When a friend was approaching his 50th birthday party in a divine flash of drunken inspiration I thought a stripper would be a great idea. In the cold soba light of morning when I considered the implications, some of the guests, his mother for example I was less convinced of my faultless plan this indecision continued for several weeks of drinking and sobriety and eventually the conflict was over with a short Google search and few clicks and a credit card number. I was, she was committed... I ordered petite from West Thurrock, I think perhaps that has a different meaning in Thurrock to the rest of the world, must be a Greys area, either that or I was the lucky one who happened to order when she was running a promotion of buy one get 25kgs free.
It all worked out pretty well, the mother was removed before the cloths were.
I had another divine flash of drunken inspiration camped in a Mongolian valley. But rather than removing the mother I decided it would be great to fly her over for her 75th. The dawn was colder and far more sobering but the idea remained and with more clicks and credit card numbers this too became a reality.
One minute mother was waiting on visas whilst I chilled in a Christian run guesthouse which I couldn’t seem to leave, with its hot water showers, IKEA towels and bacon sandwiches, and then one night I got a txt to saying she would be arriving in 36 hours.
So being the dutiful son I didn’t drink at all that night well only one beer so it doesn’t count.
Next morning bright and early I pulled open the curtains before the alarm even went off to find early was all it was, the sky was low and very wet., undeterred I had one more hot water shower one more rubdown with an IKEA towel and one more sandwich. Packed up bike which was now fully maintained and restored if not to its pre Mongolian existence at least the parts were bolted into the relevant positions as opposed to strapped and bungeed on top of panniers. I said my goodbyes and in freshly laundered cloths I went into the pissing wet morning sat on my soggy sheepskin seat and pressed the starter. Engine turned over ...and over...and over and didn’t fire. I checked the obvious, kill switch etc. and still nothing. bugger, I decide the best option under the circumstances was to hope harder and keep pressing the start button.. Nothing, check the petrol, yep seems to have some I didn’t use it all getting off all the tar. Ok so I wheeled it back into the yard, but there is no shelter at all. In a futile attempt I hung my poncho over a washing line and knelt on a plastic bag I was sweating on the inside and getting soaked by the relentless rain on the outside a row of raindrops hung off my open visor... The next thing to do is check for spark but with my over size tank I have to take off side panels and seat, but to take off the seat I now have to take off the spare tyre which means taking off top box which now due to broken lock has to be emptied of sleeping bag etc and unbolted all this to unbolt said tank to get to sparkplug. Fuck that. And in this weather in a muddy puddle yard it was not a pleasant task. this is not fixing weather this is plan b weather ‘when does the bus leave to Ulaan Baatar?’
‘8am’
It was already gone 8. But there is a minivan at 2pm ok maybe I can get that ‘you have to buy ticket now’
So the ever helpful maintence man went to buy my ticket and I decided to give up on the bike. I was allowed to put it in the coal shed as long as I came and got it before end of august when it would be used once again for coal storage.
So soaked through I took off panniers and went back to restraunt for a cup of tea not cus I particularly wanted one but because at times like this I remember I’m English and its what we do in the face of adversity and despair, reassess my options and retell my story again and again as other guests enquired as to why I was still here. So it’s time for a transformation I had to mutate into a backpacker. I had to go to market to buy a bag and then if there was enough time I better dread my hair and pierce my eyebrow. But after I got back from market I was so wet I simply couldn’t do a thing with my hair.
In actually fact with this holdall I haven even switched allegiance to the backpacker ferturnaty I’m simply a bag person. The good christian owners wanted nothing for bike storage and safe keeping of panniers; soon as trust deserves trust in return I gave them my keys. And once again said my goodbyes and headed for the collection of puddles and mud which was called the bus station. One last handshake and one last comment, ‘Graham, try and find Jesus’ well I had an awful lot of replies for that one, witty, sarcastic, offensive, flippant,, factual, argumentative dismissive, provocative, blasphemous, hysterically heretic, antagonistic, and agnostic, but in my now tried, tested and well practiced diplomatic manor I managed to keep my mouth shut and if I said anything at all it wasn’t faithless. And I’m not faithless, I have a strong belief in Karma and I also believe that everything happens for a reason. I wasn’t meant to ride my bike today...
I found the minivan and the bulshy driver insisted I sit on the end seat that faces the rear of the van.
‘no I can’t I have to face the direction of travel or ill throw up,’
but graphic visual explanations and even a healthy bribe would not change my assigned seat I was seat 5 and at this short notice I should apparently consider myself bloody lucky to have a seat at all. I think he was probably saying. And when the 11 seater van had been filled with 18 Mongolian adults 2 babies and a wet and resentful westerner, one hour behind schedule we set off.
The space between my seat and the one facing me was wide enough to get my leg in, due to bags stuffed behind my seat the back was vertical and posture was of Ryan air positioning didn’t have the room to slouch. Personal space goes out the window, there’s no room for that in here. I’m I glad I’m not fat; 2/3rds of my arse has a seat I’m bolt upright and facing the wrong direction. I try to turn to see out of the rain distorted windscreen to at least follow the muddy track and anticipate the direction of swerving so as not to bring on travel sickness, this is no trip for runny bum or puking. Well actually with a single swift window opening movement from the woman opposite me I realize puking is actually ok and that there is an advantage to being in the rear facing seat. When after an hour or so the mud turns to paved road and I can re-a-line I realize that all eyes are on, I’m used to being stared at but i’m also used to having a helmet to hide behind. This is intense head on face to face staring all I can do is put on iPod and look out of the window. We have a brief piss stop and the bottom half of a plastic water bottle is offered to me, it contains clear liquid, I know exactly what it is. I take a polite sip and offer it back its clearly indicated that I should drink the lot, no problem I shoot the whole lot back in one gulp and simultaneously get a good little buzz and a bit of respect. Now I sit with a nonchalant smile and I can return eye contact, I wonder if they can tell I’m not focusing.
We pass 3 laden bikes they are polish registered our driver hoots and passes with inches to spare, it’s interesting to see how the respect he has for them matches the clearance he had given them, on muddy potholed roads in the poor visibility of driving rain this is really dangerous and my discomfort is not so bad after all, they look miserable in their waterproofs, prior to this experience whenever I passed a tourist bus or minivan and saw the passengers crammed inside I rejoiced in my freedom and independence, it was as if I had Jesus in my heart, but now I’m happy to be here I getting a new experience, I am plenty experienced in riding in the rain.
Its cold, not freezing, but the wrong side of comfortable. The body contact is actually quire welcome, babies are held on the breast, on the lap and eventually on me, i have knee to knee contact, thigh to thigh, eye to eye and now I have 4 little Mongolian feet resting in my lap and surprisingly I actually quite like it. Where the hell did this tolerance come from?
I thought it was about a 7 hour journey but when there was no more light left we stopped for food and I was told we were half way, oh shit.’
I’m given another shot of vodka, there is quite a comerardie on this bus but best of all is the music, a CD plays and its local music the everyone is familiar with the passengers are evenly split gender wise and with and 70 year plus age range I wonder if there are speakers in the rear, but it’s the perfectly in tune and harmonic voices of my fellow passengers, they sing the chores so well, not the drunken crooning of a bunch of tourists on the way back from a wine tasting excursion to their Spanish hotel in coata chav, but the from the heart, from the bottom of the lungs and gently into the ear, enhancement of a traditional Mongolian folk song,
I smile along appreciatively
Wouldn’t have even know what was going on inside those cramped little vans if the bike had started,
My head drops and nods around for a little while squashed in the comfort on cramped comeraride of the commute. i don’t think that would have been as evident if it were not for the cold conditions, heat I think would only cause irritability.
I keep my hand on the baby trouser leg that keeps riding up, to keep those tanned little legs warm and find myself just massaging with my thumb in a kind of la-le bye sleep inducing meditational manor but I’m not sure for whose benefit.. I beginning to feel the slightest paternal pang, I wonder where the hell that came from and wake myself right up, it’s followed by a waken screaming kicking baby and the feeling disappear as quickly as it arrived. I blame the cold, the vodka, the singing, the warmth, the buzz the atmosphere, I got loads of reasons, Are we nearly there yet?
The clue was the adverts, wait a minute for the last 9 hours we have been listening to CDs, now adverts, I look over my shoulder and see lights, more lights than I’ve seen since Russia, more that all the villages I’ve seen put together over the last 10 days, this is Ulaan Baatar, the destination I looked at so long its seemed a world away. it is a world away and to ride my bike so far seems very ambitious and almost impossible. And it was cus my bike sits in a coal shed 300 miles to the west and although I have made it to my destination I have left a smiling and dripping monklet on a sodden and dead bike and until all of us are all here together the mission is not completed.
But I’m working on that, but for now its operation mama, a week of 4 wheel travel and 2 wheel thoughts, and single destinations of hotel nights with attached bathrooms and no idea of what phase the moon is in or how cold the night is. And the canopy of stars will be over my roof not over my head, of clean nails, cleaner underwear, and single layers. From biker to bag person to tourist. And just like the balding straights who all my life have come up to me and said I used to have long hair like yours once, I feel the need to go up to every bike and tell them how I rode here and had a little breakdown. Why don’t I think I will have the credibility I deserve without announcing my achievement , so what if I’m a backpacker if I’m a hired 4x4 tourist I can justify any and all of it. When I get back on my bike will I be just as anxious to tell the bus passengers all pissing in the wind how I once rode a bus to the air conditioned 4x4 tourists how I had also know how it is to sit in a back seat and let someone else drive and navigate.. So the overland trip has taken a turn a U turn back to where my bike is waiting for me, an indirect route of sightseeing and better hotels.
Theirs singing in my helmet and singing on the bus but here inside the 4x4 the isolation of the country outside is shown by the silence inside. Tinted windows and air-conditioning ,a zoom lens protrudes and is quickly retracted before flies and odours come inside.
I don’t really care I have a big bottle of duty free jagermister and the weight of it isn’t even an issue, Jager and mother you can have one without the other but like G&T they simply make the other more bearable.
And monklet?
Left in the shed like the baby Jesus
Well monklet I’m sure will have his only story to tell when we meet up and I’m sure it will make me smile.
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