A Bike Ride Through A Melting World
New essay on Kyrgyzstan, bicycles, democracy and climate change
This is something of a mixed update on new writing, where I write from the southern Turkish coast, but tracing back a few months to this summer’s ride through Kyrgyzstan.
It was a great pleasure to write a profile of cycling Kyrgyzstan’s back-country for the Financial Times, but I have to confess that it is this new essay, for NOEMA, a magazine published by The Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, that really allowed me to get into the deeper substance of thoughts from riding that week in the Tian Shan.
The piece is a reflection on individualism, group purpose, democratic systems, and how all this connects to a problem such as climate change, its causes and possible solutions. It was great to be given the opportunity to write something across so many themes, and as always I’m indebted to the simplicity of a bicycle, and its ability to roll through everything, for helping to bring it all together in something that felt like a cohesive whole. The essay is, perhaps alongside my last book Iberia, as near as I’ve got to encapsulating how I see and think of the world in a single piece of writing, even if that is a constantly evolving perspective.
Because this update is entirely to encourage people to read the NOEMA essay, I will keep it brief, hoping that you’ll forgive the geographical dislocation of pushing writing about Kyrgyzstan, while cycling in Türkiye, and headed for the Syrian border region tomorrow. The journey through Anatolia has been maybe more eventful than I’d expected, and I’m due to finish in a couple of week’s time on the border with Armenia - most likely the Turkish town of Kars. From there I’ll give a proper update, but with nights drawing in and winter nearing, time has been of the essence. I ride all day and where not too tired I write what I can in the evenings, with the manuscript deadline for the end of the year. I’ll make it - both in terms of the ride and first draft - but it has been difficult, and of course the richness of material I feel the road is giving up does put me under an additional burden of recording so much in what feels like limited time.
I hope that come next autumn there’ll be a book about the first Turkish century that will help people further understand the country, just as this writing and riding process is helping me to do so, in ways both expected and not so.
https://www.noemamag.com/a-bike-ride-through-a-melting-world/