This article was first published in Rouleur Issue 141
As I left from the tiny motel at Salmon Gums, I surrendered to the fact that I would be fighting against a headwind for the next hundred kilometres. I had acquired some zip ties from the gas station next to the motel. Somewhere between that and the only known deterrent to headwinds: singing cringy pop songs out loud, I reached Norseman Roadhouse mid-afternoon.
From here, my plan was to ride about 188km more into the Nullarbor and sleep at the next available roadhouse at Balladonia. I bought myself a lot of food, some wired earphones and just looked at the map a hundred times, hoping that I would magically be a much faster and stronger rider to cover the required distance in quick enough time to get a long night’s rest afterwards.
A quote by ultra-runner Tom Evans came to mind: “Science doesn’t lie. There are no miracles on race day”. I’ve had some tough and long days in the saddle since starting my Australian leg and my kit had been perpetually drenched. I was tired. I was also still recovering from heat exhaustion in India and severe food poisoning in Mongolia. My groundwork was good enough to keep me riding long enough distances back to back, but I wasn’t miraculously going to be any faster than what I’d trained for.
Into the void
What lay ahead was 188km of nothingness before I slept for a bit, then repeated the next day. And the next day. In the end, I simply decided to call up the next roadhouse and requested them to reserve a room for me with two veggie burgers and extra mustard sauce in the fridge. I paid while still on the call. The woman on the other end of the line realised that I was on a bicycle and that I was alone. She strongly discouraged me. I told her that I have done exactly this before and I was much younger back then so, of course, I’ll be fine. She was having none of it. In her eyes, this was still a very bad idea. “That’s what people tell me”, she said, “that they will turn up in the middle of the night at the motel. But they never do. They just disappear.” I took a deep breath. I told her that I would still like to reserve my room and my food, and ended the call.
“Of course, I’ll be fine”, I reassured myself before getting on my bike to head towards Balladonia roadhouse.
The woman’s words reminded me of everything I heard as a young girl. Suddenly, I was eight years old getting in trouble for walking home alone from school, or going to the corner shop alone in what I now know was a relatively safe neighbourhood. I grew up in Nigdi, a suburb of Pune in the western state of Maharashtra in India. My mother was a teacher and my father worked abroad. He used to be a month on and a month off from work, which meant that during the months that he was abroad, my mother was my primary parent. So, of course, her fears about the world and the overprotectiveness of those around me at the time made perfect sense, especially as an only child.
In a cultural setting where women are still very much considered as second-class citizens and where if you get into trouble with a man, fingers will be pointed at you rather than the male, my fear radar was broken before it had a chance to fully build. All this culminated in a distinct inability in trusting myself to make good decisions. I played football at the time. I was a goalkeeper. It takes a certain level of confidence to play that position well. I know that now, in retrospect, but at the time I really just thought that I was bad at sports. Growing up, I learnt to be scared of getting physically hurt, getting into trouble, doing anything alone, being out in the dark and, most importantly, men. Then, there was the cultural layer of what a girl from a good family does and doesn’t do. All in all, my belief system was well and truly built on staying safe and pleasing those around me. Confidence neither came naturally nor was strongly encouraged.
So, how did I find myself in the Nullarbor Desert riding through the dark, feeling perfectly fine and happy about my life choices?
Beginner to globetrotter
Cycling, to me, has always represented freedom. Freedom to listen to my favourite music. Freedom to talk to myself. Freedom to make mistakes. Freedom to be exactly who I am when nobody’s watching. Cycling felt like a way of living outside of everyone else’s expectations of me. On the go, I suddenly cared way less about what anybody else thought of me. This was also the case back when it was simply a tool for me to get from my home to my football training and back. Then, that evolved into me wanting to go on a three-day cycling adventure in the lower Himalayas, which quickly turned into the beginning of the planning and preparation for a ride along a route that goes pretty much across the Indian Himalayas, crossing several high mountain passes.
But the real understanding of freedom didn’t come about until I moved to the UK about five days after turning 18.
A few months later, amidst a myriad of cultural confusions and random misunderstandings, I ended up turning my previously planned 400km ride into a 1600km ride across the UK. On this ride, I had very little money and no sleeping gear. With a saddle pack and a backpack, I had set off from Bournemouth. Having changed my plans to then head to John O’Groats, I ended up knocking on people’s doors or sleeping under bus shelters along the way. On this ride, I accidentally rode on motorways and got escorted out of there by some kind people, crashed several times owing to having never ridden with clipless pedals before, and generally learnt the meaning of true Britishness in every sense.
Weaving across the drastically conflicting emotions of ultimate freedom versus acute loneliness, I started reading a book on my Kindle written by the first woman to have set the round-the-world circumnavigation record, Juliana Buhring. Just like that, I was bitten by the adventure cycling bug. I wanted to become the fastest woman to cycle the world, solo and unsupported. And I wanted to do it the following year, when I’d be 19.
In July 2018, I set off on this ride. Needless to say, I didn’t quite get the record. Between a million visa issues thanks to my Indian passport, creepy experiences that I hadn’t learnt yet how to deal with, being mugged at knifepoint and concussed, and having some crazy wildlife experiences, perhaps even making it to the finish line was a job well done. The 2018 round-the-world ride taught my 19 and 20-year-old self that I could trust myself to be out and about in the middle of nowhere. Was I perfectly confident in dealing with any major issues? Probably not. But I learnt that I could figure it out by myself if it came to it. That ride scratched my ‘freedom’ itch more than anything had ever managed before.
Eat, sleep, ride, repeat
Fast forward to 2024. I was going to do it all over again. This time, I trained harder, had more financial backing and was better prepared logistically. Visa rejections from some countries led to me planning a slightly unconventional route. This meant riding across four deserts and an entire mountain range. I was excited. I couldn’t believe my luck that I was getting to do this all over again. At this point, I was fairly confident that, record or not, I would make it around the world alright. So imagine my surprise when I found myself in a gnarly, yes, but not totally unmanageable situation and genuinely wondered ‘Is this how I die?’.
This story comes from one of the most ‘sit with it and deal with it’ moments I had ever experienced. Nothing was going to cause me immediate grief, and I had everything required to get where I needed to be, but the path felt terrifying. That day, I had already ridden 90km in the morning, pushing through headwinds and rain. I stopped at one of the last available places to eat for a huge lunch and attempted to dry everything. The next section, as I understood from maps and kind strangers, was a little bit remote. With a slightly smug smile, I told them that I could handle remote.
As I got on the bike, I just knew the weather was going to get worse. All the weather apps agreed, though the wild weather wasn’t due until late that night. The sun was shining bright, and the rainy morning felt like a distant dream. But something felt off.
Just past sunset, it started raining heavily. The wind picked up. Random branches flew at me from different angles. My headlamp died. My bike computer gave up. I didn’t know what to think but kept pedalling. I was scared. The sound of the wind was wild. It felt like cycling through a running washing machine. I told myself that nothing would be worse than stopping. Not a single vehicle had passed me for a few hours. I saw feral cats everywhere. They’d cross my path slowly here and there. It oddly reminded me of the thing my grandmother used to tell me about black cats crossing your path being a bad omen. What terrible timing to think of that.
I tried to rationalise the fear. What was I really scared of? The wind, rain and bad visibility? Airborne branches? Wildlife? Well, technically, there were enough things to ‘worry’ about but what was my only ‘right thing’ to do in the situation I found myself in? The only aspect in my control was to keep going until I got somewhere warm and dry. So that’s exactly what I did. But my thoughts were going a bit crazy.
When I finally arrived, I knew my priorities. I stopped at the first motel, but they had closed. An hour of motel-hunting led me to a room with no radiator and no hot water. I asked the owners if they had any food. They offered me a Pizza Hut pizza from the previous day that had been left on a recycling bin. I accepted it and waddled back to the room. I had a cold shower, made myself tea, and pulled the duvet over. I opened the box, mildly excited, only to find pineapple on it. I removed the pieces and had it with my cup of tea while watching Modern Family.
The next morning, the weather was still abysmal. I had several cups of coffee and headed out. Not even ten miles later, I spotted a café. It wasn’t open, and I was shivering again. A woman saw me sitting under the shelter and asked what I was up to. She told me it was my lucky day. She opened the café and put three heaters around me, giving me warm blankets. I sat there for an hour or more, and both my body heat and faith in humanity were restored. This was what it was all about.
The 2024 round-the-world wasn’t exactly a record breaking success, but it gave me a chance to take a good, hard look at myself. My 20 and 26-year-old self dealt with fear, pain, and chaos totally differently. This time, I was processing every emotion through the lens of my upbringing, my life in the UK for my entire adulthood and my previous misadventures. I felt like my own mind was my safe space and every challenge was nothing more than a minor inconvenience.
So maybe that’s what it takes to ride your bike around the world or go on a big and scary adventure. You jump into the deep end, make your mistakes, learn about the world around you, get some perspective and discover who you are along the way. It doesn’t happen one step at a time. It just comes together amidst the chaos. That’s when you know that you’re the best friend you’ve always been looking for. That’s where freedom lies.
