Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle

by Russell McGilton

‘Acha! You much enjoying India,’ he smiled.

  ‘Baha! Well …’

  He fixed me with a stare as I collected my passport. ‘Be careful in Pakistan!’

  Little did I know I’d be back in India within three weeks whether I liked it or not.

  But now I was in a new country and with that, the thought of a new beginning. I reminded myself of my vows to be a calmer person, a person full of patience, more empathetic, understanding, a – OW! WHAT THE FUCK!

  WHOP! PING! CLANG!

  The bike suddenly clanged with metallic staccatos and I felt sharp stabs to my right cheek and shoulder.

  I looked up to see two teenage boys sitting on a large muffin of hay with a pile of stones in their hands while a sad-looking donkey pulled them along in a wooden cart. I tore around them like a hornet, hurling abuse, shaking my fist, Buddhist vows lost an instant. The boys just shrugged at my mad protestations and threw more stones, one bouncing off my helmet.

  I had no idea why they did this.

  An hour or two later I coasted into the outskirts of Lahore and slipped off The Grand Trunk road and onto the Canal Road, named thus because a tree-lined canal ran alongside it. I then swung onto to The Mall, a broad boulevard that drew a long bow to the Champs Elysees and perhaps why Lahore has been ambitiously known (amongst other names) as ‘The Paris of the Punjab’. And all this time I thought Lahore was French for ‘Ladies of the Night’. Ah, my friend! You want la whore?

  Toyota Hiace vans careened in and out of lanes, beeping, pulling over, ticket men hanging out the door, smacking the roof, yelling destinations, then suddenly alighting as a large truck thundered towards them.

  To say that Pakistani trucks were much more colourful than the orange TATA trucks of India would be an understatement. They were glitzy, garish and tarted up as if they were going to be the star float at a Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

  Every inch of the vehicle was detailed in array of colours, patterns, pictures, ornaments, carvings, portraits of loved ones and murals, while words in English hugged the mudguards – ‘GOD TAKE CARE OF ME’. Jewellery that looked like it had been stolen from belly dancers dripped along the outside of the undercarriage in long chains. Headlights were heavily massacred while above the cabin, a huge Julian Claryxxii-like collar jutted forward, enmeshed in metal lattice. Seeing a convoy of theses painted beauties often made me feel like jumping off my bike and starting to dance.

  Past the Regale Chowk (roundabout) I arrived outside a white run-down looking four-storey building, The Regale Internet Inn. I’d chosen this hotel as other backpackers had said in Amritsar it was the only place in Lahore where the staff didn’t rob you!

  Though calling it a hotel was stretching it a bit. It was actually the house of an ex-journalist, Malik, and bodies of weary souls from around the world decamped in what was the living room on mattresses piled on the floor: two chain smoking German brothers, David and Paul; Gavin from Yorkshire; two Danes – Skippy and Orsa; and a Korean, Kar. It wasn’t the cleanest of places and I headed upstairs to get some fresh air. As I ducked under a laundry line of underwear, T-shirts and towels on the rooftop I heard, ‘Ah, Russell! You make good time again!’

  It was Philippe, chillum in hand and now in a light blue salwa kameez. ‘Ah, you are strong, Russell!’

  ‘What’s this?’ I smiled, pointing at the pipe.

  ‘This? Oh, this is charas. You want?’

  ‘Sure,’ I took a drag and immediately felt a slight buzz from the hashish. ‘But isn’t this “poison for your mind?”’

  ‘No! It is good for the mind! Very shanti, shanti.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s Urdu.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Urdu. The language here.’

  ‘No, no!’ he laughed, ‘I ’eard you!’

  Over the next few days Philippe and I perused the streets of Lahore: relieving ourselves from the heat in the marbled The Badshahi Mosque; eating at the night markets, gorging ourselves on meat, something which wasn’t all too available in India; and embarrassingly, spending an inordinate amount of time at the new Western style shopping centre, something we both got too excited about.

  ‘Chocolate, Russell, they have chocolate from Germany!’

  There was certainly a different feel to Pakistan. It seemed more relaxed, laid back than India and speaking to Pakistanis, they seemed less bothered about their neighbours. Unfortunately, the streets were dominated by the presence of men.

  On one particular day, Malik, after getting us (the men at least) kitted-out in salwa kameezes (which were refreshingly light and oddly cooler than wearing T-shirts and shorts) led us through the narrow busy streets of Lahore to one of the most famous and oldest Muslim shrines in Pakistan, the Data Darbar or ‘Shrine of the Giver’. Built by the Sultan Zakiruddin Ibrahim at the end of the 11th century, the marbled tomb holds the remains of Sufi saint Daata Ganj Bakhsh (also known as Syed Ali Hajwairi), a Persian scholar who is believed to be a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. According to legend, a peasant woman gave Daata Ganj Bakhsh a jar of milk and when she returned home, her cow gave an endless supply. Thus today, countless people – business people, teachers, beggars – come to kiss the mausoleum for good luck, including numerous Pakistani leaders such as President General Musharraf.

  ‘Basement,’ Malik ordered and we followed him down some marbled steps. In the middle of a large hall and sitting on a green platform in rows were the humnawa – eight musicians (all men) – playing tablas (hand-drum), dholak (two-headed hand-drum), the lead singer pumping a harmonium (an accordion) with his feet while singing out his soul. I found it mesmerising and like others around me, clapped my hands and chanted. Soon, a bizarre coterie of men in robes launched themselves out of the crowd and began dancing, spinning and the strangest thing of all, violent head shaking as if they were trying to shake out really bad thoughts.

  ‘It is called Qawwali Music,’ said Malik. ‘These Sufis, they are trying to reach god with the dancing and the singing.’

  And by all accounts, lots of hash.

  Sufism is the spiritual side of Islam commonly known as Islamic mysticism. Because they worship saints, not to mention having a good time (dancing and singing), it has not made them popular with fundamentalist groups like the Taliban.xxiii

  One of the Sufis, a man that looked like Colonel Gaddafi, entered the fray doing Russian kicks while two older men circled him: one sporting a cape and ribboned George Clinton-style coloured dreadlocks; the other, who I will call Cat Weasel (green shirt, pants and thick locks of hair and beard), shook his head back and forth so fast that he reminded me of an oscillating electric tooth brush.

  Of course, he couldn’t keep this up and he tripped and fell into Gaddafi who was none too pleased at having his leg kicking interrupted and fists came out, each one swinging madly like drunks. George Clinton and his Funkenstein crew separated them like boys in a kindergarten. Gaddafi soon went back to his dancing while Cat Weasel had to be consoled with hugs from George Clinton and his consorts before he would raise to the same fervour as before.

  Having not danced enough, later that night, Malik piled myself and other travellers into a Subaru for more Sufi dancing at the Baba Shah Jamal shrine, a few kilometres away from Data Darbar.

  Malik led the way in a gait that was hard to catch, groups of men following, falling over and elbowing each other out of the way, desperate as they were to catch a glimpse of us. Down a street of vendors selling sweets we followed the sounds of beating drums and soon arrived at a muddy field where our followers stopped to retrieve their sandals caught in the sticky mud.

  Around a fire, a man dressed in a blood-red shirt and black jeans, hair flopping over his eyes and sticking to his forehead, seemed to lead the drummers. He’d stared at them, lost in a deep trance, and then, with a twist of his hand, sent the beat in a different direction. Sweat dripped off his face as he shook his head back and forth like a mop on a pendulum. Other dancers joined him, including Philippe, who jumped up and down like
bouncing top.

  I left the group and wandered the crowded streets alone before coming to a performance stage. Women dressed in saris danced with hints of repressed sexual energy while a skinny man with no shirt and tight jeans pranced around them and bizarrely, grabbed his crotch as if he were Michael Jackson. One of the women pushed him off stage and then the girls vanished into the doorway of a cylindrical structure.

  At the top of it, people were looking down on to something. I followed others up the stairs and looked down to see the women in the middle of the cylinder, dancing slowly as two motorbikes and a Subaru hatch drove faster and faster until the centrifugal force had them vertical to the floor.

  The driver in the car took his hands off the wheel. The audience cheered. When the motorcyclists let go of the handle bars the audience instinctively stood back and relieved an ‘OOOH!’ sigh.

  I rejoined our group who were still with the drummers and there I found Philippe shaking up and down like Jim Morrison, stoned off his face, laughing and jumping, and surrounded by Pakistani men. He passed me a joint and I too was soon bopping up and down trying to catch the beat. Other dancers around us shook their heads; some were so violent with their shaking I thought their very faces would come clean off.

  Then, to confirm my imagination, a man with wild tribal-looking hair shook his head like the others but when he stopped his face was horribly disfigured. In fact, half of it was missing, presumably hacked off. Open raw holes in his face where his nose should be stared back at me. I couldn’t steal my eyes from him and later that night at the Regale Inn as I slept heavily after too much charas, I couldn’t shake the faceless man from my mind, and woke up with him in my nightmares, hot pools of sweat collecting in the dints of my collarbone, filling like questions of what he must’ve had done or didn’t do to receive such a brutal disfigurement.

  ***

  In the morning, I said goodbye to Philippe who reproached me for taking the bus to Islamabad.

  ‘But Russell! You must cycle all the way!’

  ‘I know, I know! I just rather spend my time somewhere more interesting than on a freeway.’

  Dervla Murphy may have cycled every inch, every puff of dust and every back street but I’m sure some 40 years ago she didn’t have to contend with today’s traffic and pollution.

  When I arrived in Islamabad later that day I realised it was just like Canberra, the capital of Australia. I haven’t been to Canberra and I’ve no intention of going but I’m sure it’s exactly like it because it was stuffed with bureaucrats, roundabouts and embassies. The streets were nice and wide and the Tourist Campsite I plonked myself down in was quite pleasant and filled with a conglomeration of the Swiss travellers in their camper vans and Jeeps loaded with solar panels, laptops and satellite TV.

  However, I was warned off talking to a Frenchman who kept a Bactrian (two-humped) camel near his truck.

  ‘Don’t take photos of his camel,’ Greta, a Swiss doctor told me. ‘An English couple came over not knowing any better and he came out and demanded 40 rupees. Then another couple, German, took a photo and drove off. He chased after them trying to stick his head through the window screaming “YOU GERMANS SHOULD BE ALL KILLED!” Ja, he is crazy.’

  I looked over at the camel roped to an old truck that looked as if it had once been owned by gypsies.

  ‘He says he came here with no passport for the truck,’ said Hans, Greta’s partner. ‘When he got to the border of Afghanistan and they asked him for his passport he said to them, “I have come from the stars and looking for paradise”.’

  As I set up my tent a large four-by-four station wagon pulled up and I got talking to a blond man with a receding hairline and blue eyes. I thought he was American until I heard his accent.

  ‘I am Nacho.’

  ‘Like the chips.’

  ‘Yes,’ he smiled. ‘Like the chips. I am from Madrid.’ He’d been an advertising executive, but due to the stress, decided he and his wife needed to break from it forever.

  ‘It take my life. Now I am photographer. I mean, I try as I have only just started.’

  He’d started in the US then into Alaska, had the car shipped to Thailand while he backpacked through South America and Australia, drove through India up to Ladakh and would’ve continued into China if they hadn’t wanted him to pay $US6000 to hire a driver and stay at their tourist hotels. His wife had joined him for six months but left as the driving got to her.

  ‘What did she think we were going to do?’ he pondered. ‘Sail a boat?’

  We shared similar stories of travelling with our partners. ‘And look us!’ he laughed. ‘We are now travelling on our own!’

  ***

  I was really looking forward to this next stage of my trip – cycling the Karakoram Highway. It was supposed to be the crème de la crème of cycle touring: gorgeous ravines, stunning views of the Hunza Valley, snow-capped mountains and friendly villagers. I hoped to get to Kashgar, Xinjiang Province, Western China, some 1200 kilometres away from Islamabad. I expected it to take at least three weeks, as it was quite mountainous, the highest point being Khunjerab Pass at 4693 metres.

  As towns were somewhat far from each other I was going to need another burner, one that would easily work on dirty kerosene and so I found a shop in the ‘Urdu Bazaar’ in Rawalpindi (some 15 kilometres away south and the former capital of Islamabad) to fashion a smaller one, as all I had seen so far were cumbersomely large cookers. As I sat and explained what I needed whilst having tea with the owner of the shop, Falzal, a man of about 60 shuffled in and said a few words causing everyone to laugh.

  ‘He is making a poem about you. About your head,’ said Falzal. The old man turned to me in his green salwa kameez.

  ‘I not fun you. You are a guest in my country. I say that “To go with no hair must have much enjoyment in the city.”We say a man that cuts his hair is ganjaa.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘He is making the joke about your no hair. Bald. Ganjaa.’

  ‘Oh!’ I laughed at the remark and told him not worry as people do everywhere, especially at home.

  On the way back in the minivan, squashed with other men, a billboard caught my eye:

  I burst out laughing then nearly barfed up a lung when the next sign flashed passed:

  KEEP YOUR

  CANNT GREEN

  Fellow passengers laughed at me, one with very good English. I tried to explain, tears rolling down my face.

  ‘CANNT?’ said the young man, confused. ‘It means “Cantonment”. This is an army area. The Britishes used to have headquarters here. So this is why.’

  Strictly speaking, ‘cantonment’ means ‘a temporary military headquarters’ though I’m sure to the local population it didn’t feel like the British were here just for the weekend when they invaded in 1849. In fact, this area became one of the largest and most important military garrisons of the British Raj until partition for almost a hundred years. Hardly ‘temporary’. Anyway, for whatever reason, the term ‘cantonment’ has become a permanent part of the Pakistani lexicon. As for my interpretation of the abbreviation … well …

  On the way back, I popped into an Internet café. Rebecca had emailed wanting to know if I was going to teach English with her in Taiwan and then later travel with her through Spain. In short, would we be together?

  I spent the next few days in a dark, dark anguish. I could see the same problems unfolding if I travelled with her again. And yet, despite how I unpacked these issues with cold logic, I realised that I still loved her.

  But I wasn’t listening to my heart that day and typed the reasons why we should split. I don’t know why I didn’t call. Cowardice I suppose. I pressed ‘send’, but, rather than the relief I had been seeking, I could only feel that I had done something terribly wrong, not just to her but to myself.xxiv

  It was only when I returned to the campsite in Islamabad among Swiss and German Land Cruiser owners that I realised what a horrible day it had been for everyone else.


  ‘Ah, Russell! Four American planes have crashed into the World Trade Centre!’ gasped Greta, glued to her satellite radio. ‘It is so terrible!’

  Hans, was less charitable. ‘Zese stupid Americans. Zey can’t even fly zeir own planes for shit!’

  Of all days to break up with someone, I had chosen a day that would penetrate the consciousness of the world – September 11.

  Campers flung their concerns around the campsite like jigsaw pieces.

  ‘They are saying it is Bin Laden.’

  ‘Afghanistan!’

  ‘Ah! It is only 300 kilometres from here!’

  ‘We must head for the Indian border before they close it.’

  ‘They’ll kidnap us!’

  Within two days the campsite emptied itself as Land Cruisers and vans sped to the Indian border. What was once a lively little campsite of clothes hanging off car doors, barbecues, and foreigners sitting around in fold-up chairs discussing the merits of Swiss catalytic converters, was now deserted. Only myself, the mad Frenchman and his two-humped camel remained, pondering our fate. As much as I wanted to leave, I couldn’t: my passport was with the Chinese Embassy awaiting a visa.

  Urged by Alan to register with the Australian Embassy, I went to the next-best thing – the Australia Club, an expatriate bar behind the Australian Embassy which ‘registered’ all too well with me.

  The bar was filled with red-faced bureaucrats barking through thick Australian accents (why do Australians overseas always seem sooooo Australian?) and dressed, as Spinal Tap would say, ‘like an Australian nightmare’.

  I got talking to an embassy official who bore a striking resemblance to the Australian Immigration minister, Amanda Vanstone. And like Ms Vanstone, she was as wide as a caravan and dressed as a fruit salad.

  ‘I’d wait a few days before continuing on with your trip,’ she said. ‘We just don’t know what’s going on yet.’

  Next to her was Phelan, an Irish engineer who had been evacuated that morning from Afghanistan. He had been working for a Non-Government Organisation called Concern.