Claude Marthaler - Adventure Cycling Association

intro and photos by
Claude Marthaler

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Riding through the
                                          Suusamyr Valley,
                                      Kyrgyzstan, in winter
                                     1994, nicknamed the
                                   Siberia of Central Asia.
                                One of the coldest winters I
                               experienced on two wheels.

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felt like another world,
              crisscrossing Ukraine, the
              Caucasus, and Central
              Asian republics just a
few years after the fall of the Soviet
Union. It was also the pre-digital era,
before I reached Japan by winter
1996–1997. I’d been riding already
for almost three years, with the deep
impression that I could have gone
forever. Time had somehow ceased
to matter. Handwritten letters would
punctuate the journey every three
months. I would only discover all
my pictures seven years after, once
back in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2001,
cycling meanwhile from Alaska to
Tierre del Fuego, then through Africa,
from Cape Town to Tangier.
   I took only film, 36 exposures of
Kodachrome 64 rolls with a single
mechanical camera, the legendary and
unbreakable Nikon FM2, equipped
with two lenses, 24mm and 85mm.
No zoom, no flash, just natural light.
Simple and analog, like the bicycle
itself. Each picture looks like a kind of
matriochka, the Russian nesting doll.
Pics of a forgotten world, documents
from the Indian subcontinent and
from Himalaya, as if the passage of
time would improve their taste and
intensity, like aged wine.
   As I pushed the button of my
camera, I felt sometimes that I had
already known these people, visited
these places. Looking at them today,
they appear to me like a dream —
Songwheels — reminding me of Bruce
Chatwin’s book The Songlines, about
the connection between Aboriginal
Australian song and nomadic travel.
Each day contains a life, each country
a world, each person a destiny. The
bicycle truly opens doors; it is a poem
without breaks.

Passionate “cyclonaut” turned lecturer, journalist,
and writer, Claude Marthaler, a.k.a. the Yak Man,
spent over 16 years traveling the planet by bike.

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Clockwise from upper left: India never sleeps. The Howrah Bridge, before the
                               sunrise, linking Howrah and Kolkata, India. One million pedestrians cross it each
                               and every day!

                               “Guest is God,” say the Indians. Invited for breakfast in a school where we slept.
                               Madhya Pradesh, 2006. Photo Nathalie Pellegrinelli.

                               A Tibetan dance festival under control of Chinese soldiers. Litang, Tibet, 1996.

                               A family of Uyghurs in eastern Turkestan-Xinjiang, China, 1995.

ADVENTURECYCLING.ORG/MEMBERS                                                                                        41

Above: An emblematic image,
            wheels within wheels. Nicknamed
          Ruedas (wheels), a Spanish friend of
                    mine fixing his inner tube.
                Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia, 1998.

                 Below: The pure joy of living.
          Tibetan kids in Sichuan, China, 1996.

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One world, different realities;
western travelers Simon and
Ruedas, shoolgirls, and a beggar
in Antigua, Guatemala, 1998.

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Above: Two Khampas in Litang,
                                                    eastern Tibet, 1996.

                                            Below: Ten days trekking with
                                               two young monks and their
                                          horses through Ladakh-Zanskar,
                                        Jammu, and Kashmir, India, 1989.
                                         The Indian army is now building a
                                               road linking Padum to Leh.

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Ukraine, spring 1994. To make up for the
shortage, a Ukranian family goes regularly to
Russia to buy gasoline. Mixed with water or
diesel, it’s commonly resold on the black market.

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