How Did All This Happen?

I rode across the border at the Nepalese town of Hetauda after a long day riding in the late May sunshine. The heat of the days and the dust on the roads in India had begun to take their toll, with my eyes feeling constantly sore. I was hoping Nepal would allow some respite from the assault of my senses I had experienced in India, yet my mind was preoccupied with getting to Kathmandu to speak to Melanie again. I could only call her from a telephone shop where you booked a long-distance phone call, and these facilities only seemed to exist in larger towns.

I immediately liked Nepal, and it was to become my favourite country on the whole trip. The mountain ranges provided a beautiful and inspiring backdrop, and with the increasing altitude the air felt fresher and so cycling was not the same, grinding ordeal it had felt like in India, despite the difficultly of riding uphill for hours on end.

The level of poverty seemed similar to India, but there was a much greater sense of community there. This was illustrated one night in a village on the road to Pokhara where I had taken a room in a guest house for the night. The house utilised the fact that it was clinging to the edge of the mountain by having a squat toilet – a hole in the floor through which you could see the mountain pass below. If you didn’t want to go before you walked in, you certainly did shortly afterwards.

I bathed using a bucket of water and was about to go to sleep to recover from the long day’s ride when I heard a commotion outside in the village square. I walked out to see virtually the whole village in a huddle watching something with much excitement and amusement. Not wanting to be left out, I walked over to find the source of the entertainment. It was a cockerel attempting to have sex with a duck. Now there is something mildly amusing about the thought of a cockerel attempting to have sex with a duck, but it is only mildly amusing at best. In a Nepalese village in 1992, it entertained the whole village and an English cyclist for at least an hour.

My first night in Nepal was spent in the Hotel Avocado, which at the time was run by a dwarf who could not see the funny side of me suggesting that the bucket of water he gave me to use for a shower might be enough for him, but I would need two. I was to discover later that the hotel had a guest book in which a number of cyclists either coming from or going to Kathmandu had written. After spending weeks battling through India alone and preoccupied with Melanie and the baby, it was nice to feel a connection to other people, even though some were clearly mad, like the Danish couple who had visited as they cycled around the world and said they had been on the road for two years. There was a photograph of them beside their entry: they were well into the sixties and were sitting on a tandem. Can anyone who is married imagine being on a tandem with your partner for more than a Sunday afternoon, let alone two years? It’s hard enough being married and looking at the same face every morning over breakfast; imagine looking at the same arse all day long! And, if you’re at the front, how can you know if the person at the back is peddling as hard as you? What a great way to get your own back: just lean back, read a book and let the other one do the work. I’m sorry, it’s a great idea, but to make it work you both have to be slightly mental. Or Scandinavian.

The reason the hotel was popular was because it was at the bottom of the old road to Kathmandu. The new road took most of the traffic, so this one was quiet when it came to cars. It took you over the Daman Pass, famous for being one of the highest passes you can cross on a bicycle at 2,488 metres, from which there is an observation point where you can see Mount Everest.

I rode the 150 kilometres up to Kathmandu in 14 hours and arrived exhausted but happy. The height of the pass sounds impressive, but another reason the old road is attractive to cyclists is that the gradient of the climb is reduced by the road being cut into the side of the mountain at a shallow angle, so that you zigzag up, increasing your altitude steadily. This made it longer and slower than a more direct route, but also scenic and enchanting. It is the route that has been used for centuries, and when Kathmandu was closed to the world the Nepalese used it to reach the capital to bring their goods and animals to trade. I had experienced something unique: a bike ride you would never repeat in one of the most interesting places in the world.

I had said that I would phone Melanie when I reached Kathmandu, but as I didn’t know when that would be, I had not been able to arrange an exact day, and so I was not unduly concerned when there was no answer when I called the following day. I took the opportunity to see the city and catch up on some rest.

One of the first things I wanted to do was to go and visit the American Express office to see if anybody had used their mailing service to send me any letters. When I got there, however, the man behind the counter told me that he had sent all the letters to Delhi as apparently I had written to him to ask him to do so. The fact that I wasn’t in Delhi obviously confirmed that I hadn’t actually written to him, but he was able to show me a fax that had come from the American Express office in Delhi requesting that the letters for David Swift (which would have been written to David Swift care of John Bishop) be sent to Delhi. Deciding that if David Swift wanted his letters there, then perhaps John Bishop would do too, he had sent the lot.

My disappointment was immense. I knew Melanie had written during the days we had not been able to speak on the phone and I was desperate to read those thoughts. I had also not picked up any mail from anyone else for over a month, so to know that I would never read what was in them was a crushing blow. There is no greater loneliness than the feeling of never knowing what has been said.

In desperation to have some contact with home, I booked another call at the phone shop and tried to get Melanie.

When she answered the phone, I knew. As she broke down, she told me she had lost the baby. I was standing in one of five phone booths in a shop in Kathmandu whilst people either side of me held conversations in various languages, and my world collapsed. I couldn’t speak. The thing that had been a surprise had become all I had thought about for weeks. Surprise had turned into excitement. Excitement had turned into hope. And now it was gone. I was on the other side of the world trying to speak through a piece of plastic to heal a broken heart in England, and as my five minutes of call-time passed by in a flash, the line went dead.

I was unable to book another call due to a long queue, so I walked into the streets of Kathmandu in a daze. I was lost, confused and lonelier than I ever imagined possible. I could only imagine what Melanie was going through. Our future had been changed by the pregnancy and now it had been stolen from us.

I decided that I had to see her. I was ahead of the schedule I’d imposed on myself, but now all my motivation was gone. I just needed to put my arms around her. I found out that there was one flight a week to England, and that was not due again for six days. So, the following morning, I went to the airport and with the aid of a $20 bribe managed to get a seat on the only plane travelling to Delhi that day.

In Delhi, I bought a ticket to London via Frankfurt from a man in a shop in the city centre who sold household goods such as brushes and dustpans, and airline tickets. I was not convinced till we were in the air that he had even sold me an actual ticket, although my promise to come back and murder him if he was ripping me off may have convinced him it was worth making sure my ticket was valid.

Melanie had no idea I was coming but, just over 24 hours after leaving Nepal, I walked into the back garden of her father’s house where she was sitting in the sunshine. She saw me and, after a second’s hesitation, she ran into my arms. We said nothing, but just held each other for an age. We both had our own personal pain and disappointment to deal with, but in that hug we allowed ourselves to share our loss together for the first time.

I could have turned around and gone straight back because, in that moment, all my questions were answered; whatever happened, I wanted to be connected to Melanie for the rest of my life. I stayed for a week in England without letting anyone except my family know. During the time home, I went with Melanie to a guest house in Buxton. I had already asked her father’s approval and so, after emerging from the shower one evening, I went down on one knee and asked her to marry me.

I must say that when I asked her father for his daughter’s hand in marriage, I never mentioned I would pop the question with all I had to offer on show. Had I told him, I am not sure he would have granted his approval, but I think it was the best way to do it, nothing hidden. I had no doubt that I loved Melanie, and I wanted us both to have something to replace what we had lost, something for us both to look forward to, something to move our relationship on to another level. I guess I wanted the commitment I had run away from months before.

She said ‘yes’, and I returned to continue my journey through Nepal and India a man engaged to be married the following May.

Had Melanie not become pregnant, she would not have lost the baby when she did and I would not have proposed when I did. I was beginning to learn that, in life, circumstances often shape you and not the other way round. Had none of those things happened, I think it’s unlikely this book would ever have been written. I am writing this book because I am a comedian. I am a comedian because I married Melanie. I married Melanie because I learnt I loved her. I learnt I loved her because we lost something special.

Naked on one knee in a guest house in Buxton, I planted the seed that led to you reading this book, when I was actually supposed to be on the other side of the world riding a bike.