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Monday, February 09, 2009
Chris Cork
Bicycles rarely make it to the headlines in a country where they are virtually ubiquitous. It was therefore both slightly surprising and as a cyclist myself somewhat gratifying to see recreational cycling featured in a newspaper last week. There is a bunch of dedicated bikers who gather every Sunday in Lahore for a social ride. They are of all ages, men and women, and have rediscovered the joy of one of mans greatest inventions the bicycle. They also appear, from the photo in the paper, to be solidly middle class to judge by their dress and some of the expensive bikes they are astride. Poor people cycle because they have to richer people do it as a lifestyle-statement and in the hope of getting a little exercise in an increasingly sedentary society.
The Lahori riders take a tour of the quieter spots of their city on a Sunday morning and finish up at an eatery somewhere cyclists of my acquaintance the world over have a liking for tea and cakes, and there are tea-shops in the UK whose owners have become moderately rich by catering to the needs of passing cyclists. So it is in quiet support of the intrepid riders of Lahore that I write this week as well as promoting the humble pleasures of a humble machine; one of which I brought with me on my first visit to the Land of the Pure.
Discovering that PIA had managed to lose the right-hand pedal of my bike when I landed at Karachi airport in late-October 1993 was not a good start to my cycling career in Pakistan. Bikes with one pedal aint goin nowhere, and the plan was to ride from Karachi to Khunjerab. It was with some relief that I discovered a bike wallah (discovering at the same time that everything is possible in Pakistan) who had a set of pedals that fitted the European screw-threads of my machine and off I went across Sindh and Punjab.
It was quite a ride, and took six weeks from beginning to end. Along the way there was a policeman who suspected me of carrying whisky in my water bottles he sniffed them and smelt the iodine I used to sterilize my drinking water, a tricky moment. There was also an encounter with a wandering donkey in Abbottabad neither of us noticed the other and we had a noisy but fortunately low-speed collision. Then there was the relief of starting to climb up in to the Karakorams after seemingly-years of the endless flatness of the plains in the south; and finally jubilation as I held my bike above my head to be photographed by the lonely border guard on Khunjerab Top, the border with China. In those days they used to keep a little book in the hut that the border guard lived in, and there recorded the passing of every cyclist, south and north. Thus it is that I know that I am the fifth cyclist to have ridden the Karakoram Highway from south to north and lived! At least two others trying the same ride had apparently died of dehydration and heat exhaustion on the long barren stretch between Dassu and Chilas. Another had managed to fall into the river body never found but bike washed up in Gilgit. Two years later, married to a Pakistani and with a job in the Northern Areas, me and the bike returned and have been here most of the time ever since.
Today, cycling in Pakistan for recreation rather than a-b transport is still something of an oddity. For one thing the roads are a lot busier than they were fifteen or sixteen years ago and in worse shape, with more potholes and rough surfaces. They also seem a lot faster than they were, perhaps a function of more people and more cars needing to get to more places more quickly. So hats off to the bikers of Lahore, and if a few of you fancy joining me one Sunday morning in the future drop me a line, and we will go in search of good cake shops. We might also do our cardio-vascular systems a bit of good as well! Tootle-pip.
The writer is a British social worker settled in Pakistan. Email: manticore73@gmail.com
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