What Happens When Two Strangers Trust The Rides Of Their Lives To The Magic Of The Universe?

Once upon a road in Kazakhstan, two men converge in the desert. Strangers born an ocean apart, riding bicycles burdened like camels, they emerge from either horizon, slowly approaching a common point. Day by day, hour after hour, they make their way through the land as flat and featureless as a page without words. Thousands of kilometers spool out behind them. Thousands more lie ahead.

- Kim Cross

One rides east. The other, west.

For months now, each has been pedalling, alone, through sun, wind, rain, and snow, climbing mountains, crossing plains, and loading his bike onto boats to float across minor seas. Now, on a Sunday morning in August, they soldier down an unpaved Soviet road that never seems to bend. The only sound is tyres crunching on gravel; and now and then, the lonely roar of a truck hurrying between two somewheres.

The earth spins. The sun rises. Long shadows shrink into puddles of shade beneath their spinning wheels. From dawn to dusk, in every direction, the landscape looks the same.

The only thing that changes is the angle of the sun.

Then, through the shimmering heat, a blur appears on their common horizon and gradually comes into focus: a simple white box of a building on the edge of the dusty road. Next to it, a metal shipping container marked by a hand-painted word, Translation: chai khana, a teahouse, where travellers can find water, food and shade. The nearest city, on the Caspian Sea, is 380km away.

Here, under a noon Kazak sun, two sagas, by chance, eclipse.

The American is tall, 1.8m-odd, 90kg, smiling through the scraggly beard of a traveler who hasn’t seen a shower in days. He is 27 years old.

The Brit is shorter, 65kg, smiling through a blue bandana and a slightly darker beard. He is 26 years old.

“What the hell are you doing here?” says the American.

“What the hell are you doing here?” says the Brit.