These first photos are coastal South Africa in an area called the Fynbos. The botanical world can be divided into six floral kingdoms. The largest is the northern hemisphere north of the Tropic of Cancer, which is more than half of the world’s land mass. I’m getting a feel for that kingdom presently seeing so many Mongolian plants similar to North America’s yet 180 degrees around the globe. Then South America and Australia are their own kingdoms. What little grows on Antarctica is its own. Tropical India, Southeast Asia and about all of non-Mediterranean Africa make up a kingdom, all except Africa’s southern coastal tip. Here lies the 6th region, the disproportionately small Fynbos.
The Fynbos is a strip of land coming less than hundred and fifty miles inland from the coast and about 500 miles from west to east. In it there are about 9000 discovered species of plants and over 6000 of them are endemic. Below are a good 20 or 30, most of which I can’t even get to family.
Having said all that, here’s the same spurge I have growing in my lawn at home.This is one of several species of widow bird. The males cart these enormous tails around during mating season.Some kind of ungulate scat at the first camp after leaving Cape Town…….……not sure how they project it up into the trees.
Not too many composites.
A protea after it has bloomed. The dark star shape was a huge flower. The family is Proteaceae and makes up over a thousand Fynbos species. South African pets, restaurants and hotel chains are named after it. Macadamia nuts come from that family.
Viola?
This might be conebush, a Leucadendron species in Proteaceae.
Haemanthus spp. Looks like it should be an orobanche or some kind of saprohyte. It’s in the Amaryllidaceae family.Restio spp. Restionaceaes are used to make thatch. Thamnochortus insignis is cultivated for it.
Thatch roofs made from Restio reeds have a precision look and can last 50 years.Camp with trippy trees…..…..having these fruits.Nests made by weavers of which there are many species throughout Africa.
The Fynbos to the north extends into the Cape Fold Mountains and ends roughly where the Great Escarpment defines the edge of the interior plateau. The plateau regions can be divided into High Veld, Low Veld, Bush Veld and Karoo. The Karoo, below, was the first to be encountered and is arid and hot. Much of it resembles thorn scrub of North America’s Southwest.
Pricklypear is an invasive here.
Solanaceae, an invasive as well.
Mesquite-like acacias.
Aloe.Slipper plant. It grows in a comparable latitude and habitat in Mexico.
Wonder tree.Crawling on the stalk is a relative of the same ring worm you find curled up behind your washing machine. Some species grow to about a foot long. They’re harmless and kids will let one suitably sized curl around their wrists as a bracelet.
Few Composites
The Karoo’s ranges and valleys give way to higher elevation grasslands, or veld, as you go north. The grasslands are extensive and appear to be in a natural state that has somehow escaped agriculture and livestock grazing.
Veld and termite mounds.
The grasses above and below were picked at arms length from a place I had lunch. Unbelievable diversity of grasses in South Africa.
Near Pretoria
Lots of beetles
Tiny frogStill haven’t identified this but it grows in Mexico, Argentina and South Africa.
Termite mound in Botswana.
Above and below, Victoria Falls surroundings.Zambizi River before the falls.
After Victoria Falls, Zambia becomes wetter and jungle like, maybe dry tropics. It skirts the much wetter Congo to the west.
These things were hard not to run over on one stretch.Cool spider.Another wild grass in Zambia.Elephant grass was often over your head.
Mint of some kind.Tribulus terrestris, goat’s head or puncture vine. Nasty stuff.The thorn itself.Walking through them to get to a camp. The bike was carried.
Old termite mound.Pines were farmed over many square miles in Tanzania. There were two species: Pinus radiata (Monterey pine) and P. patula from northern Mexico’s highlands. Older trees were well over 50 years and are now being harvested.Colobus monkeys in Monterrey pines.
Newt
Babao tree.This is an escaped acete, the same grown in Latin America for vegetable oil.
These next were from Mt Longido in Northern Tanzania.
Euphorbia candelabraAloe
Plants on Mt Kenya.
Dendrosenecio keniensis, or giant groundsel. Several volcanoes reach alpine altitudes in the area of Mts. Kilimanjaro and Kenya. Each has evolved its own species of the groundsel.
Lobelia telekii or giant lobelia
The deserts after Mt Kenya and on into Ethiopia were incredible but I didn’t take too many plant photos- too busy dealing with the natives. Below are the abundant acacia trees and the pealing bark of something that looks like Mexico’s Bursera species.
I flew from Muscat to Mumbai (Gateway of India) and cycled 1200 miles to Delhi.Then I flew to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia by way of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.The trip so far. I’ve figured out how to put routes on the computer maps but not how to then upload them on to the web site. So, I drew this one by hand.
Flying from Muscat to Mumbai, India meant a few degrees drop in temperature but increased humidity. Hotter/dryer is probably more tolerable but neither place qualifies as an ideal climate. Indian culture has some differences from most of the rest of the world, the first clue being cows on busy inner city streets. If you’ve ever wondered what a cow eats in the middle of a big city the answer is garbage, wet garbage. I ate at a McDonalds (yes, they’re here too and serve masala flavored burgers) and when bussing my table had a choice between disposing in dry and wet garbage bins. The wet garbage is then put out on the street where, as you can imagine, there are mountains of it. Traffic is horrendous and at first glance utterly chaotic, but after a while patterns emerge and it becomes somewhat manageable. You’re at least as safe as a cow in it and if you stop dead in the middle of an intersection to look at the map, the cars, motorcycles, tuktuks, busses, carts, along with the cows themselves, will just go around you. I did however see a calf-motorcycle collision that both walked away from and one bicyclist hit by a motorcycle; no one hurt but the bike forks got mangled. The first days were hard and I was often in a sort of road rage state dealing with the crazy driving habits. One car bumped me on the arm as it passed and folded the breakaway mirror. While stopped at an intersection a tuktuk from behind nudged against a pannier and pushed me forward a few inches until he could slip passed. I was so blown away by that maneuver I couldn’t even get mad but made sure I took it out on the next person. In general, the sense of personal space is wholly different from the West. Standing in a line for anything you’ll be bumped, jostled and groped. If you leave a bit of space between you and the person in front of you it will be soon filled by the person behind you.
After a while it became clear that I was about the only one with a problem with the driving habits. Cutting people off is the norm. Traffic lights in Mumbai were pretty much advisory and any possibility for working your way through an intersection is fair game. The paradox is that it’s really more efficient and though you never go very fast, you keep moving. The same traffic jams in the West that are at a dead stop would tend to grind forward here. All the cutting off, weaving, running of red lights has the effect of maximizing movement and, at least qualitatively, appears no less safe than American cities. The rules are certainly laissez faire but the thing that makes it work is a higher level of tolerance. Getting cutoff to an American is to an Indian just slowing a bit to keep overall traffic flowing better. By the time I got to Delhi I was pretty much acclimated.
Adding new birds to the Life List in Mumbai.
If you’re a vegetarian you’ll find plenty to eat so long as you don’t mind deep fried everything. I’m sure they use vegetable oil, but it all becomes too much after a while. The food is invariably spicy hot as well. I never did see a full sized grocery store (they must exist), only the small shops with bins of basic grains, lots of dal combinations, lots of cheap candy and soft drinks. Many sell the groceries over the counter like you’re buying auto parts- awkward enough, but doubly so when you don’t speak the language. I tried cooking grocery foods a couple of times but soon gave up. For several long stretches it was coffee in the morning and deep fried anything (except meat!) after that. The fruit stands saved me and I would eat several bananas and mangos a day, oranges when I could find them. Alcohol cannot be sold within 500 meters of a main highway, so liquor stores were hard to find. Besides that it was ridiculously expensive. I stayed on the wagon through most of India.
Western Ghats at the end of the dry season.“Riotously colored” Asian trucks.Good Camp.Fixing a flat in the only shade around.Indore, India.
India’s population is around 1.3 billion people. One source has them now edging out China but most have China still in the lead. Regardless, India is expected to pass China in the near future. To put things in perspective, Africa has just over a billion people but ten times the area of India. North America, South America and Australia combined have about a billion people and a little less than double the area of Africa. India’s crowded but I did find stretches of road with wilder territory and places to camp. Inland from the west coast of India and stretching from the tip to well north of Mumbai are the Western Ghats mountains. They’re predominantly low hills with the highest point around 9000 feet- no competition for the Himalayas. The Ghats, though, are known for biodiversity and thought to have many unrecorded plant species. Crossing through them affords some relief from continuous humanity. Much of it is agricultural but stands of trees along fenceless highways offered good camping. I had some deer hanging around a camp one morning.
The Western Ghats are home to many of India’s tiger reserves. Tigers living truly in the wild are a thing of the past in India, but country wide there are over 50 reserves and around 2000 tigers, a number that has increased in the 21st century. Tourist dollars are the tigers’ best protection.
Buying a shirt in Mumbai and making a bunch of friends.Anybody that knew our dog Zeke will be glad to know he’s resurfaced in India and getting the respect he’s always deserved.
Muddy camp after a day of rain.
Closest I got to a tiger was in a museum in Gwalior.
It took about two weeks to ride the 1200 or so miles to Delhi from Mumbai. Winds were mild, terrain basically flat but many drenching rains were encountered as the monsoon was beginning. For the many motorcycles on the roads the rainstorms can be a problem but they can pull off and wait them out in what ever shelter can be found. A stoop or the eave of a house or one of the many outdoor, but covered restaurants are all available. Private property sort of gets suspended when it rains.
Waiting out rain.
Firoj Mansuri and Iliyas Sendhwa in the top photo and Dharmendra Dinkarwere below were gas station attendants that invited me in for chai tea. Many gas stations had refrigerated, filtered water on tap that made riding in the stifling heat bearable.One of countless towns.Rainy, muddy day and stuck trucks.Gwalior.
Advice from South African Willie Pienaar many months ago was to try an Internet based service called Warm Showers where people from all over the world offer a place to stay for passing cyclists. I finally got around to checking them out and found Ankit Agrawal in the city of Gwalior. I got to Gwalior after a 108 mile day and, in darkness, didn’t try to find Ankit’s place but instead got a hotel. Ankit came that night to the hotel and soon had a busy itinerary for me that included another ride with the local cycling club early the next morning. Fortunately he saw I was in no shape to get up at 5 am for the ride and instead let me sleep till 6 am and then go on a much shorter trip with just him touring downtown. That afternoon we rode from Gwalior to the town of Banmore and on to nearby Sran Farm House where I stayed a couple of nights with a family of Sikhs that were his friends. Ankit keeps a travel blog and wrote of our stay at Sran here.
Singh family. Ranjeet (son), Mrs. Roopindar Kaur (mother), Talwinder (father), Kulwant (brother of Talwinder) and Amandeep (nephew). Kulwant experiments with combining compatible crops for better growing efficiency and was invited to a conference in the US to share ideas. Unfortunately he couldn’t get a passport in time and had to forfeit. He may get another opportunity.Talwinder, Kulwant, Bilas, Amandeep, Ranjeet, MistriKulwant, Ranjeet, Amandeep and Ankit at Sran Farm.
Sran is owned by the Singh family. Staying there, and even being put to work, was a window into how rural Indians live. As might be expected, farmers keep busy. I helped install an electrical transformer to get power to a house, loaded up and transported concrete power poles for use in getting electricity to a well pump, did some weeding. Got to drive a tractor for the first time in many years. After being amazed at the number of motorcycles on the roads loaded with four people, I got to be one of the four while riding to a nearby town. There are certainly differences in our cultures, but in the end I was amazed at how similar our lives are. They have the same group efforts to get work done and the same kind of chores and projects you would expect on any American farm. Core values are essentially the same.
Many road signs had no English and it was hard to know which town was which.AnkitThis is one painting on an urban wall with many. All had environmental themes.Ankit lined me up with an interview for a local newspaper. These are my interviewers, Aditi and Harsha.No idea what they wrote, for all I know it’s a wanted poster.Taking a bath in a Taal.Kulwant leveling a field using a laser- pretty sophisticated stuff.Namandeep, a family friend, riding the bike.Eryx johnii, or red sand boa. It’s tail looks like a second head and it’s often called a two headed snake.
Ramkaran and Talwinder.
The route north of Gwalior went through Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, and I figured I owed it to myself to see it. It involved standing in several lines, some security related, others collecting money, and then a procession over the grounds to the white marble mausoleum recognizable from the post cards. I was glad I saw it but the pictures probably do it justice.
Taj Mahal
Two more days ride brought me to Delhi and a treasure hunt for embassies and bike shops. I found a hotel for $30 a night (with breakfast!) located in Nehru Place in the downtown. It was about a ten mile ride to the embassies through horrendous traffic. In the next two weeks I would make the ride about eight times. I was trying to get visas for both China and Pakistan with the intention of riding the Karakoram Highway from Islamabad to Kashgar, China. This route would have taken me close to K2 and I was hoping to spend some time in the area. It didn’t happen; after over a week of jumping through hoops for a Pakistan visa it was denied. I was both relieved and disappointed. Pakistan would have been a more dangerous place but the Himalayas and the route through China to Mongolia really looked worthwhile. So, with Tibet still off-the-scale expensive, not to mention the closed borders with Nepal, I decided to fly to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, a “walk in” country for Americans, and try to get a visa to Russia. I suspect there other alternatives for Tibet and I may one day get back here to fill in the gap.
New Delhi traffic. Cows have been removed from Delhi’s streets but I’m not sure it wasn’t safer having them there.
Roshan, right, ran the front desk at Clarks Inn in Delhi.The bike rack broke somewhere in Ethiopia, I got a poor weld job in Muscat, and finally replaced it in Delhi.
I’m in Ulaanbaatar now and the Russian visa will take another two weeks. I am, however, somewhat more confident that it’s going to happen. The Russians are a little more forthcoming and speak English well. The only downside is that the season is advancing and I’ll need about three months to get through Siberia if I take the Kolyma Highway (the Road of Bones) to Magadan on the east coast. I’ll be encountering snow flurries at some point. In the mean time I’m being treated very well at the Good Karma Hostel and at a reasonable price, breakfast included. There are mountains here and I may take a few days to do a backpack trip. The climate, latitude and situation among mountains is comparable to Boise, Idaho. Ulaanbaatar itself is unlike the typical Asian city, being much more Western, and it reminds me of Boise in many respects. The traffic is far more orderly and the continual horn honking of India (for which I wore earplugs) is greatly diminished. Mountain slopes with blue-black conifers on northern exposures and grassy south sides are a sight I haven’t seen since leaving Utah. I took a short hike yesterday in the foothills and found larch, spruce and pine trees as well as many familiar plants. At 47° North, I’m getting into circumpolar latitudes where ecosystems over the eons have migrated east and west round the globe until they meet. I’m half way around the world but it feels like home.
Flying out of Delhi…….with a stop at Almaty, Kazakhstan. The tall buildings are Soviet era blockhouses.From Almaty I flew a hundred miles to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and stayed overnight. I met Edgar Wynter, from Guadalajara, Mexico and we had dinner in Bishkek. He’s doing NGO work with the UN in Kazakhstan.The Himalayas were under cloud cover flying over but China’s Tien Shan were visible. The range is one of three in the world, all in Asia, with peaks over 7000 meters.Boldbaatar saw me loading up the bike at the Ulaanbaatar airport and bought me lunch. He lived for a while in Los Angeles.Sisters Erdenebileg (Abby), Erdenebadam (Erica), Erdentsetseg (Erika) ran the Good Karma. Erika went to college at SW Minnesota University in Marshall and Abby in several colleges in Chicago, New Mexico and California.Inga and Marek are from Poland and stayed at the Good Karma. Their son has been touring Africa on a bicycle off and on for four years.
Ulaanbaatar from foothills.
Below is a link to the television interview with Tefera Ghedamu in Addis Ababa. It’s long, the lip synching off by a few seconds, my on-the-spot arithmetic not very good, and I could have used a map in front of me.
