Thanks to my writing about Yakutia for international readers, I have a unique opportunity to communicate with very interesting people. One of them is Rob Lilwall, a travel cyclist of London. Five years ago, he decided to embark on the journey of his life.
Bored of his work as a geography teacher in England, Rob eventually packed his panniers and took his bike for an adventure. He flew as far from England as possible. To Magadan. That was where he and his old school friend, Al Humphreys, hit the Road of Bones. It was the end of September and the beginning of a Siberian winter. At that point everything seemed perfect.
A month after he wrote ‘It is late October, and the temperature is already -40˚C …My thoughts are filled with frozen rivers that may or may not hold my weight; empty, forgotten valleys haunted by emaciated ghosts and packs of ravenous, merciless wolves.’
The initial plan started collapsing. They thought, on the way back home they would have to overcome 15000 mile for 500 days. In reality the journey appeared to be three-and-a-half-year and 30,000 mile throughout 30 countries.
About Yakutia
When they were already in Japan, I got in touch with Rob. He wrote to me ‘I had a great time cycling through Yakutia, it is an amazing place and full of wonderful people.’
Hm! Strange! Yeah, I understood cycling through the extreme cold was not easy and, indeed, it was a unique experience. But… Was his reply sincere? Was everything as amazing as he said to me? Let’s check.
In his travelogue he wrote the following things:
“Our tent sits in an icicle shrouded forest, half way across a vast glacial valley which stretches and winds its way westwards to the plains of Yakutia.”
“Every breath exhaled instantly crystallizes – beard, sleeping bag, tent roof – all is covered in ice. We stumble from the tent, gasping our way drunkenly through the bitter dawn to check the thermometer strapped to my handlebars. We are elated and awed to discover the temperature has now dropped right down to minus 40 Degrees (Centigrade and Fahrenheit in fact converge at this point).”
“As we left the Gulag port of Magadan in September – the first leg of our 25,000 km bicycle ride from Siberia to England, we were repeatedly warned that cycling the `road of bones` in winter would be impossible (this is the same road which Ewan Mcgregor motorbiked 6 months ago – we ran into several people who had met him along the way). However, whilst the going was certainly hard, we came to agree with what Dostoevsky wrote after his stint in a Tsarist camp in the 1800s: that one of the defining characteristics of human kind is our ‘ability to adapt’. It is astonishing how we did adjust to the cold. Yes, we wore a few more clothes, and ate twice as much food as normal, but in terms of actually feeling the cold, things were not nearly so bad as I’d imagined.”
“Whilst the human body does learn to cope, our human gadgets do not. Plastic in particular dislikes the cold: bicycle pumps snap, petrol stoves refuse to light, and tent poles will not click together. After a long days cycling, such fiddly extra repair jobs resulted in what Al describes as ‘serious sense of humour failures’ (i.e. normally involves shouting loudly at the offending item).”
“After a frenzy of cooking, eating and packing, we are on the road, the secret of staying warm being to always keep moving. The sun shines bright and cold on the sharp, mountains as we push over another pass and across another valley. The roads are covered in well packed snow, but there are few cars – the last vehicle we saw was a demilitarized tank on caterpillar treads, ferrying around the local goldminers.”
“As evening approaches, we are relieved to spot light and thus human life through the trees. The thought of standing in a warm room is irresistible and the Russians prove themselves wonderful hosts. Usually merely introducing ourselves as Englishmen cycling to Japan is enough to earn us several square meals and a warm bed. Whether such hospitality is just because foreigners (and cyclists) are so rare in these parts, or whether the cold climate ingrains such a culture, I do not know. But this is not reluctant or ostentatious hospitality – rather, it is lavish and full of smiles, whether it be gold miners, coal miners, weather station operators, factory workers, cafe owners or families.”
“Having broken through the notorious Gulag covered mountains of Kolyma, we began to realize how seriously behind schedule we were. We had used up half of our visas 90 day allowance, and yet were still only a quarter of the way to our Russian exit point where we could catch a ferry to Japan. Each day we slipped further and further behind schedule, and in our darkest moments we began to think that making it on time would prove impossible. This called for drastic action: we calculated a minimum daily distance and braced ourselves to stick to it, through thick and thin. What follows is a blur of rising before dawn in order to fight our way through blinding blizzards, along icy roads, across forested valleys, and then on and on into the cold nights before we could finally snatch a few hours of desperate sleep on a warm cafe floor.”
“Besides the cold and fatigue, feelings of guilt also started to get me down, as Al, three years the fitter than me (he has just traversed Europe, Africa and all the Americas on a bike) was able to go at a much faster pace and was continually forced to wait for me to catch up. By carrying some of my gear, he was able to help me to go faster, and we tried desperately to be positive about the situation.”
“At one stage during the exertion, I collapsed feverishly into a free hostel bed to sleep for 14 hours. Any notions that I would have been among Stalin’s survivors shattered – I too would have fallen if I’d been sent to work in the Gulags. A day later we were back on the bikes, an even higher daily km average now required.”
Btw, Rob released his first book called…
CYCLING HOME FROM SIBERIA
August 2009
Hodder & Stoughton
Trade paperback
In 2004 geography teacher Rob Lilwall arrived in Siberia, equipped only with a bike and a healthy dose of fear…
Finding himself in Far East Siberia in the depths of winter, Rob prepared to start his journey cycling along the legendary ‘Road of Bones’ to Magadan – the same road that Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman motorbiked during the summer months. Surviving the Siberian winter (just), Rob cycled onwards through the foreboding jungles of Papua New Guinea, a level 5 cyclone in Australia, midnight checkpoints and roadblocks in the snowy passes of the Himalayas and the war torn passes of Afghanistan’s Hindu Cush.
A gripping story of endurance and adventure, CYCLING HOME FROM SIBERIA is also a spiritual journey giving a poignant insight into life on the road in some of the world’s toughest corners.
Rob Lilwall studied geography and theology at university and, prior to cycling home from Siberia, was a geography teacher in London. He now writes and lectures worldwide about his experiences. He lives in London and CYCLING HOME FROM SIBERIA is his first book.
Order Rob Lilwall’s book Cycling Home from Siberia
Besides…
He made 6-part TV series about his epic cycling adventure to air in 2010 on National Geographic Adventure channel.
That’s so cool, my readers!
And everything was almost started from Yakutia!
PS. Have to say thanks to Rob for sending me photos and letting to publish at AskYakutia.com
Similar Posts:
- Quick tips: Cycling from Yakutsk to Magadan by the Road of Bones
- How does the Road of Bones (Kolyma Highway) look like in winter?
- Summer 2010: Biking the Kolyma Highway (the Road of Bones) – Mountain Area
- Flashback: 2010 Motorcycle Adventure Season on the Road of Bones, Yakutia/Siberia
- Oisin Hughes’s biking the Kolyma Highway (Road of Bones). Not Dead Yet Videos.
