Richard and Nicholas Crane Journey to the Centre of the Earth

Richard and Nicholas Crane Journey to the Centre of the Earth Goodbye to the Open Sea 2 From the Madhouse to the Land of Morning Calm 20 Bogged Down in Nepal 34 Cycling the Himalayas 46 Xizang Zizhiqu, Quomolangma Feng and Rinbung Dzong 56 Lhasa and the Tourist Trade 74 Cycling Out to Desolation 85 The Big Descent 101 Sprint to the Gobi 109 Depression on the Silk Road 121 The Hottest Place in China 138 Urumqi and the Public Security Bureau 154 At the Centre of the Earth 171 Postscript 180 Appendix One: Equipment 181 Appendix Two: Daily Log of Distances and Ascent 188 Bibliography 192 Richard and Nicholas Crane Journey to the Centre of the Earth Goodbye to the Open Sea Several tramp steamers and a fishing canoe off the coast of Chittagong. A handful of ripples creeping in from the Bay of Bengal. Cousin Nick and I dipped our toes in the lukewarm water then turned our backs. That was the last we saw of the open sea. Almost due north of us, several thousand miles away, lay our target: the Centre of the Earth. It's the most remote point on the earth's surface; the furthest from the open sea. No one has ever been there. The Centre of the Earth lies somewhere in the heart of the Asian continental mass, isolated from the Far East by the empty expanses of the Gobi Desert, and guarded in the north by the frozen wastes of Siberia. To the south are the most formidable mountains in the world. The exact position of the Centre of the Earth - non-existent like the North and South Poles, yet as unique as the top of Everest and the bottom of the Mariana Trench - is fixed by triangulation. It is equidistant firstly from the Arctic Ocean, secondly from Bo Hai Wan in the Yellow Sea to the far east of China, and thirdly from here where we stood by the side of the Indian Ocean. The time was noon on 1 May. A few minutes slipped by (as we put on our shoes and socks) before we waved goodbye to the local Bangladeshis who fished the sea and worked in fields nearby. They had crowded round in astonishment at two foreigners visiting their beach. By way of explanation, we tried to say that we were going to the place where there is no sea - but it didn't seem to make sense. We carried our precious bicycles across the sand to the banana plantations and coconut groves which bordered the beach, then swung our legs over the saddles for the first of many adventures. We were excited and we were on our way to the Centre of the Earth. Three hours later we collapsed in a tiny wooden chai house, strangled by the heat, drenched in sweat, dizzy from sunstroke and hemmed in by an oppressive crowd of children and young men. A radio blared out Bangladeshi music. Clouds of flies zipped by our ears and flitted across our eyelashes. Our heads were thumping, and the noise and irritations dissolved into a flickering blur. A thin man hammered metal very loudly beside us. It would have been bliss to have climbed into the engine room of a tramp steamer to lie down and sleep in a tool box. We gulped fizzy drinks and sipped at the thick, sweet tea, trying to calm our nerves and slake our thirst. Nick had wisely covered his arms and wrapped thermal long-johns around his head to protect against sun and heat, but I short-sightedly went for a tan and ended up with tender sunburn on top of heat exhaustion. Forehead, forearms and calves burnt red. After all this, we had only covered twelve kilometres. Already we had lost our way. The inside had fallen out of our wide-angle camera lens, and from under my luggage flap a piece of our waterproofs had disappeared. Nick laughed, slightly apprehensively. "Stunning start, eh?" I munched on a corner of chapatti and apologetically offered: "It can only get better." I was optimistic that things would get better. In my experience they usually do - that little bit of luck always turns up just when needed. Nick summed it up when he said, as we flew out from London barely four days earlier: "This is an opportunist's expedition." We didn't know what would happen. That's not to say we didn't know what to expect. We had done some homework. Nick had already succeeded with many great bicycle adventures, I'd travelled the Andes, Himalayas, Korea and part of East Africa on foot. In the same way that our histories are different, so are our philosophies. Nick prefers to try to evaluate all options calmly and coolly, whereas I'm more likely to make a snap decision, frequently putting my foot in it. Underneath there has always been a niggling competitiveness -the sort on which siblings thrive. Silently, we acknowledged our differences. We felt that our attitudes and our abilities complemented each other, and thereby we had faith that together we had the potential to become a team fit to challenge the endless tide of problems ahead. Our vision of the oncoming expedition was, in retrospect, rather naive. We imagined a pleasant fast bike ride through some nice quiet little villages in Bangladesh and India, quickly reaching Nepal and the Himalayas where the proper adventure would start. Then we would be boldly attempting two things which had probably never been done before. Firstly we would set out to cycle across the Tibetan Plateau - that great purple lozenge on the world map - the most extensive and inhospitable high-altitude plateau in the world. Secondly, after tipping off the northern edge of the plateau back down almost to sea-level and swapping freezing cold thin air for roasting sand-desert, we'd try to pedal up the fabled Silk Road across the Gobi, following the footsteps of traders from thousands of years ago carrying silk and spices in exchange for gold and other precious items, including at one time glass, from the Roman Empire. Marco Polo brought his camel caravan this way. Genghis Khan rode his horse. We glibly set out alone on push-bikes. The total distance we guessed from the wiggles on the map would be somewhere around 5,000 kilometres. Knowing we could do 200 kilometres per day on flat smooth tarmac in Europe, we set ourselves a target speed of over 100 kilometres per day. Hence a total time for the journey of much less than fifty days, hopefully forty, maybe only thirty. We cycled ultra-lightweight: no tent, no food, only one litre of water each. No support crew. Only one set of clothes. We snipped the labels out of our thermal underwear and cut the edges off our maps. Hopefully we were travelling light enough to battle over broken tracks in remote mountains and to buy food from families in the valleys as well as shelter from the intense sun, wind, dust and sub-zero temperatures. Altitude sickness, lung infections, dehydration, stomach upheavals and frostbite were all potential companions in the mountains. Thirst and hunger in the desert. Red tape could equally be a problem, particularly at the heavily guarded crossing from Nepal to Tibet, which is now under the austere Chinese umbrella. If we survived all this and successfully penetrated the heart of Asia, then we imagined it would be an easy day- trip to whizz out and metaphorically plant our flag (too heavy to carry - we planned to wave a well-used T-shirt instead) at the magical Centre of the Earth. As it transpired, we discovered that we were, to say the least, overoptimistic and quite wrong in our predictions! Having covered only twelve kilometres in the first three hours, we were already way behind schedule. Neither did the rest of the first day go according to plan. We had left Patenga Point soon after noon. We had stopped at the tiny wooden chai house for food at about 3 p.m. After two hours stabilizing our temperatures, heart rates and egos, we paid our few taka and set off again only to find that our intentions to start the expedition in good style by getting to sleep at dusk were transformed into a frantic dash through the failing light and rising wind to seek shelter before thick black monsoon clouds from the west burst over us. To our dismay someone up above was planning a sparkling send-off to our trip; our frantic dash failed, the daylight failed, the heavenly cisterns opened up and a torrential downpour hit us. Nick's diary. Evening. Not being used to the ferocity of monsoon rain, we pedalled blithely on as if, like an English shower, it would quickly pass and leave us damply refreshed. Asian rain, it seems, is different. We were soaked to the skin within minutes and, in the wake of spraying water, darkness arrived unnoticed. The experience which followed is one of those that you use as a benchmark for the rest of your life. No lightning I'd ever seen compared with those fantastic, violent instants of bright white - almost blue - light which ripped the night to jagged shreds every few seconds. Ahead the road pulsed with water. Without the lightning we would have been unable to continue [for weight reasons, no lights were carried]. Part of me prayed for another flash so I could see my way ahead; part of me was wondering whether the next strike would target on a couple of Raleigh 753 racing bicycles! At first the rain was deliciously warm and cleansing, but the sheer volume of it quenched the heat from the land, the road and our bodies till we became cold.

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