Day 123: La Fin!

47km Total 12594 (plus another six to Xia-Ing’s appartment)

Slept in late in our hotel room in Clay Suouilly and stuffed about preparing bikes, cutting out NZ and TW stickers from fluorescent yellow insignia cloth. Weather was grey and grizzly and we didn’t need to reach Paris until 1pm.

Ate a leasurely breakfast, then felt terribly sick. For about 20 minutes I sat on the toilet wanting to vomit, sweat pouring off me like rain. Then suddenly it passed and I felt fine. No idea what happened!

Finally at 11:40pm (our latest start ever) we set off down Le Canal D’orcq. Stopped for a petit pain-au-chocolat, then continued to our arranged rendezvous with Ting’s brother, Xia Ing and our friends.

Beautiful riding along the canal for a while, then into a grafiti-scrawled industrial area, where we bumped into Aaron. Much flag waving and hand shaking. Aaron was sporting a head wound from his accident and four hour surgical operation in Russia, but was otherwise in good condition.

Soon we were re-united with Xia Ing, and more of Ting’s friends. Finally at the end of the canal there was my family, Rhonda, Mum and Aunty Margaret, along with some journalists.

Many more hugs and hand wiggling, pictures etc. Finally we all rode together into the centre of Paris. My three year project finally came to an end. I felt a wierd mixture of relief, exhaustion, happiness and sadness that in a few days it would be all over.

Day 122: Clay Souilly (Edge of Paris) – 12553km

France was just fantastic. No cycle paths, just quiet country lanes, and the occasional bigger road, all with safe, slow, patient drivers, to within 50km of Paris!

The sky was blue and the wind moderate, though the mornings were very cold. It took until about 12 for my feet to thore, and a bit longer for Ting.

Our only struggle was with food. We arrived on a Sunday, and there were no shops open. We cycled all day through small villages of 20 or so houses, many had no shops anyway. We got a little tired of road side apples, so resorted to corn from the fields. I think it may have been a bio-fuel crop, as it didn’t taste very good.

Eventually we arrived in the Marne Valley, and rode through the heart of their Champaign growing region. From there we entered Ile de France.

Our final full day to Clay souilly was 110km, including some very steep hill climbing, in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid passing through Meux. From Meux we had a brief stretch on a nasty highway, before heading cross country, and riding into Clay Souilly along a nice pathway beside le canal d’orcq.

We had planned to stay in a hotel that night, which was lucky. Just as we arrived the weather changed and the rain came pouring down. What extraordinary luck we had for the last ten days of the trip!

Day 118: The One Fahrt Campingplatz, Konz, Germany – 12,138km.

From Dresden we headed slightly north to Leipzig, under pouring rain. It continued to rain for most of the next day, as we passed weaved around flooded roads to Weimer. We arrived late at Weimer and my second piece of sh#@$ Schwalbe marathon tyre had blown out. The next morning we were so tired we didn’t get away until 10am. It took a further three days to catch up to schedule.

Then the weather cleared from Weimer on, and we weaved our way across Germany to Giessen. From here we had the luxury of river-side cycle paths all the way to France! We raced along beside the Lahn, then Rhine, then finally the wine-growing region in the valley of the Mosel.

Our last two nights in Germany were in the luxury of real camping grounds, with hot showers and flat soft grass to sleep on and a tree to keep the dew off my sleeping bag. (The tent was so small it was more comfortable to sleep outside if there was no rain).

Day 109: Dresden, Germany – 11,258km

Poland continued to be wonderful, as was the weather. We raced on to Germany. This border crossing took about 10 seconds for me, a mere wave of my British passport and it was “Willkommen nach Deutschland”. For Ting it was slightly more complicated, taking nearly a minute for them to find the rubber stamp and thump it onto her schengen visa.

From there we called apon fellow world-traveller Ruth Fuchs, whom we had met in South Australia. She arranged for us to stay with her friends Robert and Mariam, and family in their 500 year old restored appartment in the centre of Gorlitz.

The next day, after touring some of the town’s fascinating buildings, and cursing it’s many cobble stones we were en route for our rest stop with Ruth in Dresden.

But by this time Ting’s health was getting better but mine was deteriorating. Along with that the weather packed in. It rained most of the way to Dresden. We arrived tired and cold, and looking forward to the first rest since Saratov!

We actually stayed two days. Gambling our last rest day on the hope of avoiding the worst of the weather. From here we had 12 days to make it to Paris. We bought the last of our wet-weather gear from a fancy German bike shop, and planned our route in Detail, with the help of Ruth’s vast library of maps. We were all set for the final sprint across western Europe!

Day 104: Czestochowa, Poland – 10,780km

Scenery is just getting better and better! Poland was beautiful all the way since the border. We have been weaving our way along quiet country roads through small villages. The map we were given by our mystery German friends has their route marked on it, avoiding all the big cities.

Polish drivers are more polite than their Australian counter-parts, and we are having a lovely time. The only exception was on our way into Czestochowa, when a car did a Russian style high speed overtaking with oncoming traffic. This time it hit the oncoming traffic instead of me, which was a nice change. I cleared off the broken wing mirrors while the car that had been hit did a U turn and chased the one that caused the accident. It got away.

On reaching Czestochowa we managed to get ourselves lost, and were wasting a lot of precious time. This is one of the reasons we try to avoid big cities (the other being the traffic). But along came Oktawian Ciez to the rescue. A fellow cycle tourist and rock climber, reminded me of a slightly younger version of myself. He invited us back to his place, where we spent the night.

We left in the morning carrying two jars of home made polish soup, and 1m of Polish sausage, made by his uncle, who lives in the mountains. Ting and I are actually vegetarians back home, but we had put it on hold for precisely occasions like this! Oktawian gave us a brief tour of a 700 year old monastry before leading us out of town on the road we were looking for.

Day 99: Kovel, Ukraine (near Poland) – 10,303km

Ukraine turned out to be another highlight of the trip. Much of this due to a chance meeting with two mysterious German cyclists back in Russia. They were on their way to Siberia (in winter!) and had just ridden the exact opposite of our direction to Dresden. They furnished us with a map of poland, and their expert knowledge of the current road conditions ahead.

From Sumi to Kiev we were on a quiet road, through beautiful small villages and nice peaceful scenery. Roads were lined with apple trees, which were at just the right time of season. We suplimented our diet of apples with plentiful icecream stops. It turns out that Ukrainians are nuts about icecreams. A typical convenience store would have two or three freezers full of them!

Kiev was a bit of a drag, like any city of this size, but we had already been armed with an exit strategy. Unlike our team-mates Arnold and Marieke, we headed slightly north, aiming to reach Poland near Chelm. There was little traffic all the way to Kovel, thanks to the closure of the road for a surface upgrade. We had our own private, brand new road for 100km! Traffic didn’t really get busy until the last 50K to the border.

We our last night in Ukraine was in the beautiful town of Kovel, staying at some version of Ukrainian youth hotel. It was the only time in the whole of our stay in the former soviet union that we managed to get our bikes into a hotel room. (Having done this almost every day in China!)

We would have liked to stay longer, especially since we hadn’t had a rest day since Saratov, and Ting had caught a cold. However this would make the rest of the trip tougher, so reluctantly we made for the border.

Day 92: Sumi, Ukraine

Russia continued to be dangerous and stressful, but then suddenly it was all over and we were in Ukraine. What a relief! The traffic vanished and we pedaled our way into a nice pine forest for a great night of camping.

The next morning we awoke to heavy rain and a bitterly cold north westerly. It had been cold since leaving Saratov, and I was gettting a bit miserable. It was time I bought a rain jacket. We cycled for three hours and stopped in a beautiful city called Sumi.

We located ourselves in a nice warm but anchient hotel room, and went in search of food and clothes, and a bicycle shop. Our defective Schwalbe Marathons had been giving us endless headaches since the very beginning. One finally blew out as the steel bead snaped. It had only done about 300km! Now I was in desperate need of both a spare tyre and spare inner tubes.

We strolled about the quiet streets of Sumi and found all the things we needed quite easily. Our Ukraine adventure was of to a brilliant start. This was the first bike shop we had found since leaving China!

We hadn’t seen many other bikes in Russia at all, it was nice to see them again. The trafic had behaved its self since the border too.

Day 84: Leaving Saratov, Russia

From Aral’sk to Saratov the wind, sun and road conditions were relentless. Every day was a struggle to keep to schedule. We briefly thought it was getting cooler, but then from Aktobe it became hot again. At least there were trees lining the road most of the time now, and the occasional river. We had left the real desert, but it was still hot dry steppe.

The day after Aktobe Ting became sick, we could go no further. She rested under a tree, near a river, while I went off to find food. Ting had a terrible fever.

The russian border provided no relief. After a 3 hour crossing process, during which numerous officials tried unsuccessfully to find ways to extract money from us, we were in Russia.

Little changed, except the drivers were even worse. We thought about getting on a train at this point. It was just too dangerous. Drivers in both directions were going much to fast and constantly overtaking one another. Oncoming traffic would be constantly moving into our path while overtaking, expecting us to scramble off the road.

On reaching Saratov we were at our physical limits, it was time for a rest. Luck provided us with just the place. We stayed with Elina Barskova and her family, in their beautiful two-storied home with a lovely garden. We had planned on staying just two days, but at the end of the second we were still exhausted.

Much of the time had been used shopping. The city was quite beautiful, with nice old buildings everwhere, and a large produce market near the center. So we stayed a third day, this time taking a real rest. By the time we left we felt we had the strength to make it to Ukraine.

Day 65: Aral’sk (In the glorious nation of Kazakhstan) – 7028km

 It looked like this for most of the way across Kazakhstan. Though the condition of the road was marginally better at times.

We did have a rather memorable time though, despite the 23 days of head wind, heat, sun, no shelter and wierd road surfaces. Most of the people we met were extraordinarlily nice to us. I guess they don’t have a lot of tourists in these parts.

I purchased two spare wheels in a bazaar in Taraz. We then had another day of moderate conditions and nice scenery to Shymkent. From Shymkent it became clear that my vision of riding along a beautiful river valley of the Sirdariya was terribly flawed. It was hot dry desert all the way, and we only saw the river two or three times.

I was hit by a truck the day after Shymkent, which dampened my spirits a little. I had a painfully bruised arm, and the Kevlar in my seat sustained some minor but worrying looking damage.

The drivers here were just as dangerous as those of Kyrgyzstan. The truck hit me because he couldn’t be bothered slowing down half a second when overtaking me, while another vehicle was coming from the opposite direction.

On a different occasion I managed to take a picture of two cars overtaking a truck at the same time, one on each side, one in the gravel verge, all of them going fast around a corner, towards me.

We reached Aral’sk early on day 65, so took a few hours rest. Aralsk was once a fishing town, but thanks to the shrinking of the Aral sea it is now surrounded by more desert. Fishing boats sitting on dry land remind us of its former status.

Having camped almost every day since Taraz we took the luxury of a former “intourist” hotel. Complete with the soviet backward facing toilet bowl and once-functioning air conditioner.

Day 55: The kyrgyz-Kazakh border – 5820km

Ting and I had a pretty rough time in Kyrgyzstan, though the mountain scenery was spectacular. Our lack of warm cloths or a tent didn’t help, but the main problems were more human oriented.

Our second night in the country the guesthouse we were staying at in Sari Tash tried to steal our video camera. We got it back but didn’t notice until later that we also lost some film footage from China. After this we decided to camp more.

The following night the weather was bad, so we stayed at a lousy hotel in Goucha. Having hauled our bikes into our room up two flights of stairs we were informed that we would have to pay for an extra bed for the bikes. These hotels had no running water, the beds were impossible to sleep on and were at least twice as expensive as those in China. It was the last hotel we used in Kyrgyzstan.

The roads were appauling, and the driving habits even worse. When we did get to smooth roads it became even more dangerous. The cars weaved about imaginary potholes, but now at much higher speeds. Sometimes overtaking two at a time, so we were faced with a wall of three cars coming toward us.

We weren’t hit by any of these cars, but I did crash. I hit large rock when going down a hill at 45km/h. Rocks like these are used as wheel-chocks by truck drivers, who then drive off without removing them from the road. I bent my front forks back 50mm, and dented the rim. Amazingly there was no other damage except skin, and the rim was still true!

The first of our four rims cracked soon though. Within a week the other three all had cracks too. This was mostly my own fault for re-drilling the Presta valves into Schrader ones. All of them cracked around the re-drilled valve hole.

The worst night was near the Otmok pass. Ting and I had teamed up with two European cyclists, Bolazs and Toon and were camping out in the open. They had a spare tent! At 0200, in the freezing cold (alt. 2900m) two drunk herdsmen came to hassle us. They started shaking the tents and threatening us. Ting stayed inside while Bolazs and Toon and I got out and drove them away. But this wasn’t the last of them. An hour later I heard a russle outside the tent. By the time I got out they were 100m away, running through the darkness. I gave chase, but they got away, taking with them two panniers belonging to Bolazs and Toon. It was a disaster for Bolazs and Toon, but Ting and I were lucky not to loose anything.

The next day we parted ways, Bolazs and Toon headed for the police down in Bishkek, whilst Ting and I made for the Kazakh border. When I last heard from Toon he had made it all the way to Chengdu, and Bolazs had survived Pakistan.

Our final two days in Kyrgyzstan were a complete contrast. We were in the Tallas valley, geographically seperated from the rest of the country. People stopped throwing stones at us and started buying us gifts! What a difference a mountain pass can make!

We crossed through customs hassle free and were soon in Kazakhstan, in search of some spare wheels.