Huang Jin-boa (
"I'll go park my car out in the countryside, and I can rent the parking space for NT$5000 a month. That would make NT$60,000 in a year, or more if I sell it. We can use that money for our trip," he said.
The trip he's talking about will take him and his family one big loop around the world, and except for three ocean-traversing legs by air and a possible hovercraft ride over the English Channel, they plan to ride the whole way on bicycles. They will set off next month, and hope to average 500km a week so they can finish within 13 months, just in time for 18-year-old Jian-jia (黃建家) to begin college and 15-year-old Tsung-fu (黃琮富) to start high school. Huang estimates the total cycling distance to be 24,718km.
For the 43-year-old private contractor, his 38-year-old wife Yang Li-jun (楊麗君) and their two boys, this odyssey will begin with a July 10 flight to Hong Kong. From there, they will cycle north over the mountains of southern China, through the croplands of eastern central China and the cities of Changsha and Nanyang. At Wuhan they will cross the Yangtze River, then bear northwest to Hsian where they will begin to follow the Silk Road.
Huang is already familiar with much of the route. Four years ago he spent 30 days cycling along the Silk Road from Hsian to Tunhuang by himself. But this time with the family, he'll continue farther. They'll follow the ancient caravan route through the arid climes of the Gobi Desert and western China, to Urumqi and Kashgar. From there at China's western extreme, they'll climb and pass the mountains of the Hindu Kush, the great northern protector of India. Then the family of four will pedal down into the Kashmiri section of Pakistan, through Islamabad and Quetta and into Iran.
Wait a minute. Kashmir, the 2,500km length of Pakistan, and into Iran?
Wondering whether any number of militant groups in the region would shoot them just to see if they were Americans, journalists or spies, I politely asked the Huangs if they had a Plan B.
Huang and his wife looked at each other as if to say: "Plan B? This is Plan B!"
"Originally we wanted to take a more northerly route," Huang explained, smiling wholesomely. His finger traced a jagged and highlighted road on the map leading north from Kashgar and into Kyrgzystan, where the florescent yellow road ribbon ran off the edge of the photocopied atlas page, only to pick up on another that Huang lined up next to it. This, the now discarded Plan A route, would have taken them through the Pamirs, to Kyryzstan and then some other "stans" on another photocopy somewhere else in the pile of numerous photocopies all over the floor. "But we would have to go through here in late autumn and winter, and the cold weather would make it very, very difficult," he concluded.
As things stand now, they'll still have to hope that the snow doesn't block the 4,900m-high Khunjerab Pass before Oct. 22, the date they're scheduled to reach the China-Pakistan border. And that says nothing of the political dangers.
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