Karen Darke

In May this year, a bunch of Scottish Scouts took on their own Quest 79 challenge, crossing Scotland via the Great Glen Way. The cycled and canoed 79 miles over four days through sun, rain and midges. “What was the hardest bit?” I asked.
“The big hill! It went on and on and it was so steep.”
“And the best bit?”
“Errrr. It’s weird but maybe the best bit was going uphill too” they declared. “Because we didn’t think we could do it, and then we discovered we were stronger than we thought.”

The Himalayan hills are behind us now, but whilst they were hard, we are missing them as we cycle on the plains of the Ganges. A piece of our hearts is left in the drama of the scenery we have passed through, in the unexpected terrain, with the turquoise Ganga tumbling beside us, with the resilient spirits and gentle smiles of mountain people.

Our challenges are different now. We cycle by monkeys and road signs for elephants. We are grateful for the sacred cows that bimble all over the roads, slowing the onslaught of traffic to a safer pace. We dodge between rickshaws, auto-rickshaws, tuktuks, battered old cars, trucks and buses, mules and donkeys, carts, dogs, cows, pigs, monkeys, people, puddles, potholes, bumps and lumps.

“One Selfie!” all the motorbikes call to us, anything from one to five passengers squeezed on a single seat, hands full of mobile phones pointing at us whilst shouting “What your country?!”

When we pause for a break, crowds gather within seconds, motorbikes abandoned in the middle of the road for videos and selfies with us, overladen buses veering around, sometimes with a small crowd sat on top or someone on the roof-rack playing a drum.

In this land of motorbikes and selfies, noise is relentless. After a few days we manage to zone out from the blaring horns, rumbling engines, squeals of monkeys and calls to prayer. The heat is oppressive, thirst impossible to quench. We seek sanctuary in our overnight abodes, a screen of concrete and glass between us and the chaos, a waft of cool from a fan that looks ready to propel itself from a misfitting hole in a crumbling ceiling. Kevin dreamt last night of a fan spinning from the ceiling into the giant bed and mincing us all up. Maybe he is wanting a get-out from the sticky hard work or the incessant overload on the senses.

Christine is a changed woman. “We’ll get another day out of these cycling jerseys” she suggests on day four of ten hours on the road. It is a polar opposite to her usual habit of putting every last scrap of clothing in a washing machine after a half-hour cycle that raises no sweat. I am a changed woman too, saturated with grime and years of dirty adventures, eager to rinse our jerseys in a bucket.

“I love all these bruises and scrapes on my legs. Some of them are spectacular!” Christine adds, “I’m a real adventurer now”. Meanwhile, the seasoned adventurer in me is scrubbing myself clean, cleaning my feet with tea tree and seeking the moisturiser. There has been an exchange between us somewhere along the way. Christine has downed her standards (even happy to eat some day-old pizza crawling with ants), and I have upped mine.

We are exhausted with ‘our public’ but appreciative of Christine bringing up the rear and acting as our relationship manager with the motorbikes chasing us down from behind. They have heard we are on the road and are out to investigate. “Namaste! Gangotri to Varanasi” she calls out like a broken record, and intermittently we hear “Very well thank you!” In desperation to escape a growing crowd and a gang of bikes in the town of Bijnor, we flee.

10km out of town, our newly acquired Indian SIM card not working, I briefly turn my data roaming on to check we are on the right road. We are going totally the wrong direction. Back on track and my phone full of texts from Three informing me that the 90 seconds online has cost me more than £1 a second (seriously Three?!), we decide to cut our day short and find a riverside Ashram. We are hoping for some peace and a spiritual experience on our “Sacred Way”.

We leave the tarmac and follow a dusty lane towards the Ganges, temporarily lost amongst donkey poo and inquisitive villagers. Kevin’s data roaming, at a much more reasonable rate, navigates us to the Ashram gates. A friendly crowd starts to gather and lifts us and our bikes up the flight of steps, and through a gateway that has an air of temple about it. Before entering inside, we are spoiled with hot chai, snacks and a bunch more selfies. Ready for some rest and maybe a lesson in meditation, we begin heading inside, asking where there is a room we can lie down. Instead we are guided outside again, back down the steps, up the dusty street and toward the ‘the old house’. I imagine an ancient temple, maybe a bit dilapidated, excited for our first Ashram.
We are shown to a room, Kevin reporting that an old man had been fast asleep on the bed until a few seconds before.
“This old Ashram?” I ask Kum Kum in my new Indian English. She seems to be in charge.
“Old home,” she says, “I manager”.

The rickety village of Gangotri is the end of the road and the start of our journey. We are 3500m high, buried in a Himalayan valley. A few short rows of tumbledown houses line the upper Ganges, a smattering of colour etched across golden towers of rock. Massive blocks of mountain are suspended precariously above us, ready to fall from contorted walls that stretch to the sky. Towards the heavens, rugged peaks crown the valley like meringue, and from their heart flows Ma Ganga. The crystal water of the worlds most sacred river is the reason we are here. Today we throw a feather in the river. Tomorrow we will begin chasing it downstream. In the next three weeks we will cycle 1500km from these dizzy heights to the winding streets of Varanasi and its two-thousand temples. The pristine scene before us is a stark contrast to what awaits us downstream. Here the water is pure enough to drink but by the end of our journey the river will be awash with rubbish and the remains of burned bodies. Varanasi is the fourth most polluted city in the world.

Tushi-shy is our new best friend, our Nepali Sherpa adopted for the day. A slight man, he magically makes the village wheelchair friendly, deftly navigating us up steps and along riverside paths, hauling two heavy bike boxes on his head with the strength of the mightiest Hindu God. He guides us to Ganga Aarti, evening worship of the banks of the river, and then to the temple for sunset. We share daal and chapatis and in broken English, exchange snippets of our radically different lives. We would like to stay a while, trek to the glacier and absorb more mountain energy, but our bikes are beckoning for action. Our journey must begin.

Downstream we go. The river goes down, down, down, but we go up and down. The valley sides plummet into the Ganges gorge so that ridges of mountain force us upwards. Our loads wobble and our legs and arms shake at the effort of each hill. On day three the mountains hit us like a wall, 60 km of climb. Our average speed slows to 6km an hour and we set in for a long hard day. Christine makes noises like she is giving birth, but she digs in, bend by bend, bite-size chunks her mantra. After 35km of climb, clinging to the mountainside and aghast at how high we are, she upgrades her and Kevin from ordinary human beings to extraordinary. A few bends later they are honorary superhumans, ”for one day only” she emphasises, barely able to believe where we are and how high we have climbed.
“It’s two years ago since we started the couch to 50km British Cycling training programme” she reflects ”and I thought the hill from the Dores Tesco was too much then. It’s not even a hill!”
“And now look where you are. Never mind 50 km, this is couch to Himalayas in 2 years!” I remind her.

We chase darkness to the top of the hill, and just 2 km from the hilltop village of Chamba, Christine cracks. “I can’t go on!” she wails in a brief moment of despair, but some Harry Krishna pilgrims from Russia and Kazakhstan abandon their motorbikes to help push her bike around a particularly gruesome steep bend. We are nearly there – just a few more km to the top of Christines Everest and a bed in the village of Chamba.

Storms, landslides and mud took us back to the lowlands, to our Glow on the Ganges location in Rishikesh. It feels hot, steamy and busy. We intended to visit an Ashram for a few moments of meditative peace but instead we choose a few hours of reprieve in our hostel bedroom. The assault on the senses is non-stop. The horns and throb of India can wait  for tomorrow.

We lie on beds that in India would likely sleep a whole family in each. The sheets have a grey tinge, probably washed in Ganges water. Brown dirty fans whir above us, vaguely stirring the hot sticky air. Damp stains the yellow walls and a metal grid over the window separates us from the bustle and chaos outside. Beyond the hostel wall, people are sleeping in shacks and tents amongst rubbish and moo (=mud + poo). We have monetary abundance compared to most around here, but the blessings, ceremonies, sacred rituals, smiles and hearts of the people we meet tell of spiritual richness. Who is better off I wonder?

The end of the river
Over the past three weeks we have journeyed alongside the meandering 2520km of river and finally to the mouth, where it disappears into the surf of the Southern Ocean. My pace has slowed – it’s hard not to when you share a journey with a river that moves at 1km/hr. That means that the bubbling stream water we began with is still many kilometres upstream. Our slow pace is still rapid compared to that of nature, and it makes me feel more than ever that our lives are just a blip in the passage of time.

In our final week, the flat dry plains have fallen away to slightly more rolling terrain. We could follow the river more tightly, quiet back roads instead of desert highway. There were hills to descend and climb, down and up the escarpments sculpted by the river, even greenery and trees sprung from the floodplain. It felt cooler, the sun on our backs instead of burning on our faces since the river turned south. We rode through sunsets and into stars, moonlight riding a new found pleasure after our desert nighttime odyssey. Arriving late into the village of Walker Flat, thankful for the all night ferry across the river, we didn’t realise we were camped on ‘Sprinkler Drive’. Our peaceful breakfast tent scene was sprayed by sprinklers too powerful to warrant their name, more like jets of water that drenched us through.

But soon we lost the river, its guts spilled into Lake Alexandrina, a giant lake more like sea. Without the river I felt a little lost. Our focus had dispersed. We had choices of routes to follow, different roads and trails that might lead us to the official end, where the river flow meets the waves. Winery Road, abundant in vineyards and labels familiar from supermarket shelves, led us to the small town of Goolwa, the end of our ride.

The only way to the very end was by boat, from the lake, through a lock across a barrage, and into the special landscape of the Coorong – a fragile wetland ecosystem threatened by salinity. At the river mouth, I listened to the drone of small boats dredging sand to keep the connection open between the ocean and the lakes, a project that has already cost 40 billion. It seems somewhat futile, a few tiny boats and a stream of dollars attempting to control Mother Nature. As if we can.
The flow of people with hearts as full as the vines are in grapes, has never stopped. Our penultimate village, Clayton Bay, led us to Hal, Luci, John and Barbara, locals and ‘grey nomads’ with collections of trikes, boats, utes and trailers, more hospitality, beds and lifts to the airport. The people of Australia continue to astound. But the lovely twist in the story was the discovery through Hal of the ‘Inland Rivers National Marathon Register’ a register that began somewhat accidentally when a legendary man, Frank Tuckwell, now 84, bumped into a canoeist on the banks of the lake many years ago. He had paddled the Murray and asked Frank where he could register his effort. There was no such register but Frank made one up there and then, and has curated it ever since!

We are proud to be the first cyclists on the register, and to share it with a woman I have never met, but who inspired me to take this journey. Tammy Van Wisse swam the whole length of the river in 2001. We are numbers 350 and 351 on the register of people who have travelled the Murray’s course. I love that the world has plenty of crazies in it. If we aren’t a little crazy, how can we cope in this world that has gone mad?!

Thanks to the Murray River and the special people we have met, to the Royal Geographical Society and to BBC Radio 4, for the experience of making a radio documentary (to be aired later this year). The insights, perspectives and connections I’ve been lucky to experience have truly made this a Journey of a Lifetime. It has reconnected me with nature , with people and with myself. I’m sincerely grateful.

Lines of tar, as straight as straight can be, hundreds of kilometres with nothing but crops and bush. ‘It was a lake out there once upon a time. Flat as can be, salt flats to the south, and nothing much before Adelaide’ the lovely Ian Lockhart explained. We thought we might be better and safer skipping the long dull ride, trading it for more time by the river, but the realisation dawned that there are only two buses a week – we just missed one, and they don’t take bikes anyway. And nobody wants to give a ride to our circus of bikes, trailers and luggage. So, from Sunraysia to Riverland, we have had some epic days cycling the very section of our route that we had decided not to cycle.
Weirdly though, it was unexpectedly magical. Where else can you ride hundreds of kilometres of desert highway, lines of bitumen leading to infinity, where double-trailer trucks hurtle crops out from the ‘food bowl’ of Australia?! Our oasis across the desert were the amazing artists Liz and Clint Frankel, www.frankelglassandbooks.com.au , with warm hearts, a well-stocked larder of stories and food, and a spectacular studio at the end of a dusty track overlooking the river. ‘It’s not Australia’s food bowl’ they passionately explained, ‘it’s an international export bowl run by multinationals: a vine, wine and almond bowl, all about profit.’ The startling fact that a litre of water costs more than a litre of wine here sums things up.

Without the Mighty Murray River and manipulation of its waters, nobody would live here. It is arid country, where droughts, floods and bush fires are constant threats. It is not cycle touring country. ‘Are we mad?’ I wondered, as hours into the night, starlight and truck lights illuminating our passage across the desert, I ran over a chunky lump of road kill, thankful it was smaller than a kangaroo. The stench of rotting flesh permeated the night air, but I was happy to be riding. It was twenty degrees cooler than the burning daytime sun, and we could ride on the skin smooth surface of the carriageway instead of the rubbly shoulder, dodging in when we saw the juggernaut lights bearing down.

Water is a hot topic for everyone living here. In the millennium drought, eighteen years of water shortage that ended with a flood in 2010, livlihoods were seriously affected. Small farms had to close, rich multinationals moved in, and they care nothing for the health of a river basin on the other side of the world, as long as profits are being reaped. They bottle more wine than can be sold, to the point where the supply of water to the vines is so jeopardised and so expensive, that it costs more than the wine. In this land, water is a highly sought after commodity. We’ve been dependent on bottled water as many places are empty of drinkable tap water.
Water is liquid gold. It keeps us alive cycling through the wheat and vine desert. It gives life to everyone and everything here. It is vital, and yet it is a tradeable asset…wars will no doubt be fought over it.

It’s been some journey so far, the spirit and kindness of the people we’ve met along our way something quite extraordinary. Tough times are normal around here, from drought to flood to bush fires to general survival, and I wonder if the traumas have made people more resilient, more connected with the environment and each other, important aspects of being human. Survival here means water, strength of spirit, and community connection. The Mighty Murray and its region highlights some raw fundamentals about life. We are privileged to be having this experience. I’ll never think the same again when drinking water or wine.
And now we have the final section downstream to look forward to, and arriving at the great Southern Ocean…

The Murray River, from its source high in the Australian Alps to the Southern Ocean near Adelaide, is a near-3000 km long ribbon of water, the longest river in Australia. On April 10th, a few days after racing in the Commonwealth Games, I began ‘riding the river’. There hasn’t been rain here for months, the region arid and threatened by wildfire, and even with a complex system of water management, the amount of water that flows down the Murray in a year is similar to the volume flowing down the Amazon in a single day. But we have brought a little bit of Scotland with us – day 1 at the source of the river, we woke to the pattering of rain on the tent, and just a few days in, the rain hammered down like a power shower. ‘We haven’t seen rain like this in at least 12 months’ our savior of the day, John, announced as we sheltered in his truck.
Certainly this is a different journey to any I have taken before. After a gruelling first day climbing Alpine-style passes through pungent Eucalyptus forest, kangaroos bouncing around with their Joey’s, we descended. High mountain forest gave way to rolling hills, and regular wafts of dead wombat. We’ve only seen one ‘live’ version of the waddling, fluffy creatures, the rest with their four-legs pointing skyward, upside-down carcasses at the side of the road. There have been a few snake skins dotted around too, though luckily no sign of a live snake in camp yet, but sleeping bag checks are routine, as are shoe checks for spiders! On a bike, the uphill always feels longer and more significant than the down, but we have certainly left the hills behind and arrived on the river plains. The fields of wheat, canola, and orchards of fruit stretch in all directions, the roads long and straight, the scenery as if it’s been ironed, the horizon far and flat.

The arid climate and over-irrigation of the river basin that feeds Austraila means the river struggles to stay healthy. Salinity and bacterial blooms are ever-threatening. It sounds a bit like my body in the past few years. The demands I place on it to train so hard means my vital energy sometimes struggles to flow. My body fights the acid by-products of hard training. I’ve had my own version of algal blooms – recurring abscesses full of infection, bacteria running riot. I LOVE to ride my bike, but the lifestyle of being an athlete sometimes leaves my soul feeing parched to the point where it can’t absorb the vital nutrients of life anymore – fun, friendship and the joys of life have sometimes run over me as I’ve been too tired, or too occupied with thinking of the next training session to be able to absorb them. Like the floodwater running off the land here.

So this journey feels special. It’s a big change in frequency, coming straight from high competition of the Commonwealth Games to a slower pace. I want to learn from the ‘Mighty Murray’, learn from the people here. I want to learn about balance again.
The ride from source to sea in the time we have requires 80 to 100km of riding a day, similar to the big ride from Canada to Mexico last year. However, with luggage and a touring pace, that means there is no time to experience the place or meet the people, beyond brief roadside or car park conversations. This journey needs to be different. I am here to learn, and to tell a story, to explore the river and take time to reflect. I want to learn how to keep flowing, but stay healthy.
Yesterday we met Robby and Fraser of the ‘Paddlesteamer Cumberoona’, floating on Lake Mulwala. Their eyes lit up telling us stories of the river history, of navigating downstream in the beautiful refurbished steamer we sat on board. The wood creaked, and the smell of oil was strong even with the blasting wind outside. We too could sense the history. The river runs strong in them, as does their passion for the water, the environment and the steamers. ‘We’re all about the water’ the campsite owner tells us too. The river connects people around here. It is the thread, the passion and the life of the region.

I think about the flat weeks of riding ahead. The Murray drops only 200m in 2000km now, it’s waters feeding the grains, vines and cotton along the way. It’s not my usual environment. I am drawn to mountains, not to plains, to the beauty in the drama of the summits and valleys – maybe they are a metaphor for life, never a dull moment, constant ups and downs, highs and lows, moments where I feel to be stood on top of the world, others like being lost in dark valley forests.

It’s been my intention to write the last blog about the Canada to Mexico ride for the last…errrr…well, it’s long overdue. Yesterday a journalist asked me “By the way, did you get to Mexico?” The final days were long, hot and sweaty in an unusually hot Californian autumn, but we made it to Mexico on the 29th October, 41 days after leaving Vancouver, 3000km and 38 days of riding. I’ve just calculated that is an average of 79km a day…WEIRD…it wasn’t planned that way to fit with Quest 79, but the mysterious magic of the number seems to have been at work!
The border was an unexpected and moving experience. We followed a dusty trail that became dirt, alongside the imposing grid of the border fence. We’d heard there was a park at the border – Friendship Park. I’m not sure how a park located between double fences is a symbol of friendship, nor how the hundred square metre patch of dirt we found can be called a park. In border-land, the greenest things are the turquoise of the ocean that the fences extend into, and the uniforms of the military guys stationed to intervene with any swimmers or tunnel diggers attempting to cross from Mexico.

A young guy stood at the fence, immersed in its shadows with his head bowed, hands in his pockets, being with his loved one through the dense trellis. My eyes welled, imagining the separation and the tough choices made for dreams of a better life. It’s easy to question why you’d leave family and loved ones when we have more than we need to survive in our ‘western’ world, but then most of us have never experienced real poverty. It felt indulgent to have time and resources to spend 41 days cycling, to a border where I felt like a voyeur of heartbreak.