A Different Kind of Freedom - Kreisel Ray (книги бесплатно без txt) 📗
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
“A true pilgrimage lifts the traveler out of his everyday self into a realm beyond ego. When it returns his self back to him, all of life has become a single, endless pilgrimage.”
Kerry Moran, The Sacred Mountain of Tibet
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