www.CyclingHomeFromSiberia.com

This is my final update about Cycling Home From Siberia

What was the point of Cycling Home From Siberia ?
Hints and Guesses.

(IF YOU HAVE CONTACTS IN SCHOOLS WHO MIGHT LIKE TO RECEIVE INFORMATION ABOUT THE MOTIVATIONAL TALKS I AM GIVING AROUND THE UK, THEN PLEASE DO CONTACT ME.
Please see http://www.cyclinghomefromsiberia.com/wordpress/?page_id=28  for more information.).

“How come I end up where I started…â€?
– Radiohead

“These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation…
And right action is freedom from past and future also”
- T S Eliot

I made it back in the last week of October. The bike and I sailed the dawn ferry from Dunkerque to Dover. We rode up through wind and rain to London, past Big Ben in the dark and down Notting Hill to my parents’ house. Home, at long last.

A few days later I was a best man at Al’s wedding – the friend with whom I began this whole crazy escapade in Siberia, in the winter of 2004. Once we reached Japan early in 2005, Al had sensibly taken a more direct route home via Northern China rather than via Australia. He arrived back almost 2 years ahead of me and managed to win back Sarah, his university sweetheart, to be his wife. I was glad to make it home in time for their special day. (Incidentally, Al has just published the second book about his ride – “Thunder and Sunshine� – this one includes several excellent chapters about our exploits together in Siberia. You can get a copy from www.alastairhumphreys.com – well worth a read).

Since then, I have had two months settling back into London life. It has been quite an up and down time. Usually, on the ride, I found finishing difficult legs the most exhilarating experiences. For several weeks before the end, I knew that perhaps finishing the entire thing would feel rather different.  If the goal was to cycle HOME, what am I to do now that I am home?! Some days I feel grateful to be back and excited about what is ahead. Other days, I feel daunted as I see everyone else in London seemingly rattling onwards with their careers, buying houses, settling down.
 
I often shake my head in bewilderment as I try to remind myself that the last three years did actually happen. It was not a dream, yet so distant and unreal it seems in my mind sometimes.  Before I set off I just expected this ride to involve lots of camping in epic places and riding across vast deserts and having a few laughs with Al. It all turned out to be rather more complicated, difficult and worthwhile than expected. That’s life I suppose.

I sometimes imagine what I would have thought, if before I set off, somebody had told me that the journey would end up taking not 18 months, but 37, and that I would be alone for the vast majority of it. That I would experience campsites at minus 40, sailing the South China Sea in Typhoon Season, getting lost in Papua New Guinean jungles, malaria, a Level Five Cyclone in Australia, dodging police checkpoints in Tibet, riding the Hindu Cush in Afghanistan… and best of all meeting an amazing girl who would be in London when I got home. Crumbs. I do not think I would have ever believed you.

Rather than over analysing everything (my favourite pastime these day it seems), I will sign off these updates with a brief look at a few questions which I am often asked (and which I often ask myself).

Why did you do it?

I think I did it because I wanted to learn about the world, and I have always found it difficult to say no when someone invites me to take part in something challenging.  Then, once I started, I found I could not bring myself to quit – and I was enjoying meeting such a wide diversity of people and learning about the world in such unexpected ways.

Do you miss being on the road?

I do NOT miss the cycling (I am now enjoying using my Oyster Card and reading books as I get around London).

I DO miss the camping in cool places. The other day, on a bus ride through Scotland, I gazed rather wistfully at a forest which was up a farm road on top of a small hill. “If I was cyclingâ€?, I thought to myself, “that would be a cool place to camp… cooking a simple meal of pasta and fried tuna, then settling down for a snug night in the tent reading a book by torch light. I would wake and open the tent door to see a frozen dawn rolling across the white fields and shining mistâ€?. Wow!

I think what I miss most of all is the tangible sense of purpose I had on the bike. I just needed to pedal a bit further along the road. Each night I could look at my map and see that, however insignificant that progress might appear, I was now a little bit closer to my destination. If I looked at the map a week later, I could see the real distance that I had covered. Now, back in “normal life� in London, it is much harder to have clear, tangible, achievable goals like that. 

Any more adventures planned?

Not of the cycling or multiyear variety. Perhaps it would be good to go and live in a country long enough to learn the language and make deeper friendships. One of my favourite projects before this trip was canoeing down the Thames from Oxford to Big Ben, sleeping in random farmers’ fields as each night arrived.  Adventures do not need to be epic to be great fun, so yes, I hope to have a few more of those.

Have you changed?

Whilst on the trip, I could never tell if I had changed, as I had nothing to compare myself to. Now, suddenly, I can compare myself with people who I knew before (though they have changed too!). 

Maybe I am less patient from spending too much time on my own on the road which has made me self-absorbed. On the road, if I decided to do something, it was up to me to make it happen. Now I have to learn to cooperate with others a lot more.

In a positive sense, I think I have learnt about some good things:  that problems can be solved if approached with a good attitude; that it is still possible to persevere even when strength seems to have run out; that there are a lot of hospitable people in the world who know deep in their bones that it is more blessed to give than to receive; that proper preparation is needed to get through difficult situations; that often it is worth taking a risk; that life is short;  that although some things feel like they will go on forever, they will, of course, reach their end eventually.

I remember one evening in a small town in Pakistan, I was approached by a man, about my age, whom I assumed to be from the local area. To my surprise he began to chat to me in a broad Manchester accent. He was English Pakistani, but was back in Pakistan to bury his father. We chatted for a while about how he found life in Pakistan compared to England, and he warned about some of the more dangerous characters in the vicinity, but then said to me “but you’ll be ok – with all your experience�.  Later that night, as I wandered off into the town to find an internet cafe, I started to think to myself: in what possible sense could all my experience actually help me if I did get into trouble on a dark night in a foreign town? I have never been in a fight in my life. I am not a particularly fast runner to escape danger. The only thing that I could think of was that perhaps I am slightly more able to take scary situations in my stride, things faze me less these days. At least, things that I encountered on the road do not seem to faze me now. I am hoping I can learn to adopt the same attitude to life in England.
Example:
Q.  What is the worst that can happen if knock on this persons door in Tibet ?
A. They think I am a strange foreign cyclist and tell me to go away.

C.f. adopting the same attitude in England:

Q. What is the worst that can happen if I apply for this job? 
A. They think I am not qualified for the job and tell me to go away.

“If�, I remind myself, “I was brave enough to cycle through Papua New Guinea and Afghanistan, surely I am brave enough to take a few risks in England too�.

On matters of faith, I think that my Christian beliefs have remained essentially the same, though I have been challenged greatly by the examples of generosity, devotion, courage, and forbearance which I encountered on the road.

The intensity of thought and feeling which we experience, whether it be when we yearn for justice, long for good companionship, or are moved by the dazzling beauty of nature, for me, all point to the reality of a spiritual dimension to life, and to the belief that the world has somehow gone wrong. As a Christian, I do believe that we are meant to work towards making the world become a better place, though I do not think we can achieve the goodness we long for on our own.

Passing through the religious heartlands of Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism and Islam was also a thought provoking and moving experience for me. I am challenged immensely to maintain integrity in the practice and articulation of my own beliefs, whilst also genuinely listening to and learning from the deeply held beliefs of others.  I am uninspired by the rather shallow “I’m ok and you’re ok� spirituality which seems so popular in the West. I think respecting another person’s beliefs does not always entail leaving them alone and unchallenged and I am alarmed by the seemingly prevalent view that all things spiritual are necessarily benign. More than tolerance, I think we need to learn to love and forgive. And I for one, do not think I can learn to love people with whom I disagree strongly, or forgive people by whom I am hurt badly, unless I am given some help from above.

What will you do now?

A good question!

In the short term I am doing some work off the back of this trip, with some writing, film editing, and most of all, giving “motivational lectures� in schools. 

In the same way that I was encouraged by lectures I gave during the trip, I have been encouraged that schools in the UK have been giving me some very positive feedback:

 “What an excellent way to start the New Year’s Lecture series! The Sixth Form and staff thoroughly enjoyed your enlightening and interactive insights into your travels, and there has been a buzz around the senior pupils following it. Pupils of this age are often reticent to get involved; you obviously fired them up and I am sure that there would have been more questions had time allowed.
I wish you every success in your future career and other expeditions that you undertake. You have an exciting message for the young of today and I am grateful to you for sharing it with our Sixth Form.�
- J P Middleton, Deputy Head, Clifton College, Bristol

“School schedules are busy things, but if you can find time to lift your students out of their normal day for just an hour, Rob Lilwall’s stories will fill them with optimism, courage and self belief.  Our girls enthralled from start to finish – and left feeling empowered to pursue and to achieve their dreams.  This, together with gaining a memorable lesson in geography, history and humanity, made it an experience I wholeheartedly recommend.”
- Director of Thinking Skills, Northwood College, London

“Rob’s talk illuminated a dark winter’s afternoon, the children’s imagination was fired and educationally it was a great way to show young children the varied culture, climate, flora and fauna of several continents all packed into one engaging hour. A super way to end the term and we learned a lot in class by following the journey on a World map. The children truly enjoyed Rob’s presentation.â€?
- David Pearce, Year 7 Teacher, Loretto Preparatory School, Edinburgh

If you have contacts in schools who might be interested in me speaking, please do direct them to my website for more information, or even better, pass me their contact details so that I can send an information pack. Thank you.

I will be doing this schools’ work for the next two terms, but after that I am exploring a number of ideas. Back to teaching geography is a strong possibility, but I am open to doing something new and challenging in a different way to cycling or teaching.
 
Of course, thank you to everyone who donated money to Viva Network whose sterling work with children at risk around the world I witnessed to be making a real difference. I am extremely happy to announce that we have now made it over the fundraising target of £20,000. THANK YOU !  I will leave the Justgiving.com site up and running until the end of January so that we can still push it on upwards further to £21,000.

Finally, I just want to say thank you very much to everyone for all your emails, prayers and encouragement along the way. It all meant a lot to me.  Please do drop me an email if you are in London and want to catch up.

If you are interested, I have pasted below a poem and three quotes which help me make sense of our journey through life.

Stay in touch and God bless, and thanks again for your support,

Rob
www.cyclinghomefromsiberia.com

Thalassa
- by Louis MacNeice

Run out the boat, my broken comrades;
Let the old seaweed crack, the surge
Burgeon oblivious of the last
Embarkation of feckless men,
Let every adverse force converge–
Here we must needs embark again.

Run up the sail, my heartsick comrades;
Let each horizon tilt and lurch–
You know the worst: your wills are fickle,
Your values blurred, your hearts impure
And your past life a ruined church–
But let your poison be your cure.

Put out to sea, ignoble comrades,
Whose record shall be noble yet;
Butting through scarps of moving marble
The narwhal dares us to be free;
By a high star our course is set,
Our end is Life. Put out to sea.

And here are three quotes from C S Lewis, who, a dozen years after I first read him, still fires my mind and imagination: