…HAI, or maybe …JING or …KYO or …?, is a project that I’ve been dreaming about since I heard the name of Samarcanda for the first time (I remember that it was in a song, but at that time I didn’t know exactly where nor how it was, I just knew that I wanted to get there somehow). Coming back from China in 2002, during (too) long hours spent on the train, I had all the time to look at the maps of that route, a few hundred kilometres southern than the one I was going through, getting a clearer idea of the trip. But it was only in a Sunday morning of 2009 when the letters HAI started to twinkle in my mind, soon followed by MAD.
MADHAI: from MADrid to shangHAI, was then a trip by car from the Puerta del Sol all the way to the Madrid pavilion in the Shanghai World Expo 2010. It was meant to be a documentary movie, a website, hundreds of photos, some videos for the pavilion, interviews… it was meant to be www.madhai.net and much more, but crisis of different kinds managed to change its shape, time and even its title. The trip as I’ve been planning it, all on 4 wheels and through 17 countries, has been delayed, increased and made fall to pieces, until it left me with this blog, a car that won’t run more than the first 2000km, many trains to catch, a bicycle to get where the 4 wheels would have bring me and a lot of question marks.
What is clear now is the MAD. To the …HAI let’s see when, how and if I’m going to get.
