The Pan-Eurasian Bike Trip

Honalee, Sumeria, Shiraz, and Andalucia, they are distant places whose names tickle our curiosities. The very arrangement of letters on a map can signify exoticism. Often a delicious arrangement of syllables or particular resonance of a vocal chord seems to divide the Regina’s of the world from the Montreal’s, the Pittsburgh’s from the Prague’s.

Names can enchant us long before we understand the reality which alluring words describe. Each part of the earth possesses an individual history that adorns a city or region with architectural accoutrements that mark the passage of time and shape the lives of those who breathe life into them. It is this intrinsic quality of places, and those who inhabit them, that intrigues us initially.

Still, the names of some locales attract us more than others. Kazan, a city in western Russia, is one of those places.

Riding toward Kazan from the Ural Mountains, the earth becomes a series of steep hills that curve sharply like the arched backs of pilgrims praying before a prophet’s remains. On top of one, you can see for miles. Fields of golden wheat and groves of yellow-leafed birch trees undulate before me.

Cool fall weather, that magical time of year where one can work outside comfortably all day without breaking a sweat, overtakes the hill country on our first day of riding. But as late afternoon wanes, an Arctic cold front moves in, chasing the pleasant weather away like a rodent fleeing a starving cat. We camp in a field. I can feel the temperature plummet as I fall asleep.

By daybreak, it is near freezing. Heavy dew formed on my tent overnight. It is soaking wet. I pack it up with quivering fingers that quickly go numb in the raw cold. It feels like December. The beaming sun does not affect the temperature today. I wear a wool pullover and pants to stay warm on my bicycle.

Today, for the first time, we turn off the federal highway onto a secondary road for 200 miles that will lead us to Kazan quicker. We have never done this before. In Siberia, even the main roads were in such poor condition, we would never have tried this. But we are in Europe now. Our map suddenly abounds with a web of criss-crossing main roads that could save us time.

After several hours on this secondary road, I feel like I have returned to Siberia. There is no traffic. Large distances separate small towns. We are near areas of Russia with large fuel reserves. Occasionally, oil wells line the roadside.

We travel more than 100 miles to Celti, a small outpost of simple log cabin-style homes far from civilization. At a small cafe in town, we gorge ourselves on food. While finishing our meal, two older women who work in Celti’s town hall invite us to their table. They have been drinking heavily. A nearly empty vodka bottle sits between them.

“Our town is poor,” they tell us, “because there happens to be no oil in our district. There is no money here.”

That night we camp by the local police station. The cold front lifts overnight, gliding back to the frigid Arctic. Warm sunlight basks Celti in the luminous glow of Indian summer as we ride out of town the next day.

The road quality decreases as we continue. Giant potholes and cracked pavement destroy the vestiges of navigable road. We quit early in the afternoon and sleep in a small village. We already know the bad road will bring us to Kazan a day later than planned.

The next morning, pavement disappears entirely. The earth is sandy here. The passage of cars overtime has churned the dirt road into a fine dust resembling beach sand. Riding a road bike here is like driving a car downhill on an icy road. I fall frequently when I hit a deep patch of sand and slip. Oftentimes the sand is so deep I must stop and push my bike.

Towns on this road rarely have a post office or even a small store. People here grow crops, raise animals, and chop firewood to survive. In some villages old ways of life persist; in others, they seem abandoned. In a small village called Gorky, log cabins are boarded up, their dilapidated frames sinking into the foundations. A nearby mine, or whatever industry once brought people here, dried up. Only several families remain.

After Gorky, the road ends at a large river with a fierce current. There is no bridge. We must wait with cars and ferry across on an old barge. On the other side, we meet with a paved road leading to Kazan. That afternoon, we enter Tatarstan, an independent republic in Russia of the Tatar people, where Kazan is the capital city.

Kazan rests on the banks of the mighty Volga river, which for centuries has marked the point where eastern and western culture collides. The more than 10,000 Tatar people worldwide, over half of whom live in Russia, reflect this statement. Tatars descend from a mix of Turkic ethnic groups who settled along the Volga and in-termixed with Eastern European peoples long ago. Tatars were once nomadic, and, even today, significant Tatar communities exist as far away as Finland, China, Uzbekistan, and New York City.

More than 1,000 years ago, missionaries from the Middle East converted people along the Volga to Islam. Most Tatars today still practice Sunni Islam despite the Russian conquest of Kazan in the 16th century. The Islamic faith in Tatarstan evolved differently due to its distance from the Islamic world. Tatars have traditionally practiced tolerance for other religions and given Tatar women the same rights as men.

Riding into Tatarstan, the minarets of mosques, instead of Christian churches, rise from the centers of small Russian villages. I feel like I have been whisked away to Turkey.

Arriving in Kazan really feels like stepping into another country. Strolling toward the town center, the Kazan Kremlin, a walled citadel within the city based on the design of Moscow’s Kremlin, comes into view. The towers of the massive Kol Sharif Mosque rise from within the Kremlin’s white walls looking over the Volga like silent sentries. The Kazan Kremlin is a visual tour of the city’s diverse history; towering mosques stand between the colorful onion domes of Christian churches.

Tatarstan’s history follows a bumpy road of clashing empires and religions. The winding path of Tartar culture today ends in a vibrant Russian city where Muslims and Christians live peacefully together. Kazan’s diverse architecture represents how the past influences the present, and rushes forward into an exciting future. Walking through undeveloped Russian villages feels like just looking into the past. The future is uncertain there.

“Russia is at a juncture,” I think while walking along Kazan’s shaded alleyways, “The road I’m standing on seems to link the past and the future. Perhaps that is the answer to further developing Russia,” I think to myself smirking, “build better roads.”

I stop to rest by the water. Behind me, the call to prayer emanates from a mosque and echoes over the Volga. “This is Kazan,” I think. An interesting name on the map that for so long wordlessly enticed me to visit.

For a moment, I recall the beach sand road we traveled on to get here. Exotic sounding names can beckon one to travel to new and interesting places. But oftentimes, just getting there is the biggest adventure.

We have ridden 5,000 miles across Russia and been caught in torrential rain storms, changed sixty flat tires, and repaired broken bicycle racks seven times. My riding partner Ellery's ability to fix small bike problems on the road with few tools and a lot creativity continually amazes me. But oftentimes, a keen knowledge of rudimentary bicycle mechanics cannot solve the most problematic moments we encounter here.

We travel light carrying just four waterproof panniers, small bags which strap onto racks on the front and back of our bicycles. We have embraced nomadhood; for over eight months, these bags will contain our only possessions. I carry just the clothes I need to survive in extremely cold or wet situations. In bad weather, I can just pull off the road, set up my tent, and crawl into my warm down sleeping bag. The feeling is liberating.

In the past months, I've found that self-sufficiency often does not mean being ready for anything, but having many things you rarely use and less things that you want. I travel with just two pairs of underwear and one pair of pants to wear when I am not cycling. But I also carry a headlamp and six rechargeable batteries. If my headlamp loses power in an emergency, I have another set of batteries to light it. Nomadic life forces you to adopt an stringent sense of absurd practicality; the battery to underwear ratio in my panniers is 3:1.

Preparing for this trip, Ellery and me continually asked ourselves, 'how can we make less things more valuable?' We planned to bring several cameras to document our trip, and a small computer to upload video, photos, and writing about the people and places we would encounter to a website. Russia is a country rich in culture, history, and friendly folks who have treated us with outstanding hospitality. Few people visit Russia outside of major tourist destinations, and, consequently, the people who live here remain largely misunderstood. Using the Internet to document our experiences here could give people in America valuable insights into another culture. The problem was how to harness its uses efficiently.

Suddenly, a idea arose. What if we could use our trip and the Internet to both foster cross-cultural understanding while showing how the very technologies which link us together can be environmentally friendly? We decided to attach light-weight solar panels on the back of our bicycles that could recharge the batteries in our cameras and computer. A company called GoGreen Solar provided us with small flexible solar panels at a discount.

Your access to sunlight makes solar power invaluable on a bicycle trip. While traveling in remote areas, we can always keep our cell phones charged in case of an emergency. Solar power ultimately allows us to travel in the least environmentally intrusive manner possible, riding bicycles instead of using transportation powered by gasoline, and designing a website to document our journey created by cameras powered by the sun.

I once had idyllic dreams of riding all day while charging my laptop's battery, then sitting in my tent at night, connecting to the Internet, and updating our website. Unfortunately, this fantasy has been hard to implement.

One can easily get online throughout Russia with a USB modem, a small device that plugs into your computer and picks up the Internet through cell phone signals. The gadget is affordable and easy to use. But making it work on the road is nearly impossible.

Approximately every 1,000 miles, we enter a new zone where cell phone towers operate on a different signal, and we must buy a new SIM card for our USB modem to work in the new region. SIM cards are small removable chips in cell phones which allow users to easily switch their phone number from one area code, or country, to another simply by purchasing a new chip. One must present a Russian passport to buy a SIM card here and foreigner's must show a passport and what is called a registration, a small piece of paper issued by a local branch of the Russian Federal Migration Service which monitors the movement of foreigners. Hotels register foreigners, and the paperwork is easily obtained in major cities like Moscow. Most of the country, however, ignores this formality leftover from the Soviet Union, and we often cannot find a hotel which will register us. Consequently, we can never buy new SIM cards and our USB modem is useless.

Finding the Internet on this trip is more difficult than changing flat tires or making my solar panel work in limited sunlight. In cities, I must use Internet cafes, but these can be hard to find. Russia, as a country, often seems like the perfect mix of the developed and undeveloped world. In Latin American countries for instance, few people own personal computers, and Internet cafes abound even in small towns. In a country like Russia, which, until recently, experienced years of a quickly growing economy, more people have computers and certain services like Internet cafes are less in demand.

Last week, I faced a serious emergency: the Internet cafe I found closed an hour early. Suddenly, the screen went dead as I was sending an article about the bike trip to the newspaper I write for in Maine. After an extensive search, I found another Internet center in a fancy hotel with an international calling center. International calling cards in European Russia are plentiful, but telephones are not. After sending my photos to the newspaper, I pounced on the rare opportunity to use the hotel's telephone to call my family in Maine.The cheap hotels in Russian cities we often stay in are located in old Soviet apartment buildings which were built before telephone use became widespread. These buildings often have just one telephone in an office near the entrance.

After the Soviet Union fell, the efficiency of cell phones evolved quicker than land line phones. Consequently, it is hard to find telephones today to call abroad. The one telephone in an old Soviet building is often under the charge of a babushka, an old Russian woman, who invariably works in the office. They are from another generation and cannot believe how a paper telephone card will let one call America.

"Sorry, that won't work here," they always respond when I ask if I can use the phone.

Leaving a city on my bicycle gives me the reassuring feeling that I am returning to a simpler way of living. On this trip, life seems more chaotic in civilization than outside it. This is hard for some people who haven't traveled widely to understand.

"What do you do when it rains?" is the chief question many Russians ask us about our trip.

While cycling through the Ural Mountains one day, an ominously dark mass of clouds appears on the horizon and it starts to pour. I stop to put on my rain jacket, pants, and waterproof booties over my shoes before I continue. The weather's behavior is not restricted by international border or customs. It is a natural phenomenon I can prepare for.

"Now, this is the easy part," I think  to myself.

Sometimes in life you just have to run. The impulse to move quickly does not exclusively come from a feeling of entrapment, but rather an intrinsic desire to stampede forward and glimpse what lays near the horizon.   

For humans, these desires are instinctual, realized in the moment when we rose on wobbly knees as small babes and dared to take our first steps. Life presents us with innumerable opportunities to continue moving, to continue exploring. Sometimes, however, traveling is easier said than done. So when the conditions for movement are favorable, its best to lunge forward. 

For most of August, we have slowly cycled across the flat plains of the steppe in western Siberia. Brutal headwinds here, which blow against our bicycles, have made for slow going. While resting in the city of Omsk, my riding partner Ellery checked the weather forecast and our fortunes suddenly changed.  

"It says the wind will blow behind us for several days," he exclaimed excitedly.  

Tailwinds are a cyclist's dream. They help push you forward, allowing one to ride faster. Before us 600 more miles of barren steppe remained between the cities of Omsk and Ekaterinaburg. With the wind momentarily at our back, we set out to cover the remaining distance in six days.   

Steppe is the plains area of central Asia, a desolate expanse of earth mainly covered in marshland. Only several major roads, most of which are so poorly maintained that they are almost impassable at points, cross this sparsely populated section of the earth.   Traveling westward, the steppe ends in Ekaterinaburg, a city at the base of the Ural Mountains which technically separate the Asian and European continents. From the Pacific Ocean, we have ridden almost 4,800 miles. The Urals mark the first major accomplishment of our trip; we will have ridden across Asia, the world's biggest continent by land mass.   

Gazing into the blank expanse of the steppe, the nearness of Europe seems incomprehensible. My sense of perspective is useless here. Different places I have lived during my life have trained my eyes to judge distance by things like a hill or houses, objects which appear in front of me as big or small on the horizon.   The steppe is mostly devoid of these landmarks. Here endless plains and swamp drift over the vast earth to a distant point where scant things, like groves of trees, just become blurry as they reach the indefinable boundary between the earth and sky.  

Riding over rolling hills or crossing mountains on a bicycle gives me the sensation that I am moving somewhere. On the steppe, you see where you are going long before you arrive, giving you the frustrating feeling that you should be there already.  

But for now, the wind is at our back. We can move fast. Leaving Omsk, we cover over two hundred miles in two days. We often ride forty miles or more between the few villages and roadside cafes scattered along the steppe.  

Towns here are scarce and mainly limited to lonely farming communities perched along the plains. This is the western outskirts of Siberia, a lawless and largely unpopulated land which now fans thousands of miles behind us across the vastness of northern Asia.  

A stalwart people mainly of European descent populate Siberia. The first brave souls to wander this part of the earth were fur traders. Their footsteps were followed by two surges of European migration in the late 19th century. In 1861, the abolition of serfdom in Russia set free a tide of poor land hungry peasants who moved eastwards into northern Asia. The Trans-Siberian railroad further facilitated the movement of people here; twenty years after the railroad's completion, Siberia's population doubled to 10 million.  

During the last four months, I have traveled by bicycle through this, at times, seemingly forgotten part of the world. Many people here live simple lives in log cabins, chopping their own firewood and growing crops to sustain them during long and brutally cold winters. Most towns lack paved roads and running water. Large scale development has not yet happened here.  

The word Siberia originates from a blend of the Mongolian 'Siber' which means 'pure' and the Tatar 'Sibir' which translates to 'sleeping land.'  Today, the now archaic roots of the word are perhaps more relevant than ever: they are adjectives which describe an infantile land which has yet to wake up into the modern world.  

On the third day of our sprint, the wind fiercely blows behind us harder than ever. At times, it shifts, gusting against my side, and jolting my bicycle like a kayak running through river rapids.   

By early afternoon, we cover 80 miles hardly stopping for breaks. We want to go as far as possible while the wind is with us. Riding this fast is extremely exhausting. My back aches with excruciating pain from pedaling for so long.  

When we finally arrive in a town, I throw down my bike, and collapse on my back. I lay on the ruts of tire tracks drawn into the mud and hardened by the sun. The rough earth digs into the knots in my back. The feeling of laying down, even momentarily, makes me groan with glee.  

That afternoon, the wind shifts, blowing against my side. Crosswinds often do not slow bicycle travel, they just make it more laborious. Moving forward, I examine my surroundings. Every living creature who inhabits the steppe seems victim to the fickle movement of the wind. Birds flap their wings futilely in the sky. Bushes and grass bend towards the earth like a mass of slaves bowing before an evil despot.  

By day's end, I rest near a wheat field. The gusting wind creates ripples in the wheat like a breeze moving over an ocean inlet.   

In the distance, I spot a small village. My aching muscles remind me that the first settlers who originally founded the towns here arrived on horses. They endured bitterly cold winters isolated far from European cities to forge a new life. In the 21st century, when we leave our homes to explore what mysteries lay near the horizon, we speed along in cars, and stop at highway gas stations to buy snacks. The knots in my back force me to appreciate how so much of the world we live in is built upon the suffering of previous people centuries ago.  

The wind remains behind us for two more days. By the fifth day of our push, we are extremely exhausted. In the past month, we have cycled over 2,000 miles. Just 135 miles from Ekaterinaburg, early in the day, we pass a roadside hotel. The proximity of comfy beds lures us to rest, and we decide to cover the remaining distance tomorrow.   

My body is weak and I am delirious with fatigue. I crash into bed like a bowling ball smacking a row of pins. Sleep overtakes me. I am not prone to nightmares, but today I dream that I am cycling alone across the vast steppe. A distant pack of mangy wolves begin chasing me. I can smell their rancid breath as they pant heavily behind me closing in for the kill. I pedal faster and faster to get ahead. Suddenly my foot slips and I crash upon the pavement. Time slows down. The staccato noise of their claws hitting the asphalt as they halt and turn around to pounce on me reverberates in my ear drums. I hop to my feet and race forward, escaping, their jaws snapping behind me.    

We set out at dawn. The wind shifts and blows against us. My muscles ache. I focus solely on turning the pedals and disappear somewhere deep inside myself where I vaguely sense the wind blowing on my cheeks and the bicycle slowly moving forward. By late afternoon, we begin passing European looking villages with small churches in the center. Adrenaline pumps. I pedal faster, not wanting to stop now.

n Ekaterinaburg, a group of Russian cyclists and representatives from the U.S. Consulate here greet us. We rest in the city for four days, our longest break in two months.   

Twenty miles outside of Ekaterinaburg, a simple stone monument, made of a vertical segment of granite separating two pieces of marble, stands on a hill by the roadside.   

Russian letters on each side of the marble spell the following words: Azea, Evropa. Asia, Europe.  

Several Russian cyclists lead us out of Ekaterinaburg. We reach the monument, and, with just a tinge of nostalgia and hesitation, I gingerly step over the granite line marking the boundary of each continent like one stepping into a cool bath tub.  

We say goodbye to the cyclists and speed down the hill. I turn my head for one last glimpse of the green fields of Asia disappearing behind me, but they have already faded behind the rising Urals.  

We are in Europe now.