Red Tape and Black Coffee

It sounds wonderfully straightforward. One sunny afternoon you pack a few basic necessities, grab your bike and simply go wherever your fancy takes you. During the first year of this trip that really was all it amounted to. Europe, though frightfully expensive, is the perfect playground for cyclists. No borders, no conflicts: freedom pure and simple. Cross into Asia, however, and you'll soon find yourself facing red tape everywhere you look. I've been tailed by armed police, banned from motorways, forced to take buses, turned away at hotels and internet cafés, held hostage by the army, denied access to entire provinces—and the list goes on. 'Take it easy,' I keep telling myself at times like these. 'Tomorrow you'll look back on it and laugh. And if not tomorrow maybe next week. Or next year.'

Hong Kong: from the grandiose...

Having said that, one thing you'll never find me do is chuckle about is the never-ending visa hassle. Visas can make or break a trip like this. A rejection from the Iranian authorities, for instance, would have blocked the gate to Central Asia. And if the immigration office in Lahore hadn't granted me a generous two-month extension, I would have had to wrap up my trip then and there as the Khunjerab Pass was still snowed up at that time.

There is no predicting what will happen. You can trawl online travel forums for experiences posted by fellow travellers and spend hours drawing up lists of which visa offices to avoid and what background stories to fabricate, but that won't change the fact that you're at the mercy of powers that are whimsical at best. Take my last application. I entered the Chinese embassy in Islamabad empty-handed, merely hoping to find out what I needed for a valid application. Thirty minutes later I walked out with a pick-up receipt for a ninety-day visa. Emily, my Khunjerab buddy, tried her luck a week later, armed to the teeth with every single document they could possibly ask for. She only got thirty days. Why? That really is anyone's guess.

...to a more human scale

Under normal circumstances, those ninety days plus the thirty-day extension I pocketed in Xi'an would have given me ample leeway to ride to Beijing without having to overexert myself. Four months is a long time, even if you're looking to cross a swathe of land as chunky as China. But if the idea is to cycle to Beijing and, subsequently, leave the country in a manner that doesn't involve two wings and a runway—let's say by train through Mongolia and Russia—then you really need a bit more time to sort out all the paperwork. The only way that extra time can be had is by making a quick hop to Hong Kong. There, I was told, Chinese visas are handed out by the bucket. So I booked a ticket, left my bike in Taiyuan and tried not to give too much thought to the fact that for the second time I was taking a flight for the sole purpose of getting a silly sticker in my passport.

And here I am, sipping expensive coffee in a café on Hong Kong's waterfront as I watch an international set of lawyers and investment bankers file by. Handsome people, immaculately dressed. It's lunchtime. The coolly understated restaurant next door fills up quickly. Like any metropole Hong Kong is a place of haves and have-nots, though here the gap may be a bit wider than elsewhere. I think of the wretched apartment block where my hostel is located—the cockroach-infested corridors, the Pakistani hawkers at the entrance with their fake luxury watches, the Africans on the upper floors who only come out at night, the park across the street where Malay and Filipino women push around blond children in prams. How many of these people have a residence permit, I wonder.

I take out my passport and examine my new Chinese visa. So far that unassuming booklet with those silly stickers has opened every door I've tried. Despite my fretting. That's more, much more, than many here in this vast city could ever hope for.