The Magic Bus

“Well, there’s a first for everything,” I thought to myself.

As the angry Siberian wind slapped my face, I reluctantly withdrew my unmentionables and directed a laughable spray onto the frozen gears of my immobile bicycle. It was mid-winter in Kyrgyzstan and not a degree above -25C.

The ice crackled and dripped away from the sprockets into a toxic-yellow patch on the icy mountain pass. Like magic, the trusty steed returned to life, and with it my hopes for a safe mountain crossing. I hastily zipped up my wand and continued pedalling into the savage headwind.

Little did I know, this wasn’t the only miracle to occur that day.

The morning had begun so positively. I was well-rested, having found respite with a typically warm-hearted Kyrgyz family in a remote village called Sary Tash. They’d let me sleep in a room behind their roadside eatery the night before.

The eldest daughter served a carb-rich breakfast of rice and lamb, her shy eyes reflecting the deep blue morning skies through the window. I noticed how the hard, jagged contours of her cheek and jawbones matched the ominous mountain peaks looming over the village.

She smiled at me and I grinned back. She must have thought I possessed an intellect rivalled only by a bike spanner.

I pedalled eastwards, determinedly weaving my way towards the Chinese border through the wild and enchanted Narnian landscape. The crunching of my tyres pierced the catacomb-quiet air. The only soul I encountered was a truck driver coming the opposite way, and I caught his puzzled expression through the frosted windscreen.

Mother nature can be a cruel temptress.

Suddenly, the sun was swallowed by a biblical whiteout and everything from my bike to my bones froze. Had I made fateful eye contact with Medusa behind the wheel of the truck? The situation became bleaker than the blizzard that had now cocooned me.

It was then that I saw it.

Was it just a cruel arctic mirage in the distance or a potential shelter for the night?

My ice-covered beard twitched with excitement and I pedalled again, unremittingly, albeit at a pace not too dissimilar to a drunken slug.

Inside the unlocked, mystical van was a bucket of coal to get the furnace started, a jar of tea bags, and more quilts than a US granny convention. Was this a gift from the vagabond-gods for an overly ambitious British traveller? I felt like an expected guest.

A grin returned to my lips for the first time since breakfast. I had found a magic bus.