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author: Ray Kreisel
title: another kind
of freedom
...the land around me
had a purity that I have never seen before, purity in colour
and terrain. the rocks that covered the mountains around me
shone with every shade of purple, green, brown, orange, and
red. each of the colours carefully blended into the next,
with occasional patches of brilliant white snow. the unending
line of telephone poles that follows the road created the
only intrusion on this landscape.
since Ali, the poles
recorded my past and pointed the way to my future. the
poles lead to only one place, Kashgar. that was where I hoped
my future also lay. at times I could see the black wooden
rods off into the distance, I would start to ride cross-country
because I knew that I was headed in the right direction, leaving
the road to take its own course. when I rode across the desert
without even a dirt track to follow, I had an sense of totally
unrestrained freedom. there were no lines, no paths, no tracks
to follow. nothing constrained or controlled my movement.
it was a different kind of travel, a different kind of freedom.
the heart of the Askin
Chin is a massive basin that spans hundreds of miles across.
from the middle of this table land, I could clearly see distant
mountains in all directions, to the south the Himalaya of
Ladakh, India, to the west the peaks of the Karakoram Mountains
in Pakistan, and to the north the Kun Lun Shan Mountains,
the 'Mountains of Darkness'. while
I rode, I noticed that the animals of the Askin Chin seemed
to be less afraid of me. maybe it was just that very few people
have ever spent any time in this area. when an antelope saw
me riding on the road, he raced me for some distance.
to ride in this vacant
land side by side with such a beautiful animal brought a great
smile to my face. I sprinted down the road at 15 mph with
a wild antelope just a few yards away bounding alongside me.
in the late afternoon the winds and dark storm clouds rolled
in. they brought head winds so strong that I would have to
stop riding. the ditches off the side of the road and the
small piles of dirt left by the road workers created convenient
rest areas. the winds pelted me with small rocks and sand
when I remained out in the open. sometimes the storms also
brought flurries of fresh snow even in the months of July
and August. the monsoon back on the south side of the Himalaya
in India filled the clouds with moisture. the saying that
I have seen on Harley Davidson T-shirts, rang through my head.
'ride to live, live to ride.' I do not think this is exactly
what all of those riders had in mind...
more of another kind
of freedom: www.kreisels.com/tibet94/
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