RIDING IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Back in the 1980s, there was an intrepid Aussie explorer called Alby Mangles on TV. He travelled to the most remote and exotic places on earth. In one episode, he visited a place called Aseki in the highlands of PNG where, instead of burying their dead, villagers smoked them in longhouses and assembled them in life-like positions in shrines in the jungle. Alby’s footage of the shrivelled, ghoul-like corpses made a lasting impression on me, and I dreamed of following in his footsteps.
In 2010, I finally bought a ticket to PNG, but didn’t get to see the smoked corpses on that trip because of the logistical difficulties of reaching Aseki, which lies in a remote part of the Highlands. I had to wait until my fourth trip to PNG in 2015 for the stars to align, and I found a guide who had strong enough motorbikes to make the journey. It was even weirder than I imagined it to be.
Papua New Guinea is about the same size as Thailand, but only has about a dozen highways. Even then, they are not in great condition. Torrential monsoon rains and landslides lift and destroy the foundations of roads soon after they are built, there’s a lack of government funding for infrastructure, plus an incredibly challenging mountainous landscape. There is no road, for example, linking the capital Port Moresby to
