‘WITHIN seconds the pack is upon me. Four sets of angry teeth growling and barking. It is my worst nightmare’ – Angus Neaves.
IF you tried to name someone who had a more adventurous 2023 than young Newry local Angus Neaves, you would be hard-pressed to come up with a more thrilling story.
After high school graduation and pondering ‘what’s next?’, Neaves, fuelled by a desire to carve his own path, embarked on a 15,000-kilometre solo bikepacking adventure from Mongolia to Scotland.
“I really wanted to do a bit of self-discovery, if you want to call it that; learning about who I am and where I want to go on my own journey and path, and I think that some solitude and time alone allows for that reflection,” Neaves said.
Between April and December last year, he ventured through 16 countries on a second-hand bike he bought online, raising money for the TreeProject Fund and The Environmental Defenders Office.
He was armed with nothing more than a tent, a handful of spare clothes, a phone, three water bottles, and an abundance of determination, if not a touch of naivety.
Neaves admitted he is “the opposite of a planner” and “someone who just goes with the flow”.
This meant the resourceful youngster encountered a lot of learning curves on the road.
From finding an appropriate approach to mapping, conversing with locals using Google translate when he needed help, to engineering a tent pole out of sticks, and even buying a week’s worth of food at a time were necessary learning curves because towns and truck stops where he resupplied were few and far between.
At least he is a strong rider and no stranger to extreme cycling.
Neaves, having cycled seriously since 2016, has competed in state and national mountain bike racing championships across Australia, placing within the top five on several occasions.
The temptation to watch friends compete in the 2023 Cycling World Championships held in Glasgow, Scotland, sowed the seed of adventure in Neaves’ mind.
However, it was a more poignant childhood memory that set Angus on the path he would eventually take.
“I read a book when I was quite young by Tim Cope, who rode his horse from Mongolia to Hungary, so I always wanted to go see Mongolia,” Neaves said.
“Once I had Mongolia in mind, I started looking at ways to go (from there).”
Neaves made tracks from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s bustling capital in April 2023.
Thrown into uncharted territory, the young rider found himself navigating bustling highways surrounded by fast-moving trucks and cars, a stark contrast to the quiet backroads he typically cycles along with his father near their family’s dairy farm in Newry.
The unfamiliar world he had entered contrasted with the comforts of home in various ways.
In blog posts Neaves kept as he travelled, the vast emptiness and arid environment of the Eurasian steppe conjure imagery of a lone rider made even lonelier by sheer distance he would come to cover over the next eight months.
Despite the inhospitable landscape, Neaves said the people he encountered along the way were welcoming.
“I met quite a lot of people on the road, and just chatted to them for half an hour and kept going,” he said.
“There were a few people I rode with for a day and then we said our goodbyes in the morning.”
As he rode through the deserts of the world’s largest landlocked country, Kazakhstan, which he traversed in two months, he conversed and dined with hospitable locals that invited him into their homes, offering a good meal and a place to stay.
Perhaps finding a sense of belonging and a connection to home in more secluded areas, Neaves noted that remote settlements were inhabited by some of the warmest and friendliest people he met.
“There’s more adventure on the dirt (roads) and its more fun meeting people that not many tourists get to see. They’re usually friendlier people as well – more hospitable and curious.
“They’re quite curious about what a white fella is doing in their little town out in the middle of nowhere,” he said.
Some of his favourite memories were made in Kazakhstan and Albania, where he put the bike aside to explore “amazing rocky mountains” on foot.
But emotions along the way were as undulating as the Albanian mountains he came to love because the journey was not without its “low moments”.
Not so different from fellow Gippslander Tim Cope’s experience facing blood thirsty wolves as he crossed the Eurasian steppe, Neaves too had multiple run ins with protective sheep-herding dogs in Azerbaijan.
Such encounters became a frightening tale he recounted in a blog post:
‘The higher I get the more Shepherd camps I pass … Blue tarps shaped like a rainbow make a small hut for sleeping and another makes a house for the chooks. The fact that there is chooks makes me think people live up on the mountains seasonally, allowing their flocks to graze on the summer grass. As I pass by I pray that there are no dogs. There doesn’t seem to be. But when I reach the steep part of the road past the camp, a smaller dog comes out barking its head off.
Suddenly more come into view. All, running as fast as they can, straight at me. I put the hammer down, trying to escape from the thunder behind me. It is no use. The road is simply too steep. I stop and try to act big. Within seconds the pack is upon me. Four sets of angry teeth growling and barking. It is my worst nightmare. I yell back at them but can’t even hear my own voice over their noise. I’m using my bike as a shield. Hoping they don’t come closer. They do. I’m no longer at the top of the food chain. Right now, I’m at the bottom.
Soon they are all within half a metre of me. Snarling, barking, teeth flared. I’m totally out of control. As one dog takes a plunge towards me, I try to kick or yell at it, but taking my eyes off the others allows them access to the other side of me. My head is on a swivel. Constantly checking each dog, making sure they don’t bite me. I try to bend down and pick up a rock, but as I do the largest of the pack plunges in towards my face. I can’t pick anything up. What’s next? Where are the owners? I see them walking up the hill seemingly out of breath. I signal for the boy, no older than nine, to hurry up. I swing my bike around with all my might, trying to give myself more room. It is no use. I’m surrounded.’
No other moment cemented the fact he was a stranger in a strange world more than this.
Despite these encounters, a relentless week of illness in Italy, camping in minus 12-degree conditions, two broken phones, hours of bike maintenance, and a broken tent pole, the young Gippslander persevered, staying committed to his bike and successfully completing his mission.
“I was quite homesick at certain times, but because I had announced I was going to Scotland I felt like I couldn’t just go home, so I think that (goal) saved me in the end,” he said.
“Getting through those low moments, (realising) that they do come and go, was quite a big learning for me.
“If you push through, you’re going to get to good parts again.”
And get to the good parts he did; photographs of rocky white-capped mountains, vast deserts, deep blue lakes, dew-covered fields, sunset campsite views all to himself, and a perpetually smiling Angus tell their own story.
“I had a really nice moment in Georgia,” Neaves reminisced.
“I came up to a dam just north of the capital, Tbilisi, it was after a big day and the light was just amazing and I had a lot of endorphins going.”
During moments when Neaves wasn’t taking in the scenery but focused on putting kilometres behind him, he found solace in Spotify playlists and audiobooks, particularly favouring cycling-related podcasts like professional American mountain biker Payson McLeevan’s The Adventure Stache.
In a serendipitous turn of events, fuelled by Neaves winning a giveaway on the podcast and the creator’s seeing images of his bikepacking adventure on his social media, Neaves found himself featured as a guest on The Adventure Stache.
“It was funny,” Neaves said.
“They do this giveaway for the listeners where they have questions on Instagram Stories based on previous podcasts to see if you’ve been listening, and the prize was a pair of socks.
“I won, and when they went to DM me on Instagram, they saw my (pictures) and thought it was cool, so they asked me to come on.”
While Neaves was staying in England towards the end of his journey, he shared his story with McElveen, who called his bikepacking adventure the “ultimate gap year”.
Among the group of known and lesser-known professional cyclists featured on the podcast, Neaves stands out as the individual who has undertaken the longest bike ride.
It capped off an incredible adventure, which he completed when he crossed the Scottish border in early December 2023.
But as one journey ends another begins, as Neaves leaves to study a Bachelor of Science, majoring in regenerative agriculture at Southern Cross University in Lismore, New South Wales.
Angus has no plans to put on the brakes, as he looks forward to exploring the Byron Bay hinterlands on his mountain bike.
