Waterford's Michael Whelan reflects on two-month bike trip across Asia

Osh, Kyrgyzstan to Karachi, Pakistan, equates to a roughly 3,000-kilometre journey.

In a car, that can be tough work. On a bike, it’s a whole different ball game.

Over the course of two months, Waterford native Michael Whelan traversed across Central Asia, battling freezing temperatures, mountainous ascents and wafer-thin oxygen levels.

How did he do it? “You just have to slow down,” says the 69-year-old.

“I generally find with younger people they tend to have a target and an itinerary. They'll say, ‘I'm going to go from A to B today’, and they’ll want to get to B, where I don't do that at all. You have to just take it as it comes.”

He began his Eurasian odyssey in April, embarking upon the Silk Road - an age-old trade route where evidence of human migration patterns still lay bare.

From there, he passed through Kashgar and Samarkand, witnessing the remnants of the USSR’s former empire.

Whelan has been governed by a sense of wanderlust for most of his life. Hailing from St. John’s Park and a carpenter by trade, Whelan spent years working in the Middle East and Russia.

He settled back in Ireland almost 25 years ago, and has been retired for the past 10.

His first solo trip dates back to 1978 - an expedition from Spain and across the Pyrenees. His next cycling trip will begin in Burundi in February.

Travelling through blood-stained lands that have been ravaged by war, or nations governed by dictators that have been ostracised from the Western world, Whelan said human generosity has always transcended cultural and linguistic barriers.

He puts it down to the nomadic and unassuming nature of the solo cyclist.

“You're not necessarily seen as a threat. If an adult male arrives in a village, they don't know what he is, you know? And especially in remote areas, they don't know what your purpose is, or where you've come from, are you a military man, or are you a businessman?

“But if you arrive on a bicycle, then you're coming with the whole package. And people smile, you know?

“Sometimes your biggest problem is having to turn people down. They want you to come back and stay in their house.”

Both the struggles of ordinary civilians and expansive geopolitical conflicts have played out before his eyes.

One particularly jolting moment came as Whelan passed through the sweeping views of the Kashmir mountains in May.

Kashmir, a 222,000 square kilometre region in the North-Western India subcontinent, has been embroiled in ethnic conflict between India and Pakistan since the 1947 partition.

In April, a Pakistani-linked terrorist group killed 25 Indian tourists. India responded with air strikes.

Whelan was aware of the terrorist attacks while traversing Kashmir, but a call from his daughter alerted him to the Indian response.

“One Pakistani guy approached me and said, ‘Are you aware of the situation…you know it's very serious.’

“I could tell, because most of the Pakistani people were gathered around televisions and cafes and stuff like that, listening intensely to the news.

“I think the country was absolutely on a knife-edge. He said to me, ‘you should consider having a plan B.’ He said, consider maybe going back to China.”

The nearest airstrike landed 30 kilometres away from Whelan. An immediate ceasefire between India and Pakistan was signed on May 10.

His journeys on the bike have shown him perspective and lessons about the less fortunate.

“You see the absolute poverty…It's hard to say this, you know it's not always miserable.

“People can be elegant wearing rags, whereas you can see the opposite here. You can see somebody dressed up to the nines here with gold watches and everything. And in the head, they’re probably not in a good place, you know?”

Whelan will host a presentation on his journey entitled ‘China to Pakistan on my bike’ at St Patrick’s Gateway Centre on November 7.