Solvitur Velocipedo

Cocooned in my forest lair by day, by night holed up in the sequestered serenity of the campsite's riverside glade. I passed my time beneath the 1600m peaks that closet the table land. Five trails led away from my tent; four into the forest hills. The fifth, least used, led back to roads and noise and people. Occasional forays that way into the tourist hub of Tanah Rata's main drag to procure food a fleeting, grating reminder of the busy reality just a tree screen away.

The stillness couldn't last. Altitude is a a cyclists hardest won currency; the urge for a spendthrift splurge rose irresistibly. With a glorious descent promise-note burning a hole in my pocket I packed up my camp and romped through Brinchang and Kampung Raja, the tableland's northern most stations. The scale of the developments was difficult to miss. The WWF's describing land clearance as "rampant" did not seem hyperbolic looking over valleys glaring back from reflective cellophane and glass.

Musandam and bust

I was pleased to be waved through the border crossing at Dibba.

I was pleased not to have to pay for a new Omani visa.

I was less pleased to now be an undocumented foreign national. 

To complicate matters further, non-GCC nationals (me) aren't allowed to pass between border crossings here. Travelling from say Dibba, north to Khassab and then on to re-enter the UAE at Ash Sham was prohibited. 

A shame indeed, as that was exactly my intention. I'd read about dolphins cavorting in the fjords around Khassab and I meant to see them.

Bureaucracy be damned.

So I scooted out of Dibba to make camp.

An obliging acacia grove provided a discrete and comfortable spot. 

Gully! What a gorge-ous couloir, canyon not defile it?

What I may lack in pun quality I try to make up for in exuberant quantity.

Having spent a comfortable pagan night camped amongst the stone sentinels my morning began with another high pass to reach. At 2260m it was only a few hundered short of Selim and constituted a hearty mornings work.

But safe in the knowledge that my destination for the day, Goris, was only 25k beyond I could relax and enjoy the growing majesty of the surrounds.

It hadn't rained here for days but the snow hung on even on the road side making me glad of warm gloves and hat despite the high sun and bitterly lamenting the loss of my buff as the cold wind came down off the peaks.

Macedonia

A hop skip and a road side watermelon from the border we entered the Macedonian capital Skopje. An infectiously ludicrous city which has seen literally hundreds of statues erected over the last three years by the right wing government. When added to the ample number of soviet monuments already extant and the result is more Madame Tussaud's than Roman grandeur.

Part ideological desire to create and celebrate Macedonian nationalist heroes (leading to fun discoveries like a 15 foot statue of an obscure lexicographer) and part attempt to woo tourists to a capital formally described as frumpy - the result is a schizophrenic collision of styles with modernist concrete swoops vying with fake baroque pretense all against an Ottoman backdrop.

While the execution may be lacking, and the renovation of the central square has left it feeling like Disneyland meets Las Vegas as the governing classes seek to manufacture a picture postcard view, it is hard not to be charmed by the city.

At the hostel Fred and I stayed in a local girl, Mariana, raged against the mess that was being made of her city claiming she could hardly recognize it. Following the earthquake here in 1963 an international effort was made to assist with reconstruction; overseen by the great Japenese architect Kenzo Tange. There can be little doubt that his vision has been sullied by the current spate of reckless revisionism but the vigour and vitality of the city shines through with bustling bazaars and a cool riverside bar scene. We amused ourselves playing spot the statue and trying to keep tally. (Impossible)

A snapshot of Skopje and it's many littered statues.

Marco

Heading out from my Dubrovnik crows nest I hugged the coast south enjoying the seemingly unending loveliness of Croatia's coastline.

While that loveliness remained soon the surroundings had taken on a more rural outlook as I left behind the busy surrounds of Dubrovnik and it's neighboring touristy towns and entered Croatia's southern hinterland, Konavle.

The heat was blistering as it had been constantly since entering the Balkans and despite an early start in the relative morning cool I found myself running low on water as I left the main highway near Cavtat. I hold it to be a truth self-evident that as soon as water runs low you will be unable to think of anything else and a previously perfectly comfortable throat will become desperately dry and scratchy.

So afflicted I began to look around for water points or a shop but after 25k of cycling I had found exactly nothing meeting that description. Of a sudden I heard the strains of classic 80's pop drifting towards me

"girls just want to have fun, girls just want to have fuuuuun"