Pokhara 20th May 2006

I went for a ride around the lake as I heard that it leads to some amazing villages that look as though they haven’t changed in 150 years. The weather was fine, but cloudy over the mountains, as usual. I got about five kilometres around the lake and the bikes clutch was playing up again – which is starting to get a bit annoying at this stage, so I decided to head back into town and see if I could get someone to have a proper look at it and strip the clutch right down.

Just up the road from my guesthouse, on the way to town, I noticed a small workshop that specialised in repairing Bullets, there were also several bullets outside, which was a good sign. I decided to pop in and get the guy to have a look at it. When I pulled in this big white Dutch guy came over to me and introduced himself as Peter and there was an Aussie guy, Don (I think) and they both started looking the bike over and were very chatty. Turns out that they are customers and hang out at the garage talking motorbikes a lot of the day. The mechanic was crouched down inspecting an engine and I didn’t get to talk to him for ten minutes. Don asked me what happened to the clutch casing (nothing as far as I knew), but when I looked the casing had completely cracked and when I pulled the clutch in the complete housing moved. Not a good sign. What had happened is the that the other mechanics had over tightened the bolts on the other side of the bike, which resulted in the main bolt on the clutch side becoming loose and pushing against the casing.

Raju, the mechanic, lad a quick look at the bike, had a cigarette, chatted a bit, had a cup of tea, had a bit of a chat, looked at another bike and then stripped and repaired the clutch in about five minutes, he also had an old clutch casing lying around which he cleaned up and put on. He then actually tested the bike (something no other mechanic did), came back and adjusted a couple of things and gave me back the bike and told me to test it. It was like riding a new bike, the clutch felt very tight and the bike just pops into gear now. The whole job cost me 650 NR (about £5 GBP) so I asked him if he could have a look at my front suspension and a few other small bits and pieces. The above process took about three hours to complete, although as I said the work itself took no longer than five minutes. Several more bikers popped in and out during my time there, both Nepalese and European, turns out the local bike club use him to service all their bikes, and it’s become the unofficial club house. By the time I got out of there it was gone 18:00, and I dropped my bike back to the guesthouse (after agreeing to drop my bike off at 09:00 the next morning at Raju’s).

I went out and got some dinner then went to the Busy Bee restaurant to meet up with some of the bikers and played pool and listened to the live band. I had a good night and didn’t end up getting back home until 02:30, well it had started raining heavily around midnight, and no one really wanted to go out in it (that’s my excuse anyway