Peking to Paris Motor Challenge, Day 30.
That day the main group stayed in Istanbul to service their cars ahead of the border crossing to come.
After driving the long roads of Asia, at last we were heading into Europe.
Ordinarily we too would have been checking the car with our friends and resting our bodies.
But the Buick, with its broken ring gear, still had no part we could work with.
There was nothing… nothing at all that we could do.
Would the miracle ring gear found in New York really arrive? Where could we receive it? Would we make the finish in time?
Without knowing anything, time simply slipped by.
Not waiting — moving ahead
We had learned that crossing a border with a broken-down vehicle simply takes a great deal of time.
No… even without being told, it could only be so.
If we set out on the same day as the main group, we would be held up at the border,
and might even lose the chance of receiving the part further on.
So while the main group was servicing their cars in Istanbul,
we decided to set off a little ahead of them.
Going with us were fellow competitors who also had breakdowns of their own.
Even though each of us had serious problems with our own cars, whenever someone’s car stopped, everyone got out and pushed. If someone needed a tool, it was handed over.
When someone is in trouble, hands reach out before words do.
The strength of these friends truly saved us.
In the competition we may have been rivals.
But having come this far together, we were now companions aiming for the same finish.
A few hundred metres that felt endlessly far
There was all kinds of trouble even before we reached the border… together with the friends who waited two hours for us,
we headed for the border by pushing the car by hand, for six hours.
Under a blazing sun, in the huge traffic jam of people crossing for Turkey’s long holiday…
We had to pass the border as a vehicle, yet the vehicle would not move.
Just a few hundred metres more.
Such a short distance, and yet it was endlessly far.
Push, stop, push again.
Under the blazing sun, we pushed that lump of iron, a classic car, over and over with our friends. Our clothes were soaked with sweat, and there was no strength left in our arms or legs.
Even so, we could not stop here.
Getting through the border took over six hours.
It was less “crossing the border by car” than the hours in which everyone’s hands carried a single car over to the other side.
A gun pointed at me
At the border, of course, we were not allowed to cross on foot.
But we did not even know whether the Buick could move a few hundred metres ahead.
I was pushing the car with everything I had.
I was warned again and again (… we had no common language, so that was the gist).
I was being scolded… but I want to go!
What on earth am I supposed to do!
Before I knew it I was shouting at a soldier…
“My car is broken down! What on earth do you want me to do?!”
Exhaustion and frustration brought out an outrageous side of me (laughs).
Then, a border guard pointed his gun at me.
“Get in the car.” “Get in the car.”
Even without a shared language, that was one order I understood.
But the car I was meant to get into would not move.
I was not allowed to push.
I was not allowed to walk. And I could not simply stay where I was.
What am I supposed to do!?
My mind went blank with fear and panic, but I begged a passing ordinary car for help.
“Please. Take me across the border.”
One car after another brushed me off with a suspicious look.
Even so, I would not give up…
I kept calling out to car after car.
A family car, who understood my situation, let me get in.
Another miracle happened!
Helped by the kindness of complete strangers, I was finally able to cross the border.
What carried us forward
What carried us forward that day was not the engine.
The friends who pushed the stopped car with us. The people who put their heads together.
And the stranger who let me into their car at the border.
Human hands and human kindness carried us and our immobile Buick forward, one step at a time.
The journey from Peking to Paris is not a contest of speed alone.
When you meet a wall you cannot get over alone, you borrow someone’s strength. And when someone else is in trouble, you offer your own.
Without these friends, we could never have crossed that border.
Our Day 30, a day ahead of the main group, led into what would have been the official Day 31 route.
I did not even notice that I was hungry…
Stray dogs came up to us as if begging for food…
I was hungry too…
Rabies? Stray dogs?
Even that kind of fear — everything — had vanished by then.
Let’s share and eat together… somehow I felt that I had connected with the stray dogs, too…
“Hang in there…” is how they seemed to bark.
But there was still no prospect of the miracle ring gear arriving.
With one week to go to the Paris finish, I looked back on the thirty days that had passed — and still it felt far, far away.
With our immobile car, we pressed on further.
To be continued in Day 31…