Travel Quote by John Pomfret

It is hard to hear “bicycle” here without hearing “constraint.” Pomfret’s sentence isn’t really about a quaint mode of getting around; it’s a practical solution to a social physics problem: density. The key verb is “could move though the crowd” (the slight slip of “though” for “through” almost helps, suggesting motion despite obstruction). A bicycle becomes a technology of improvisation, a way to thread the needle when normal infrastructure, authority, or privilege can’t clear a path.

The specific intent feels documentary: to pin a moment in time by naming the tool that made daily life possible. But the subtext is bigger. “Main form of transportation” implies the absence or unreliability of alternatives. In crowded cities, in protests, in disasters, in periods of political volatility, the bike is what still works when cars stall and transit routes collapse. It’s mobility stripped down to human power and maneuverability: you can dismount, you can lift it, you can merge with pedestrians. That adaptability is the real point.

Contextually, Pomfret reads like a reporter recalling a scene where movement itself had meaning. Choosing a bicycle is also choosing proximity. You don’t glide above people; you’re inside the press of them, navigating at their speed, absorbing the mood, the noise, the friction. The line quietly signals how the crowd wasn’t background but the defining condition - and how survival, work, or witnessing depended on staying agile within it.