We were 45, all brave. Under an optimistic blue sky, we stand with our bikes on the banks of the Bosphorus on the Asian side of Istanbul, posing for the camera, helmets on. The date, August 4, 2007. In 15 minutes, we would embark on what some considered an impossible, even silly, expedition: a 10,700km journey that followed the fabled Silk Road. A three and a half month journey through Asia, ending in front of the Forbidden City in Beijing.

Hard? Surely. Foolish? Maybe. Impossible? Unlucky.

In fact, it wasn’t the first epic bike ride I’d ever undertaken. On January 15, 2003, 32 other adventurous spirits and I embarked on the inaugural race of the Tour d’Afrique, from Cairo, Egypt to Cape Town, South Africa, in 120 grueling days.

That first day, in the shadow of the pyramids, the question I asked myself was: can this really be done? Can we walk every meter, later acronym and defined as EFI or (Every F…ing Inch)? After all, when we announced the trip in the media eight months earlier, I was accused of being a charlatan, a crazy adventurer risking people’s lives, and a naive fool who obviously “hadn’t spent a day in Africa.”

The group arrived outside Cape Town an hour ahead of schedule.

Two years later, I stood in front of the Eiffel Tower, posing with another group. We were about to start a 4,000km tour of eight countries from Paris to Istanbul, which we ironically called The Orient Express Bicycle Tour. Ironic because it offered anything but the luxury amenities found on the famous continental train ride. The question I asked myself on that occasion was: can I earn an honest living doing transcontinental bicycle tours? The evidence seemed to suggest that I could.

Now, on this beautiful morning in Istanbul, posing for another camera, I was wondering what question I could ask myself as I crossed the Asian continent. There were many options. The route is rich in architecture, majestic mountains and endless deserts, all fit for contemplation. It is deep in history, having witnessed the rapacious violence of the armies of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, the Great Game, the precursor to the Cold War, the great designs of the former Soviet Empire, all rich material to analyze the quest incessant of man by power and violence. Or I could tackle more difficult issues, including personal issues and how to make sense of my life.

In the end, it was the humble bike I sat on that was worth thinking about. Having conquered two continents, he knew that long-distance cycling is closer to the state of mind of ancient hunter-gatherers. The cyclist, like the hunter-gatherer, must constantly worry about his safety, his food, a place to sleep and how to enjoy the satisfaction that comes from just getting through an arduous day (knowing that the next will be no less). . challenging).

The bicycle: cheap, non-polluting, small and silent. Wikipedia, among others, calls it the most efficient machine ever built by humans, because a person on a bicycle expends less energy than any other creature or machine traveling the same distance. Appropriately enough, I pointed in the direction of China, a country where a billion people (give or take a few hundred million) still used bicycles as their primary mode of transportation. And its full potential was still untapped. Somewhere, he had read that enterprising students were designing a small grinding device that could be attached to a bicycle: grind your own grain, on the go. Or maybe it was a water filter. Certainly, I had seen generator-equipped bikes in museums where a visitor pedaling at 50 (or less) watts could turn on an incandescent lamp. The only fuel needed for all of this: a peanut butter sandwich.

Armed with these stories and memories, my question was easily formulated: can the bicycle save the world? That it needs to be saved seems indisputable. We all know that we are headed down a path that is destructive to nature and thus to life as we know it.

It turned out that I did not have enough time to plunge into the depths of such serious contemplation. I was too busy living, having fun, engaging with drunken Georgians (the ex-Soviet type) selling roadside watermelons at 10am, savoring the beauty of a provincial Chinese town, or choosing a meal by pointing to a number on a menu and waiting. .praying– that it wasn’t derived from a former member of an alien species he’d never even heard of.

Of course, it was not an uninterrupted panorama of pleasure. In Turkey, we cycled through one of the worst heat waves in its modern history, with temperatures reaching over 45°C for several consecutive days. Hot asphalt stuck to my tires. It didn’t get any better when, in Tbilisi, Georgia, three kilometers from the hotel where we were supposed to take a well-earned break, a crazed taxi driver ran over one of my bike companions. He flew like a missile, landing in front of me. The driver, unashamed, quickly backed the car up and away from him before he had time to dismount. He was undoubtedly descended from Genghis Khan. The cyclist, fortunately, was not seriously injured.

At the border with Azerbaijan we were received not only by a delegation from the Ministry of Tourism, but also by an orchestra of eight musicians, traditional dancers and the entire Azerbaijani youth cycling team. Azerbaijan, of course, is a Muslim country, but in each restaurant we receive three glasses of water, wine and vodka respectively. And this was for breakfast.

Turkmenistan spoke to my heart. Growing up under the shadow of a totalitarian regime (communist Czechoslovakia), so traveling in the desert with a constant police escort made me feel like old times. It didn’t take me long to revert to the behavior necessary to live and thrive in such societies, to stretch the limits of the forbidden while avoiding trouble.

At one point, a police officer ordered me to get into his car. I smiled and politely declined his request, offering to buy him and his colleagues cokes and ice cream. That sealed our new friendship.

Through the Turkmeni desert to the next Stan: Uzbekistan. No deserts, no mountains, and luckily no sweltering heat. A day’s drive from the border we reach the legendary city of Bukhara (the name means monastery in Sanskrit), a glorious sight. We toured the Earthen Ark Fortress, home to the rulers of Bukhara for over a millennium; the Registan, a green square at your feet; and the Kalon Minaret, the tower of death, named for the many victims thrown from its heights. A traditional proverb says that Samarkand is the beauty of the Earth, but Bukhara is the beauty of the spirit. But part of that spirit was also pure evil. On the eve of the 20th century, the Emir of Bukhara enjoyed gouging out the eyes of his dissenting subjects.

We arrive in Tajikistan to find a country still trying to recover from a recent civil war. About 60% of Tajiks live in abject poverty and the minimum wage is $1 a month. Nowhere is the spirit of Stalin more visible than in the zigzag borders of Tajikistan, drawn by the young Georgian commissar in 1924 on the well-known principle of divide and rule. The country is 65% Tajik, a different ethnolinguistic group from the Turkish people around them. And there are more Tajiks living in exile in neighboring countries than in Tajikistan. Still, it is an impressive place, where the altitude rarely drops below 3,000 meters.

In Kyrgyzstan, after a rest day in Osh, we embark on a serious ascent to the Taldyk Pass, at 3,700 meters. Let me tell you, on that oxygen-deprived elevation, you’re not thinking about saving the world. You are thinking of saving yourself, if you are capable of thinking. But the drive downhill, through the mountain pass into China, was exhilarating.

The old ‘bike kingdom’ is of course no more. Now, China is El Dorado for all the world’s automakers. Here, at last, was time for sober contemplation. You may ask yourself: how can you think with 1.3 billion people around you? But in fact, the vast majority of Chinese live in the east. Large portions of the west are almost, like northern Canada, virtually uninhabited.

Still modern China and the frenetic pace of change hit you from all sides. Construction of a new highway cuts through the Taklamakan desert, a Uiger word meaning “to enter but not to leave.” Huge apartment buildings sprout like mushrooms after a good rain. Small Chinese cities are home to millions. China is on the move. And so are the Chinese. Its entrepreneurial energy, pent up in the decades following the 1948 communist revolution, has now been released and is flowing faster than a newly opened dam.

So can bicycles save the world? Of course he can. Imagine every city with boulevards full of bikes, pedestrians, trams, and parks where kids can be kids again. Is it so hard to imagine? After all, in Copenhagen 36% of all trips are made by bicycle (only 27% by car). By 2015, five years from now, they aim to be at 50%. It is in our urban centers where transformation must occur; half of the world’s population now lives in cities. That’s over three billion plus breathing, or should it be wheezing? — soul.

What if we persuaded Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, or George Soros to put up $10 million for the best new human-powered vehicle? Think of the benefits to human health, reducing demand for our rapidly depleting fossil fuels. Just as the X Prize created space tourism, this prize would spawn all kinds of new human-powered inventions.

But we have to act. And as I biked mile after mile in today’s China, I was reminded of something I had learned the hard way as a humanitarian worker in Africa. Human beings tend not to respond until disaster strikes.

Henry Gold is Chairman of Tour d’Afrique Ltd www.tourdafrique, a Toronto-based adventure travel company that organizes annual cycling races and expeditions in Africa, Europe, Asia and South America.