April 11, 2017

It was 2 am. I had been riding around in not one but two different taxis for nearly 3 hours since I landed in Kunming.  I just wanted to find my hotel. This, on the tail end of 2 days of the worst food poisoning in my life prior to leaving Nepal (and fittingly my only food poisoning to date). Literally 5 minutes after eating or drinking anything, everythingpassed directly through. I laid in bed for my final 2 full days in Nepal, trying to stay hydrated before my trip to China. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I was smart, I thought. I had made an on line hotel booking. All I needed to do was pick up my bike, which was neatly packed in a box, find a taxi, and tell the driver which hotel. I had done this numerous times before. It was easy. But this is China. The language barrier here is legit. I would soon learn it is like nothing I have ever experienced. The taxi driver spoke zero English. I spoke even less Chinese. I told him the name of the hotel and even showed him my phone.  Nothing, because of course he could not read it.  He handed me his phone and asked me to type in the address, which was equally as nonsensical, yet from the complete opposite perspective.  Fortunately, I found the hotel on my mapping app, and like that, we had a direction.

We loaded up his van in the direction of the pin on my map. Thirty minutes went by. The driver appeared confident, until according to my map, he missed a turn, and then several more. I waved my hands frantically in an effort to get him to stop, pointing at the pin on the map and the blinking dot that was quickly going in the opposite direction. He waved his hands back at me emphatically telling me that he was going the right way. This hand dance charade proceeded for the next 10 minutes, each moment going further away from the pin on my map until he finally pulled over to ask directions at a taxi stand. I found the phone number of the hotel and implored him to call. He did, but for some reason handed me the phone.  Even if the person on the other end spoke any English, I still would be unable to communicate those directions to the driver, as if I knew where I was?  He just simply couldn’t fathom that I didn’t speak Chinese as was evident by the way he continued to carry on a complete conversation with (at) me. I was getting frustrated, as was the driver. We were lost, somewhere in Kunming, a city of 6.6 million people. There were no hotels near because at this point, if there were, I would gladly have taken one, any one. The driver having felt he had invested enough time and gas in this scavenger hunt, demanded more money to continue, to which I sternly declined. I grabbed my bike box and bags and the van sped off. I was left in exactly the same situation, trying to find my hotel, 90 minutes wasted, and still without a way to communicate. Unfortunately now, all of the taxis were much smaller, Volkswagen sedans…and my bike did not fit. I pushed. I pulled. I twisted, but the doors simply would not close. It was now 1:30 a.m. The convoy of drivers looked at me as if to say “What the fuck are you doing here?” At that moment, I wondered that as well. They also talked to me as if they expected that I spoke fluent Chinese and were dumbfounded at the fact that I did not. I took a deep breath and prepared to take my bike out of the box and build it.  At least then I would have transportation since it clearly was not going to fit in the taxi anyway. As I was tearing into the box, an older model Volkswagen from the late 1980’s, larger in size, rolled up. It was dented, beat up, and had a loud, loose, exhaust. The driver appeared to be in his late 50’s and the few teeth that he did have were badly decayed, but showed a kindness in his smile. With the windows in the back seat rolled all the way down, the corners of the box could stick out, allowing the doors (with a strong, full shoulder thrust) to close. I climbed in the passenger seat. There was a make shift metal gate erected separating the driver from the passenger for his security. The seat was torn, dash was cracked, but we were once again on our way, in the direction of the pin. The driver, however, had no idea where to go because of course he did not know the hotel, nor could he read the address on my phone.  For some reason this felt familiar, but I was resolved to figure this out.  He instead relied on me, at every street or highway junction, to give him a hand signal to continue straight, or turn left/right.  He was the driver.  I was the navigator.  We had our roles.  At 2 a.m. the blinking dot of our taxi was on the pin…only there was no hotel. My heart sunk and despair washed over me. There was a large building but it was not a hotel. The driver was excited thinking that he had found this mystery hotel. I walked up to the front of the building and was stopped at the door by a man dressed in a military uniform and holstering a gun. “Lossen hotel?” I inquired politely, trying to fake a smile to hide my stressful fatigue. I put my hands together at the side of my head, giving the international signal for sleep. He shook his head and shooed us away. That was it. I had spent nearly 3 hours searching for a hotel and in 30 seconds was dismissed. It was 2:30 a.m. I was mentally bankrupt. I had ridden my bike though the Himalayas, over the highest motorable road in the world in a snow storm, across the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal, through a wild game reserve in Zambia…but I was succumbing to Kunming, China and I had been here less than 4 hours. It is a modern developed city where everything is available. I just didn’t know how to ask for it. It was the most helpless that I have ever felt in my life. Have you ever had a moment when you just want to scream in utter frustration and maybe even break down in tears?  Now…nearly.  But then reality came back and I realized that would do me no good.  I just needed to take a deep breath and figure this shit out.  The driver,  frustrated, seeing the dejection in my face, looked at me with sincerity as if to say, “What do you want from me?”  “Fuck, man…I don’t know,” I said back audibly to him, knowing he didn’t understand, yet he actually did.  I again made the sleep sign with my hands and waived my hands around in a circle indicating, “Just find me a place to sleep, anywhere…I don’t care.” Twenty minutes later we arrived at a hotel. I smiled with gratitude as the driver pulled away.  I walked in the front door, woke up the night desk clerk, and checked in. By 3 a.m. I was asleep, in China.

The next morning I awoke, refreshed from the nightmare of several hours prior. When I walked out the front door, the once dark alley way was alive and gave way to the bustle of a major city. Electric scooters, (aka ninjas) stealthily zipped by me. I walked across the street to an open air restaurant. Inside was a case with dozens of meats and vegetables, many of which I had never seen before. I looked around at the others who were eating and they looked back at me with perplexing stares. A smiling woman handed me a basket. She pointed at the case and signaled for me to place whatever items I wanted into it and she would prepare them into a soup, a soup that I soon discovered was larger than my head. I was the only westerner around and I fumbled hopelessly with a combo of chop sticks and a giant ladle. The girl sitting next to me, who spoke about 7 words of English, said “They like you,” pointing to the staff who were all standing around giggling at the spectacle I was putting on. People really are just people. Searching for connection. Sharing a smile. I was back. The joy of the moment vanquished the stress of the night before and I was once again in my place. Everything is as it should be.  I crave this newness. I sometimes think that I don’t and I lull myself into complacency in places of familiarity and comfort. It is when I’m moving, experiencing, that my senses come to life. The boyhood curiosity takes over and pulls me forward. Tomorrow I will get back on my bike after a 5 week reprieve, and begin cycling 300 miles to the ancient city of Dali in the Yunnan Province where I will rejoin my 2 Swiss friends as we will travel north into Eastern Tibet. Back into the high mountains where my spirit soars and my heart becomes full.