Ak-Baital, Murghab, Alichur. Like so many travellers before me, I am often seized by the pull of certain place names. These particular words – and the numbers that accompany them: nine gruelling mountain passes, the highest of which is at a breathless 15,272ft – are part of the Pamir Highway between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, one of the many routes of the ancient Silk Roads.
From the moment we decided to cycle from Tokyo to Zürich on a tandem bicycle, those names and numbers hung over us like a thunderous cloud, electrifying and threatening. We didn’t know then that it would take us 7,619 miles and 15 months to achieve our goal. I, for one, barely knew how to ride a bike.
Carol Sachs and Hugo Timm on the Ha Giang Loop in Northern Vietnam © Carol Sachs
Some years earlier, I’d had a taste of the liberating detachment from the everyday that long-term travel can offer. It’s intoxicating to have no obligations, no commitments and no one depending on you other than yourself and your travel companion. I felt unburdened, untethered, free to just exist in the moment.
I told my partner, Hugo, that I wanted us to take a travelling sabbatical. He was interested but, as a person who needs a task, the idea of bumming about aimlessly from attraction to attraction didn’t appeal to him. He needed a greater sense of purpose and figured that sweating from attraction to attraction on a bike could be it. I was interested but, as a person who manages to cycle into, over and against all manner of moving and stationary objects, I had my doubts. Until we found out there’s such a thing as a bicycle for two – a curious-looking object that is a beautiful equaliser for people of differing abilities who want to ride together.
