The Bicycle Odyssey Part 2 - Laos

On the first day on the bike after the climbing break, I did one kilometer after another. I felt like an eagle on the hunt, flying between the mountains on the valley roads past the villages, only I wasn't hunting for animals on the lower food chain, but for the Thalang town sign. The place where I wanted to meet Katja in the evening and where a large vegetarian all you can BBQ awaited me. My illusion of the predator analogy was only shattered every now and then when I saw my reflection in the glass fronts of the isolated houses. The reflection reminded me of the owl that I found while jogging in the forest 4 years ago in late autumn. Fallen out of the nest, shaking, wet and helpless. And just as the owl would have gotten closer to the light going out without my help, I also had to accept that my bike wasn't a top bike and was slowly showing the first signs of resignation. The chain started jumping and jamming every 10 seconds, which frustrated the hell out of me until I found a small repair shop where the owner greeted me warmly and immediately knew what was wrong and how to fix it. Just as I was pampering the owl, he was repairing my bike to get as many kilometers out of it as possible. After the repairs, I was still riding the wobbly owl, but I immediately imagined that I was gliding along on a Pegasus bicycle.

The first real mountain squeezed every bead of sweat out of me and made me think about crossing the Alps again. Once at the top, a scream of joy and a feeling of well-being escaped my throat as the wind removed my excess heat via sweat through convection. For the last few kilometers I did a little nonsense on the bike and practiced acrobatic dances on the frame and saddle.

When I arrived in Thalang in the evening, to my surprise, there was also Stuart, a 66-year-old Canadian who I had previously met with Katja and who, apart from the age difference, was in no way different from the other backpackers. We all loved Stuart. It is a living motivation not to give in to increasing age and the associated cognitive and physical decline, but to start fighting against it at an early age. Stuart's healthy lifestyle, his diet and his sporting activities, while maintaining his desire for adventure, spontaneity and openness, led to the special person he is. I never thought I would be dancing to techno with a 66 year old in Laos at night :D

We had a very beautiful sunset and stuffed ourselves at the BBQ until we were all sick, which was my first attempt to address my calorie deficit. While I was teaching the group a new card game, I received an email that took me completely by surprise, so I had to think about whether I wasn't dreaming after all. I pinched myself several times, checked the existence and validity of the email dozens of times, and in my tunnel vision began shaking, crying, and grinning. The reason why the email was so extremely unexpected was because the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz had actually already sent me a rejection letter for the 2024 summer semester, based on which I mentally created a complete plan for another six months of travel prepared for it and already booked flights to Hong Kong and Taiwan. And now I read in all seriousness that I was admitted after all.

The goal that I had been striving for since I was 16 and had to fight so hard for was suddenly on my cell phone while playing cards in Laos in the evening. Everything seemed incredibly surreal. I told the others what had just happened and they all immediately jumped up to congratulate me and give me a hug. Especially with Katja and Stuart, I could really feel that they were really happy for me. As the round slowly dissipated around 11 p.m., any exhaustion from the day had disappeared and I was still brimming with excitement and joy. I started calling my family and friends and was incredibly happy to finally be able to tell them this news. I've been imagining this moment for years, calling all these people and telling them I finally did it. Everyone was incredibly happy for me and, above all, it meant that I could finally move in with my cousin Lena. Due to my lack of sleep until 4 a.m., I spent the time taking care of the return journey, finding out about child benefit, BAföG, university and everything else and thinking about how things always turn out for the better when you only with passion and ambition. The next morning I woke up with a huge grin, checked my email again to make sure I wasn't really dreaming, and then booked the flight home. Katja, Stuart and I said a warm goodbye and I was looking forward to seeing the warm-hearted and loving Katja again in Thailand.

That day on the bike my only thoughts were about all the things that were about to happen to me and the spontaneous change in plans. Since I was on a route that many tourists take as a motorbike ride, people kept whizzing past me on scooters, joining in with the motivating gestures of the locals. In fact, I was so fast that I met the same people at the same rest points and sights along the way and quickly became known as the crazy and fast German cyclist among the 20 or so backpackers.

The next day I wanted to visit the Kong Lor cave, which is 45 km away and has to come back the same way. Since I didn't feel like it, I decided to try hitchhiking and drove to the cave with about 6 different Laotians on their trucks, scooters, motorcycles, cars and vans. There I met a Dutch couple with whom I rented a boat to travel through the 7km long cave. The cave runs through an entire mountain range, over hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years, the cave's massive dimensions have eroded, allowing for probably one of the coolest boat rides imaginable. After arriving in the starting village, I quickly hopped on my bike to conquer the upcoming mountain before dark, as I didn't want to start early in the morning. When my chain fell out several times halfway up the mountain and my tire burst, the sun sank behind the mountains towards the west in its increasingly orange glow. I decided to set up my hammock here and then repair my bike, which turned out to be torture. My replacement tube burst when I pumped it up for the first time, the patches on the tube just wouldn't work and my air pump spontaneously started to get porous spots everywhere, which I tried to cover with glue. Even though it was the absolute best glue I ever owned and I smeared it on the air pump hose, there was always a leak somewhere. When I bought the glue, a drop fell on my pants, which immediately began to steam at that point and the drop of glue etched its way through the pants and even etched away my epidermis underneath. Within seconds it was rock hard and I would swear it came straight from NASA, where they use it to maintain the ISS.

As the darkness enveloped me, I lay in my hammock, hungry (because I couldn't make it to the next village), the broken bike and saw a forest fire in the distance. After I judged it to be harmless, I slowly fell asleep with the red spot in the distance, while the first drops of rain I had seen in weeks fell to the ground next to me. Luckily I had a cover over my hammock so I only got partially wet and woke up every now and then to the lashing rain, thunder and trucks speeding past.

The next morning I somehow managed to inflate my rear tire to a minimum volume, which took me over the next mountain and to the next village, where an employee at a car repair shop filled my tire up again with an electronic air pump. I decided not to drive in western Laos anymore, but to take a route through the center, which would take me through even more remote towns and through the mountains. I didn't know that this decision would ultimately be my downfall when I stocked up on food at the crucial intersection and sweated up the first mountains.

After 80 kilometers I took my first break for food and saw a Caucasian man sitting at the table in front of me who was looking at me just as surprised as I was at him. I smiled at him and after a moment of processing he returned it. So I met the 60-year-old American Greg, who works as a professor of Southeast Asian culture at a university in New York, speaks Lao, is currently cycling through the remote rural areas of Laos and is documenting it in order to collect data for the university library. A nice, quiet, introverted but charming man who, on his racing bike and his 60 years, made me look like a post-covid patient just starting his rehabilitation. I envied his basic fitness and his flexibility to make such a trip easy.

The next morning the time had come. The partially fixed left pedal was the last announcement and breath of my bike the previous evening. The tire was completely flat again in the morning and the pedal was completely rigid. My options were zero due to insufficient preparation and the nearest small town where I could hope for a bike shop with strong optimism was 250km away. I didn't consider my options, left Master Hora standing and stuck my thumb out. After almost 1000km the tour ended quite abruptly. It was like the morbidity and vulnerability of old people. The degenerative process was slow and insidious and then came a usually mild trauma that started the chain reaction of rapid decline, which without professional treatment spells the end.

The change from autonomy and freedom with your own bike to complete dependence on other people and the uncertainty of how the day will turn out was very interesting and not that easy. I also couldn't take the route I wanted to take by bike because it took me through such uninhabited areas where my chances of finding a ride were zero. So I finally had to take a detour of an additional 150 km to increase my chances, which worked pretty well. I spent the next two days mostly in the back of trucks, jeeps and vans, where I was sometimes able to rest on hay and sometimes had to be crushed between individual car components. Sometimes I was kept company by chickens, ducks, pigs and dogs who shook me around, squealing, yelping or pooping. As the roads got worse and the dust increased, after the two days my body felt as if I had recklessly entered the ring against Mohamed Ali and my particulate matter exposure was already covered for the next decade. I thought a lot about giving up control, read whenever possible, listened to my medical audio book and learned the basics of cellular processes and metabolic components in preparation for the course.

It was not only the end of the bike tour, but also the end of the real adventure for my trip to Asia. It was the best decision I could have made. Because now I'm back in civilization, where life is simple and uncomplicated and I know it will stay that way until my return flight in three weeks.

I've discovered a lot about myself in the last six months, but one thing that became clear to me once again after completing this was that I now know what type of travel I prefer.

When I've been cycling up a mountain in the middle of nowhere for two weeks without a shower at 37 degrees, my rattling frame gives up the ghost, I don't know where I'm going to get my next meals or water, I feel alive.

When I hike past glaciers in the Himalayas at -15°C, the oxygen concentration is only 65% of what it was at nn and I have to eat snow because my water is frozen, then I feel the blood pumping through my heart, driving this system.

When I encounter such fundamental cultural and moral differences in India, I reach the limits of understanding and perhaps end up with a new perspective.

And when I actively seek out this experience again and again, put myself into 'unsafe' conditions and each time come out with a grin, more knowledge and even greater interest in adventure, then I know who I am, what defines me and what drives me.