That's what I thought

"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race."

H. G. Wells

two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
and sorry, I could not travel both.
and be one traveller long I stood
and looked down one as far as I could
to where it bent in the undergrowth.

then took the other, just as fair
and having perhaps the better claim,
because it was grassy and wanted wear,
though as for that the passing there
had worn them really about the same.

and both that morning equally lay
in leaves, no step had trodden black.
oh, I kept the first for another day!
yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less travelled by,
and that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost, 1916

If you look at my itinery across Australia you might wonder, why I chose to travel all those dusty, corrugated roads. Am I punishing myself for something? Am I masochistic? Or am I simply crazy?

Well, I leave it to others to judge whether I am crazy or not. Most people think I am. But I reckon I am pretty normal, apart from the fact, that I have recognized the bicycle as a fully capable and equally respectable means of transport among all other options of transport mankind has to offer.

However, when it comes to energy efficiency, the bicycle stands high above everything else ever invented. Cycling is even more energy efficient than walking when comparing the muscular energy needed per kilometer. Only sailing is possibly more energy efficient than cycling, but it is not very practical when travelling overland. As one of my main focus in life is energy efficiency, I opted for the bicycle to travel to and across Australia.

When I came to Australia, there were basically two places I wanted to visit before going to Carnamah. The Kimberley Region, because it had always been praised as particularly beautiful, and Uluru (Ayers Rock). After arriving in Darwin I took pretty much the shortest way that allowed me to combine the Kimberleys and Uluru on the way to Carnamah. Only from Leonora I took a bit of a detour to see Lake Ballard, Kalgoorlie, Wave Rock, Richelle in Merredin, Perth and to participate Rottnest Marathon before finally heading up to Carnamah.

The reason for visiting Uluru was not so much touristic, however. I had already visited it 15 years ago. As a group of over 100 exchange students, mostly from Scandinavia, we were travelling around Australia with three buses for three weeks. Some of us climbed the Rock, and I decided to join in. On top of the Rock, in a patch of eroded sand, there was a little fragment, that fit nicely in my hand. I picked it up, looked at it, and took it with me. It was not particularly beautiful, but it was part of Uluru, displaying the typically rusted red colour on one side, being rather boring grey otherwise.

For many years this piece of rock was sitting on my desk or on a window board, sadly collecting Swiss city dust, rather than the red dust from the desert where it came from. As the years passed I realized, that this piece of rock is part of something bigger, something beautiful and something sacred. And I realized, too, that it really belongs to where it came from, it doesn't belong on my desk. It looked lost there. And long before knowing how and when I would visit Australia again, I decided that on my next visit I would bring it back.

For almost 15 months I carried it with me, safely wrapped up into a silken cloth, on the red bicycle across Europe and Asia and halfway across Australia to its red centre. While some people believe that it brings bad luck to take a piece of Uluru, I was convinced that this piece of rock would not play any bad tricks on me. I knew, that this little rock wants to go home. Therefore I was almost certain, that it would rather help me to overcome all sorts of difficulties along my way, rather than putting any unnecessary obstacles in it. And I was certain, too, that it would particularly support me, as I had chosen to bring it home with a minimum irreversible impact on our mother earth, which also means with the least possible impact on the world's mineral ressources.

When I finally reached Uluru, I celebrated my rock's coming home by walking it around Uluru (about 10km) before heading off into the head office of the Uluru and Kata Tjuta National Park. Through the Central Land Council in Alice Springs I had arranged to give it back to a member of the Mutitjulu (Aboriginal) Community, who are the custodians of Uluru and to whom the Rock is sacred. Sean from the park administration introduced me to an elder of the community. She was thankful for me bringing it home and asked me to put it back to where I took it. But because this meant climbing the Rock again, she then decided to take care of it and put it together with the other travelling rocks that had returned home. I was not the only one to bring back a piece of Uluru, even though I was the first to bring it back on a bicycle. Every year, the park receives up to 300 fragments of Uluru from people who had taken them as a souvenir, and over the years realized, that this was the wrong thing to do. The park authorities call it the „Sorry Rock Phenomenon“. Most people send their fragments back by mail, others bring it back on another visit. While the local Aboriginals do appreciate when people return those travelling rocks, they would obviously much prefer, if people didn't pick them up in the first place. It is mostly impossible to determine their original position, and even if it was possible, it would not necessarily be good to put it back there. The energy of those fragments would have been transformed during their travels, which might disturb the energy characteristics of the different sites on the Rock.

A conciliatory view of the „Sorry Rocks“ is that those travelling fragments are an expression of a reciprocal get-to-know-each-other. While hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world come to visit Uluru every year, look at it, walk around it, and sometimes even trod on it, Uluru takes a chance to travel around the world, too, in order to see the places, where all these people come from. While the world comes to Uluru, Uluru goes and sees the world, too. But just as the visitors of Uluru do not wish to perish on it, I believe that also Uluru does not want to perish somewhere out in the world, but eventually return home. The fact that so many parts of Uluru do return, might also just mean, that this rock is more alive than we think.
From this perspecitive, it might as well be, that it wasn't me, who chose to pick up that piece of Uluru 15 years ago. Instead it could have been that piece who chose to travel with me and see the world, knowing that sometimes in the future I would bring it back home. Who knows? However, I don't accept this view nor my young age to be used as an excuse for taking it. There is no excuse, I should not have taken it in the first place. I was wrong. It was an unrespectful act. And I am deeply sorry and hereby wish to apolgize for doing so.

However, as much as I feel sorry, I also feel thankful. The Rock had made me venture across some of the most remote areas of Australia, along some of the most fascinating roads. Roads that I would never have taken, if it hadn't been for this little rock insisting in going home on my bicycle and leaving me with an extraordinary experience and a lot of fantastic memories.

And I learned one lesson, too: It is easy to carry a piece of rock around the world on a bicycle to bring it back where it belongs. But I wonder how much more difficult it will be to put back all the carbon we are burning, once we fully realize that the atmosphere is just not the place where it belongs.

Thank you Uluru!

It was six o'clock in the morning, Sunday morning. The streets were wet after a short drizzling rain. The morning sun ellbowed its way through the clouds which were rushing across the island chased by a strong southwesterly wind. Already the day before the strong wind had the express ferry from Fremantle to Rottnest Island jumping and bumping across the water. My hope for this wind to cease today was in vain.

Suddenly there was a shot. And we started running. We were about 150 runners setting off for the Rottnest Marathon, 42,2km. First, the course would take us a couple of kilometers towards and past the Kingston Barracks, where many runners had stayed the night before, and back to the Thomson Bay Settlement before turning onto the four laps of 9,5km around the northern half of Rottnest Island. Rottnest Island, about 11km long and 4,5km wide, lies about 20km off the coast from Fremantle. It is listed as an A-Class Reserve, whatever that means. There are nice beaches, waves, snorkling opportunities and a scenic rugged, almost alpine landscape inland. But most importantly, there is no traffic. No private vehicles are allowed on the island. The main mode of transport is the bicycle (not considered as a vehicle under Australian laws). A good reason for me to pay a visit, and probably my main motivation to run this marathon.
The participants of the marathon all had to spend the night on the island, because the first ferry in the morning only arrives after the start of the run. A somewhat familiar atmosphere for this event is thereby guaranteed. Another good reason to participate.

I started at a leisurely pace, which I thought I would be able to keep up for a few hours. My main worry at the start were my lungs. Only two days before, when I went for a last short 15min run in Perth, I returned heavily breathing, with my lungs blocked asthmalike. I had experienced similar difficulties already for weeks, mostly at night or after some of the few running trainings. But this time it was extraordinarily bad, and just two days before the marathon. I was worried and decided to go and see the doctor in the afternoon, even though then I was breathing normally again. He related my lungproblems to my hayfever, it's the season here now. I admitted, that my hayfever wouldn't help my lungs, but I still was not convinced and agreed to do a computerized analyses of my breathperformance. The results suggested an estimated lung age of 63 years, upon which the doctor prescribed some Cortison and wished me good luck for the marathon. Well, I thought, there are people running marathons at the age of 63, too. No worries, I'll be right.

It took me five minutes for the first kilometer, and I was pleased to feel very relaxed, and that there was no sign of any respiratory or other problems at all. If I can keep up this pace I could get through the finish line after three and a half hours, which would get close enough to my marathon times two years ago. But would my muscles keep it up this long? Would my joints support it?

Again I thought back of my practically non-existing training, which had me worrying all along the week before the marathon, pondering whether I shouldn't rather dismiss it. This marathon, I was convinced, was the most silly and unreasonable thing I had ever done. It's OK to cycle from Basel to Perth, there is nothing wrong with that. There is a commitment to such a journey. It's an experience, an adventure. And there is a message in it. The message of what we can achieve if we commit ourselves to a sustainable way of life, and consequently to sustainable transportation, and if we do what we really want to do, if we live up to our convictions and beliefs. But running a marathon practically unprepared without any reasonable training? What message is in that? There is no message in that except stupidity, madness. So why am I doing this? Should I have renounced on running, because I didn't get the training I intended? Because two days ago 15 minutes running left me breathless? But it's too late now. I have started, I am in it, and I knew, the only thing that could stop me at this point from running another 41 kilometers was my body, my lungs, my joints or my muscles. And I promised myself, that I would listen very carefully to my body.

My marathon training:
- Early September I went running on three consecutive days for about 20 minutes in Alice Springs, when I registered for the run.
- When I reached Laverton in late September I went running again for 20-30 minutes to restart my training. But it was a complete disaster for my lungs. After running I spent a few hours coughing up and breathing heavily while preparing and eating dinner in the camper's kitchen, such that my fellow camper's seriously started worrying about me. I blamed the cold weather for it. Was I going to get a pneumonia? Being afraid of more complications with my lungs I dropped my training in Leonora two days later and also Kalgoorlie a week later.
- Eight days before the marathon I reached York, where I suddenly realized, that it is too late even for half a serious marathon training. Trying to do the best I could, but not too much, I went running for 30 minutes on that Saturday.
- The day after I reached Fremantle: 45 minutes on Monday and 20 minutes on Wednesday, and I was going to run a marathon on Sunday. I felt ridiculous.
- Finally the last bit of cosmetics, the already mentioned 15 minutes in Perth on Friday.
To run the marathon I would have to rely completely on my general level of fitness and endurance I gained from cycling.

While telling myself off on the first couple of kilometers for what I was doing, my thoughts suddenly went 12 years back, when I was living in Perth. One day I wanted to do something for my fitness and decided to go for a run. I enjoyed it so much, that I kept going and going and by the time I got home, roughly an hour later, I had wrecked my knees and my ankles. It took a couple of weeks for my ankles to recover and my knees had been liable to aches and pains for many years after. It was a painful lesson on what can happen, when you go for too long a run without any previous exercice. And I learned, too, that my mind is strong enough to overrule my body. But I was not going to let it happen this time. Again I promised myself that I would listen very carefully to my body and abandon the marathon if needed.

After two and a half kilometers we turned around to head back into Thomson Bay Settlement, facing northwest. A big rainbow is painted on the fresh morning sky. I am thrilled, and somehow suddenly I am convinced, I can do this. And I am happy. What a wonderful thing, running a marathon with the sun rising on one side and a colourful rainbow on the other side. At kilometer 5 I am back in town and entering the first of four laps. I am still on my five minutes per kilometer average, and I still feel good, but it is also still a long way to go. As the road takes me out of town, I pass an alpine lake on my right, with rocks and a barren vegetation on its shores. Further back on Mount Herschel (hardly a hill really) stands a windmill quietly and steadily turning its rounds. It seems as if the windmill keeps us all running around the island. The rainbow now descends right onto the windmill. I should have taken the camera with me. The road leads onto a dam and across Lake Herschel. A strong sidewind drags foam from the lake across the dam. I contemplate the rainbow and imagine how I run for it, trying to catch it.

On the other side of the lake the road climbs up a little hill, then down and up again and after slight bend there is suddenly a white lighthouse towering ahead of me in the far extension of the road. Again I am stunned by the sight. But before we reach the bottom of the lighthouse we turn off to the right into a little wood. On the other side of the wood the road twists around a set of shallow lakes, the Pink Lake, Lake Sirius, Lake Negri and Lake Baghdad. Then the road gently curves up and a sign says „5km to go“. Sounds easy, but unfortunately it's not for me yet. Really there are three laps and 5 kilometers to go. I try to do some maths, 3 x 9,5 + 5 = not easy when you are running and the result won't exactly be encouraging. At least with every lap the maths will get easier and the remaining distance shorter.

Presently, on a loop around Armstrong Rock, the sea comes in sight. Big breaking waves roll onto Rottnest Island, while the wind blows their top back out into the ocean. As I contemplate this fascinating powerstruggle between the elements, I suddenly hear the sound of a bagpipe. Further up stands a solitary scottish bagpiper on the cliff facing the Indian Ocean and sending out his tunes into the universe. Thanks for the music!

I pass the 10km sign (that's for me), 500m further the 20km sign (not for me), then the 30km sign (not for me) and past some holiday houses at Geordie Bay stands the 40km sign (again not for me, it starts getting frustrating). With every sign I do the maths, and I am really getting good at it. Heading back to the Thomson Bay Settlement we now approach the windmill from behind. A big board explains how this windmill saves us 900 tons of carbon emissions every year, powering the electricity grid of Rottnest Island and the desalination plant. At least for once I have a headwind that is not completely useless. As I run down the hill on the other side against the wind I spread out my arms. There are two strategies to deal with a head wind, I felt. Either you swear your head off and end up frustrated because you can't change it anyway, or you joyfully embrace the wind and feel its energy as it massages your face, dresses your hair and airs your clothes. I wasn't in the mood for swearing. I had fatalistically accepted my running here, so I might just as well accept the wind.

Back in Thomson Bay settlement, just having completed the first lap, I see Senta standing on the side of the road and a quokka in the middle of it. A quokka is an animal about the size of a big rat but with the design of a fat kangaroo. It is native to Rottnest Island, and Rottnest Island only. It's not a large habitat, but thanks to the lack of any predators they are performing quite well. The quokka sat there happily chewing on something, so I decided to pass it on its right. But just when I came along it decided to move about and nearly had me trip over it. Finally I have completed my first lap, and it was such a scenic lap, that I didn't mind at all to do it again.

The rainbow was gone though, but the wind was still there, and so were the lighthouse, the lakes, the forests, the cliffs, the waves, and also the bagpiper was still playing. With great satisfaction I pass the 10km sign again. That's already done a long time ago. I welcome the 20km and try to visualize the distance travelled and to be travelled on my bicycle computer.

For a little while a man is running in front of me with a blue t-shirt that has „impossible is nothing“ printed on its back. Somehow it fits to my faded red t-shirt, which says „le velo rouge en route vers Carnamah“ on the back. True, impossible is nothing. And maybe it also fits to my running here, my initial worries have faded away. I have been running for one and a half hour now. I start to feel it in my legs, but in a healthy way. My legs felt heavy. They seem to have accumulated an extra kilogram of weight with every kilometer I had run. Running half a marathon would be just fine, I think, I could go for a good sprint now. But two more laps is going to be a very long way still. Near the windmill I passed the man with the blue t-shirt and never saw him again.

When I passed the bagpiper on my third lap, he was still playing. He's doing a marathon on his own, a musical marathon. Just before the 30km mark the leading bicycle, followed by the first runner, passes me. As I would find out later only, the winner of the marathon is Swiss, too. I clap in my hands as he passes and say „good on you“. But I also envy him, because he can go straight for the finish line now, while I still have to do another lap. My legs are getting really tired and heavy. This marathon is decidedly tougher on me than the Triathlon in Bali four months ago.

I was very glad to enter the last lap. Now I would go for the finish line, too. I drag my heavy legs along. My body wants to take a break. My legs want to walk. Just walk. But I know, if I stop running now, it will be only harder to get back running again. And if I start walking, it would take me much longer to get to the finish line. I keep pushing myself. But then there is also this urge for the toilet. An excellent excuse for just a little break. But I would have to get past Lake Herschel to go into the bush. A sign says 7km to go and I weer off into the bush to crouch down and drop some weight. It felt good to bend my knees. When I got back onto the road a few runners had past me, including two women. But before the next drink station I passed one of them again and I stayed on the heels of the other one. As long as she could run, I would, too. A couple of hundred meters before the bagpiper all the runners were given a 1-Dollar-coin. Customs wants it, that we hand it over to the bagpiper. On my way to the bagpiper I hold on tight to the coin, not to lose it, while I grab Johnny out of my pocket with the other hand to get him some fresh air. He will have to help me on the last four and something kilometers. As he looks as fit and cheerful as always, I had no doubt, that he would make it. We drop our coin into the bagpiper's box. Then 4km to go, then 3km to go, then 2km to go and I pass the woman. 1,5km to go and I pass another runner. I know that the other runners feel just as I do. But I have Johnny. The finish line is close. Johnny pretends to be jumping up and down and clapping his hands. At least I imagine so, which gives me the energy to accelerate just a little.

Just before quarter to ten I cross the finish line with a smile. I can't believe it, I did it again. I have just completed my third marathon, a very scenic marathon. It is not my best time, but yet a great achievement considering all circumstances. And it certainly was a great and unique way of seeing Rottnest Island.

At half past ten, Senta (my sister) started for the 5km fun run, which left me just enough time to rest a little before taking over her bag and my jacket. The day before we had met some other Swiss participating the fun run, and with a nice t-shirt on offer for the participants, she spontaneously signed up, too. For not having trained at all (it must be in the family), she did extremely well, too. Good on you!

Arriving in Laverton, after having spent twelve days on the Great Central Road, I was delighted to learn, that Laverton was named after Dr Charles Laver in honour of his memorable bike ride from Coolgardie to Laverton in 1896, shortly after gold had been found there. All over Australia you can find memorials of the pioneers who explored this vast continent with its inhospitable climate. But Dr Laver simply rode his bicycle across the bush. What a hero!

But I was even more delighted when I came to Kalgoorlie. In the visitor’’s centre of Kalgoorlie the title of book sprang into my eyes: “The bicycle and the bush” by Jim Fitzpatrick, which is a 250-page-strong, illustrated book, looking at the history of the use of bicycles in outback Australia. It’’s a goldmine of fascinating information to me. Many times in the last couple of days I opened it up, flipped through some pages, and simply got lost in it, finding it hard to put it down again.
On the back cover it reads: “In the outback [the bicycle] was quickly and widely adopted as a form of transport, because it required no food or water, was two or three times as fast as a horse or camel, and did not drop dead from eating poisonous plants. It was particularly important in opening up lines of rapid communication on the Western Australian goldfields.”
And somewhere it says: “The bicycle was probably more important and more intensively used for transport on the Western Australian goldfields than in any other rural area of the world in the 1890s.” This is actually easy to believe. The soil in the Goldfields region is normally hard enough for a bicycle to ride on it, and with no form of motorized transport available – apart from the steam train – the bicycle would have been the fastest and most reliable option of transport, with the additional advantage, as stated above, of not needing any water in a region where water was extremely scarce.

Percy Armstrong, who was reportedly Australia’’s first overland cyclist after having cycled down from Croydon (Qld) to Melbourne in 1893, came to WA in 1894 and opened the first bicycle shop in the goldfields. By 1901 he operated a network of six branches and some thirty agencies in various towns throughout the state.
The first man known to cycle across the Nullarbor was Arthur Richardson in 1896, and in 1899-1900 he was also the first to cycle all the way around Australia in 243 days. While there were probably also many undocumented rides, those who aimed for setting new records were well documented. And their performances in 1898 are astonishing: Darwin-Melbourne in 34 days, Perth-Adelaide in 18 ½ days, Perth-Rockhampton (Qld) in 62 days (7240km). In comparison: it took me 73 days (including 17 rest days)for my 5332km-odyssee from Darwin to Kalgoorlie .

But the book has also a lot of fascinating information on the evolution of bicycle technology, the bicycle’’s energy efficiency, its impact on society, its different uses for messenger services, fence patrolling, kangaroo shooting, and also various problems encountered by cyclists. The problem of horsemen using the bicycle tracks in the Goldfields, and thereby destroying them with the hoof prints they left behind, became political with a letter of the secretary of the Broad Arrow Cyclists’’ Association published in the Broad Arrow Standard on 30 June 1897: “(...)I think, for a start, we might get a bill introduced into Parliament, reserving a strip of, say, three yards on each side of all telegraph lines outside Coolgardie for cyclists alone, and making it punishable by heavy penalty for any horseman or driver of horses found within that area(...)”

A hundred years ago, Kalgoorlie must have been a wonderfully thriving and lively town with its electrical tramway, running every 15 minutes and people, bicycles, horses and camels moving about everywhere inside and outside town. Sadly enough, the automobile was introduced later and killed the tramway, the bicycle, and the horse, and by today it is just about to kill our climate, too...


“The invention of the rear-driven pneumatic cycle is an event destined to influence our manner of life, to an extent which few of us as yet fully realise.” (Austral Wheel, Jan 1896)

“It is a wonderful machine, which the rider can carry, and yet can carry its rider 60 miles between lunch and dinner.” (Herbert Woodhouse, 1895)

“You can tell how a man treats his wife by the way he looked after his bicycle.” (Mrs F. Farley, 1977)

I am a planning type of person. Sometimes this is quite annoying, it leaves me spending hours looking at a map, pondering about the roads I would possibly take weeks ahead of me, instead of just see how it goes.

When planning my trip across Sumatra, I had pretty much decided, to go down the westcoast, after having consulted the map and my Indonesian guidebook. The alternatives, down east through the swampy inland would probably have been a little shorter, but promised more mosquitoes than scenery. The transsumatran highway going down the middle promised a mountainous terrain and traffic. And the westcoast promised just as much an up-and-downish road like the center, but less traffic, and may be some seaview scenery. So that was my favourite option, and I definitely decided for it, when I found out, that somewhere between Padang and Painan on the west coast, there is a hydraulic powerstation hidden away, where the much needed refitting is sponsored by some companies in Basel. I was going to visit that.

But according to my guidebook, there was also a nice peaceful and relaxing crater lake just 40km off the road from Bukitinggi to Padang. A kind of must-do thing, if you are in the area. And the described road down the 600m high craterwalls with 44 hairpincurves indeed sounded like this Lake Maninjau could be a scenic place. But getting there is one thing. Getting out of it with a loaded bicycle is another, and the road described above just didn't make it very attractive. I looked on the map, if there is an alternative - and there was. In the other side of the lake, I road went out of the crater to the seashore. That's not necessarily better, if the crater wall still is 600m high. But many times I looked at that thin blue line on my map, running parallel to the road. A river. Water. And water being even more worried than myself about not going uphill, this means, that there could be a gap for me to sneak out. I still wasn't completely convinced about this detour. What if the water runs through a canyon, and the road still twists itself up across the crater wall?

What eventually decided me to go there, was this nice little game of geocaching, a sort of global treasure hunt, a dutch couple (Bert and Mandy) were telling me about in Kuala Lumpur. This treasure hunt has made people hiding boxes, with a logbook and a number of goodies in it, all over the place around the world. They indicate the geographical coordinates on the website, and people with a GPS device, such as I have, go about to search them. I decided to start my search in Indonesia. And in Sumatra there just happened to be two caches (treasures). One was in Maninjau, and the other 20km south of Padang on the raod to Painan.

So I went to Maninjau, a long way up from Bukittinggi and then down the 44 hairpin bends. It was an extremely scenic ride, absolutely fantastic. It was so beautiful, that the scenery somehow spoilt the fun of freewheeling it down. I sat on my brakes all the time, stopped for a foto here and there, anxious to miss the beautiful view from here, or the other one from there. And I kept checking my GPS every now and again, in case the geocache was hidden somewhere along this road. This road was a oneway road to me, there was no way I would go back up.

Once I reached the village of Maninjau at the bottom of the road, by the lake, I took out my GPS again, and it pointed right along the main road along the lake 600m ahead of me. With the GPS in my left hand, I followed the road. 500m, 400m, 300m, I was rapidly closing in. Then 200m and the arrow on my screen slowly weered off to the left of my travel direction. Well, the road will turn left, too, not far ahead of me, I thought. 150m, 100m, 90m, 100m, the arrow is pointing backwards now. Hm, I must have missed it. I went back to the point, where the arrow points off the road at the right angle. 90m it says, but only 50m away there was the lake. Oh well, I thought, but there is a restaurant here. I might as well have a little bite first, before getting into this more seriously, and check the description about the place again. I parked my bicycle on the lawn, when I spotted a little jetty going out into the lake. Ah, that must be it. The lady from the restaurant had already wanted me to sit down, but I kept her patient, saying, that I want to go out the jetty first. I got as close as 20m. Well, it must be here somewhere, but obviously the inprecision of my device, or of the device from the person who noted the coordinates is not enough to find it. I would definitely have to read the descriptions again.

I sat down on the terrace for dinner. And I was delighted. The restaurant didn't only offer a nice view over the lake, but they had also Roesti on the menu! But I was the only guest, ordered the Sumatran Roesti, while a man, the owner of the place, joined me and asked, where I come from.
- Switzerland.
- Sprechen Sie deutsch?
Fantastic. I haven't met anyone with a merely useful English in the past few days, and this guy even speaks German. And not too bad. We had been talking for at least ten minutes, when he asks me about my name.
- Benno. And what is your name?
He tells me his name and adds: But people also call me Mr Stachelschwein (Porcupine), which he pronounces with a terrible english accent.
- Mr Stachelschwein?
He doesn't really accept my german pronunciation, but his Stoggelswine still sounded very much like what a poorly pronounced Stachelschwein would be.
I reflected for a while. I faintly remembered, that there was written something about a Mr ....., but I couldn't recall what it was. It was not Stachelschwein, this I knew, but with an englified spelling maybe it gets close to that.
- Do you know what a GPS is? I asked, and pointed at my GPS device on the table.
- Yes, he said, about which I was slightly surprised, as he hadn't recognized my GPS before (which admittedly looks a bit like a mobile phone). He was interested and asked how much my GPS device cost. I tried to explain him in return about the geocaching. Then he must have understood, because suddenly he disappeared in the restaurant and came back with a dusty box in his hand.
- Are you looking for this?
I had just found my first geocache, and in this particular case I was also the first one to find it at all, after it had been put there by somebody from Singapur almost a year before. I signed the logbook, left my travel card, and gave also a travel card to Mr Porcupine, the friendly owner of the restaurant Zalino by the craterlake.

Leaving lake Maninjau the next morning was easy. The road went flat around the lake, through the gap in the crater wall, I had hoped for and another 500m in altitude down along the river to the beach.

I missed out on the second geocache. 20km south of Padang I was standing at the turnoff of a road, that would have probably led me to the second geocache out on a cape. But while my road was winding itself up across the peninsular, the geocache was still more than 9km away. With a winding coastal road, this could have meant a far longer distance, and as many geocaches involve some trekking, I decided to give it a miss. I wanted to visit the hydraulic powerstation just before Painan, which was another sort of treasure, and which also made a very nice excursion 10km into a gentle side valley with terraced rice fields and many hello misters along the recently paved road.

I also missed about four geocaches on Java, which are all placed high above on a mountain and would mostly have involved several hours of trekking, which is nice, but I was not that much into it.

But there are quite a few caches here in Bali. And while I am waiting for my visa extension, which takes longer, once again due to a series of public holidays yesterday, today and tomorrow, I set off to discover a couple of geocaches again.

But the real fun will begin in Australia. Darwin alone has more Geocaches than all of Indonesia, which is no surprise. Because even though it pretends to be a global game, geocaching remains a game of the rich and westernized people like me, that are running about with a GPS device in their pocket. But it's fun!

Organizing a visa can be quite an adventure. Organizing two visas at the same time gives you at least twice the thrill, depending on the embassies' requirements.

In Kuala Lumpur (KL) I wanted to get both, a 60-day-visa for Indonesia and a one-year-visa for Australia. So the day after arriving in KL, the first thing I did, was to go to post office to pick up a letter (mail for Benno! The real stuff, not just electronics...) from where I went straight to the Australian embassy, equipped with my passport, some copies thereof, some additional passport fotograph, a recent bank statement, everything I could imagine they wanted to have.
After having passed an airportlike security check I reached the visa section, took a number and sat down, waiting for my number to flash on a screen. The usual stuff.

Once it was my turn, I was told, that I could apply electronically for my visa. Now, that's nice to know, I said, but I wanted to have a visa actually sticked in my passport (the real stuff, not just electronics...), as it is a nicer souvenir, and because it could turn out handy, to have a visible visa in my passport, when looking for a private boat taking me to Australia. I am sure, ordinary skippers do not have access to that database of the Australian immigration authorities, where it says, that I may indeed come for a visit.

But I did not need to explain all this, the woman was happy to pass me form R48 to fill in for my traditional visa application, and another special form for explaining why I am not applying in my homecountry. Being rather a form-type of person, I was actually looking forward to this challenging paperwork. Yes, I always like to fill in forms, especially, when you can tick boxes. Even more, when none of the proposed options really fits -which in my case happens surprisingly often-, giving me a chance to overrule the common stereotypes, and ajust the form to my likings. It's like a game. Well, I am not going into details about these forms now, but having them duely completed I went up to the counter number 1 again, where I handed in forms, passport, a photograph, bank statement, and the visafee to receive another number in exchange. So I sat down again to wait.

This time it was counter number 3. I got my passport back, together with still another form, and a list of physicians in KL. I have to get an x-ray of my chest to check on TB (tuberculosis), the lady said, "as you have been to countries like Iran".
Strange, I thought, Iran was the only country in Asia, where I actually felt safe to drink water from the tap. And checking on the website of the World Health Organization confirms, too, that TB-vise, Iran is the safest country I have been to since Slovenia and about 10 times safer than Pakistan, India, or Indonesia. Maybe that woman was not properly informed?

Anyway, back I was on the street. And that's one of those situations, where a local mobile phone number really comes in handy. I called the first cabinet on the list, which happened to be not too far away from my hotel, and asked, if I could come along on the same day. Yes, I could, and I did, and afterwards I just hoped, that the physician wouldn't take too long to post the x-ray and the corresponding form to the embassy. When I walked out of the physician's, I suddenly wondered again about this TB-thing. I had been vaccinated against TB. So there is little chance of contracting it. And why didn't that woman at the embassy ask for a vaccination-certificate first, rather than demanding immediately an x-ray? Was this x-ray really for medical purposes? Or was there perhaps also a bio-metrical purpose for identification?

I was satisfied with this day number one, having sorted out the Australians. As the Indonesian embassy was not situated near public transport and it was getting close to 4pm, I decided to go there the day after. After all, the Australian visa could take up to an extraordinary 10 working days to proceed, so there was no hurry.

The day after, a Thursday, the Indonesian embassy was closed. It's a public holdiday, I was told. A little later, reading a newspaper around a cup of coffe, I found out, that it was coronation day, Malaysia just got a new king. Instead of turning my deception about the embassy being closed into anger, I decided to honour the king's coronation, by copying one of those many congratulation pages in the newspaper, which read all the same and were sponsored by big and important companies.

Another day later, the Indonesian embassy was crowded, hundreds of Indonesians were there, someone was even selling food. Luckily, the visa section for foreigners was a little less crowded. The form to fill in was of the simple, doublesided type, no creativity added to it. But the lady at the counter told me, that I must bring a copy of a return- or onwardticket with me, when I come to pick up the visa. I tried to explain, that this is not possible, because I will use some creativity to travel to Australia by ship, as mentioned on the application. But in vain, and also the trick with the bank statement did not work. She insisted in a return- or onwardticket. And when I threatened to buy a return ticket, which I am not going to use, she thought that's fine.

So I left the embassy without my passport, but with a ticket, confirming, that my passport was deposited at the Indonesian embassy for visa application, and that I could pick it up on 3rd May, six days later, on presentation of a return-/throughticket. Normally it only takes three working days, but as the embassy would be closed on 1st and 2nd of May for labour day and Wesak day, six days meant actually only two working days. As it happened, within the eight days after my arrival in KL, there were not only two days of weekend, but also three public holidays.

As for the returnticket requirement, I found there would be two options. I could buy an airline ticket to Jakarta and back, and try to cancel it and get the money refunded after picking up my visa. As I am dickheadedly not only refusing to use airline services for transportation, but their services all together, this option was out of question.
Beside this, I wanted to play the game as honestly as possible, and decided to buy a return ticket for a ferry, which I would use at least for a oneway journey. That way I could technically argue, that I changed my mind only after arriving in Indonesia. I tried a few travel agencies, I asked the guesthouse manager, but it was not possible to buy a ferry ticket in KL. I would have to go to Melaka to buy the ticket.

The decision how to do this was easy. To me it is always much more pleasant, to arrive in a city for the first time by bicycle. This way I believe I get a better feeling for the place, and I don't need the services of overcharging taxi- or rikshawdrivers to get around. Thus I decided to pack my gear and spend labour and Wesak day cycling down to Melaka, buy the ferryticket, and catch a bus back to KL to pick up my visas.

On monday before leaving KL, I checked with the Australian embassy. They said that they had just received my x-ray, so that the visa would be ready on Thursday, too. Perfect! The only tricky thing was, that the Australian visa section is open from 9am to 12m only, but that my passport was at the Indonesian embassy, where I am normally supposed to pick it up between 3pm and 4.30pm.

So my plan was, to get to Melaka on Wednesday, buy a ferryticket, then on Thursday catch an early bus to KL, pick up my passport at the Indonesian embassy in the morning, and try to make it before noon to the Australian embassy.
With a bit of luck it would be possible, but I expected rather to stay the night in KL and pick up the Australian visa on Friday.

When I tried to leave the guesthouse in Melaka at 7.10 am the door was locked. I had somehow expected that, as there was a sign saying "no checkout before 7.30am". Well, I was not going to check out, I just wanted to go out. I sat down and waited, it wouldn't be my last wait today anyway, I thought. At 7.20am, the receptionist finally got up and opened the door. There's a bus at 7.30am, he says, as I leave. Thanks, I thought, but the busstation is at least half an hour walking, if I am lucky, I will make it there by 8am now. I still refused to take a taxi. After 40min of stiff walking, at exactly 8am I walked into the bus station. Some buses, obviously scheduled to leave at 8am, were just leaving. But as I come around the corner, I saw a bus, written KL on it, which was still waiting. The driver pointed to the counter, where I should get a ticket. I rushed there, and quickly bought a ticket for the 8am bus. Too bad for the driver, that it was the counter of a different company, so I got into the bus which was waiting next to it. As I stepped in, the door closed and both buses left. Phew, just-in-time-management!

I slept nearly the whole way to KL, dreaming of a fast roller-coaster-like busride on a narrow road, with a vertical slope falling down to infinity on either side of the road. Just before KL I woke up and put on the seat belt for the last 10 minutes. You never know...

At 10.20am we arrived at the busstation in KL, from where I immediately set off walking to the Indonesian embassy. There is no metrostation nearby the embassy. Just before 11am I arrived. I had my ferryticket, but -stupid me- I didn't have a copy of it. I expected to be able to make a copy at the copy-counter of the embassy, where I had my passport copied when I applied for the visa. But this time there were a lot of people not lining up at the counter. Everyone was pushing and reaching out his passport and other documents to get copied. I resigned getting a copy there. I really didn't feel like pushing my way through to the counter to get my copy, nor to be the only one lining up till the evening. So I walked out the embassy again in the search of another copy machine. There was tall office-like building a hundred meters down the road. I walked into the lobby and told the security guard, that I want to make a copy. Not possible, he says.
- Well, I am sure, that there must be a copy machine in this building, and I would just like to ask someone to do me a favor.
- No.
I insisted, asking to see some kind of manager which was marked to be on the 3rd floor. No. Then the bank which was marked on floor 4-6. Eventually, I was told to go to floor six, where I found a glass door locked. As the two security guards behind the glass door outnumbered me, they opened, and one of the men kindly had me seated to wait while he went off to get a copy of my ticket.

I rushed back to the embassy, visa section, handed in the passport-ticket and the copy of my ferryticket.
- Please sit down and wait.
I waited, it was 11.15am. Another woman-customer comes in with a pile of paper. She apologized to the lady at the counter saying, that there is no line at the copycounter outside, and that she doesn't feel like pushing her way through that crowd, like everybody else did. Well, I could understand her, as she left again, still that pile of papers in her hand, probably for the search of another copymachine.

11.25, I have my passport back with a 60-day visa for Indonesia. The Australian embassy is a good half an hour away, when walking fast. Alternatively, there were taxis waiting outside. But no, I can make it, and again, for the third time today I set off for a stiff walk. The Australian embassy is near the Twin tower of KL, which can be seen from just about anywhere. So when I came passed a road turning off from the main road and leading straight towards these twin towers I decided to take a risk and try this road as a shortcut.

11.52, After having passed the security check, I am sitting in the waiting room of the Australian visa section, waiting for number 58 to be called.

12.15, I stumble out into the humid heat of Kuala Lumpur. In my hands I joyfully hold my passport with two fresh visas, 60 days for Indonesia, 1 year for Australia. Johnny, we've made it!

Epilogue:
On the Australian visa it says "no work", "allowed to study up to 3 months", "x-ray if studies > 4 weeks". There it comes again this x-ray. Do Australians need to x-ray their chest when studying? Am I more infectious when studying than when travelling and reading books? Somehow I just can't get rid of the feeling, that this x-ray had a purely biometrical identification purpose, rather than a medical purpose. The inappropriate comment on Iran by the woman at the embassy would somehow strangely fit to this idea, too. And it's no secret, that the current Australian government sticks firmly to the US foreign policy. But why not be straight about it? Why pretend a medical purpose?

Anyway, my visa run was successfully completed and I was happy. So I went to eat and enjoy the afternoon in KL with a walk through the city forest and a ride up the KL Tower before in the evening catching a bus back to Melaka.

Daulat Tuanku is Malaysian and means something like "long live the king". Three days ago, the new king, His Majesty the Yang Di-Pertuan Agong XIII has been installed, here. As I happened to be in Kuala Lumpur, I considered it as appropriate, to pay my respect accordingly.

Yesterday evening, there was a public celebration just around the corner, which was broadcasted on TV. It was a dance spectacle with 1008 performing artists in various traditional dresses, from the different people living in Malaysia, followed by some fireworks. Malaysia, by the way, is a remarkably multicultural society, where Malay people live peacefully together with large Chinese and Indian minorities, each of them bringing along their own culture, their own religion, their own language, their own alphabet.

Of course, His majesty, the king, took also part in the festivities, and with him a good number of diplomats of foreign countries. I considered it as a spectacle by itself, when at the end, there was a long line of mostly black expensive cars rolling up, many of them decorated with the flag of the respective country, picking up the ambassadors and their wives. Of course I was looking out for a car with a Swiss flag, but without any success. Now, I can only speculate about the reason.

Maybe due to the democratic (read anti-monarchist) tradition of Switzerland, the ambassador decided to boycott the event? - Unlikely.
Maybe the Swiss ambassador modestly decided not to display his own flag? - Rather likely.
Maybe due to his environmental awareness the Swiss ambassador decided to come by public transport, by bicycle or by walking? - Not impossible.
Or maybe -unmodestly- I happened to be the ambassador of Switzerland, but I didn't know...

Salutations and Heartiest Congratulations to

His Majesty the Yang Di-Pertuan Agong Al-Wathiqu Billah Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin Ibni Almarhum Sultan Mahmud Al-Muktafi Billah Shah
D.K.M., D.K.T, D.K.R, D.M.N, S.U.M.Z, S.S.M.T., S.P.M.T, D.K.(Perlis), D.K.(Johor), D.K.M.B.(Brunei), D.K.(Perak), D.K.(Negeri Sembilan), D.K.(Kedah), D.K.(Kelantan), D.K.(Selangor), S.P.M.J., Commandeur de la Légion d'Honneur (France)

and

Her Majesty the Raja Permaisuri Agong Tuanku Nur Zahirah
D.M.N., D.K., S.S.M.Z., S.S.M.T

on the Installation of His Majesty as the Yang Di-Pertuan Agong XIII on 26 April 2007 (8 Rabiulakhir 1428)

May God Bless His Majesty's Reign.

In Kolkata (or Calcutta as the British used to call this place) I had the chance again to go to a cinema. The choice of films however is not so big, even less if you are limited to english language movies. But there was a cinema not far from my hotel showing "Blood Diamond". Even though I expected it to have quite some violence in it, which is not my kind of movies at all, it also promised to pick up a political issue, that might be worth having a look at. So I went to watch it.

Most of the movie is set in Sierra Leone. When comparing the rural and city life in the film with my experience here, I found, that Africa is actually not dirtier than India at all.

And India played its part in the film, too, when it was said, that the blood diamonds find their way into the legal market of precious stones by going first to Antwerpen in Belgium, and from there to India. I had to think of Jaipur, a city that boasted itself to be the city of Jewels and Diamonds.

After a lot of bloodshed, there was some sort of happy end to the film. The main character could save his family to the secure and wealthy London. But in my case, the relief of the happy end only lasted until I stepped out of the fictional movie-world into the misery of the real world in Kolkata.

It was quarter past eleven at night, outside the cinema a few barefooted rikshaw-pullers were waiting and hoping for some clients. I walked past them with a slight and rejecting movement of my head, to indicate, that I will walk myself, and that I don't want to discuss about it. I walked down the empty streets full of rubbish, looking at all these people lying asleep under the arcades or hugged towards the walls of the houses. Some have blankets, others don't. And somewhere nearby, dogs are barking. They are homeless, too.

The scenery is even more miserable, here, than in the film, I thought now. Yet, life is probably still much better, as nobody has to expect any pick-up with a load of rebells coming around the corner any moment and shooting aimlessly around.

Peace is the most precious thing we can have, and the most delicate thing to conserve...