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A photographic journey from China to Portugal

By Rod Loboz

March 3^rd, 2024

foreword

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars”

Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Back in 2009 I did a 4 month overland trip from Macau, China to Lisbon, Portugal, across two continents, visiting 34 cities in 19 countries, almost 20,000 kms without flying. It feels like a lifetime ago. Another world, even. I can say that I tasted true freedom, free from routines, free from schedules, free to roam wherever I desired, adapting to every new challenge and circumstance. After a while, I realised I had stopped asking other travellers what their occupation was. What they and myself did for a living became irrelevant.

What do you do became where are you going.

I started taking photos so I could send them to a newspaper that had agreed to run my stories. I didn’t know much about photography then. Looking back, as I was selecting which photos to use for this article, I discovered that my favourite photos are now those which feature people in them. What a shame that that I didn’t realise then how much more interesting photographs with people in them are. Those few ones that I did for some reason take with people in them are the ones that I now look more fondly upon and which sparkle the most vivid memories in me. Because where there is a person there is a story.

I dedicate this story to all the fantastic, mad, wonderful people I met on the road.

China

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I spent one full month travelling in China. So it’s no surprise that it was difficult to pick which photos to use in this section. My initial shortlist had over 100 photos in China! It’s also interesting that even though I wasn’t aiming to photograph people, I do have quite a bit of photos featuring Chinese. I think it’s because to a Westerner, everything in China seems interesting and unique, everyone catches your eye. Even the most mundane tasks look incredible and different. I started in Macau and went to Hong Kong for a day. I had been to Hong Kong many times and just wanted to get a couple of photos while I waited for my Russian visa to be ready. I officially set off a couple of days later from Macau to Guangzhou, where I stayed with a good friend from home who had been living there for years. My stops in China were Guilin, Yangshuo, Chengdu, Xi’an, Shanghai and finally Beijing.

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Yao Woman, Huangluo Village, Guangxi, China

Woman, Longsheng Rice Terraces, Guangxi, China

Brother and Sister, Muslim Quarter, Xi'an, China

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Yulong River Bamboo Rafts, Yangshuo, China

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Master Li, Yulong River, Yangshuo, China

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Crocodile in a Restaurant, Guangzhou, China

Mother and Cub, Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, Chengdu, China

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Liu Sanjie Show on Li River, Yangshuo, China

Service Station Toilets, Somewhere between Guangdong and Guangxi Provinces, China

Du Fu Thatched Cottage Park, Chengdu, China

The Transmongolian: Beijing - Moscow

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Beijing-Moscow Train, Trans-Mongolian Railway, Beijing Railway Station

When people tell me that a trip of a couple of hours seems too long, I reply that I once spent 6 days on a train. People don’t seem to believe that’s even possible. It’s an extraordinary experience of solitude but also of bonding with fellow travellers. Everyone getting drunk on warm beer in the restaurant car in the afternoon after setting off from Beijing and later in the evening getting locked down for more than 1 hour inside Erenhot railway station while the train was having its rolling stock changed. Someone who had stayed behind on the train to watch the bogies being replaced had to pee into a plastic bottle because the toilets get locked shut once the train stops. Leaving China to the sound of the Chinese national anthem blaring through the speakers on the platform and waking up the following morning in the midst of the dusty emptiness of the Gobi desert. Later throughout that day watching the landscape slowly wrinkle into the rolling green hills of the Mongolian steppe. At the Russian border, seeing aggressive looking soldiers with breathing masks (it was the alleged onset of the swine flu pandemic then) climb onto the train for passport control. They spoke in grunts and ordered passengers out of their seats and checked all cabins for illegal items. Hearing stories about travellers stepping too far away during stops and missing the train, and later seeing that almost happen to a fellow passenger. Taking books with me to read but spending hours on my own looking at the landscape or writing in my journal instead. Watching a Russian army captain in the restaurant car go through a bottle of vodka all on his own and then hearing him invite me, in his terrible broken English, more gestures and gutural sounds than words, to stay with his family near Lake Baikal to hunt bears together. Finally, on the sixth day arriving in Moscow just when the cabin fever was starting to get a hold of me.

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Somewhere on the Trans-Siberian Railway, Russia

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Lockdown, Erenhot Railway Station, China

Russia

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Russia is not easy on the traveller who doesn’t speak Russian, but for me the tough travel experiences are the ones that linger more in my memory. Unfortunately I was on a transit visa and only had the time to quickly visit Moscow and Saint Petersburg. But I had the chance to visit The Hermitage museum in Saint Petersburg, which, in the words of its director, is arguably the best museum in the world.

The Baltic States

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After more than one month of travelling from one place to the next I arrived in Tallinn but ended up staying for more days than I had initially planned. The old town felt to me a bit artificial as its buildings looked brand-new and immaculately clean, a sort of Disneyland to hoax tourists to come along and spend their money on their fake rides. Nevertheless, it was a great feeling to be able to take my time and leisurely enjoy the town at the pace of the locals who have all the time in the world to see the attractions of their own city. Not that there was much to see, but after the bustle of the massive cities in China, it was a good feeling to be somewhere relaxed, where I blended in with the the local population. Riga, on the other hand, has a much more Soviet aura, perhaps also due to the fact that it still boasts many Latvia born Russians. It might have been the only place where I barely had any contact with locals. Vilnius was a breath of fresh air and I fell in love with the capital of Lithuania. Back then, low-cost flights were going to Kaunas, the second largest city of Lithuania, and for the first time in a while I actually saw local people enjoying their own city centre. Despite what they may say, Lithuanians are a very friendly people and they shared a lot of the history of their country with me.

House of the Blackheads and St. Peter's Church, Riga, Latvia

Eastern Europe

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I stopped in Krakow (Poland) after Lithuania. It’s a lovely city but with a lot more tourists than Vilnius. Visiting Auschwitz was an eerie experience but one that should definitely be taken up by everyone — in the state the world today is in, it seems that the horrors of WWII are beginning to fade away from our collective memory. I had been to Prague before but enjoyed it much more the first time. Hordes of tourists moved about the city in a procession of big cameras, paper maps, straw hats and expensive casual clothes. I heard all sorts of foreign languages except Czech. After Prague I stopped at Brno for two days before visiting Bratislava in Slovenia. From Slovenia onwards I travelled with a friend from Australia I had met in Prague and we did Transylvania and a quick stop at Bucharest in Romania before the fear and loathing days in Varna on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria. After Varna we just wanted to take it slow. Veliko Tarnovo and Sofia are but memories of lazy and brief strolls close to the hostel and huge cheap meals once a day.

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Sofia, Bulgaria

Brașov Council Square, Brașov, Transylvania, Romania

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Church of Peter and Paul, Krakow, Poland

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The Balkans

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I celebrated my 30th birthday in Belgrade. I had always been curious about that area because of the war. It was perhaps the first big war I remember watching regularly on the news back in 1993. It’s appalling what went on down there. The Balkan region has magnificent landscapes. Sarajevo, for instance, is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever been too. If you take the road trip from Belgrade, it hits you in all its splendour, as you’re coming down the mountain and it opens up to the valley, the spires of Sarajevo’s many mosques glinting on the mountainside and far down in the valley. Bosnia was an unexpected but pleasant surprise, even though unfortunately it was perhaps the one country which suffered more during the war. In Croatia, the lady who owned the hostel told me that a lot of Croats feel they were mislead in the war which broke the mighty Yugoslavia apart. They were told everything would be better with independence but now they were alone and isolated. The coastline of Croatia is a true gem though and the Adriatic sea feels more like a gigantic saltwater swimming pool whereinto you can plunge without a breath of hesitation. I was nearly broke by the end of my stay in Ljubljana (Slovenia), but still managed to miss a train, which was the only single train missed in 4 months — although there had been some pretty close calls before.

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The Final Leg

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On my way to Milan, I stopped in Venice for a couple of hours. What an extraordinary city of majestic vision. Unfortunately, too expensive to linger. I spent one night at a friend’s place in Milan and his wife and him showed me around the city — I must confess though, that I was a bit disappointed with the pizza. How curious that 6 years later my Sicilian girlfriend would save Italy’s reputation on that regard. Another train down to Genoa on the coastline. I wanted to squeeze in a boat journey on this trip, albeit a short one in comparison with the scale of the whole journey. I boarded The Majestic bound to Barcelona. I met two crazy Italians who were headed to one of the islands. They spent the following day buying me glasses of wine and when I arrived to Barcelona at dusk I felt tipsy. In one of those strange twists that happens when you travel, I ended up staying with a friend I had met earlier in China, at the beginning of my trip. She was kind enough to let me crash for two or three days at her place in the lovely quarter of Gracia. After Barcelona I was almost home. I took a train to Madrid and got on the overnight train to Lisbon.