Empat Sepeda, we’re called like this in Java language. Now that our two friends from Ravenna have joined us to try to do understand our travel, we’re four bikes. We know each other from long time and suddenly it’s nice to meet again in a longer trail with stories to reveal and months to tell. In four we’re as a small cycling team, where the goal is not go fast to arrive before, but to share feelings, that words can’t. I think that friendship is even this truly understand what is passing through the people who are close to you, how they’re living.
Indonesia is a land of smiling people, mostly poor and not touristic.
Crossing carnival parades where people used to dance in the street blocking the traffic, but waking up the joy of being together. Pedaling for hours on flat moorland, cultivated rice that shade in swamp or saline close to the sea. We’re like migratory swallows that overfly chatting, our Christmas nest is southern, towards Bali. Everywhere we find simply and hot street food, the new entry who are virgin of the real oriental flavors feel strongly the gastronomy changing. The habits are rustic , without toilet paper, without cutlery, without shower, but just with a water bucket…it’s need a good adaptability and with a smile everything turns into an experience to remember.

In fact, yesterday night we camped in the open gallery of a mosque, we washed ourselves after 7 hours of cycling in the basin where Muslim wash their feet before praying. We eated plain rice with chicken paws broth and we communicated with gestures before fainting on the cold floor lulled by the mosquito buzz and by the truck horse.
Like Carmen Consoli sings “ for every waiver coincide a counterpart” , what we lost in comfort we gained upon awakening: a colorful dawn, the song of the minaret imam and hundreds of kids around us, to laugh and hug the new guest with white skin and travel byclicle…it seemed a dream, it seemed a hyms to life.