After a week of waiting for an available seat on a flight home, I once again boarded a San Francisco bound China Air flight. During the course of the 13-hour flight, I spied the world out my small airplane window. The figure that I had fallen asleep to for so many nights during the past five months shown above. Orion the Hunter held his position high in the nighttime sky over the tiny Boeing 747 aircraft that carried me home.

My journey started on April 1, 1994 in Dali, Yunnan, China. By the time I reached Gilget in Northern Pakistan at the end of August, I had bicycled 3300 miles [5500 km] and climbed more than 160,000 vertical feet [48,700 meters]. With the exception of the small ferry across the Tsangpo River and a truck ride across a deep part of the Indus River, I completed the entire trip under my own power. By most every measure I exceeded all expectations I had for the trip. In the end my bike continued to work and I remained among the living, the two basic components needed to continue my journey.

Often when I saw another Westerner, they would tell me “O’ you must be so strong.” I am not so strong. There are plenty of cyclists who are certainly much stronger than I am. This trip at first glance seems like a physical journey across the Tibetan Plateau, but in the end what determined if I completed the trip was not my physical strength but rather my mental strength. A mental strength that enabled me to get up morning after morning and get on my bike to continue on this insane ride.

When people ask me about my trip, I tell them “It was an exercise in learning how to manage pain.” That statement often provokes rather strong reactions from people, many of whom think I am somewhat crazy for subjecting myself to such an exercise. I guess I do not see it exactly that way. When the Buddha diagnosed the human condition, he also came to the same conclusion. He put this forth in the First Nobel Truth – “Life is suffering.” The difficult part is learning how to manage the situation.

Epilogue

In the time since I have returned to the USA, I have not been through a single day in which I did not think about some aspect of this journey. At a superficial level I have reentered life in America, buying my food at Safeway and writing computer software for a living, but the way in which I perceive the world around me has changed. Sometimes, when I listen to friends complain about a meal in a restaurant that is not cooked “just so” or get worried about a credit card bill that they forgot to pay, I just smile to myself as these matters seem meaningless in the larger scheme of things. There was a certain clarity of life and purpose during my travels in Tibet that often seems to be difficult to find in the normal hectic life of the USA.

Meanwhile when I pass Native Americans seated on the sidewalk outside a Montana bar listening to Indian chants and songs on a boom box, I say a prayer for my Tibetan friends and hope that a kinder fate awaits them.

Ray Kreisel

Missoula, Montana – 1996

Please feel free to contact me about any comments, corrections or questions.

Please contact me via

email: [email protected]

webpage: http://www.kreisels.com/ray

Equipment List

The following is a list of all of the items that I carried during the journey, exclusive of food.

Sleeping Equipment

one person tent – Sierra Designs Divine Light Tent with stuff sack

sleeping bag – Feathered Friends Snow Bunting GorTex with compression stuff sack

sleeping mat – Thermarest with stuff sack

Clothing

Teva sandals

hiking shoes – Nike Lava Dome Jr.

riding gloves – with long fingers and covered back to protect my hands from the sun

socks (2 pair)

long pants (1 pair)

long sleeve cycling shirt -lightweight

cycling shorts (1 pair)

expedition weight long underwear zip turtleneck shirt

medium weight long underwear bottoms

pile jacket – 300 weight Polorguard

GorTex jacket – Marmot Alpinist jacket

rain pants – REI GorTex cycling pants

pile hat – with earflaps

baseball hat – to protect my face from the sun

bandanna

cotton surgical mask – to reduce the amount of road dust that I would inhale every day, commonly used in Tibet to help fight off bronchitis

stuff sack – 1 for clothes, 1 for food

winter gloves – GorTex ski type gloves

balaclava – light weight

small towel

Cooking Equipment

metal spoon

cooking stove – MSR XKG II stove with stove cleaning kit and nylon bag (I acquired this item halfway through the trip from the American Jay)

fuel bottle – filled with kerosene fuel

cook pot – large metal Chinese mug with lid, 1 liter size

water bottles – 2 liter Nagel plastic bottles, 1 with nylon carrying bag

plastic soda bottle – 1.5 liter size (only on second half of trip)

bicycle water bottles – 2 large size water bottles

water filter – Katadyn water filter with old toothbrush to clean water filter

Miscellaneous Equipment

flashlight – Maglight with extra light bulb and two AA batteries

mini Bic lighter

candles – (2) used for starting cook fires

thermometer

compass

small hand mirror – 2 inches across

comb

toilet paper

soap

Chapstick with sunblock

sunblock cream – SPF 25

multi-vitamins

sunglasses – glacier glasses

notebook

writing pen (2)

Chinese/English Dictionary-Phrase book

zip lock bags (4) – heavy duty freezer bags

local postcards with Chinese stamps already affixed

reading book – Annie Dillard, “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”

short-wave radio – with two AA batteries

mini tripod for camera – 3 inches long

camera – Olympus Stylus Zoom, 35-70 mm zoom with extra battery

film – 8 rolls

fishing hooks (3)

fishing line – 60 feet [30 meters]

two extra AA batteries

Important Documents and Papers

passport

credit card

US dollars $300

AMEX Travelers checks US$2000

airplane ticket

money belt

photocopy of airplane ticket

photocopy of passport and traveler check numbers (5) – one copy in each of my different packs

maps – ONC maps for Yunnan, Tibet and Pakistan, Chinese Government map of Xizang Province (Tibet), map of China,

notes from collected research – 2 pages

First Aid Kit

elastic hair tie (3)

heavy sewing thread

sewing needle (3)

folding scissors

aluminum foil

safety pins (3)

adhesive tape

drug usage information sheet

Diamox – drug for high altitude

Imodium – drug for diarrhea

Trimethoprim-sulfa D.S. (Septra) – weaker antibiotic

Ciprofloxicin (Cipro) – stronger antibiotic

antibiotic cream – 4 small packs

bandages (6)

alcohol swab (3)

tinidazole 4 grams – drug for giardia two doses

sterile pad (3)

mole skin

iodine swab (2)

Bicycle Equipment

bike computer – Avocet cyclometer with altimeter