How Do I Look…

…like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards? Or like I’ve cycled through Kazakhstan and Xinjiang into the Mongolian Altai?

We were staying with Jenta in her home on Altai, Bayan-Ölgii (Ölgii is the province we are in and towns need their province name added in Mongolia because there are so many towns with the same name). Jenta kindly offered her house when we asked about a guesthouse in the Altai grocery store.

When we reached Altai we were tired after 85km on Mongolian 4WD tracks and an encounter with some sort of official guy who’d stuck his car in a bog and declined our help but demanded our ‘permit’. After a few bouts of Google Translate he got bored with us. Mosquitoes were biting ferociously, his family were sitting in the Toyota Corolla hatchback looking sullen, and two motorcyclists had stopped and appeared to be the car rescue team. He finished our exchange with, “The border guards will pick you up, okay?”

Well, not very okay, but what can you do on a mostly deserted braid plain with the wind behind you other than keep cycling towards your destination? We were stopped at the outskirts of Altai by a smiling older man (he also could have been our age – it’s a tough life in the Mongolian Altai) m. He asked where we had come from and where we were going then looked happy when we said we were going to sleep in Altai. Was he a border guard (but he didn’t have a uniform)? Or a foot and mouth control person (but he didn’t have a bleach sprayer)?

Chris was already pretty keen on staying in a house after the last week in the mountains and we figured border guards would be happier if we were findable at a house rather than semi-hidden (though there’s not much to hide behind in the Altai) in a tent. However, when we cycled around town with an honour guard of small boys on their bikes, the guesthouse marked in Maps.Me just looked like a house with no one home, Google Maps had no advice, so the best place to find anything was a grocery store where Jenta happened to be buying produce.

Jenta is a nurse and her husband a sports teacher. We didn’t meet him as he was in Katon Karagay horse riding with his son and sister (we stayed in Katon Karagai as we cycled through the Kazakh Altai). Minjuu, the family’s oldest daughter at 15, was told to look after us by Jenta after she piled the table with bread, meat, curd, cucumber, apples and watermelon then rushed back to the hospital. Minjuu has done two years of English classes and went really well with her English. We had an entertaining afternoon and evening talking with Minjuu and playing with 3 year old Denise who carried her prized possessions around in a gold-painted tray. They included a Barbie whose head and arms were regularly removed to change into one of her 3 dresses or to be shaken upside down at us, a hair brush, blue latex gloves and a rainbow-coloured toy that’s like regenerating bubble wrap. Minjuu’s friend turned up and they washed their hair together and watched TikTok videos in a very teenage way. Then another younger, smiling girl with glasses came and was tasked with playing with Denise. A boy was added to the mix and the house was full and disorderly.

By 8pm we were getting pretty hungry (homestays include food in Mongolia). Minjuu finally started chopping up meat and put rice in a pot. This looked promising until the power went out and all the kids deserted the building. They reappeared with the power some time after we went to bed having eaten bread with jam.

But getting back to the subject of how one looks…in the morning Jenta put on another big spread of eggs (boiled and fried), bread, cucumber and the previous night’s meat and potatoes with rice and buckwheat meal. As we ate large helpings, she picked at a boiled egg and showed us pictures of herself at 95kg, with Minjuu translating that Jenta now weighed 70kg and did exercise class every morning at 5am.

I thought how pervasive body image issues are and flinched when Jenta gestured to show how fat Minjuu would get if she kept eating bread slathered with mayonnaise. One great thing about bike packing is the lack of mirrors – I completely forget how I look. I suppose I could use my phone to see myself but why would I? There’s a wonderful freedom in not caring about how you look, only about how your body functions. So when I went to take the selfie of Jenta, Minjuu, Chris and myself, it was the first time in a week I’d had any thought relating to how I might look. I tried hitting my hair with the flat of my hand to make it sit down (it was reluctant) and everyone laughed.

Social media has made a bad problem worse in relation to body image. I recently read a blog post of Jenny Tough’s (an extraordinary long distance runner and cyclist who has run through seven mountain ranges solo, including the Southern Alps of NZ). Jenny is in her thirties and wondering whether to dye her hair because a few grey strands are appearing and whether to go further with look-enhancement like lip fillers because her income is from media articles and presentations about her physical exploits, and this industry require her to look good. This is beyond sad. Jenny emphasised her situation is a choice but the choice seems to be driven by other’s expectations of how she should look rather than any internally-generated desire on her part to look ‘better’.

I do notice how the bike packing/cycle touring bloggers who appear in my social media feeds look perfect. it irritates me because no one looks good at every time of day when doing hard exercise in harsh environments. The bloggers all look like they just woke up after a brilliant night’s sleep with their hair freshly washed and make-up applied (the women). Presumably they use the skills harnessed by airline attendants who are similarly impressive. You stagger bleary-eyed and sleep deprived from the airplane bathroom on your long haul flight and marvel at how they look impossibly immaculate.

Age helps, of course, on the not caring front. I’m not hunting for a mate and the expectations of other people matter less every year. But I’d like there to be some other way to help people get off the body image treadmill that didn’t involve taking yourself out of normal environments and eschewing mirrors. Until I think of something better, my contribution will have to be posting pictures and videos of myself looking like I forgot to look in a mirror.