Author: Tom Russell

Tales from the Slovenian Misery Trail

By Tom Russell

This time I wasn’t afraid. Starting the Slovenian Mountain Trail, it felt like coming home. I was returning to a place I belonged, to a place I understood. The trail. The trail is where I go to heal. Life needs to be lived, and this is where I can do just that.

Haunted by a sense of nostalgia, I realised I’d been here before. Two years ago, I stood here alone as I set off across the Balkans. I was in the same place, but now I was a different person. I was no longer alone. Dan, Joe and I were embarking on this 600 km journey across the Julian Alps.

I lay curled under my tarp, unable to sleep; I never do on the first night. So much lay ahead of us, all of it unknown. Knowing nothing about the future meant that everything was possible. That’s the beauty of adventuring into the unknown – it opens the pure possibility of life. 

For a week we were shrouded in the Slovenian forest. Days spent in the rain, cold and wet, wearing dishwashing gloves to warm my hands. Each day, the snowy mountains that loomed across the horizon were getting closer and closer. A record early snowfall had now made a gnarly route even gnarlier. We ignored the fact we had zero snow gear and in denial simply kept walking. Each day the sole goal of existence was to walk. The snow was an issue for the future, we simply had to live for the needs of the day. 

I felt happy. Usually on a thru hike my days are this mental rollercoaster, bouncing between despair and ecstasy. But here I’ve felt this steady contentment, some form of peace. There hasn’t been this grand suffering as in previous times. In the past, I suffered from my idealism. Idealising the suffering of solitude, of having no shackles, believing in the purity of the self, I left people I loved. I drowned in the void that surrounds the lonesome walker. It was always optional, driven by the desire to suffer. The need to suffer. How many days have I spent crippled by the loneliness of this romantic nightmare? I no longer feel this need. I think it’s taken these tears to nourish the white flower that grows in my often black and broken heart. In a cruel and twisted way, it’s taught me the need for others.

Most of the mountain huts were now shut due to the snow. We would often curl up on the hut porches to shelter from the rain. The Slovenian Misery Trail. That’s what Dan and Joe had started to call it. At camp one night we talked about quitting. It made complete sense. Walking in the cold rain was miserable and the snow was going to be dangerous to say the least. The idea of quitting terrified me because I felt like I had nothing to go back to. I felt the crippling ache of losing people who used to define your life. I even felt separate from Dan and Joe. I was an outcast to their brotherly bond. It was too cold to fall asleep, shivering as I let the tears wash the dirt off my face.

In the morning, we bailed off the trail. Failed hitch after failed hitch, we walked in silence. We had no clue where we were going but as long as it was out of the rain we didn’t care.

We ended up getting a ride from a guy driving to Tolmin, so that’s where we were headed. As we drove out of the hills, with music playing from the radio, the sun started to shine. In the mirror I could see Dan and Joe smiling, softly singing in the back.

It turns out our new friend knew these mountains well and he offered to help us come up with a plan. Map in hand, he called up his friend who worked in the Mountain Rescue. In a few days’ time there was going to be a good weather window, which should give us enough time to get through the highest mountains. There was still plenty of fresh snow so we planned plenty of lower elevation alternates that we could bail onto. Our psyche was back. And so, we rested at a campsite, ate and even showered. That man did more for us than he will ever know. He gave us hope and belief. The trail always provides. 

Through everything we finally arrived at the foot of the mountains. Through the rain, through tears, through the cold and now through the mountains and snow. That is the nature of a thru hike – to go through it all. 

We climbed up along a crystal river. It was brutally steep climbing, but that was nothing compared to our excitement. Our excitement to get up high into the alpine, to drown in the vastness. We eventually broke through the tree line. All around were towering masses of rock, masters in a world of flux. Shards of rock that seemed to cut across the sky. Limestone faces extended all around that burned bright in the sun, blinding me, forcing me to shield my eyes from their purity. As I climbed up through rocky outcrops, I encountered the first of the snow. Above, I could see Dan and Joe about to reach the shelter. Looking up at them, two figures seemingly dancing along the land, I started to cry. Smiling with tears streaming, I spun around trying to take everything in. Refusing to let anything slip by. I knew then that all the suffering was nothing compared to the beauty I’ve experienced. I was back home in the mountains. 

We piled into the emergency shelter. Inside were mattresses and blankets, a cosy den. Like kids we ran around the giant boulder field nearby. Climbing the various lines we could see, playing till the sun set where we retreated inside the shelter. We listened to the howling of the wind while we were wrapped up inside. We talked and laughed until the warmth and comfort of sleep welcomed us. 

I opened the shelter door to the sun starting to rise over the massif opposite us. Distant peaks lit up in a pink haze. Joe and I set off to summit Jalovec. Dan sensibly was staying behind as he didn’t want to push the risks. Joe and I established that our goal was to simply have fun and that we were completely okay with the likelihood of not reaching the summit. We knew it was going to be spicy. We hopped through boulder fields and up scree slopes. With our harnesses on we started ascending through some via ferrata sections, thankful for the protection given the exposure. Slowly we climbed higher. Quickly the route became covered in snow. Without any crampons or axes slipping on the snow would mean a high chance of a death fall. We decided to quest up off route on rock. We were both rock climbers, so we felt it was safer, but it quickly got sketchy. Slab climbing in no fall territory, looking down below at hundreds of metres of cliff below. Any foot slip and you were plummeting down. Joe could tell I was starting to struggle and lose my head. My leg at times doing a full ‘Elvis leg’. Joe guiding me through the beta when I got cruxed out. 

We eventually got completely snowed out and decided that was high enough. We stood for a while marvelling at everything around us. With all the recent snow there was not a soul anywhere on these mountains. It was just us. The space to think. To feel. To live. To revel. ‘The ecstatic joy of pure being’. Being able to share these experiences is what it is all about. To be in these places with people you care about, doing things you love. These moments you can’t convey to other people. Moments you can never fully relive. Moments I’ll always look back on in awe, no matter how old I become. As I stood there, I knew that when I die I’ll smile, knowing that I’ve felt beauty that is inconceivable, that no words could ever convey. 

It was now just the simple task of downclimbing everything we had just quested up. Dan was waiting for us at the bottom, nervously debating at what point he should call mountain rescue. 

Packing up our stuff a fight broke out between Dan and Joe over water. Something so minor quickly divided us. In silence we set off and bombed it down knowing we had a lot of distance to cover that day. The goal was to reach a hut on the other side of a big technical pass. 

Joe and I didn’t see Dan for most of the day. I think it was easier for him to be apart from us than to be with us. He had lived in solitude for the last two months hiking across the Alps. Joe and I kept getting annoyed with his selfishness, but I knew he was just learning how to deal with people again. He was a solitary creature being forced into a herd.

By evening we began the final ascent to the pass. We climbed up scree as ibex pranced above us. In an ocean of rock, we tried to work out where the pass was. Jagged ridgelines all around us broken up by towering spires. Dan was nowhere to be seen, and the terrain was getting sketchier and sketchier. We climbed across exposed wet rock, up vertical sections pulling onto steel cables while my feet slipped on ice. We’d been following Dan’s footprints but now we hadn’t seen any for a while. I could see Joe’s uneasiness growing. His fear of seeing Dan’s body lying somewhere down below, somewhere we would never find. 

The last beams of light were staggered across the various ridgelines, cutting shadows across the land. We were post-holing up to our knees in fresh snow. I was thankful for the mist, not being able to see the drop below. Being in the mountains it’s hard not to experience ego death. You feel so small in the immensity of it all. You feel so insignificant and yet you feel so much. 

Finally, we made it to the top and I could see Dan sitting there. My joy at him being alive quickly wore off and soon we were all shouting at each other. But the setting sun cut our fight short. The threat of darkness and the need to get down was more important. Only a few minutes into the descent, the only light was from our head torches. After some snow fields and via ferrata, we saw the distant light of the hut. It started to rain, and the distant glow never looked so welcoming. The light was getting closer and closer. We made it. The hut warden was shocked when he asked where we came from. Turns out we were the only people to have made it through that pass in the snow. A testament to our stupidity. Our fighting was irrelevant compared to the joy of a fire and a hot bowl of goulash. 

The landscape we had been passing through was of another world. A rough wilderness where beauty is the most common of things. I would stop and try to look all around, but I couldn’t absorb it all. It was everywhere and yet I couldn’t hold onto any of it. I was just passing through. I knew I would wake up the next day and not be able to truly remember any of it. It existed only in the now. Beauty only exists in the present. Like everything, it will pass, but I think that’s okay. Leaving those moments as moments. No matter how much you want to, you can’t hold onto any of it. If you try to hold on forever, you’ll drown in memories of the past. I think this is the nature of everything. Relationships and times of your life can’t always be forever, but that doesn’t take away their significance or beauty. These times with people can burn like fireworks exploding against the dark sky, but fireworks can’t burn forever. If it was forever, it would be but a mere candle.

We stood at the base of Triglav. A helicopter was flying around looking for the body of a hiker who had died up here. With all the snow we never thought we would be here, but here we were staring up at its three peaks, its crown. The tallest mountains in Slovenia. The plan was to go from a hut on one side, then to move up and over to a hut on the other side. We began pushing up. I could see a woman laugh at Dan as he passed her in his unbuttoned shirt, shorts and trainers, while she had mountaineering boots, crampons, jackets, helmets and ice axes. As I reached her, she said “whenever there’s one crazy there’s always another not too far away.” 

Things quickly got technical. The rock and snow fields were steep with plenty of via ferrata. We made our way up. All three of us stood at the top. We embraced in celebration. Despite everything we made it to the highest point of the route. In a sea of snow, here we were looking down on the world below. The sun was starting to set and all around us lay layers of purple, blue and yellow. Along the horizon you could see the curvature of the earth. This beautiful, beautiful world.

The temperature was beginning to drop as we began the descent. The hut soon came into view and with it the dream of warmth. This dream was interrupted as all of a sudden we cliffed out. Standing on a snowy ledge clipped into a cable, we looked around. Below a vertical drop, we could make out some cables. We had no rope and to get there would require a hail mary jump down the snowy drop while trying to catch the cable. In all likelihood we would be plummeting down into the abyss below.  We’d made it so far to get here, but we all knew we were seriously close to the line. Joe made the call not to go any further. He suggested we go back up a bit and bivy up there for the night. Things would get dangerously cold if we slept up here, so I made the heartbreaking suggestion to retrace our steps and go back down the other side. Back over the top of everything we had just climbed. 

In the pitch of darkness, we put on some layers and turned on our head torches. We looked at each other with sombre eyes, knowing we had to lock in. This wasn’t a game and we knew there would be no room for mistakes. We climbed back up through snowy chutes, traversing icy rock, everything we had just done but now in the dark. We were taking our time and making smart decisions. It was already dark so there was no need to rush, it made no difference. The only focus was to make it down alive. With the temperature drop, the snow was freshly frozen which made the descent easier, being able to kick in solid boot packs. The light from my head torch was slowly dimming until it died. This wasn’t the best time for that. I slotted in the middle between Dan and Joe, desperately trying to occupy the little bubble of light around them.

It got scary. Real scary. But you didn’t have room to let fear into your head. You couldn’t let it mess with you. You couldn’t let it distract you. You had to be there. I was wholly there. To survive you had to be present. If you came out of that moment it would be over. This intensity of living. Existing in the space between life and death, everything dissolves away apart from the sole need to live. Moments so pure, you could die for.

We made it. We made it down. A group outside the hut had been watching the dots from our headlamps descend down in anticipation of the worst. I’ve never hugged anyone so tight as we collapsed onto the ground. It was only now that I could feel the amount of adrenaline in my body. I hadn’t noticed the stars but the whole night sky was dancing with them. “You can only know the value of life when you are that close to losing it”, Joe said. I lay listening to my heart beating. I felt the value of being alive and the value of others. I felt so happy to be lying next to them. To not be alone. To feel the sense of brotherhood between us all. Love gets in the way of death, for love is life. It’s for love that I did not want to die.

The next day we quit. We got a hitch to town from a circus fire dancer and got a bus to Lake Bled. We’d had our fair share of adventure. With the weather window being over, why suffer more when we didn’t have to?

Walking around Bled I felt nothing. From the peace of the mountains to this chaos. All these tourists had come to see how beautiful this lake was but to me it was nothing. Nothing compared to the beauty of the mountains. To the peace of the mountains. A fall from grace. We felt aimless. Normal civilisation wasn’t meant for us. Stressed and anxious we wandered around, but it wasn’t long before with a grin I proposed we got back on the SMT.

And so, we walked. Three Dharma bums partaking in the rucksack revolution. Through the rain and cold we placed foot after foot. Our feet wrinkled from the river-like trail. Nights spent shivering for warmth, sneaking into firewood sheds. Having quit the trail, everything now felt like a gift. I had accepted that the trail was over and so none of this we were meant to experience. Everything we passed by now felt special. These were miles I was never meant to walk. There was no rush because we no longer had a goal. There was no destination. No goal but to live, and with that came a feeling of immense freedom.

One of the last nights on trail we barricaded ourselves on this porch. We flipped a table to block an approaching storm. We each had our own form of protection. Dan had strung up his tent horizontally, Joe was lying under a plank of wood, and I was wrapped in my plastic groundsheet. Despite my burrito I was completely soaked and spent the night shivering feeling hypothermic, but I’ll always look back on this night and smile. We lay there in the rain singing. Singing ‘So rock me mama like a wagon wheel, rock me mama any way you feel.’ A song about a man traveling home to see his lover. Initially it saddened me. I no longer had someone I loved to go back to, and the idea of home felt alien. This strange abandonment or aimlessness. But I now felt weirdly okay with that. Despite this loneliness, I felt love for Dan and Joe, love for friends elsewhere, love for this life. I think I agree with something Joe said, that love is the only real thing in this world. I think it’s the only thing that matters. It’s the most priceless treasure in the world, and with it the whole of life lies open.

With the leaves now falling from the trees, our time on the Slovenian Mountain Trail came to an end. Together we’d carried the fire across Slovenia. This trail taught me that it is only because of others that my fire burns bright. Mad to live knowing that I don’t have all the time in the world, only that which I’m given and while I’m alive I intend to live and to love. There have been times where I’ve lost that. But I now feel a duty to love, because when you lose that you lose everything. There is no life but in love. 

By Tom Russell

Mongolia. This was a place like no other. A land of extremes where normality does not exist. Being here was like time travelling to the wild west. Travelling to a different universe where life is completely alien. 

Hal and I had been here now a month. On a farm near Orkhon, up north. We hopped on a train from Ulaanbaatar, sharing our carriage with two grannies. We waited at the station for Mingee. A few hours of waiting and we still hadn’t heard from her. We slept on the benches as people eyed us. This woman after looking at us for a while said ‘Mingee?’. ‘Yes Mingee, Mingee”. She started to move about drawing out an imaginary map on the ground. All we understood was that we had to cross a river and then the railroad and that was our destination. Safe to say we stayed put. 

A woman came up to us. She wasn’t Mingee but she was going to bring us to her. She pointed to a truck. We jumped into the back of the truck, lying amidst chopped lumber. We drove through the town. People riding around on horseback, cows milling about. A little boy hopped in the back with us and later jumped back out when he was clearly home. We came to a stop. 

We stayed a few days at Mingee’s parents’ place in the village. A small, fenced area with the grandparent’s ger and their garden, a cooking area and then another ger and some small barns and paddocks. Here we met Schmetterling and Galeile. They were working for Mingee as well. A couple hitchhiking across the world. Schmetterling was from Germany. A dreaded, psychedelic-taking voyager. Galeile was a doctor from Belgium. A great duo. 

We slept in our tent on the concrete floor in the kitchen. A room with a wood burning stove and cheese hanging up to dry. We spent our days building fences and getting our stomachs used to the Mongolian diet, which consisted of this fatty meat cooked in more fat. We had a horse, called Chaton. Hal would train him and later would teach me how to ride. 

After a few days we moved to Mingee’s farm. Further out from the village. She had her house, which she shared with her daughter, and a building where us workers stayed. We cooked on the wood stove outside and ate our meals on the porch. An American named Fynn was with us now. He played the tin whistle and only spoke in jokes.

This was it, truly in the middle of nowhere. The horizon was only limited by my eyesight. Never ending expanses of plains. The Orkhon river passed through below in the valley. This was it; we were out there. Pure life, without superficialities. This was life to the bone, living in Mongolia and shitting in a hole. 

Mingee was this Mongolian woman who lived here and ran the farm by herself. She had forty or so cows and a few hundred horses. An unbelievably strong woman. You needed to be to survive out here and to last winter. 

We would wake and herd the cows. Riding around on horses screaming ‘Chandar’ with our sticks. Chasing the calves into this little pen and then Mingee would milk them while we tied them up. Mingee and her daughter savagely beat any cow who wasn’t behaving. Boots slammed into their side. Amidst the violence Hal and I began naming the calves. Double Decker, Milky Way, Oreo. This emotional attachment to animals is something that Mingee and Mongolians don’t feel. There’s no space for sentimentality here. To Mongolians, animals are simply resources. Resources to aid in their mission to survive. As such they get treated accordingly. I’ve watched as a cowboy named Marlboro cracked a plank of wood in half over his horse’s head, while others punched their horses in the face. Mingee even asked the local policeman to shoot her dog after it killed someone’s goat.

During the day Hal and I would do construction, building the shed. We built it out of scrap wood and rusty nails. Hal was the brains of the operation, coming up with the plan and then ordering me about to carry the logs of wood. It worked well that way and by the end we had ourselves a shed which we reckoned would make it through winter without collapsing. 

After a day’s work, if we had the energy, we would take some horses and go for a ride. Riding around the mountain as the sky turned purple with every sunset. After dinner we would sit on the porch, playing games and chatting. Schmetterling in the first few days had discovered a plantation of wild weed, which he started harvesting and drying out, so he would enjoy his homemade joint at the end of the day.

And that was about it. That was our daily schedule and yet no day would ever be the same. Everyday all these simple tasks turned into a nutty adventure. But overall, life here was barebones. It was simple and beautiful. The simplicity gave you the space to bathe in the beauty.

Everything was about survival. About preparing for winter. Food you didn’t get at your local supermarket. If you ran out of food, you killed for your food. You had a slaughtering day. Cows during the harsh winter lose their fat while horses don’t so it makes more sense to eat the cows in the summer and horses in the winter. We were there in summer. We had run out of food to eat so today’s job was to solve that. Hal, myself, Mingee’s daughter’s boyfriend Tomo and Marlboro went out to find the cow Mingee wanted to kill. Marlboro chased the cow into the horses’ pen, where we shut the gates blocking him in. There were four of us in there with this one cow. Marlboro and Tomo throwing lassos, trying to hook his horns. The cow charging about. Eventually the lasso landed around its horns, but the rope was ripped out of Marlboro’s hands. Tomo dashed to grab it with the cow running, he grabbed it and quickly spun around a pole. With the rope wrapped around the pole, the cow buckled in his stride and fell to the ground. 

Hal and I timidly helped drag the cow to the killing site. Marlboro and Tomo whacking him with their sticks. With ropes now around his legs we pulled him to the ground, pinning him down. My hands pressing his forelegs onto the ground. Marlboro pulled out a penknife and thrust it in between his eyes. I struggled to hold his legs down which struck out in spasm. My eyes didn’t leave his eyes. large. Terrified. The spasms slowed and his eyes stopped moving.

Marlboro started gutting the cow and butchering the meat. An entire cow killed and butchered with a penknife. He grunted directions to us now and then in Mongolian, we tried to work out what he wanted us to do. Squeeze the feces out of its intestines, hold back this leg, grab that lung, carry the head over there. Not a single bit of that cow was wasted. Everything was a resource that was too valuable to waste. The only thing left behind was its skin, left out for the birds. The meat lasts the longest while the organs are the first to go off. We placed the meat in a freezer box, while all the organs were all put in one pot and boiled in water. That was dinner for the near future. 

The organs teamed with cucumbers bought from the local policeman was an interesting combination. A combination that didn’t do many favors for my digestion. It was a relief to the group when Schmetterling decided enough was enough and set out to build a toilet. It ended up being more of a throne. A nice wooden throne with a view. I’d sit there and take in the view. Nothing but the steppe with horses grazing in the distance

Mongolian horses are famous around the world. In Mongolia people’s horses roam free until they were needed and then are captured. We had three horses at the farm for daily life while the rest of Mingee’s horses roamed free. The horses are branded for identification but often some run away and never return. They either stay lost, or cross paths with the wolves. Mongolian horses are small in stature but incredibly resilient and strong. 

One day we spent branding some of the younger horses. I think it may have been one of the craziest days of my life. We went back down to the farm in the village. Nasa, a cowboy, and a few teenagers from the town had led a herd of thirty or so horses into the farm, and we shut the gates. You could see the stallion straight away. The stallions always had a longer mane and possessed more muscle. We started by trying to separate one from the herd. We would push the herd into a corner and the cowboys would try lasso the horse. The horses obviously didn’t take too kindly to this so they would try bolt out of there, crashing through whatever fences were blocking them in. Once a lasso stuck, we would tackle it to the ground and then tie his front legs together. No horse likes to be pinned to the ground and so we would have to wrestle with it. Usually there would be two of us wrestling it while someone else shaved its hind leg to prepare the skin for the brand. And then the brand would be placed on. This process of wrestling was hard enough without the commotion going around you. All the other horses galloping around you. I was even wrestling one horse on the ground when I heard a crash behind me of a horse breaking through a fence and then jumps over the top of me. Absolute madness. All the Mongolians were drinking vodka, pouring it down your throat while you’re on top of a horse. At one-point Fynn and Nasa started wrestling each other. Having some sort of competition amidst this chaos.

That night we threw a party for the local village. A night spent necking vodka while chanting and dancing around a fire. There was this beautiful girl there but safe to say it didn’t go too well considering I only spoke English and I asked her if she was from Orkhon, which was the only village for a few hundred miles. Mongolians love their vodka to the point they could hardly walk, and yet would collapse on top of their horses and gallop home. I lay by the fire, admiring the stars. After twenty years of living, I’ve somehow ended up here, lying on this patch of grass in Mongolia. Sometimes I think I know things, that I’ve learnt these profound lessons, but I think the only thing I know is that you have got to be open to it. Open to life and everything that entails. All the weirdness of it that makes it special. 

This is just a brief description of what life was like in Mongolia. Every day was another adventure. I could never recount it all but from branding horses to castrating cows, we experienced a lot. But time on the farm was coming to an end. We were going to take some of the horses and go for a long old ride for a few days, before heading back to Ulaanbaatar.

By Tom Russell

We squeezed into this convenience store, jostling past customers as they bought their individual cigarettes, to the back door. Out in the yard were two motorbikes sitting there. They were for us. We had a few days to kill in Ulaanbaatarbefore heading north, and the lure of a motorbike trip was just too appealing. Nonchalantly we asked Beno, the garage owner, if we could expect any trouble with the police as we didn’t have official motorbike licences. ‘This is Mongolia’, he replied with a smile.

Bags strapped on the back and saddle bags brimming with food, we bade farewell to the Beno. Hal rode out the gate first. I wasn’t in any rush to take the lead. I’d ridden smaller bikes before, but this was a different beast, and it had been a while since I’d been on a bike. My feet scuttling along the ground, pushing the bike to cover up my consistent stalling. Hal glancing behind every now and then checking that I hadn’t died this early. Slowly I was getting used to being back on a bike. At traffic lights I was no longer popping wheelies out the gate. Through dusty roads and past the flurry of gers we were on the main road out of the city. This was the one main road in the country, a linear path connecting the north and the south. Driving amidst the chaos of traffic was not an experience I’d like to repeat. 

The pollution and the noise didn’t last long. Soon there was nothing. Ulaanbaatar was quickly left behind. The Steppe. All my life I’d read and seen pictures of the Mongolian steppe but none of which quite encapsulated it.  Rolling green fields, broken by sharp mountains. My eyes filled with every shade of green. Even now, gunning it on the bike, you still didn’t really feel like you were moving. The vastness of the landscape swallowed you. We were just distant specks moving in this barren world. Emptiness. Emptiness. Emptiness. Everywhere, there was nothing. We would pull over  every now and then for a smoke and to rest our arses, and the silence would hit. My ears, no longer filled with the roar of the engine, were empty. Nothing. Not a sound. 

Riding a bike in this vastness, your mind can’t help but wonder. My mind was free, no longer blocked in by the constraints of buildings or the buttresses of people. Wonder. Space to breath. Space to think. Free from all the external buzz that beats you into shape. We crossed entire worlds. We would ride to the horizon and then cross the lip and a whole new world would reveal itself. Down into a new valley and a new world.

Up in front I saw some police lights and Hal getting pulled over. Reducing my speed, I drove past and pulled over a safe distance in front and peered nervously behind. Hal and the police officer were chatting. The first test. A big grin broke out across my face as Hal hopped back on his bike and slowly approached where I was waiting. I couldn’t see under his helmet, but no doubt there was a grin there as well.  

We still had a few hours of sunlight left before we would be forced to make camp, so we hurtled on. The steppe was eternal. Once we were in it, I didn’t believe in an outside world. Herds of horses galloping across the landscape. Occasionally, the bizarreness of everything would overwhelm me. Passing by a herd of camels I couldn’t help but giggle. The weirdness of life is a great and beautiful thing.

Another police stop. As expected, we were beckoned over. Filled with confidence from our last interaction we pulled over and got out our documents. There were three of them. One in a smarter uniform was clearly the big boss, the other two in uniforms of a lighter blue. One of them was twirling his baton while occasionally rubbing his stomach that poked through his shirt. The other had a much quieter presence. The big boss would speak to the quieter officer who acted as our translator. He explained they weren’t happy with our standard driving license. Still, we weren’t too nervous. This being Mongolia we expected to hand over some money and be on our way. We figured this was just fear tactics. Amidst a serious language barrier, we exchanged the occasional few words, awkward laughs, and some cigarettes. The big bellied officer jokingly hit us now and then with the baton.

The big boss drove away, while the rest of us remained. A few hours later and we’re still in the same spot watching the sun set from the side of the road. Our mood started to slowly dwindle with our frustration mounting. Now everything was less jokey. The officer with the baton was getting slightly too power giddy and was becoming a serious annoyance with his baton. Every hit was bringing us slightly closer to our breaking point. Cigarette after cigarette to pass the time and calm our nerves. The wait continued. We figured we weren’t going anywhere anytime soon, so we might as well sit and enjoy the sunset.

The sky was now dark. After four hours of waiting the big boss returned and the conversation picked back up. After some mumbling we grasped that we were going to have to pay a fine. Yes, finally. Brilliant. We both had our cash in our hands and were basically thrusting it towards them. Take it and let us continue. They didn’t make any move to take our money. Instead, they mounted our bikes. Woah. Woah. Hold up. Hal sprinted and jumped in front of the bikes. He had no intention of letting them drive off. Standing in front of them, he called up Beno and hastily explained what was going on. He handed the phone to the big boss. After talking, Beno told Hal that only a Mongolian citizen is allowed to pay the fine, so they were going to take the bikes for now and we had to go with them. Left with little choice we got on the back of the bikes, with the police driving. At least we were leaving this spot on the side of the road. Here we were in the middle of nowhere in Mongolia getting a police escort to lord knows where. I made sure to give his belly a big squeeze.

We were dropped off outside this restaurant. They unstrapped our bags and then sped off on our bikes. There were some rooms above the restaurant, a Mongolian motel it seemed. We sat down on the curb. Both of us taking a second to process what had just happened. The two of us sitting there, we still had no clue where we were, there was the restaurant, the road and then further off in the distance some lights from a small village. We had no clue where our bikes were or where the police station would be. Where in the middle of the steppe does one find a police station?

We talked to Beno and the plan was for him to get a bus to where we were so we could go to the police station and get this all sorted. Well, this wasn’t where we pictured we would be spending the night. A woman walked us upstairs to our room. We thanked her and dropped our bags. Dirty and bug infested with cracked walls, it wasn’t too inviting but it would have to do. 

We found a nice bench to sit on and cooked dinner on the side of the road. As our noodles simmered, we joked about, trying to see the funny side of it all. You have got to accept you are not in control. There’s no script to follow and that’s where the excitement comes from. The monotony of normal life manifests itself in the repetition of events to where it becomes tough to distinguish between one day and another. Here that doesn’t exist.

I woke the following morning bleary eyed. The night’s sleep was pretty rough. I kept getting woken up by bugs crawling on my face and parts of the ceiling falling onto me. We had nothing else to do but to kill time until Beno arrived. Back on our bench, backgammon and chess were our cure. The motel owner’s little daughters kept us company, insisting we play with them. My focus on the chess games would be shattered by some brutish pigs occasionally running around behind us. Sitting next to a mountain of trash and an outhouse wasn’t the best placement. Determined not to waste the day, we strolled around the plains for a bit. The sense of barrenness you couldn’t escape. Walking along, you passed by a carcass every now and then. Sitting on a hillside we tried to get the lay of the land. Below us was a little village with gers and a few buildings. We figured that’s where the police station would be, and hence, our bikes. Mourning the loss of our bikes, I watched as a motorbike troop drove past in the distance. We could see the road where we were pulled over. A little streak across the open land. I could make out little figures on motorbikes simply driving past the checkpoint on the grass, taking a wide berth of the police. So that’s how it’s done.

Our rescue turned up at around six. Boy, were we glad to see Beno. We quickly stopped for a quick meal in the village. Sitting there, we discussed the game plan. He seemed confident that we could get the bikes back. He chatted with the restaurant owner about the police in town. She apparently knew them, so she gave them a ring. She got off the phone looking more dismayed than before. It wasn’t looking good, apparently the big boss had contacted the police in Ulaanbaatar about it all. We packed up and made our way to the station. The mood was a lot more sombre. 

We found the station in the middle of town. It was empty apart from some cows milling about outside. The waiting never ended. Some herders came over to chat. Apparently, the police had gone to a different village, but they confirmed our bikes were here in the shed. They were chuckling as they told Beno that the three police men, fuelled on vodka, were joyriding our bikes around last night.

A police car finally turned up. Hal and I nervously glanced at each other. It was time for our best behaviour. Beno approached the big bellied officer and they talked in hushed voices. Neither of us had any clue what they were saying so we stood there trying to adopt what I thought of as an innocent expression. 

Beno started to walk away, beckoning for us to follow. After we had put some distance between us and the station, he broke down what had happened. The bikes needed to be transported back to Ulaanbaatar on a truck – we weren’t allowed to ride them – and we would need to pay a fine in the city; but we were all free to leave. Relieved that this was all over, we bought some beers and headed back over the hill to our motel. The realisation that our motorbike trip was over dawned on me, but I didn’t dwell too much on it. You just got to it rolling.

Back outside we shared a beer with Beno and chatted. Our new friend talked of his time studying in Moscow while we talked of our far-off lives in Durham. The sun was starting to set so we grabbed our bags and walked off to find somewhere to sleep. With the fine looming we didn’t fancy paying for another night at the motel. I pitched the tent while Hal started to cook our dinner. Lying on the grass with our bellies full, we chatted about things that never come up in daily life but out here feel so normal to talk about. Soon, the orange glow of the setting sun gave way to a blanket of stars. Stars don’t exist elsewhere like they do in Mongolia. There’s a depth to them, layers. You feel like you’re looking further and further into them, beyond them. We picked out the different constellations we could see and created our own. 

The only problem with the steppe is just how exposed it is. The wind cuts across the land without obstruction, making for a tough night’s sleep. It was basically like a dust bowl. I awoke with everything covered in a layer of dust, I couldn’t see out my glasses and my hands were black. Shaking off the dust, I crawled outside. Standing there, a tear almost left my eye. A herd of horses were trotting about by our tent. You’re awake and immediately alive in one of the most magical places in the world. 

Cooking breakfast on the side of the road, we prepared ourselves for a day of hitching. Straight away a car pulled up near us. Through google translate he offered us a lift back to the capital for a few bucks. We threw our bags in the back. That was the easiest hitch of my life, we didn’t even have to try. ‘There’s got to be some sort of catch’ Hal said. He started driving the wrong way. He seemed to be conducting his morning business around town, dropping off tires at different houses. We stayed along with him though, figuring he wouldn’t take too long. We parked on this hill for close to an hour, while different cars, bikes and even people on horseback pulled up to meet him. We joked about how it felt like he was the entire town’s drug supplier or something. One by one people also started hopping in the car, until it was now more than full with six of us in there. 

There’s a saying in Mongolia, ‘we get there when we get there’. We were finally on our way. Driving the same way as yesterday but this time we were on four wheels, myself sitting in the front with Hal knocked out in the back drooling on this herdsman, this time burning our way back to the capital.

By Tom Russell

We stepped on the train at Shanghai. Bumping up against people, we shouldered our way to our seats. The journey had begun. Sid and I were heading to the Anhui district. Some may call it an adventure, others therapy. A trip born out of suffering and hurt. I’ve always viewed nature as a healer, a transformer. Every time I come out a little less broken. Something the two of us were hoping for.

The train was moving, properly moving. Engineers from Star Wars invented this train. A spaceship streaking across the land. Outside the window the landscape remained the same. Buildings, buildings, buildings, buildings. The dominance of mankind was everywhere. The never-ending expansion of urbanity and with it the destruction of nature.

We hopped out of the train at Huangshan and got into a taxi to the national park. Driving out of town everything around me felt wrong. The buildings, the lack of people, the plants, this sense of incongruity. This town didn’t feel real, as if it just fell from the sky and landed here and that was that. There was no synchronicity with the mountains around. The park entrance felt like being in a ski resort, people milling about buying poles and souvenirs. This wasn’t the serene nature park we had pictured. 

We began the climb up to Yellow Mountain. We were buzzing, we were about to climb up one of the most famous mountains in the world. A mountain that’s inspired philosophers, artists and now hopefully us. Steps. Thousands and thousands of steps. Up and up. Nothing but steps. The only thing worse than steps are steps rammed with people. Heaps and heaps of people. People who had taken the gondola up and then decided to brave the steps down. We witnessed some serious displays of pain from people. People crawling down backwards on their hands and feet. People collapsed on the side. And then there were the two of us marching up them. Sid was the mandarin speaker out of the two of us, but he’s white while I’m half Asian. The greatest source of entertainment was watching people’s reactions to him speaking. Sid became a celebrity on that walk up. Photos of him were to become their source of dinner conversation when they were back down.  

Over a thousand meters in elevation gain all done on steps. This was what it felt like to be Sisyphus, I guess. Both of us dripping in sweat we made it to the top. We were now in the mist and fog. You could see nothing. The occasional tree poking out of the mist. We were walking in a mystery land. We were staying in this lodge which was up near the top of the mountain. We ditched our bags and headed back out into the fog. We climbed up to a small peak and sat there together. The wind harshly striking our faces, we couldn’t see a thing. The sun had just set and sitting there the fog swallowed us into its darkness. Still, we stayed. I’d let out a scream every now and then. This scream was this act of defiance, to scream into the void, knowing it would live but seconds before being extinguished. That brief flicker of life. We sat there just feeling. Feeling everything it means to be alive. Sid was sitting there screaming as well. Boy that made me smile seeing him sitting there. Here he was. He was on this mountain, he still had the passion, he still had the fire.

Slowly navigating our way in the dark, we made it back to our home for the night. A quick noodle soup and then we drifted into sleep. 

I woke up with nightmares of those steps and my calves reminded me that they weren’t just nightmares. Fire. A burning fire from my calves. The sun hadn’t yet risen, and we could feel the cold from inside. Chasing sunrise was just too good a thought to lay there in bed. So, we were off again. We strolled along the paths, trying to find our way to Lotus Peak to watch the sunrise. Our dreams crushed when we found the trail blocked with winter closure signs, and cameras recording us. China isn’t the place I plan on breaking any laws on camera. Back we go. The sun was slowly rising now and with it there was the occasional break in the fog. These brief glimpses into what surrounded us. Tiny pockets showcasing the world. Thousands of sharp peaks jutting out from the mist. Trees covering their tops. And bang, that was it. Back in the fog. Little fleeting moments of beauty that you can’t hold onto. Letting them pass is the only way to not get lost living in visions of the past.

We made our way to the northern side of the park in an effort to escape the rain and mist. People didn’t seem to come to this side of the national park, so we finally got the bliss that comes from solitude. We finally escaped the mist, and the world was revealed around us. This beautiful world. It felt like a fantasy land. Places like this only exist in myth or legend. This was what the trip was about. To get away and to enjoy a beautiful place. We lay in this one spot for a few hours. Gazing about. Speaking when we wanted to speak. In the mountains there’s this honesty that exists. An honesty with yourself and also with others. Falsehood doesn’t exist. We shared this openness. It’s so easy to feel pain and to lose yourself in that pain. But you cling to all the tiny things, all the minute mundane things that get you psyched. You feed the fire with anything you can, and you break the consumption.

It came time to find camp for the night. Usually this isn’t too hard an ordeal but here in China it was different. We walked around trying to find an area where we could dart off trail. Every time we bumped into a park policeman, and they didn’t mess about. There would even be cameras hidden in rocks. Eventually we broke off into some bushes. Fifteen minutes of bushwhacking and we found this ledge on the cliff side. Just big enough for a tent. The outcrop was surrounded by bushes on two sides, offering protection from the wind. It was perfect. We dropped down into our little nook and settled in. With the tent pitched we had nothing to do but enjoy the sun setting across from us. Sid even found a beer hidden in his pack. With the sun gone the temperature dropped. It wasn’t long till we retreated into our tent and got into our sleeping bags. It dropped to -5 degrees. We were greeted with a rainstorm during the night and with it the never ceasing shaking of the tent. A sleepless night.

Sid survived his first wild camp. It was still raining, and we were back to being in the mist. Our nook was starting to flood with water, so we were forced to break camp early. Cold, wet, and tired we were still excited. A new day out here was too good to be moping about. It was nice to share this with a friend from home for the first time. I could see the same passion in Sid that makes you want to be in places like this. 

We walked through snowy woods, with only the noise of our feet crunching on the frozen ground, along streams and up passes, running and jumping our way down on the other side.  

Today was our last day up here, we were heading back down. We crossed back over onto the other side and then we were going to descend on that side of the mountain. It was as if the mountain was giving us a goodbye present. The mist was just below us and everything opened to us. Never have I seen anything like it. Stopping every few minutes to take in the view made descending slow going but we eventually made it. Back down to earth from our celestial peaks. 

We didn’t walk away from this trip with everything fixed but we did walk about knowing that we had lived.