Lost. Bengkulu, Indonesia.

I’m lost. I’m very lost. I’m so lost, that I can’t even give up and go back, as I don’t know which way ‘back’ is. I’ve literally been riding in circles since early morning. As I was woken up at 5am by seven different roosters (the world truly needs to eat more chicken…) I was on the road early, with the intention of finding a nice quiet coastal road to Lampung, recommend by some bikers from Jakarta that I met last night.

All is well until the first turn off from tarmac to dirt. Heavy rain from the last days has caused enormous road-wide puddles. I splash through a couple without effort but in the last one, the water is knee high and my boots fill up with dirty muddy water. The road then turns into a narrow track and I decide to turn around as this doesn’t look like the awesome coastal road described to me by the local guys.

As I don’t like to ride the same track back to the main road, I use my GPS to find an alternative road. This leads me into a massive palm oil farm. 50km of rocky dirt road with no turn offs, just a straight track running parallel to the main road without any possibilities to join it. The road gets worse before it gets better and I struggle to stay upright. Luckily the palm trees keep the road shaded so both the bike and myself stay relatively cool.

It takes me two hours to do 50km; the same stretch on the tarmac main road took me 20 minutes in the morning.

Back in Bengkulu I check my GPS more carefully. I’m running open source software and until now this has served me well. I’m comfortable relying on GPS even though it has sent onto many roads that didn’t turn out to be roads at all.

I once did a trip hosted by Charley Boorman in Southern Africa in 2010 and brought a map of the region, only to find out that the organisers kitted all the rental bikes out with navigation systems. I haven’t ridden without one since then (disclaimer: I’m only mentioning this so I can tag Boorman in my Facebook post, luring his fans to this story. You could consider this click bating but as you’re reading this, it clearly worked… Now keep on reading, it will get better…).

I see the road on the GPS and take of into the general direction. The open source software doesn’t allow turn-by-turn guidance so it’s a bit of trial and error getting to the right road. Again the tarmac turns into dirt a couple of kilometres outside the town. This is quite common in Indonesia so I’m not yet concerned.

The dirt turns into mud but the GPS shows the destination road as only 15km away so I crack on. I see a rather large mountain range in front of me but reckon the road will go around it. The GPS doesn’t show elevations so I’m blind when it comes to heights. Usually when the road on the GPS starts to snake around, showing hairpin bends, you know something is going up or down but the screen just shows a fairly straight line towards my chosen road.

The straight road turns out not so straight and does ascend the mountain. It’s a fairly good dirt track so I continue upwards. The track is also gets drying the higher I go, so I hopeful that wrestling the bike through the mud is a thing of the past.

On the summit I meet a local guy on a moped. “Lampung?” I ask, pointing at the road. “Yadda, yadda, yadda, Lampung, yadda, yadda” he says in Indonesian with a big smile. I take the big smile as confirmation that I’m on the right track and ride on.

The descent is much muddier then the ascent and I’m glad I’m riding down. Not sure I’d make it going up in this muddy mess. With 2 km to go to the main road, I come across a Chinese mine. I find it a little odd that the track goes straight through the mine site, but what do I know.

Not much it turns out. A Chinese guard calls out “Stop! Stop! No entry!” When I ride through. I stop and ask him “Lampung?” pointing behind the mine. He shakes his head and tells to wait. 5 minutes later he comes back with a man of authority (his white dress shirt and tie give him away as literally a ‘white collar worker’). This man tells me that I’m trespassing on the grounds of a copper mine run by the People’s Republic of China and that this road is a dead-end. The mine is the final destination and the only way to get to Lampung is to drive back to Bengkulu and take the main road that starts there.

“Mate, the main road is only 2 kilometres that way from here, surely there must be a track to there?” I ask. He shakes his head and points at the mountain behind the mine, which I failed to notice until now. “Big mountain in between, you must go back, good bye.”

That’s the end of the conversation and no matter how much I curse my directional skills, I’ll have to turn back. I then realise that I have to ride up the muddy mountain road I just came down on and curse some more, to the hilarity of the Chinese guard. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fucking shit” he giggles, mimicking me. Not the most useful support at that particular moment, but hey hoo…

I struggle through the mud without dropping the bike once but it does take me four hours to get back to Bengkulu for the third time today. I arrive muddy, hungry and tired around 2pm. I’ve spent the last 9 hours getting absolutely fucking nowhere. Common sense should prevail; I should just get a hotel and try to get to Lampung tomorrow. But that would mean no progress today at all and I can’t handle that.

I get some food and rest for a while alongside a man talking loudly to what seems his pet rabbit, before taking the main road that has been evading me the whole day. It’s around 700km to Lampung so I should be able to make it before 10pm. The road is in good condition and traffic light so against my against my better judgment I decide this will be a breeze.

15 minutes later it starts to pour down and I’m stuck between a long line of trucks not only spraying me with muddy water but also belching toxic exhaust gasses in my face. There’s so much spray coming from the truck wheels that there’s no way in hell I’m overtaking. Unfortunately the zero visibility does not stop the local drivers from overtaking constantly in the most unsuitable spots, creating traffic mayhem and long delays.

It takes me three hours to do 140 kilometres and the rain does not let up throughout. It’s also getting dark so I give in and search for a hotel in the nearest town. The first three ones I try seem all empty but the receptionists tell me “No room!” as soon as I step in. It seems they don’t want me there. At the 4^th hotel the receptionist just starts to laugh when I walk in but does give me a room without any issue.

When I get to the room I see my reflection in the full-length mirror on the wall. Not only am I covered in mud; my face is black with soot from the trucks. I look like a deranged panda on a lengthy murdering spree…