1984 Cycle Touring Expedition UK to Australia and Back Again: Phill Hargreaves (Part 2)

This episode is part 2 sharing guest Phill Hargreaves story and experiences from his three year Cycle Tour taken in 1984.  You can listen to Part 1 here.

This journey saw Phill leave home in the UK destination Australia. He left as a group of three, in Turkey his group became two and then from Nepal he continued the journey solo.  This conversation picks up that journey from Nepal as Phill made his way through Asia to Australia. 

Some incredible stories were shared for this leg of the journey by Phill including travelling through Myanmar, Island hopping in Indonesia - and then a wild work experience encounter on a fishing trawler when he finally reached Australia. 

After saving money Phill then decided to cycle back to the UK. He travelled through Australia and NZ before then heading home via China and Tibet. He'd catch the Trans-Siberian express to Germany and then cycled the rest of the journey. All up returning almost 3 years after setting off.

Phill's son Jamie is currently re-tracing this very journey Phill took and you can listen to the interview I had with him here. Jamie Hargreaves Episode

Be sure to also keep an eye out for his other son Olly who is now about to take his own journey from the UK to Singapore - his instagram is here: @sagas.of_olly.hargreaves

Check out the Cycplus tiny e-Pumps and use the code STR for a 5% discount

Chapters

• 2:26 Dave's Decision to End the Tour
• 4:40 Traveling Solo: Challenges ad Decisions
• 7:53 Exploring Burma and Beyond
• 11:45 Cultural Reflections and Life Lessons
• 18:03 Adapting to Western Culture
• 29:54 The Importance of Resilience
• 38:46 Perils on the Malacca Strait
• 40:37 Exploring Lake Toba and Volcanos in Java
• 43:42 Bali Mishap and the End of the Road
• 47:14 Life on a Prawn Trawler
• 55:31 Cycling Through Australia's Outback
• 1:01:03 New Zealand's Challenges and China Bound
• 1:03:39 Navigating Early China
• 1:10:43 Ultimatum: Fine or Prison
• 1:12:47 Tarracotta Soldiers and Xi'an
• 1:13:59 Journey to Lhasa
• 1:14:57 Return to Kathmandu
• 1:16:59 Trans-Siberian Train Adventure
• 1:19:45 Exploring Moscow
• 1:23:06 Checkpoint Chalie and Berlin
• 1:26:10 Final Reflections and Homecoming

Transcript

Phill: 0:00

So I'd got quite a way north, I'd camped out the night, and I was sort of following the map, and I ended up riding through what turned out to be a military base. It wasn't marked on the map or anything, and I thought, you know, it's some kind of big airfield, and there was lots of military vehicles and stuff like that. I kind of thought, this might not end well, as it was. Nobody stopped me, I just kind of kept my head down and kind of kept going, and hoping nobody kind of saw me. So I got through this kind of military area, and I thought, oh, I've got a way with it. Fine. Got to the next sort of small town and the police were basically waiting for me there. They'd obviously rung ahead and gone, Oh, we've got this, you know, this foreign guy's just cycled through the base sort of thing. So they kind of pulled me up and they confiscated my passport and basically put me in this hotel under kind of house arrest.

Bella: 0:46

Welcome to Seek Travel Ride, where we share the stories and experiences of people taking amazing adventures by bike. Whether it's crossing state borders mountain rangers, countries, or continents. We want to share that spirit of adventuring on two wheels with our listeners. Okay, listeners. Well, I hope you all enjoyed last week's episode where I spoke with Phill Hargreaves and we were talking about his monumental adventure. From the UK, destination Australia. But his adventure was so amazing that we got as far as Phill reaching base camp. I realised pretty quickly that unless I tried to wrap up an amazing part of his journey in all of five minutes, you as listeners would miss out on an incredible story. So, Phill quite kindly said to me, Bella, we have the time, I can get together again with you and record the rest of the journey properly. And this is it. So, we are now in episode two. Welcome back, Phill.

Phill: 1:56

Hi, Belle. Great to be here again.

Bella: 1:58

Oh, it is. Um, just a few days later. You're looking well.

Phill: 2:03

Thanks, yeah.

Bella: 2:04

Phill, first episode. We touched on your incredible journey, how you decided to set off on this trip to the other side of the world, with your friends, from a trio down to a duo. You've made it to Nepal, reached base camp, done some incredible hiker biking on some trails that were never designed for steel touring bikes. And we've gotten as far as your partner there, Dave Clark, he made the decision that that was it for him. He was sick of being very, very sick and he decided that was the end of his tour. How did you feel about all of that?

Phill: 2:41

Yeah, so it was a real shock actually because he sort of started feeling ill on the way back from Everest. We'd done, I think I mentioned before, we'd done the whole sort of route from Kathmandu, the route that the old expeditions used to follow. So we'd literally gone all the way in and all the way back out, you know, by road and, and foot, obviously. And it was the sort of last, probably, four or five days of, of heading back towards Kathmandu. And Dave started sort of feeling a bit lousy and a bit, and, and he, you know, he started, he, he, he's turning a bit yellow as well, which wasn't, wasn't a good sign. It's

Bella: 3:13

like a sign of jaundice, isn't it? Yeah,

Phill: 3:15

yeah. And we, we kind of got back to Kathmandu and, you know, he thought he was just probably just a bit ill or whatever. And so we kind of, you know, had a few days in Kathmandu, kind of recuperating. It didn't clear up and he ended up seeing a doctor and then the guy said, Oh yeah, you know, you've got hepatitis. And, you know, gave him a bit of, sort of, a talk about, you know, what that entailed. Because it was, you know, you've got to be really careful what you eat. You can't eat fatty foods, you can't have alcohol, you can't have, you know, this, that and the other. Which, you know, out in Asia, sort of thing, where, especially biking, where you've got to, you eat basically whatever you can find. I think that was just the kind of, yeah, the, the straw that broke the camel's back for Dave, really. And he sort of, yeah, he made the decision to go back. We'd been away about, I think about seven months by then, something like that. And so, he said, yeah, you know, I've had enough, and it was, it's, you know, it's not something you get over quickly, hepatitis, you know, it's a sort of, it's quite a long haul, and he was also, uh, on top of that as well, he was also getting, um, reoccurring bouts of malaria, he'd got the type of malaria that kind of reoccurs every now and again.

Bella: 4:17

I didn't know that could happen! Wow! Yeah,

Phill: 4:19

yeah, yeah, yeah, in fact, he had it for a few years, I think, you know, where it, you know, certain times of the year or whatever. Get about of sort of, I mean, it's essentially from what I understand, it's kind of like a bad case of flu and it lasts a few days and then you kind of get over it. But yeah, so he kind of decided to, that, you know, he'd had enough and he was going to go home at that point. It was kind of gosh, you know, and I'm obviously, I felt gutted for Dave because he was my best mate, you know, we'd done all these, you know, we'd had loads of sort of, you know, adventures together and stuff. And I was really torn because In one way, I kind of wanted to go home with Dave and support him, sort of thing, you know. But then I thought, if I go home now, maybe I'll never do this again, you know. This is kind of, you know, life will take over and stuff like that. I might never get to do this, so it was kind of, it was a really tough call to be honest with you. And I'd sort of, one of the things on the, on the way back out from Everest as we walked out, well I think we met them on the way in, you end up meeting up with this sort of crowd of, or few people who were on the sort of same trajectory as you, you know, you'd bump into them at different sort of tea houses and what have you. And we met a couple of Danish girls, who we spent a few days walking in with and walking back out with. And they were heading over to Koh Samui for Christmas. We kind of had this loose agreement, you know, we were going to try and meet up with them in Koh Samui for Christmas. So I thought, in my head I was thinking, well, obviously I'd never travelled before on my own. I think I mentioned before, I was kind of, you know, out of the two of us, Dave was the extrovert, and I was kind of, you know, I was an introvert, but, you know, we bounced off each other and we're, I wouldn't say we were insular, but, you know, you have that little sort of, that bond between yourselves. So I was, I was a bit unsure about that, but I thought, well, you know, that's something to aim for if I go and aim to sort of try and get there, which I think it was, uh, I think it was about the beginning of November ish, something like that. So obviously it was a couple of months to Christmas. I thought, well, I'll carry on. And if I end up not liking it or, you know, I find it's too hard or whatever. There's something to aim for, you know, it's a target at the end, and then I can go, well, okay, I've done it, I've tried it, I've not liked it, and then I can perhaps fly back from Bangkok or something like that, you know, but at least I've given it a go, and then so, kind of, I set my soul out like that, and I've talked it through with Dave. You know, he was fine. We, we, you know, we agreed to sort of, you know, he, he was going to go back and everything. It was tough. So I'd made the decision to head back down into, or our original plan anyway was to kind of head back into India to go down to Varanasi. And then in those days, you used to be able to catch a boat from, um, Calcutta, I think it was, across to Penang or somewhere like that in Malaysia. So that was, that was the sort of plan that we'd kind of come up with. So I thought, well, I'll carry on with that because I wanted to go to Varanasi anyway. And then literally as a, I, I can't remember whether David actually flown back by then or whether he was still around and so I was, I was literally due to go back into India and then, um, Mrs. Gandhi was assassinated. As I was sort of sorting all this stuff out, this happened, you know, I didn't really put two and two together, but then loads of Westerners were kind of, you know, arriving in Kathmandu on buses and stuff. And they were saying, oh, it's just absolute chaos, you know. There were gangs of people going around on the trains and just looting and killing, and it was just horrendous. So I was like, oh gosh, right, you know, that, that doesn't sound good at all. And they were saying, just don't go. In fact, I think they closed the borders with India, except to foreigners, to stop people coming in, and it was just, it was just chaos anyway. So that kind of threw that planning to, in a, a, a way. And then it was like, oh, what do I do now? And I'd say, loads of people, loads of Westerners were coming into Kathmandu, so it was kind of filling up rapidly, and so I got chatting to a guy, I think, who, talking about going over to Burma. So I thought, oh, that sounds alright, I'll do that, you know, I'll do that. So, so I ended up with a flight from Burma, from Kathmandu, to Rangoon. And you could only get a seven day visa in those days. So I thought, well, I'll just go and have a ride around. Sort of local to Rangoon, I'll just go and have a bit of pootle around there for a week and see a bit of that and then fly on to Bangkok. So, anyway, got the flight, and the flight was interesting as well, it was with the old Beeman Airways, I think it was, which was the Burmese airline, which was known across Asia for being like one of the worst airlines. So, the plane took off from Kathmandu. And got up into the air, and then everybody clapped in the plane. So they were all clapping, we were like

Bella: 8:44

That gives you confidence. You're like, you're only halfway through this though, right? You gotta get back down.

Phill: 8:48

That's right, yeah, so it took off safely. And then it turned round, and we were thinking, oh, what's going on now? And it turned round and landed. And they'd forgotten to close the cargo door properly, I think it was. So, yeah, so it landed, closed the cargo door.

Bella: 9:03

That fills you with confidence, doesn't it?

Phill: 9:05

Yeah, so we're all sitting there, you know, oh gosh, right and then anyway it took off again and everybody clapped again and then literally You know, as soon as everybody stopped clapping, they pulled out all the, the, the sort of curry towers. I know you've been to India. They have these sort of little sets of pans that they heat up with the curry and the chapati, the chapatis and rice in.

Bella: 9:23

Yes, yes, yes.

Phill: 9:25

There were all these people pulling these out of the bags and started cooking on the plane.

Bella: 9:29

Oh, hang on, this is passengers doing this?

Phill: 9:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I was thinking

Bella: 9:32

it was like the, the flight attendants.

Phill: 9:34

Yeah, this, this was passengers, yeah. Oh, I love it! So I'll never forget that. And, and anyway, we got into Rangoon, and landed at the airfield in Rangoon, which then, from memory was, I think it was just a little runway, with like a, a mizzen hut on the side, so there was no Kind of airport as such. And um, we got out and you had to go and get your own bags out of the cargo. Somebody was in the cargo hold, sort of climbed up on a ladder, and just sort of passed all the bags out to you. And they passed my bike out and then we went in and got through sort of immigration and they said, Oh no, you can't ride your bike here. You can't travel independently at all. So they basically confiscated my bike at the airport. So that kind of threw that plan into, into um, into touch. In some ways it actually did me a favor because I wouldn't have seen much of Burma anyway, you know, I'd have seen a bit around Rangoon. So, went into Rangoon itself, had a night there, and then caught buses and stuff up to, I went up to Mandalay. Uh, and if you think Pagan, I think that was on the way up.

Bella: 10:32

It's all an area that's not able to be really seen for travelers at the moment, obviously. No, that's right.

Phill: 10:37

Yeah, you can't get up there now. I mean, it's really interesting, yeah, because obviously, you know, you've got all the war history up there as well from, you know, from the Second World War. Yeah, and so anyway, I went to Mandalay, and then you used to be able to catch a ferry down near Rwadi. Basically, sort of, most of the way back to Rangoon, I think. So we did that, and that took several days. And we got marooned on a sandbank in the middle of the river, because it was, it was the dry season.

Bella: 11:01

The river wasn't very high, was it? Yeah,

Phill: 11:03

and, and, but that was, you know, Burma then was an amazing experience, because it was, it was like, sort of, going back into Yeah, the twenties or thirties. I mean, you didn't see none of the men wore trousers. Everybody wore sarongs and there was no sort of very, very little sort of Western influence there at all. You know, because they did, they did have this policy of kind of, you know, isolating themselves from the rest of the world. It's kind of a bit like North Korea is now. So it was really, it was really, you know, very, very different. Even to India and, you know, stuff like that. A lot less, sort of, uh, manic than India. Um, yeah, it was a lot more relaxed. The people were really nice. And some, you know, fantastic history and sort of, um, architecture and stuff around there.

Bella: 11:45

It really makes me pause just to reflect back on just the type of experiences this journey done at that time in the world would have been for you, and how different it is to now, like, when we spoke during our first episode there, Phill, we were talking about, you know, going on trips through Europe, and it was the time of the Iron Curtain. That was very, very different than, you know, the Iran Iraq war was very much in place, and that dictated how you travelled through Iran, it wasn't cycling through there. And I know that Iran's a bit problematic now as well. Just these other elements of it as well, where, you know, the idea that, you know, there's an assassination in India which has stopped you from your plans, so then you've gone to this other country which has isolated itself from the world, but somehow you've managed to get there and, and Be experiencing, like, they're just experiences that I don't think you can necessarily have now because they don't exist in the same way now.

Phill: 12:40

Yeah, I think that we were lucky in many respects in those days because, you know, the sort of Western sort of commercialism and modernism, if you like, hadn't kind of spread, you know, even say like behind the Iron Curtain. You know, in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria and places like that, it was kind of like going back 30, 40 years, you know, people were riding around on donkeys and horses and carts and stuff like that, you know, there's no very little in the way of private vehicle ownership or anything like that, you know, the shops were very different, the cars, you know, there were no western cars there, whereas, you know, these days, even I think wherever you go in the world now, it's kind of Westernized pretty well wherever now really, which is you know, I'm sure I'm sure there are some places that are not as westernized as others But I think, yeah, we were lucky in that respect that a lot of these places were still, you know, very, very different and not sort of touched too much by the West sort of thing. Yeah.

Bella: 13:37

It's given you such a stark experience and knowledge through experience of the world too. I was thinking a lot about just how what you've experienced would have informed you. You know, you were quite young when you undertook this journey, you left when you were 21, 22. You're at a very early stage of your adult life, and I do wonder how having this type of an experience so early on would have impacted you and turned you into who you were.

Phill: 14:04

Yeah, I mean, it does, it had a, you know, massive impact on my whole life, really. You know, the experiences you have, especially the side of it where, and you know, I've talked to, you know, my wife has obviously travelled around about the same time, you know, back in the 80s and 90s. You know, her travelling was different, but you have that same sort of view where You know, you meet all these people that have, you know, we weren't rich compared to anybody in the West by any means in those days. But compared with what the locals have and how they dealt with their lives, you know, they were really happy even though they had nothing. They didn't have this sort of materialism, especially now, you know, it's even worse now. That you've got to have, you know, you've got to have the latest this and the latest that and it's all about sort of buying stuff and having stuff and there was none of that at all in really most of the countries outside of Europe, you know, it wasn't as bad in Europe that is now, I don't think, but you know, really opens your eyes as to how little you really need. You know, I know I remember coming back and thinking, well, I don't need a color telly. I don't need it. You know, this. I don't need that. And it's still, you know, I still have that now, much to my kids chandering, I think, sometimes. You know, you kind of go, well, we've got an old telly. I think our telly's probably 15 years old.

Bella: 15:21

Does it still look like a piece of furniture?

Phill: 15:23

Oh no, it's not quite that old. Is it a flat screen? Yeah, it is a flat screen. It doesn't have the wood all around it. That's

Bella: 15:31

what I grew up with.

Phill: 15:33

Yeah, and yeah, the kids go, Oh, yeah, we need to get, you know, we can get a bigger telly. I said, why, why do we need another telly? We, you know, it's perfectly right, it does everything we want it to do. Why do we need another one, you know? And I think there's that, there is that sort of attitude in the West of, Oh, I'll just get this, I'll just get that. And certainly then over in, you know, in, in the East, and once you got out of Europe, there was none of that, you know, people just didn't have that sort of stuff. You know, they had no, most people didn't have cars, most people didn't have TVs, you know. The village you might have, I remember in, in India, uh, where you'd come into these villages in the evening and the, and somebody would have a TV in the village and they'd bring it out and they'd have the TV out in the sort of, you know, the village square. And the whole village, you know, they'd put some program on, the whole village would come out and that, you know, that, that was their sort of, their TV.

Bella: 16:22

I interviewed an awesome guest, uh, a number of months ago, Rob McClennan. Hi Rob! And he did an awesome adventure. He went from London all the way down to Cape Town via West Africa, so the western coast of Africa through there. And I remember his comment, you know, he was saying about everything's been permeated by the West. He made the comment that football and the Coca Cola company. Have managed to get to all the far reaches of Africa because everywhere you went in Africa There was always coke But even in the most remotest of villages someone would have a generator with a TV that was showing the football Yeah, again that same sort of experience that you're recounting there like

Phill: 16:59

oh, yeah, not that everyone's

Bella: 17:00

got it One person's got it, but the whole village now has it

Phill: 17:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and that was the thing, because even then, when you traveled, um, you know, and they learnt you were from England, or in the north of England, and the first thing they would say was, oh, Bobby Charlton, Jackie Charlton, Georgie Best. They'd roll off, sort of, these football, sort of, football, yeah, famous footballers names. Yeah.

Bella: 17:22

I'm gonna ask you, who do you go for?

Phill: 17:24

Oh, nobody really, I'm not, I have to say I'm not, I'm not a big football fan at all.

Bella: 17:29

It's not a bad way to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It can be a very divisive topic.

Phill: 17:33

It can be, it can be, yeah.

Bella: 17:35

Speaking to you now, you can reflect back on that and, and that idea that we don't need to be driven by the latest in tech or so many possessions and getting things brand new. Was that something that, you know, did you sort of have that sort of reverse culture shock in a way then when you returned back to it all? Because you'd lived like that, or actually did it hit you when you got to Australia? And I'm only touching on Australia now, we've got a long way, we've got a lot of gaps to fill before we get there on your journey, but did that hit you a little bit? Like, getting into those Western countries again, and being hit with that Western culture?

Phill: 18:08

Yeah, it kind of did a little bit, although I was, because, as I arrived in Australia, um, I've literally arrived in Australia with, I think, about 100 to my name. Fortunately, I got a working, you know, the old student working visa, and I managed to blag my way onto a trawler, literally within a couple of days of arriving. And I was on a trawler then for, around the Gulf of Carpentaria for about three months or so, three and a half, four months, maybe. So that was a very isolated sort of experience anyway. So I didn't kind of jump from like, you know, being in, being in this suddenly very westernized sort of, I mean, obviously it was, you know, it was a westernized environment, but it was not your normal western environment.

Bella: 18:47

Even thinking of like the main cities up in the top end when you eventually get to Darwin, it's, Darwin is very, very different to Sydney, so.

Phill: 18:54

Yeah, yeah, well, I got, after finishing on the trawler, I worked in Darwin. Because I arrived in Darwin and, uh, I ended up working on a, in fact, I bumped into a, a, a, a sort of, not a friend, an acquaintance that I knew from Manchester. And he'd ridden his motorbike out to Australia actually. I bumped into him about the day, I think the day or the day after I arrived in Australia. And he'd just arrived in Darwin himself on his bike. And then I got the job on the trawler. And when I got back into Darwin, I bumped into him again after a couple of days. And he was actually an electrical engineer as well and was working on a Uh, project, I think it's the, it was a, a new hotel, because there was still, there was still quite a lot of rebuilding work going on in Darwin.

Bella: 19:35

After Cyclone Tracy, yeah.

Phill: 19:36

Cyclone Tracy, that's right, yeah. So he was working on a building site on the, on the, uh, the Esplanade, which I think is now the Darwin Hilton. And he said, oh, go and see, go and see this guy, you know, he's, he's after, I'm, I'm leaving and they're after sort of, you know, sparkies and stuff on there. So I went to see this guy called Rocky, an Italian guy who was running the job, got this job and, you know, replaced, um, Dave on this job and worked there for Yeah, this is a

Bella: 20:01

serendipitous moment of bumping into someone who's got a connection somehow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who really has no right to, but somehow does. Like, that's awesome. That's

Phill: 20:08

right, yeah, yeah. So I ended up working on this building site for another sort of, I think that was another two or three months I think. Yeah, basically earning enough money then. Because originally the plan had been to kind of head back home from Australia. But I ended up earning enough money over there to kind of last me another year. So it was like, what do I do? Do I fly home with a bit of money in my pocket? Or as I said, when, when I left Dave in Nepal, you know, I was, I was really unsure as to whether how I was going to deal with it, you know, because, because when you're traveling as a pair, you know, it's quite a. It amazes me, actually, I'm quite proud of Jamie for that, in many ways, because to travel somewhere, you know, it's one thing perhaps travelling in the West on your own, but to travel across a lot of these countries on your own, having not experienced it. Quite a leap of sort of faith and, and trust really, I think, as well of, of just to kind of go out having not had that experience. Now, I was lucky in the way that, you know, I'd been with Dave and we'd done, you know, we'd done all that together. So you kind of build up that bit of knowledge and experience of how to deal with stuff. But then when you're on your own, you know, you've got nobody to talk to. You've got nobody to fall back on. You know, when you're having a crappy day and you've, you know, you've had the runs, you've, you know, you've got a really bad head and just feeling like you want to curl up and die, you know, at least when you're with somebody, you can kind of go, you know, that somebody is going to look after you if, you know, if it gets really bad. But you don't have that if you're on your own. You constantly got that in the back of your mind. If something happens to me, what am I going to do? And, you know, fortunately, it never happened to me. I mean, I got sick and, you know, had various scrapes and things. But you build up that sort of resilience, I think, as you're travelling. Anyway, you know, I, I, I carried on and I actually realised I actually really enjoyed travelling. You know, it was tough on, on my own, because when, when I went to Bangkok, flew over to Bangkok and then headed up to Chiang Mai in the north, I think I caught the train up to Chiang Mai. Uh, I had a few days around Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, I met an English guy up there and we, I left a bike in Chiang Mai, I think it was, and we hired motorbikes and headed off into the jungle, into the, you know, the border villages with Burma and stuff, and went to a Karen village, and the guys with the really long necks, you know, they put the brass rings on the necks, yeah, we ended up in a village of these women with these really sort of tall necks with brass rings. And obviously now, all that sort of thing's probably well on the tourist trail, you know.

Bella: 22:33

Yeah, but it was more authentic and, yeah, yeah, it wasn't planted for you to find that way exactly.

Phill: 22:38

Yeah, it wasn't kind of like a tourist experience in those days, you know. We weren't looking for it, we just kind of, you know, stumbled upon it almost. So yeah, so we did that on the motorbikes for about, you know, five days, I think. And then headed back to Chiang Mai and then started sort of heading south. And one thing I did sort of realise was, you know, with travelling on a bike Was you had these sort of periods where you know, you got to place like Chiang Mai or Bangkok or you know Koh Samui and and there'd be other Westerners there and anyway, they weren't, you know, it's not like it was today But yeah, there were other Westerners there You could sort of chat to and stuff and then you'd have you'd have this long period of sometimes several weeks in between Where you just didn't see any any foreigners at all You didn't even speak English to people because, um, you know, there weren't many locals that spoke English. You might, you might bump into the odd person, but, so you couldn't even have a, you know, a kind of a full blown conversation.

Bella: 23:34

And this is before Google Translate. You don't have a mobile phone.

Phill: 23:37

Yeah, well, I always tried to, uh, in those days, you know, you had, so I had the old, uh, cross Asia on a shoestring, I think it was. You had the, um, the sort of useful phrases, but in the back. So I always used to try and learn, you know, a little bit of what are the languages that, of the country. Do you

Bella: 23:52

still remember any?

Phill: 23:54

Uh, yeah, I can still count in Turkish, count up to 10 in Malaysia and Indonesia, I learnt, I could actually hold a sort of basic conversation, because Their language is quite simple, they don't have plurals and things, so, things like children, so child is anuk, children are, is anuk, anuk, so it's kind of more than one.

Bella: 24:16

Oh, so you just double the word Yeah,

Phill: 24:18

so you kind of double the word, yeah, yeah, yeah. French could have a lot

Bella: 24:22

to learn from a simple language.

Phill: 24:24

Yeah, yeah.

Bella: 24:25

I joke feel having moved to France that I have signed up for lifelong language learning. Yeah, yeah.

Phill: 24:32

That was one of the things, again, that you had to kind of get used to, you know, really quickly, and to get by, you know, to, you know, asking how much things were, and not that he'd got ripped off that much, but, you know, learning to buy stuff in the market, you know, to buy food, and The other side of it, which is going to sound quite sort of mean in some ways, is I mean, you have to rely on yourself a lot, but you don't have to kind of consider anybody else either.

Bella: 24:56

No, that's a very valid point. I think it's not so much mean. I don't know exactly where you're coming from.

Phill: 25:01

Myself and Dave, you know, we'd say, you know, we were the best of mates, we, you know, we loved each other and We'd known each other for years and that and great friends, but you still had kind of off days or days Where you know David want to do something and I didn't and there was always a you know that little bit of tension Or you know right arose sometimes not always and we never had any you know massive fallings out But you kind of get grumpy with each other

Bella: 25:24

It's also you get to make your own decisions and you're the only one that has to make a choice And you don't it's what you want to do.

Phill: 25:31

Mmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there is that And it's also having that feeling of knowing if I make this decision it all rests on my shoulders Yeah, it's my fault if something goes wrong Whereas I think there's always that thing where you know, somebody else makes this and you go go on there Well, yeah, we'll do that and something happens. It goes wrong or whatever You know, you have a tough time, you kind of, there's always that, oh, you, you know, you wanted us to do this. So, there's always that, but I, I, I really enjoyed that, you know, not having that sort of, A, not having, not relying on somebody else to kind of do stuff for you or organise stuff, you know, you've got to do everything yourself. And also not, not having to kind of consider somebody else as well and just doing what you wanted to do, which was really good in, in many ways. I mean, you know, it's a different experience sort of thing, so.

Bella: 26:15

Yeah, and I think the way that your trip unfolded was, You had the benefit of experiencing both versions as well. And even at the point where you started as a team of three, then whittled to a team of two. Bizarrely, as we might say, and listen, if you, if you just stumbled on this as episode, as the first episode that you're listening to Phill, you definitely need to scroll back to last week's episode and listen to part one, but the idea that you then sort of. Became solo on this journey as well. I think it sort of, by the sounds of it, pushed you a bit, Phill, out of that personality of there's also that side of where you've got someone to lean on and you know, you can, you're not on, you're on, you're not on your own here, you'll muddle through together and work things out to then having to give yourself the self confidence and, Oh no, it is me. It's my decisions that determine what, what happens now. And I guess there's that confidence that grows in you as well. I do starkly remember when I spoke with your son, Jamie, and interviewed him, you know, he had sort of said, cause he's obviously made some great, fast friendships on the road and he and Malachi are out there now, literally, when this episode goes out, they'll be somewhere around Everest base camp, I guess, taking bikes to ridiculous places. But he'd also, you know, he loved his time with others, but he also did yearn to have that experience of being on his own again as well.

Phill: 27:36

Yeah, I mean, it's sort of enriching, I think, in many ways, you know, because it is hard, especially cycling on your own, because, you know, you're spending nights, you're camping in the middle of the jungle. You're dossing out in, you know, all kinds of places on your own in some way. You don't know the environment, you know, the people, all that sort of stuff. So it is, it is quite nerve wracking, but it's kind of, it's also liberating and it also, it builds up that sort of, I think, resilience and self confidence in yourself that you, you know, you have to deal with whatever is thrown at you. That could be anything from, you know, wild dogs in the middle of the night outside your tent, or where you're bivvying, you know. I've had that experience in Turkey, you know, you're camping in a tent and they have the, the, the big Kangol, uh, sheep dogs, sheep guard dogs. Oh, like the Anatolian

Bella: 28:25

Shepherds or something? Yeah, yeah, with the

Phill: 28:27

big collars on to stop the wolves from attacking them. And they are, you know, they're ferocious.

Bella: 28:32

What was your strategy to deal with that?

Phill: 28:36

Try, well, There was one day when, Myself and Dave were riding, I think we were heading back west somewhere, On this road in the middle of nowhere, And there was a, this huge flock of sheep, And we saw them, and we knew, We knew there were going to be dogs nearby, sort of thing, And you kind of think, Uh, hopefully they won't see us or get past, and then we, you know, you hear the barking and you think, oh, and then you see these dogs running, and there's often not just a dog, it's normally, you know, a pack of dogs sort of thing, there's at least four or five of them. Anyway, we, we're riding up this road and these dogs are getting closer and closer, and normally you can kind of, you know, you can kind of outrun some of them, or If you're on a downhill or whatever. Anyway, this particular time we were actually going uphill. So you're going quite slowly anyway. And these dogs were literally coming from all sides. You know, there was no way we were going to get past them. And I remember we ended up getting off the bikes and we were standing back to back in the middle of this road, holding the bikes kind of in front of us. And we were like swiveling around because these dogs were coming at us from both sides. And fortunately the shepherd Saw what was going on and kind of called them off and off they ran sort of thing, but Yeah, they're kind of quite scary beasts, and when you're on your own, it's um, yeah, it's another, another thing altogether, yeah. You're the only meat they can attack. Yeah, you need a big, a big stick, a big stick, yeah, and fast legs. Yeah. But it's like the resilient side of it, you know, you, you learn to deal with all this stuff. It's like, it's like, you know, from day one when I was on my own, when, you know, my plan has completely changed because of Mrs. Gandhi getting assassinated. You kind of learn to deal with it, and I think that's something that's probably served me all of my life now. You know, you, you just know that, well, okay, that kind of opportunity or window's closed. Well, what else is there? What, you know, what else can we do? What else do I need to do to sort this out? You know, how do I fix this? And you just kind of, you know, you play it through your mind and come up with a, you know, an alternative or a, or a different option and, and go, well, okay, that's what I'm going to do and, and carry on. So, it's definitely, uh, uh, it enriches your life, I think.

Bella: 30:34

Yeah, well, I guess it would be a life skill too.

Phill: 30:37

Oh, yeah.

Bella: 30:37

There'd be situations that are totally not related to bike travel or any travel that would come up in your life where Knowing that experience has taught you that you'll find a way is really helpful and assuring.

Phill: 30:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bella: 30:49

It's a confidence and a skill that you don't realise necessarily at the time that that's what you've given yourself, but you certainly have walked away from that trip with.

Phill: 30:57

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bella: 30:59

At that age though, having to do it, like, what a gift to yourself. Life lessons on the road.

Phill: 31:04

Oh, definitely, yeah. But it's, it's even, it's even such, you know, the stuff like, you know, when we were going up to base camp. Myself and Dave have done some pretty tough things in the past on, on bikes. You know, taking them up mountains in the Alps and all sorts of stuff. And you know that it's going to be tough. And you know that it's, you know, it's going to be hard and you, it's not going to be a walk in the park. But when you get into these places, you know, I remember on the last day, you know, going up to Everest Base Camp, you know, I felt, I felt terrible. I just wanted to curl up and die. But you have to kind of find it somewhere in yourself to go, I'm not going to give up. I'm going to push on. I'm going to get through it. You know in your head that it's going to get better, but at that point in time, it's sometimes really difficult to see that in the future having, you know, once you've gone through some of those sort of experiences. I think it helps you in, in other circumstances when you, you come across something not necessarily the same sort of thing, but you know, you're in some kind of bad situation one way or another and you kind of, you know, you think your whole world's falling apart, but you know that actually, if you persevere, get on with it, just keep a level head, it might be tough, it might be hard, but you know, you're going to come through it and you'll probably be better for it in the end.

Bella: 33:02

We've spoken about Jamie a bit there. You know, his way of traveling. And we've also spoken about the time that you were traveling and how different things were in the world. I asked him to send me some questions and he did send me a few, some of which we just answered naturally. But there was one that he asked, which is sort of a bit apt in terms of the difference between him and you. And to be fair, you sort of asked this question in reverse to Jamie, but he wanted to know what modern piece of cycling gadget or equipment or gear would you choose to take if you could have taken something from this time and magically have had it with you back in 84?

Phill: 33:41

Uh, probably, uh, it would be an MP3 player or, you know, music of some kind, because we, we didn't have any of that at all. We had no, well, until I remember I got to, um, Singapore, and I don't know whether it's quite the same there, but Singapore was always known as the, you know, electronics, you know, you bought your elect, sheep electronics then, and I remember when, when I arrived in Singapore, the old Walkmans had just come out, so I bought myself this Walkman. With a radio, with a built in radio as well it had. Gosh, wow. I don't use that. The height of technology. Yeah.

Bella: 34:15

You used to tune in with a little dial, right? Yeah, that's right. That's

Phill: 34:18

right, yeah. And I thought, well, because I had no music, the whole thing, and I'd always liked music, you know. I used to go to a lot of concerts and stuff. And that was one of the things that I did really miss. Probably none of the other stuff. I, you know, I still wouldn't, I still travel even now. I don't really like using GPS's. I do use it on the motorbike because it just makes a lot more sense on the motorbike. But on, on a bike, I still use a map or, um

Bella: 34:43

Town signs.

Phill: 34:44

Yeah. But yeah, so yeah, Walkman. And I bought this Walkman. I remember getting across to Australia with it. And when I cycled down through Australia, through the desert from Darwin to Alice, I had it strapped on my bar bag at the front listening to tapes and some friends had sent, you know, the old, you used to make your own mixtapes.

Bella: 35:02

You did make your own, and you used to hate it if like the, if the radio station, you know, DJ used to speak over the, yeah, or speak over the first part. I'm like, shut up. That's right, yeah.

Phill: 35:12

Yeah. So yeah, so friends had sent all these tapes out to me, so I listened to those as I cycled across Australia.

Bella: 35:19

Oh, nostalgia. I did all of my exams to my own mixtapes. Yeah.

Phill: 35:23

Yeah.

Bella: 35:24

Just a slight tangent, listeners, especially for you who aren't old enough to have to have gone through this struggle, but I had something fancy where if I could, I think if I held the rewind and the play button down together, it would actually magically stop at the start of a song. It was amazing. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Phill: 35:41

I didn't, I didn't have that sort of technology on mine. It was press, press and play.

Bella: 35:45

Wouldn't it have been amazing just to even bring music with you? Because especially when you're on your own, I've commented with a lot of guests before Sometimes guests will listen, and I've done this myself, if you're a solo and you want conversation, sometimes you'll tune into a podcast because you feel like you're part of a conversation, you don't feel like you're alone.

Phill: 36:02

Yeah, even

Bella: 36:03

just the thought of music that would have been bliss.

Phill: 36:06

Oh, yeah

Bella: 36:06

in Singapore What sort of radio stations are you listening to you like I'm guessing are you listening to songs? You've even know what they're saying.

Phill: 36:14

I think I think it was a bit of a mix Yeah You could pick up so you used to be able to pick up the old Voice of America and they have music on that and obviously the BBC World Service as well on shortwave Because I think, I think it had a, did it have a shortwave on it? Not sure, actually. But I think it was mainly tapes and stuff that I listened to. But yeah, I did pick up radio, radio stations and that where I could.

Bella: 36:33

Before getting to Australia, you did make your way, obviously, across Indonesia. A country with many, many people, a huge population, but made up of many, many islands as well. What was it like, like, I'm guessing you sort of island hopped your way from the main islands to smaller islands along the way as well?

Phill: 36:50

Yeah, so yeah, what I made my way down through Indonesia, uh, sorry, Malaysia and Thailand and Malaysia and then down to Singapore and then in those days, I guess, I don't know whether it still runs or not, there used to be a, you could get a ferry out to a place called Tanjun Penang, which was like a little island sort of south of Singapore. Back in those days, you know, Singapore was still It was the old English Singapore. It wasn't the modern sort of, you know, metropolis it is now. Um, yeah, there was the old Chinatown was there and I remember going in the, in the Raffles Hotel and having a Singapore Sling in the, in Raffles Hotel, which was the thing, you know, the thing you did when you got to Singapore in those days. So I caught a ferry across there and then from Tanjunpanang, there used to be this, I think it was a weekly service on this very rickety boat to a place called Pekanbaru, which was kind of inland in Sumatra. Somewhere in the middle of some arch or so. You spent about, I think it was about three days on the boat. And there were no facilities on this boat, you know. It was very basic. There was like a, it was a sort of multi storey boat. Quite narrow.

Bella: 37:56

Like a long boat.

Phill: 37:57

Yeah, it was kind of long and sort of tall and there was like beds inside. There was myself and a couple of other westerners that got on it. And we ended up staying on the top, basically on the roof. You know, out in the sun, and you had, there was no kind of, you know, restaurant or anything like that on it. So you had to have your own food for, enough food for three days. So we'd all got on with all this stuff, and of course, you never have enough food, because you're sitting around doing nothing, and you always start eating more than you've got. We ran out of food and the boat broke down in the middle of the uh, Malacca Straits, I think it was. The engine packed up and we're in, it was quite rough seas. And this thing was bobbing around and waving from side to side.

Bella: 38:37

Oh, my stomach's turning already. Oh yeah, there were

Phill: 38:40

people being sick over the side and it was all looking quite dodgy for a while. And then they managed to get, you know, we were kind of thinking, because you kind of think of Indonesia as being, you know, lots of islands all close together. But actually, it's not, you know, it's quite a Quite a big distances, so we were in the middle of this sort of, you know, this Malacca Strait, I think it was. You know, with big boats sort of going past, not that far away, creating even more waves and, you know, so this boat was wobbling around and we were thinking, oh crikey, we're going to be bailing out here, you know, and you did hear of, you know, you still hear of now these ferries in Indonesia capsizing and, you know, all these people dying and you think, oh crikey. Anyway, they managed to get the engine going again and we chugged off and then it entered this river system on Sumatra. And we had, it was about a day or a day and a half of literally going up this sort of jungle river, this wide jungle river. And you had, you know, apes and things leaping around in the trees and Hearing all these animal noises at night, uh, it was just an amazing experience, you know, and we were out on, on, say, on the top all the time.

Bella: 39:42

How starkly different to bobbing around like a cork in a wild sea to then all of a sudden floating down with all these wild animals in a jungle?

Phill: 39:50

Yeah, yeah, and it was literally like, you know, almost how you imagine going up the Amazon would be like. Yeah! Quite amazing. And they were saying there were no towns and no buildings anywhere. And you'd see the odd, you know, tribes person at the side of the river somewhere. But anyway, we, yeah, we arrived in, we eventually got to this place called Peckham Baroo, which was kind of in the middle of nowhere and, and got off the boat and they'd obviously not seen many sort of Westerners there for a while, and so we were quite the village entertainment sort of thing. Anyway, the guys that were, they were backpacking, so, said goodbyes, and headed off up these jungle roads. Uh, and then headed up towards the north of Sumatra, up towards Lake Toba. Sort of got up there, because that's quite an amazing place. Just riding on these, yeah, these little jungle roads. With, and you'd meet, you know, guys on elephants and things walking, you know, like, almost like Indian elephants with the mohut. You'd have monkeys jumping over the, over the road.

Bella: 40:45

And the terrain there, as well. Forgive me because I've not been to Indonesia. I've only through this podcast and speak to amazing travellers who have, but In Indonesia, I think of a few, well, I think of a few things. I'm a food lover, Phill, so I think of food.

Phill: 41:00

Oh yeah, the food is raising, yeah.

Bella: 41:01

And I think of the jungle, but then I think of volcanoes. Yeah, yeah. Is that that sort of terrain then? Are you in thick jungle that, with steep roads that

Phill: 41:11

Yeah, yeah, it was quite, it was, it was flat as, certainly Sumatra was sort of a bit flatter from what I remember. But Lake Toba itself is, um, uh, I think it's one of these super volcanoes. So the lake, the actual lake of Lake Toba, is in this massive caldera. And then there's a little island in the middle of it. Apparently the whole thing kind of rises and falls in the lake, as, as the sort of, yeah, as the magma underneath it kind of, you know, Lift, yeah. Yeah, so, and there's been, in fact, it was, uh, Aceh province, you know, where the tsunami was? Yeah, that's kind of up that area there, on the west coast of Sumatra. So, yeah, so, so I kind of went up there, and then kind of started heading south, and this, yeah, this volcano's sort of all the way along, and, I caught the ferry over to Java, because, again, Java's quite volcanic as well. Well, in fact, the whole sort of range of islands down there are. Went to, yeah, Jakarta, and, And then cuts across to, um, gosh, what is that called? It's the old, the old capital of Indonesia, I think.

Bella: 42:10

Not Yogyakarta.

Phill: 42:12

Yogyakarta, yeah, yeah, Yogyakarta, that's it, yeah. And then, yeah, it's headed south from there. And then ended up going up to Mount Bromo. I'd seen the mountains and I think I'd met some guys in Yogyakarta and they said, oh yeah, you can, you know, you can actually get into the caldera itself. You can go across the caldera and there's like the cone in the middle. And it's sort of one of the things that I'd always had on my, in fact, it's still on my bucket list of things to do. Is to go and look, stand on top of a volcano looking into like the, the bubbling pool of lava. This is what I was expecting when I got there. So I rode, I found this little road that kind of went up the other side. And ended up right on the rim of the actual caldera. And then there was a track that rode down into it and across the actual thing and across the cold air and left my bike at the bottom of the cone and sort of trogged up to the top, thinking, you know, fully expecting because it was all steaming and, you know, there was sort of smoke coming out at the top and there I was sort of, you know, fully expecting to see this sort of Bubbling lake of lava. And, and it was, no, it was, it was, it was basically mud. Well, when you could see it, because there was an awful lot of sort of steam and smoke and stuff coming off it. But it was just, it was just mud, unfortunately. Yeah, bubbling, bubbling mud. So that was a, that was a little bit of a disappointment, but uh, but still interesting. Yeah, I mean it was fantastic. Yeah, I loved the country. It was really nice. People really, really hospitable as well. Yeah, I had a great time there. From there I headed down towards Bali, with the intention of sort of trying to island hop all along the islands to Timor. East Timor, try and get over to Australia from there, but unfortunately, I got knocked off my bike in Bali by a guy in a scooter, wasn't an Australian though, it was a local, so yeah, I got run into, I think it was in Denpasar actually.

Bella: 43:56

Were you very badly injured there, or?

Phill: 43:58

No, no, I was actually alright, I kind of got knocked off into this, into a rice paddy.

Bella: 44:02

A wet soft landing?

Phill: 44:04

Oh, it was very, it was very wet and stinky, it was horrible. Covered head to foot in mud and bits of rice and pulled myself out and thought I'd got away with it because he'd hit the sort of side of my bike. Fortunately, not going that fast, he managed to slow down, but it kind of twisted the frame. That and the fact that I was kind of running out of money as well. Put a bit of a stop to, you know, I thought, well, I can't ride this now anyway. The whole bike was completely out of the line. Was

Bella: 44:29

that it for the bike then? Like, were you able to get it fixed?

Phill: 44:32

No, well, unfortunately not.

Bella: 44:33

Good old mercy and steel lives again.

Phill: 44:35

Yeah, when I got to, well, I ended up flying to Darwin. I thought, well, I can't, ride anymore. I had to say the fact I was kind of running out of money as well kind of sealed the deal really. I thought, right, I better just have to get a flight into, into Darwin. Trying to earn some money in Australia package the bike up and everything and flew into Darwin Say literally as I said before, you know arrived at Darwin and went stayed I think it's called Lameroo Lodge in the center of Darwin Somebody told me about you know I've met all these Aussies going down through Southeast Asia and they said oh if you're going to even if you're gonna be in Darwin Get a job on the trawlers. It's good money, and I say I ride with probably about a hundred pounds to my name So there's I couldn't I couldn't afford to buy a flight home. Anyway, and so I thought right I'll go and try and get a job on the trawler literally the sort of first day I was there I went down to the harbour in Darwin and just went along the sort of boats that were at the quayside And so I said, oh, you know, have you got a job? Have you got a job? And I think the second or third one I came to, the guy was, Oh yeah, yeah, we were after a deckhand. Have you worked on a boat before? And of course, never been on a boat before in my life. The only, the only boat I'd ever been on was the Cross Channel Ferry when, when I set off on the, on the, on the trip.

Bella: 45:46

And then the one that got stuck in the Malacca Straits. Come on now. Oh yeah, true, that one as well, yeah, that one

Phill: 45:49

as well, yeah, yeah. So I thought, well, I really need this job. I blagged my way on and said oh yeah, I've got an uncle who lives in Hull. You know, he's got a trawler and I've been out in his trawler. And he went, oh right, go and get your stuff, we're sailing in an hour. So, I ran back to Lameroo Lodge. I had a word with the guys there and said look, you know, I've got this job, can I leave all my bike and all that stuff here? And they said, oh yeah, it's fine, no problem, chuck it in his storeroom sort of thing. Sent a postcard to mum and dad saying Don't panic, going to sea, you might not hear from me for a few months. Sent that off to my dad. Yeah, packed a few things and went and got on this boat and literally, you know, I jumped on the boat, and literally they threw the lines off and we sort of set sail. Literally as we were kind of pulling out of the bay. The ship's engineer, who was from Hull, of course. Came over and was oh, I've heard your your uncle's got this boat in hull. You know, what's his name? What's his boat called and then cuz I was going? Oh, no, you know, I've been put my covers boy yeah, I said I was kind of And he went oh you're bullshitting aren't you? You know typical say Aussie sort of style and I was like, oh, yeah. Yeah

Bella: 46:57

I can just picture the accent that's said with. Yeah,

Phill: 47:00

and he said, he said, It's alright, I won't say anything, don't worry. And he was actually, he was a really sound guy. She'll be right, mate. Yeah, yeah, really sound guy. And so I ended up, yeah, I ended up on this boat for Gosh, yeah, three or four months. We sailed around to the Gulf of Carpentaria for banana season, it was called. The banana prawns.

Bella: 47:17

Because it's a prawn trawler. Yeah,

Phill: 47:19

it was a prawn trawler. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, you know what prawns and shrimps are in the UK. So, these things that, you know, you catch over there, I'd never seen anything so big.

Bella: 47:27

Yeah, banana prawns are huge. Yeah,

Phill: 47:29

yeah, yeah.

Bella: 47:30

Did it put you off eating prawns?

Phill: 47:32

No, it didn't actually. I didn't, I quite liked them actually. Yeah, yeah. You know, we'd eat them fresh, sort of straight out the sea. We'd have, you know, barbies and And the fish and stuff, and I was, I was never a big seafood sort of fan. But it was, it was something different on the boat.

Bella: 47:44

Totally different.

Phill: 47:45

The, uh, the boat was the Thirburn Bluff part of the Lombardo Marine out of, um, out of Fremantle. They were based.

Bella: 47:53

Fremantle's an awesome place. Did you ride to Fremantle? No,

Phill: 47:56

unfortunately, I never got to West Australia. Still on your bucket list? Yeah, another, another place, yeah. That was a whole other experience on the boat. It was, it was, um, it was like the Wild West. It was just unbelievable. And we got on this, I don't know whether I should say this really, we got on the boat. And the captain was called Muzza. That's

Bella: 48:14

such a great Aussie nickname. Aye, Muzza?

Phill: 48:16

Yeah. It was just like the Wild West, and so he got on. And the captain had got on with this, basically, a bag of weed. You know, like a shopping bag. A shopping bag of weed. This was supposed to last for the banana season. You know, to keep him going for the banana season. There's six or seven of us on the boat, altogether. You know, there's a ship's engineer, a cook. Couple of deckhands, uh, a mate.

Bella: 48:37

Dodgy pom. Yeah, dodgy pom, yeah. Yeah,

Phill: 48:40

lying, a lying pom. And we got on, and so the first, the first sort of, uh, it was about, I don't know, five days or something took us to sail, to basically steam round to sort of the Gulf of Carpentaria. We were smoking this stuff all the time, and we ran out after about a week in the Gulf. We'd run out, we'd run out of this stuff.

Bella: 48:58

How long was it meant to last?

Phill: 49:00

Yeah, and the captain, Muzza, Basically, he got like the DTs, you know, he got the shakes, he couldn't do anything, and the company hired a plane to fly out from Darwin, and they found a boat in the Gulf of Carpentaria, and it was like a little light aircraft, you know, and this plane, the window opened on this plane, and they had a boy tied to a bag of dope that came flying out of the window, and we had to go and fish this thing out. And then that kind of kept him going for the next, you know, the next month or so, whatever it was. And so there was that, and we had every week, I think there were four or five boats, I think it was, in the fleet. Every sort of week or ten days, you know, we'd all meet up in some place and they'd build a gulf. So you couldn't see land anywhere. The first boat would drop their anchors and then the other boats would kind of tie off their back and you'd meet in the middle. You go over these kind of rope bridges between the boats and get in the middle and you'd have this massive party and all the, I mean, all of the captains were like just raging alcoholics, you know, they'd drink bottles of whiskey a day, no problem at all. And so these parties, I mean, you could imagine they were just, just really wild. Debaucherous. Oh, yeah, yeah. If you fell asleep, if you passed out through a drink or anything, you'd wake up with half your hair cut off or an eyebrow missing. Or, greased eyebrows, or all sorts of things.

Bella: 50:15

That's such a different experience altogether, isn't it? You've had so many on this trip. Oh my goodness.

Phill: 50:20

The funny thing was, they used to tie off the back of the boat. So you'd still have, which was just news to me, you'd still have a current, you know, when the tides came in and out. So the tide would still be flowing past the boats, even though you were in the middle of the ocean. Because you were obviously, you know, we'd drop the anchors. And then, as people got more and more drunk, you know, often people would fall off the boat. Or, they'd fall off the ropes because you'd have to go between the boats on these sort of, like a rope bridge. Hands and feet sort of thing. And people would fall off. The captain told me this story once about some guy who fell off and they saw him getting taken by a, um, Was it a shark or a, no, a squid I think it was, a giant squid. Uh, that you reckon the, I don't know, I don't know whether that was actually in the Gulf or whether that was on the East Coast. Because he'd fished around various places. Of course there was salties crocs and, you know, sharks and big, that's a

Bella: 51:11

big firm no for me. Oh yeah,

Phill: 51:12

yeah, yeah. So on the, on the last boat they'd tie like, you know, uh, they'd throw over a lenta rope with buoys tied along every few metres to keep it afloat. So that if you fell off, and you were actually, you were compass mentis enough, because you'd get, you know, these were big boats, they weren't like kind of small. You know, small choices with big boats. And you'd get washed past all these boats, and then if you got to the end boat and you were able to, you could at least grab hold of this rope and kind of pull yourself along the rope and then there'd be a ladder on the back that you could kind of climb up. So, yeah. It was all, uh, all very lairy.

Bella: 51:46

Again, stuff that none of us would We'd all be oblivious to these sort of things ever occurring. Oh

Phill: 51:51

no, I mean, it Oh, another story. So we had guns on the boat. This this was before, you know, the gu the gun laws in, uh, Australia changed. Yeah, well that

Bella: 51:59

didn't come in until 96.

Phill: 52:01

So we got we on on the boat, we had, uh, so we had a 12 bore pump action shotgun, a 10 bore sawn off shotgun, a Magnum 357, An Enfield 303, and I think there may well have been a couple of others as well. So you'd catch sharks in the nets, so when, when you'd pull the nets up with all the, all the prawns. So often you'd pull the nets up and you'd have, I think the biggest we caught was something like a, an 18 foot tiger shark.

Bella: 52:29

Oh gosh.

Phill: 52:30

When the nets kind of come up, you have like a big sorting table in the middle of the boat. So you have this special knot on the bottom of the net. So you pull it and then everything kind of just drops out onto this, onto this sort of sorting table. And of course, you know, we used to get turtles and snakes and, you know, massive crabs, all sorts of stuff. Sharks include, you know, hammerheads, rays. Uh, I don't think we ever, we didn't, we never caught any manta rays, but, but certainly sharks. So these sharks, you know, you get a big 10 foot, 15 foot shark dropping on the deck. And of course they, they start thrashing around all over the place and you can't, can't get anywhere near it. And, and you can't get them overboard. You can't manhandle them because you can't get anywhere near them. So you just have to shoot them. You'd have somebody on the, like, the top deck. You'd pull the knots on the net, drop everything out, and you'd, you'd run, basically, the opposite direction. And then, and then somebody would be on the, on the sort of deck on top, and they'd basically have to shoot the shark. So you'd have this, and then Oh, I mean, the sharks didn't get wasted, they got filleted, or, or, uh, whatever. You know, we used to cook the sharks. But anyway, going back to the guns. So we used to shoot stuff off the back of the boat. You know, we'd throw buoys in and One day we had a boat from another fleet that cut us up. Because when you have the necks down, obviously if the boat stops, you can basically, all the necks can get kind of tangled up on the ocean floor and you can lose all the kit. So it's a really massive problem. Anyway, this kind of boat cut across where we were sailing to get across this, this boil of prawns. And our captain, who was still muzzah then, before he got off, he ran out and like started shooting at this boat. They ran in, they obviously got their guns, they started shooting back at us, everybody hits the deck. The other, uh, deckhands ran in and got the other guns out, and it was like basically a full on sort of gun battle in the middle of the ocean. I mean, fortunately, nobody got hit. Was

Bella: 54:24

it sort of like, hang on, hang on, I need to get the context here right. Was it sort of like, semi friendly ha ha fire, or was it

Phill: 54:30

was, yeah, I think, I don't think they were kind of aiming to actually kill anybody, but it was kind of, I mean, the mu yeah, the Captain Muzza was, was pretty miffed.

Bella: 54:38

Muzza sounds like a wild man, by the way. I wonder if Muzz is still around. Yeah,

Phill: 54:42

yeah, I don't know, I don't know, yeah, it'd be amazing to catch it with those guys again. Yeah, it was certainly, it was certainly the experience that you would, you wouldn't get that sort of experience these days.

Bella: 54:52

I'm going to bring you back to land now, Phill. Your bike, it was not in a usable condition when you got to Australia, but you obviously got that fixed. And then you mentioned, you were, you were in Australia for a working holiday basis, so you worked there. You mentioned earlier, you could have flown back, but you chose not to fly back, you chose to ride back.

Phill: 55:11

Yeah, well, I, uh, you know, the aim, I'd made enough money and I'd obviously had such a great time coming down on my own. So I thought, well, you know, I'm here, this side of the world, again, it's a kind of, you know, I might never get back here again. So far I haven't, that's proved to be true. So I ended up cycling down, sort of did this stint on the building site in Darwin, and then set off, heading sort of south, went across to Kakadu National Park, and then cut down to the Stuart Highway and, down the Stuart Highway to Ayers, Ayers Rock, oh well, Ayers Springs and Ayers Rock, and then back up to Alice Rainbow, is, I think it was, Christmas 1985 would have been. Yeah, it was in Alice Springs, Christmas 1985. The weirdest thing because it, you know, how hot Alice Springs gets in the middle of summer.

Bella: 55:56

Is that during the build up as well? Like with all, before the wet season, there's the build up and it's like peak humidity as well. Oh yeah, yeah. they say the phrase growing tropo,

Phill: 56:08

yeah, tropo season, yeah, that's right, yeah. Yeah, well, it was all that, and, and, say, so it was like, kind of, really high humidity, and then, as I got further south, it got kind of hotter and drier. I remember being in, say, Alice Springs, it was kind of, 45, 46 degrees, or something like that, you know, really, really hot, and so, I ended up, you know, you could, it was too hot to cycle in the middle of the day, really, so, what I used to do was camp out in the desert. And then cycle to a roadhouse. You know, there was a roadhouse about every sort of a hundred miles or so. I kind of camp in the desert in the night, you know, get out quite early at sort of crack of dawn, ride to the roadhouse, and then spend sort of, you know, the hottest part of the day there, and then sort of three o'clock, four o'clock in the afternoon, kind of carry on and then find somewhere else. But then when it got to Alice Springs, it's on Christmas Day, and they had, it was all like decorated for Christmas. And they had all these sort of cardboard kind of cutouts along the road of things like snowmen and stuff like that, which is, you know, it's kind of like the last place on earth. Still do! Yeah.

Bella: 57:10

But you still do! Really? Yeah, And the thing is, The thing is, it wasn't until I moved to the Northern Hemisphere that I realised that all these traditions that we have at Christmas time in Australia actually make sense. But I grew up with like, you know, you snowman, you have fake snow, there's Rudolph, there's Santa.

Phill: 57:28

And he's got like the last place on Earth. Australia in most

Bella: 57:29

places is, you know, 30 odd degrees and really, really warm.

Phill: 57:32

Yeah, yeah. It's the

Bella: 57:33

summer.

Phill: 57:33

Yeah, yeah, so I remember finding that really, really bizarre.

Bella: 57:37

So hang on, that was 83, so did you start your cycle back then in 83 or? No, no, no, no, 83, 86, sorry, sorry.

Phill: 57:46

So 85, so that was 85, yeah, that was Christmas 85. So from there I headed kind of down to Well, I crossed to the East Coast, got a bit bored of the, of the, um

Bella: 57:57

Hot weather?

Phill: 57:58

Yeah, the hot weather and the sort of sea I mean, it's kind of stunning, the desert, in many ways, but after about a month or six weeks of it, it was same, same, so I kind of rode Because I, and again, the other thing, like, you know, you get to Alice Springs, and I was thinking, Oh, Alice Springs, this is where Ayers Rock is.

Bella: 58:15

No, it's like 500 kilometers away. Yeah, that's

Phill: 58:17

right, it's miles away, yeah. So, so I'd cycled out to Ayers Rock, and, uh, yeah, took my bike up Ayers Rock, which, well, I know, I know Ayers Rock, you know, the whole thing is different now, uh, Uluru, yeah.

Bella: 58:28

Uluru now. It's a traditional sacred site, uh, with the First Nations people there, so no, there's, there's definitely no taking a bike on the rock, you're not even walking on the rock, so yeah.

Phill: 58:37

Yeah, that's right, yeah, yeah, but in those days, obviously, it used to be a thing. Yeah. So anyway, I went back up to Alice Springs, and then, uh, I thought, oh, I've had enough of the desert sort of things, I'll catch a bus, so I'll catch a bus, I think it was to either Mount Isa or Klunkurry, can't remember which one, and it was about, certainly over a day on the bus, 24 hours, 36 hours, or something like that on the bus. And I thought, oh, you know, by the time I get over there, it'll be, you know, the scenery will be different, it'll be, you know, nicer. And Kuss got there, got off, and it was exactly the same. It was, you know, just, just the same scenery, really, just as hot.

Bella: 59:11

Just think, though, 36 hours on a bus with the same scenery, how many days on a bike? Oh, yeah, well, exactly, yeah, yeah.

Phill: 59:18

So I ended up cycling to the next town. I had a day cycling, and I thought, I'll stuff this, and there was a train line there. I think that might have been Mount Isa. And then, so I got on the train and had another, I don't know how many hours on the train to get further across east to somewhere and then, and then headed up through the Atherton Tablelands up to, uh, up towards Cairns and Cape Trib, Cape Tribulation.

Bella: 59:59

It's definitely not arid desert there.

Phill: 1:00:00

No, no, it's complete, yeah, completely different. Yeah, yeah, amazing. Lush,

Bella: 1:00:03

tropical green. Yeah, and

Phill: 1:00:05

then, and then sort of followed all the east coast down to Sydney.

Bella: 1:00:08

What a journey. Were there many other touring cyclists in Australia?

Phill: 1:00:12

Uh, I met, I met a guy, a Japanese guy on the Stuart Highway. And he was heading down to Adelaide and ended up, spent a couple of days cycling with him. In fact, he came, he came up Uluru with me as well with his bike. But no, not really. I don't recall seeing many others at all.

Bella: 1:00:28

And just thinking, just again, how much that's changed to now.

Phill: 1:00:31

Mm.

Bella: 1:00:32

You know how we were talking about how the political situation changed your experience in many different countries? Mm. I guess something that did change, and I guess probably sparked that extra bit of intrigue, I mean, you headed back to the UK via China, because China had only just really started opening up for tourists then as well, didn't it?

Phill: 1:00:49

Yeah, yeah, well that came about because I went over to New Zealand and spent a bit of time in New Zealand, and Unfortunately, in the North Island, I came off my bike. I met a couple of cyclists in the South on, um, the road up to, um, Phillips, I think it's called Phillips Road. It's like a backcountry road that goes, Oh, what's the place on the lake? Not Christchurch.

Bella: 1:01:10

Queenstown.

Phill: 1:01:11

Queenstown, yeah, sorry, yeah, Queenstown, yeah. Oh, what a place

Bella: 1:01:13

too.

Phill: 1:01:14

Yeah. Everywhere in New Zealand. Oh, yeah, it's gorgeous, yeah. So I'd met these guys cycling up towards Queenstown and then they'd kind of headed off somewhere else and so I went up the west coast, caught the ferry across over to the North Island and headed over to Taranaki around the volcano and ended up Coming off on a corner on this it was like a dirt road on a muddy wet corner Slipped off and ended up breaking my shoulder.

Bella: 1:01:37

That would have been the worst injury of the journey Yeah, much more worse than the motorbike in Bali.

Phill: 1:01:42

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, cuz I wasn't actually injured then I you know, I was well a bit a couple of bruises mainly the bike So I ended up I managed to catch a train up to get this this local farmer took me to the hospital Got kind of patched up and then they, they kindly put me up for a couple of nights and then dropped me off at the nearest train station and I caught the train up to, uh, Auckland. And then met up with these guys there, and they put me up for about, I think it was there, must have been three or four weeks or something like that, I think.

Bella: 1:02:10

How was the bike? Feels a bit shallow asking you that, but it's a world travelled bike.

Phill: 1:02:15

Yeah, it was kind of what, it was one of those silly sort of little accidents here, where I just sort of slept off, and it was, it was something and a nothing sort of fall, and I just must have landed kind of wrong, I don't, I don't really know. So I spent a bit of time in Auckland with these guys. Uh, and while I was there, I'd met, uh, I met somebody, I think, because, in my mind, I was kind of thinking, Oh, I'll, I'll go over to America. I've got relatives in America, so I thought Because that was

Bella: 1:02:39

the original journey.

Phill: 1:02:40

Yeah, that, that was kind of my original idea, was to head over to America and, you know, cycle across America and go and see my relatives and then kind of head back to the UK from there. And then, I met some guy, say, in Auckland, who'd Recently been to China and they said oh, yeah, it's kind of opening up You know, you can go there now as an individual traveler and I thought wow, that would be yeah, that'd be quite interesting They've gone to Tibet as well. And I'd always wanted to go to Tibet You know it always been one of those sort of Places that I'd heard of and the mystic behind it and stuff like that I managed to be able to sort of kind of sort of flight back out to Sydney and then up to Hong Kong and then Caught the boat down to Macau. You couldn't I don't think you could actually enter from Hong Kong But you could enter from Macau, so I caught the ferry down to Macau, and then cycled in through Macau. And that was, I mean, going through China then was, because this was sort of early 86. It was how you imagine, you know, all those old pictures you see of China in the Mao sort of era, you know. Everybody was wearing the blue Mao suits. They were opening up, it was still very early days. It was just very, very different. You know, there was no, nothing Western there at all. No English signs. Couldn't buy maps even. The map, in fact, I've still got the map. That I bought, I bought it in Hong Kong. It was literally a wall map of the whole of China. And that's what I used for sort of navigation, I think it had a compass. And this map, and it was all in Chinese, there was no English on it at all. So I kind of headed up north, I kind of, I, I, I knew the rough direction I was heading, just kind of followed these roads, and half the roads weren't even on the map, because, you know, it only had the kind of, the major roads, which, even those, there weren't that many roads. And in those days you had to get, um, you had what was called an alien's travel permit. And I didn't actually, well I don't know whether I did realise and I just kind of was a bit blasé about it, but you were only supposed to go to kind of the bigger cities. And you were only supposed to travel between them by, kind of, bus or train or whatever. Because I was cycling, so I cycled up to, I think it was Canton. And then I caught the, a ferry on the Yellow River. Up the Yellow River for several days to, I think, Wuhan. And then went to, kind of, Yangshou. You know, the place with, you know, you've got all these, sort of, limestone. Sort of towers just sticking out. Again, it was almost like going back into, you know, the 18th century. Yeah. You know, people were still kind of had, you know, they were pulling carts around by hand. They were all in the Mao suits. And, and I caused, you know, because they hadn't seen Westerns, you know, most of the places I went to. I

Bella: 1:05:12

was gonna say, what was the intrigue like around you? It

Phill: 1:05:14

was amazing. It was, it was kind of, in some ways, it was worse than India. You know, we used to have this expression in India, if ever stopped in a village in India, We used to call it the spray on crowd, you know, within seconds you would have hundreds of people kind of around you and it was a bit like that in China. It was really difficult communicating because Chinese is that sort of language, you know, you can't kind of, you can't look at it on a piece of paper and go, oh, I can kind of

Bella: 1:05:40

No, well the alphabet's different as well. Yeah, I can't

Phill: 1:05:42

even attempt to pronounce that. And, you know, I did try to learn some Chinese, but it was really difficult communicating and obviously there was no Yeah, no tourist infrastructure whatsoever, you know, there are very few hotels to stay at in the in the towns There were some obviously.

Bella: 1:05:58

Were there issues there as well? Because I know that like currently I know that it can be problematic for some people staying in hotels as a foreigner It's tricky, like you have to be registered and then the police often get called and I've been, I've been um, watching a great um, Irishman making their way across to Australia now. Hi Fergal!

Phill: 1:06:17

Oh yeah, Aussie to Rossie, yeah, Rossie to Aussie. Yeah, yeah, Rossie to Aussie, exactly.

Bella: 1:06:21

He's a legend and um, God, he's gone through some grim times, like the grim cold, but some amazing experiences. Yeah, I've seen sort of his, his experience play out there as well. Yeah. Did you have something similar? Like, because you're early days.

Phill: 1:06:34

Yeah, yeah. So, so, I mean, I come to quite a bit of the time and try to kind of keep out the way, so. Every time I did stay in a village or a town, where I did find a hotel, yeah, you get a visit from the police. You know, you couldn't communicate, because they, you know, there were very few people there that spoke English at all. So they'd disappear with your passport, and then you didn't know what was happening with it, and then, yeah, often it took ages in the morning to kind of find a police station. You know, if they hadn't come back to drop it off with you, you had to go and recover it. So, yeah, it was really difficult and the food was terrible.

Bella: 1:07:03

Oh, this breaks my heart because I always have to talk about food on the podcast. I always want it to be food that that makes my, you know. Oh, yeah, yeah, no, no. So, was it, was it horrible because it was just so different and starkly to what you were used to, or what, what made it horrible?

Phill: 1:07:19

Yeah, the food, all the food you could get literally was, uh, it was kind of like fried, greasy fried sort of greens, you know, I don't know what the, what they were, but they were kind of greens and rice or egg and rice, but it was all really sort of greasy and oily. And that was it. That was really all, all I could get, you know, the occasional bit of fruit now and again. So yeah, it was really, it was really difficult cycling. I mean, the scenery wise was amazing and there was, you know, there was literally nothing on the roads, no traffic or very little traffic on the roads. It was all either kind of military traffic or commercial traffic. You know, there was no private cars or anything. Everybody was on a bicycle. So anyway, this carried on, I kind of got, you know, got further north, because I was aiming to go up to Xi'an, to go and see the Terracotta soldiers. And about, it was probably four or five days, I guess, away from Xi'an. So I got quite a way north. And then this particular day, I'd stayed, I'd camped out the night. And I was sort of following the map, and I ended up riding through this, what turned out to be a military base. Uh, obviously it wasn't marked on the map or anything, and I thought You know, some kind of big airfield and there was lots of military vehicles and stuff like that. I thought, I kind of thought, this might not end well. So anyway, as it was, nobody stopped me. I just kind of kept my head down and kind of kept going and hoping nobody kind of saw me. Anyway, I carried on and nobody actually stopped me. So I got, I got through this kind of military area and I thought, oh, I got away with it. Anyway, I got to the next, sort of, small town, which was, you know, a few miles away, I can't remember how many. And the police were basically waiting for me there. And they'd sort of set up a bit of a, well, not exactly a roadblock, but they were basically waiting at the side of the road. So, they'd obviously rung ahead and gone, Oh, we've got this, you know, this foreign guy, he's just cycled through the base, sort of thing. So, So they, they kind of pulled me up and confiscated my passport, and the guy, the kind of chief guy who was in charge was the tallest Chinese guy I'd ever seen, and he had, you know, the guy on one of the James Bond films with the steel teeth, jaws, I think it was jaws, yeah,

Bella: 1:09:23

yeah, I used to be scared of jaws as a kid, but yeah, so this guy

Phill: 1:09:26

was, I mean, he must have been kind of over six foot and quite big with it, And he got these steel teeth as well, and so it was quite intimidating, and they confiscated my passport and basically put me in this hotel under kind of house arrest, and said, oh, you know, you've got to stay here, you can't leave here, and said communication was difficult, and they, they went off and got the local school teacher, who Allegedly could speak English to kind of come and translate and this guy, I mean, he, he was teaching English to pupils, but he really couldn't speak English at all. It was really difficult kind of making sense of what he was saying. You know, he, he obviously thought he could speak English. I couldn't understand why I couldn't understand him.

Bella: 1:10:08

I'd love to know what he was translating. Yeah,

Phill: 1:10:11

yeah. So, so anyway, this went on for several days. I was under kind of house arrest and thing and they were bringing me food into the hotel and stuff. And. I was climbing out of the hotel window at night and kind of going, there was a, there was like a little cafe sort of bar thing next door. So I was sneaking around there to get sort of extra, extra stuff and then sneaking back in. Anyway, they kind of came back to me with this sort of ultimatum of I was going to be fined or I could go to prison for like a week or something like that. And I was like, oh, that's, that'd be quite something being, you know, cause they'd have to notify the British embassy for a start. And it'd be kind of a bit of a story and they kind of, they'd have to look after you. It wouldn't be too bad because they wouldn't want you to be. You know, they wouldn't want anything to happen to me on their watch that I think it caused, you know, political ruptures and things like that. So I thought, oh, actually, I'll do that, you know, because, and, and, the fact, I can't remember how much the fine was. It wasn't a huge amount of money, but obviously I didn't have a lot of money then, and I'd still got to get myself back to, you know, Europe and the UK. So I thought, oh, I'll do, I'll do that. So I said, you know, okay, I'll go, I'll go to prison, you know, it's fine. And they were like, oh, shocked, you know, they were kind of, they couldn't believe anybody would choose that, and, you know, maybe a fair bit of experience, and they kind of had second thoughts, but I thought, oh yeah, it'll be fine. And they were like, taking her back and going, oh, you know, and they said, oh, they kind of got across, you know, we'll let you think about it overnight, and we'll come back tomorrow. And I'd been feeling a bit dodgy that day. Anyway, it turns out I got, I ended up with Giardia. I think I must have got it from the beer bottles in the cafe that they were keeping it. They got them like in big tubs of water, and I think I must have got it from that. Anyway, that night I kind of started feeling really bad and, you know, you get the eggy burps, whether you've ever had Giardia, but it's really horrible, you get like terrible runs, eggy burps, you feel terrible as well, so I kind of, and I knew what it was, I'd had it before. And so I knew what it was and I thought, oh, you know, that's not gonna be, that's not gonna be nice being in prison with that. So I kind of braced myself and thought, oh, you know, it's gonna be better if I just pay the, pay the fine. And, and kind of get out of there, you know. How

Bella: 1:12:13

much was the fine? I

Phill: 1:12:14

honestly can't remember. I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't a lot of money, but I got a kind of arrest warrant thing which I've got framed in a thing somewhere. I don't know where it's, I think it's in the attic actually at the moment. But yeah, so they kind of, the next day they came round and I was, you know, feeling a bit sorry for myself and thought, oh God, I'll, I'll pay the fine then. And so they put me on a bus. And shipped me out to, to Xi'an.

Bella: 1:12:34

So you saw the terracotta soldiers?

Phill: 1:12:35

Yeah, I went to see the terracotta soldiers, and you know, that was amazing, because they'd only been discovered not that, you know, it was only a few years before I got there. I think it was 1978 or something like that that they found them.

Bella: 1:12:46

It's meant to be quite an impressive site.

Phill: 1:12:48

Oh, it's, it's absolutely stunning. I mean, it must be even more impressive now, because they're still, they're still kind of excavating it. I remember then, there was, you know, it was, it was impressive. They'd built this massive sort of arched sort of tent thing over them. To protect them, but Xi'an itself was, was amazing as well, because obviously it was the old capital of, of China, so that was quite stunning.

Bella: 1:13:07

See the Great Wall of China as well, obviously, in places?

Phill: 1:13:10

Yeah, near there, yeah, it's kind of not that far from the end of the, the Great Wall, but I didn't actually see the Great Wall there, but I met, um, an English guy who was actually working in, um, in Shanghai, I think, while I was in Xi'an. Uh, and I was still feeling pretty rough because of the, um, because of the Jardia. I'd managed to get some tablets from a kind of local Chinese doctor there. And, you know, he said, take these and you'll, you know, you'll get over it sort of thing. So I was feeling pretty rough, so I met this, this English guy. And we kind of, you're kind of quite, quite over in the west there on the train line. And there's a train, you could get a train to Golmud then, which I think is now called something else. So we came up with this plan to kind of head over to, to Lhasa, so we caught the train over to Golmud and then a bus journey to Lhasa itself, which back then was still, you know, it was not built up like, you know, Chinese ified like it is now, from all accounts anyway.

Bella: 1:14:02

A very unique experience.

Phill: 1:14:04

Oh, it was amazing, yeah, I had my 23rd birthday in, in, in Lhasa city. And, uh, went to Patala Palace, and, you know, saw all these things, and then, while we were there, the guy that I was with, he had to head back, and I met up with a crowd of other folk, and they were heading over back to Nepal, to Kathmandu. So we kind of got this bus back over through the, through the, uh, over to Shigatse in Gyantse, and then back to Kathmandu.

Bella: 1:14:29

Was there a sense of him going back to the familiar?

Phill: 1:14:31

Oh, yeah, it was. Yeah, well, it was actually because I thought, because again, the food in Tibet was pretty ropey as well. So, I thought, oh, you know, could get, could go back to Kathmandu and have, you know, have some yak burgers and have some decent food. So, did that, went and spent a bit of time in Kathmandu, and then went over to Pokhara as well, because I didn't get to Pokhara the first time I was in Nepal. And then basically, yeah, spent a bit of time over there and then kind of reversed the whole journey all the way back to Xi'an, which again was, you know, back to Lhasa. Went through, uh, you know, Shigatse and Gyantse, and saw all the, the sort of damage that had happened in the, the cultural revolution there as well, which was, you know, these places were just destroyed, and I think, I think they've been kind of rebuilt to a, a bit of a degree now, although I don't know how the, um, the earthquakes affected all that now, this recent earthquake. Yeah. Then so, so I got back to, to Shehan and I was still actually suffering from the Giardia then as well. It hadn't, it hadn't really cleared up. I'd lost quite a lot of weight and yeah, I wasn't really in the best of health and when I got back to Shehan, I kind of intended to, to cycle up to peaking, but I just kind of, I'd lost that sort of, that motivation really. So, uh, on the train back up from Goldman to Shehan, met a couple of guys who were going all the way up to peaking. They were gonna get off in Shehan for a few days I thought. You know what, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna, you know, go up to Peking on the train with them. And it was kind of getting towards the end of the year by now as well, so I was thinking, you know, heading back to Europe and, you know, to try and get the timing right. So, yeah, spent a bit of time in Peking itself, went up to the Great Wall and, you know, saw Tiananmen Square and And the, um, the summer palace and things like that, which was again back then, you know, I mean, it must be very different in Peking now or Beijing now to what it was. And it was still, you know, kind of as it was in the fifties, you know. It was a big place for China, but nowhere near, near the sort of size it is now. Again, there was very, you know, there was no private traffic. Everybody was on bikes. You know, the roads were just absolutely crammed with bikes. You know, with all the locals on them and stuff. So that was, yeah, that was a, was another amazing experience. So then, yeah, it was then kind of, what do I do from here? Do I fly back, you know, to Europe somewhere from Beijing? And then, um, somebody was talking about, you know, the, the, the trans Siberian train, so I was, oh, that's all right. And actually worked out that it was actually the cheapest way to get back to Europe as well. I think I paid

Bella: 1:16:56

Oh, awesome!

Phill: 1:16:57

I think the ticket was something like about 50 or 60. To get the train from

Bella: 1:17:01

Nothing, when you think of the distance that that's covering as well, and days!

Phill: 1:17:05

I think it was eight days to Moscow. Yeah! I think. So anyway, we got on this, there's myself and I think there's a couple of other Westerners on it. So we got on this train and sort of, uh, That was another experience in itself, because it was the Chinese side, you got It was run by the sort of Chinese, and then when you got to the Russian border, Because the train gauges are actually different, So they lift the whole train up, you have to get off the train and all this sort of stuff. They lift the train up and they change the kind of bogies on the bottom of the carriages to the new gate.

Bella: 1:17:34

That's amazing. You'd nearly think it would be easier to just have two different trains. Yeah,

Phill: 1:17:38

yeah, yeah. But now they lifted them all up, changed all the bogies and got back on and then it was like that it was all Russian.

Bella: 1:17:44

Total different culture. Totally

Phill: 1:17:46

different culture, yeah. Totally different culture. And you had, on each sort of, um, cabin, So we were in this cabin, and you had like your own little sort of four bed cabin. So they'd come around and knock you up in the morning, and all the food was sort of included, because obviously you couldn't fry it for yourself. So they'd have it at one end of the cabin, they'd have a, like a lady who was in charge of it. The Chinese ones were quite, you know, they were quite nice and quite interesting and stuff, and quite polite. And then you got the Russian ones, who were kind of built like Russian shop putters. And we're very brusque, and they'd come out and they'd knock on the door at seven o'clock in the morning. Everybody, you know, you had to get up, sort of thing, or you didn't get breakfast. And you got served, it was borscht. Basically, everyday

Bella: 1:18:25

beetroot soup. Yeah, beetroot

Phill: 1:18:27

soup and cabbage soup. Mmm. And then, yeah, I can't, I think it was a bit of black bread for breakfast. Uh, and then tea and stuff. And then, so, you know, even though there was nothing to do, they'd get you up at seven o'clock in the morning and you kind of get up and you'd be sitting in the cabin and you'd be looking out over the sort of tundra and the steps of sort of Siberia. It just kind of went on for miles and miles and miles of just a lot of the same. Yeah. So we, I think somebody had a pack of cards and we, you know, we played a lot of cards, but then the good thing about it was, was we got to the bigger places. So like, Oh, what's the place at the bottom of Lake Michael.

Bella: 1:19:04

Like, that's meant to be one of the coldest places in the world.

Phill: 1:19:06

That's right, yeah. So that's at the bottom of Lake Baikal. So the train, the actual train journey kind of goes down the side of Lake Baikal. And then you stop in Lake Baikal so they, the train got kind of resupplied and stuff so you could get off the train for a couple of hours and, you know, have a wander around. So that was really interesting.

Bella: 1:19:22

That would have been.

Phill: 1:19:23

Yeah, and then you kind of, you get back on, because obviously this was all, you know, back in the Soviet times as well. So it was very, again, it was very sort of, you know, very Soviet. In those days, and then anyway, yeah, so we kind of carried on right over to Moscow, and there was this thing because I knew that this was a possibility as well, so I actually bought a load of rubles on the black market in Hong Kong. So, I mean, I can't remember what the exchange rate was, and I mean, yeah, the black market for cash when you're traveling isn't such a thing these days. But you know, they used to have like fixed exchange rates because a lot of these countries, especially countries behind the iron curtain, you know, they wanted dollars, they wanted us dollars said that they'd set the exchange rate artificially high. So maybe on the official exchange rate, you'd get maybe two rubles to a dollar. But on the unofficial, on the black market exchange rate, you get maybe 20 or 30 roubles to the dollar. So it made everything just like, you know, really, really cheap. Yeah. So you could buy like lots of roubles and obviously they did, they searched you when you went in to, you know, so you had to hide them and all this sort of stuff. So anyway, we bought all these rubles. As we got off, you know, you could go and get a meal in a place. And there was also this thing, when you're in Moscow, the train station you arrive in from the east is on one side of Moscow, and then the train station on the west, to go over to Berlin, is on the other side of Moscow. And you were supposed to, I think the train arrived at something like 11 o'clock in the morning or something, I can't remember. And you had, you know, you had a few hours and the train left for Berlin at like 6 o'clock at night. So you had to kind of make your way over there to catch the train and that. But if you missed the train going out to Berlin, Intourist, who was like the official tourist agency then, would have to put you up for the night. In Moscow.

Bella: 1:21:02

Was that your motivation to purposefully miss the train?

Phill: 1:21:05

Yeah, so it was, it was a kind of known thing. So you, you dill in d sort of and got lost on the underground and missed the train. So then you had a whole day in Moscow, you had the whole night and then all of the next day in Moscow before the next train went out at six o'clock the next, the following night. So myself and, uh, there was a, a, a German girl and I think a Danish class as well. We're on this train and, so we missed the train, the train out to Berlin and we got put up in this hotel just off Red Square. And, and they'd also got these rubles and stuff, so, uh, we went out that night, remember, we went out and found this restaurant round the back of Red Square, and dined on caviar and pink champagne.

Bella: 1:21:44

The most luxurious meal of your trip.

Phill: 1:21:46

Oh, yeah. I mean, I'd never had caviar before, you know. Have you had

Bella: 1:21:49

it much since?

Phill: 1:21:50

No, I haven't actually, no. There you go! Maybe the one and only time I've had caviar.

Bella: 1:21:55

Hopefully you've had a few bubbles since then, though. Oh,

Phill: 1:21:57

yeah, yeah, bubbles, but not, not caviar. But yeah, so we, we kind of lived it up and down, went to see St. Nicholas in red Square, you know, the, the, the cathedral there and went to see Lenin in, in his mo 'cause the, the you, the Mor Williams there. Yeah. So he was, he was, I dunno whether he's still in there, but that was kind of a, a bizarre sort of thing. Yeah. And then there used to be a, a shopping center just off Red Square as well, like an old kind of Victorian age, you know, like on levels. I think it was, we sort of reserved for kind of the elite. So it was all shops with kind of luxury items in. Which only Westerners and the kind of Russian elite could go to. So we, we went there, and I remember buying a, I brought a bearskin tank commander's Russian hatch, which I've actually still got. Spent my kind of rubles on that. So then we had the day in, in Moscow, and then, kind of then the train went through sort of Poland and Gdansk, and yeah, we got, we could get off there as well and have a wander around for a little bit. Uh, and then I ended up in Berlin. Of course, then it was still, you know, the, the Berlin Wall was still there. So you arrived in the East and it was still, you know, a lot of it was still bombed out, you know, still ruins and stuff. And I remember, you know, we had to ride from the station to Checkpoint Charlie, which was the kind of, you know, the crossing point between East and West. You know, people talk about Checkpoint Charlie. In fact, I went to Checkpoint Charlie on my last trip coming back from Georgia a couple of years ago. And now it's like, you know, you've got a Kentucky fried chicken and a McDonald's on one side and it's a kind of this sort of tourist thing, but in those days, I remember it being a really intimidating place, you know, because there were all these armed guards and, you know, the wall ran right up to it, and on this side, you know, the eastern side of the wall were still all these old sort of buildings from the Second World War that were kind of bombed out and there was still that sort of Almost no man's land in between, you know, the two checkpoints and you know You had to get your passport and yeah You'd have a Kalashnikov in your face and stuff like that and he wasn't a welcoming sort of thing when you arrived on the western Side, you know, there was still you know, they thought you were a Russian spy and you know What are you doing here and all this sort of stuff? So there was all that and then obviously you get into West Berlin and it's like gosh, it's just completely different to The eastern part of Berlin and, and Moscow and stuff, it was, you know, it, because obviously they, they wanted people to be there, because it was like a little island, you know, I think people forget that Berlin was like this little island in the middle of East Germany. Berlin wasn't kind of part of the western, it was like this little island, and they had to make it sort of, Interesting and entertaining and stuff for people to go there because it was such a kind of different life and I remember thinking oh, and I don't think I really realized that at the time and I kind of went to go and think I'll cycle back from Berlin now, I'll kind of write, you know, but I couldn't. Because there was only, there was one road, I think, linking, like, East Berlin with West Berlin. It was only, it was a motorway, so you couldn't cycle on it. So I had to then catch a train from West Berlin up to Denmark, near, sort of, the Danish border. And then get off and then cycle from there. In fact, the Danish girls that, um, or one of the Danish girls that we met in, um, Nepal, who we met again in Koh Samui, one of them was back in, in Denmark then, and kind of kept in touch with them over the, over the years. So I kind of headed up to her and, uh, what was her name? Hannah, Hannah, yeah, Hannah Brandt. I think she was at university, but she was living kind of north in Denmark. So I kind of went up there and had a few days up with her and she took me around the sights of northern Denmark and to the uh, the highest point in Denmark, I think it's called, was it Sky Hill or something like that, a whole sort of 30 meters high or something like that, I think it was, yeah.

Bella: 1:25:38

It's like the highest point in the Netherlands, isn't that over like a bridge over a loch or something?

Phill: 1:25:42

Yeah, that's right, yeah, yeah. So yeah, so I spent a little bit of time with her and kind of, now it's kind of, what was it, we've been getting into sort of October, I think. So I started heading back down, headed down to Hamburg and caught the ferry back from Hamburg to Harwich.

Bella: 1:25:57

And then back on home soil.

Phill: 1:25:58

Yeah, back on home soil, which was Knocking

Bella: 1:26:00

on your parents door.

Phill: 1:26:02

Yeah.

Bella: 1:26:02

How many years later? Three odd years later or something?

Phill: 1:26:05

Yeah, well they were actually out when I arrived home because they didn't know that I was, I was They kind of knew that I was kind of on the way back somewhere, but didn't know where I was. I don't think they knew I was back in the country. So I arrived back home and nobody was in.

Bella: 1:26:18

What did

Phill: 1:26:18

you do? Well, I kind of sat in the garden for a bit because I thought, Oh, well, that's interesting. I'll kind of hang around.

Bella: 1:26:24

Phill, legitimately I was waiting for you to say, Well, I just went to the pub.

Phill: 1:26:28

Yeah, yeah, I should have perhaps, yeah. What

Bella: 1:26:31

a journey. Oh my gosh, what a monumental journey. Phill, I normally ask guests to share one day of their trip, but over two episodes, I feel listeners like we've just heard so many amazing days. Like it's just been absolutely mind blowingly incredible. It's such a gift. I just feel like I could just sit back here and just ask you a random country and just hear 10 amazing stories. Like, you must see that as well. Like, I, I don't know whether you would've appreciated when you set off from the UK the, the sort of life stories that you would've been left with by the time you had returned.

Phill: 1:27:03

Oh, not at all. Not at all. I mean, even now, you know, just talking about it now, because obviously, you know, this was 40 years ago. Mm. So you kind of, you know, the few years when you get back, you know, I did, I did some slideshow for people and, you know, talks and things like that for various clubs and you kind of, you know, people you haven't bumped into, everybody ask you about it, but kind of. You know, it all gets kind of forgotten, you know, and you move on and, you know, you do other stuff and life takes over. And you kind of, you kind of forget, you know, what you've done, and it's been really interesting for me, you know, great in fact, you know, kind of talking about it all again. You do just forget all this stuff and before coming on the on the interviews that you know I kind of got my diaries out and had a had a bit of a flick back through them because You do forget a lot of this stuff and you kind of read through them go. Oh crikey you know the people you meet and the sort of you know That's the thing that sticks in my mind is all the you know the people and the sort of stories that you hear this obviously, you know, the environment you're in is amazing as well, but I think it's the kind of life stories that you, that kind of stick with you.

Bella: 1:28:06

Yeah, and I guess they're the most things that have impacted you the most as well, and like imparted the most on you. They're the things you probably reflect on the most, more than a landscape or a scenery.

Phill: 1:28:17

Oh yeah, it definitely rubs off on you, and I say the thing, yeah, the thing about how You know, you go to these countries and they've got so much less than we have, and their lives are so much more, you know, so much harder than our lives. And yet, people over here don't realize that's still going on, you know, like, that difference in, you know, East and West living is still there. Maybe not, perhaps not quite to the same degree, possibly, but, I don't know, you know, there's still vast differences, and I think a lot of people in the West, you know, kind of forget that, really.

Bella: 1:28:46

I like to think I'm open minded and empathetic, but even I feel like I'm blindsided by my own birthplace lottery. I understand that I have so much privilege, but even then, I haven't seen it so starkly in my face as what you would have experienced there. I've heard of the stories, and I can Think I can feel what it would be like but to be faced with that for Many many days on this trip that lasted three years like that Yeah, it would be quite something and it would be something that you couldn't just shake off and forget.

Phill: 1:29:15

No, no No, it's it's yeah, it definitely changes your life. And I think it'd be interesting. I remember going back to Jamie as well You know, because obviously he's, he's heard a lot of my stories over the years, I'm, you know, Ali's as well. And, um, you know, remember he said we went out for a walk with him just before he went. He was chatting to Ali and he said, Mum, take a look at me now. You know, I'm not going to be the same person that I went away as when I come back. And we were like, wow, yeah, that's really sort of deep, you know, and fit. God, he's

Bella: 1:29:42

so mature.

Phill: 1:29:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah, really mature. Yeah, like, like just even come

Bella: 1:29:46

out with that as well. Definitely. He did actually ask me, I feel like we sort of semi answered it, he did say, there was another question. Of course. Looking back, do you think the journey changed you as a person? And if so, how?

Phill: 1:30:00

Oh yeah, definitely. I think the, it gives you a vast amount of self confidence and resilience, I think. You know, dealing with all the stuff you have to deal with and the Knowing that, especially when you're on your own, say, you know, knowing that everything, all your decisions fall back on you, you know, you make, you make the wrong decision. It's, it's nobody else's fault. It's yours and dealing with all of that. And, and all the stuff that kind of comes along, knowing that. You know, you can get through it. And you know, whatever, whatever happens, there's an answer. There's, there's a way out of it sort of thing. There's something, you know, there's something to look forward to. As difficult as it seems at the time, and as hard, you know, as bad as you might feel at the time, you know, that you're going to get through it. And I think that's kind of lived with me. And kind of, I mean, Ali, Ali says to me that, you know, you never, you never really get stressed about anything. And I said, well, you don't need to be stressed. You know, there's always an answer. There's always a way out or an alternative or a. You know, something you can see, you just have to kind of go, Well, okay, well that, that option's been taken away from me or that's changed. What else is there? You know, what else can we do? What, what, what is there a way around this? And I think it opens your mind to certainly that sort of side of things. And I say, I think the other, the other side of it that it's changed me is, You know, not being materialistic. Yeah. I don't want the latest bike or watch or gizmo. You know, I still ride around on my old, I've still got my Mercian in the garage and I, You know, I don't use it. That often, but I still ride around on it.

Bella: 1:31:25

Gosh, the things you must think of when you just look down at it. Yeah. Like, it would just throw memories at you.

Phill: 1:31:31

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's lovely. I mean, it's my kind of nice, sunny day bike now. Yeah. You know, I don't go out if it's raining or wet or horrible or anything on it. I just go out on a nice, sunny day for a nice ride down the lanes, down the Cheshire lanes. And you do, you kind of think, blimey, where, you know, where have I been on this bike and all, all the things that he's,

Bella: 1:31:51

yeah. Oh, my mind just boggles. Phill, genuinely, I hope one day to be able to visit you there, up where you live, and see those lanes, and see your Mercian, and go for a ride with you on a sunny day out there. I think that would just be magic. That would be fantastic, you're more than welcome. I podcast microphone in your face. I'll buy you a meal at a pub so you can share more stories. Like, this has just been such an absolute pleasure for me, just Just hearing you talk about them. It's a real gift for me to be able to hear it and to be able to share it with people around the world to listen to them as well. There's many of us who listen to this show who don't have the privilege to be able to travel for any situation, but I often feel Sometimes, the biggest gift of this show is giving these stories to people and giving these learnings about the world to people as well. And, um, I so appreciate you taking the time to do that. It's just been absolutely mega.

Phill: 1:32:37

No, it's been great. It's been absolutely fantastic. I've so enjoyed it. I've enjoyed it. In fact, I've enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would do.

Bella: 1:32:43

LAUGHS I did joke, I must say though, having said I wouldn't throw a podcast microphone in your face, I did joke with Jamie, not really joke, but did say that I'd love to do a session with him when he's finished and you, and, and compare notes with you together, so maybe in the future there will be one.

Phill: 1:32:58

Oh yeah, I'd be up for that, that'd be amazing.

Bella: 1:33:00

I have to wrap things up, how sad's that? I have three quick questions for you. The first one's music related. We talked about music earlier on the show, but now, as a guest, you get to go onto the Seek Travel Ride music playlist. Listeners, I've got links to it in our show notes. It's available on Spotify as well as Apple Music. Phill, this playlist contains a song from every guest of Seek Travel Ride. And it's a song that they chose to be the soundtrack to their adventure. This is a monumental adventure of yours. What song are you going to pick?

Phill: 1:33:31

So, yeah, I really thought hard about this actually, because I've got a really broad range of music tastes. You know, I like everything from a bit of classical stuff right through to a bit of Eminem and a bit of thrash metal. So, and I've got a favourite, you know, I've got favourites in each sort of, in each area, so I've, I've really struggled with this, but I think I'm going to go back to my roots and pick a Jethro Tull song.

Bella: 1:33:53

Ooh, I don't know this, so hang on, what's the, the, Jethro

Phill: 1:33:57

Jethro Tull, oh yeah, amazing band, you need to listen to them. They're a kind of 60s, 70s, well they're still going actually, in kind, sort of folk rock band. Done some amazing, yeah, I saw them quite a few times live and I just really like their music, so I think my favourite song of theirs is a song called High Road to Valhalla, and I think it's off the, um, Stormwatch album. Because, you know, Valhalla is, um

Bella: 1:34:21

Heaven for the Norse, isn't it? That's

Phill: 1:34:23

right, yeah, where the sort of heroes go to, yeah, when they're killed. And it's, it's just such a great sort of, just, I just love the record, it's fantastic, yeah.

Bella: 1:34:31

I guarantee you once I get off this I'm going to go and listen to that song. Oh yeah, yeah, it's great, yeah.

Phill: 1:34:36

And listen to the other albums, some of the other albums as well, they're brilliant. I might

Bella: 1:34:39

have to add it on my own playlist. Yeah, yeah. I must say, the Zeke Travel Ride music playlist, my gosh, it's got to be close to six hours long now, so. Oh wow. If you're after an eclectic mix the next time you're out touring. Yeah. Put it on in your ears and um. Like I said, each song is someone's adventure. That's what I love about it.

Phill: 1:34:55

Yeah, excellent.

Bella: 1:34:56

Alrighty, two questions left. This will be an interesting answer. Feel I already know the answer to this, but anyway. You're given the choice one day, Phill. You can choose to go left down a road, and that road leads to never ending, bone jarring, washboard corrugations. The type that would rattle your fillings out, Blblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblb There's no smoothness there. Or you could go the other way, but you have a never ending, relentless, Almost stop you in your tracks headwind. Which one are you gonna choose?

Phill: 1:35:27

Oh no, easy, easy, easy answer for that. It's got to be the corrugations.

Bella: 1:35:31

Oh, it had to be the corrugations! I mean, you took your bike up never ending corrugations and your hills and everything up Everest.

Phill: 1:35:37

Yeah, I, I, I thought headwinds are just It's so demoralizing, you know, because you kind of feel, you feel cheated, you know, especially when you, you know, you ride, you ride up a hill or whatever and you get to the top and you think, oh, at least I've got a bit of downhill, I've got a little bit of a rest here. And then you have the headwind and you've got to pedal down the hill and it's just so demoralizing. Yeah.

Bella: 1:35:56

In the valleys, in the Pyrenees, it's, you know, your reward for climbing the mountain is a long discipline. But often that long descent's into a cheeky headwind. Oh, yeah. Because you've got to pedal.

Phill: 1:36:04

Yeah. And the thing about, the thing about corrugations as well is, you know, there's always that little bit of an edge on the side of the corrugations where it's just kind of, you know, the sweet spot before, you know, the sort of rough area on the edge and you get the sort of dust thrown up in the corners. I remember when we went across the Baluchi Desert from, from the Taftan border up to Quetta. It was about 800 kilometers, I think, and it was mostly corrugations across the desert. And it was just, yeah, you found this sort of sweet spot on the side. But it was all, the stand varied and sometimes you'd, you'd be riding along and it'd be quite hard packed. And then it'd suddenly just turn into this really soft stand and you'd be forced back out into the actual proper corrugations. Yeah, and there'll be corrugations all the way.

Bella: 1:36:46

Oh, I knew it was going to be. I didn't even need to ask it, but I need to have it on record. Alright, final question. I know I'm going to love your answer to this. And I just want you to finish this sentence for me, and the sentence is, The best thing about taking a bike adventure is

Phill: 1:37:02

Oh great, it's got to be meeting the people. I think meeting, you know, when, when you, on a, so I've done, you know, having done quite a lot of travels in various forms, you know, cars, motorbikes, uh, backpacking. I think when you arrive somewhere on a bike, people don't see you as a threat. I think they take you in very quickly, because they kind of go, you know, especially when you're in an area where, you know, any kind of traveling is hard. You know, you kind of appear on this bike and they look at you and go, What on earth are you doing on a bike here? And I think that kind of opens doors immediately and they don't, you know, the divide between, obviously, you know, there's the cultural divide that you have between yourselves, but it just seems to dissipate and you're just two people. In a place, sort of thing, and, and I think, I think that's the best thing about travelling by bike, you know, the sort of, the lack of barriers that it makes all the barriers sort of fall away, generally anyway, yeah, yeah.

Bella: 1:37:53

And it's a conversation starter. It's, it's a sign of vulnerability in a way, that you don't have much with you.

Phill: 1:38:00

Yeah, yeah, you're not seen as the rich tourist, even though, you know. A lot of bikes these days cost a lot of money, but you know, you're kind of just seen as almost, oh, you're one of us. You've arrived on a bike.

Bella: 1:38:11

Mm, yeah. It takes me back to James Bale, who traveled at a very similar time to you. Yeah. He was at Everest in 86. That's right. Yeah. So not, not much further on. And his description of it was, it's a very humble way of traveling. It is, yeah. It's a leveler.

Phill: 1:38:23

It is. It is. Yeah. Yeah. It goes with

Bella: 1:38:25

that, doesn't it?

Phill: 1:38:26

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And, and it also, of course, it, it's that sweet spot as well between. You know, because you've got kind of walk, you know, you can travel by walk, but you know, realistically, you're kind of stuck to probably, you know, 25, 30 K's a day, something like that, whereas, you know, and then on a motorbike or something, you know, you can, you can do a lot further, but you've got a lot more paraphernalia, you know, you want to stop and take a photo, you've got to kind of get off the bike, find somewhere to park, take your gloves off, take your helmet off, you know, and with a bike, you've kind of got, it's that sweet spot in between really, where you're open, You know, you're in the elements. You can cover a reasonable distance, you know,

Bella: 1:39:01

you can take it anywhere.

Phill: 1:39:03

Yeah. You, yeah. And so, yeah, you can pick it up, stick it on your back and, you know, carry it with you and, and you've still got it. So, yeah. And the

Bella: 1:39:09

places you've carried it to as well. Yeah.. Phill: Yeah. Oh, what an absolute trip. What a journey. A life-changing journey legitimately.

Phill: 1:39:17

Oh, definitely. Yeah.

Bella: 1:39:18

Like I can only just imagine the stories. There would be things that you would flick through Phill, like that, you know, your journals or photos. You know, the little memorial plaque of, you were arrested and meant to be put in a Chinese jail.

Phill: 1:39:32

Yeah, yeah.

Bella: 1:39:33

The next time you eat a banana prawn. Um, the story that that brings back, it's been an absolute pleasure. Like, Phill Hargraves, you have taken us On a real journey, and listeners, I hope that you've appreciated listening to these stories now as we reach the end of part two of Phill and his adventures, the UK to Australia and all the way back again, uh, a story of legend, one of the first to get to Everest base camp, you still have your beautiful Steel, Mercy and Cycle there. I challenge you to look at it today, take a photo of it and send it to me.

Phill: 1:40:08

I will do.

Bella: 1:40:09

It has been an absolute pleasure, Phill Hargraves. Thank you so, so much for sharing your stories and experiences here for us on the podcast at Seek Travel Ride.

Phill: 1:40:17

Yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me on, Bully. It's been, it's been really great.

Bella: 1:40:20

And there we have it, listeners, a wrap up on a most incredible bike adventure by Phill Hargraves there. Almost three years to go from the UK to Australia via Basecamp and then back again. My mind was continually blown through these two podcast sessions that I had with Phill, just hearing the stories and Also knowing that, no doubt, there are still hundreds more that are contained within his adventure, I definitely welcome you to check out our Instagram account where I have got a lot of photos from these journeys that Phill has taken up there. Because the photos paired with Phill's stories really add an extra layer and insight into what it must have been like for him to venture out there on the road. Now listeners, if you have been enjoying Seek Travel Ride and you would like to show some love and appreciation for the work that I'm putting together here on the show, you can do so by buying me a coffee. Simply head to buymeacoffee. com forward slash Seek Travel Ride or hit the link in the show notes. Buy me a virtual brew, but most importantly leave me a message and let me know where your bike adventure is going to take you. Until the next episode, I'm Bella Molloy. Thanks for listening.