After a few days of staying in my friend’s house in Aberdeen, I started to feel like home. I don’t know how to compare, but I guess many travellers feel the same way. After a long time being on the road, it feels like my body and my mind can’t differentiate between being at home and the foreign land. I feel so comfortable being on the road, I started to feel that the road is my real home now. Sometimes I have this fear, when I go back to my real home in Malaysia, I might feel weird and strange, like I will be a stranger in my own land. Im afraid that I will be soft again living the comfortable life once im back home. I will sleep in a nice proper bed with soft pillows, safely under a roof with very comfortable temperature. I will get use to the comfort to use an umbrella to cover myself under the heavy rain back home even to walk towards my car which is parked only some 30 meters away. All these while, Im so used to fighting the strong wind and fierce rain head on without knowing where to sleep when the sun starts hiding. Surely I miss many things back home, family and friends, ohh and the good food. Talking about food, I’m not being biased, but maybe because I’m Asian, I think Asian food is simply the best. It has its own characteristic. Its far from being dull, Asian food is always spicy, once it enters your mouth, every single nerve cells on your tongue is working hard, sending the signals to your brain, telling that its spicy and rich with taste, and your whole body started to react to it! Your eyes started to produce tears, the skin of your face turned red and you breathe faster, reacting to the spicy taste. Your body comes to life and active which will slowly shape your characteristic and behaviour. And one thing about Malaysia, we have different races living here. So imagine the result when the best of Chinese food, Malay food, Indian food, Thai and even Indonesian mixed together. It makes you spend more time in the kitchen rather than any other place! Right after you’re done with lunch, you’re actually looking forward for dinner!

When I was about to leave Aberdeen, I find it hard to say goodbye to them. They treated me so well and I felt like theyre my brothers and sisters. The last day of my ride in Scotland was from Aberdeen to Dundee, with the distance about 100km. But I’m not sure to say that it’s a ride. I find it more like to get from point A to point B. It was the worst ride for me in Scotland, even though I was riding under the clear sky and good weather. I took the wrong road, I took the busy road instead of the coastal road. Riding in a road that connects between 2 busy cities is not a good idea. Cars were moving fast, lorries passing by me so close as if they want to kill me. Instead of enjoying the ride, I had the fear of getting smashed by these fast vehicles. I only looked straight, concentrate on the road and forcing my legs to push the pedal really fast so that I can reach my destination early. I was riding as fast as 30km/hour with the strong headwind, lucky me the road was quite flat and only a few of easy climbs.

the castle in Stonehaven

A few kilometres after Aberdeen, I reached Stoneheaven, a tourist attraction place where they have beautiful castle. I didn’t find it interesting at all to look at those bricks, so I stayed there only a while before decided to end the ride on the same day by taking train back to Glasgow. From here on, the ride wont be nice anymore. There are many big cities down here in the south of Scotland, so I decided to travel by train. It was Sunday and the train station in Stoneheaven was empty. Nobody was working there and I didn’t know how to purchase the train ticket. I then decided to cycle fast towards Dundee and take a train from there back to Glasgow.

vibrant Glasgow city at night

I then reached Glasgow via train on the same day at night and cycled back to my friend’s house in Glasgow from the train station. One big difference I realized now is the weather. Once I ended my ride here in Scotland, the weather suddenly turned to be really good. The blue sky was really blue! I wonder where is the headwind that always making it hard for me to move forward all these while. Suddenly here in Glasgow, everything turned out to be so calm! My friends took me for a short hiking in the Loch Lomond area and it was great! Like I said before, once the clouds here giving ways for the sun to shine, Scotland really feel proud showing its natural beauty! I stayed a week in Glasgow and I had enough of it. The last few days when I was in Glasgow, my mind was all about my wife. I had been away from my family for too long now. My body was still in Scotland but my mind is already in Central Asia, deep inside between Tian Shan and the Pamir, with my wife.

hiking with my friends, Reena and Tom

I then flew back from Edinburgh via Turkey crossing back to the realm of Asia. The distance of thousands of kilometres which will take me months to cover with bicycle, only took me 11 hours to cover by flight. I realized the change of culture when I crossed into Turkey. Once I reach Ataturk Airport, people are getting aggressive unlike the smiley Scottish people. But I didn’t stay long there, only 2 hours to change the flight to get me to Manas Airport, the international gateway into Kyrgyzstan, home of the horselords! It feels good to be here again in Kyrgyzstan, the country with beautiful mountains and valleys and most unique culture and most beautiful girls in all of Soviet or maybe in the whole world! When I crossed into this land 2 years ago from Kazakh border, I was a complete foreigner, knowing nothing about this land and wondering where to sleep each night. Now its totally a different story. My Kyrgyz brothers were waiting for me at the airport. They don’t treat me like a foreigner anymore but like a very close family. The connection of brotherhood between me and these people of the mountains are strong here since I’m married to one of their sisters.

tired after the climb

I will stop writing temporary for now, Im no more traveling for a while now. Even tho Im now in a country where I don’t really speak their language, but this is home. Im busy spending time with my family here, almost every day my Kyrgyz relatives will come to visit me. It feels great to be part of these people. For now, I have this fear of my next journey ahead. I will continue my journey somewhere on December/January due to the strict visa rules in the Schengen areas. By that time, its already winter and crossing into Arctic on winter is not something I can take lightly. But surely, I will face the cold head on. The Kyrgyz, theyre people of the mountains. Surely they can read the snow by its colors and patterns just like how some Malays who live in the jungle can predict dangers from the sound of birds and monkeys in the forest. I need to learn all these, in order to survive in the wild. The Kyrgyz will surely teach me all these. Sometimes, having fear is a good thing… it will make you prepare well. That’s all for now… peace upon all…

the climb

Reena recording the beauty into pixels

hikers enjoying the autumn colors before the white winter comes

ehehe… brown powahhh… baby….

After spending a day exploring the magical landscape in the Kyle of Tongue, we (me & Lucie) decided to get to Thurso, a true town with facilities here in the north and also the gate to the northern islands of Scotland, which are Orkney and Shetlands. We then travelled on our own ways getting to the same direction, I cycled and she hitchhiked. Hitchhiking is easy for a woman, since woman get pickups easier compared to male hitchhikers. So she was still sleeping when I put both my hands at my bike’s handlebar. I left around 8 in the morning and the weather was lovely. Riding under the sunshine is always a pleasure here in the cold northern countries. There were many big climbs even right after I left Tongue and it never ends. Everytime after a big climb, the road goes downhill again almost to a sea level and it goes up again, steep, forcing me to have another slow progress. But I don’t mind that at all as long as I have a lovely weather.

one of the earliest nuclear powerplant in the world! between Tongue and Thurso

I stopped at a small village called Bettyhill for lunch break and that’s where I met Lucie again. She hitchhiked here and will get another to let her to ride all the way to Thurso. So we had a simple lunch together before moving on. While I was riding peacefully, there were a group of cyclists passed by me. They were on racing bicycles! We had a short conversation, they cycled from south of England for 11 days covering 1100 miles to raise money for charity. There were about 80 of them! They are targeting to raise 100000 pounds and currently raised some 75k already! They were amazed to see me traveling around the world with my bicycle and wanted to meet me in Thurso because they want to have an interview session with me. But sadly I didn’t meet them in Thurso. I was slowed down a lot the last few hours due to strong headwind coming from the North Sea. I reached Thurso late and didn’t meet them. I saw a nice campsite upon reaching Thurso but it was too cold to camp that night. I couldn’t stand the cold anymore. Then I received an SMS from Lucie, telling me to get into the hostel shes staying in for the night. Again I attracted everyone in the hostel and I shared the room together with Lucie and a cyclist from England who cycled alone here from Kyle of Lochalsh for a week.

There we meet another crazy guy, a Japanese surfer, Hiroshi, who travel around the world just to find the perfect wave. He plan to get to Iceland after Scotland and I gave him some tips on where to go in Iceland since he will spend only 5 days there in Iceland. He has been to our land and can be able to speak a bit of Malay language, hehe funny to hear a Japanese trying to speak Malay. The owner of the hostel is married to a Thai woman! She wanted to cook Thai food for me but too bad I was leaving to Orkney Island that day…

The next day, the 3 of us, a hitchhiker, a surfer and a cyclist, travel together and get the ferry to Orkney. One magic about traveling solo, when you meet another solo traveller, even though we just meet and get to know each other for a day, we trust each other just like our family. We team up to move from a place to another, protect each other’s belongings and even share our food and eat together. When we reached Orkney, both Hiroshi and Lucie hitchhike to get to a town called Kirkwall and I cycled. Even tho it was only 17 miles (~30km) but it took me 2 hours of struggling. The headwind was really strong! I was moving just a bit faster than the normal walking speed. When I reached Kirkwall, I had no more energy left. Stayed in a cheap hostel there and our group became bigger when we met Constantine from Germany and Christophe from France. We had a long interesting conversation for the whole night. At first, all of us had different plans but after we discuss about where to go next, we all decided to travel together around the island and plan to get to Aberdeen together via ferry.

another stone here in Orkney, 5000 years old. But not as huge as the Callanish stone in Lewis Island i saw the other day

group photo

So we all travel together, Lucie automatically became our leader, since shes the most experience hitchhiker among all of us and we all went hitchhike :) I find hitchhiking difficult and doesn’t give much freedom, since I have to depend on strangers to send me to places. It can get frustrated too when u walked for so long and no one wants to give you a lift. But it’s the cheapest way to travel! One weird thing about Orkney is, they have their own flag and its very similar to Norwegian flag. The Scottish has been telling me that people here in Orkney are more like the Scandinavian rather than Scottish themselves. It feels more like in Norway rather than Scotland. But I didn’t notice the difference, since I haven’t been to Norway in my life so I can’t tell. The next day we all get to the ferry to send us back to the mainland, to Aberdeen, the city of oil and gas here in Scotland! This was where we all finally separated. The German, the French and the Japanese took a bus to Edinburgh, Lucie get to a hostel here and I head to my friend’s house to eat our Malaysian food! But we all still will keep in touch and hope to meet each other again in the future. Lucie will still be here in Scotland so I guess we can still meet up with each other.

home of one of the earliest civilization here in Orkney

back to civilization!! Aberdeen early in the morning!

Since I reached Durness, I had many sleepless nights here in the very north coast of Scotland. It started while I was camping by the sea in Durness. When the sun went away giving its light to other parts of the world, the darkness came in. I was very lucky because the clouds suddenly decided not to show up that night, giving way to the countless of stars and the unearthly milky way to appear. I was speechless, the pain all over my body caused by the cold wind suddenly disappeared, I felt that my mind left my body for a while when I saw these super massive open space starscape. This is the first time I saw such things in my entire life, it was very clear, the night sky I saw here definitely beats the night sky I saw in the Lower Himalayas years ago. I was standing outside my tent in a very low altitude, just at the sea level unlike when I was in the Tibetan mountains where I sat at nearly 5000m altitude that time. But here, Im sitting at the very north of Scotland, in very high latitude. And the latitude beats the altitude here.

At first the night sky seems dark to me since my eyes are not used to the very low light condition yet but after a few minutes looking at this darkness, automatically my eyes got adjusted by it and the sky looks really bright! This time, there are even more shooting stars and it really feels like there were many spaceships in the sky firing laser at each other. Maybe because it is so massive and so beautiful and it feels so divine, the clouds refused to cover this night sky. It lasted for almost the whole night, the clouds came in once in a while and disappear again, allowing me to see this marvel for hours and hours, I ended up sleeping only when the sun about to come again.

It is dark here in the north of Scotland, very few lights coming from the small village, the ground was so dark making the sky looked really bright showing strange colors coming from the Milky Way. For a while, I thought I finally saw the mysterious word called the “Infinity”, I thought I finally saw heaven from afar. And for a moment I could feel the greatness of the divine power when I see this magic. I could feel the greatness of the master of the universe, the one who is the most merciful, the master of the judgement day, the same master that I always pray to and seek help in my entire life to show me the true straight path. I felt weird, because the cold doesn’t seem to bother me anymore, I don’t feel the pain like thousands of needles penetrating my skin getting to my bones when the super cold wind blowing hard to me. I felt calm, I felt like the pain signal inside my body system stop functioning at that moment.

All campers here in the campsite were sleeping. I was the only who was awake to witness this magic. Everybody was sleeping inside their tent, covering themselves inside their sleeping bags from the cold. Perhaps they don’t know about this divine starscape, perhaps they don’t want to struggle under this very cold condition to watch this marvel of the universe. I realized I was the only one here who had the sleepless night watching this magic. Since then, I saw this magical starscape almost every night in this very northern part of Scotland, in Tongue, Durness and Thurso, making me feel like I don’t want to ride back south towards Glasgow. I felt like staying here, but I knew that it is impossible…

After I camped a night by the sea in Durness, I couldn’t stand the cold anymore. It was too cold for me and the wind never stops blowing. I plan to stay another day there so I went to a bunkhouse nearby to sleep in the warmth under a roof. It was there where I met Lucie, a lonely French girl who hitchhike around Scotland for a few months. A young girl, 22 years old and became addicted with traveling. She made her way here from Edinburgh just by hitchhiking. She left her home somewhere in the suburb of France 5 months ago and get to London to work there for a few months before hitchhiking around Scotland. We then spent the day together walking along the white sand beach for a few hours exchanging our past stories, sharing our hope and dreams in the future in this life. She burst into a laugh when I told her that some Asian girls I know are obsessed about France, tried to speak some words in French because they think its romantic, Paris is somehow a city of love and French guys are romantic. Hehehe…. She replied back that Paris is just another boring city and the Eifel Tower is an ugly tower. And she didn’t find any logic that why the language can become romantic. Probably Hollywood is to be blamed here. Then it was my turn to burst into a laugh…

Later in the evening, 3 German guys came in to the bunkhouse so we all sit together talking crap, hehehe. They travel by car for 2 weeks around Scotland together while waiting to go to University in Munich. And again, they invited me to pass by Munich, if I cycle in Germany heading to the Alps from the east. I guess one day when I cycle in Germany, my progress will be very slow in the country since I will meet so many people in Germany. And again, they were impressed to see my film and that night I felt like I’m back to work as a lecturer in KL when I taught them how to use their DSLR camera to get the best pictures and to film the night sky. I was outside with them in the cold for an hour teaching them the technical part of filming with DSLR cameras under the low light condition and when we get back to the bunkhouse, I taught them on how to handle those footages in post-production from my laptop. It was fun because these guys really have strong interest in the subject unlike back home, where some of my ex-students were learning by force, just to get the paper and the qualification…

Early the next day in the morning, I left Durness heading towards Tongue, the last village for me in the north of Scotland before riding down south fast back towards Glasgow. I plan to meet Lucie again there, since we both heading towards the same direction. Im cycling and shes hitchhiking, heading towards the same direction. So I left first early in the morning while shes taking her time slowly. The road from Durness to Tongue is another pain, many big climbs and some are very very steep and I had to push my bicycle at some point. It was only 50 km away but it took me around 5 hours pulling my bike with the heavy luggage because of the terrain. It was beautiful here when the sun is shining proudly, I was riding constantly under the shadow of Ben Hope, the highest mountain in the northern part of Scotland. The height is only about 1000m above sea level but it looks majestic here under the clouds.

Upon reaching Tongue, Lucie was waiting for me at the roadside and we went to a youth hostel there together. I was shivering all the way so I stayed inside the hostel for a few hours until the sun was shining again. I felt much better after I had a cup of hot tea. It was a very small village with only 1 small shop, I guess the population here is below 200 people. I felt so tired that day and I actually went to sleep for 2 hours in the evening! Hehe I guess im getting older or what? I only cycled some 50km and already felt so tired. Or maybe it’s the cold? Or perhaps too many big climbs?….

Here in Tongue, I supposed to meet an old friend from KL who has been studying and living here in Aberdeen for years. She drove to Tongue from Aberdeen with her brother and arrived quite late. So I decided to meet them the next day since I was too tired. We supposed to meet after breakfast the next day but the problem was that my phone doesn’t have reception in the area. I waited a while and they never show up. I was hoping that they will find me since there is only 1 hostel there in the small village and its easy to find, and they travel by car. At some point, while I was sitting outside the hostel listening to music from my Ipod, suddenly they passed by me! It was really fun meeting them since we both know each other for many years. Its like a school reunion here in the very north of Scotland! Shes from Bangsar and Im from Damansara Heights so we both have the same circle of friends and came from the same background, same culture. We are far away from our home yet we speak the street Malay language, making Malay jokes and laugh the Malay style! Hehehe… But we didn’t spend too long together, since they are on their way to Durness and finally to the Isle of Skye. I will meet them again in Aberdeen soon a few days from now and will invade their space, sleep in their bed and swarm their fridge with my stuff! Hehe…

Staying a night in the hostel in Ullapool was fun. I met a mountain biker from Germany there. We are both cyclists so we talk about so many things while cooking in the kitchen. The hostel owner heard our conversation, who is a cyclist himself. He got attracted by us and joined us in the kitchen. A very nice guy, he offered me free food that night! We then had dinner together and exchanged our experience. And as usual, the conversation leads to by asking me how do I plan to fund my traveling. I then told them that I’m filming my journey and sell my footages, videos and photos, also writes articles for travel magazines etc etc. They got really interested in it and wanted me to show them the short intro for my travelogue documentary. I was glad that they love it the first time they saw it. And the hostel owner, went out to call his staff and other people in the hostel to the lounge area to see my film! Hehe… so ended up many people were there to watch my film documentary on the screen.

I woke up early the next day getting ready for a long ride. Before leaving the hostel, everyone were wishing me good luck on my journey and my filming project. They were so impressed by it and we exchanged contacts and hope to see my film someday. I was planning to ride to the very north of Scotland, to a small village called Tongue which is around 150km away at least using the west coast road. Again, I underestimated Scotland. I checked the altitude for the whole country, none of the roads touches 500m altitude, Scotland is flat and it gonna be an easy ride. I was wrong. Even though the roads never touch even 400m altitude, but it was never flat! Just a few kilometres after Ullapool, the big climb started for me! The problem is, after every big climb, the road goes down again to almost sea level and there will another big climb afterwards! It is never flat! It really slows me down and I can never complete more than 100 kilometers in a day with this kind of terrain. Usually I will smile when I see the road goes downhill after a tough climb, but this time, I was cursing when I see the road goes downhill because I know that I will have to climb again after that. Hehehe…

I was progressing really slow, and the big mistake I did was, I didn’t bring any food with me… again… hehe. I thought that there will be villages in between for me to get food but I was surrounded by nothing but hills and moreee hills! But the day was pleasant, it was very very beautiful! The weather here is really unpredictable. It rains for 20 minutes followed by sunshine for another 20 minutes. It keeps changing and because of that, I saw rainbows, double full rainbows everywhere, maybe like 10 times on the same day! Now I know how to describe Scotland, it’s the realm of rainbows! Some appeared only for seconds and some lasted for 20 minutes or more! That made my progress even slower, since I kept on stopping to watch this beautiful phenomenon.

I kept on riding through the steep hills for about 8 hours and realized that I can never reach Tongue on the same day. I then reached a small village called Durness. I found a nice campsite and decided to pitch my tent there since Tongue is still another 30 miles (50km) away. It was one of the best campsites here in Scotland with a very beautiful view of the white sand beach. I pitched my tent at the corner to get the best view of the ocean. This is the very north of Scotland, there are no land here between where I stand and the North Pole except the Faroe Islands. And its very pleasant, since the weather here now is much better compared to when I was in the Isle of Skye or in the West Highland Way.