Tour de Mereuch - part 2

No its not Lawrence of Arabia...it's me on Day 4 in the back of the truck, again, this time with tour organiser, Olga van den Pol. I was too tired to take a picture at the end of Day 1!

I was so tired and drained of energy that I just wanted to give up, sit down and wait for help. Unfortunately for me, I was on a rarely-used dirt-road in the middle of the remote northeastern province of Mondulkiri in Cambodia and the support vehicle hadn't been seen for five hours. I simply had to carry on. It was murder. Every bone in my body and every nerve in my brain was telling me to stop, but I was at the back of our group of half a dozen cyclists and there was no-one to come to my rescue. I simply couldn't afford to give up. I vowed there and then to never accept another invitation to join a biking tour.

The Tour de Mereuch bike tour had begun earlier in the day from the WWF office in Sen Monorom, the provincial capital. The plan was to cycle 76kms to the WWF/Srepok Wilderness Field Outpost at Trapeang Thmeir, inside the protected forest of Mondulkiri province. We started with eight cyclists and a support vehicle. Within ten minutes two cyclists had disappeared without trace and so had our back-up. We didn't see them again for another six hours. This was my first biking experience since I broke my arm in a cycling accident some 35 years ago - I should've seen the writing on the wall. For much of the route, the terrain wasn't too bad, bumpy and rutted yes but we were in Mondulkiri afterall, though it was the rolling hills for which the province is famous, that really broke my spirit. For experienced mountainbikers, hills aren't a problem, for me they were agony. I simply wasn't prepared for them, having cycled around Phnom Penh for a couple of weeks, where there isn't a hill in sight. I didn't have the power in my thighs and calves for the inclines and the steep declines were at times, pretty scary. The roads aren't paved, they are hard-packed red dirt roads that are rutted by trucks and motorbikes in the wet season and if you choose the wrong line to follow, it can be very costly.

After stopping at the village of Puchiri for sugar-cane juice and lunch, we finally caught up with the support vehicle and our two colleagues at another field outpost at Nam Ram. They'd actually got ahead of us when we took a cross-country diversion and had sped-on. Indeed, most of the group were experienced cyclists and I often found myself bringing up the rear, which is demoralizing enough for anyone. After six hours in the saddle, and some 72 of the 76 kilometres completed, I admitted defeat and dragged myself into the back of the support vehicle. I simply couldn't manage another inch. We reached Trapeang Thmeir just as the sun was setting, showered at the water-pump, had a bite to eat and fell into our hammocks hooked up under the Ranger Station. I had already decided that the cycling on Day 2 would begin without me.