A Different Kind of Freedom

by Ray Kreisel

  During my entire trip my bike computer kept a total of how many miles I had traveled along with how many vertical feet I climbed, giving me the total combined uphill climb. During a conversation on the phone with my brother back in the USA, one of the Chinese guys in John’s examined my bike computer. He flipped it over and pulled off the battery cover, resetting the mileage back to zero. In an instant the electronic record of the distance that I had traveled disappeared. I relayed the event to my brother, he thought that I would be furious with the Chinese guy who erased my bike computer. I knew that there was nothing that I could do, it was gone.

  Kashgar marked the end of the difficult part of my trip. I knew that anything after Kashgar would constitute more or less a “vacation ride.” The Karakoram Highway goes south for 450 miles [750 km], winding its way through the Western extent of the Himalayan and the Karakoram mountains. The road took more than 20 years to build by both Chinese and Pakistani workers. Every day landslides, washouts and collapses continue to plague the road. But compared to the route I had just traveled, I knew that it would make for a relatively easy ride. In recent years even a couple of commercial companies ran organized mountain bike trips down the Karakoram Highway. Throughout this length of road both food and basic shelter would always be easy to find.

  I guess by normal standards a 500-mile [833 km] mountain bike ride from Kashgar in far Western China down the Karakoram Highway to Gilget, Pakistan would make for an exciting extreme adventure, but for me it meant just the opposite. In Kashgar I found a guidebook that described the route in detail. Most of the ride ran through a land foreign to me. The people who live in this part of Western China are Caucasians, mostly Uyghur, Kossacks, and Tajiks. I did not know their culture or their language. Fortunately for me, there were still enough people around who spoke Chinese for me to be able to know what was going on.

  The Kunjirab Pass demarcates the official border between China and Pakistan. Since the actual border line lies in an uninhabited region, neither the Chinese nor the Pakistanis have a border post at the pass. Each day a couple guards patrol their respective sides of the border. I received a Chinese exit stamp in my passport in the Tajik town of Taskargant. It is another 78 miles [130 km] until the Pakistani border post. When I thought about it, the concept of not officially being in either China or Pakistan seemed a strange idea. The notion of being some place but not residing in a country had never occurred to me before.

  The last Chinese guard post consist a small building on the side of the road, manned by two PLA soldiers. The guard flipped through my passport and took my exit papers. I felt a little sad to be leaving China, it marked another step in the ending of my trip. A busload of Japanese tourists stopped on the side of the road next to me. They had paused to take pictures of the mountains around us, jagged snowcapped peaks that rose up out of the pristine grassy meadows. When a few of the Japanese heard where I had recently traveled, they offered me some candy and soda pop that they had brought with them from Japan.

  At the actual border, two or three Chinese PLA soldiers with automatic weapons leisurely guarded the Chinese side, while a few Pakistani soldiers followed suit on their side. I stopped at the stone marker on the top of the pass for a short break and to celebrate what I had done in the four and a half months. I asked one of the Pakistani soldiers, “Could you please take a picture of me?” He certainly did not show much enthusiasm but finally agreed. Upon handing my camera back, he asked to see my Pakistani visa. I answered, “I am sorry but I don’t have a Pakistani visa, I want to get a 72-hour transit visa. I’m sorry but I have been in China for 4 and a half months. I was instructed that any Pakistan visa that I received in the USA would only be valid for 3 months. The Pakistani consulate in Los Angeles told me that it would not be a problem to get a visa at the border.” The solider was upset, because obviously he had too many people showing up at the border without a visa. He flatly told me, “You must return to China, it is not possible to enter Pakistan without a visa.” I knew that the only Pakistani consulate in all of China was located in Beijing, and there was also one in Hong Kong; both of these were more than 2000 miles [3333 km] away. That would mean that I would have to fly all the way across the country and spend a week in Beijing just to get a visa. I had no interest in doing this. I pleaded with the solider again, “Sir, I am very sorry that I don’t have a Pakistani visa, but at this point I no longer have a Chinese visa, so it is not possible for me to return to China. I know that it is not possible for me to get a regular visa at the border, but I only want a 72-hour transit visa, so I can take the bus to Islamabad, where I can get an official visa.” The discussion went on for the next 20 minutes. He continued to tell me over and over that I must return to China, that it was not possible to enter Pakistan. I was just about in tears, because after all I had been through, to have a border guard end my trip was not a pleasant idea. Finally he told me, “All of you Americans, French and British come here with no visa, it is not right. You must have a visa to enter Pakistan. You can cross the Kunjirab Pass, but you must go straight to my boss, who is at the next road construction camp and ask him if it is possible for you to enter Pakistan. When the immigration official in Sust, Pakistan heard about my journey, he made sure that I got a 15-day visa so that I would not have any visa problems in Pakistan.

  The Journey Home

  Once I reached Gilget in Northern Pakistan the daily temperatures hovered around 95F. With the dramatic increase in temperature and traffic I did not have a great interest in cycling all the way to Islamabad, in central Pakistan. After I spent a few days looking into other possibilities, and cooler routes through Pakistan I came to the realization that it was time to go home. For the equivalent of a couple US dollars I purchased a bus ticket to Islamabad, the capitol city of Pakistan.

  Like most cities of the world, Islamabad consists of a mix of the extremely wealthy and the extremely poor. While one group tossed their rubbish in large piles that filled the sides of the city streets the other group combed through the heaps looking for buried treasures or at least some scraps of food. In a well air-conditioned American Express office staffed by sharp-looking Pakistanis I purchased a ticket to Hong Kong, to start the long series of flights back to the USA.

  During the course of riding alone for days on end in the desert I acquired a certain type of calmness and tranquillity in my life. All of that collided head on with the round the clock hectic life of Hong Kong when I arrived at the famous Nathan Road in Kowloon. When I staggered out of the taxi, a pack of vultures descended on me, hawking everything from hotel rooms to foreign currency. Everything that I carried had been designed to be transported on my bicycle. With my bike packed up for airplane travel I possessed more equipment than I could possibly carry by myself. I grabbed one of the young Indian men advertising cheap hostel rooms and handed him a few of my bags. The place he showed me looked decent, four bunk beds in a clean room, 10 feet by 15 feet [3 meters by 5 meters]. I just spent the last five months traveling through one of the least densely populated areas of the planet and now I was staying in one of the most densely populated.

  After I dropped my gear in the room, I took the elevator down to the street to walk around a bit and find something to eat. As I walked down the wide sidewalks of Nathan Road in the early evening I felt like I moved in super-slow-motion while everyone around me flew passed at light speed. Hong Kongers talked on their ubiquitous cellular phones, answered pages from their electronic pagers and eyed the endless sale items on display in every shop window. The famous enormous neon signs of Hong Kong hung overhead. I continued to move ever so slowly, placing one foot in front of the other moving closer and closer to the harbor, while my peripheral vision blurred with flashing lights and frenzied movement. My harborside seat offered a respite from the activity, as I watched the moon shine down on the placid water before me.

  After a week of waiting for an available seat on a flight home, I once again boarded a San Francisco bound China Air flight. During the course
of the 13-hour flight, I spied the world out my small airplane window. The figure that I had fallen asleep to for so many nights during the past five months shown above. Orion the Hunter held his position high in the nighttime sky over the tiny Boeing 747 aircraft that carried me home.

  My journey started on April 1, 1994 in Dali, Yunnan, China. By the time I reached Gilget in Northern Pakistan at the end of August, I had bicycled 3300 miles [5500 km] and climbed more than 160,000 vertical feet [48,700 meters]. With the exception of the small ferry across the Tsangpo River and a truck ride across a deep part of the Indus River, I completed the entire trip under my own power. By most every measure I exceeded all expectations I had for the trip. In the end my bike continued to work and I remained among the living, the two basic components needed to continue my journey.

  Often when I saw another Westerner, they would tell me “O’ you must be so strong.” I am not so strong. There are plenty of cyclists who are certainly much stronger than I am. This trip at first glance seems like a physical journey across the Tibetan Plateau, but in the end what determined if I completed the trip was not my physical strength but rather my mental strength. A mental strength that enabled me to get up morning after morning and get on my bike to continue on this insane ride.

  When people ask me about my trip, I tell them “It was an exercise in learning how to manage pain.” That statement often provokes rather strong reactions from people, many of whom think I am somewhat crazy for subjecting myself to such an exercise. I guess I do not see it exactly that way. When the Buddha diagnosed the human condition, he also came to the same conclusion. He put this forth in the First Nobel Truth – “Life is suffering.” The difficult part is learning how to manage the situation.

  Epilogue

  “A true pilgrimage lifts the traveler out of his everyday self into a realm beyond ego. When it returns his self back to him, all of life has become a single, endless pilgrimage.”

  Kerry Moran, The Sacred Mountain of Tibet

  In the time since I have returned to the USA, I have not been through a single day in which I did not think about some aspect of this journey. At a superficial level I have reentered life in America, buying my food at Safeway and writing computer software for a living, but the way in which I perceive the world around me has changed. Sometimes, when I listen to friends complain about a meal in a restaurant that is not cooked “just so” or get worried about a credit card bill that they forgot to pay, I just smile to myself as these matters seem meaningless in the larger scheme of things. There was a certain clarity of life and purpose during my travels in Tibet that often seems to be difficult to find in the normal hectic life of the USA.

  Meanwhile when I pass Native Americans seated on the sidewalk outside a Montana bar listening to Indian chants and songs on a boom box, I say a prayer for my Tibetan friends and hope that a kinder fate awaits them.

  Ray Kreisel

  Missoula, Montana – 1996

  Please feel free to contact me about any comments, corrections or questions.

  Please contact me via

  email: raykreisel@yahoo.com

  webpage: http://www.kreisels.com/ray

  Equipment List

  The following is a list of all of the items that I carried during the journey, exclusive of food.

  Sleeping Equipment

  one person tent – Sierra Designs Divine Light Tent with stuff sack

  sleeping bag – Feathered Friends Snow Bunting GorTex with compression stuff sack

  sleeping mat – Thermarest with stuff sack

  Clothing

  Teva sandals

  hiking shoes – Nike Lava Dome Jr.

  riding gloves – with long fingers and covered back to protect my hands from the sun

  socks (2 pair)

  long pants (1 pair)

  long sleeve cycling shirt -lightweight

  cycling shorts (1 pair)

  expedition weight long underwear zip turtleneck shirt

  medium weight long underwear bottoms

  pile jacket – 300 weight Polorguard

  GorTex jacket – Marmot Alpinist jacket

  rain pants – REI GorTex cycling pants

  pile hat – with earflaps

  baseball hat – to protect my face from the sun

  bandanna

  cotton surgical mask – to reduce the amount of road dust that I would inhale every day, commonly used in Tibet to help fight off bronchitis

  stuff sack – 1 for clothes, 1 for food

  winter gloves – GorTex ski type gloves

  balaclava – light weight

  small towel

  Cooking Equipment

  metal spoon

  cooking stove – MSR XKG II stove with stove cleaning kit and nylon bag (I acquired this item halfway through the trip from the American Jay)

  fuel bottle – filled with kerosene fuel

  cook pot – large metal Chinese mug with lid, 1 liter size

  water bottles – 2 liter Nagel plastic bottles, 1 with nylon carrying bag

  plastic soda bottle – 1.5 liter size (only on second half of trip)

  bicycle water bottles – 2 large size water bottles

  water filter – Katadyn water filter with old toothbrush to clean water filter

  Miscellaneous Equipment

  flashlight – Maglight with extra light bulb and two AA batteries

  mini Bic lighter

  candles – (2) used for starting cook fires

  thermometer

  compass

  small hand mirror – 2 inches across

  comb

  toilet paper

  soap

  Chapstick with sunblock

  sunblock cream – SPF 25

  multi-vitamins

  sunglasses – glacier glasses

  notebook

  writing pen (2)

  Chinese/English Dictionary-Phrase book

  zip lock bags (4) – heavy duty freezer bags

  local postcards with Chinese stamps already affixed

  reading book – Annie Dillard, “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”

  short-wave radio – with two AA batteries

  mini tripod for camera – 3 inches long

  camera – Olympus Stylus Zoom, 35-70 mm zoom with extra battery

  film – 8 rolls

  fishing hooks (3)

  fishing line – 60 feet [30 meters]

  two extra AA batteries

  Important Documents and Papers

  passport

  credit card

  US dollars $300

  AMEX Travelers checks US$2000

  airplane ticket

  money belt

  photocopy of airplane ticket

  photocopy of passport and traveler check numbers (5) – one copy in each of my different packs

  maps – ONC maps for Yunnan, Tibet and Pakistan, Chinese Government map of Xizang Province (Tibet), map of China,

  notes from collected research – 2 pages

  First Aid Kit

  elastic hair tie (3)

  heavy sewing thread

  sewing needle (3)

  folding scissors

  aluminum foil

  safety pins (3)

  adhesive tape

  drug usage information sheet

  Diamox – drug for high altitude

  Imodium – drug for diarrhea

  Trimethoprim-sulfa D.S. (Septra) – weaker antibiotic

  Ciprofloxicin (Cipro) – stronger antibiotic

  antibiotic cream – 4 small packs

  bandages (6)

  alcohol swab (3)

  tinidazole 4 grams – drug for giardia two doses

  sterile pad (3)

  mole skin

  iodine swab (2)

  Bicycle Equipment

  bike computer – Avocet cyclometer with altimeter

  bicycle tire pump – mini Zefal Mt. Bike pump

  extra bicycle tire – acquired in Lhasa

  small piece of inner tube tire rubb
er

  bicycle tube patch kit (2)

  extra spokes for back wheel and front wheel

  hacksaw blade – 3 inch piece for cutting bolts and other pieces of metal

  climbing webbing – 2 pieces 10 feet [3 meters] long to tie all of the items on the rear rack of the bike

  bicycle brakes – extra set for front and back

  ball bearings – for headset and pedals

  lubricant – TriFlow and motor oil

  metal wire – 20 feet [7 meters]

  metal U clamps for front and back racks in case the frame mounts broke

  freewheel removable tool

  rag

  grease

  Loctite – for gluing nuts and bolts in place

  allen keys – 4 sizes

  pipe clamps (4)

  extra derailer cable and extra brake cable

  bolts for front and back rack (6)

  chain links (5)

  spare bicycle tube (2)

  crank arm extractor tool – small inset washer type

  washers (10)

  cool tool – multi-purpose bicycle tool, crescent wrench, chain tool, spoke wrench etc.

  duct tape

  strapping tape

  large Mountain Smith bag for tools

  canvas pedal covers – these homemade covers helped keep my feet dry and warm

  SOG tool – multi-purpose tool, pliers, knife, metal file, can-opener etc.

  front panniers – mid size from Overland Expeditions

  rear panniers – trans-am’s from Madden

  fanny pack – Mountain Smith Lumbar pack

  lower rider front bicycle rack

  rear bicycle rack – Blackburn Expedition Rear Rack