Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle
Russell McGilton
Language: English
Pages: 312
ISBN: B00ADG6VG8
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
"Congratulations," said Dr Chawla. "You are having the malaria."
And so begins Russell McGilton's comic adventure as he attempts to cycle from Bombay to Beijing in the quest of writing his travel opus.
Pedalling furiously for China, McGilton's tour de force rides the reader through an honest handlebar view on the absurdities and fragile wonders of travel from the saddle. He rides, he falls, he gets chased by wild dogs, eats things he shouldn't, battles tropical hallucinations and finds himself at the hands of the curious Dr Chawla.
Not quite the Lonely Planet guide to sun and sex.
Chinese ancestry was incongruous, a carbuncle on the face of Chinese history. ‘And isn’t it interesting,’ said Maria as she slurped froth from her upper lip, ‘that no matter where you find a Starbucks, no matter what exotic location they put them in, the coffee still tastes like shit?’ ‘Then why did you drink it?’ ‘I was cold!’ She punched me and then kissed me. ‘Let’s get some dumplings.’ As we walked outside the Forbidden City and through Tiananmen Gate, the paradox continued. North of
with Uros where I thought he wouldn’t mind cycling 184 kilometres in one day, for some reason I thought Bec, a novice at cycle touring, wouldn’t mind cycling up 30 kilometre long hills (the hills that Uros and I had struggled over) for days either. What was I thinking? We argued of course, and after one particularly tough day, she lay next to me shaking and crying, declaring she wasn’t going to cut this cycling malarkey. ‘You’ll be fine,’ I reassured her. ‘Wait ’til we get to India. It’s flat
illiterate, only make one mistake for every eight million lunches delivered! I watched two dabbawallahs spear through the slowing traffic, bounce the barrow over a gutter and disappear around a building. I got back on the bike and cut through onto Marine Drive on the west side of Colaba where the Arabian Sea met the bay. On the beach lay clumps of rags flapping in the wind. Some of these rags got up and walked around – people, no, whole communities, perhaps from the rural plains I would soon be
toilets are backside!’ I tried to stifle a laugh. ‘Better for you to stay in Nasik and go to caves.’ He slurped his tea. ‘It is too late for you to be cycling. It is now two o’clock. Too much late, isn’t it?’ He was right. It was getting on and, although it was January and we were still in their winter, it was warm enough for drops of sweat to trickle down my back. ‘You must come to Nasik again. We are going to be having a big party.’ ‘When?’ ‘In 2004 years.’ He was talking about Kumbh
on the shoulder and (surprise, surprise) made lewd gestures, indicating that I should screw my kind hostess with some degree of savagery. The woman squirted water at him, laughing, before going back to hosing down his steaming brakes. After moving on, I only had three kilometres to climb, but it took me an hour to get to the top of the pass, the wind so strong I ended up getting off and pushing. Once I was over the pass, a huge peak – the Gongga Shan, 7556 metres – rose above me like a big