Reflections on the Road: The Meanings of Mileage Markers

Early on in my fourteen-month journey across Asia, while sitting atop the Great Wall of China, I wrote in my notebook, "Many ways exist to measure a journey -- miles, months, passport stamps.  But now another measure has come to mind: walls traversed."  In the year that followed my visit to the Great Wall, most of what I wrote would have to do with traversing walls of some sort (though not the physical kind).

But in this photo essay I want to pay tribute to one of the old fashioned ways of measuring a journey: miles traversed -- or, as is more often the case, kilometers traversed.  Whatever their size or shape, I love the frame of reference mileage markers provide the traveler.  There's nothing like seeing a marker that says something like "700", then sixteen hours later, in a semi-delirious state, finding one which brings better news because it now says, let's say, "5".

Billy Joel's 1989 hit "We Didn't Start the Fire" includes the town's name its lyrics, but Dien Bien Phu isn't recognizable to most Americans.  To the Vietnamese, however, it is well known, for here in northwest of their nation a pivotal point in their history occurred.  What follows is an excerpt from an article I've written about the town:

Looking for a way to win a decisive victory over the Vietnamese agitating for independence, the French moved their forces into the village of Dien Bien Phu. This was an ideal place, they thought, to draw Viet Minh forces into a confrontation in which they would be decimated by French firepower.  The steep and heavily forested mountains around the valley were deemed impassible for Viet Minh artillery, and without artillery the Vietnamese wouldn't stand a chance.  This assumption, however, was a catastrophic error.  Employing the ingenuity and willpower that years later would serve them well against the Americans, the Viet Minh did indeed haul artillery to the mountain tops and turned the table on the French.  With planes now unable to land and the roads severed, the French had no way to escape Dien Bien Phu, and the constant rain of artillery slowly bled them until they could no longer fight.  They had misjudged their adversary and it led to their defeat.  Seven thousand legionnaires were either killed or injured and another 12,000 had been taken prisoner.

Several hundred miles from Dien Bien Phu is the Vietnamese city of Nha Trang.  If my memory is correct, the first time I saw "Nha Trang" was as a kid watching "Magnum PI".  I think it was TJ who sometimes wore a cap with the words written across the front.  So that was my first exposure to the place -- letters on a hat. 

Little did I know that I would one day visit the city myself.  But not only that -- here I would even come to the defense of a pineapple. 

Centuries ago, Cambodia was a great power and ruled over territory stretching from Vietnam to the Malay Peninsula.  The empire's center was Angkor, a city that at its peak held a population estimated at one million people -- twenty times larger than London at the time.  Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Cambodia constructed a vast temple complex at Angkor.

The empire crumbled in the 15th century.  Today Cambodia is an impoverished, troubled nation, still in many ways gutted from the trauma of years of violence.  An estimated 100,000 Cambodian civilians were killed by U.S. bombing in the early 1970s, but the greatest slaughter came in the late 1970s during the reign of the Khmer Rouge.  From 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1,700,000 Cambodians -- 21 percent of the country's population.

Cambodia's recent history is too painful for many of its citizens to talk about.  But Cambodians find pride in the temples of Angkor, where the distance marker above is located.  Today the hundreds of buildings are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  The site is free to Cambodians; for foreigners the cost is $20 for a one-day pass, or $40 dollars for a three-day pass.  For photographs from Angkor, click HERE.

This mileage marker sits along a little-used stretch of road in northern Thailand, in an area known as the Golden Triangle.  Behind the marker flows the Mekong River.  The region is known for its drug trade, but all one can see growing from the highway is corn.  (For more pictures from this region, click on "Reflections on the Road: the Mekong River.")

On a train between the Indian cities of Gorakhpur and Varanasi I often had a nice view of my neighbor's foot.  But every so often I'd catch sight of a distance marker as well, which were spaced out all along the track.

Here in the far north of Pakistan, the Karakoram Highway (KKH) cuts a path through daunting terrain en route to the Chinese border.  The highway, built at the cost of hundreds of lives, was inaugurated in the 1980s.  And just last year China and Pakistan signed a memorandum of understanding, expressing the intent to upgrade the 10-meter-wide highway to 30 meters.  The planned upgrade is connected to the recent opening of the Pakistani port of Gwadar, which was financed by China and which China intends to use robustly.  (The port is western China's closest link to the sea and thus a widened KKH will facilitate increased movement of goods.)

Incidentally, China's heavy investments in Pakistan is worrying the United States and will likely be a pressing issue in the years ahead.  As a recent article in the Christian Science Monitor puts it, "As China positions itself as Pakistan's chief patron, that could tilt Pakistan's center of political gravity, observers add, outweighing US influence dollar for dollar – and without the strings of human rights, democracy, and counterterrorism attached."

The highest point of the Karakoram Highway is the 15,397-foot Khunjerab Pass, where China and Pakistan meet.  This is the first distance marker I saw on the Chinese side.  The final destination of this leg of my journey, the city of Kashgar, was still a day and a half away.

		Joel Carillet, Gather Travel Correspondent
	Joel's column, "Reflections on the Road," is published every other Thursday to Gather Essentials: Travel. His articles, based on extensive travels in Asia and the Middle East, seek to shed light on humanity, both our own and that of others.   They aim not merely to entertain and inform but also to develop a sense of connection between the reader and the world. Joel's writing and photography have appeared in several magazines and newspapers, including the Kansas City Star and Christian Science Monitor.  Currently he is seeking an agent for a book manuscript entitled Sixty-One Weeks: A Journey across Asia. When not on the road, he happily calls Tennessee home. Keep up with Joel's article series by joining his network, or subscribing to his content.