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Perspective and Bereavement

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It’s been a busy, painful and tiring few days.

And I think, after making sweeping (and potentially erroneous) statements like ‘the trip’s over’, and ‘only a smashed collarbone’ in my Thai hospital post, you probably deserve a little more of a considered appraisal of what’s occurred.

I was in pain and in shock, after all.  Not a good time to be making decent assessments.  So let’s roll it back a little, and start at the start.

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The roads in Thailand had seemed pretty benign.  I was heading north on the coast last Sunday, with a gentle tailwind, in the sunshine, without a care in the world.  I passed a temple or two.  It was the middle of the afternoon.  The road was quiet.

And then the truck hit me.  And then I woke up in hospital.

My initial understanding of what happened was pieced together from shards of half-remembered conversations with doctors and policemen (quite possibly with a little morphine involved, too).

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Apparently, the truck had grazed the right-rear pannier on the bike, flipping the Beast and me sideways to smash my collarbone on the, erm, hard shoulder.  The doctors had scanned me while I was semi-conscious, and my head and spine were OK.  I was a very lucky boy.

But the more I thought about it, the less some of this made sense.  Why were all the scratches and scrapes down my left side, when it was my right collarbone which was damaged?  How did I end up with a bump on the back of my head?  And how was I knocked unconscious if I’d fallen off sideways?

Time, crash scene photos, and endless scans and x-rays have clarified things a little since.

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The collarbone didn’t break on the road.  That was a false assumption, based on how most cyclists pick up the injury.  In fact, the truck really did hit me, as well as the bike.  And it hit me hard.  The bike went down on the left (that’s the scrapes and scratches accounted for).  But all the damage to my shoulder was caused directly by the truck.

Tons of metal on flesh and bone at a closing speed of about 60kph.  Not what you’d call a fair fight.

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After finally getting back to the UK on Saturday evening (a long and tedious journey, of which little needs to be said), I spent most of the rest of Easter weekend in and out of another hospital.  More scans, more x-rays.  Every one identifying more damage.

The truck pretty much took out the whole upper-right quarter of my torso.  As well as the collarbone, my shoulder-blade is now in three big pieces (and several smaller ones).  I’ve got at least four broken ribs.  And at least four fractured vertebrae in my back to match.  So that’s technically a broken back, then.  Oh, and a bunch of neck vertebrae which now have bits missing.

And so I won’t be riding a bike for a while.

So far, so unlucky.

Or…

So far, so very, very lucky to be alive, sitting slightly uncomfortably on a sofa and writing a post.  So very, very lucky not to be paralysed or brain-damaged.  I’m actually a relatively happy bunny at the moment.

If I’d arrived at hospital in the UK with those back injuries, I’d have been straight into emergency spinal surgery.  If I hadn’t been wearing a helmet (smashed into a thousand tiny pieces), the truck’s indicator housing would have stoved in the back of my skull like an eggshell.  And if one of the broken ribs had punctured a lung (apparently pretty common), I’d have been in real trouble too.

None of those things happened.  So it all depends how you look at it.  Yes, I got hit by a truck.  Yes, I need an operation on my shoulder (that’s next week’s fun-packed agenda).  Yes, I’m finding it difficult to sit or stand or lie in comfort.  But if you’re going to get hit hard by a truck, this is probably the best outcome you can hope for.  I can walk.  I can think.  I can breathe.

Is the trip over?  Well, clearly yes, in its original form.  Even if I had a break and then went back to finish my planned route, that would be two ‘half-way round the world’ trips, rather than one whole one.  I’m a bit gutted about that.

But again, a sense of perspective is required.  Assuming the op goes OK, there’s nothing to stop me from cycling in the reasonably near future.  Am I finished with long distance touring?  I don’t think so; I’m already climbing the walls with boredom here (that’s obviously metaphorical, given my condition).  And I nodded off earlier, and had a dream about riding a bike through the Alps.  Or maybe the Andes.  Or the Scottish Highlands.  Some hills, anyway.

Will it be a series of shorter rides, or another intercontinental journey?  Will I finish what I started, or start something new?  I don’t know.

But I don’t think the riding’s over just yet…

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Now, some truly sad news.  Whatever the next ride is, I’ll be missing a faithful friend.  The Beast is, erm, deceased (well, it more-or-less rhymes…).

Tough old boot that The Beast was, the truck was one step too far.  It just wasn’t worth trying to bring it back to the UK for repairs, especially as the truck’s insurance were willing to pay me out for it.

So sadly, after over 15000 trouble-free kilometres (including a few before the trip), and at just over a year old (far too young), it’s time for me to look forward to whatever the next adventure is without the solid, heavy, reassuring presence of The Beast alongside.

I’ll keep you posted on what that adventure might be, how my recovery goes, and what Beast II looks like over the next little while.  Guess there are still a few unknowns out there to chase down…

The Back Roads

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After the days on The Slab (and I’d been on that road, and its gargantuan identical siblings for far too long), the back roads finally beckoned on Wednesday.

It was a nice change.  Virtually no traffic, an almost total lack of diesel fumes to breathe, and time to stop to admire the view.

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But before that, there was the mystery of the multiplying bikes to work out.

I parked up at the cheapest hotel in Chaiya on Tuesday evening, just before sunset.  The Beast was accommodated in the lobby, tied neatly to the railing on the stairs, and completely alone.

By the time I returned from grabbing some food, there was another bike trying (unsuccessfully, I hope) to mate with The Beast.  And two more (very expensive) adventure touring bikes nestled together on the other side of the room.

It was all very disturbing.  I didn’t see them arrive, and I didn’t see the owners.  It was like The Beast had just spawned a whole family in the time I’d been away.  Terrifying.

I didn’t see them leave, either.  Disembodied voices were all I heard, the next morning, as they all scooted off a few minutes before my alarm meant I was ‘officially’ awake.

Well, I did say I was a little slow in the mornings, didn’t I?

I never did meet the Dutch couple who owned the adventure tourers.  They were heading south.  But, having struggled out of my pit with my usual enthusiasm, I rolled north on the back roads, hours later.  And eventually saw a figure on a bike by the side of the road.  A familiar bike; the one that had been cuddled up to the Beast.

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The figure turned out to be Ringo Zheng, from Shanghai, who’s riding north from Malaysia.  He’s a really nice bloke.  Amazingly enough, his name isn’t really Ringo at all.  He picked it out of a list when he discovered his real name was hard to pronounce.  And only then found out that he’d named himself after the least famous Beatle.

Anyway, after a bit of chit-chat and some water melon, we got down to business.  It’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to share the work with someone else, and it’s amazing the difference it makes.  We took turns on the front, and were zipping along between 25 and 27kph (16-17mph) for a good few hours.

Ringo was nice enough to shoot a video of me putting in a turn on the front, which, if you’ve not seen it on FB already, can be found here.  I’m not sure it’s worth it unless you’re really interested in seeing what I look like from behind while riding.  But I couldn’t have shot it myself, so it’s nice for me to have.

We rode together until late afternoon, and then went our separate ways.  Ringo wanted to push on, while I’d made my target for the day.  I don’t think we’re that far apart still, so there’s a fair chance we’ll bump into each other again.  Though I’ll try to keep the bikes apart next time.  Don’t want any ‘accidents’…

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For me, it was back on the Slab on Thursday, making a dull but efficient run to Chumphon, where I had a day off on Friday (and finally got my clothes washed – well overdue).

And then, back to the back roads today.  Hopefully, I can stay on them for the next few days.

Apart from an increase in dog chases, which I haven’t had to worry about for ages, it’s much more pleasant riding.  Being by the coast, you get the chance to have a look at the beaches (mostly empty) and the scenery without having trucks and buses constantly bearing down on you.  And there always seems to be more interesting stuff to see away from the main roads, wherever you are.

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I’m still waiting for the hordes of tourists to emerge.  Everything seems suspiciously quiet so far.  But I’m edging into the resort areas now, so I guess it’s only a matter of time.  I should only be a couple of days to Hua Hin, where I was once part of those hordes myself.

Not sure whether I will be again?  It would be nice to think that being on a bike and going around the world makes you a traveller, rather than a tourist.  It certainly feels different on the small roads and in the little villages.  But in a tourist resort, with a load of other foreigners?

We’ll see, I suppose…

Celebrations and Coincidence on The Slab

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Dull but efficient.

There are hardly any worse words with which to begin a post, I’d imagine.  Sounds like a lecture on German public toilets, or something.

However, it’s the only way I can describe Thai Highway 41 (also known as Asian Highway 2).  And it’s dominated the last few days.  It’s a pretty flat, very smooth, unnecessarily wide and interminably long lump of tarmac that runs all the way up peninsular Thailand.  It’s got me pretty much all the way across to the east coast.

But it’s crushingly boring.  And it’s hot.  And it just goes on, and on, and on.  I’m calling it ‘The Slab’.

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Thankfully, other events have taken my mind off it in the last couple of days.

To start with, I stayed up too late on Sunday, and had an extra drink.  Or two.

I should know better than to have too much beer on a school night (especially now that ‘school night’ implies that the next day will involve a vast amount of sweating).

But it was a momentous day, as I’m sure you’re all aware.  Bristol City were playing Walsall in the FA Trophy final (now named after an otherwise obscure paint company) at Wembley Stadium.  I spent ages trying to find a live stream.  I ended up listening on internet radio.  Not quite the same as being there.  Still, City won 2-0, and will now forever be the first team to win the trophy three times.  So you can hopefully understand why a small over-indulgence was called for.

An entirely predictable consequence was that I didn’t get enough sleep.  But, given no obvious hangover (and more importantly, a tailwind), yesterday became a low effort, high-speed rush along The Slab for 90-odd kilometres.  I even had enough time to grab a picture of the one interesting thing I saw; a huge, lonely Buddha waiting on a huge building site for a temple to be built around him:

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The lack of sleep (and, just possibly, a touch of delayed dehydration) caught up with me this morning.  I felt abysmally rough, and failed to get out of bed with anything approaching enthusiasm.  It was baking outside already, so I did some emergency re-planning, and settled on a much shorter day to give myself a chance to recover.

I was, therefore, only about 60km down the road by three o’clock this afternoon, and nearly finished for the day.  I saw a loaded touring cyclist, decked out in Thai flags on the other side of the road.  He didn’t notice me, but I noticed a cafe behind him.  I trundled over for a drink.  And saw another loaded bike hiding in the shadows.  It belonged to Colin.

And, get this…  Colin is from the UK.  From England.  From the West Midlands.  From Walsall.  What are the chances?

Bristol and Walsall meet twice in three days.  Once at Wembley Stadium in London, and once (with bikes) in a cafe in southern Thailand.  And all because of that extra lager on Sunday.  Isn’t that remarkable?

No?  Well, it’s as remarkable as this post’s getting, anyway.

The only other vaguely remarkable thing to happen to me in the last few days is my discovery of the range of room quality that you get in Thailand for more-or-less the same price.  A few days ago, my room had an improvised washing facility involving (spotlessly clean) dustbins.  Yesterday, I was in a brand new motel unit.  With (slightly alarmingly) mirrors on the ceiling:

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That picture looks odder the more I see it…

Now, the sharp-eyed among you will have noticed that the title of this post implies that more than one celebration should have been featured.  The second has nothing to do with me, at all (not sure that the first one had that much to do with me, either, come to think of it).

But it’s still well worth celebrating.  My cousin Jess, and her husband Jay (though I’m guessing he’s getting less of the credit), have just had a baby girl!  Congratulations and love to all three of you, and I’m looking forward to meeting Winnie when I get back home.

And that seems like a good place to leave it for now.  My dependence on The Slab should lessen from tomorrow onwards, as smaller coast roads link the various seaside resorts and hotels along the shore.  There might even be something interesting to write about next time.

The Future?

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It’s the year 2558.

Mankind has evolved away from using letters.  People make do by scrawling impossibly long lines of runes on incredibly detailed signposts.  Nobody can drive very fast, as they need so much time to decipher the signs.  Oh, and there’s very little cheese in the shops.  Although there’s plenty of everything else, including sweet – very, oddly sweet – shredded chicken buns.

Yup, that’s chicken.  Sugary chicken.

Normal life appears impossible.

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Or maybe I just crossed the border into Thailand.

I did check, you know.  They said it was an hour behind Malaysia.  Nobody said anything about Thailand being five-hundred-and-odd-years ahead.  Less the hour, of course.

But it really is 2558 here.  I know, because the date is one of the very few things you can understand after putting the Thai language through Google Translate.

A quick example.  I’ll give you all the help I can.  This is part of the first (almost infinitely long) text message I received from the mobile phone company (True Move) after putting my shiny new Thai SIM card in.  I assume it’s a welcome message of some sort, but it might as well be in Martian:

‘Heard good Shepherd get to True Move H.  K or the 3G a fire 1 to have actually cover cover all over the United States number means of you is [phone number], use of work has to day at 18/04/2558′.  It goes on for a while longer, then the truly enlightening: ‘the First 99 Star Link to Bora Nasser the call Bt 20 use has long 60 day pin scrap!!’

While it’s good to know that we’ve managed to develop a Star Link to Bora Nasser by 2558, the rest of this makes very little sense to me.  Even allowing for Google’s less-than-legendary grasp of language, it should be easier to understand than this, shouldn’t it?

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Anyway, despite the language issues and the future shock, the first couple of days in Thailand have been promising.

I’m really in the deep south of the country at the moment; it’s very rural, and with very few tourists (I’ve heard that most of Thailand is over-run with them).  The roads are nice and smooth, and the drivers are civilised, not unlike Malaysia.  The weather’s hot and humid.  Again, not unlike Malaysia.  The countryside’s a bit more interesting here, though.

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The biggest difference on the road is that there are hills on the Thai side of the border.  Not especially big ones, and with space between for the road to snake through with minimal climbing, but hills, nonetheless.

And the biggest cultural difference is that I’ve moved from a majority-Muslim democracy to a majority-Buddhist constitutional monarchy under military control.  They take their royals very, very seriously here.  I think there must be some sort of significant event or anniversary on at the moment, as the place is festooned with flags and portraits.  I’ll probably work out what the fuss is all about while I’m here.  I’ll let you know if I do.

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Well, there’s your first bulletin from the future.  I’m off to check on the next few hundred years of football results, so I can get some bets on, if and when I make it back to 2015.

Remembering How to Ride

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It’s funny how you can forget how to do something you’ve been doing perfectly well for eight months.

Though, I suppose it’s no stranger than Tiger Woods forgetting how to play golf, or the England cricket team…  Well, the less said about them, the better, I think.

While I was moaning about the sweating and the headwinds last time, it also turns out that I’d forgotten how to ride in the heat.  I think it was the month in Indonesia; maybe ten degrees celsius cooler than Australia, but much steeper.  I got used to being able to go harder (and having to go harder over the hills) than I could before.  And then I forgot to readjust to new circumstances here.

Anyway, I’ve remembered in the last few days.  Start a little earlier, go a little slower, stop for a little longer in the shade.  And the miles will come.

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The last vaguely hilly section of road so far was just south of Kuala Lumpur, as I passed the motor racing circuit at Sepang (above).  I seem to be just missing a couple of big Malaysian sports events by a few days: Sepang will host the Malaysian Formula One Grand Prix in a couple of weeks, and the country’s biggest bike race (the Tour of Langkawi) is on this week, but sadly nowhere near where I am.

Once past Kuala Lumpur, and having stopped, as expected, at Klang (not as noisy as I’d expected), the roads became pretty much pan flat, and the Beast and I have made some decent ground up the coast.

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The only vague complaint is that the scenery is a bit dull; billions of palm trees and not a huge amount else.

But the towns are as interesting as ever.  It’s still hard to get my head round the diversity of the Malaysian population, with every large-ish town sprinkled with mosques, churches and Chinese temples.  I’ve had a rest day today (Friday) in Sitiawan, which seems to have a large Indian population, and I’m just across the road from a large Hindu temple here:

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What’s surprising (to me, at least) is that there’s no real sense of tension or separation between all those different groups, unlike the immigration / ghettoisation / race-relation issues you tend to see in Europe and the US.  Everyone seems to get along with no major problems.  I guess there may be some underlying difficulties which are hard to sense just passing through, but it feels like it all works pretty well from my cycling outsider’s point of view.

Speaking of cyclists, I’ve started seeing a few other tourists on the road (I’d started wondering when I’d meet any more; half of Australia and the whole of Indonesia had passed without seeing any).  There were a trio in Singapore on my way to the border.  And then two yesterday south of Sitiawan.  All heading the other way, but it’s nice to know there are some others out there.

And finally, you expect to find a few oddities when you’re outside your own culture.  But this was just plain confusing:

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So, is it coffee?  Or tea?  Or something else altogether?  I can tell you’re on the edge of your seat.  Well, it turned out to be a mixture of coffee and tea.  Which is entirely peculiar.  And an innovation which I’m fairly sure nobody ever asked for.

I know it’s hard to see how things can get much more interesting than coffee-tea.  But I’ll keep you posted; you never know what’s out there…

Beast in a Box (Again)

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Well, the ‘slow boat from Jakarta’ plan didn’t work out.

It proved to be too many things: too complicated (the Beast being treated as cargo and sent separately); too time-consuming (endless running between offices near the port); too tiring (language barriers and miming can wear you out) and too relatively expensive (24 hrs on the ship would cost the same as the ridiculously cheap hop between Jakarta and Singapore).

And so I flew the Indonesian coop this morning, popped back into the northern hemisphere (just), and arrived safely in Singapore just over an hour after leaving Jakarta.  The Beast, while whining as usual about being dismantled and packed in cardboard, appears to have survived once again.  I’ll know for sure when I put it back together tomorrow.

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I did have time for a poke around the more monumental end of Jakarta before I left.  It reminded me a bit of some cities in the Former Soviet Union (albeit without the same apparent risk of being topped for being rude about the government), or maybe North Korea, with everything laid out neatly and then massively oversized to emphasise the importance of the place.  The Istiqlal Mosque (above) is hard to get a scale on.  My estimate is that the vertical part (below the dome) is about seven or eight storeys high.  It’s a big mosque.

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It’s a little easier to appreciate the largeness of the National Monument.  It’s a monster.  And the enormous, carefully tended park around it was an idyllic setting for families enjoying a Sunday stroll yesterday.  Or at least it would have been, if it weren’t for the fleets of hired mini-motorcycles being raced around and around by manic, grinning teenagers.

Now, I’ve seen so many abused bicycles in Indonesia, overloaded to breaking point to carry everything from reeds to dumpling stalls to multiple sacks of rice, that I felt it was time to expose the practice (although, sadly, I suspect that simply pointing it out will not stop the exploitation).

I’ve switched off my hypocrisy filter, by the way.  The Beast actively enjoys being loaded until it creaks and then thrashed across thousands of miles of mountains, deserts and crumbling tarmac.  Honest.

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Anyway, this pitiful example was being used as a coffee shop in central Jakarta by a particularly villainous owner.  An owner who insisted on being photographed with his poor, worn out victim.  And then tried to charge me five US dollars for a coffee to cover his modelling expenses.  Bearing in mind that the normal price of a coffee is 5000Rp (around 40 US cents), and that $5 will buy you a meal in a decent restaurant, I declined his kind invitation, and gave him a twenty percent tip on the coffee instead.  I didn’t want a picture with his mug in it anyway.

For the first time on this entire trip, I walked away from a conversation with what I can only assume were carefully selected curses and threats ringing in my ears.  I wasn’t looking back, but I reckon there were probably some less-than-flattering hand signals involved, too.

In fairness, he was the first and only unpleasant human being that I met in Indonesia, which only accentuates how lovely people generally were there.

Let’s hope that Singapore, Malaysia and points further north are as interesting, and the people as nice, as Indonesia has managed in the last month (though preferably with slightly better roads and less manic traffic).

To Jakarta: Hills, Traffic, and Football

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It’s been a few days that have felt like an assault course at times.

You can feel the pull of the capital from a long way off.  A metropolitan area with nearly 30 million inhabitants (10m in the city itself) is hard to ignore.

The traffic gets heavier (and slightly more aggressive), the air gets dirtier, and the noises get louder.  The lack of decent sign-posting becomes a major issue instead of a minor irritation.  And the smells get noticeably stronger (and generally less pleasant).

But before all that, there were the hills.

The ride to Bandung on Tuesday looked tough on paper.  And it was in practice.  Two major climbs, topping out at nearly 900m, and an awful lot of little ups and downs in between.

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It’s hard to get a sense of steepness across on a photo, but you can hopefully see the gradient near the top of the second climb here (the road follows the line with the rock face behind it).  It was a brutal day, and I was pretty well knackered by the time I rolled into Bandung.  To the extent that I didn’t really notice the increasing traffic until I got back on the road yesterday (Wednesday) morning.

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It was mayhem.  And this was on the ring-road, rather than the city centre.  The traffic lights here are on incredibly long delays, resulting in hundreds of scooters, minibuses (‘Bemos’), vans and cars building up at every red light.  When the lights go green, everyone charges across the junction, and then screeches to a halt again as the Bemos pull up in the middle of the road on the other side to disgorge their passengers.  Once you’ve squeezed past them, it’s all clear for a few hundred yards to the next set of lights, where the whole process repeats.

Jakarta, I can now say with some authority, is worse.

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As I crossed the last of the hills, it was a steep, twisty and poorly-surfaced interlude between the traffic madness.  It was fun.  There was a constant stream of trucks, scooters and cars going the other way, draped in blue flags.  It turns out that football is just as big in Indonesia as it is at home, and that Bandung had just won the league, with stacks of fans heading into town to celebrate.  At least I finally got my own back on the photo-muggers, and got a shot of some of them (all, oddly, Manchester United fans too, and not even from Surrey).

So, having got as far as Jakarta, I’ve got some logistics to sort out.  I’ve got six days left on my 30-day visa, which is not really enough to get to a port or airport in Sumatra.  With a bit of luck, I’ll be able to get a ferry up close to Singapore from here before my time expires.  Trouble is, it’s pretty much impossible to work out when and if the ferries are running without going to the office and asking.  If there’s one in time, I’ll get it (hopefully with a couple of days to poke around Jakarta).  If not, it’s either a visa renewal or a flight.

Should all be much clearer by next update…

Betrayal and Photo-Mugging

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You might have got the impression from recent posts that I’d fallen for the happy madness of Indonesia’s National Road 3.

You’d have been right too.  But not any more.  It’s let me down badly.

Maybe I expected too much, and tried to push too hard (I have been trying to increase the mileage since Yogyakarta).  Whatever, by yesterday afternoon (Friday), I was sat at a level crossing watching a train flash smoothly by, and wishing I was on it.

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It’s not the scenery, which has remained pleasant and lush and green (if a little hilly as I approach the inevitable volcanic passes I need to clear to get towards the north coast and Jakarta).  It’s not the people, who have remained lovely throughout.  And It’s not the traffic, which I’m well used to by now.  Or even my standard bugbear, the weather.

No.  It’s the road itself.

Ever since Yogyakarta, the surface has deteriorated.  There have always been a few rough spots, but it’s got kind of ridiculous for the last hundred and fifty kilometres or so.  For long, seemingly endless, sections it might as well be ploughed.

Potholes, ruts, tree root damage, odd ripples which look like the road’s melted and then stuck together again in waves.  I actually hit some roadworks this morning, where they had stripped the surface off the top of the road.  The bare gravel was much smoother than most of what I’d been riding.

Down goes the speed, up goes the effort.  It’s like mountain biking, having to use your whole body to keep moving while keeping the bike and bags in one piece.  Constantly out of the saddle to absorb shocks.  Constantly un-weighting the front, then the back on every lump and bump to avoid damaging the wheels.  Constantly concentrating to find the smoothest line, and make sure you can take it without getting rear-ended by a bus.

It’s hard work, is what I’m trying to say.  And I’m getting a wee bit tired of it.

There may be a little hope.  The Beast and I rattled and bumped to the border between central and west Java this afternoon.

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The road has been a little better since the border, though it’s only been a few miles.  I’m not counting my chickens yet.

While the road might have changed, one thing has remained constant since I was at Borobudur.  Being photo-mugged by the locals.  It never happened before Yogyakarta, but it’s been pretty much constant since.  Indonesians don’t do the full-on gawking, ‘staring at the weird foreigner’ thing which happens in other places.

But they pretty much all have camera phones.  And they do all seem to want a photo with the weird foreigner.  A couple of local tourists got me at the border.  Before that, a bunch of scootering girls caught me at a shop at lunchtime.  And then another school football team got me at my final drink-break.  It’s nice, but a bit odd to be a tourist attraction when I’m the one on tour.

I guess I’ll just have to get used to the road and the photo-mugging, and try not to let them distract me.  There are still a few miles to go, after all.  And I need to focus on the big hills in the next few days.  Just hope that road surface holds up…

Night Riding and Borombudur

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I wouldn’t necessarily recommend riding on Javanese roads at night.  I’ve nudged into dusk a few times over here, as the sun sets depressingly early.  But I’ve only hit full darkness once on the whole trip, on Tuesday.  It wasn’t dark to start with, mind:

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Later on, it was quite easily my scariest evening’s riding since I used to commute in London.  A head-torch turns out not to provide a massive amount of illumination in the pitch dark gaps between villages.  And combining it with a helmet means that whatever tiny pinprick of light is produced is generally aimed at either the sky or the handlebars.

This all makes it very hard to see either the side of the road or the gradient, unless there are other headlights about to steal light from.  But if there are other headlights, that means you’re in the grip of the standard Indonesian traffic frenzy (with less visibility than usual).  Fun, fun, fun!

It wasn’t even (really) my fault that I got stuck out there as darkness fell with forty kilometres still to go to my destination.  I knew I had a fairly long run (123km) ahead of me, and set a super-early alarm to give myself time.  For some reason, despite being connected to the network, my phone managed to lose an hour in the night, leaving me playing catch-up before I even started.  And then a badly-timed burst of rain left me stranded until nearly dusk.  And because it was only nearly dusk, I refused the kind (mimed) offer of shelter from an Indonesian family whose roof I’d been sheltering under from the rain.  So really, not my fault at all.

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Apart from the unintentional night riding, it’s all been going quite well.  Although I’m running a little slow (halfway through my Indonesian visa time already!), I’ve been making reasonable progress across Java.  And I was greeted on the road into Yogyakarta yesterday (Wednesday) by a mosque dressed up as St Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow.  Or maybe St Basil’s was modelled on a mosque; who knows?

Yogyakarta is the biggest city I’ve been to here, and is a cultural centre for the country.  What I really wanted to see was Borombudor, a huge,ancient Buddhist temple a few miles out of town, which was dug out of the forest in the late 1800s, and is now an Indonesian ‘must see’.

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I got out there today, with rain threatening (though thankfully, not actually falling on me for a change).  It’s a very impressive site; a flat-ish pyramid with tiers of Buddhas and Stupas all the way up, as well as some fairly vertiginous steps and drop-offs (health and safety is not quite such a big deal here as it is at home).  And the taxi ride out and back was a nice little adrenaline spike to get me ready to be back on the road tomorrow.

It’s actually my second new year of the year tomorrow, as the Year of the Goat (or possibly the Sheep; there are a lot of ambiguous drawings and inflatable toys around) kicks off.

Hopefully, the roads will be quieter as I head on west.  Unlikely, but you never know…

Ode to a Javanese Road

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Once again, depressingly, without pictures.  I’ll get some decent wifi soon, I’m sure.  Sorry.

 

National Route 3 is one of only two major east-west roads on the island of Java.  You’d think it might be a fine, wide highway, zipping traffic efficiently from one end of the island to the other.  But it really, really isn’t.  It’s more like experiencing the whole life of Java compressed onto a (very, too, scarily) narrow strip of tarmac, and rushing past in a crazy cavalcade wreathed in diesel fumes and dust.  It deserves a little more attention than I gave it in the last post.

My first view of Java was of a volcano and clouds.  The volcano warned of hills to come, and the clouds (and reports of flooding all over the west of Java) suggested that rain might become an issue once again.  Nothing warned me about the impression the roads would make, even after a warm-up in Bali.

A gaggle of schoolgirls in pink hijabs shoot by on scooters.  Some two-up, some three up.  Some texting.  Some smile and wave – “Hallo Meester!” – before dividing each side of the truck in front, which is plastering me with diesel fumes.  The truck turns out to be stuck behind a scooter with a dumpling shop riding pillion.  I have to pass him as well, attentive to the gentle honks of anything behind which is quicker.  Just letting you know they’re there.  I’m through, and there’s a slight break.  Few deep breaths, and dodge a wheel-sized pothole (to the inside; feeling clever until I see an old man on a bike loaded with reeds heading straight toward me).

A bit later.  A clear spot.  I switch off for a second.  A truck comes around the bend ahead, followed by a slipstreaming inter-city bus, which immediately moves out to overtake it.  My side of the road.  Horn blaring, lights flashing.  The road’s full, so I’ve no choice.  Dive onto the dirt, and watch the wall of metal flash past.  Straight back on, in case I lose my nerve.

A town, and things slow down.  And clog up.  More Hallo Meesters, overlaid with the crunching of ancient truck gears, music pumping from somewhere, and the strains of the local muezzin trying to make himself heard over the general hubbub.  Smells – diesel, satay, sewage, fried chicken, coffee, two-stroke engines, over-ripe fruit.  A family come past on a scooter.  Mum driving, then the two kids, then Dad on the back.  Big smile, a Hallo Meester, thumbs up.  All of them.

Start climbing.  Less traffic.  The more overloaded trucks barely make my speed up hills, so I can stop and wait for the convoy stuck behind them to pass before heading on up on fairly clear roads.  Almost everyone who passes gives me a friendly honk, or a shout of encouragement, or a thumbs up.  Everyone’s so nice on the roads; it’s the only way it could work here.  At home, there would be road rage everywhere.  None here at all.  Maybe getting there on time is less important than getting there alive.  Down the other side; passing trucks with hopeless brakes edging down the hill under massive overloads of rocks, soil, wood, metal, whatever.  Get to stop, wash, collapse into bed.

Next day, the rain comes.  At the bottom of a 700-metre pass.  Grr.  The road goes quiet for a minute as everyone gets their rain-capes on, then the madness resumes.  I’m soaked and covered in road-filth in a matter of minutes.  Another fleet of kids; boys this time, in football gear, boots dangling from the saddles, precariously close to the wheels.  Endless encouragement in broken English from the scooterists and quicker truck drivers as I climb into the low clouds.

A break as the rain becomes torrential high on the pass.  Under the tin roof of a little restaurant-shack clinging to the mountainside.  An old man dipping his bare feet in the river running across the road, a Muslim lady staring folornly at the weather and muttering.  I guess she’s praying for it to stop.

It doesn’t stop, but it does ease a little.  I’m running out of light, so I’m off, over the pass, and down the slippery, rutted and pot-holed descent.  In the dusk and the rain.  I zip past a couple of trucks and another scooter-borne snack bar.  This is why you want disc brakes on a touring bike.  Confidence.  Hit a rhythm, slaloming down the hill towards a dry room and my bed.  Let a car through.  Friendly honk.  Swerve the lying water; could be holes underneath.  Judder on the shoddy surface, take violent evasive action to avoid a family of feral chickens crossing the road.  Wonder why they’re crossing.  Smile.  My reward is my first aggressive honk from a flying bus.  Clearly not an animal lover.  Splash into town as it gets dark.  More Hello Meesters, and what sounds like a “Nearly There, Meester”.

I am there, thankfully.  Into the room.  Wash, food, bed.  Same again tomorrow.  Loving it.