"Now that we were so perilously close to finishing, I realized that relief wasn’t the overriding emotion. There were two others: a sense of achievement and a sense of great loss."
Off the Rails is a wonderful tale of more than 10,000 kms cycling expedition of two Australian boys from Moscow to Beijing: Tim Cope and Chris Hatherly in their earliest 20s. One freshly drop out of undergraduate program and the other recently hooked to a girl. One looking for food at each village on the way while the other crashing into each internet cafe to contact his fiancee.
They traveled through snow storms, waded through flooded streets, splashed into puddles, stuck in mud and sands, crossed mountains, deserts, plain, glaciers, rivers and lakes. Fought with giant mosquitoes, suffered from frostbites and heat strokes besides disturbed bowels and diarrhoea during these ten thousands kilometer journey.
They rode through Russia during the infancy years of libation from communism and witnessed how people suffered through this freedom. How this freedom along with failure of Glasnost and Prestroika shattered soviet economy and abandoned its people. But this bankruptcy did not deter their humanity, generosity and hospitality. They found a number of Mishas, Andres, Vladimirs and Babushkas of every size and shape on the way. And enjoyed hospitality of uncountable Babushkas, adored steam bath at uncountable Banyas, feasted on various kind of foods and gulped down lots and lots of Vodka.
And the conclusion they find was: that every problem finds its solution in the end, does not matter how much awkward what we call جگاڑ. That there are more good people in the world than the bad ones. That at the end of the day you never sleep hungry. That you can make it, you just have to keep moving through thick and thin.
Tim and Chris rode approximately 100 km per day without any google map, GPS or fan following at a time when mobile phone was a rarity and FB was not invented munching on tons of Pryaniki biscuits. They spent 14 months together, at times they were fed up with each other and split up for a week but . .
Chirs and Tim wrote alternate chapters of the book. The book need to be re-written to find out Chris and Tim's story of the alternate missing chapters. The book took me to Siberia, Baikal and Voldga & it made me realize that I can summit Alburz, Baikal, Urals etc, if I want to and Altai too 🙈
⛺🌅🚲🌌⛰🌈🌊🌋🌀🌁⛆⛈⛱⛴🗻🚆🚂🚲🌄⛺
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Also trekk to Concordia with me.
