@kamranonbike

The sun had set behind the mountains, and as the light faded, hordes of tourists started disappearing from the Torres lookout. Our legs ached after a day-long hike on our first day in Torres del Paine National Park in Chile. All the campsite we had spotted during the day were all already full. We kept on walking and eventually found ourselves in front of Torres peaks. With no place to sleep, we decided to spend the night there behind a giant boulder. As the park rules don't permit the use of stove outside designated campsites, we used lukewarm water from our thermoses to mix with mashed potatoes powder. After stuffing our stomach with thick and cold bland paste, we rolled out mattresses on the rocky ground and slipped into our sleeping bags. The grand view of the towers and the surrounding peaks filled our eyes in the dim light. In still air, all we could hear was our breath. We kept staring at those towers till our eyes started to close. "What if a puma attacks us? We don't know what to do?" we wondered. I immediately opened up the offline Wikipedia app on my phone, and we keenly read about it. The article suggested to keep calm and stand tall, maintaining intense eye contact with the puma, and make loud but calm noise. Before we went to sleep, each of us urinated in a different corner a few metres away from the camp to let pumas know it was our territory. "What if the puma sniffs our pee and considers it as a challenge and decides to reclaim its territory?" Fabio was not so sure despite having taken a pee. At midnight, when I opened eyes, the sky was full of stars. The towers wore a black robe, but there was one dot of light on the Torre Central. A climber was on the move to the summit. We woke up at 4:30 am and quickly packed our sleeping bags lest park rangers find us. When the first rays of sun hit the towers, the Torres towers bathed in golden light and their reflection on the turquoise Torres lake was a sight to behold. Now over four years have passed, but I remember this place the most not for the starry night, or its golden sunrise, but for the urination we thought would keep us safe from pumas!

Do you know what was the world's first national park? The answer is Yellowstone National Park in the US. It took a photographer, a painter and a geological survey team to explore the region and convince the US Congress to withdraw this region from public auction. In 1872, Yellowstone was declared as—"a public park...for the benefit and enjoyment of the people." Once you visit Yellowstone, you know why this place is so special. It comprises a variety of landscape, rugged mountains, lush valleys, gushing rivers, pristine lakes, deep canyons, majestic waterfalls, tall geysers and colourful boiling springs. The park sits on top of the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest super-volcano on the continent, containing 465 active geysers in a given year and about 10,000 geothermal features. About two-thirds of the world's geysers and half of the world's thermal features are located within Yellowstone Park. The wildlife is abundant here. Grizzly bears, black bears, wolves, deer, bison and elks roam the park territory. About 4 million people visit Yellowstone every year. I saw more Desi people in this park than in any other park I have visited in my life. Despite the hordes of tourists, Yellowstone was one of my most favourites. It is hard to express the beauty of this park in words. Perhaps the best description of Yellowstone comes from the naturalist John Muir, who in 1898, described the park as follows: "However orderly your excursions or aimless, again and again amid the calmest, stillest scenery you will be brought to a standstill hushed and awe-stricken before phenomena wholly new to you. Boiling Springs and huge deep pools of purest green and azure water, thousands of them, are plashing and heaving in these high, cool mountains as if a fierce furnace fire were burning beneath each one of them; and a hundred geysers, white torrents of boiling water and steam, like inverted waterfalls, are ever and anon rushing up out of the hot, black underworld."

It was 4:00 am. The air was still and the Mesa Arch held a deafening silence of a dark night. As my eyes adjusted to the starlight, I set up the tripod and began taking photos of the arch. All of a sudden, the silence broke with the sound of a stone falling behind me. I looked around with a headlamp, but there was nothing. As I resumed taking pictures, I heard two objects dropping. This happened a few times, but I couldn't see anyone. Suddenly I heard an eerie yell, "OYEE!" A current ran through my body. I turned around and spotted a white human-like figure next to a giant boulder. The moment the light bounced off it, it slipped behind the rock, but only partially. "Hey, I can see you. Stop pranking me!" I shouted a couple of times. In return, I only heard my echo. I could observe the lower part of the figure for a few seconds. After that, it disappeared behind the rock. I left the camera on the ground and scrambled to the scene, but there was nothing, only rocks and shrubs. I couldn’t see or hear anyone fleeing either. For the next hour, I couldn't take pictures. I just sat down with my headlamp turned on. My hands clasped the camera and the tripod as if they were my weapons for defence. Just before the sunrise, two photographers arrived at the scene. I told them everything. First, they didn't believe me but then said, "maybe, it was the spirit of an American Indian." When the sun rose above the horizon, I witnessed the most amazing sunrise ever. The bottom of the arch glowed red in the morning light as if it was on fire. Was it indeed the spirit of an American Indian for whom the land is sacred? Who knows? One thing is for sure though that I would remember this place for a reason different than its beautiful sunrise. A year later, I was narrating this story to my hosts in California. Their TV was showing stock wallpaper photos from around the world. I freaked out when the TV screen switched to a wallpaper of the sunrise at Mesa Arch. "This is the place, this is the place," I shouted. Neither my hosts nor I could believe the coincidence. "Kamran, you have brought the ghost to our house," they said. I looked at them. I don't think they were joking!

Gocta Waterfall plunged from a height of 771-m into the forest. From where I sat, the leaping waterfall appeared like a long lock of white hair draping over the shoulder of a mermaid. Beneath was thick amazon cloud forest; hot and humid. Gentle morning breeze caressed my sweaty skin as if blowing air on my wounds. The air smelled like a mix of vegetation, moisture, and soil. Other than the occasional chirping of birds and buzzing of mosquitoes, all I could hear was the soft white noise of the waterfall. Big birds glided elegantly in the air much like a tightrope walker who is straightening and locking arms with ever-so-slight arm movement. "Why do birds fly high above in circles?" I asked my mother. "May you also be like one of them!" she replied. Decades later, sitting atop a hill, I pondered my life. What happened to all those efforts and talents? What was I looking for in this jungle? Being a wanderer or pursuing my destiny? After sometime, I stood up to set up the camera on tripod at the edge of the cliff. Looking through the viewfinder, I noticed a smudge on the lens. While still lost in thoughts, I stepped in front of the camera to clean it. My right foot landed on the plants at the edge. I stumbled but regained balanced. When I looked down, my heart came into my mouth. It was hundreds of meters of vertical fall into the forest. I left the camera on the tripod, sat on the ground and held my head in hands. This could have been it! Late at night, I turned and changed sides in the bed. As the night grew darker, my eyes began to close, but the intensity of my fears grew upon me; falling hundreds of meters; life flashing before my eyes; my body twisting and turning in the air in super slow-motion. When my eyes opened, I found myself in the lap of my mother. It was a sunny winter Friday afternoon on the roof of our old house. She had bathed me, made me wear blue Shalwar Kameez, and put kohl in my eyes. She gently combed my hair and whispered to me, "Meray Khawaabon Ki Tabeer (you are the realisation of my dreams)!" In a flash, my spirit left the cage of my body and soared high, much higher than any waterfall in the world, making circles in the sky!

“So, why are you doing this?” someone asks me. I take a deep breath. My eyes scan around for some visual clues and get hooked on a giant LED screen with bold blue letters “Welcome to Facebook!” It is a hot day. I am rolling a motorcycle tyre in the street of Layyah. A slap hits my face, and my bicycle crashes into a rickshaw. “Remember, you are the son of a labourer!” As I bury my head in books, someone drags me by the hair in the office. I kiss her on the cheek, but a storm fills my mouth with the sand. I collapse on the ground coughing and vomiting all my dreams one by one. The ringing of a bicycle bell brings me back to the world. While sitting among young programmers from the world’s top tech companies, I try hard to come up with a profound answer. My mind is shovelling desperately for gold, but instead of striking gold, the shovel is hitting hard rocks and creating sparks. Why did I do my previous trip from Germany to Pakistan and the ones before? Why did I begin cycling at all? Why was I born, and why is there a planet Earth, or even a universe? Eventually, I run out of an explanation and leave this question up to God. The why becomes God! Asking someone about their motivation for passion is like examining the purpose of their life. The answer to this question lies so deep within us that we cannot observe it yet involuntary respond to it. Many people refer to it as listening to the inner voice. Don’t ask a moth why it flies into the flame? It is pure love. It also precisely why I left behind two Master degrees and a PhD in computer science along with a professional career and haven’t looked back since 2015. My passion for cycling endless roads is indeed selfish, but the purpose of my photo stories is not. It is about selflessly serving others with lessons from the road. Coming back to “why are you doing this?” if you are true to yourself, you have no choice but find a way to fulfil your destiny. The key is to discover your passion that drives your purpose, for a life without a passion is dull, and a life without a purpose, meaningless. Now, if I could direct the same question back to those tech professionals: “so, why are you working?”

Ever since my childhood, I had always imagined the US as a country with big sweeping vistas of the Wild West. This perception mainly came from movie shots of the Monument Valley, the Death Valley, and the Grand Canyon. It was only much later in life I got to visit these locations on my bicycle trip from Argentina to Alaska (2016–2019). On my first day at the Grand Canyon, I noticed a young lady sitting all by herself at the edge of a rock and looking into the distance. Her name was Clementine. She had been walking the 800 miles long Arizona trail from Mexico to Utah in the memory of her sister Megan who had committed suicide a year before due to depression. Instead of staying home and grieving, Clementine decided to walk the Arizona Trail and go to the bottom of the Grand Canyon to scatter the cremated ashes of Megan over the Colorado River. "Arizona is the place I associate with her joy. Grand Canyon was her favourite place. She made an 18-day rafting trip down the Colorado River in the canyon. In recounting the memories of last year, I wanted to be at a place where I am thinking of Megan, where she was joyful, a place that knew her love, light, and not just the darkness," she said. We sat there in silence for a while. The sun played a game of light and shadows from the clouds, displaying layers and layers of buttes and temples. The top part of the sky was black, and golden beams of light broke through dark clouds like rays of hope. It was as if nature was reflecting what Clementine had just said. Before leaving, Clementine gave me a small amount of the ashes of her cremated sister, which I carried further up North on my bicycle trip. When I crossed the Colorado River a few days later, I slowly brought my hand into the water. The ashes made circles in a tiny whirlpool around my hand and then drifted away, beginning their long journey down to the canyon. I had gone to the Grand Canyon to take pictures of the bare rocks but became part of an emotional story. Now the Wild West isn't only about wide-open vistas to me anymore, but also about the tale of light and darkness, joy and pain, and love and separation of two sisters!

In 2002, I got admission at a university in Germany and sat on the PIA flight from Islamabad to Frankfurt. The plane took off, and after crossing Iran was cruising at 40,000 feet altitude somewhere above Turkey when looking through the plane window, I was mesmerised by the vastness and the landscape below. Rivers appeared as curved lines, towns as brown patches, and mountains as wrinkles on the old rough coloured paper. I wondered how it would feel to be out there on the ground? "What are local people like, the languages they speak, the culture, and the food and the music?" As I pondered these questions, I imagined a tiny dot moving on the endless strip of tarmac snaking across the rugged terrain, with the desert wind singing songs and the Duduk music playing in the far distance. This little dot slowly morphed into a cyclist. Throughout the eight hours of flight, my eyes continued to follow an invisible dot of a cyclist in the infinite landscape below. With the plane still in the air, I made a secret promise to myself, "one day, I am going to cycle from Germany to Pakistan!" When the plane landed in Frankfurt, the little dot had disappeared somewhere behind the horizon, but its image remained etched into my memory. In Germany, I finished the Master's and a PhD and worked as a software developer, but there wasn't a single day when I didn't remember this dream. Nine years later, I started the bicycle journey to Pakistan but lost mom halfway. I went back to Germany, and four years after that quit my job, gave up my apartment, car, and everything else. I got a bicycle and hit the road again. After 13 years of wait, I finally entered Pakistan from China via Khunjerab Pass at 4693-m elevation, the highest paved international border crossing in the world. Cycling down from the Pass, I paused a couple of times to check if I was still dreaming, like on those sleepless nights when my head would be resting on the pillow but my soul would detach from my body and leave on a journey towards the east. Even though it was my first time on this road, I had a feeling I had been here before. The only difference was that this time around, I was carrying my body on a bicycle!

We humans have limited cognitive capacity when it comes to social relationships. At any given time, we can maintain meaningful relationships to a maximum of 150 people. These are the people we can easily cooperate with and care about. We consider the others as strangers, and by nature, it is not easy for us to trust them and work with. This limit, also known as Dunbar's Number, long hindered the progress of ancient humans as there were challenges far bigger than an individual tribe of up to 150 people could tackle. So, to bring different tribes together for practical purposes, humans formed higher-level groups. Today, the notions of race, nationality, religion, and corporations seek to unite otherwise different peoples so they can cooperate and accomplish something bigger. Society teaches us these concepts from an early age and determines which groups we belong to. We form a core belief that our social identities define our "essence", and that within each identity, we share some kind of deep inner properties with others that make us who we are. When we meet a new person, we instinctively label them as one of our own or an outsider, and if we can trust them. Our strong attachment to one identity can create resentment towards people outside our group circle. We are willing to fight others in the name of race, class, nationality, religion, and even sports club when we should only be caring about 150 people from our core tribe. We go as far as marking physical lines on the planet calling them country borders to protect "our" people from the "other" people. Such is our fear of the other. But beyond all these concepts is a loose circle of humanity caring for all humans regardless of their identity. And beyond that is a circle of life caring for all life, animals and plants. Further beyond is a circle of inanimate caring for even lifeless objects, mountains, glaciers and rivers. And beyond everything, is a circle that encompasses all. Unlike other circles whose boundaries exist in our imagination, this circle is for real. This is the ultimate circle of being. Surprisingly we are least aware of this circle of "oneness" when we should be most concerned about it!

Dear Mom, it’s been nine years since you left. When I was little, you would bathe me, dress me in blue Shalwar Kameez, and add Kajal in my eyes as we sat in the winter sun on our roof where I always fell asleep in your lap. How before every bite of roti you fed me, I would beg for a cycle? You named me Kamran after the PTV song, “Har Ghari Tayyar Kamran” and always called me “Mere Khwaboon Ki Tabeer” (the realization of my dreams). If I got 9/10 marks in exams, you would ask why I didn’t get 10/10, and if I got 10, you asked if I was the only one. When once I failed in an exam, you made me wear a necklace of shoes. But, when I first flew to Pakistan from Germany, with tear-filled eyes, you kissed me on the forehead and placed a garland of roses and marigolds around my neck. You sold gold bangles for my university fee but wouldn’t allow me to cycle from Germany to Pakistan and say, “sons living abroad rush back home, but you have chosen the slowest way to return.” I emotionally blackmailed you for years. While I was still cycling to Pakistan, you went to a hospital instead. I found you on a bed amongst beeping machines. You opened your eyes and mumbled something. We both couldn’t dam rivers flowing from our eyes. We spent several weeks at the hospital. I showed you my bicycle. You said once you get back healthy, you would sit behind me on it. But then you disappeared. When I lifted that brown blanket, I only found your body. Quiet. Still. Emotionless. “The heaven is under your mother’s feet!” I buried you and the heaven in the ground and flattened the dirt with my own feet. Now I wander the world, but you have gone far away. Sometimes, you visit my snowy tent in Alaska and lull me to sleep, nurse my wound in dreams, or when I am hungry and thirsty in the Peruvian Highlands, you feed me daal and roti with your hands. I’ll keep seeking you until we meet again. Then we will sit and talk till the end of time and beyond until I again fall asleep in your lap, forgetting the pain of your absence. Next morning, we will both set out on a never-ending journey—with you sitting behind me on the bicycle—a wish you made in your last days—a wish I couldn’t fulfil!

Dear Mexico, when the immigration officer at the border gave me a six-month entry, I cycled like a mad man screaming with joy. The Mayan pyramids of Yucatan peeped out of forest canopy just to see who had arrived. I can write about your landscape, from rugged mountains to canyons, from lush jungles to deserts, from waterfalls to cenotes to the infinity pools with spectacular vistas, and your world’s thickest tree. But how to describe your soul? Those buzzing central squares, the aroma and taste of tacos, roving Mariachis singing passionately against the backdrop of ornate churches, pilgrimage cyclists carrying holy statues on their backs, and the men getting drunk in the name of the God at church inauguration—people need to experience it themselves. Remember the Pakistani restaurant owner in Oaxaca converting locals to Islam? He made me a witness to the Nikah ceremony of a newly converted couple and also taught me to be a waiter. How I once took a tour of the tequila factory and on the way back saw flying dancers attached to a rope unfurling around the pole? It was not them, but world spinning. The endless desert of Baja California and a tiny tent among cacti under a sky full of stars—how many secrets we shared in silence? Here I installed a Layyah signpost in perfect latitudinal alignment with my hometown in Pakistan. Your people gave me keys of their homes even when they were not home. The guy Coco with no lower legs, who decorated his place with bras and panties of travellers, sheltered me and gifted me a warm fleece jacket. In Tijuana, they didn’t let me pay for the hotel and gave me money so I could continue my travel to the US. I also saw how the US/Mexico wall was home for some but divided other. Your uphills and downhills taught me one shouldn’t become too happy in good times, or too sad in bad times. Things can change fast like the slope of a mountain road. By decorating graves and playing music at the cemeteries on the Day of the Dead, you showed me that visiting a graveyard can also be a joyous occasion. And most importantly you taught me that there are humans, even kinder than us, on the other side of the wall. Happy Independence Day!

Dear Guatemala, you are my favourite country in Central America. I clearly remember the day when I crossed a river bridge from El Salvador and entered your home. Your steep slopes hugged me so tight that it hurt. Your beauty lured me from first sight. It took my fears away. Your tall symmetrical volcanoes waved at me from afar like angels. What more does a lonely man need? I followed. Like a moth to a flame, I danced around you in oblivion. I remember the cobbled streets of your city Antigua. I took intensive Spanish classes there and practised language with indigenous women souvenir sellers in the streets. Once I took pictures of a lady who didn't have any photos of her. The next day I presented her a print. Later I photographed dozens of souvenir sellers and gave them images. How their eyes lit up when they held their photos? You taught me the true value of a photograph! It's been two years, but I still remember: the religious ceremonies— the Shaman who twisted and removed the neck of an alive black chicken and threw it into the fire; the last cackle the hen made—the Maximón statue whom people offered cigarettes; the hat it wore and a long tie with currency notes tucked in it—and Mayan people kneeled at doorsteps of the church; the scent of the smoke from Copal resin. The village woman standing in the back of a truck, or the ones washing clothes in streams, and those who carried maize to a milling shop, I remember their faces and colourful skirts. I will never forget: the aroma of black pepper that people winnowed in villages—the smile of a man with missing teeth—the green hues of Lake Atitlan—the pyramids shrouded in fog at Tikal—the heavenly Semuc Champey pools nestled in a forest; the echoing of birds; the sound of cascading water; the dance of light streaks in shallow ponds; and the gentle touch of cool water on my skin. You taught me there is music in the fabric of the universe. I saw it when Fuego volcano spat lava in sync with lightning. You conveyed a message of politeness, quietness, and humbleness in an otherwise bold, loud, and pretentious world. My dear Guatemala, my love for you runs deeper than Lake Atitlan. Happy Independence Day!

Dear Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador! 15th September is your Independence Day. Costa Rica, you are the greenest country I have ever cycled and also the most humid. Never in my entire life have I sweated so much as I did while pushing the bicycle on your steep slopes. Twice you broke my chainstay and made me walk many kilometres. I still vision your thick cloud forests echoing with bird songs. You taught me the virtue of patience and quietness through bird watching. As I became a silent observer of nature, you kindled my love for the planet. Oh, how I used to pick mangoes, fill my hungry stomach and fall asleep under your trees? Their taste took me to my childhood. In your dog sanctuary with 1600 mutts, I learned, "no matter how badly people treat a dog, it still wants to be with humans." Once, two black puppies started walking behind me on the road. I cannot tell you how I begged them not to follow me. Nicaragua, I saw your lush landscape, mighty volcanoes, and massive cigar factories, but I remember you the most for the Champion's Trophy Cricket Final 2017 I watched in your city Esteli. Pakistan won the match. A few days later, you almost took my life. My head would have been crushed like a watermelon against the boulders in the fast-flowing water of Somoto Canyon had a guide not caught my fingertips in the last moment. Honduras, you were a blur. On my first day, I met your people wearing Mexican hats and fancy dress shirts and saying "Bienvenidos!" On the second day, a bee stung me and the area below my knee swelled. The direct sunlight caused me so much discomfort in the swollen part that I had to wear the pull pants in the hot weather. El Salvador, I vividly remember looking at the boiling crater lake of Santa Anna volcano. It was the eye of the volcano full of rage but holding back its emotion. Your street vendors sold huge red mangoes, a dollar each. Your schoolchildren yelled, "gringo, gringo!" at me and when I yelled back the same words to them, they giggled. How wrong were all those people warning me against you! You taught me that the most valuable lessons are the ones we experience ourselves. Happy Independence Day!