Bombay To Beijing By Bicycle-- A Guest Post By Russell McGilton

The first time I arrived in India it was 1969 and the world was changing around me and inside me. I drove in my VW van from Europe and I stayed almost 2 years, I've been back numerous times since and right now Roland and I are planning another trip to the Subcontinent. Pretty soon you'll be inundated with posts about planning and executing a trip to India, the wonders of Delhi and the glory of Kerala. Meanwhile, though, I asked author Russell McGilton to give us a guest post about his own adventures in India and his recent book, Bombay To Beijing By Bicycle

TEN THINGS ABOUT THE TRIP

by Russell McGilton

� GETTING MALARIA

There I am, two weeks into my grand adventure to cycle from Bombay to Beijing when in some backwater town in India I fall ill to a terrible fever. The doctor has a wonderful beside manner: �Congratulations! You are having the malaria!�

�Riiiiight! Um, tell me doctor. Do many people die from that around here?�

�Yes, many!�

Despite medical treatment, I will never be quite free of the fevers. Later in the Rajasthani Desert, the school principal of the small town of Shergarth has an enlightening solution of

�  DRINKING MY OWN URINE.

'Drinking your own urine will cure you of the malaria. '

'Oh, come on! You're taking the piss!'

'Yes. I am taking the piss since 1996 and I feel much better for it. I am stronger, much vigour and I have not been sick once since the treatment.�

So after much ado-ing (is that a word?) I give it a shot. And you know. Mine�s not too bad with a slice of lemon on the side. To my surprise the fevers subside unlike the 

� BILLIONS OF STARES. 

Yes, stop for a quick look at your map, adjust your shorts, a bite to eat, oil the chain and within seconds a crowd of gawking admirers is upon. Even when I am trying to quietly relieve myself behind a bush I look up to see what seems to be the entire population of Indian children staring at my spluttering confluences, smiling and calling for pens. I go insane. But this is nothing compared to 

� BEING CHASED BY A RHINO.

In the Bardia National Park of Nepal, after failing to locate any tigers we are now in long grass looking for rhinos. �Up ahead are rhino. Grass very long. I go first,� Mundi, our guide warns, �If I see rhino I will say �RUN UP TREE!� So you must RUN UP TREE! No ifs or buts.�

Of course, within minutes we hear, �RUN UP TREE!� Everyone gets up their tree, everyone� except me! Because the trees are quite thin and keep breaking. Eventually, I find a tree and latch onto it just as two pale grey rhinos, some 30-metres away, charge us. They stop, look around, snort loudly before charging again and repeating the process. Later, I ask Mundi why they charged only three times.

�I don�t know. Maybe�� he rubs his chin thoughtfully. �They can�t count to four!� The next time I am terrified out of my wits is when I get

� STUCK IN PAKISTAN DURING THE WORLD TRADE CENTRE BOMBINGS. 

In Abbottabad (yes, where they killed Bin Laden!), over a hundred kilometres away from Islamabad, I�m madly cycling to the Chinese border when I hear its just been closed. What�s more anti-Western sentiment is stirring up and so, feeling �visible� and I take to wearing the Pakistani national dress, the shalwa kameez (long shirt and baggy pants) and a topi (a Muslim cap). This is rendered futile when I jump on my loaded mountain bike and crowds of smiling men shout, �AH! AMERICAN! AMERICAN!�

Luckily, I get a bus out and make it over the border back into India then onto China where I nearly 

� FALL OFF A CLIFF ON THE TIBETAN PLATEAU 

in the dead of night. I miss an important stopping point (an abandoned hut to sleep in) and continue up the snow-laden pass. My wheels slip and skid through the slush and more than once I nearly lose my balance and fall into the inky abyss just to the left of me. I am saved by herb fossickers who greet me warmly into their large hut. On the road Chinese-Anglo relations are further enhanced when I hear truck drivers yell �I LOVE YOU�. This leaves me blushing but not as much as when I decide to

� MOON THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA. 

Sans clothes I run up and down the rocky and unpredictable rocky wall when a bemused guard laughs too heartily for my liking (it was winter, you know).

When I finally arrive in Beijing, I am shocked to see that the Western Pig Dog Imperialists have made there way through the once impenetrable Forbidden City walls not with canons but with polystyrene coffee cups. Yes, there�s a 

� STARBUCKS

inside. I�m so disgusted I down two Brazilian Grande Lattes. As I cycle the streets of Beijing, putting the trip into perspective, I realise that what is more terrifying than the malaria I had contracted, drinking my own urine, nearly falling off cliffs or the hysteria of terrorism but that the knowledge that the environment I had just enjoyed will, in a few short years, be totally unrecognisable as freeways, cars and pollution leave their indelible footprint. Alas, my daughter shall not have such joys.

Russell