Têdy droga?

The book has been awarded the KOLOS Travellers' Prize (Poland, 2004).

Australia

Kinga and Chopin made it to Australia by hitching rides with yachts. First from New Zealand to Vanuatu, and from there – straight to Townsville

28 June This morning, after ten days of sailing, we excitedly watch Australia show up on the horizon. It’s getting closer and closer now. We pass Magnetic Island on our right, and head straight for the town of Townsville in Northern Queensland. All this is surrounded by the perfect arc of a morning rainbow – our lucky sign. The first contact on the new continent, before we even set foot on Australian land, is with the customs officers. Taking off her shoes before entering our dirty boat, the female custom officer greets us in Polish and says: “My babcia (Polish for grandmother) was from Bydgoszcz.” She chats with us as she’s stamping our passports, and while we’re filling out papers. Then, she presents us with a map of the city and wishes us a happy stay in Australia. If the rest of the country is equally friendly, this should be a paradise.

Kinga za sterem

Townsville, with its numerous parks, great beaches, free swimming pools, and relaxed atmosphere, looks like a great place to live. It’s the middle of the Australian winter, but the town lies in the tropics, so there are plenty of palm trees and colorful little parrots flying around. We change the rest of our New Zealand dollars for Australian ones, and I’m delighted to see that the one-dollar coin has a picture of a kangaroo. A friendly lady in the tourist information office gives us heaps of brochures with all the attractions in the area. The pictures of the Great Barrier Reef fire my imagination.

30 June We’re experiencing some lucky spells of hospitality. Syd, the Servas host we’re staying with, has been preparing genuine feasts for us, even though he himself only eats when he feels like it, which happens once every few days. He lets us use his four-wheel drive Land Cruiser to explore the area. He lives outside the city, right next to the Alligator Creek Park. There aren’t any alligators there, unfortunately, but there are kangaroos – lots of kangaroos and wallabies, quietly grazing around. They only raise their heads when you arrive, observe you for a while, and if you don’t come up too close, they go back to their grazing. If they feel threatened, they disappear with a few jumps.

Laos

Leaving Chopin in a Buddhist Center in Laos for two weeks, Kinga set off on her own to explore this fascinating country.

Buddysta

Choosing this route I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I discover that they weren’t joking when they said that sometimes something passes along here – it was meant most literally! Sometimes… Like south American ‘manana.’ From the woman I stayed with, with the help of gestures and pictures, I try to find out more, but she keeps repeating: “Bo mi lot.” Which means – ‘there’s no vehicle’ – I quickly learn another sentence in Laotian. Still, I have gone too far to turn back now. All I can do is continue forward. One man explains that if I follow the road, I will reach another village, from which, supposedly, there are vehicles. “How many kilometers?” I ask. I can see he’s not sure, but he writes down – 30.

I walk along the only road, admiring the morning mist enveloping the nearby hills. It rained for most of the night, so the dirt road has turned into muddy ruts. The road enters a wild jungle. I walk for a few kilometers before I hear the sound of an engine approaching. It’s a tractor-like vehicle. I climb into its wooden trailer in which there are a few young men going to work cutting trees, I assume, seeing their massive chain-saw. Crossing a few streams and deep, muddy ponds, I go with them up to the place where they have to turn deeper into the jungle. I start walking again. After a while I reach a roadside camp of a hill tribe working with bamboo.

Dirty and sweaty, I arrive at the village in the afternoon. This is the place where there was supposed to be some traffic. Here, also, nobody speaks English, but I meet a local teacher, and from her, again using the language of gestures, I manage to find out that they’re expecting something to pass through tomorrow. Today she invites me into her hut on stilts. I accompany her on her trip to the nearby river. There’s no other bathroom, so I have no choice; I have to wash like everybody else, in the river. Following the Lao custom, I have to wear one sarong for bathing, wash my clothes in the river, and then change into a dry sarong. My new friend, guessing that I don’t have any, brought two sarongs especially for me.

Pakistan

In Pakistan Chopin got seriously sick and had to fly back home, to Poland. Kinga continued the journey by land, passing on her own through Pakistan and the rest of Asia, towards Europe.

The Indian-Pakistani border must only be a pedestrian-traffic border, because I can see trucks with dried figs and apricots from Afghanistan stop right in front of it. The boxes are carried gracefully on the heads of the Pakistani porters. They carry them to the line painted on the road, and watching carefully not to step across it, they hand the goods over to the Indian porters, who in turn carry them to their trucks.

Beside this fast, well-coordinated action, not much of anything else happens here, and this border is one of the most relaxed ones I’ve ever crossed. You have to stop at a few checkpoints consisting of a table and a chair under a roof, and wait for the officer to slowly copy down the details of your passport into a huge book, all the while engaging in customary conversation. They ask a lot of questions, (not all of them very official ones, I’m afraid). They want to know how old I am, and whether I’m married… On the Pakistani side, one of the officers calls an honest money changer for me. I change the rest of my Indian rupees for Pakistani ones, and enter the new country. Here, the money changer shows me his little bookshop in a wooden shed, with quite an impressive collection of second-hand titles bought and exchanged with travelers. He buys me a drink while I’m browsing through the books. This is the start of an amazing string of Pakistani hospitality.

I take the bus to Lahore. The front part of the bus, separated by a wall, is for women. I have to say it suits me fine. When women ask me whether I’m married, it sounds different. Realizing I am quite an attraction for them, I’m happy to engage in conversation.

In town, I head straight to ‘Regale,’ a guesthouse recommended to me by an English guy who I met a few days ago. It’s a legendary place, praised by backpackers, although at first sight it’s hard to tell why. I get a mattress on the floor of the crowded dormitory, and wait my turn to the shower in the shabby bathroom. Only when Malik, the owner, shows up in the evening, do I understand why there’s no lack of guests at this place. He doesn’t treat the travelers like customers. Entering his guesthouse, we become more like members of his family. Tonight he’s taking everybody who’s interested out for a Sufi night.

“Come, you need to change,” Malik says, having one look at me. He leads me to the upper floor, shows me a wardrobe full of Pakistani dresses, and offers his advice while I’m searching for something I would feel comfortable in. All the other girls (mostly Japanese) are already wearing their Pakistani outfits consisting of loose pants and a comfortable matching top.

All I know about Sufism is that it is a mystical branch of Islam, and this is my first time in a Sufi temple. When we arrive, the yard of the temple is already swarming with a crowd of local men, but they make room for us, too. Two bearded Sufis beat out an energetic rhythm on the huge drums. A few others start a peculiar dance, jerking with sudden body movements and shaking their heads, inciting a kind of trance. The ones who were just watching also join in. The music gets louder, the rhythm faster, and the dancing wilder. For half the night, I witness something I have never seen before.

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