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Six days of serious mountain cycling on rough rocky roads has left me exhausted.  Having entered Nepal on the far east side from Siliguri, India, we spent 5 days making serious distance on Nepal’s low-lands Hwy 1.  90km days were becoming routine, and we were fortunate to meet a number of great people in the low lands, including a nice village stay we’ll write more about later. 

But 90km / day on a flat road was too easy.  I mean, how could we come to Nepal and not go into the Himalayas?  So we turned north in our ignorance of what we were beginning, in our ignorance from our low quality map.  It looked like a shorter way to Kathmandu.  We turned north on a reasonable looking secondary road (one of the few besides the 3 main highways in all of Nepal) towards a town typed in bigger print than the thousands of villages dotting our map connected only by mountain “tracks,” called Sindhulimadi.  Riding straight into the Himalayan foothills which quickly became mountains, without snow mind you but mountains none the less, we made it to Sindhulimadi which turned out to be more like a village anyway. 

The pavement quickly gave way to dirt and rock.  After Sindhulimadi though, the gravel miraculously turned into brandnew Japanese pavement and one heck of an incredible uphill switchback road and drainage system climbing up over a tall pass.  But the people told us time and time again, the road’s not finished, its only a walking path.  But we pushed on. 

We camped near the top of the pass the Japanese road conquered, and biked down through the construction of the road on the otherside.  Foremen told us the way ahead was difficult, but after some coaxing they would admit it was possible.  They were right in both.

Lucky for us, the steep walking path only lasted 1km, after a narrow cable bridge, and that 2 local boys were eager to help us carry the band wagon over this most difficult stretch.  After the Japanese road ended though, the roads were all rock roads, not small gravel rock, but big rocks that greatly threatened the integrity of our already burdened wheels.

Slowness.  30km days that felt like 100km days.  Sweating even in the cool air and often pushing bikes up up up.  Yet beauty and silence and peace, among sparsely populated mountain communities scattered about.  Though physically difficult, it was well worth it. 

Now, we rest.  After 11 tough days.

My luck finding and then usuing the internet in India has been quite bad.  However after 6 hours and an off and on connection, I finally got some shots up from the last 3 weeks in West Bengal, India.

You can find them in the “Individuals” album, then “Peter’s Photos,” then “India.”  I hope you enjoy!

We’re now resting after 2 quite difficult mountain days in the famous mountain town, Darleeling.

Just a “quick” update since its been a couple weeks.  The availablility of internet seems to have dropped out from under us.  In this good sized market town of Chanchal in West Bengal, some 500km north of Calcutta, both “internet cafes” infact have been computer stores with one computer connected to the world wide web via dialup modem, and the first place’s computer was still running Windows 98 and I couldn’t get anything done in 30min due to slowness.  I had heard that India’s infrastructure was much less developed than China, but I’m somehow still shocked by the reality.  The last two days’ stressful ride on National Highway 34, which is in a state of disrepair and is only 2 lanes wide on par with a back county road in Minnesota, certainly has added to this shock.  Luckily, we found a small road to break of today which has less traffic and is smoother. 

On the otherhand, contrary to some reports from other cyclists, I’ve found the Indians that I’ve met to be quite friendly and very welcoming.  Today was exceptional, with middle school students who are now on holiday eagerly leading us to their Christian school (Christian schools are considered among India’s best) and giving us a tour, obviously proud.  Additionally, the family running the restaurant where we ate this evening took very good care of us and even gave us free desert afterwards.  Meanwhile, while we were eating, they were taking photos of us (as passersby were stepping in and crowding the entrance to look at us and/or shake our hands) and then asked if they could video us, obvious that they were happy to have us.  Even while I’ve been sitting here typing, people occasionally enter this little room and introduce themselves to me, wanting to shake my hand, humbleing me with their honoring.

After a great week with Brian Heilman (SJU ‘05 who has been living there since last August working with an NGO and school) in a small village named Katna, near Kandi town (250km north of Calcutta) in the state of West Bengal, us boys are heading north towards the Himilayas while Nakia has headed south via train to the state of Tamil to also do some volunteering with an NGO (Drew is riding Nakia’s bike since his was stolen and Nakia is not riding now). 

Nakia is still dealing with her passport and the fact that she has no more visa pages left and all the Bahamian consulate offices in Asia can’t do anything.  They can’t “add” pages like American consulates do, they have to issue a whole new passport.  For awhile it seemed the only solution was for her to fly to the Bahamas in person, which would financially end the trip for her.  Now, there may be a possbility via the UK and mailing, but that may not work out either.  To explore the latter option though, she has to be stationed in one spot, hence our spliting.  Once her passport is sorted in 1, 2, or 3? months we will reunite, God willing, with her training or flying ahead to where we are.  We are still hopeful about Pakistan, and especailly Iran as we have a contact in Iran helping us apply for the visas, though both are still very uncertain.  The final decisions will be made in Dehli in 1.5 months.  The good news is that a very nice Turkish girl whom we met in Calcutta told us about a reasonably priced flight from western India (Rajistan) to Istanbul (the gateway to Europe) and invided us to spend time with her in Istanbul upon arrival, thus solidifying our backup plan.  So things look favorable for FBR to really make this trip an inter-continental expedition.

Jim, Drew, and I, will continue pedaling, though since we want to give Nakia some added time to increase the possibilty of her leaving India with us (2 more months).  So, in a meeting in Calcutta, we’ve agreed to Drew’s suggestion to add a northern side swipe through Nepal, since if we went straight to Dehli we’d arrive in 3 weeks, southern India is entering its hottest time of the year at the end of April, and Katmandu is “almost” on the way to Dehli from Calcutta (check your world map!).  Since we originally decided against going through Tibet due to the difficulty of Himilayan riding, and the beautiful Kharakorum highway of northern Pakistan is also not on our route, our dip into Nepal will be our brush up to the “roof top of the world,” which is so close to where we are, how could we miss the opportunity? 

An Indian town famous among tourists, Darjeeling, will be our first stop and view of the Himilayas, including a view of Mount Everest.  Biking north from Calcutta, the terrain has been very flat rice fields, so once we get to the foothills we may change our minds, but right now we’re looking forward to cooler weather and great views that we’ll have to work for.

We’ll update as we can, though it may be weeks between good internet stops.

As spring is arriving, we hope you’re getting your bicycle dusted off & tuned up, getting ready for a new season of riding, hopefully more than last year!  =)

For some reason I always have formatting difficulties when I compose a post in Word and copy and paste it to our blog.  On advice, I pasted it first to an e-mail which I mailed myself, then copied and pasted it.  In the past this has worked fine.  But today, random smiley faces have appeared.  I did not put them there, nor can I remove them as they do not show up when I go to edit previous blogs. 

The first one by “Communist Propaganda” is perhaps the most inappropriately placed, but as I said, I don’t have the power to remove the smilies.

Please take no offense.

In danger of stereotyping or propagating an over simplified view of any country, we want to specify that the following are just our memories, the characteristics that we best remember from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand in the order we traveled through them.

Vietnam

1)       Conical hats actually worn by many, especially farmers

2)       Funky 2-tone “echo horns” bouncing back and forth between the two tones and slowly fading, used liberally by many motorized vehicles

3)       French bread and banh mi sandwiches made with French bread, a meat purée with cucumbers & other vegetables, and hot sauce.

4)       Only roman letters used for Vietnamese, no indecipherable script.  The only continental East Asian country without such a non-western script.

5)       Common restaurant signs: Thit Cho, Tim Cat (Adam’s “Meeoww!” whenever Tim Cat was said), and Com Pho, all meaning respectively: dog meat, internal organs, and rice & noodles.

6)       Motorbikes!  Lots of Motorbikes, especially in Hanoi.

7)       Narrow, tall houses/buildings with very ornate & colorful fronts, but bare concrete sides, many of them new as of 2001 (year built often written in big print at the top of the highest eave).

       Rampant Communist Propaganda: old-school communist painted signs and 5am broadcasts over loudspeakers reaching even the remotest rural areas.

7.5) Ho Chi Min posters, billboards, and signs everywhere.  “Uncle Ho”

9)       Hard bargaining, such as restaurant owners changing the agreed upon price when it came time to pay, as much as double the original price.

10)   Double pedaling: two people on a bike, but the person sitting on the back rack shares the pedals.

11)   Most trucks are the same old-school model with the cab overhanging the sides of the front wheels and rounded windows.

Lao

1)       Very few people

2)       Old Growth forests in mountains (hwy 8 in east-central Lao from Vietnam)

3)       Wooden houses on stilts (instead of concrete or brick)

4)       People, especially children, yelling “Sabaidee!” to us instead of the English equivalent: “Hello,” thus for the first and only time on the trip people using their own language when initiating a greeting with us.

5)       Brand new Toyota “Hilux” 4-door champagne color pickup trucks seem to be the only model of automobile on Lao’s sparsely trafficked highways.

6)       Sticky rice that comes in little baskets.  “Sticky” meaning one must use one’s hands to ball it up to eat, chop sticks are nearly impossible for the task.

7)       Beer Lao tastes good, but is expensive (US$1 for 0.5L compared to China and Vietnam US$0.25 for 0.6L) 

       Swimming in Rivers – rivers that were clean enough for the first time on the trip.

9)       Other bicycle tourists, usually seeing one group a day

10)   Freely roaming cows, pigs, goats, and chickens instead of them being tied or fenced.

11)   Traditional dress for women (scarves and long skirts)

12)   We started siesta time due to the mid-day heat (12:00-3pm)

13)   Loud music with big bass from select homes in the early evenings when people would receive their freshly charged car battery for electricity during the evening.

Cambodia

1)       Burning down the jungle for the first 140km in the north from Lao, making it look like a war zone.  This area also had very few people.

2)       The Mekong River and biking 200km or so through the “endless village” along its banks on a rough dirt road.

3)       More wooden houses on stilts (often with thatched roofs)

4)       Tall white cows/oxen and big wooden-wheeled wagon carts with 2-cow yokes hauling hay, reminiscent of the American West wagon.

5)       ATMs (the few there are) only disperse US dollars, and every one accepts dollars and gives Cambodian riel as change if less than US$1.  (4000 riel/ US$1)

6)       Pre-made food at restaurant stalls, fast and cheap (500 riel for a serving of rice, 1000 riel for one serving of a vegetable or meat dish)

7)       People eat early lunches (10-11am)

       Instant noodles common, even in nicer restaurants serving “noodles”

9)       Many loud weddings set up right near the main roads, with blaring Cambodian music and big bass starting early in the morning and lasting nearly all night.

10)   Common for people, especially women, to wear pajamas out and about.

11)   Sarongs with muscular men

12)   Kramas (checkered wraps used as scarves or bandanas, part of Khmer culture.)

13)   Brand new Lexus SUV’s are the most common automobile, with “Lexus” written in big print on the side of the vehicle.

14)   Older mid 1990s Toyota Camry’s are the 2^nd most common automobile.

15)   Barren, dusty, flat land/rice fields as far as one could see in western Cambodia leading to Thailand.

16)   Cambodians appear to look a little Indian, seemingly conforming to the Cambodian creation story connected to Hinduism, that the first Cambodians were half Indian and half Naga (a mythical Hindu sea serpent).

Thailand

1)       Big, nice, developed-country quality paved roads and divided 4-lane highways and plenty of cars and pickup trucks to go with them.

2)       Ride on the left side of the road

3)       Purposefully loud truck and motorbike (“rice rocket”) exhaust pipes

4)       Many street lights

5)       Green vegetation and obviously effective land management

6)       Black and white cows off of county roads strongly reminding us of Minnesota.

7)       7-11 convenient stores everywhere.  In Bangkok, one nearly every block.

       Take shoes off in some rural convenience stores

9)       Most Thai dogs “attack” bikes barking and chasing

10)   Most common meal: fried rice with assorted veggies & Phad Thai

We’ve (the boys) arrived in India. Whoa.

Walking out of the Kolcatta (Calcutta) airport into the late afternoon sun, I was greeted with a new and noticeable smell. A different smell than Thailand, and since we’d flown and the change happened suddenly within 2 hours, it was easy to notice. It was the smell of India, and I smell it now as the air wafts over me from the door of this net bar. Soon I will become used to it and I will no longer notice it. Smells are so difficult to explain, but there are food smells, curries, other spices, lassies (yogurt drinks), mixed with plenty of bus and taxi exhaust from the old style “Ambassador Classic” diesel taxi cabs.

While biking the 20 some km from the airport to the center of town I noticed that yes, the traffic here is plentiful and congested. But because we were forewarned for the worst, it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. Moreover, since we’d just come from biking around Bangkok, which so far is the least pleasant city we’ve biked in due to a confusing road system, narrow streets, super fast traffic, few other bikers, and plenty of fast and loud exhaust-piped motor bikes that seem to view every newly green light as the start of a race, Kolcatta’s slower traffic has actually been a nice change. After Thailand’s surprising absence of car horns, the frequent car horns here are a strange kind of comfort, reminding me of China.

Also reminding me of China, after contrasting Lao’s, Cambodia’s, and Thailand’s sparse populations, I also quickly noticed that there are A LOT of people here in Kolcatta. Known for its crowdedness, I still sense a positive vibe from the people here. When Jim and I stopped to ask for directions to Nakia’s hostel (Drew was on a bus since his bike was most unfortunately stolen in Bangkok due to a less-than adequate lock; he’s planning to buy a new low to mid range bike here - but he can tell you more about that later) a small crowd of people slowly gathered around us with several quite eager to help us find the street we were looking for, also taking me back to our Chinese days, only they spoke great English. It feels good to be back in the thick of humanity. Although I did enjoy the time to think while biking in the middle of no-where Lao and Cambodia, after 3 years of living in China, this is what I have become used to. Only here, there are MORE people and everything is even more intense than in China. I’ll probably tire of the large numbers of people at some point, but for now Kolcatta has a surprisingly huge park area (actually parks) that provides a great get-a-way for some peace and well, not quite quiet but more quiet.

A few other things that I’ve noticed in my first 2 days: taxis and buses are old but well-functioning, and real rickshaws (pulled by a man walking, NOT pedaling) are very common and used by many, unlike China that only uses more and more scarce pedi-cabs (tricycles) now. People’s clothes are distinctly Indian, especially women’s, comprised of colorful cloth wrapped and draped about them. Clothing here seems to be refreshingly the least westernized of any other country I’ve traveled in. Food (and the food is great: nan, curries, samosas, etc) is cheaper than China and most of SE Asia at the cheap stalls. I usually eat for $1.00 a meal, which actually fills me.

We’re planning to stay here for the better part of this week, as there is much to do and plenty of volunteering opportunities, as Nakia has already dove into. After that, we’ll head north 200km or so to visit one of Jim’s friends who lives in a remote village, which should be a great experience right off the bat.

Until then, I’m taking my time and trying to be gentle on myself as I mentally adapt to this huge regional and cultural shift.

My muscles were getting tired as the sun was sinking on the hazy horizon over the Cambodian Mekong River. I began to wonder where we were going to sleep. It’d been a rough and slow ride all day along the “shortcut” to Phnom Penh – a rocky dirt road following the snaking Mekong from Kom Pang Cham to Phnom Penh through a seemingly endless village of wooden houses raised 2 or 3 meters on stilts with overly excited children franticly yelling hellos at us. Not that I was worried. We could, if needed, ask any family if we could set up our two tents in their yard as Gael and Elena had done. However with 5 of us, we didn’t want to be imposing. Two foreigners who barely speak your language showing up unsolicited on your doorstep is one thing, but five foreigners with loaded bikes plus a Band Wagon can be a bit intimidating for anyone. A few nights before, we’d asked at the local Buddhist monastery if we could pitch our tents in their compound and they welcomed us with open arms, insisting that we sleep up in their large prayer hall. If we could find another monastery…

My whole body was sore and tired, but not as it usually is after biking 75km. After all, we’d only biked 50km today, but that was the problem. Going only 10-15km/hr instead of 20km/hr over rough dirt and rocks while standing up for much of it to cushion my poor road-bike wheels and trying to acknowledge as many of the children greeting us as I could was a new kind of stressful workout.

Winding around several 90 degree turns we came along a wall that looked promising. A little further we arrived at the decorative concrete gate with two nagas (snake-like creatures involved in the Hindu creation story – closely connected with Buddhism - who, according to the Cambodian creation story, compose half of the Cambodian ancestry along with the human half from India) indicating this was a Buddhist temple and probably a monastery.

We entered the gate and looked for the distinctive orange robes of Southeast Asian Buddhist monks. Spying a small group of young monks across the way, we slowly approached them and asked if we could set up our tents somewhere in their large yard and spend the night there - mostly using gestures and our badly pronounced phrase for camping in Khmer. They seemed to understand, indicating it was OK between several quick exchanges in Khmer and giggles.

We got to setting up camp. We were near the back entrance of the yard, which faced a small dirt road and the Mekong. A few people walking by noticed us and our strange equipment and stopped in to watch us set up the tents. This group then attracted other passers-by and soon there were 10-15 people watching us, as we were watching a dragon fly eating a fly on Jim’s tent (see Drew’s post). Rosa Srey Houch was one of the on-lookers.

Rosa had come by motorbike with her mother when she had heard from her neighbor that there were foreigners on bicycles down at her local Buddhist temple. Being an eager 16 yr old English student, she naturally wanted to seize the opportunity to talk with us. That opportunity soon turned into an invitation for us to move to her home. We at first told her we’d be too much trouble for her and her family, but she insisted and we finally accepted.

Her home, in Hancher Village, Kom Pong Cham prov. Cambodia, was just 200m down the dirt river road and was quite nice, elevated on stilts like the others, but complete with concrete walls on the basement level where we stored our bikes. Climbing the steep wooden steps to the living level of her home, I realized that this was my first time to enter a Cambodian home. It was beautiful, with its simple yet carefully crafted wooden slate floor and vaulted ceiling.

Rosa’s grandmother in their living room

We hadn’t eaten dinner yet. Rosa and her mother wanted to cook us dinner, but we insisted on cooking our own rice and eating the sweet bananas we had planned for our dinner.  I finally managed to at least convince them to use our rice as they proceeded to cook it for us. It was near 7pm, so her family (mother, grandmother, younger sister, and younger brother) had already eaten. They had some of their dishes left over and quickly put them before us to complement our rather simple dinner of rice and bananas. They arranged the food nicely on a cloth over the floor on which we sat. After eating, we tried to insist that we would do the dishes, but Rosa, along with her sister and mother wouldn’t hear of it. After putting the dishes in a big basin in the kitchen for later, we all sat down again on their living room floor to chat and play a little music.

Our music drifted through the wooden boards to the neighbors’ homes 10-20 meters way, attracting them to come over to check out the foreign band. As has happened elsewhere, some of the people were there more to check us out than to listen to our music, talking amongst themselves while we played. Rosa and her family seemed to enjoy our modest performance, though at 9pm kindly asked us to wrap it up since it was time for the neighbors to go to sleep.

They gave us a nice chunk of floor space with sleeping mats and pillows in their front porch/sitting room and also provided us with a huge mosquito net and a smaller one. I had a great night’s sleep.

Thanks to Rosa and her family for such a warm and hospitable welcome! It was one of my most memorable nights in Cambodia.

Rosa is the third from right and her younger sister is the second from right.

You may be wondering how far we have riden from Beijing to Bangkok.  Now you know.  =)

Of course we didn’t take the shortest path by any means, at times purposefully going longer to visit friends (i.e. Shanghai, Changsha, and Phnom Penh).  But since visiting friends who have a deeper understanding of a city or a country is one of the best methods of travel, the extra kilometers were always well worth it. 

March 16th 2008 marks our 6 month anniversary of starting our trip and the approximate mid point of our trip.  This Sunday Jim, Drew, and I fly to Calcutta, India to begin the 3rd chapter of the Fueled By Rice story after wrapping up the 2nd chapter in South East Asia.  We still hope to make it to Europe, God willing and if finances hold out against the battering of airplane tickets over countries that won’t allow us to bike through (i.e. Myanmar and Pakistan).  We have been so blessed with encounters with wonderful people, safety, and a general smoothness of the trip.  Thank you for your continued interest, support, and prayers as we enter what we expect to be the most dangerous road conditions to bike in - India.

Brief Update:

We’ve had an excellent week resting in Phnom Pehn, Cambodia after 2 months of SE Asia biking.  While here, we’ve visited my Maryknoll friend, Celina, other Maryknollers, and several of the Maryknoll projects here.  This is a great community and we are so thankful for the hospitality they have showered on us.  We are especially thankful to Jean-Francoise and Myriam (Maryknoll affiliates) who have generously opened up their home to host us for the entire week.  THANK YOU!!!

Jim, Drew, and I pedal off tomorrow, heading west to Siem Reap, famous for the ancient temple complex, Ankor Wat.  Nakia and Yuske are taking a bus down south to volunteer for a week as they’ve both already visited Ankor Wat.  We’ll meet up in Siem Reap, the Thai border, or Bangkok. 

We are now coping with major decisions about how we are going to get to India - plane or boat - and if we can afford the extra luggage fees for even “cheap” flights, which currently have us worried.  With added stress from Nakia’s passport needing more pages but no Bahama’s embassy in Asia who can do it, our relaxing week has stayed…balanced.

More specifics on Phnom Pehn and our unfolding adventure to come!

Peace,

Peter

Since crossing the Lao-Vietnam border on Jan 19, the drastic change in climate has forced us to change our daily routine.  In China and Vietnam we would start at 8am, take a morning break around 10am for about 20min, a lunch break around 12-12:30 for about 1 hour, and try to be done biking our 70-75km by 3 or 4pm, and when we were lucky, before a late lunch at 1pm.  We liked arriving early at the day’s final destination so we would have time to explore the small city or town we were staying in, in addition to having time to talk with people and work on our individual projects (i.e. writing, photography, and video). 

Now, the mid-day sun is so intense and hot that we simply can’t bike comfortably between 11:30am and 3pm .  Moreover, as the morning heats up, doing 70km before 11:30am (or even in a whole day) would only be possible if we started biking before sunrise at 6am – something we’ve often mentioned but as of yet haven’t been motivated to actually do.  So now that we loose 3.5 hrs of daytime biking and we’re not on as tight of a schedule to make it to a friend’s wedding on the other side of China as we were the first 2 months, we’ve reduced our average daily distance to 60km (maybe 40 miles), and occasionally just 50km. 

In Lao, as soon as 11:15am or so came, we kept our eyes open for restaurants, which were small wooden structures with plenty of locals just hanging around to get out of the sun, usually located at dirt road intersections with paved Hwy 13, which we were riding on.  The best restaurants would have a raised wooden platform in the shade for guests to take naps on after eating, which has quickly become our habit.  After beginning to ride again at 3pm , we planned and still plan in Cambodia , to stop at the first “inviting” river after 5km to swim and bathe.  Lao and Cambodia are relatively dry this time of year, but we usually find some kind of stream to cool us off within 20km after lunch.  Swimming in rivers has been an added blessing in Lao and Cambodia as nearly all rivers we saw in China were too polluted to even consider swimming in.

In northern Cambodia, restaurants have given way to very few small huts selling nothing more than snack food, ramen noodles, water, sugary fruit drinks, beer, and cigarettes – so in Cambodia we’ve been hauling our own baguettes (first appearing in Vietnam thanks to the French colonial influence), sweet bananas, rice, and beans bought in larger market towns 60-140km apart from each other (Stung Treng and now Kratie) and cooking dinners while camping.

Our diet in Lao also had drastically changed since China and Vietnam .  In Lao, gone was our familiar staple of standard steamed white rice and in was sticky rice.  Sticky rice comes in a woven basket-cup and is eaten with hands instead of chopsticks, rolling it into a ball and dipping it into the accompanying vegetable (often difficult to find) or meat dishes, quite similar to Kenya’s and other African countries’ staple, ugali (made from boiled corn meal).  Also gone was the wide array of vegetable dishes we enjoyed in China , especially eggplant and pumpkin, which we had come to relish.  In their place entered small sweet bananas. 

The good thing about the Lao diet of sticky rice and sweet bananas is that it is easily portable.  Since people and restaurants are sparse in Lao, we often bought our dinner’s sticky rice and bananas at lunch, giving us the freedom to stop and camp where ever we were around 5pm when the sun would be getting low.  Currently in northern Cambodia , Lao’s sticky rice seems to have disappeared so we’re back to normal white rice, though we now have to cook it ourselves when camping since there are no real restaurants outside of Stung Treng and Kratie towns.