Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle

by Russell McGilton

  ‘And isn’t it interesting,’ said Maria as she slurped froth from her upper lip, ‘that no matter where you find a Starbucks, no matter what exotic location they put them in, the coffee still tastes like shit?’

  ‘Then why did you drink it?’

  ‘I was cold!’ She punched me and then kissed me. ‘Let’s get some dumplings.’

  As we walked outside the Forbidden City and through Tiananmen Gate, the paradox continued. North of Tiananmen Square hung the dominating visage of the blank-faced and wart-chinned Mao Tse Tung. During the 1989 protests, students managed to smear the old tyrant’s portrait with red paint, giving it an odd Dorian Gray hue. The picture was replaced soon after the Tiananmen Square massacre, though it may not have been what Mao wanted in the end, for now his image was condemned to a communist purgatory, left to stare at one of the most gratuitous symbols of Western Imperialism: the golden arches of McDonald’s. The restaurant was at the other end of the square, and a plastic statue of Ronald McDonald stood outside the store, grinning and waving back at Mao.

  It was hard to believe that only a little over ten years ago, hundreds of students were mowed down by soldiers’ bullets and tanks here, forgotten now in the slurp of a thick shake and the slap of a Big Mac. The ‘Capitalist Pig Dogs’ had beaten the Communists, it seemed, and to let it be known to the people that they had sold out entirely, banners proudly hung across busy city intersections proclaiming China’s upcoming entry into the World Trade Organization.

  I unlocked my bike and wheeled it out into the grey emptiness of the square (no one was allowed to ride across the square, and numerous police kept an eye on such attempts). Maria jumped on the back of the bike and we cycled off but were soon stopped at an intersection by a scruffy man who began shouting at us.

  ‘What does he want?’ I asked Maria.

  ‘How would I know? I speak Cantonese; my Mandarin is terrible!’

  He flashed a small plastic badge at us and pointed to Maria to get off the bike. Apparently he was some kind of civilian traffic officer, and dinkingxxxvi was not allowed in Beijing. We walked the bike for a while and as soon as the officer was out of sprinting distance Maria got back on. We headed to the hútòngs behind the Forbidden City and found a small dumpling restaurant down a narrow, tree-lined street. We warmed up on a bowl of pork dumpling soup.

  ‘Ah, that’s better,’ Maria said, obviously relieved. She shovelled another dumpling into her mouth then stopped. ‘What are you staring at?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, averting my gaze to my own bowl.

  ‘Go on. What is it?’

  ‘No, it’s nothing. Really.’

  ‘Tell me!’ Maria could be quite forceful when she wanted to be.

  ‘Well … do you always eat … with your mouth open?’

  ‘Oh, that,’ she relaxed, stabbing another dumpling. ‘Yeah, friends have told me about that before. I said, “Why didn’t you tell me?”, and they said, “Oh, we thought it was a cultural thing.” I couldn’t believe it! I’d been eating like this for years in front of them. Does it bother you?’

  ‘No, it fascinates me.’

  ‘Shut up!’ After that, I did notice she tried to keep her mouth shut while she ate … for a day or two.

  We headed back out into the cold to the Xiùshui Silk Market. You could get practically any kind of copied brand name here: Gore-tex jackets, North Face fleeces, Gucci belts, Gap caps and your usual fare of famous-brand watches. I picked out a red satin dress for Bec.

  ‘Do you feel weird doing this when you’re with me?’ Maria asked while I held her hand.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘But you’ve broken up with her.’

  ‘Yeah, but—’ I said, then, trying to make sense of it, ‘I just want to give her something. It’s Christmas soon and I think she’d look good in this.’

  ‘You still love her!’ She poked me in the ribs, laughing. It was true. I still did.

  I haggled a bit with the shopkeeper and bought the dress. After an hour or so of bartering and fighting through the crowds of other foreigners, we left. At our hotel we collapsed in our room, exhausted from a day of cold December winds, noisy traffic and foreign coffee in forbidden spaces.

  In the morning we had breakfast at the Waley Bar. The bar was in the hotel, just down the hallway from our room, and it was open all night, every night. In the late evenings the bar was frequented by the hotel manager, a bolshie Chinese woman, Amanda, who would loudly exclaim in the company of her foreign male companions, ‘Noooo! FUCK YOU!’ ever so frequently, before laughing the smoke out of her face. By the look of things, she had been up all night and was now slumped at the bar, a tiny cigarette in one upright hand trailing smoke above her – a signal; no, perhaps a warning, to keep well away.

  A waiter delivered our poached eggs amid the mess around us – our luggage. It was our last day in Beijing. We were to take the overnight train together to Hong Kong that afternoon; Maria was meeting up with her mother there and I had to organise a flight to Taipei.

  On a table opposite I noticed another traveller reading a map, and I was pleased to see that he was festooned with panniers.

  ‘Cycling China?’ I asked. He looked up.

  ‘Yes. I have just cycled Mongolia.’ He had a slight Israeli accent. ‘Now I go to Chengdu. What about you?’

  ‘Just done it,’ I said pointing to my bags. His name was Athalia and when I told him my name he said, ‘Is your email “russellbike”?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ah!’ his face lit up. ‘I emailed you!’

  I had posted a notice on the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree page offering advice on cycling in southwest China, and Athalia had responded.

  He seemed quite nervous about heading into the Tibetan highlands, though I don’t know why. In Mongolia he had pushed his mountain bike through rivers, lowered it down cliffs on a rope, camped out in the middle of the desert. He had even made his own panniers, thrown together from scraps of old fabric.

  Suddenly our conversation ended when somebody crashed down at our table with a pint of lager and a small glass of whisky. It was a middle-aged man wearing a jacket as worn and battered as his face. He collected himself and just sat there staring at us through his big glasses, stroking his grey goatee and fiddling with a yin-and-yang ring on his finger.

  I soon recognised him as the lump in the bed next to mine when I had stayed in the dorm room some nights ago. He slept most of each day. I was told by another traveller that this drunk creature had been here two weeks already and that he was ‘recovering from jetlag’, which of course had nothing to do with the all-night benders he had been on; waking us up, staggering in as if lost in a storm, colliding through the room collecting coat hangers, bags and odd shoes in his wake.

  He smiled and pulled out what looked like a small electric shaver and pressed it to a dint in his throat.

  ‘Where are you from?’ buzzed a robotic voice.

  ‘Australia,’ I replied. ‘You?’

  ‘Can’t you tell from my accent?’

  I wanted to say ‘Er … Dr Who?’ because he sounded just like a Dalek. I thought better of it. ‘Ireland?’

  ‘No. Guess again.’

  ‘Scotland?’

  ‘Correct. I’m Scottish. My name’s Gilly, short for “Killy” … Killy the English, you know. I hate the fawkin’ English.’

  From his garbled squawks I could only piece together fragments of what he was ranting about: fighting in the Gulf War, being in prison, searching for the Holy Grail. God knows.

  He took a swig from his whisky, then his lager.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Gilly unwrapped the cravat around his neck and tended to a small plastic pipe that stuck out from his throat. He pulled out a hanky and cleared sputum from the pipe, hissing and rasping as he did so.

  ‘How did …’ I asked awkwardly, unable to contain my curiosity. ‘I don’t want to be obvious about stating the obvious, but how did you … how did you lose your voice?’

  ‘Ah, tha
t’s nothing for you to worry about,’ he said, shying away and taking another gulp from his drink.

  ‘I was asking because my father had a tracheotomy as well.’

  ‘Give him me number and we’ll have a chat!’ He laughed, then spluttered and coughed. He wiped his mouth then took another gulp from his drink before reaching inside his leather jacket and bringing out a small crystal attached to a gold chain. He dangled it.

  ‘It … never … lies.’

  Maria, Athalia and I looked at each other.

  ‘This wee thing told me I had cancer. I tells the doctor but he didnae believe me, of course. Anyways, they did a biop. Had fawkin’ lymphatic cancer, now didnae? Took this huge lump out of my neck and shoulder.’

  He passed the crystal over and put the gold chain between my index finger and thumb. ‘Think of somethin’. Somethin’ important.’

  I tried. I thought of Rebecca. The crystal didn’t move.

  ‘Hmm. Now you,’ he said to Athalia. Nothing. Then it was Maria’s turn. The crystal moved.

  ‘She’s got it. She’s got it!’ Gilly said.

  ‘Got what?’

  ‘Got the ability. Yer see, I’ve got what’s called the second insight. I can see the future. And believe me. It’s ’orrible. Fawkin’ ’orrible.’

  He passed the crystal back to me.

  ‘Ask it a different question.’

  This time the crystal spun and swayed violently.

  ‘YES!’

  ‘Yes what?’

  ‘Yes, to your question. What was your question?’

  ‘I asked if my dead father was happy.’

  Gilly’s eyes swirled madly behind his glasses as he tried to follow the crystal.

  ‘He’s happy.’ His Dalek voice crackled as he clasped my forearm and leant forward so I could smell his whisky breath. ‘Happy as a fawkin’ pig in shite!’

  ***

  The bike, now sorely loaded up with Christmas presents, was heavy as I wheeled it one last time across Tiananmen Square on my way to meet Maria at the station.

  I posed with the bike, trying to look adventurous, while two students took my picture. The last photo of my trip. I looked around the square; my last experience of what was once an idea, late one night in front of an old atlas. I stood there, trying to take it all in.

  Travel, they say, changes you. I had been to different countries but was I returning as a different person?

  I still felt the same. I had had no spiritual awakening, as people sometimes expect when you go to places such as India. I had not had an epiphany, nor any flashes of magnetic truth, no divine light. But, having said that, the trip had taught me a few things.

  India was perhaps one of the friendliest places I’d been to and unfortunately I did not always appreciate that fact. She showed me my own shortcomings as a Western traveller: my pettiness, my lack of patience, empathy and understanding. (In fact, I ended up falling in love with the place, and have been back there twice since this trip).

  China and Nepal I had adored; there was less hassle and less traffic, and the countryside was breathtaking. As for Pakistan, I wished I had had more time but I liked what I saw during my stay.

  I had fun and met great people such as Uros, Dr Pushkar, the Doctors Chawla, Devendra and Fulong. Nothing had quite gone to plan, which I’d sort of expected, but really not. Malaria in the first two weeks? September 11? Breaking up with Bec?

  You may remember my original plan:

  This was my actual journey:

  Yes, it makes me look like I was smoking crack the whole time! What the hell …

  Now, I hadn’t cycled from Bombay to Beijing at all, though I had traversed a sizeable chunk, nearly 7000 kilometres. If I had taken a more direct route I might have done it, but then I might also have missed out on meeting some of the most amazing people and seeing some of the most beautiful scenery I was ever likely to come across.

  And there was the book, which, to mark a cliché, was always my real destination. At home there were piles of mailed journals, badly wrapped in Indian hessian cloth, scuff-marked by long, arduous sea voyages and smelling of an exotic past.

  Still, not doing the entire trip by bike gnawed at me and the same thought shuffled around in my head: what was I going to call the book now?

  I pushed the bike out of the square, mulling it over, speaking out loud to myself.

  ‘“Bombay to Beijing by …”’

  I pulled on my gloves.

  ‘No, no. “Mumbai to Beijing by …”’

  I snapped my helmet on and moved into the cycle traffic.

  ‘No, I really like the “B” sound. What about “Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle … sort of … kinda”?’

  I dodged a woman trying to cross the road with four upside-down chickens squawking in her hands.

  ‘No! That won’t do.’

  I cycled onwards to the train station. ‘“Bombay to Beijing by … by …”’

  Struggling with it all I disappeared into the thick crowds and once again, got completely lost.

  d

  Epilogue

  I eventually did meet with Rebecca in Taipei, but we did not end up together. She did, however, go on to have her own incredible cycle adventures through Europe and Canada.

  Maria still lives in the UK doing a hundred things a week, and Uros went on to drive through Southern India in 2007 and has since travelled all over South America, though not by bicycle.

  Since Bombay to Beijing, I’ve cycled Slovenia and the South Island of New Zealand. I’ve also returned to India twice – travelling to Southern India and to Mumbai to do a talk on this very journey.

  Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle Shows

  The one-man show based on this book won the George Fairfax Playwright Competition in 2003, performed by Mark Pegler and directed and dramaturged by Sue Ingleton. In 2005, I remounted the show as a performer and, with the help of Adam Pierzchalskie, the piece was workshopped and directed by Kimberley Grigg. The revised show went on to be performed to a sell-out season at the Melbourne Fringe Festival 2005 and at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2006. I later toured it, dramaturged by David Woods, to the Edinburgh Festival 2008.

  For more information on more of my adventures and shows go to www.russellmcgilton.com.au

  Acknowledgements

  First and foremost I’d like to thank the generosity of the people in India, Nepal, Pakistan and China in those moments that all travellers need – the kindness of strangers.

  For the 2012 eBook edition: I’d like to thank my agent at Curtis Brown Australia, Pippa Masson, for her continual encouragement; Joel Naoum at Momentum, Pan Macmillan; Graeme Wiggins for the wonderful map design; my partner Sarah Jane Chapman for preliminary proofs on the manuscript (not to mention her love and support); Jane Koenig for her suggestions; Alan Griffiths, Maria Yuen, Daniel Coward, Mary and Clency Bernard (on behalf of Krista Bernard), and Rebecca Gosling for their generous permissions, and the comedian, Damian Callinan, for his funny suggestions on rhinos in Nepal.

  For the 2004 edition: Kath Knapsey, who did a really fantastic job of pre-edit; Alan Griffiths, Samantha Page, Carolyn Court, Lucy Cooper, Fabian Dattner, Louise Swinn, Zoe Dattner, Graeme Wiggins, Trevor McGilton, Simone Metzler, Rick Juliusson, Bradley Hughes, Andrew Gardner, Erika Niesner, Jason Howell, Eli Court, Vineet Singh, Devendra G. Gaidlani, Govinda, Corrina Syke, Eric Svirskis and Celeste Young, who all made valuable contributions and suggestions.

  I’d also like to thank travelling companions Uros Pust for being there in Delhi at the right time; Maria Yuen; Dr Pushkar; Dr Chawla; Heather McLean and Tulsicharan Bisht for looking after me when I was ill. And, with the deepest respect and gratitude to Rebecca Gosling for her courage, strength and incredible patience.

  Last but not least, thanks to my gorgeous sister Fiona for being there when I was at my lowest and bringing me cups of tea and hugs when everything seemed a bloody mess!

  (Throughout the book I have changed and omitted full names of some peop
le for the sake of privacy.)

  Cycle Tips for Sub-Continental India and China

  A mountain bike is recommended, mainly because the roads are bad in India and Nepal particularly. Roads are generally better in China. Also, a lot of bike shops in India and Nepal only stock 26-inch tubes and tyres but not 27-inch tyres for touring bikes. It’s advisable to get two-inch wide tyres as this will lessen the impact from the road. You could pack 1.5 inch for better road conditions but this is more weight.

  Make sure you test out your bike if it’s a new bike. I made the mistake of getting a bike that was too big and not testing it enough. The distance between the headset and the set was too far and caused ongoing shoulder pain.

  Plan out your day. In the beginning, four to five hours per day in the first two weeks (80 kilometres per day) should be a good start. I took a four-day trip through the mountainous Dargo Plains near Bright in the north east of Victoria. This clarified for me what I needed to take.

  To save on money, a lot of camping accessories can be bought in Kathmandu at a fraction of the cost, though quality is somewhat dubious on items such as the sleeping bags and so-called Gortex Jackets.

  Ask locals all the time so that you’re heading in the right direction (though this can be a double-edged sword).

  Odometers, while useful, can mess with your brain as you try to beat the kilometres rather than enjoy the scenery.

  Pack the heavier things in the rear panniers and leave the lighter things in the front panniers, as it will become harder to turn with so much weight in the front. Also, front racks are not as strong as your rear ones.