Off The Rails Read online

  The last two months of the course were highly intensive with exams and tests, and I felt guilty about not being able to help Chris with the sponsorship drive. His e-mails were nothing short of inspiring. Sometimes he would write about an incredible number of businesses that he had faxed, and say that there was an inkling of interest. At other times he sounded dejected and downright convinced that he was not getting anywhere.

  The day before he flew out of Sydney, he surprised me with some news – his girlfriend Natalie Chan would join him from London to Romania. Interestingly, Nat also studied in Canberra and had lived a few doors from me and Chris. It seemed that things were working out in a serendipitous way.

  At the end of the wilderness guide course, I moved into a canvas A-frame ‘trapper’s tent’ in the nearby forest. The frame was made of branches cut from the forest. I had twenty-five dollars left and my return ticket to Australia had been forfeited. Using the tent as my base, I worked eight-hour days for the forestry college, repairing outdoor equipment. In my spare time, I went about finding sponsors, organising our twelve-month Russian visas, and trying to nut out a basic plan for our journey. Integral to our adventure was my desire to inspire young people. To this end I e-mailed about 2000 schools in Russia, hoping to visit some along the way. We planned to use our Web-site to post stories for students in Australia, Russia and Finland so that they could keep up with our progress.

  With a month to go before departure, my e-mails and letters to sponsors, media and schools proliferated. Every time I received an update call from Chris, it was a reminder that time was running out.

  One morning a big package from Australia arrived via courier. Attached to it was a note from Chris: ‘What do you reckon, mate? A pretty good Christmas present from sponsors!’ I tore it open to find 100 rolls of Kodak slide film, Gore-tex Clothing from Mountain Designs, bundles of thermals from Everwarm and a whole host of other goodies. For the first time the journey began to feel real. My bike, however, was yet to arrive. It was still being custom made in Canberra by Wayne Kotzur. My share of the sponsored funds from Australian Geographic was going to be just enough to pay for the bike and its shipment to Finland. In the end Wayne waived the courier fee in a gesture of support.

  My finances were still looking scarce, even with the money that I was saving from work. I had discovered that while it wasn’t too difficult to convince companies to sponsor us with products, procuring cash was almost impossible.

  I decided to call John and Alison Kearney, distant relatives who lived on the Gold Coast in Queensland. They had been following my progress since the course in Finland and had already backed me with generous support. I was bowled over when they agreed to support me with some much-needed funds.

  One week before I was due to leave Finland, I finally received our Russian twelve-month visas. It had been a long process that included, among other things, getting HIV tests.

  The evening after receiving the visas, I was sifting through my things when I came across a letter from Australian National University in Canberra. It read: ‘If you have not re-enrolled or applied for further deferral by 1 June then it is assumed that you have abandoned the course.’

  Although I had not intended to return to study Law immediately, the security had suddenly vanished. Officially, for the first time, I was technically not ‘in-between’ anything. A rush of emotion flushed my system. It felt so reassuring that I had now irretrievably committed to my dreams.

  The last few days were a whirlwind of tying up loose ends. With first aid in mind, I visited the local doctor who was more than happy to give me free advice, a bundle of bandages and sterile syringes, tubes and even stitching needles. One of my fears was running into health problems or sustaining an injury in the middle of Russia. Fortunately, my parents funded my basic travel insurance for twelve months.

  On the sixth of September, three days before I departed Finland, the bike finally arrived. All that was left to do was pack up and leave. On the eighth, I loaded up my gear into a friend’s hatchback and drove to the train station. From there I headed towards the border.

  ———

  The phone rang and I raced to pick up the handset. I had been in Petrozavodsk for a week, waiting for the visa to turn up in Bucharest.

  ‘Tim, did you get my e-mail?’ Chris shouted down the line.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I got the visa! I’ve been looking in the wrong post office all along!’

  The next night I found myself on a rickety overnight train service to Moscow. As the train hurtled into the night, it felt as if a chapter in my life was ending and a new one dawning.

  I had barely spoken to an Australian face-to-face for fourteen months. What will Chris look like? How will he have changed? I really couldn’t even begin to fathom the journey ahead.

  Before drifting off to sleep a new thought came to me.

  Chris and I had been following such different paths over the past year or so; we were both fiercely independent. What if he had different reasons for doing this journey than I did? Would we get along, or would this be the beginning of a long, drawnout conflict?

  It left me feeling a little sick in the pit of my stomach.

  Sad Beginnings

  Bucharest – Moscow – Elbrus

  Early Autumn 1999

  ———

  Chris

  For me, the expedition began with a piercing train whistle, a broken heart and a flood of tears. It was 23 September and the train was lurching slowly out of Bucharest. Outside, standing on the platform, was my girlfriend Natalie – looking beautiful, terribly out of reach and desperately close to tears.

  After nearly five uninterrupted months of cycling across Europe together, the day had finally come for us to part.

  Nat walked along the platform, hurrying to keep pace with the carriage. The gap between us was too great to reach across, but we tried anyway. We blew kisses, vowed our love and struggled to smile into each other’s hearts. Then the platform ended and the train picked up speed. It whistled, rounded a bend and, two seconds later, Nat disappeared.

  That was the point when my heart broke. I slumped back into my seat and my head sunk into my hands.

  We’d known each other for only two years and been in love for less than half of that time, but the months together had been so close to perfect that already it felt as though our relationship was ready to move on. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Nat, and yet here I was, allowing circumstances to wrench us apart. If all went according to plan – the horrible plan, I thought for a moment – we wouldn’t see each other for over a year. I’d committed to this expedition before our relationship had started and all along I’d believed that it was the right thing to do. What would be the cost? If we could both survive the next months and still be in love at the end, then we would each have grown. But if not?

  I broke down, succumbing to desolation and a flood of tears. I wished with all my heart that the whole thing wasn’t happening.

  And that, for me, is how the expedition began.

  It wasn’t the beginning of the journey, of course. I was an Australian taking a train from Romania to Moscow, and I’d obviously done a bit of travelling to get there. But in the two years between the decision and the destination, that moment when I lost sight of Nat was the moment in which the fun and excitement of the holiday ended and the challenge of the adventure began. I was leaving Nat and the comforts of Europe behind and heading out into a vast unknown. There, I was to meet Tim, a friend I hadn’t seen in sixteen months, and together we were hoping to cycle to Beijing. It was going to be a hell of a challenge, not only for Nat and I, but for Tim and I.

  The train rumbled on and the days and nights merged. I paid little attention to anything – even the need to eat. I remember once looking up from a patch of torn fabric on the seat opposite and realising that I’d been staring at it for hours. I lifted my gaze to the window and noticed the gold-plated, mushroom-shaped cupolas of a dazzling cathedral sliding by ma
jestically. I returned my indifferent gaze to the torn seat, and it wasn’t till an hour later that my stirring consciousness registered that I’d just seen the grand cathedral of Kiev. I thought about it for a moment, then returned to the cold comfort of my gloom. I just didn’t care.

  Occasionally, my depression lifted and I was able to reflect on what the beginning of such an adventure might mean. My thoughts drifted backwards over all the events that had brought me here, and forwards to the vast uncertainty that lay ahead. Backwards was safe: there was no unknown and nobody in my past had ever tried to kill me. But forwards was something else again. For months, people had warned me against going to Russia. ‘It’s a country of desperate poverty,’ they said and predicted that I – a rich foreigner – would be mugged, robbed and killed as soon as I crossed the border. Previous experience had taught me to ignore such warnings. The people who made them generally had no first-hand experience of what they were talking about, and often they were simply voicing the sorts of fears that would always stop them reaching out to achieve their own dreams. On the other hand, I had only a very basic knowledge of the Russian language, knew almost nothing about the country or culture, and I was about to be dumped out into the mega-metropolis of Moscow on my own. I was, to say the least, a little scared.

  I remembered the day the first seed of the trip had been sown. It was two years ago – I was eighteen at the time – and halfway through my first big adventure: a year-long cycling trip around Australia. I’d met an American man in a pub in Darwin. His name was Tom Stone, a retired US soldier. He’d been on the road for the past seven years, walking most of the way around the world! His stories of Russia captured me in particular.

  ‘It’s a beautiful country, Chris, totally wild and free. The people are so down-to-earth and friendly. I spent over two years walking there and I stayed both winters with locals in these tiny Siberian villages. If you ever go, think of me, and always remember the bum!’

  I thought that he’d been describing himself as a ‘bum’, but later I realised that I’d simply misheard his strong American accent. He’d actually been telling me to remember the highlight of his journey: the BAM railway through Northern Siberia, one of the longest and most remote working railway lines in the world.

  I remembered the university in Canberra where I’d first met Tim. We’d spent a crazy few months poring over maps and dreaming of adventures, until he won the scholarship to train as a wilderness guide in Finland. I spent the rest of the year seriously doubting my reasons for studying until, finally, goaded into action by Tim’s e-mails from the Arctic, I dropped out of my course and set about organising an adventure of my own. After a few half-baked ideas, several themes finally merged and I set my mind on Russia. I let Tim in on the idea and it turned out that he was keen on coming too! And so the adventure was born.

  We had very little information and no real idea what would be in store for us. But then, we were teenagers and we just knew that we could do anything. What we lacked in knowledge and experience we could always make up with enthusiasm. All that remained was to organise the details and the logistics and the not-so-straightforward matter of finding AU$30 000 in sponsorship to cover equipment and other expenses. In the last months of 1998 I set to work and quickly realised that most companies were reluctant to hand out cash. I made little progress and procrastinated heavily. And then Nat came along.

  Nat decided to defer her studies in psychology for a year and come travelling too. She worked in Sydney as a taxi telephonist while I worked the evening shift at a frozen foods factory in Bathurst, packing icy-cold fish-fingers and counting down the hours till knock-off time in dollars and cents. I spent my days on the phone, calling hundreds of media outlets and thousands of potential sponsors, and trying to crack the vicious circle of needing publicity to attract sponsors while needing the credibility of sponsors to interest the media.

  On the weekends, Nat and I would meet at Katoomba – halfway between our homes – and explore the deep river gorges and the soaring, wild ridges of the beautiful southern Blue Mountains.

  In mid-April of 1999, after months of minimal success, everything finally started to come together. As the list of sponsors began to grow, others were encouraged to join the show. The wagon started to roll and in the weeks before I flew out to London, couriers were arriving at the door every day, carting a range of boxes with all the different bits and pieces of gear that Tim and I would need. Together we were given over AU$20 000 worth of equipment from forty different sponsors. It felt like a monumental achievement, but I still didn’t have enough cash for an aeroplane ticket. I spent a few days in uncertainty, until my beloved grandmother stepped in with a loan.

  I flew out of Sydney on 14 May 1999. The final week of last-minute preparations had been so exhausting that I slept for twenty hours straight. I arrived in London to meet Nat; she had taken a different flight. Together, we sat at a bus shelter outside Heathrow airport, rebuilding our bikes and packing our gear under a sky of heavy grey clouds.

  And then we were off. The first pedals of an incredible journey. All the stress and the months of worry fell away and we lost ourselves in the beginnings of a beautiful lifestyle of gentle, easy cycling.

  We spent the next four months cycling east through the countries of central, southern and eastern Europe. We stuck to back roads, camped in secluded forests and generally planned our route day by day. We had many rewarding encounters with locals and occasionally we’d leave our bikes to canoe down a river or go walking in the mountains. At other times, when the roads took us through cities, we’d stop off at an Internet café to contact friends and family.

  Throughout, I stayed in regular contact with Tim. He’d solved our biggest problem and found a way to get year-long Russian visas! The embassy in Canberra had refused point-blank, saying that it was impossible; people from the various Russia-focused Internet newsgroups I’d checked out agreed. Tim had come through though, and now he was well on track for our meeting in mid-September.

  Nat and I were less successful when it came to organising visas for the Ukraine. First, the officials said ‘no’. Then, ‘Yes, but it will cost you.’ They were sticking to the old Russian system of communist tourism, which stipulated that we needed to have pre-booked accommodation for every night of our stay. Furthermore, the only official travel agent authorised to make such bookings gave us starting prices in the thousands. In the end we gave up and set our sights on Romania instead. There, I would collect my Russian visa and take a train to meet Tim in Moscow, while Nat took a bus to Istanbul and continued cycling in Turkey.

  We reached Bucharest a month later only to find that the Russian visa had not arrived. For Nat and I, this came as an executioner’s stay. We spent the week before the visa was finally tracked down wandering around the city, hand in hand. After this extra time, in a strange way, we felt more prepared for the separation than we would have otherwise been.

  ———

  Two days later, I was standing on a station platform and shivering with my hands under my armpits and my chin tucked well into the zipped-up collar of my polar fleece. The roiling grey sky had descended during the trip from warm, sunny Romania and was now skimming the tops of the featureless, eleven-storey concrete towers that served as homes for Moscow’s millions. A piercing cold wind was howling through the station, bringing with it an angling, icy sleet that defeated the design of the broad roof stretched over the platform leaving me with nowhere dry to stand. Milling around was a bustling crowd dressed in bleak colours that matched the weather. Above each platform were signs giving meaningful information to everyone but me. Beside the few inconsequential words that I remembered from my brief study of Russian at university, the only thing I could understand was the big clock mounted high above the entrance to the station. It was 11.30 a.m.

  I’d been in Moscow for three hours and spent most of that time confused, cold and just a little terrified. I managed to change some money at a rate that I was sure had suckered me right
in. I couldn’t understand what the man was saying – I’d simply handed over my American dollars and hoped for some change. Finally, I managed to cross town on the underground system and get to the station where I was supposed to meet Tim. His train was late. Unable to ask what was happening, I could only stand and wait, feeling very much alone.

  Finally, at midday, a shrieking train ground to a shuddering halt at platform five. I hurried along, eyeing the doors to each of the carriages until I reached the very end. There, standing behind a huge pile of boxes and bags, was a figure I recognised in an instant. Tim!

  Eight hours later, we were on a rattling train that was hauling us south through the night, towards the Caucusus Mountains. Tim was describing our destination: Mount Elbrus, at over five and a half thousand metres, is the highest peak in Europe. We had been planning to climb it as a way of kicking off the journey. Next to Tim sat Stas, an expert mountaineer from Petrozavodsk. He had agreed to be our guide on the mountain, yet he spoke no English. I turned back to Tim, who was still gushing with an unbroken stream of enthusiasm. We had barely spoken since Tim had left for Finland, yet here he was in front of me, bigger than I remembered, and hairier too!

  We chatted into the evening and I soon realised that we had both changed a lot. I had no doubt that we would have an amazing time together, and that we’d both meet the challenges of the year head on. But would we still share the same spark and the same values that we had over a year ago? Somewhere, in the back of my mind, the first seeds of doubt were beginning to grow.

  We got ready for bed. Tim had a top bunk sleeper and I watched as he climbed up to make his bed by stepping on the lower occupant’s pillow. I cringed as the owner of the bed glared furiously at Tim. This was an aspect of his personality that I’d forgotten. How to describe it? An ability to concentrate on one thing at the exclusion of all else.

  I remembered back to the first day I’d met him – the second person I’d gotten to know at university, just after meeting Nat. We’d sat down to eat sandwiches at a barbecue before becoming engrossed in each other’s stories of adventure. Two hours later, Tim’s conversation faltered as, all of a sudden, he almost fainted with hunger. He’d been clutching a sandwich for two hours without taking a single bite.