Sand - Sen Monorom to Ratnikiri

For me today's ride has been all about the sand on the tracks through the jungle. As a boy I loved playing in the sand, spending hours on the beach building sand castles and dams (budding engineer); but today, sand is my greatest enemy. Whilst I can now happily ascend and descend treaturous rocky paths and navigate bumpy ruts like a pro (pro what is the question) Sand reduces me to a crawl and makes me look like a freshly landed haddock, tail flailing hopelessly. Or it did. Thanks to some timely advice from the more experienced guys here I've almost conquered the dusty demon. Stand up, handlebars loose, let the bike find its own way: that I knew. The revelation is to "give it gas" when you get into trouble; totally counter intuitive. Normally when you get into trouble you stop doing the thing you were doing that got you into trouble; in biking terms that usually means you get off the throttle, or get off the gas. In sand that causes the front wheel to dig in, which gets you deeper into trouble and likely to lose control and fall off. I was very lucky not to fall off in the morning as I got off the gas when troubled in sand. Using my new found knowledge I now lift the front wheel higher with power and push through the difficult patch in third gear. I'm not an expert by any means, but I don't feel like I'm going to fall off..... as often.

One interesting thing about the jungle tracks here is that they don't tend to split off in all directions. One reason for this is that Cambodia is relatively sparsely populated compared to Vietnam for example, so there are less dots to join up. The other, and this is important for us to absorb as well, the land all around the tracks are mined. Mined, as in big, loud, death-causing explosion. These mines are left overs from the various wars that have plagued the country and one estimate is that there are between four and six million left in the ground. Thus there is a real motive to avoid random paths for fear of tripping one of these indiscriminate killers. There is an active landmine clearance programme, but it will take a long time to complete and meanwhile many children and adults die each year.

Having said that, when a path becomes impassable due to a fallen tree or deep mud, a track is soon established to bypass the obstruction. We were advised to take the bypass when available, and during the rainy season it is the only option. Now that it's dryer, often the bypass isn't needed and I found that the original route was fine in most cases. But it's not always obvious. In one case I ignored a bypass only to run into a massive puddle. It wasn't until my bike stopped in mud above my knee did I realise this was a mistake. I put a foot down and almost tipped over into it as my foot sank down into the smelly black goo. I gunned the engine, but the wheel just span sending mud flying everywhere. Eventually I was able to rock the bike free; what a relief! If I had stalled the engine and the bike didn't have an electric starter I really would have been stuck. Luckily I didn't, and it does. I'd like to think I was treating Ducky to a dip in a pond, but I'm not really that nice.

As yesterday, we stop frequently (always in the shade) to regroup and take fluids. I use the opportunity to take pictures and post to the blog if I can; as I've previously said, Jungle radio works a treat. When we stop at roadside pitstops we invariably find a big red box full of iced drinks is waiting for us. This seems to appear like magic and I can't work out if it's the same box everywhere or if all roadside shacks have them. Either way, an ice cold drink is VERY welcome!