BOOK OF THE DAY: Cycling Home from Siberia; By Rob Lilwall; Hodder and Stoughton; 350pp, £10.99
ENGAGING IN a bike ride through dense jungles and across swollen rivers is a bit like getting married or having a baby: there’s always someone doing it for the first time.
Rob Lilwall was a restless English geography teacher when his friend Al e-mailed him an invitation to join him on a bike ride through Siberia.
With £8,000 in a bank and with a 10-year-old bicycle that had already served him well, he had nothing to lose. Fast forward to a Siberian winter, camping in minus 30 he found, in fact, he had a lot to lose – like fingers and toes to frost bite. Not to mention his head when Al – by far the more experienced survivalist – proposed crossing a frozen river that didn’t look nearly frozen enough.
Inevitably, they travelled burdened with the fears of others: you’ll be robbed, murdered and possibly both, they were told.
In Russia, they were held up at gunpoint and robbed which led Al, well used to being on his own, to make the observation with which solo travellers will be familiar. “ When you are alone,” he said, “you are seen as a kind of nomad, a wandering, searching adventurer. As soon as you start travelling in a pair, you begin to look like tourists. And tourists are usually the ones to get robbed”.
Eventually, sick of each other’s company and to save their friendship, they split up and Rob went on alone.
Good at inter-networking, he had places to stay lined up along the route. Christian missionaries, found in the most unlikely of places, were always ready with an open door. Diplomats, NGO workers and teachers of English as a foreign language also had beds, showers and DVDs to hand. All were welcome after below-freezing nights in a small tent or a mountain hut. On one occasion they slept in a high-tech blow-dry Japanese lavatory. The one for disabled users was big enough to get two bikes inside and, as Al noted, their accommodation was en suite.
In all, Rob Lilwall cycled 35,178 miles from Magadan in Siberia, to London via Japan, Papua New Guinea, Australia, Uzbekistan and Tibet to name but a few. This, though, is 21st Century travel which meant that when Al had a problem with a wheel, his mother sent him another via courier.
This book is a rite-of-passage adventure full of thrills, excitement and endurance tests all passed with flying colours and exemplifies the difference between female and male travel writing.
Ella Maillart’s and Peter Fleming’s individual books about the journey they made together from Beijing to Srinagar are perfect examples. Women tend to stop, linger, deviate from the straight and narrow while men have their eyes fixed firmly on their final destination, ticking off the days as they draw nearer to the end.
In Cycling Home from Siberia, Rob Lilwall was on a 67 Siberian-mile-a-day treadmill, otherwise, his visa would be out of date he fretted when, asked to give a talk at a school in Australia, he had to leave his planned route to get to it.
Throughout the many trials and tribulations he endured, Lilwall put his faith in his God (male, Christian). And though his religion stood him in good stead, he seems uninterested in those two great traditions, Buddhism and Hinduism. The latter, he wrote, being “hard to understand”.
If you’re a cyclist – and even if you’re not – go for this book: it’s a challenging read.
Mary Russell is a travel writer and has cycled in Europe, North Africa and Syria