The Return

 

Sitting in a hostel in Cairo with the sounds of the city below coming through the balcony,  I remembered how it was waiting on the coir mat as I came in from the shops one day and how I nearly stepped on it. The card was red and white with the box “Recorded Signed for” ticked off. My heart gave a summersault, I was sure this was it. I had been waiting for more than three months and finally here it was. I looked at the clock and it was past 4 o’clock, too late to collect it,  it would have to wait until the next day.

Seven and a half months earlier, at the end of May, I had arrived back in London after nearly two years of cycling from London to Far East Asia. Two years full of experiences, challenges, places, people and the newness inherent in the daily moving on. For two years I had been a nomad on a bike and here I was back in the house where I had lived for 22 years. I had come back to make sure that it continued being my home.

On my first day back, when I walked through the door and went upstairs to my room everything felt so familiar, so ordinary that in an instant it was like I had never been away. I had the odd sensation that  those two years on the bike had remained in the world of dreams where the cycling adventure had been conceived many years earlier.

There were things that proved to me that I wasn’t dreaming. There was a heatwave in London when I got back, the 21 of June was the hottest June day for 40 years, NHS England was urging vulnerable people to stay hydrated and keep cool and yet I needed extra covers at night. When I went to the shops and stood in front of dozens of different cereal boxes I was seized by anxiety and had to leave, I couldn’t cope with the choice. I looked at commuters in the eyes and smiled at them expecting a smile back, some responded but many looked away,  appeared awkward, shuffled in their seats and to avoid my eyes immersed themselves in their smart phones. The world around me was grey- grey in the clothes of people, grey in the buildings and pavements, even the sky was grey some days. My world a few days earlier had been full of colour.  I realised that I was looking at London with different filters.

Adjusting was hard and in those first few weeks friends and family were a lifeline.  I came back to live with my daughter Amaya and her partner John and having them around kept me sane and staved off depression.

I filled my days seeing friends in London and further afield and catching up on their lives, visiting museums and galleries, having meals, telling and retelling anecdotes of my travels that instantly transported me back to the places and situations I was describing. I realised I that it was my way to reaffirming that my travels had been real.

meeting friends was a lifeline

Getting the paperwork ready to apply for permanent residency in the UK, a country where I had lived and worked since 1980 was a journey on its own right. I spent hours and hours and hours gathering the evidence I had to submit with the over 80 page long form. I had to look for pieces of paper that had been sent to me by the UK tax officials in 1986, boarding passes to prove that I had not been out of the country for more than two years, the whole of my employment history including how much I earned when I started each job and how much I earned when I left it. It was a nightmarish trip down memory lane. Finally the form and the documentation went in and all I could do was wait.

hours and hours of work on the table

The only way I could cope with the wait was by keeping busy.  I did some frantic DIY in the house, got rid of bags and bags of clothes, poured over maps, read other people’s blogs. I lived with a sense that my life was in a  parenthesis and it wasn’t easy. If  I stopped my endless activity I felt lost.

You would have thought that I used the time to explore the UK on Foxtrot but I didn’t. I did do a few trips and whilst riding the bike in the company of dear friends felt good,  it made me yearn for the  life on the road that I had had to cut short.

I told anyone who listened that I was only in London for a while, long enough to sort out my permanent residency papers and as autumn turned to winter and my permit had not arrived, I decided I would stay for Xmas and leave early in the new year whether my papers had arrived or not. Once more, my daughters talked sense into me and convinced me to delay my journey until I was in possession of the permanent residency card.

I knew that the delivery note on the doormat held the passport to my travels that I had been waiting for. The following day I rushed to the Post Office to collect the package, I couldn’t wait to get home, I ripped the envelope open and there it was, a small blue card that to me represented the freedom to set off again. I was elated.

A couple of days later the flight that would bring me to Cairo was booked and I started to say goodbye to  friends and family.

On the flight I thought about how much I would miss my friends. I thought about how sad it would be not to be able to hug my daughters for many months to come and I also thought about how much joy I would feel exploring Africa from the saddle of my bike.

Tomorrow is day one of that adventure.

 

 

 

Georgia

Start Finish Distance (Km) Notes
Batumi Shekvetili 41
Shekvetili Ianeti 71
Ianeti Zestafoni 61
Zestafoni Khashuri 73
Khashuri Gori 53
Gori Tsinarekhi 63
Tsinarekhi Tbilisi 44
Tbilisi Armenian Border 71
cycling days distance
Total Georgia 8 477

Turkey

Start Finish Distance (Km) Notes
Ayvalık Port Ayvalık 10
Ayvalık Burhaniye 32
Burhaniye Ivrindi 58
Ivrindi Balıkesir 37
Balıkesir Susurluk 44
Susurluk Istanbul 63 ferry not included
Istanbul Yalova 30
Yalova Cumhuriyet 40
Cumhu Iznik 40
Iznik Pamukova 50
Pamukova Haciyakup 42
Haciyakup Dedeler 42
Dedeler Nallihan 53
Nallihan Beypazari 61
Beypazari Ayaş 45
Ayaş Ankara 64
Ankara Yaglipinar 41
Yagli Kulu 76
Kulu Şereflikoçhisar 61
Şereflikoçhisar Aksaray 81
Aksaray Acigöl 54.5 taxi to Nevershir
Göreme Kayseri 71 taxi from Nevşehir
Kayseri Boğazliyan 80
Boğazliyan Sarikaya 38
Sarikaya Sorgun 43
Sorgun Çekerek 47.2
Çekerek Zile 53
Zile Amasya 96
Amasya Kavak 79
Kavak Irmaksirti 75
Irmaksirti Fatsa 86
Fatsa Ordu 43
Ordu Gülburnu 74
Gülburnu Trabzon 106
Trabzon Kiyicic 58
Kiyicic Işikli 75
Işikli Hopa 51
Hopa Batumi 38 8631
cycling days distance
Total Turkey 38 2140

Greece

Start Finish Distance (Km) Notes
Komotini Xanthi 54
Xanthi Kavala 57
cycling days distance
Total Greece 2 111

Bulgaria

Part 1

Start Finish Distance (Km) Notes
Slivnitza Sofia 30
Sofia Mirkobo 80
Mirkobo Sopot 72
Sopot Plovdiv 67
Plovdiv Stara Zagora 96
Stara Zagora Sliven 67
Sliven Banevo 105
Banevo Sozopol 49
Sozopol Burgas 31
Burgas Nessebar 35
Nessebar Byala 48
Byala Varna 54
Varna Balchik 50
Balchik Kamen Bryag 55
Kamen Bryag Vama Veche 48

cycling days distance
Total Bulgaria 15 887

Part 2

Start Finish Distance (Km) Notes
Giurgiu Cherven 56
Cherven Byala 41
Byala Veliko Tarnovo 52
Veliko Tarnovo Gabrovo 44
Gabrovo Shipka Pass 26
Shipka Pass Shipka 39 via Buzludzha Monument
Shipka Stara Zagora 50
Stara Zagora Haskovo 63
Haskovo Kardzali 56
Kardzali Komotini 75

cycling days distance
Total Bulgaria 2 10 502

Serbia

Start Finish Distance(Km) Notes
Doroslovo Novi Sad 70
Novi Sad Belgrade 85
Belgrade Gaj 66
Gaj Golubac 70
Golubac D. Milanova 57
D. Milanova Zaječar 80
Zaječar Trgovište 50
Trgovište Pirot 50
Pirot Slivnitza 50
cycling days distance
Total Serbia 9 578

Hungary

Start Finish Distance (Km) Notes
Batatek Miskolc 55
Miskolc Budapest by train
Budapest Gardony 55
Gardony Sósto 63
Sósto Balatonboglár 45
Balatonboglár Heviz 49
Heviz Balatonakali 60
Balatonakali Igal 60
Igal Sikonda 59
Sikonda Budzsák 88
Budzsák Doroslovo 60
cycling days distance
Total Hungary 10 594

Decision making time

Hanging Bridge in Angkor

It was in Hue where things came to a head for me.  Anytime I stop for a few days I like to read the papers and catch up on what’s going on in the world and in the UK and Spain in particular. Roundabout that time a series of horror stories about Brexit and the treatment that long term EU citizens had received from the authorities hit the headlines together with tales of deportations, halting food distribution in the Calais refugee camps and journalists being detained in Turkey. It was overwhelming,  my eyes welled up in anger at the injustice of it all and I couldn’t but reflect on the contrast of this with my current reality, for nearly two years I have been welcomed by people of different cultures and religions in 23 countries.

Welcoming smiles all around

From big and small

I allowed worry and anxiety to squat my mind but no way I was going to let them spoil my experience of the Hai Van Pass. In one of his books Theroux, having travelled across Europe, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent by train, was amazed by what he saw from his compartment on the Trans-Indochinois:

Of all the places the railway had taken me since London, this was the loveliest.

Beyond the leaping jade plates of the sea was an overhang of cliffs and the sight of a valley so large it contained sun, smoke, rain and cloud – all at once.

I had been unprepared for this beauty; it surprised and humbled me.

Who has mentioned the simple fact that the heights of Vietnam are places of unimaginable grandeur?

And the road didn’t disappoint either,  a huge expanse of sparkling sea on my left, the jungle in the slopes of the mountain on my right and hundreds of small golden dragonflies shimmering just above my head, the climbing was glorious and the views from the top stunning.

 

10 km of climbing ahead with 8 to 9% gradients
Views during the climb
Looking at where I was coming from
And the view coming down

I was looking forward to Hoi An too, every single traveller I had met in Vietnam told me about the beauty of the place. I spent a blissful week in this town forgetting my worries and enjoying the food and the beach, wandering around its old town and cycling around small islands, enjoying beautiful sunsets and the company of Ana and Jace.  Of all the things I did there, visiting the Rehahn photography exhibition was an absolute highlight.  I had seen some of his photographs at the Hanoi Women’s Museum where I fell in love with them, portraits of old women with smiles in their eyes and missing teeth, each of their wrinkles telling us something about their lives. I couldn’t believe my luck when I discovered he had a permanent exhibition in Hoi An where I  had the chance to meet and talk to the him. The secret, he told me, is that I love them, something evident when you look at his photographs.

There were bikes everywhere in Hoi An

 

Stunning sunsets
Hoi An street seller

It was in Hoi An where I spent my second birthday on the road. I marked it by joining the local full moon celebration in the company of Jace and Ana. We watched how the lanterns we placed in the river joined the hundreds of others already floating in the water, the moon bright above our heads and soft street lights making the houses of the Old Town glow.  I felt content.

Celebrating my birthday
Lanterns everywhere

Hard as it was to leave Hoi An, time was ticking on my visa and I wanted to make it to the Mekong Delta before crossing into Cambodia. I left on the 14 March, exactly a year after I’d entered Iran, one of my favourite countries in this trip. I followed the coastal road crossing villages with fish hanging to dry, huge pots of yellow chrysanthemums outside the doors of the houses, fishing boats moored in the sand and hundred of villagers swimming at dawn in a sea that looked like a milk pond at that early hour.

Swimmers at dawn

I passed clouds of children on their bikes coming from or going to school, they loved racing me. The pattern always the same: I overtake them, they look at me in surprise and one of them, the most daring, grins and says “hullo” followed by “what is your name? “, before I have time to respond they speed ahead in their old squeaky single gear bikes, huge big smiles in their faces because they are faster than me.

The rainy season was approaching, it rained most days and it was extremely humid. Day and night, my body was never dry, small rivers of rain water or perspiration running through its geography, pooling in its crevasses and leaving behind a film of salt that made my clothes stiff and my skin itchy.

Rain, rain, rain
The ‘roads’ became a big tricky after the rain

Vietnam is a coffee country and you can find coffee shops everywhere. Coffee drinking is about spending hours waiting for the coffee to be ready whilst talking to friends and then spending hours with a small cup still deep in conversation.  The perfect speed for the coffee to get through the Vietnamese coffee filter is one drop per second.

One drop per second is the perfect speed
I never rushed my coffee in Vietnam, in fact I often had it lying down on a hammock!

A coffee lover,  I couldn’t leave Vietnam without exploring its coffee plantations and that meant going to the Highlands and climbing again. I reached places where, judging by the reaction of people,  westerners weren’t common place. On one occasion a man skid in some gravel and came off his motorbike, when having a good look at me and on another a toddler looked at me with terrified huge eyes, burst out crying and run in panic to hide in the arms of her mother.

Coffee shrubs in flower
Remote mountain villages
Community spaces with incredible roofs

By the time I got to Da Lat, a hill station built by the French my worries about Brexit intensified. I began considering going back to the UK for a while to maintain my permanent residency entitlement by not being out of the country for more than two years. I wanted to stop thinking about it and Da Lat gave me plenty of distractions but not enough to stop me from feeling a bit lost each night when I got back to the hostel. A feeling that sat in the pit of my stomach, a mix of anxiety,  unsettledness, lack of focus… Each day I wobbled, I binged on cake, I read my book and eventually fell asleep.

Da Lat Golden Buddha
On top of the local mountain after a long climb through the forest

In that state of mind I  continued my way South to Ho Chi Min City.  More coffee plantations, more climbing, more rain. All along the way people continued to smile and say hullo but I observed that something had switched inside me and I wasn’t as responsive, they responded to my silence with louder and louder hullos until they became near hysterical screams that made my anger rise. How could they expect a response? Could they not see how hard it was going uphill fully loaded? How hard I was working? And then I would see a tiny woman straining to push a heavy bike loaded with  “recycling” material towering above her and I would feel ashamed of myself and remind myself that I was doing this by choice.

Time for a big portion of humble pie

I started to interpret ‘ordinary’ events as messages from the universe telling me to go back home. Part of my routine had been cooking in the guesthouses with the TV at top volume to cover the noise of my very loud petrol stove but just before Ho Chi Min  City I didn’t realise that it was leaking and I nearly set the place on fire. In a split second all the fire training of my working days rushed through my head: Not an electrical fire so water is OK. I poured some water and extinguished the fire. When I left the place, my room smelled like a petrol station.

My age old patterns came out to play. I’m an expert at letting my internal doubts fell upon deaf ears and that’s just what I tried to do now, I just carried on pretending nothing was going on. In Ho Chi Min City I stayed with the most wonderful Warmshowers host and her lovely, interesting kids,  long conversations, jazz evenings, red wine, the company of other cyclists, I couldn’t have asked for more.

To get to the Mekong Delta and the famous Can Tho floating market I crossed hundreds of branches of water big and small using bridges and ferries, cycled through rice fields and down small paths by one one of the river branches.  I had been following  this mighty river through 4 countries since I first encountered it in the Chinese province of Yunnan and here it was meeting the sea.

I crossed dozens of bridges like this one
Rice fields everywhere
Can Tho floating Market

On the day my Vietnamese visa expired I crossed into Cambodia where I made my final decision.  Conversations with friends and my daughters gave me the last push. I would go back to the UK from Bangkok, I would join the thousands of long term EU citizens filling the 85 page form and gathering the huge pile of documents required as evidence to get a piece of paper confirming my entitlement, I would set off again to continue my journey after a rest and the security that I could come back ‘home’ any time I wanted and… I would commit to never being out of the country for more than two consecutive years in order to maintain the residency.

Kep and the famous Kep Crab

A huge weight lifted off my shoulders once I made the decision. Now I should be able to enjoy Cambodia, I thought. Well, that’s what I thought but how do you stop the mind from racing ahead, generating lists of things to do? Being on the next trip before this one is over? Cycling for a couple of days with Kris, and Adele, a Polish couple who have been on the road for 7 years, was the perfect antidote. With them I celebrated Easter Polish style, made coffee by the side of the road, set my tent next to theirs in a temple, had conversations outside the tent in the dark… When you are on your own you have too much time to think!

Kris and Adele – 7 years on the road and counting

Cambodia was different from Vietnam, less populated, no cafes or eateries everywhere along the road and similar to Laos, buffaloes, temples and poorer.

A poorer feel
Remote and rural

Cambodia is a country with a tragic recent history,  it was heavily bombed by the USA  between March 1969 and May 1970 during the Vietnam war. In an operation that Nixon and Kissinger kept secret to avoid criticism, the American forces dropped over 120000 tons of bombs and ordnance in the country and today, according to the Mines Advisory Group it is  of the most heavily landmine and unexploded ordnance (UXO) affected countries in the world killing two people every week.

As more than 80 per cent of people live in rural areas and depend on the land for their survival, the landmines further trap people in poverty by restricting access to productive land.

Apart from the large human toll, that continues until today  perhaps the most powerful and direct impact of the bombing was the political backlash it caused, the rise of the Khmer Rouge and its ascent to power. 

In proportion to the population, what happened next was a human catastrophe unparalleled in the 20th century. Out of a 1970 population of probably near 7,100,000, Cambodia probably lost slightly less than 4,000,000 people to war, rebellion, man-made famine, genocide, politicide, and mass murder. The vast majority, almost 3,300,000 men, women, and children (including 35,000 foreigners), were murdered within the years 1970 to 1980 by successive governments and guerrilla groups. Most of these, a likely near 2,400,000, were murdered by the communist Khmer Rouge.

As I cycled I Cambodia what struck me was how young everyone looked, by their absence people over 55, the missing generation,  where forever present in my mind.

Children everywhere

In Cambodia I slept in temples a lot of the time, woke up to the sound of cockerels crowing before dawn, mist in lily ponds and images of Buddha.

It was very, very hot and I was always so sweaty when I arrived that I looked forward to my temple ‘shower’  at the end of the day,  a small outbuilding with water in a concrete tank and a scoop to pour it over you.  However, one evening I arrived at a temple where the facilities were inhabited by all sort of creatures including an enormous spider. There was just no way I would wash there and the salt was making my body really itchy, something had to be done.  I had been shown to a huge pottery jar with water when I asked earlier where I could wash my hands so wrapped in my sarong and taking advantage of the dark,  moonless night I soaped and washed my body bit by bit without taking it off as I had seen women do at the common tap in some laotian villages,  the water from the jar was warm and it felt delicious. I could now snuggle under my mosquito net to read my book, the now familiar night sounds music like in my ears.

Saying goodbye to my host

With a cracked rear hub I made it to Phnom Penh, from replies in the social forums where I had posted asking for advice I knew that making it to Bangkok would be a lottery. The solution was at hand in a street corner, a chaotic place full of used rusty bicycle parts amongst which I found the right size wheel which by the amount of cobwebs covering it, had been there for a while. I agreed a price with the young man running the stall and in the blink of an eye he trued my front wheel, took the cassette of my bike and put it on my new-old wheel, trued the wheel and adjusted my brakes and gears. I had never seen anyone work on a bike that fast.

Street corner mechanic sorting out Foxtrot

Now I could continue confidently to Bangkok but not before a mandatory stop at the Angkor Temple complex near Siem Reap where I spent three days on my bike exploring the temples.

Sunrise at Angkor Wat
The power of the jungle

And in Siem Reap I got my ticket home and I began to really look forward to seeing my daughters and all my loved ones but I before I realised I was looking at the map of the world and the cost of flights to Cairo!

Blanca on a Bike is heading for Africa

 

Have you ever had a dream? Something that you always wanted to do? Or do you enjoy reading about places, the world, cycling and more? I did.

Initially Blanca on a Bike was going to be mainly a way to keep in touch with family and friends. A way to be able to share with them my bicycle journey. A place to publish photos so that they could see the places I will visit and the people I will meet.

I was also hoping to get something back from it. It is so amazing to hear from people when you are away. It is particularly motivating when you are having a bit of a hard time. I wanted the blog to be a central place where I could get messages and comments from everyone.

And then, like so many of the things I get involved in, it grew. I began to read other people’s blogs and got a lot out of it. This made me want to give something back and develop a resource for others. Comments and suggestions to make the blog better are more than welcome.

There are several  sections on the site that will get regularly updated

  • The blog – travel log will tell the story of my trip and those that subscribe get a notification when a new post is up
  • The country file section which I started during my
    Africa trip and provides information that I hope would be useful to others planning to visit this wonderful continent
  • The Africa route map and associated tables

To start with during my first trip I started The Photos section  which wanted to  tell the story but in a different way. This section died of natural death after a while. I underestimated the difficulty of working with images having a small tablet as my only tool. I included many more photos in the blog posts instead.

If you would like to follow this blog – please sing up and  you will receive a notification every time I update the content  and of course if you have any suggestions on how to make it better and more useful please let me know.

If you would like to publish sections of this blog or photos please get in touch with me before you do so.