Travelling Rough

The pitiless Rajasthani sun scorches once pasty skin. I stare down at my shoes as they plough through fine red, desert sand; I am near the Pakistani border and am covered in a film of grease, sweat and who knows what else. My throat is barren like a kitten's mouth, post hairball ejection. And I've misplaced my torn-but-trusty cargo pants. It's 7:36am, on my 25th birthday and I'm 10,193 kilometres from home... How did I end up here?

It’s a simple tale.

“Enlightened” by a series of ill-fated mishaps (not limited to breaking my spine), your author disembarked the comforting shores of 'Oz' in search of his own 'On The Road' nomadic exigency. Burdened only by carry-on luggage, a boyish illiteracy of the wider world, and my yet-to-be-torn-but-still-trusty cargos, I waved goodbye to home with one overwhelming aim: to traverse the globe, Bangkok to Paris.

On a bicycle.

For months I turned my once-skinny legs. Day after day, wrong turn by wrong turn, over rock and broken curb, I sweated through pores I hadn’t known existed. Through Laos and Burma I peddled, shelling thoughts of luscious carb rich food, cool nights and warm, woolly duvets. I peddled.

And for what? To get run over, robbed and to lose my trusty cargos. To take bad directions from a Hindu who spoke more broken words of English than there are mobile phones in Mumbai. To end up isolated and alone deep in the Rajasthani wilds.

Indeed, how did I end up here? Had I offended some seething, Indian deity?

So here I am, cloaked in a fine mist of red sand, grimacing in the heat, feeling as dry as the earth through which my feet drag, with a mind trying to rationalise all I've seen: lady-boys in Lewe; saffroned Sadhus in Surat; long necked Karen of Burma. From cold, silent stone steps of lonely, lovely temples, to the rich tapestry of wealth and destitution only believed by travelling rough in India.

All through this pilgrimage I've been several men, living vicariously through a bold stranger I seem to have become, winding a path towards that something unobtainable; and yet to grasp. I think of all these things and remount my bike.

I smile.

Like a 7 time Tour de France winner that I am not, I again push one foot down and watch rubber part sand. The bike’s in control now, and I surge with the strength of 6 Lance Armstrongs…except I have with no money, two testicles, and possibly most noticeably, I’m wearing no pants.

And do you know what: I regret nothing. Not even if it meant me getting my cargos back.