Riding the Mountains Down

Very much in the style of Dervla Murphy (no bad thing, obviously), this is the first of some nine bicycle travel books by Bettina Selby. At 47 she decided to take up travel, and selected bicycling at her travel medium.

This book documents her journey in 1983 from Karachi to Kathmandu, and covers the eastern side of Pakistan from south to north, before crossing into India in the Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh before heading into Nepal. Out the other side and back into India, she finishes up in Sikkim.

Like every traveller to the India subcontinent, she struggles with privacy, person space, group thuggery and pointless bureaucracy.

Nicely written, amusing and engaging.

Some quotes I enjoyed:
I had travelled about 40 miles and my thoughts were turning more and more to food and drink (a frequent preoccupation of cyclists)when I was suddenly aware of a motorcyclist riding alongside, regarding me intently. ‘You are English, yes?' he asked. ‘Yes, I'm English' I replied with caution. ‘I like English woman,' he said with great enthusiasm. I said nothing but proceeded with warning bells sounding loudly. ‘English woman very sexy,' he confided. ‘No,' I said, ‘English women are not sexy.' ‘You are not being sexy?' he queried incredulously. ‘Not being sexy?' ‘No,' I said with even greater firmness. ‘No, I am not being sexy.' ‘Me, I am very sexy man, so then please I am saying goodbye and thank you,' and on this splendid note he revved up the engine of his 90c.c. motor cycle and zoomed off.

and less amusing:

The Kangra Valley grew wider the further east I went and villages and small towns became more frequent - squalid places these, in stark contrast to their idyllic settings. Dead dogs and bloated corpses of rats littered their muddy streets and the drains made their malodorous presence only too apparent. It was in one such place I experienced a particularly nasty incident which could have ended the journey right there. It happened around mid-afternoon when the day had become hot and sultry. I had no intention of stopping, but a man had stepped out of his little cafe as I passed and waved a bottle of soft drink at me. I stopped, but before I had even got off the bicycle a crowd of men and youths closed in around me. No one said anything, they just stood there slowly chewing betel nut and occasionally spitting the red juices onto the dusty ground in front of me. One fat youth pressed himself up against the front of the bicycle and was rubbing at his crotch while he leered into my face. The bottle had been opened in the meantime and was being tossed from hand to hand round the circle, until one of them thrust it suddenly at me as though he meant to strike me with it. At the same moment someone got hold of the back of the bicycle and twisted it over. Down I went in the filth, breaking my sunglasses and grazing my leg - though I was unaware of this at the time. Up to that moment I had been virtually paralysed with fear, but as I hit the ground I became so incensed with rage, I could have done murder. I could hear them laughing and jeering above me, and I hated them all. But somehow in the second or so it took for me to pick myself and the bicycle up the rage evaporated and I knew that I had to do something decisive to end this ugly scene before it became a tragic one. Then it was as though everything was happening in a dream - I could see their open jeering mouths, the betel-stained teeth giving the appearance of blood dripping. It's like a medieval bear-baiting, I thought, or a cock fight, and then I remembered a painting of the Spanish civil war, where people had been shooting and were being shot - their mouths too had been open; but I couldn't remember who the painter was, and this worried me because I could not concentrate. It was through this curious dream-like state that I heard my own voice, icy-calm and authoritative - as though I was addressing a class of fractious eight year olds. ‘I am going', said the voice,'to fetch a policemen'. Even in my disconnected state I remember thinking, ‘That's torn it', for it seemed a most feeble and inappropriate threat under the circumstances. But for some reason it worked; the awful men fell back and I wheeled the bicycle through the space they left, trying not to hurry, or to show the fear now which perversely came flooding back. In retrospect now I think this was the most dangerous moment of the whole encounter, for had I rushed or shown the least sign of fear they would have been on me like a pack of dogs and there might have been another unsolved case of a missing Western woman. As it was, I waited until I was well clear before leaping on the bicycle and pedalling off as fast as my shaking legs would allow - the babel of sound pursuing me showing that the temporary lull was over.