Current Location: Kabul, Afghanistan
My journey through India has left me with very mixed memories. There was the hectic, crazy traffic on the hot, flat roads; the hawkers of Delhi who liked to call you “brother” and “friend” before ripping you off; the young and old backpackers who wore Turbans and henna as they eagerly searched for whatever they were searching for out here in the misty east; there was spectacular history and architecture; there was the lovely week I spent with Christine when she came out to visit; and then there was the flight home (and back to India again) after a family tragedy in England.
When I arrived back in India I was really feeling like I did not want to do any more cycling. I was both unenthusiastic and nervous about the route ahead. But once I had set off and subsequently cleared the cow pat and pothole strewn roads of Delhi, and once I had started to feel the unnoticed rhythm of turning legs and turning wheels, and could see the poplar lined plains zipping past me, then I started to feel a lot better.
It took me four days of riding to get to the Indian border town of Amritsar where I stayed a night in the free rooms provided by the Golden Temple of the Sikhs. The Golden Temple itself is the shiny jewel at the center of an elaborate complex of arches, alleyways and a giant sacred pond. Free food and accommodation is given, 24 hours a day, to Sikhs and non-Sikhs alike, and as I watched an old man bathing in the pond and gently half-submerging his grandson in their revered waters, I could see how effectively family visits to such traditional places could help ingrain a love of their faith in every subsequent generation of Sikhs. I was very impressed.
The night before I left India I tried to watch the famously ostentatious and nationalistic flag lowering ceremony at the border itself. Giant Indian soldiers (with still more giant moustaches) strutted around and kicked their salutes, whilst vast crowds of Indian tourists (over whose heads I was trying to watch the ceremony) cheered and jostled. In the distance, beyond the border gates, a similar ceremony was being held by the Pakistanis, though it looked like their audience was considerably smaller.
And then the next day I crossed the border and rode into Pakistan. Pakistan was infact the first country on my whole “Siberian journey” where I had been before – as bright eyed twenty year olds, Al Humphreys and I had cycled through the Karakorum Mountains during our first University summer holidays, a memorable and significant journey for both of us, boding of future adventures on two wheels in 6 different continents.
Fortunate to be staying with a very hospitable Pakistani family in Lahore, I enjoyed my first two days back in Pakistan enormously. I was given generous meals and taken sightseeing around the city, and inbetween things I fondly recall having long, informative discussions about Islam, Christianity and Pakistani politics with my kind Muslim hosts.
From Lahore I rode north up the Grand Trunk Road to Islamabad, where I picked up a visa and stayed with another hospitable family – but this time they were Pakistani Christians – a rather oppressed minority group in Pakistan. They told me of how their job applications were often rejected just on the basis of their names (which are Christian not Muslim names) and of terrifying times when riots break out and churches are burned (for example, after the Danish Cartoon incident and other inflaming sensations).
On from Islamabad, I turned off the main road on my bike one afternoon in order to pop into the Taxila museum, where 3rd Century (AD) Buddhas showed the breadth of different cultural influences which have seeped through this strategic corridor of the world. Whilst the Buddhism crept further west before veering north and into China (and eventually Japan) over the first Millennia (AD), it was earlier still that Alexander (in the 4th Century BC) had led his troops reluctantly (and victoriously) through the Indus valley before making a U-turn back towards Persia. Weapons in the museum from the time of Alexander (but not of his own troops) brought the home the reality of just how ancient this culture was.
I crossed the Indus (a river I had not seen for almost ten years) and arrived in the North West Frontier city of Peshawar. It took me one day to get my Afghan visa and a special permit to get me to the border, and then I was ready for the next, somewhat frightening stage of the journey: Afghanistan.
I had been pondering on this route for months, emailing or talking to every one who had any first hand knowledge of the country that I could impose myself upon. (In researching countries such as Afghanistan, there is no point in talking to people who do not know the country first hand, as it is so easy to focus on unrepresentative media reports). The general advice I seemed to be given was that the route across the border to Kabul (about 300 km, crossing the famous Khyber pass) was really not secure at the moment, but more promisingly, the road north from Kabul to Uzbekistan WAS secure. I therefore decided the most sensible and responsible thing to do would be to catch a bus (with the bike on the roof) to Kabul, and then cycle north from there… in other words, for the first time on the ride I decided to cheat!
Leaving at 7 in the morning, the taxi took me, my bike and an armed guard (compulsory) up to the border. A massive flow of people moving in both directions emphasized just how many Afghan refugees now live most of their lives in Pakistan (almost 3 million of them). I noticed the differences in their headware in particular – some wore the loosly wrapped turban (and looked, in my unaccustomed eyes, rather sinister), while others wore Chitrali caps bringing to mind the mountains of Pakistan, while amongst the crowds I spotted the occasional basball cap telling of the western influence even here. The majority of the women were wearing full Burkha – sky blue garments which covered their whole body and face, with just small slits for seeing through.
I changed my money, and upon reaching the bus park on the Afghani side of the border, found myself being pulled too and fro between a crowd of enthusiastic taxi drivers, eager for business. After a couple of tussles had broken out around me, I eventually decided on taking a mini bus (feeling safer if I was with lots of normal people, rather than on my own in a taxi). Helping me through all this was a man with red hair and beard – who looked rather like a Celt I thought, but who was clearly a local. There is a huge variety of different racial appearances native to Afghanistan, representing the varied origins of the many conquerors who have passed through this way.
The bus wound down through gullies and valleys, and then up another onto new, brown rocky ridges. A stream torrented its way downwards, and at prayer time I glimpsed a couple of men bowing Meccawards as they perched upon slabs of rock in the middle of the water. We veered through crumbling tunnels, and high up above the deserted rocky mountains (of which one always thinks when imagining Afghanistan) the giant snowy peaks of the Hindu Kush stared down on us.
People on the bus were friendly, though seemed a little wary of who I was, and slightly more restrained in their friendliness than I had become used to in Pakistan. A women sitting behind me in full Burka vomited into a plastic bag without exposing her face for fresh air, and no one around her seemed to notice. A few minutes later I heard her chatting confidently into her mobile phone.
Eventually, after 6 hours on the bus, I arrived in Kabul. As I cycled through the city to my kind hosts house, it was clear that, besides its reputation, Kabul was a completely different city to any I had previously visited. Passing close to an area of army bases, soldiers lined the streets, and impatiently waved me on when I stopped to pump up a deflating tyre. Convoys of white landcruisers and motorcycles sped past at high speed, and NATO troops stared down from their fortified towers. There is no mistaking that this is still a country at war, and yet at the same time, the majority of people just continued to get on with their normal lives – selling and buying in the markets, bustling traffic in busy streets, friends who walk and chat together.
Tomorrow I will set off to cycle north to the Uzbekistan border, a journey which should take no more than a week. Part of me can’t wait to just get out of slightly high stress country, but part of me is very excited about the adventures that await over this next week.
Many thanks for all the kind emails I have received in response to previous posting below about the accident in England.
take care and God bless,
Rob
www.cyclinghomefromsiberia.com
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