saw even a 70, so there’s no wonder Doyle would be riding on pee at this very moment. The solution is simple and literally at hand – we’re riding smoothly and we’re accelerating even more smoothly .

Ten kilometers, checking point. Passport, everything ok. At least it seems so, until one of the four soldiers, seemingly the boss of the place, tells me to open my luggage. Yes, my entire plan of riding fast on this super-bad road is about to collapse. Ok, dude, I’m opening my luggage. He only wants to look in the tanks and once I’m opening them I realize he’s not looking for something in particular. He’s just curious. What’s this? And that? What about this one? But I’m not exactly in the mood for his curiosity. After half an hour, I finally pack everything back when, well, the English speaker soldier shows up. At least this is how his colleagues proudly introduce him to me. And look how well he speaks English. He looks at me and, with an innocent smile, he prompts: “Souvenir?”. Well… well done, dude! I take a business card out, hand it to him, smiling at least as innocently as him and I say: “Yes”. Take a souvenir, dude, it’s colorful. Write to me. The reaction is fine, in the meaning that no one understands anything, so I put my helmet and gloves on, respectfully say goodbye and split.

I forgot how it is. It’s fiery. Holes, dust, trucks and small traces of asphalt. My Doyle is disintegrating or at least this is what I feel, every meter of this road. It certainly isn’t harder than Mongolia, but there is something else about this road. It’s very tiring. And I mean very. That or I don’t remember how it was few thousand kilometers ago. I cross the mountain pass, where I drop a little the passport to a soldier, but I don’t give any business card anymore. Then, while descending, I stop to say hello to a bicyclist from Italy who tells me that here, on this stretch, the road is quite good compared to what’s happening next, where we’ll be fucked. I’m sincerely not impressed, as I’ve heard apocalyptical advices like this before from bicyclists, and it wasn’t that bad after all. But this time, after few kilometers, it seems that it starts stinking. Or maybe it’s just the fatigue, which is getting bigger, I swear. Or maybe the boots. I don’t know what it is, but it’s madness. Again I feel dust between my teeth and I have to stop several times to wash the glasses. Two hundred kilometers and something. That’s the distance I have to ride today. Several hours have already passed and we’ve ridden seventy kilometers. I feel like I haven’t got down from the saddle for a week. My back starts to hurt and the watch has made a wound at the left wrist because of the handlebar vibrations. I yell a cursing every time we poke into deep craters at the precise moment we get to see the needle pointing 60 km/h. It’s so hard.

The rhythm is broken by a wonderful incident. Exactly when I decide to overtake a car, I see it stopping. It intends to grant priority to a truck coming from the front, on a shallow stretch of the road. I sort of anticipate what’s about to happen. The dude in the car has stopped too late, the truck won’t go in, so the dude is gonna go into reverse. So the safest thing to do is leaving five meters between us. I’m so smart. The reverse lights of the car are on and it comes towards me faster than I imagined. I push my finger into the horn. Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiizbaaang! And silence… though my finger is still pressed on the horn. I see my front fender being lifted and the car bumper leaned upon my wheel. The reverse lights are off and I see the driver wants to leave. I desperately punch its rear window, which is few centimeters away from my windshield. The engine stops and a little and smiley one gets down. I say it straight to him, with no introduction, screaming in Romanian: “what the hell are you doing, you d@#k?!?”. He smiles, shows me his thumb up and says harasho. The f@#k harasho, don’t you see that fender and don’t you notice I don’t have a horn anymore? And I’m repeatedly pushing the horn button. Nope, he doesn’t see that and he keeps smiling with his thumb up, showing the fender. Moreover, she starts pulling the fender around, to show me it’s ok. Go, God have mercy on you, I don’t want to see you around. He gets that and he quickly jumps in his car and vanishes. The damage is not that big. I was more scared than damaged. Only the fender extension has got a hole where it was screwed, but I’ll solve this with a washer. I resume my road between mountains and holes. After less than ten minutes my reflexes are hardly put to the test. Right turn, slope on the right, me on the right, on my place. I see a car on the opposite lane, minding its driving, and suddenly a small van in the middle of the road, overtaking. Brake, the rear part is blocking and sliding a little in the dust of the road, enough for me to change my trajectory with few degrees and so my left tank passes few centimeters away from that irresponsible creature. Fuck. What was that? What are these? Stop, you assholes, I want to get home. How good it’s all over now…

I meet Ben from Australia, riding a R1200FG. He goes to China and he’s as tall as a Chinese. The asphalt is waiting for me ten kilometers away, one hundred kilometers of it, until destination. Needless to say how cool is the thing I’m riding on now. Until Dushanbe I don’t feel anything else but the fatigue.

I have to get to Adventure’s Inn; mind this, adventure. Alexandru’s team told me they stay there and it’s cool. I don’t particularly share this opinion, as I’ll find out later. It’s expensive and far off. I enter the town and I manage to get only in the proximity of the location. From there on, I can’t manage anymore. I get lost on the streets and I realize I don’t have rear brake anymore. Should I tell you again about Doyle who is suspending all his problems until destination? Well, maybe there’s some air that got in, as I haven’t refill the liquid for ages. Some people show me the approximate location and I see Alexandru few meters behind me. I’ve found it.

In the first evening we had some beers with fellow travelers from Ireland and Holland and we went to sleep quite early. The second day I’ve been pretty busy. I realize that my problem is not the air in the plumbing but a more complicated one. The brake pipe has broken. The sky falls over me together with this news. Just a little. I know I wanted to change this pipe before leaving with a metal pipe, but I got stuck in a stuck screw which didn’t let me go further, so I didn’t do it after all. I meet the same screw now, but this time I really have to take it out somehow. Mark helps me. Or I help him, to be more precise. Alexandru is self-respecting and he’s sleeping. We have taken the entire brake outfit and we’ve hardly manage to take that screw out. Don’t you think this is easy; it isn’t. There are some screws and nuts that you have to reach from beneath the bike and that would be so much easier if you were in the fourth year in Surgery. The guys leave a little later and I remain with Doyle’s hose in my hand, so I leave at my turn to look for a solution in the Tajik capital. For that and for one more trick. I have to find the embassy of Azerbaijan and try to expand the duration of the visa I already have. I miscalculated while I was making the preparations for the journey, so my visa starts too late. I find a cab, we bargain and he says he takes me to an automotive mega-bazaar where it’s impossible not to find any solution I need. It’s harder with the embassy, as the driver hasn’t heard of this street in his entire life, but at least he takes me to that area, as Piotr, my German-Polish bicyclist showed me on the map in Bishkek where the approximate location is.

We get to the bazaar. It’s huge and I don’t have too much time, as I suppose that embassy has a schedule and it’s open until a certain hour, it’s not waiting for me. And it’s Friday above all. Thus, we run from one booth to the other, waving the hose, but we only get repeated head shaking. The only thing I find is something similar, but it seems to be used for air, not liquid. I take this, more for not leaving empty-handed, and we go downtown. I show him on the map where I want to get and when I get down I see the first sign the day gets shitty from now on. After asking few persons, I realize the dude left me in a totally different area than I told him, pretty far from the place I indicated him on the map. I go on foot and I get to the area where I was told I’ll find the embassy. There’s a labyrinth of small streets here and I cross them all, from one end to the other. I ask people I meet, I ask drivers. No one has ever heard about that street. Two hours – this is the time I spent for this search; and a walk of about eight kilometers. It’s three a.m. and, cursing the darn municipality that gave names to the streets, the people who have no idea about these names, the guides which don’t say anything about embassies and the embassies requiring visas, I break down. I piss on these from above and so I take myself a beer, in order to make it properly. I stop at a pub, I take the beer and I’m thinking. This is it; faith doesn’t let me go home later. Can I beat that? I can’t. Can you? No one can. Meanwhile, I’m staring at the map. Waaaait a minute… my eyes open wide and I feel like jumping from the chair. It’s like in that movie with Mr. Bean or someone like him, when he goes to the dentist and turns the radiography upside down few times until he takes all his molars out.

I’ve been walking like crazy for hours in a totally different area than Piotr told me. I sip the bear and run in the place I should have been in from the very beginning. Look at iiiiit… how nicely the embassy is waiting for me. The embassy and the three soldiers in front of it. Hello, guys! Hello, brave man! Please take a seat here with us, as mister consul is not here but he’s coming in ten minutes and meanwhile keep this green stuff from this bag under your tongue, you’ll see how good you’ll be. They gave me some sort of a weed, a kind of tobacco, which should be held under the tongue and has a pretty piquant taste. Meanwhile, one of them ensures me the others gave me some pretty nasty stuff that will make me dizzy. Everything on the ‘La Isla Bonita’ background coming out from the speakers of a car parked nearby. Everyone stand up, mister consul is getting down from a black BMW and makes me a sign to follow him. I explain him inside what I want. Yes, we can’t move the date, but he can give me another visa, with no invitation letters or other rubbish required, as I’d have needed in Romania. He hands me a form and while I fill in this form, he gives me my passport back, with the visa in it. Does it matter that I put a date on the form and he has written in my passport that my visa is starting tomorrow? It doesn’t. 50$. This is it. The price for my getting home few days earlier. I’ve earned this medal so hard. I’m back at the adventurers’ nest I’m sleeping in. Quiet today, please. I’m tired.

The next day I’ve been busy writing and transcribing. I’ve been rubbing a computer keyboard for six hours, trying to bring my letters up to date. During these six hours, I had a saving conversation with Lisa on messenger, with Simon telling me over her shoulder to put a rubber patch over the break in the hose, then put some 1+1 gluing stuff over it. Let’s try. No, the patch is not holding on, but some poxipol, which is also a kind of rubber when it’s hardened, works, with a thick layer of 1+1 liquid metal I received from Radu. An hour later I put everything back. It seems to work. I’ll use the rear brake as less as I can and we’ll get home, to that metal hose, as we are. I’ve also tried to fix the horn. I took it down, took it to pieces, didn’t get anything and put it back. Silent mode, keep it low, this is how we’re gonna ride. But at least I’ve lifted a weight lying on my heart. And I think I put it on my eyelids. They’re so heavy now.

I opened those eyelids the second day at six; to my despair, as this happened for I don’t know how many days in a row. Breakfast, luggage, up in the saddle, tap the horse on the croup, yard gates opening, yabadabadoo… I have to ride about two hundred kilometers today, until Istaravshan, a small town praised by Lonely Planet. They say it’s ancient and has winding narrow streets and I love feeling those under my feet. The road is great, as it’s built by our brothers the Chinese, that are still working at it and they are everywhere on the side, with all sorts of equipment. Now I know why the Great Wall is still standing. Where the Chinese worker puts his hand, the time stands still. This lasts until the ascending starts, when we get back to that kind of road that, despite the intensive training we’re making from many days, we still don’t get used to. The classic recipe: dust, holes, trucks. Fuck, and I promised Doyle we’re done with the rattling. This pass, Anzob (3373m) is a beauty. I’d stop after every hundred meters I’m conquering.

I go down and the premium Chinese asphalt welcomes me again. I have no explanation for it, but I’m obsessively singing the tune on the credits of the Sandybell cartoons. Then surprise – I’m climbing again and I’m climbing pretty high. It’s obvious I’m heading for another pass, but the map doesn’t mention it.

And I’m climbing, and I’m climbing, and the asphalt is over, and the dusty nightmare begins, and I’m climbing, oh my brother, I’m still climbing. The road is so winding, that on Marcel’s display it looks as if I’m not even moving on. Soon, the mileage recorder shows me I rode 200 and today’s destination is still far away. I finally get on top and then I start descending. I keep putting off a revival break that I need so much, as everything hurts, but Istaravshan is still far and the odds are that I get there after dark, so I strain myself. Descent over. Chinese! There’s room for 110. Burn it, Doyle!

And as we were riding together like brothers, I make a random gesture, almost without purpose. I push the horn with the left finger. I hear a very hard to describe onomatopoeia, as if a horse is blowing his nose or clearing his throat. Aaa, haa, Doyle, you’re doing what you were doing in the old times, aren’t you? You’re fixing yourself, right? I give him a brake of few kilometers and I make the gesture again. I hear that thing again, then again, but a bit clearer and then clearer and… Tiiiiit-titiiiiiiit-tiitiiiitiiiiiit. Ahaha, we’re having so much fun! Hurray for you, my boy!. Istaravshan.

I stop to ask for guiding towards one of the three hotels mentioned in the guide. They seem not to have very many riding tourists around here, as I find myself surrounded. Make an exercise and imagine a mob around you, with a man coming in every two seconds. I tell you, in two minutes you don’t see the street anymore. I find out where the hotel is and I split, until the television shows up.

The small hotel has an inner courtyard that Doyle seems to enjoy. A dude comes to me, I tell him I want a bed, he shows me a room with two and, after proudly showing me the wc with no ring, the television with all the channels in Russian and the ventilator for the ten degrees outside, he tells me 100 somons, that is 22$. How much?!? I tell him it’s too much. 80? No, dude, I don’t pay you that much. 60? I’m sorry, but I can’t afford more than 50. No, not 50. Alright then, goodbye. And I’m turning to leave. At that moment I hear behind me: “passport?”. I’m turning back – 50? Yes, 50. Well done. There’s no hidden talent in negotiation. It’s just me, the broke one. I change my clothes in a hurry and I go to look for the labyrinth of streets. A dude with a car tells me it’s very far and he can take me there for two bucks. We get there. The fuck it’s far, it’s less than one kilometer away. Well, God be with you, Mob-man. There’s no big deal about the praised thing. The streets aren’t that narrow and, as labyrinthic this place is, I didn’t succeed to get lots and my block of flats in Petrila looks older than these houses. I’ve briefly seen Abdullatif Sultan Medressa and afterwards few dudes have taken me to Hauz-i-Shah Mosque.

At the exit of this ancient town, I met few kids that asked me to take a picture of them and when I put the camera to my eye, they suddenly became hysterical, which brightened my day a little.

I returned to the hotel, which is somewhere at the town exit, on foot, I crossed the bazaar where everyone was gathering their merchandise and, after telling the moon how beautiful she is when she’s full and then goodnight to Doyle, I cut my movie suddenly, but somehow tenderly. Tomorrow we’re conquering the Uzbek borders.