Timor-Leste – Eastern Loop

It has been wonderful to take a generously-loaned 150cc Honda touring around Timor Leste’s eastern half this last week. What a trip! I planned three days, but the road had other ideas. I’ve kept diary notes each day, and batched them up in one post here. If you can enjoy these notes or images 1% as much as I enjoyed the ride, we’ll both be happy. A video reprisal will follow eventually. It’s become a long post. Feel free to find something better to do if you get bored.

Written on Wednesday

Today has been lovely. It was a gentle start.  I packed my stuff in the Dili digs as if I were moving on altogether, leaving only a couple of bags of things stowed away for my return.  A hobbit’s breakfast (google it if you don’t know) preceded some route planning, and then – huffing and puffing with the heavy bike jacket and the backpack of bricks – I was off.
 
The ride to Manatuto mirrored last week’s trip, except I stopped off for a $3 lunch of rice, veggies and fairly tough but otherwise tasty beef.  I took the opportunity to try once more to tie down by email exactly when my bike will be available.  There has been another delay for the boat’s arrival, but at least today’s was a single-day change from this coming Friday to Saturday – where previous delays have each been “another week” or even fortnight.  That said, all that’s really of interest is when the bike will be through customs and available to me.  That question is still being roundly ignored, by PJs from whom I bought passage, from Bollore who are managing the vessel, and from anyone else in the know.  Getting the bike from Darwin to Dili will have cost me 20% of my trip financial budget, over 50% of the time I allocated for the entire schedule, and years and years of additional grey hair.
 
It takes a significant, deliberate effort not to let that build up as frustration.  I’m practicing the present, and have tried to partly release the overall ambition of “Melbourne to London”.  Reaching Europe at all actually seems an unlikely outcome now, unless many other things shift in concert with the schedule and finance overruns.  I might need to explore some sponsorship to extend the additional runway.
 
Although much is now quite unknown, I have worked out is that there’s quite a simple decision framework.  The big question of “can I get to London?” is interesting but mostly irrelevant to anything except growing frustration.  In contrast; on a given day I could give up and go home; but that’s not going to happen so it really only remains relevant to ask “what is my best course today?”
 
Right at the moment a. I’m not giving up, and yet b. nothing I do will get me closer to London, perhaps other than staying on top of emails with the shippers.  So I’m trying instead to enjoy a simple moment of “being” – with greater Timor as the canvas.  Today’s ride was a lovely brush stroke on that portrait.
 

I had some accomodation booked tonight a place owned by Fernando, who organised the rice planting trip a few weeks back.  Since Google’s or Apple Maps’ turn-by-turn directions in Timor are almost nonexistent, Fernando has put a 2-min video together of how to find this place.  But my phone data wasn’t playing nice and I couldn’t download it or contact anyone for help.  So I simply followed my nose, based only on the video’s still-image of the Baucau swimming pool and the concept that the place is “on the way to the beach”.  Somewhat incredibly I followed my nose past nearly a dozen different places I could have gone wrong and – without coms, a map or even a street address – found myself staring straight at the required “Da Terra” roadside sign.  I still can’t quite work out how it happened.  [Editorial note Sunday night – having just come back through the same route this afternoon, I’m even more bemused how my bike and I sniffed the place out].  I am now happily ensconced for the night exactly where I was supposed to be.  It’s a really beautiful place, with both a permaculture and a tourism B&B focus.  Dinner tonight was glorious – all fresh produce from this property, except the king-sized fish stake which was from the beach just down the road.  I’ve committed to being up before 6am to watch the sunrise with breakfast on the viewing platform just near my traditional hut lodgings.

Written on Thursday


A Melbourne friend Haydn noted that my diary recently recorded feeling empty, and he reminded me of Ephesians 3:14-19.  It’s written from Paul to the church, but it adapts beautifully as a first-person prayer:
“I bow my knees before you, Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of your glory you may strengthen me with power through your Spirit in my inner being, so that Christ may dwell in my heart through faith.  Being rooted and grounded in love, may I have strength to comprehend with all the saints the breadth and length and height and depth and, my Christ, to know your love that surpasses knowledge, that I may be filled with all the fullness of God.”  Amen!
I decided to change plans and stay an extra day at Da Terra because the sense of quiet peace about the place is good for the soul.  The host, Eta (pronounced “Ay-ta”), has a happy joyfulness that reminds me of Kathryn.  That is at the same time both lovely and a mild nudge in a still-very-open wound.
 
I’ve now had more confirmation that the boat is likely to deliver my bike this Saturday.  For the first time I’ve had an official word on how long it will take thereafter to deliver to me – “1 to 2 weeks”.  Sigh.
 

Written on Friday

Today I started the day on the viewing platform again, with a lovely hour of reading and praying followed by another big Da Terra breakkie.  I packed up and headed out shortly after that, with priority one being to find a SIM card with another carrier as I had quickly learned that Timor Telecom (“TT”) was not great in country areas.
 
The scenery was varied but constantly stunning.  I feel like I keep saying that, but it really is hard to overstate.
 
The big surprise of today is just how bad the roads are.  I thought I’d planned a route that would mostly be on fairly established, fast-riding road.  There are short stretches of excellent, broad, new tarmac, mixed in like Morse Code amongst long stretches of every variation of rough.  There are rocky roads that jar worse than the road to Laclubar.  There are slippery, muddy roads where I felt constantly as if I was about to fall off.  There are pot hole roads variously filled with muddy water or (much better) dry so at least I could see how deep they are.  And on it goes.  But all of this was with glorious scenery, when I could lift my gaze from the perils under each revolution of rubber.
 
The rough roads have impacted speed and distance, and in fact I’ve travelled less than half the distance planned.  At one point along the south coast I’d pulled up to replace a GoPro battery.  As almost always happens someone stopped to strike up conversation with the malae, with the foreigner.  This time I said – with the help of Google Maps and lots of gesticulation – that I had planned to get to Com on the north east tip of Timor, but found that I could not make it due to rough roads.  I asked if there were any other hotels, road houses or other accomodation.  I hoped this offer was because he had an answer to my accomodation question, but accepted his invitation only because we were headed in the same direction anyway and so it seemed low risk.  It took 5 minutes and a change of electric fuse to even get his scooter started, and then we were on our slow way weaving through potholes and other obstacles in tandem.
 
Arriving in the next village, he pulled up at a small cluster of locals enjoying the late afternoon.  After a brief conversation one of the number approached me and turned out to have (slightly) better English.  I explained my situation again, which led to a quick exchange in Tetun between my guide and the newcomer.  The nod of understanding was a worry… confirming perhaps he hadn’t previously understood, leaving me to wonder exactly why I had been following!
 
Anyway, we then proceeded to drop in at a couple of other places, with me understanding none of the corresponding rapid-fire questions-and-answers.  Eventually we pulled in to one more home where my guide explained with some hand waving that we’d arrived at a home of his extended family.  I’d said I was looking for somewhere to sleep, and it turned out this hospitable clan were offering me a spare bed.  With barely a handful of words understood between us, I wasn’t really sure if I was being offered a place for “an hour or so” of afternoon rest, or a bed for the night.  But in the end, stay the night I did.
 
I now had two of the three Timor telephone SIMs in operation.  But it turns out that in this village, only the third SIM gets data.  Sigh.  Nonetheless, the pre-downloaded Indonesian pack in Google Translate rescued what might have been a very awkward few hours.  Slowly and painfully we tapped out on the phone’s on-screen keyboard an English-Indonesian conversation which the family then had to translate from to their native Tetun.  We ended up with a wide-ranging conversation over the following hours, but it most definitely affirmed that there was invitation to share the evening meal and to stay the night.  Having a data connection would have meant we’d all be able to speak to Google Translate rather than type at it, which would have made the whole affair a bit more fluid.  But it was still amazing to have that bridge between us in otherwise impossible circumstances.
 
And so it has been a lovely evening, staying in a local home and sharing genuine local company, food and lodgings.  While I’ve loved the ex-pat community in Dili and still value it, there’s something quite special about being welcomed into the home of a family who have lived on this land for generations.
 
I aim to pack up and move on early tomorrow.  But I’ve learned my lesson and have now lowered expectations on how far I’ll get.  I’ll endeavour to find a Protestant church along route tomorrow, and search out lodgings in that town tomorrow night so that I can worship there with the locals the day after, on Sunday.
 
I’ve discovered an interesting thing.  Once we got used to the slow use of typing on Google Translate (with voice translate requiring data I did not have), there was a lot of time sitting together in silence while we waited for another to finish their typing.  It was actually quite peaceful to sit together without needing to talk.  Really quite lovely.  And we had plenty of communication through the slow on-screen keyboard translation.  It became a deep sense of “shared”, perhaps like a combination of a silent retreat (as I imagine it might be) and of a friendship so old that words are no longer needed.  And yet we only met the day before.

Written on Saturday

Wooha its been a day of intense riding.  I was on the road by 8:30am on the south coast of Timor, rode high into the mid-Timor mountains again, and found my way down to the north coast (near the east tip) a bit after 3:00pm.  It was such gruelling going!  Far rougher and more remote than anything I’ve ridden so far in Timor (or Aus), and that is saying something.  But it was every bit as amazing as it was rough and remote.
 
Unfortunately two of my three GoPro batteries died on Friday, and my room in the Village Chief’s house didn’t have power, so I had only a little time with helmet-cam this morning on the one remaining battery.  The last GoPro battery died just before I had another almost-tumble.  And I still haven’t figured out how to manage the day-time white balance on the drone, so much of the footage is completely wiped out.  That turned out to be a real shame particularly when I was crossing a river of (I reckon 50m) width.
 
There were at least half a dozen places where the route was ambiguous.  I’m so reliant on technology.  Google Maps does a particularly good job of rescuing me where there’s no phone data available, so long as I’ve explored the route beforehand.  The earlier map exploration saves automagically in a cache somehow, so I can discover immediately and precisely whenever off track in middle of nowhere.  Hmm, no; “Immediately” is a bit of a stretch.  When my bike arrives in Dili there’s a bracket to mount the phone on the handlebars, so the map is constantly visible while riding.  On this bike the phone stays in my pocket.  Several times I’d found myself 15 or 20 minutes off track before pulling the phone out to check.  Oh well.
 
With a big breakkie of rice, eggs and (I think?) beef this morning, I didn’t feel a need for lunch and stopped only for fuel and photos.  So when I got to my accomodation this afternoon I took a much needed hour of rest/admin in my room.  Getting up again I was confronted with just how sore every muscle in my body was (still is)!  I suspect half my tendons are close to shaken right off (and I never exaggerate).
 
It’s quite strange really.  Riding those rough, remote roads with a vague sense of direction but no hard-and-fast schedule has such a sense of freedom.  It has shaken (boom! boom!) off more of the “cares and concerns” of life, perhaps just by a smidge.  It has probably brought me closest to a sense of joy and peace I’ve had in a very long time.  That leaves me really, really keen to get my bike back, pointing it towards Indonesia.
 
I’m sitting now 3 metres from the gentle rhythmic waves on (perhaps) Timor’s whitest beach.  I’m a bit stuffed now – having eaten two amazing freshly-caught fish for dinner with rice, veggies and salad.  As the only guest tonight at Com’s “Kati Guest House”, it is just the most gloriously peaceful atmosphere.
 
There’s a bit more admin to do, and I want to be up before 6:30 for the sunrise over the ocean.  So I’ll call it a day here, and finish this tomorrow.

Written on Sunday

A majestic sunrise was rich reward for dragging my stiff and sore body out of bed at a reasonable hour.  Today’s plans were simple – sunrise photography, church en route, returning to Dili some stage in the afternoon.  While the internal and southern roads are really rough, the northern roads have good stretches in reasonable condition (with exceptions, of course) so travel times are relatively predictable.
 
Keen to explore the drone’s capabilities, I had a few aerial runs at the beach-front sunrise.  I’ll probably find out tomorrow if there’s any video worth sharing.
 
Finding a church is a “simple” task on a list, but turns out to be challenging.  I’d found precisely nothing of help on the web or on Apple or Google Maps, until Rob pointed out I should search in the local language for “Igreja” (thanks Rob!).  A plethora of options unfolded.  But challenge remained.  Picking Protestant from Catholic based just on a name is sometimes going to be relatively easy, but far from perfect.  We agreed that “Igreja Cristo Liurai” was as plausible as any, and it had the advantage of being right on route a neat 30 minutes out from last night’s lodgings.  Next challenge was starting time.  Rob said my guess of 10am was too late so I made a stab in the dark for 9am, very pleased with myself for then arriving just on 3 or so minutes early.
 
Several things were immediately obvious.  i. It was a very large church by Timor standards, full with what I’d estimate to be nearly 1,000 people.  ii. It might have been very high-church Protestant, but felt much more likely to be Catholic.  iii. It was most definitely not “about to start”.  But I’d put a bit of work into making it happen, and thought I’d persist just a moment longer.  I sidled in at the back past a few people milling at the doors, and found about the only seat left.  My arrival wasn’t without a ripple in the congregation.  It turned out I’d launched myself right into a designated children’s seating area.  People were of course gracious, but it must have seemed very very odd.  A strange, grey, bearded, “malae” (white man) launching with a backpack (that I couldn’t leave with the bike – too many valuables) right into the kids seating just as the one hour service was winding up!!!
 
The church building was in a commanding location up a hill just outside the seaside village.  So after crashing the party I had just long enough to sit, before standing up again to obligatory “bondia” (“good morning”) with lots of warm and friendly strangers.  Wandering out to appreciate the view, I was accosted by a throng of people – mostly young women and children.  Some wanted to try a few English words, and all wanted the prize of photo on their own camera with a malae.  The “throng” turned into a “river”, and I’d eat my hat if there weren’t at least 50 and possibly even 100 immortalised in their Google Images together with some random, scruffy bloke from Melbourne.  I really don’t understand the attraction.  But it costs nothing to comply, and it is lovely to spark a little joy – perhaps I’d even have to admit that simply being cause of that joy gave me a little of the same myself.  In contrast, I have learned to decline the ongoing requests for my phone number, as that just becomes unmanageable.  If I were to “practice English” with everyone who wanted my details, I’d need at least 24 additional hours squeezed into each and every day.  Just for starters.
 
It was an hour or so from there to Baucau, where I stayed the first night.  The ride back to Dili from Baucau felt very familiar.  Other than a lunch stop on the roadside for a bit of fish and rice, I was by then keen to get off the road.  While I’ve loved the trip, the bike and heavy backpack have been hard work, requiring a stooped posture for days on end over very rough terrain.  And then there’s the headache-inducing helmet.  I thought of finding a massage this afternoon in Dili to work some of those aches and pains out of the system, but found myself snoozing instead.
 
In other news.  My bike is now in Dili.  Woohooo!  I believe the boat arrived Saturday.  I’m still wrestling with the unloaders.  Estimates of when I can collect have been varying more wildly than the price of Bitcoin, with some contenders suggesting three or even more weeks from unloading.  But I’ve latched onto one, which suggests that I might be reunited with my bike and gear this Tuesday.  That’ll be five weeks.  For four hundred miles.  Eighty miles a week.  Anyway.  There’s still uncertainty about paperwork, but I think – and hope – there’s an arrangement brewing to push through some of that tomorrow morning.
 
That will introduce a quirky, frustrating little irony.  Because of the delays in bike delivery, I’ve had to apply for an extension of the standard 30-day tourist visa.  I applied last week, and was told it will take two weeks (at least) to process.  On paper that leaves the very real possibility that I might have my bike and all my gear, and still be unable to go because the government is busy working out if they’d let me stay.  Sigh.
 
That’s it for now.  I’ll see if I can load some photos now to compliment these notes, and have a go at some video editing perhaps tomorrow.  [Editors note: due to ongoing WordPress challenges, it wasn’t until 23/3 these photos were properly added! Sigh.]

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