Extremes Beyond the Screen

The shakedown ride consists of putting stepdaughter on pillion seat and taking back roads to the bakery for cinnamon rolls. Yeah, seems fine, job’s a good ‘un.

Petrol is pissing out the bottom of my bike, what the fuck? I find a stone and hit the float bowl, hoping the float is stuck, it’s a knee-jerk reaction to such a scenario. Second is to actually turn off the fuel tap when the impact fails to stem the flow.
I’m not three hours from home and this?

A seagull comes and sits on the ledge, right there on the other side of the glass. I feel like a celebrity being scrutinised by an obsessive fan – however, I’m the one who takes a photo. It doesn’t deter him and he stays the entire meal, begrudging my every bite.

I feel that watching the sun set into the sea yesterday calibrated my life with the speed of the planet. It moved me to the moment. It was visual evidence as to the pace of time at this latitude.

The first turn-off leads to a new dam, too excavated; the next takes me to the river’s edge, too exposed and too shitty too, rubbish strewn around. The third is elevated from the river but too close to the road – come on, Goldilocks, make a decision. It is flat here and mostly out of sight; OK, it’s not *just right* but will do.

I have the perfect seat in the restaurant, shaded under a canopy, bike in full view and snow-capped mountain backdrop, a meal of soup and salad along with the obligatory bucket of bread. From tray to transport to tempting horizon, all is pleasing to the eye and candy for the camera lens.

I reluctantly turn back, only to get stuck behind a road-blocking herd of home-going cattle. No point in trying to penetrate the delay, I’ve already showed my idiot hand, I turn off the engine and freewheel behind slowly. In twos and threes, the cows peel off into their appointed yards.

. I wonder exactly how stupid it is to camp on a riverbed. The stream is slow but constant and there is much room for expansion before I become the tidemark, anyway there are spring flowers protruding from the sandy surface.

A slaughtered, skinned and semi-butchered cow is hung from the elevated forks on the front of a tractor, legs in a rigor mortis pose. The farmer hacks with his machete, a bowl underneath catches the blood and a big mama in headscarf and baggy trousers sits in a plastic chair surveying. Brutal, but at the same time, grass-fed organic burger anyone? This is where they actually come from.

I pass a statue, it’s striking, depicts a soul leaving a dying body, well, that’s what it says to me. I realise as I walk around it, observing without inhibitions, that the overwhelming sensation I’m experiencing here is time, on two levels, it running out of the figurine while I, at least for this instant, am using mine to the full. It’s not just about life leaving the sculpture but the fact I allow myself to simply take it in. Not rushing off somewhere, simply pausing to appreciate the art, what the artist was saying, portraying and, if nothing else, it’s given me a moment, what greater gift can there be than living in the moment?

There is one thing I’ve never managed to achieve in Georgia. Actually there are loads, but at the top of the list I failed to bring with me is to try khachapuri. It’s a national dish, a kind of elongated diamond-shaped bread with an egg in the middle, it’s simple, aesthetically pleasing and I’m yet to find out how tasty. Today I can confirm … very, and filling too.

Last time it was just me, a tout and a lonely bearded Austrian in a converted camper. Now a fuckin’ theme park, bus park, car park, tourist kiosks, paragliders, drones, horse and donkey rides, sold out, whored out, out of the city for this? I only stop to photograph the hideousness.

A massive herd of sheep are shepherded down the lane, skilful dogs keeping them bunched up and moving, better than any tour guide I’ve witnessed since I’ve been here. This timeless scene beyond my screen reminds me how much better the real world is, so I log off, shut down and get the bike out.

I look at the intricate way they build their stone houses, random rocks with large slate-like lintels making solid horizontal stripes at about one-foot intervals. Tricky to photograph as there are the omnipresent gas pipes always in the shot.

As I wind down the canyon with no authorised entitlement to be in either country, the procession of stationary trucks begins. I pass on the single oncoming lane, the verge on the opposite side a scrapyard of dismembered cars. Smashed and graffiti-adorned, a brutal sight, burned out, wrecked, ruined, gutted, destroyed, vandalised. It’s quite daunting, like seeing a crashed plane on the runway before you take off.

Anyway, Грозный is signposted at crucial junctions and I confidently get out of town. The first two symbols are the same as the first two letters of my name so I’m familiar with them, ‘o’ is the same as – British expats in Bulgaria would say – the English alphabet, the ‘з’ is not a three but a ‘z’ and is exactly how, in my handwriting at least, I express that letter in lower case, the H is pronounced as an ‘n’, the last three letters are different in Bulgarian Cyrillic but the upside-down ‘N’ is a phonetic ‘i’, so it clearly says Grozny.

For fuck’s sake, the epitome of ostentatious. Who gold plates a Rolls-Royce?

However, somewhere in this area there is an underpass, where on the walls are photos from when this city sustained the heaviest bombardment in Europe since the Second World War, while it was under siege from Russian forces.

Maybe Russia has changed since I was last here, maybe I have, perhaps we’ve met in the middle. Possibly Grozny is not typical, has its own traits. Certainly not touristy. I take a walk down a pedestrian area, again it’s so chilled, polite, peaceful. Kids, parents, youths, babas, tranquillity, respect, courtesy, clean, swish, modern. Pride in appearance, in property, in the way they present themselves, impervious to preconceptions.

I come to a toll bridge – oh no, I remember this. A hinged metal pontoon affair, it undulates with the weight of vehicles and the sheet metal offers zero traction to wet tyres. I’d rather pay a ferryman, but give up my coins to cross, got just enough left for breakfast. I’m told to wait for a particularly large truck to come across, fine by me, I detest this bloody crossing. What, I wonder, have they been spending the toll money on? It’s identical to how it was fifteen years ago.

The road, like the continents, is divided, as in the central reservation is a working oil pump jack. You could pull up and fill your tank straight from source, although that might be a bit crude.

I’m assuming it’s an eatery as outside they have a poster, it’s the menu. A photo of five dishes with a single Cyrillic word next to each. Meat and onions, meat and rice, fish, rice and meat, and finally meat in a bowl – that must be the soup option. I take a photo for easy ordering and enter.

. By 4 a.m. it’s light and the birds are singing about it. So I get up to see what all the fuss is about and take a few sunrise photos. It’s a colourful dawn and it’s all mine, a few clouds to break up the sky, my tent and bike the highest elements from here to sunrise.

A Dutch refrigerated trailer is parked beside a camel. I worked for that company for years, hauled that actual trailer, the ‘K5’ series were the best of the fleet, didn’t have to attach bulbs and lenses, generally had a winding handle too, my DNA is on the trailer. How nostalgic. I’ve no one to tell so I’ll just write it again. *I’ve actually hauled that very trailer*. I take a photo of my bike, a camel and it … the trailer I’ve … you get the picture.

I do the bus shelter doze again, have to displace the donkeys first, they submissively go stand round the back in the exposed piss-stench heat. It’s 32°C, 1 p.m., absolutely nothing out here, horizontal and bleached, the sky clear and elongated across the land, those are your choices, only two elements, earth or air. I drift away.

She is pretty, in a shy and small-town kind of way. I can’t let it end here, and now next to the picture of the three men by my bike, is some dusty biker inappropriately close to a hazel-eyed, innocent, possibly hopeful, although utterly deluded, young Kazakh girl. I am not your Prince Charming, not the happy ending to your fairy tale, I am just another frog you must kiss before you find your true love. And with that I know I must ride onward with my quest, fair buxom maiden, give your sweet heart to someone more deserving, save it, be sparing, be picky, be particular.

Those fuckin’ Dutch twats, whose names I now know are Dirk and Hendrik, have slapped one of their *Mission Mongolia* stickers on my bike. I felt I couldn’t shake their presence completely. I peel the graffiti off; it takes the paint off with it, leaving a full moon of white plastic on the black side panel. Of course their ‘follow me’ credentials are listed on the sticky litter they left on my bike, so I use my data to post on their page with an *Ask first before you tag someone’s property*. There are road scars, hard-earned lessons, accidents, abrasions and age-related character, then there are the abrasive and their narrow views of what travel is. No aptitude, just applications and, worse still, stickers.

And that’s when it hits me, the density. After the emptiness I’d become accustomed to, this is hectic, traders pushing barrows loaded with wares, barging and shouting, hustling and hassling, money changers, and hawkers.
‘Come with me, my friend, this way. What *ine* would you like?’
‘Insurance so I don’t get a fine.’

Worst of all is the creeping and increasing asphyxiation. Even behind the camper I can sense the haze of fumes. Vision is through a fog of exhaust and, despite my trusty bandanna filter, I can feel my throat antagonised, lungs poisoned, oxygen at a level below crucial. There is nothing wholesome to breathe, but unfortunately I can’t stop myself inhaling. I am simply being suffocated, overcome by emissions, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel, no light at all, other than the red glow I’m following. I didn’t make a note of the mileage when I entered, am I past the point of no return? Even if not, I’m committed now. Hope is all I have, this must end, it has to, but for whom and how? I try long, slow inhalations, that only hyperventilates me and results in short, shivered breaths, like sucking down a delicious milkshake that’s instantly addictive. However, there is no nourishment here … contaminated considerations … now not even my thinking is clear.