Misty, gray morning.
Sunday. No church bells, but birdsong in the distance (or am I just imagining that?). The air smells as usual, not of Sunday, but of TukTuk exhaust fumes and kitchen odors in the restaurant, where I'm eating a cinnamon bagel with butter and home-made (!) Jam. And in addition a cup of my beloved Coffee Mon with lots of condensed milk.
Today, I desperately need some exercise to ease my rusty muscles. Cycling in the surroundings of Luang Prabang seems to be the appropriate solution, maybe in combination with a trip to the Elephant Village.
The first destination is a waterfall (again!), but even after a very strenuous journey on unpaved roads, uphill steep gradients, it remains a phantom (again!). Sweat is pouring down my limbs, but that's the way it has to be. The bike seems to be from last century, a woman's bike, without gears, but it proves to be a brave little bycicle. And I feel just as brave.
A tough way uphill
A sign points the way to an elephant center, but it turns out not to be the one I'm looking for. No problem. At the beginning the road is quite ok, but then it gets steeper, dustier, with lots of dangerous curves. A veritable mountain road, which gets worse by the meter, full of holes, sharp stones and sections where construction machinery is at work. The prospect of having to drive all the way back on my weak bike, arouses dull feelings.
It's getting tougher - what's being done here is a mystery
Trucks thunder past, pulling thick clouds of dust along the road. At places where it gets too steep and the heart rate rises, I have to dismount the bycicle. But somehow, over hedge and ditch, I manage to reach the camp.
My favorite Animals
And there they are, my favorite Animals (besides cats, tigers, bears, kingfishers, golden eagles and all others with 2, 4 or more legs), about ten elephants chewing pleasurably on sugar cane.
When one looks at their clever little eyes, knowing what fate is in store for them and their fellows, one is overcome with sadness. Of the million pachyderms who once inhabited the country, only about a thousand are left, a considerable part as working elephants, but which are no longer needed because they are replaced by machines.
A young man with plans
The return trip takes much less time than expected, and my fragile-looking vehicle can do a lot more than it looks. After a cake break, I follow the Mekong north, buy bananas at a price that puts shame on my face, and talk to a young man who sits down next to me.
He studies nearby and speaks reasonably good English (at least better than my Lao, which still consists of Sabaidee and Kopjai lai lai). He has plans for his future, adamant that he has a future if he tries hard enough.
These young people are admirable. There are no obstacles that cannot be overcome, although the chance of success is slim.
I wish him all the luck in the world.
Along the Mekong
Then I turn into a road that follows the river, cross small groups of huts on unpaved roads, soft waddling chickens and ducks and dogs and children and simply feel divine. These are again the moments, the feelings of happiness, the big ones, the ones that make all the difference.
It takes not much for a little happiness and well-being. A warm shower after a busy day, a mouth-watering dinner, a comfortable bed. Like now.
Patrick Leigh Fermor
Before sleeping, I dig deeper into Patrick Leigh Fermor's opus magnum A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: from the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube. So to speak, the first hiking book, written by a then 18-year-old Englishman.
I quote from the blurb:
The acclaimed travel writer's youthful journey - as an 18-year-old - across XNUMXs Europe by foot began in A Time of Gifts, which covered the author's exacting journey from the Lowlands as far as Hungary. Picking up from the very spot on a bridge across the Danube where his readers last saw him, we travel on with him across the great Hungarian Plain on horseback, and over the Romanian border to Transylvania. The trip was an exploration of a continent which was already showing signs of the holocaust which was to come. Although frequently praised for his lyrical writing, Fermor's account also provides a coherent understanding of the dramatic events then unfolding in Middle Europe. But the delight remains in travelling with him in his picaresque journey past remote castles, mountain villages, monasteries and towering ranges.
During the Second World War, Fermor served the Special Operations Executive. The SOE deployed Major Fermor among others in the occupied Crete. There Fermor lived in the underground, organized the resistance against the German occupiers and finally kidnapped, together with an officer comrade, the German major general and commander of the German occupation forces in Crete. He was honored with two medals and appointed honorary citizen of Heraklion.
I recently learned that Fermor died last November with 96 years. I feel a loss, as if a good friend had left me. A wanderer, an eternal traveler. A poetic writer by the grace of God. I'll miss him, even though I did not even know anything about his existence until three years ago.
P.S. Matching Song: Tame Impala - Elephant
And here the journey continues ...
