One Year On And I'm Off Again..

Well, it's been nearly two years since I've been back in the UK and it's time for me to get out of the rat race again.  I've decided to cycle around the world for a couple of years and I'm leaving on 18th July 2008.

I going to try and raise some money for charity during my trip and I'm supporting two organizations who take care of the orphaned street kids in Nepal.  Please make a small donation (or a big one) as your money can make a massive difference to these kids life.  Log onto www.acousticmotorbike.com and either click on "Sponsor Me" logo or go to the link page to make a donation.

Namaste.

Aidan

Back to reality.........

Where did the 13 months go to? It's funny how time just slips away. I had lots of plans for when I left Nepal, but these went by the wayside as I couldn't leave Nepal. Such an amazing country. I stopped Blogging when I was in Nepal as it didn't seem right to write about people who I got close to and was seeing on a daily basis. I've got wonderful memories of my times there and the words come flooding back when I look at the photos I took during this time.

I've just started work on another blog just in case I decide to take off again...........

Namaste

Tibetian Old Boy

Des and I went to visit a Tibetian refugee camp (the first ever in Nepal) and wandered around the monastery and came across this old boy as we were having a glass of Chai. He had the most amazing smile (very gappy!) but clamped up when the camera pointed towards him.

Pokhara 13th July 2006

Here I am a month later. I didn’t feel like writing too much after Wolf died, lots of things happened that wouldn’t be right to put on a website.

Wolf was cremated in Kathmandu and we had a lovely day. Des, Oliver and I went to the German Embassy, where Wolf’s body had been moved to and we gave Wolf a motorbike escort to the burning ghats. When we got there we removed Wolf from the body bag and wrapped him in a shroud before placing him onto of the wood. We then dressed the body with orange garlands. Mo had spoken with Suzanne (Wolf’s girlfriend) and they asked me if I would take photographs of the ceremony. So I was busy running around taking photographs of these really picturesque ghats whilst kids played and men and women sat around.

Over forty people turned up for the cremation and the lady from the German embassy told us that this was “not normal, usually only zoo or zree people for foreigner”. Wolf’s friend from Germany brought a couple of crates of beer and everyone sat around, had a beer and told stores as our friend burned away in front of us. I’ve been to a couple of cremations before in the London, and they are horrible, impersonal affairs compared to Wolf’s cremation. We had three Baba’s there (holy men) who Wolf knew, we had goats walking around trying to eat the flowers (Wolf would have liked that), kids playing and normal life going on less than twenty metres away. Cheddup was excellent and he tended to the fire to make sure that the body burned properly. He’s burned many bodies (I didn’t want to ask…) and he was running around getting logs and straw. We went back to Cheddup’s bar (Jazz Upstairs) and he had laid food on and we had a really good night.

I ended up taking over 500 hundred photographs – I only had one chance to get this right. The photos came out really well and as a result of this I’ve had various little photography jobs and have even done some Photoshop training for someone. I burned copies of 100 of the photos onto CD and gave them to Rick and Mo to copy and distribute. I also did a couple of photo montages which I also put on CD, I’ll try and put some of the photos on this site.

I’ve met so many nice people here in Pokhara. I spent a week hanging around with two South African swimwear models (I was like the cat who had the cream – shame they both had boyfriends back home), drank with the head of the army (and his armed bodyguard), I’ve partied with a radio producer from Warzaw, had dinner with a mountaineering journalist, had numerous lunches with a Scottish journalist and have made so many amazing contacts. I’m also a paid photographer and graphic designer. I designed a logo and flyers for Rick and Mo’s business and there is plenty more of that type of work here for me to do. So many people have come up to me to compliment me on Wolf’s photos and one photo in particular which I never even took! It was a photo that Rick took and he thought it would look nice to frame it and put it in front of the burning ghat. The only problem was that Mo was sitting on her motorbike in the photo beside Wolf and there was an ox cart and other stuff in the background. I told them that I’d see if I could do anything with it. I ended up extracting Wolf from the photo and combining him with a photo of the fog / clouds I had ridden through on my way from Daman to Kathmandu, and it really worked.
Some guy from the Himalayan Enfielders (motorcycle touring club) in Kathmandu asked me to train him in photography. He’d just spent four days training with a professional Indian photographer and wanted to learn more. I asked him if he knew how to use Photoshop and he told me that he had a copy of CS2 (the latest version) but he never used it. I told him that I could improve his photography more in two hours using Photoshop than I could in two days teaching him photography. He told me that he’d pay, but I told him not to bother. Did I mention that he also runs a trekking business? He brought some photos that he took in a studio with the Indian photographer and they were technically ok, but lifeless. I showed him how to correct colour, remove spots, soften wrinkles and basically turn normal common garden people into super models, and it works. He couldn’t believe what I’d been able to do to his photos, actually, he couldn’t believe what he could do and he was dying to email the photo’s to the people in them.

I’ve tried to leave Nepal a couple of times in the last two weeks and get back on the road. I’ve failed every time, the latest attempt being yesterday! I said all my goodbyes and we had a few drinks and I woke up in the morning and couldn’t go. My visa runs out today (has it really been two months?), so I’ve got to head down to town and get a one-month renewal.

Baglung Family

I stopped for some Chai on the way to Baglung and got talking to the kids in the photo, so asked if I could take a photo with their mother.

Kathmandu 12th June 2006

I’ve had a good couple of days wandering around Kathmandu by myself taking in all the sights, but I fear that that’s all about to change.

Kathmandu is a city that is built to explore on foot, if you thought Olde London and Dublin have lots of alleyways and hidden passages to explore you ain’t seen nothing yet. I’ve wandered down countless dark alleyways which open up to splendid courtyards with ancient monuments / statues in them. Kathmandu is like an open-air museum; everywhere you go there are monuments, temples and statues. Some of the statues are no bigger than four inches tall and they are on the ground, the only way I can spot most of them is if someone has put flowers or other offerings down.

I spent yesterday wandering around Durbar Sq, which is where the city’s kings were crowned and ruled from. This is an area of the city that is in fact an open museum, at least for tourists who have to pay 200 Nepalese Rupees, but it’s worth every paisa. There are countless temples and shrines and there is also a giant bell and two great drums (on which a goat and a buffalo must be sacrificed twice a year). I managed to avoid most of the Sadu’s (“holy men”), as they never want to offer any spiritual advice as they are more concerned with trying to extract rupees from you, and had to tell about ten “guides” that I was perfectly capable of finding my way around the Square and that I needed to be alone to take photographs.

And take photographs I did. It was my first time out properly with my new lens and it was nice to have the option of changing the angle of view with the zoom after being stuck with a fixed lens for the last couple of months. I went a bit crazy and snapped anything that moved (or indeed stayed still) and ended up taking over four hundred photos (the joy of digital), most of them are “throw aways”, but there are a couple of good ones also.

I watched the Serbia Montenagro v Holland match in the evening which was fairly boring. I managed to catch the England v Paraguay game on Saturday, all I can say is “oh dear”. They should be capable of playing a lot better than they did, what a waste of Gerrards talents playing him in a holding midfield role. Looks like they’ll be out on penalties again…

I woke early this morning thanks to a lorry delivering and removing a skip, I had a look at my watch and it was 05:30 – what is wrong with these people? Yesterday I was woken up by the screams of school kids – it was 06:30 on a SUNDAY! I had planned to go to Durbar Sq today, no not that one, a different one! This one is in Patan, which is about five kilometres away. There are three main towns in the Kathmandu Valley – Kathmandu (funnily enough), Bhaktapur and Patan. Patan is also known as Lalitpur which means “City of Beauty” and it really is. I decided to walk there as it’s only five km’s away and when I left the hotel I noticed Rick and Mo’s Enfields parked beside my bike, they must have arrived last night, so I left a note on Mo’s bike telling her what room I was in.

A couple of minutes after leaving the hotel I came to a football pitch (which isn’t surprising as it’s been there every time I’ve gone that way), but today there were dozens of people doing martial arts. It was about 06:45!
I arrived in Patan at 08:10 and had a cup of chai and had a look at the map to see which direction I was going to explore first. First port of call was to see a Ganesh Temple. Ganesh has an elephants head on his human body, the story is that his old man (Shiva) came back from a long trip and found his wife in bed with a young man, so Shiva (as any jealous husband would do) chopped his head off. He never thought to stop and see if it was his son sharing his mum’s bed! His wife (Parvati) forced him to bring his son back to life, but he could only do so by giving him the head of the first living thing he saw. An elephant. I don’t know how he managed to aquire six arms though….

I then meandered to Durbar Sq. passing numerous temples, shrines etc and I explored lots of alleyways and found some superb courtyards, none of which prepared me for Durbar Sq. It is breathtaking, simply outstanding display of temples etc and it’s all there in the open in a living breathing (when the pollution isn’t too bad..) city. If you haven’t been to Kathmandu (or indeed Nepal) get here before the tourist boom starts.

I got back to the hotel just after 14:00 and I noticed that Dessie’s bike was parked in the hotel courtyard along with another Enfield I didn’t recognise. There was a note on my bike saying to meet them in Jazz Upstairs tonight. Maybe I won’t make it to Durbar Sq (yes, there is a third one) in Bhaktapur.

I bumped into Rick and Oliver around 18:00 and Rick informed me that Wolf had been in an accident and died. They had been at the police station all day trying to find out what had happened and as far as they knew, Wolf had been hit by a truck, the driver ran off and Wolf died in hospital about four hours later without regaining consciousness. In this part of the world it’s not unusual for the driver (involved in an accident) to reverse over you to make sure that you are dead, because they are responsible for all medical care until you recover. If you are disabled as a result of an accident they are responsible for all medical care etc. until you die. A driver has to pay 20,000 Nepal Rupees (£149 GBP) if you kill someone. Life is cheap. Oh yeah, the driver also runs away from an accident as it’s not uncommon for a baying mob to beat the driver senseless and many a driver dies as a result of the beating from the mob.

Rick and Mo were superb. They went well above and beyond the call. I helped out where I could, as did Des and Oliver (who had just bought the Enfield that I hadn’t recognised). Suzanne, Wolf’s girlfriend was back in Germany and we really wanted to organise everything before she returned to Nepal. We visited the main police station in Durbar Square (Kathmandu) and it was like stepping back in time. There were desks full of police officers and the desks were piled up with mountains of paper, there wasn’t a computer in sight and it would have been amazing to get some photo’s of it. Rick and Mo got to talk with the driver of the truck, turns out that he had been tracked down and was in the cells below. He was a youngish guy (about 24) and he says that Wolf was hit by a Nepalese motorcyclist and forced into the side of the truck. He ran as he didn’t want to get lynched, which is the reason that he was in the cells. Rick and Mo thought that the guy was genuine and the damage to Wolf’s bike (when we finally got to see it) would seem to support the guy’s story.

Daman

A view over the hills as I was riding along the wonderful Daman road.

Daman – Kathmandu 8th June 2006

I woke this morning to the sound of the family dog barking it’s head off, this wouldn’t have been so bad if:
a) The dog hadn’t been lying two feet away from me
b) I’d have had more than four hours sleep
c) It wasn’t 05:00

I hadn’t had a bad nights sleep though, I listened to my ipod for an hour or so before nodding off around 01:00. It’s weird to sleep on a mattress on a table in a restaurant, but I’m glad I done it, after all part of this trip is to have new experiences.

I had a bit of a lie in though and didn’t get up until 05:30, as I heard everyone start to move about. This wasn’t difficult though as the pot washer guy was sleeping in a store room beside me and he made sure that I was awake by singing and throwing open the curtains. The weather looked nice though so I wanted to go and see if I could see the mountains, especially Mt. Everest, as the guidebooks say that Daman is the best place to get a panoramic view of the Himalayas. The shower was the village pump about fifty yards down the road, I had a quick look at it but didn’t want to join the queue of five people (men and women) waiting to use it – a shower would have to wait until Kathmandu. I went for a quick walk and was rewarded with a stunning view of clouds! There was a bit of blue sky breaking, but it looked like I wasn’t going to get to see Everest this trip. I walked back to the “hotel” and got talking to one of the kids from last night (he was out at 05:40 washing pots and pans in cold water) and I said to him; “no Everest today?” and pointed to the clouds, he said;” Everest not there, over here” and he took me twenty yards down the road and I could see some mountains between the houses and I excitedly said “Everest”, and he said “no, not Everest, Everest beside, but not see today”. Oh well, at least I’d seen a couple of snow covered mountains, and the little I saw was spectacular.

I went back and got a cup of chai from the “lady of the house”, I think that she must have got a bollocking from her husband last night as she was a bit quite and sheepish. It was too early to set off for Kathmandu (only two hours away), so I hung around and went for a walk around the village and whilst I was doing this the clouds started to burn off and I got some more tantalising glimpses of the mountain range. By the time I got on the road at 07:00 the clouds were starting to close back in and I didn’t get to see Mt. Everest, I was above the level of the clouds though so I had a clear view of the road, which certainly wasn’t the case yesterday. I noticed the rattle coming from my side boxes getting louder and I pulled over after about five kilometres and noticed that one of the two remaining supports (I lost the other one in the Jungle in Chitwan) had lost one of the two screws holding it in and the frame was now cracked in two places (did I mention before that it had one crack last week?) and there was only three screws holding the rack and two boxes together. I couldn’t empty the boxes as all I was carrying was my camera bag and my clothes etc. wouldn’t fit in there. I hand tightened the allen bolts (I don’t have an allen key as the rest of the bike is tightened by spanners) and checked them five more kilometres down the road. The last remaining two bolts had become loose again and the frame was rattling around dangerously, I hand tightened the bolts again but knew it wouldn’t be long before I would have to pull over and repeat the procedure.

In a way it was a bit of a blessing in disguise as I made sure I stopped at a scenic place (not difficult) and I was able to take some photos at the same time. When I left Daman the views were excellent, I could see right across valleys and caught glimpses of the mountains, but I was travelling downhill out of the mountains. I don’t know why but I prefer to ride up hill, I love the pull of the bike and knocking down the gears as I take yet another hairpin with the side of my shoes scraping the blacktop (that doesn’t happen in London). I was on the lookout for someone to repair the luggage rack, but I only passed medieval type villages and no doubt they’ve only learned that you can shoe a horse, and I was met with looks of puzzlement as I pointed to my rack and asked if they could “chuhh chuhh” it (I tried to sound like a welder and used some hand motions – it was clear that they never played Charades.

Rick and Mo are thinking of organising motorcycle trips on this road (they already do some for other parts of Nepal) and they would be the most amazing road trips that you could go on. I can only imagine how beautiful the road would be from Sept – Feb when the sky is blue and clear, today it was merely brilliant. I did have one “brown pants” moment when I was going into a right hand bend (not tight) and the front wheel lost grip and slipped, somehow the bike managed to right itself (after my right foot grounded and nearly snapped my ankle) and I pulled over to take in what had happened. I hadn’t been going fast, no more than 35 kilometres per hour and I hadn’t used my front brake, the road had looked fine as I entered the bend (no visible gravel, dirt or diesel) so I don’t know why I lost the front end which was a slight worry. I checked my tires and they were fine, no stones or nails in then and the pressure was good, so I have no idea why the bike lost it at that corner, I wouldn’t have minded if it happened at one of the bends that I had been ‘hammering’ around.

I got to Naubise, which is on a busy little junction with the Kathmandu / Pokhara road and as I went through the town I noticed several motorcycle mechanics, I pulled in at the second or third one. I asked the guy (in my best Pidgin English) if he could weld the broken supports and put a couple of bolts in the luggage rack, he couldn’t weld, but he managed to secure the rack with a couple of bolts, which should get me the twenty kilometres to Kathmandu. I decided to get a Chai as it was after 10:00 and I needed a bit of liquid refreshment so I went to a small café beside the workshop where I had a lovely Chai and some Dal Baht. As I was sitting there I seen the most amazing sight. A bus full of people rounded the bend and there was a brass band in full costume and hats sitting on the roof (it gets better). Not only were they sitting there, they were also playing as the bus weaved around the corner, I p1ssed myself laughing. I had to get a photograph of this – surely a competition winner! I wolfed the rest of the Dal Baht down and five minutes later I was on the bike chasing the bus down, it wouldn’t take me long as the roads were bendy and as far as I knew there were no other roads it could take until it got a bit nearer Kathmandu. I geared myself up for the chase and was thinking of my speech for accepting Photographer of the Year, when I rounded a bend and there was the band walking down the road, instruments at hand on their way to a wedding! Shot missed.

Just after I passed the checkpoint before Kathmandu the road got really bad, which only happened in the last week. It looked as though they were in the process of relaying the road although they had only got as far as putting loose gravel down in the lane that I was in. This made riding pretty hazardous, as it was dangerous to brake on this service. Oh, I forgot to mention, when I was taking photos in the mountains, my bike rolled off its centre stand and broke the left foot peg. Again. I’ve been riding for eighteen years (no sniggering at the back) and I’ve never lost a foot peg before and suddenly it’s two within the space of a week. I was better able to handle it this time though, especially as the roads were twisty and I kept my speed down. Just after the road in Kathmandu got bad, I spotted some guy welding, so I did a U-turn and motioned to him to have a look at my bike. I showed him my foot peg and broken rack and within twenty minutes he welded the bike up – not bad for £0.55 pence GBP! I managed to find the guesthouse easily enough, which surprised me, but Oliver gave me good directions when I met with him in Chitwan.

After checking in I took a walk around Thamel, which is the tourist / back packer area, and it’s only a ten minute walk from the hotel. I was heading for New Road as Dessie told me that there are numerous camera shops there and I need to get a lens for my new camera. Wow, it was like walking into paradise – there were camera shops everywhere and they were all selling the latest gear! I found one shop that can get me the lens that I want (3 day delivery time), although I think I’ve decided to buy two lens rather than the one and it’ll only cost me an extra two hundred quid more than the one lens would cost me back in England. I managed to walk away with out buying anything, as I wanted to check the Internet to see what people make of the lenses. I found an Internet shop and was delighted to hear that it was only 15 Nepali Rupees an hour as opposed to the 150 Rupees an hour they were charging in Chitwan, and the connection speed wasn’t too bad. I found very positive reviews of the lenses and managed to rattle off a few quick emails as I have a lot of catching up to do (apologies if I haven’t got back to anyone, give me a few more days….please).

I bought a cut-throat razor and shaving brush today as I’ve really enjoyed getting shaved by one. I decided to have a quick shave before I went out: big mistake. It’s not actually as easy as it looks, which is why I suppose we all use modern razors. It took me half a face to get the hang (sort of) of it, and the right hand side of my face looked as though I had survived (just about) a meeting with Freddie Kruger. The left hand side of my face was fine. When using a cut-throat you lather up and shave then repeat (just like having a two bladed Gillette) and I some how managed to cut my left ear and slice my left cheek on my second shave! Nothing that half an hour of pressing my face trying to get the blood to clot couldn’t fix though! Maybe I’ll have better luck tomorrow..

I went to Cheddup’s bar (Jazz Upstairs) to see if he was around, he told me that he might be there for the weekend when I saw him in Chitwan, but looks like he won’t be here until Saturday, Wolf and Raju left town yesterday. I had one beer there and something to eat and there was a power cut due to the monsoon rains, so I called it a night and discovered that my waterproof North Face jacket is not waterproof – not to monsoon rains anyway, no wonder most of the Nepalese walk around in the rain wearing T-shirts.

Sunset at Chitwan Jungle

Chitwan 6th June 2006

I’ve had a couple of really relaxing days, waking late, drinking chai, reading books down by the river, watching elephants bathe and enjoying the monsoon. The monsoon has hit in the last couple of days and I’m really enjoying it. The first day was 3rd June and Dessie and I were in the next village trying to use the internet (no power!) and as we were talking to the woman in the Internet café it started to bucket down. We had a cup of tea with her (Dessie knows here from going in there on and off for the last six years), but the rain didn’t let up, so we decided to go and get something to eat. It was a quick thirty-yard sprint and we ordered chow chow (noodles & veg) and had another chai – still the rain didn’t let up. I then went and had a shave and Dessie went to see if he could find a rear mudguard for his bike. By the time we met up again three hours had passed and the rain was still coming down ‘cats and dogs’. We decided to make a run for it anyway.

Dessie was staying the night with friends in a small village in the foothills of the mountains and he had a twenty-kilometre ride ahead of him and I was heading back to the guesthouse, which I’d never ridden to on my own. I was wearing a pair of shorts and short sleeve top; I was soaked before I even had a chance to kick-start my bike. I couldn’t see through my glasses after ten yards, so had to peer through the rain covered lens for a general blurry view and if I spotted something worth investigating (or avoiding!) I peered over the top of my glasses to get a rain free (though blurry) view. Luckily only local traffic uses the roads I was on, so I don’t think that I hit anything other than a couple of kids on the way back and no damage was done to the bike…. It took me about twenty minutes to get the six kilometres back and I was wetter than a drowned rat, but a hot shower and a quick change of clothes put everything back on track.

The rain hammered down for over five hours in total, but it was really fresh and green once the rain stopped. I went down to the Jungle Bar for sunset and was rewarded with a sky that turned from yellow too red to purple.

I’ve spent a lot of time walking around the local villages and it’s really like stepping back one hundred years in time (or Ireland twenty years ago…). The traditional style of house is made from bamboo that is then covered in mud (inside and out) and most houses have livestock (cows, ducks, hens, dogs etc), which they keep, in rickety old barns attached to the main building. The Tadi tribe have really strong family values and it’s not unusual to find complete family’s living together (grandparents, parents, uncles / aunts, cousins and children). I’ve heard of one house not so far away that has forty-eight people living in it! All the farm work is done by hand, I’ve spotted the odd tractor, but they seem to be used to ferry people between villages. It’s really good having Dessie around as he’s been coming here for six years and everybody in the village knows him, and I even get a 10% discount in the Jungle Pub!

I woke on Sunday morning to the sound of torrential rain on the roof, the roof here is made of corrugated iron, which whilst not the traditional method, it’s reassuring to know that snakes won’t be slithering through the roof to say hello. I looked at my watch and it was 05:00, I couldn’t get back to sleep so I lay in bed reading until 10:00, by which time is was still lashing rain. It didn’t stop raining until 13:00 and by this stage I was getting cabin fever, as soon as the rain stopped I went down to the Jungle Pub to get some lunch. It appeared that everyone else had the same idea and there was a good atmosphere down there. The Jungle Pub is basically a couple of tables and chairs right on the riverfront overlooking the Jungle and it’s really nice to sit there and watch the elephants wading through the water and if I’m lucky enough I’ll spot a rhino on the far shore. The elephant handlers come down to the river to wash the elephants and if you slip them 50 rupees, they will let you get in the water and wash the elephant. I had great fun watching an English family in the water washing the elephant, as the handlers will let you sit on them and will show you how to roll with the elephant when it rolls around in the water (I’m not sure how they would stand legally if you got the roll wrong and ended up getting flattened!).

Dessie and I went around to a small “restaurant” last night to have something to eat. I call it a restaurant because we had food, drink and paid for our meal, but it was actually a villager’s house. On the way to the Jungle Bar for sunset we passed by the house and Dessie told the woman that we’d be around for Dal Bhat at 19:30. We continued onto the Jungle Bar by the back lanes (unknown to us, Cheddup had ridden down from Pokhara and was in the next bar, but we didn’t find that out until the next morning) and had a couple of beers and I spotted my first Jungle Pub Rhino. There should, hopefully, be a photo of the Jungle Pub either above or below this blog entry and the Rhino appeared on the far bank of the river and started to make its way across the river to our side. It was dusk though and we lost sight of the Rhino about twenty metres after he entered the water heading our way! It’s been a couple of years since a Rhino actually came as far over as the Jungle Bar, and we were hoping that it’d be a couple of years more until it happened again! We sat there supping our beers watching the fireflies performing acrobatics over the river and decided we’d better go and get our dinner.

When we got to the ladies house, there were a couple of Nepal guys in there and we sat with them. The lady has two kids, the girl is seven and the boy is ten and they speak really good English. Dessie knows the kids really well and he started laughing and playing around with them. The food was ok, not the best I’ve had, but it was cheap and cheerful and we know that the money is going straight into the local community. I showed the kids a couple of tricks and games and we all played ‘shove halfpenny’ and then I showed them how to balance coins on your elbow and to ‘snap-catch’ them in your hand. We had a really good time and stayed there until nearly 22:00, our guesthouse is only two minutes walk away, but by the time we got there, there was a rumble of thunder in the sky.

I got into bed and started listening to my ipod and I heard the by now familiar sound of raindrops on the hot tin roof. Boy did they come down, the roof was really taking a battering, so I switched off my ipod and listened to the rain. I’d like to say that it was really therapeutic, but I’d be lying. The thunder was like nothing I’ve heard before, actually I tell a lie; it was like a bomb going off. Real close. There was one thunderclap in particular which sounded as though it was just above my head and it actually made me jump. The loudness of the thunder was intensified by the complete silence that followed it. For about two or three seconds there was no wind, no rain, no nothing. Silence….. Then the rain started up again and I heard a weird sound from the roof. It sounded like footsteps. Then there was a sliding sound and the steps started up again whilst the thunder thundered and the lighting light. The steps would stop for a second and then there would be the sliding sound and they’d start up again. Dessie had told me to expect this, it’s either a mongoose or a rat, either way, I was glad that I had my corrugated iron roof! This was one situation where I’m all for progress!

I don’t know what time I managed to get to sleep at, but I didn’t get much of it. I heard Dessie up and about outside and I had a look at my watch. Dessie had said that he was getting back to Pokhara early, so I was surprised that he was still around. I thought that my watch was having me on when it read 07:00! It surely must have been at least 11:00, but no, it was indeed 07:00. I rolled over and tried to get some kip, I could say goodbye to Dessie next time we caught up. I was managing to doze off when I heard a knock at my door, it was Dessie. He told me that Cheddup was in town (he’d been up since 05:00 and Cheddup had left word with the Jungle Pub that he was around), and that he was going down for breakfast and meeting Cheddup at 10:30, I told him that I’d have a shower and follow him down. By the time I was ready, I couldn’t be arsed to walk the 500 metres to the Jungle Pub, so I got on my bike (back carrier loose…) and had a nice breakfast of poached eggs, toast, and fried potato with garlic and tomatoes (divine).

There was no sign of Cheddup by 11:00, and there was the distinct rumble of thunder coming from the hills, so Dessie decided to head back to Pokhara. We went to the first village together as I was going to try and use the Internet and it was on his way, this also gave him a chance to say goodbye to the woman in the shop. We got there and there was;
“no power”.
“When power come”? (our Pidgin English is improving)
(shrug of shoulders)
“today”?
“maybe”

And I gave up after that; god knows how many emails I’ll have when I finally get around to checking my account. Let’s hope that my Internet provider doesn’t delete the twenty odd emails I get about penile dysfunction (did you know that just one box of tablets can cure it?) before I get a chance to send my money away….

I got back to the village at about 11:30 and met up with Cheddup and “friend” at the Jungle Bar. I had to laugh, Cheddup had a curry and roti in front of him, these were surrounded by four drinks (coffee, soda, Pepsi and some local beverage I didn’t want to ask about). I hadn’t seen Cheddup since the Bar Room Brawl ™ last week and it was really good to catch up, I’d met his “friend” before and we had a bit of a laugh. It started to rain as we were sitting there, so Cheddup decides to “get one together”; how can they do it that early in the morning? I bade them farewell and told them I’d probably see them in Kathmandu over the weekend (they informed me that Wolf and Raju are already there). I went to the book shop and traded a couple of books and sat down by the river and read until the rain forced me back indoors. I’m going to head off to Kathmandu tomorrow and try to pick up a new camera lens and I’ll probably stay there for the weekend and make my way slowly back to Pokhara. The road tomorrow is meant to be one of the best roads in the world, I can’t wait to get on it, so much so that I’m probably only going to do half of it and stay overnight in Daman, before tackling the two hour (!) journey to Kathmandu the next day. I’ve already been told of one place that does free wi-fi Internet access in the mornings…. Let the good times roll!

Preying Mantis

This photo was taken just after she'd had sex and killed her partner...

Chitwan 1st June 2006

I woke to the sound of an elephant clearing it’s nose! Quite a strange noise to hear at 05:00. I read in bed for a couple of hours and then listened to some music and didn’t leave my room until 10:00. I was going to have a wander around the village and get something to eat but as I was passing Dessie’s room he called out to me, I went over to see what was up. He told me that there was a Preying Mantis in his room and it had just killed the male. I’d heard the name before but didn’t know if it was a snake or a lizard. It turns out that it is a big green grasshopper type thing.

There were two of them in his room and one of them was lying dead under his bed. It turns out that the female kills the male after sex (are they never happy……..?) It was an amazing looking creature, like something out of Alien. I was able to get a really good close up shot, it was probably knackered after shagging and slaying! Dessie was busy pottering around and he’d just got some bleach and was about to dye his jeans (it’s not all sex, drugs and rock’n’roll), so I went down and got some breakfast. I sat by the river and had two poached eggs, toast and beautiful potatoes fried in garlic, onions and tomatos, washed down with a cup of coffee. I was sitting on a bench under a grassed roof canopy and there are sparrows nesting in it. So I was entertained by the parents flying back and forth with food and sitting on the back of the bench opposite me singing and chirping away. When the chick heard the parents chirping, they would stick their heads out from the top of the canopy and the mother would fly up and feed them. Dad tended to stay down keeping a careful eye on me.

Dessie turned up about half an hour later, turns out that the ‘beach’ dyed his jeans lilac! At least now they match the colour of his bike… Rick and Mo showed up, they had decided against riding back to Pakorah and were going to stay another day. We sat around chatting for hours as the sky gradually got darker and darker and the wind started picking up. Dessie was going to meet someone in the foothills so he left before the rain came down and we sat through an hour and a half long storm. At about 18:20 Oliver turns up from Kathmandu and we all sat there chatting until nearly 21:00. The sunset was pretty good, especially as it was the first time we spotted it the whole day. The sky and river turned from yellow to red before fading with the light to black.

Main Street Sauraha

Pokhara – Chitwan 31st May 2006

I met up with Dessie at Raju’s at 11:00, but he had a bit of trouble with his electrics so Raju was fixing them. I had bumped into an Aussie guy, Dan, last week and he has a 350cc bullet with a few problems, I’d told him about Raju’s and he was there as well when I rode up.

It was 11:30 by the time we got on the road and it was going to be a long journey. Raju had put new piston rings into Dessie’s engine, so the engine had to be run in at 60kph (max) for 500km’s. Dessie led out of town and once we hit the open road I went on ahead. I met up with him at the tea stop where I had taken the photo’s on the way back from the Last Resort. I gave him the photo’s as he knows the women there and it was great to see the joy on their faces when Dessie gave them the photo’s. And we got a free Chai each!

We met up again an hour or so later at a bridge in a crossroads town called Mugling. From here we left the Pokhara – Kathmandu road and followed the path of the Narayani for about half an hour before pulling over for some noodles at a road side ‘café’. They have a small monkey outside the café, it’s tied to a bamboo cane around it’s waist. When we got there, there was a group of Nepalese sitting by the monkey with a lighter in their hands. They were trying to set fire to the monkeys fire and it was trying to get away from them, which it couldn’t really as it was tied to the bamboo cane. I shouted over to them to stop and they gave me a ‘gappy’ smile and continued to taunt the monkey. Dessie picked up his lighter went over to the guy with the lighter and started to try and set fire to his legs! The guy didn’t like this being done to him and Dessie starts shouting to him in Nepalese and the guy gets up and walks off. He was lucky he didn’t get a few slaps for his trouble.

We got to Sauraha around 17:00, had a quick beer and then headed down to the river to watch the sunset over the jungle. When we got there we met up with Rick and Mo, who had arrived the night before, and had a few beers and something to eat. I was a beautiful setting as the river was ten feet away and elephants were crossing from the jungle with the sun setting in the background. It wasn’t the best sunset as it turned out, as it hit some haze just as it was dipping behind the hills and lost a lot of its colour. Didn’t get up to much else that evening, just enjoyed chilling out by the river hearing all the noises coming from the jungle, which holds tigers, leopards, rhino, elephants, crocodiles, deer and various other animals you only normally see on television.

The hills are alive with the sound of an Enfield

I thought that my helmet may have popped off as I was grinning so much whilst driving through the countryside.

Bar room blitz - Pokhara 30th May 2006

Most of the morning was spent pottering around the lake and I found a sandwich shop that does the most amazing bacon (real bacon) and salad rolls with mustard. Absolute heaven, shame I’m leaving town again tomorrow.

Later on, I met up with Wolf and Cheddup at the Blues Bar, actually slight correction, on my way to the Blues Bar I bumped into Raju and two of his friends and he insisted that I came to 7 Eleven with them. 7 Eleven isn’t a franchise of the convenience store, it’s an upstairs bar. With dancers. There was a good mixed crowd of people in there and we took a seat down near the front left of stage. The dancing was a mixture of traditional dancing and Irish pole dancing. That is to say that there were no poles on stage and the women, although scantily clad, remained clothed. Some of the dancers were wearing very mini skits, but underneath they had big granny knickers on, a bit bizarre and certainly wouldn’t happen in Bangkok. As we were sitting there, Raju starts smiling over at me and then asks me if I want to be with the woman (his friend) who is sitting beside me. I asked him what he meant (just to clarify) and he told me that he trusts me and that I can be with his friend if I want. No money! I told him that I had to meet up with Dessie later to sort out our trip tomorrow (bit of a white lie) and that I was meeting him in the Blues Bar. So we ended up going across the road to Cheddups place and we could actually chat there as the music wasn’t so loud.

Raju repeated his kind offer, all whilst the woman was sitting beside me. I got talking to her and she asked me if she could go on the trip to the Last Resort with me, and was a bit upset when I told her that it had already happened. She then blurts out her mobile phone number and tells me to give her a ring in the morning to arrange something. I told her that there is no way that I’m going to remember her number without writing it down and she told me that of course I will. I told her that I’d get it off her again later, but will probably give her a ring next week as I’m going away for a couple of days. Then she started trying to feed me peanuts – do I really look like an elephant?

Whilst all this was happening, Cheddup was getting abuse from some Nepali guy sitting at the bar. Over the course of an hour Cheddup was putting up with this abuse and occasionally arguing with the guy. It turns out that his mother is the freeholder of the bar and Cheddup pays rent to her. This guy stirs up shit with Cheddup every so often and tells him that it’s his bar and that he’s going to get rid if Cheddup when he takes over. It started to get a bit heated and they were arguing in English (so most of the people in the bar could follow what was happening) and Wolf and I had to go over and gently separate them on a couple of occasions. Any other bar in the world and they guy would have been thrown out hours ago and barred, but Cheddup is one of the nicest guys you could meet and is so laid back that he took it from this guy. Until he flipped that is.

I was keeping half an eye on the bar as I was talking and next think I notice is Cheddup doing a flying kick across the bar into the guys chest. They both go down on the ground and start fighting. Loads of people try to jump in to stop it, but Wolf and I are trying to get everyone away so that they can finish the fight. The air needed clearing and this was the best way of doing it. But everyone tried to interfere and a brawl was breaking out. One of the guys mates squared up to me, I told him to calm down, that I wasn’t fighting his mate as well, but he wasn’t listening and tried to hit me. I grabbed his arm and shoved him away and then grabbed the guy fighting Cheddup before his mate got back. I got the guy into a headlock and tried to get him towards the main door and out of the bar. He was pulling Cheddups hair (dreadlocks) and wouldn’t let go and there were people trying to pull Cheddup off him, so the whole scrum made their slowly to the door. I tripped on someones leg and brought the scrum down on top of me, I still had the guy in a headlock and he’s screaming at me to let him go. No chance. Wolf comes over and pulls me up and shouts at the guy to stop pulling Cheddups hair (girly fighting!) but he won’t. Wolf starts punching the guy on the arm, really belting him, but he still won’t let go. We eventually manage to free Cheddups hair from his grasp and we shove the guy out the door. Cheddup is steaming at this stage and we have to keep him from chasing after him. It wasn’t really a fight, more of a shove and sprawl, but it did liven up the evening and got me away from Raju’s friend for a while!

About five minutes after the brawl ended the police turn up at the door and try to take both the guys down to the police station. Cheddup won’t go and tells the cops that it’s his bar and this guy was causing hassle so they threw him out (sort of true-ish). The police call the guys mother (he’s in his 30’s), his mother goes mad with him and drags him off in a taxi. Entertaining night.

Dragonfly

Kathmandu – Pokhara 29th May 2006

I heard Dessie shuffling around the room, so I asked him what time it was. It was 05:15, so I told him that I’d ride with him to Pokhara. I was up and dressed in two minutes – no point having a shower as we’d be covered in all types of crap by the time we reach our destination, and we had a cup of tea and were on the road at 06:00.

It took us a good forty minutes to get out of the city (the checkpoint at the top of the valley) and from there the ride was really good. Dessie likes to plod along on the bike, so I went ahead and enjoyed the twists and turns and pulled over every so often to let Dessie catch up. We made good time and had plenty of stops along the way for chai and food (Dal Bhat). I was looking forward to stopping at one of the fish places I passed on the way up, but I was leading at this stage and missed the stop! But we ended up having Dal Bhat in Mugling which was nice. As we entered Pokhara we came across a big demonstration by the Maoists, I’ve no idea what they were demonstrating about, but it was a pain in the arse as we had to make a detour. I checked back into my old guesthouse, which was handy, as they were storing most of my luggage and I jumped in a lovely hot shower and washed the early morning off my body.

Dessie asked me if I want to go to Chitwan, which is the National Park down near the Indian border. He’s been going to a small village near there for the last six years and he raves about the place. We decided the next day and arranged to meet up at Raju’s for 11:00. I had some bits and pieces to do in the afternoon and I especially wanted to get some photo’s developed. I took some photo’s of the people in a chai shack today as they have a young baby and they didn’t have any photo’s of him. So I took several photos of each of the family with the baby and then took a group photo. I was going to be passing there again on the way to Chitwan, so it would have been nice to give them a copy of the photos. I couldn’t burn them to CD though as my CD player isn’t working at the moment, so I had to copy them to my USB flash memory stick. It took me nearly two hours and several miles until I found a photo shop in the main town that could print them out for me.

I rode by Raju’s garage on the way back from collecting the photos and it was just after 18:00. He waved to me and asked me in for a beer, and it would have been rude not to. We sat outside and had a couple of beers and as I was sitting there I got tantalising glimpses of the distant mountains. They have been more or less covered in clouds since I got here, but slowly they were being revealed to me. I got a glimpse of the snow covered mountaintop, but I wasn’t sure if it was just cloud. And over the course of the next hour, the mountain range was slowly revealed. Then the setting sun hit the peaks and they turned a lovely pinky orange. I got a couple of photos but I’m not sure how good they’ll turn out. As we were sitting there, Wolf turned up from Kathmandu. He told me he had the best ever ride in looking at the mountains and the sunset.

I went back to my guesthouse to park my bike up then watched a crappy movie in one of the local restaurant / bars and had a couple of games of pool with some Nepalese that I got to know.

Sunset at Phewa Lake

Last Resort 28th May 2006

I woke to the sound of the ‘breakfast’ bell. I looked at my watch; it was 07:00 on Sunday morning! I looked around the tent, the front door was wide open and Don was crashed out, Wolf was nowhere to be seen! I lay in bed for half an hour and it was starting to get very warm in the tent so I went and had a shower. A cold shower. A very very cold, Nepali mountain water shower. Christ, it was so cold it nearly stripped the flesh from my bones. I later found out that there was a hot water shower in the next shower block. Doh!

Breakfast was omelette and beans on toast, which hit the spot. There was more live music on stage from 10:00 onwards, so we settled in to listen to that. I started off with acoustic Nepalese music, which was ok, but then Reggae man came out. Things started to turn bad then (musically), as he must have left his voice back in the tent. He was dreadful, and it wasn’t just me that thought that. I was looking forward to hear him after enjoying his performance last night, but the acoustic set didn’t work and it was pretty painful in places. I got up after about half an hour and went to go across the bridge and check my bike out before riding back to Kathmandu. Unfortunately they were doing bungee jumping, so I couldn’t cross the bridge. I hung around there for a while and watched people jumping into the gorge (most of them attached to a bungee cord…) and then went back to the others. Reggae man was still singing and he hadn’t got any better. Dessie had enough by this stage and went to check if the bridge was open and he came back about ten minutes later and told me that it was, so we could make out escape.

We arranged to meet the others at 13:00 to ride back to Kathmandu, so Dessie and I had a cup of Chai and looked over our bikes and then watched the bungee jumpers from the other side of the bridge. We met some Canadian guy on a bicycle, he’s been touring around the world for the past three years and he was on the last leg and would finish up in Kathmandu. We had a really good conversation with him and found out that he’s a little ahead of schedule and his house will not be empty in Quebec for another couple of weeks, so he’s going to fly to Norway and cycle down to Paris before getting his plane. I’ve seen nearly half a dozen Western cyclists since I’ve been in Nepal, I didn’t see one in India, which is surprising seeing as though 80% of Nepal is covered in mountains. The others turned up at 13:30 as the bridge was closed and we all made our way back to Kathmandu. The group got pretty fragmented as some people were staying in different parts of the city and others had things to do. I rode most of the way with Dessie and we went to stay in the guesthouse that I stayed in with Rick and Mo on Friday night. The only problem was is that Dessie didn’t know where the guesthouse was and I didn’t know Kathmandu. I told him if he brought me to the edge of Thamel (district) I should recognise the turn for the guesthouse. We negotiated our way through the city (always the worst part on a motorbike) and he pulled over and asked me where the guesthouse was. I didn’t recognise where we were! I asked him if he was sure this was the road and he said it’s where Rick told him it was. I had another look and spotted the side road we had to take, turns out that we approached it from the other direction, which is why I hadn’t recognised the turn off.

We ended up back at Jazz Upstairs and had some more lovely food and a couple of beers, it was an early night though and I was back in the room by 22:00. I was sharing a room with Dessie and he was leaving at 05:30 the next morning, I told him that I’d see how I felt in the morning before agreeing to go with him.

Tata

One of the many accidents I've come across on the road, the driver was sitting down on the grass behind the lorry reading a paper - he was probably reading the paper and misjudged the bend!

Kathmandu 27th May 2006

I had a great night at Jazz Upstairs last night, it’s a really cool bar and plays a great mix of jazz and Blues music, with some old rock thrown into the mix as well. Cheddup made us a lovely spicy tofu dish, some salad dish and various other dishes that were equally nice. There were about twenty of us in the bar, the drinks were flowing and the craic was ninety.

Cheddup has a newspaper article about Sting on the wall of the bar. Cheddup organises rafting on the numerous rivers in Nepal and Sting and his son went with him on a trip about three years ago. Apparently they were both really bad at it and they were thrown out of the boat at the first set of rapids and nearly every other set after that. In the photo two of Stings fingers are taped up – from an accident that happened on the river! Cheddup invited him out for a beer (as he usually does with people) and he told Sting that he knows a little jazz bar that’ll they’ll be left alone in. Sting agreed, so on his way to the bar Cheddup phoned a few friends to get them around there, unknown the Cheddup, his friends decided to ring their friends, who decided to ring their friends. So when they turn up for a quite drink, half of Kathmandu and the press are waiting for them, Cheddup had never seen the bar so busy.

The funny think is that when they walk in together, Cheddup's friends are practicing Police songs on stage! They tried to get Sting to play some Police songs, but he wouldn’t, but he did eventually agree to play some old blues numbers and Cheddup says that he was amazing. We didn’t stay late, as we had to be up early in the morning to continue our journey to the Last Resort.

I woke up this morning to the sound of very heavy rain and had a look at my watch to see what time it was: 05:00. I sort of dozed for a couple of hours as I wasn’t meeting up with the others until 08:30, but the rain didn’t ease off. I had a cup of tea with Mo and Rick and we decided that we’d go to the Kathmandu Guest House as arranged and wait for the others to turn up. It was only a three or four minute ride to KGH, but we got soaked through on our way there. Dessie turned up on time, but he was the only one. We decided to have breakfast and see if the rain eased off at all. It took about an hour, but the rain started easing off and people started turning up and we eventually set off at about 09:45. (Unknown to me, Raju had turned up and he had fitted my repaired foot peg and horn holder). The road out of Kathmandu was a pain, the roads were still slippy from the rain and there was a lot of traffic and there was about nine bikes riding along and it’s pretty easy to get separated and for someone to get lost.

I was riding at the front of the pack, just behind Cheddup (who was leading us out of the city), and once we got out of the town Cheddup took off like a bat out of hell (have to get the biking clichés in) and I followed along behind him. Cheddup has got a modern Japanese bike, which he imported from Singapore and it’s a KLR 200cc off road bike and it’s easily as fast as my 500cc bullet. He knows the roads pretty well and we were really flying, and we were using the entire road to get ourselves around the many many corners and hairpins. We stopped for Chai after about fifty minutes as we came to a junction and made sure that everyone took the right turning. We hung around for nearly ten minutes before the others showed up – we had been really riding hard! As we were all sitting there drinking our chai, Tony the NZ guy pulls up.

A lot of the Pokhara crowd are really pissed of with Tony, as he’s a pretty reckless rider. Know one minds others riding fast, but we usually slow down when we enter towns, villages, junctions, schools etc. Not Tony. He also has the annoying and dangerous habit of riding in your blind spot about two feet from your rear wheel. This means that if I have to brake suddenly for a cow / child / bus etc. that he’s more than likely going to crash into me. He’s also got the habit of riding in the ‘wrong line’, which means that when I’m coming out of a bend there is a chance that I’ll clip his bike and go down. Rick, who runs the motorbike club with Mo, went over and had a word to him about his riding and that it’s putting other people in danger etc. He was with him for about five minutes and after the conversation, Tony rode off by himself with the hump.

Cheddup and I set off again, although I soon fell to the back of the bunch as I was stopping to take photographs every couple of miles, as the roads and scenery were amazing. It was also good fun trying to catch up with the pack and I really was on the limit through some of the corners, I was riding along at about 100 smiles an hour. I managed to catch up with the group at the next tea stop and Cheddup and I soon set off again. The roads gave way to unsealed tracks, which gave way to deep unsealed muddy tracks, which gave way to deep pools of muddy water. Cheddup was having a great time on his off road bike and he was sailing through the mud and deep water. My bike was sliding all over the place when we hit the deep mud and I was fighting to keep the bike and me from falling into the deep sticky mud. The water crossing wasn’t so bad, I watched Cheddup go first and I followed his line and although I hit a couple of rocks on the way over, I was fine. All hazards cleared, no faults! We hung around the water hazards for fifteen minutes and had a good laugh at everyone negotiating their way though. Only one went down in the mud and everyone crossed the water.

The Last Resort was a further fifteen minutes ride down the road, but most of it was sealed and everyone made is safely. We couldn’t enter the resort when we got there though, as we had to cross a suspension bridge over a160meter gorge across the Bhote Kosi River. The bridge was closed when we got there though as there were people Bungee Jumping from it into the gorge!! We parked up our bikes and had a couple of beers as we waited for the bridge to re-open. It was a nice walk across the bridge when it did open and the view to the bottom of the gorge was stunning, not that I fancied throwing myself off it attached to a piece of elastic.

We were staying in tents and I was staying with Don and Wolf, which was ok, because there was no way that Wolf was going to find his way back to the tent at 03:00, especially as our tent was a bit down the hill from the bar. The bar was open on three sides and was well thought out and there were loads of sofas and crash out areas. One side of the bar opened onto the garden where a stage was set up and there was further seating, to the right of the stage and set back a bit was a massive BBQ area. The resort is all inclusive and the food was excellent and there was plenty of it, I couldn’t get enough of the BBQ chicken, actually that’s not strictly true as by my second full plate, I couldn’t eat anymore!

The live music was pretty good, it started off with a Nepali band playing traditional music, they did about three quarters of an hour and then brought a couple of other musicians and singers on stage and played a bit more. I missed most of the second band, but they sounded alright. The third band was a led by a reggae singer from Jamaica. If there is one type of music I can’t get my head around, it’s reggae. I’ve tried listening to it over the years and have borrowed stuff from friends, but apart from some Marley and Dennis Brown, I just can’t listen to it. Give me blues music any day of the week. But. But, this guy was really good, although I suppose it was because he was doing some good Marley covers. Reggae is pretty big here in Nepal and there are lots of guys going around in Dreadlocks (Cheddup included). I crashed out at about 02:30, Don got back sometime after that. Wolf slept in the bar.

The Nomad

Dessie on modified 350cc Bullet

Kathmandu 26th May 2006

I did nothing much for the last couple of days, woke early, read books, late brunch and a walk around town. I’d meet up with the bikers at Raju’s workshop at 18:00, have a couple of beers with them, go for something to eat and have a couple of games of pool to round the night off.

We met up this morning at 08:00 to ride to Kathmandu on our way to The Last Resort, which is an adventure sports resort about 5 / 10 km’s from the Tibetan border. Thirteen of us met up and between us we were on eleven bikes, most of which were either 350cc Enfield’s or 500cc Enfield’s, the other couple of bikes were off-roaders that some of the Nepali guys were riding. We also brought Raju along with us for the ride, between the rest of us we paid for his entrance fee and loss of earnings whilst his workshop is closed down – it cost us £7.50 GBP each, and it’s worth it for peace of mind when there are that many Enfield’s together!

We got on the road at 09:00, the Indian Sadu (Baba G) was late, but he’s got God on his side, so we’ll say nothing! It started off a really nice morning and I could actually see the mountains for a change (amazing and inspiring sight) and it was about forty minutes when we stopped for our first cup of chai. This was just before the road twisted up into the mountains and the stop gave us all something to look forward to. Wolf (German), Tony (New Zealand) and I went ahead of the others as we were on 500cc bikes and we really hammered the first mountain section. The two lads know the road to Kathmandu pretty well and I followed along behind them at 100kph and followed their ‘lines’, the roads were fairly clear, and apart from two bus drivers racing in front of us (interesting to watch from well behind) that leg passed by without incident.

We had arranged to meet at a restaurant and the three of us got there a good ten minutes before the main pack. Actually, not strictly true, because Tony decided to stop along the road to have a joint before his breakfast! When we all met up we were missing two bikes. Raju (the mechanic) and Baba (the Sadu) were nowhere to be seen, so we hung around for them, twenty minutes later they turn up. There had been a problem with Baba’s bike (the points) and Raju stopped to fix them. I went off with Monica (Dutch), Rick (English), Don (Australian), Dessie (English), Cheddup (Nepali), Oliver (Singapore) and two other Nepali guys, whose names I don’t yet know. I was at the back of the pack and as we rounded a corner I got there just in time to see Don take a heavy fall. I pulled up behind him along with the two Nepali guys and made sure he was all right. Turns out the road is full of diesel and Don hit a patch of it, which wasn’t hard to do and we later found out that a couple of others hit the patch but didn’t go down.

Don bought his 500cc Bullet new in Delhi a few months a go, and he damaged the headlight casing, the front mudguard, right foot peg and his pride took a battering. He was ok though, just pissed off with himself as he’d actually seen the spill and tried to ride through it. Maybe he shouldn’t have had that joint at 08:00 before he set off! We met up with the others about half an hour later at our next scheduled stop. The restaurant we stopped at is meant to do amazing fish (from local river), but I’d only had breakfast an hour before and wasn’t hungry. I was still getting used to all the stops that these guys make as all the half hours aren’t long in adding up. Des took off by himself and told us he’d meet us just outside Kathmandu at the checkpoint at the top of the mountain. The other guys and girls were busy eating their fish, I hung around for ten minutes and set off on my own after Dessie.

I got about five minutes down the road and the dark grey clouds that I’d been trying to outrun caught up with me. I rode through the rain for a couple of km’s, but the rain wasn’t easing off at all so I pulled over and put on a jacket, which was ok for another couple of km’s but I then pulled over under a tree and put the bike on it’s side stand. Next thing I know my bike is rolling forward down the hill, I made a grab for it, but it was too fast and heavy and it fell on it’s side. No worries just pick it up and wait for the rain to ease. At this stage some of the other bikes came past, I waved them on and went to get on my bike to follow them. It was at this point that I noticed that the left foot rest had completely snapped off, which meant that the ride suddenly got a lot more difficult especially with the amount of water laying on the road.

I was ok when I put my left leg on the passengers peg, but it kind of upset the balance and made braking with my left leg (rear brake – very important in the wet) difficult, and didn’t help with changing gears either. I got around a couple of bends and found the guys sheltering in a shack, well it looked like a shack, but I think it was some kind of road side “café”. We hung around there for about thirty minutes until the rain eased off and the sun came out, this gave the guys behind us a chance to catch up and the only one missing was Dessie who’d gone on ahead. We took it real easy on the greasy roads and were doing between 40 kph and 60 kph, I was at the rear for most of the next section as I need a lot more braking room and was happy for the others to clear a path through the small towns. Wolf wasn’t happy with his bike, it was making a ‘new’ noise from the rear wheel, and Raju had a look and found that the chain guard was rubbing against the chain – nothing to worry about for the moment.

We passed Tony on the road, actually I didn’t pass him, as I stopped to help get his bike off him as he was pinned to a roadside wall. He’d been taking it easy (so he says) and a bus came around the corner and knocked him into the wall. That’s his story anyway and not a lot of people believe it as he’s a bit of a loon on a bike, we reckon that he overshot the corner and hit the wall. But there wasn’t much damage to him or the bike, so we continued on or way. We got onto the ring road (think M25, then take away all traffic controls and add a traffic cop to direct all traffic) and Wolf’s bike started playing up again, so we all pulled over to see what was up. Wolf has just put a new petrol tank on his bike, it’s a nice big jobbie and he’s got some excellent murals painted on it. Wolf only got the tank back from the painted a couple of nights ago and the inside of the tank was a bit rusty after lying in a workshop for three months, so the inside of the tank must be treated to stop bits of rust and crud falling off and getting into the carburettor. The treated tank should be stood for three days before use, Wolf left it barely twenty-four hours, and the petrol filter was blocked. Raju spent a couple of minutes clearing it and we were off again winding our way through Kathmandu traffic.

We all got here safely in the end after a seven-hour journey (normal solo riding time = three hours!) and we spread ourselves over a couple of guesthouses. Cheddup owns a bar in Pakhora (The Blues Bar) and he also has one here in Kathmandu (Jazz Upstairs), so we’re all meeting up in a couple of hours to head there for the night. Lets just hope we can all make it up for 07:30 tomorrow! Raju has already taken the broken foot peg away to get welded, he’ll get it done tonight and put it on the bike first think in the morning. He even checked my oil. Top bloke!

It turns out that several of the group got stopped by Maoists who were demanding money, just as we entered Kathmandu. Dessie was the first to be stopped, he was asked for a 1000 Nepali Rupees (just over £7 GBP), he told them he didn’t have it. Then the guy tells him that “we have a problem”, Dessie told him that he hadn’t a problem. The Maoist guy then tells Dessie that he’s going to have to take his bike. Not a good thing to say to Dessie. Dessie then tells him that he’ll have a problem if he takes his bike, drops his bike into gear and then speeds off down the road (well, speeding for a Bullet!). Cheddup, Wolf and I were next through the road block, but for some reason we weren’t stopped. Would you mess with us???? ; o)

Don and a couple were next and they stopped for the guy. They get asked for money and refuse, so the Maoist guy tries to grab Dons front brake lever, so he won’t be able to get away like Dessie, but Don was too quick and they all rode off before the guy had a chance to stop them. I think he must of gave up after that as no one else I spoke to had got hassled.

Chai Break

Stopping for a chai break on the way to Chitwan.

Pokhara 21st May 2006

Somehow I managed to get my groggy body out of bed and down to Raju’s for 09:00, he had told me to drop it (my bike) off early, otherwise it’ll get too busy and he mightn’t be able to finish all in the one session.

When I got there he was already working on a customers bike since 07:30 that morning. The guy, Dessie, was still hanging around drinking tea so I got chatting to him. He rides a modified Enfield Bullet, painted purple. He left London six years ago and has been travelling around ever since, although he’s been in Nepal for two years (on and off) and he’s part of the bike club. We had a cup of tea, chatted about bikes, Nepal and London and had another cup of tea. I’d forgotten how much tea biker’s drink – it’s not all whiskey and beer you know. Dessie and I went off and had breakfast next door, he’s just came back to Pokhara after spending a month in a small village in the jungle and his trip sounded amazing.

Wolf dropped by a bit later. Wolf is a biker from just outside Frankfurt, Germany and he’s been living here for years. He also rides a modified Enfield Bullet, he’s got front suspension from an off road bike and trial handle bars and a few other mods. Peter dropped by and he was going on about builders. He’s designed a house and he’s getting it built by locals and he’s having some trouble with the neighbour about boundaries. He’s got a couple of Enfield Bullets and a 650cc Bsa. Rick, another English guy, stopped by, he’s set up a motorcycling training school (eight months ago) and he also takes groups out for trips. Monick, a Dutch woman, came in for a cuppa, I think she helped Rick set up the business. The morning flew by and was washed down with many cups of chai (or teeth rot as it should be called).

Raju even started some work on my bike! The guy really is a good mechanic and he had no trouble stripping down the complete front end of the bike. There was a bent fork rod (which he managed to straighten) and the head bearings (effects the steering) had to be replaced. He disappeared off to town at one stage to get a few parts and left me alone in the workshop for twenty minutes (until Dessie wandered back). Raju also went off to help Don get his bike started. Don bought a new Enfield in Delhi and he is going to get it shipped to Thailand and ride abound Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, before getting it shipped back to Australia. But his bike doesn’t like rain. He’s only discovered this in the last couple of days as he also hadn’t seen rain for months.

Raju got my suspension sorted out and went for a test ride, came back and he wasn’t happy about it. So he stripped the suspension again, took out my fork springs and he managed to find some springs lying under a bench. He reassembled the forks again and he was happy with it this time. I took it for a spin and the bike just glides over potholes now, no more “slapping” sounds when the bike bottoms out.

Raju also changed the fuel filter for me, this was the bit that kept popping out as I was riding along and Raju told me that the wrong one had been put on there. He also told me that the tappets needed adjusting, I had a listen to the bike and could clearly hear “tapping” coming from the engine. He took off the tank and stripped the top off the engine, had a look at the push rod and told me that the wrong one was in there. Turns out that when I broke down in India and the guy put a new push rod in, he put in one from a 350cc bike and not a 500cc bike. Gobshite! Raju had the bike back together in about ten minutes, it would have been quicker if he hadn’t of had a cigarette! I took the bike for a spin and the overall difference was astounding, it felt lovely and I can’t wait to hit the twisty roads.

It was about 17:00 by the time he finished on my bike, and I’d been there since 09:00, I could have wandered off and came back but I had a good time there and it was interesting to see Raju work on the bike. Speaking to most of the guys who dropped in, they have had more damage done to their bikes by mechanics than anything else, me too. Raju went and bought a couple of beers, so five of us sat around chatting and sharing a couple of bottles. There is a club run to the Tibetan border on 26th May and they’ve asked me to go on that with the club, so I’ll hang around here until then. It should be a good weekend as there is camping and live music, Raju is also coming with us, which will be good for peace of mind. The bill came to 3200 NP, which is £25 GBP, which is nothing for parts and labour for a days work. More importantly a days work by an excellent mechanic. The lads told me that when the Enfield workshop have problems with their bikes and can’t repair them, they bring them to Raju!

I left Raju’s at 19:00 and told the guys I’d see them later for a couple of beers and some pool. The lack of sleep from the night before was catching up with me and I crashed out on my bed for an hour. I woke up, looked at my watch, 22:30! Sh1t, night over.

Annapurna Himalayan Range

The clouds eventually cleared to give this wonderful view of the nearby mountains.

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

Craggy Island?

This is a photo of the "fun park" in Pokhara, it really reminds me of the Father Ted eposidoe when the fun fair came to Craggy Island. There was nothing else in the park apart from this wheel.

Pokhara 19th May 2006

I had good intentions of waking early this morning and indeed I was awake by 07:00, and I had a quick look out the window towards the mountains. They were covered in clouds, so I crashed out again for another hour before I got up. I decided to have another walk around the lake (east side this time) and I wore my new hiking boots and hat, which I bought yesterday.

I can’t believe how unfit I have become. On a level road, I can keep up with the best, but it’s been a while since I walked up hill – especially since I tore my ligaments in Laos, but living in London I haven’t encountered many hills in the last twelve years. I found a nice spot down by the lake and chatted to a couple of people who passed by, they were all very friendly and didn’t even try to sell me anything. I hung around there for about two hours and watched people fish and swim in the lake and it was very relaxing. I meandered back to my hotel and decided to have a rest before going out on my bike. I ended up crashing out and waking up at 17:00! I then went to an Internet café and as I was there the most amazing rain came down. I’m still not used to seeing rain, and this was so heavy, that shopkeepers had to pull down their shutters to stop their shops getting flooded out.

I spent two hours in the Internet café and decided to go for dinner in a restaurant that shows the ‘latest’ DVD’s. By the time I got there (about 100 metre) I was drenched right through, so I went back to the hotel and got into some dry clothes and put on my new rain coat (North Face - £10 GBP). I then had a lovely Schnitzel and salad and watched about an hour of a really crap move. When the movie stared there was about ten people in the restaurant, when I left there were only two people there. I then headed to a bikers bar and ended up playing pool with a couple of Australians and when they left, some Nepalese.

Boats

Phewa Lake in Pokhaara is the second biggest lake in Nepal, here are some of the boats available for hire.

Pokhara 18th May 2006

I woke up late (ish) and decided to go for a quick walk around Damside (part of the lake where the dam is). The weather was lovely, although I couldn’t see the Himalayas due to cloud cover over the mountains.

After about twenty minutes I left the town behind me and crossed a rope bridge and I was suddenly walking through rice terraces. I greeted several people I met along the way and they were all ‘smiley’ people. Some guy came up to me and asked me where I was going, I told him truthfully, that I didn’t know, I was just walking. He followed me for about 1km and he was pointing out various sights along the way, all of which I knew from my guidebook. We came to a turning before a small village and he told me to follow him, I was in the mood just to ramble by myself (spend three months in India and you’ll know how I feel). I told him I wanted to go the other way and I asked him what he wanted from me. He told me that he wanted to be my guide and that he’ll bring me to ‘Davids Falls’ (a waterfall). I’m all templed out, peopled out and waterfalled out. I told him I didn’t need a guide and then he asked me to give him some money. I told him (more or less) to take a jump in Davids Falls as I was perfectly happy wandering by myself.

He then left me alone (thank god) and I had a lovely wander through the rice terraces and small villages that surround the lake. I was surprised by how hot the sun was and I hadn’t put on any sun cream so I found a tree to crash out under, I had a lovely ¾’s of an hour to myself watching village life go by, before I had another ‘guide’ approach me. We had a brief conversation together and I probably gave of ‘leave me alone vibes’, so he took out his umbrella and sat in the shade of that for half an hour, before finally getting up and wandering off. I hung around there for another hour or so before heading back to Lakeside.

I ended up at the ‘Fishtail Restaurant’, which is on the west bank of the lake and chilled out there for another hour. The sky had turned a lovely grey by then and there was the sound of rumbling thunder in the distance. I was firmly ensconced on a bench and watching the comings and goings on the lake taking it all in. It started drizzling and the feel of the rain was bliss, the only rain I’ve felt in the last six months was in Delhi about three months ago. I went back to the main drag and went to a restaurant on the lake side and had a lovely pizza, salad and a couple of beers and then went to an Internet café. Whilst I was emailing the rain came down big time, rain like I hadn’t seen in years, it was lovely, so refreshing. I went back to the hotel to chill out for a while but just as I got there I heard lots of singing and chanting so I went to investigate. There was a big march going on and the mood was jovial, I joined the back of the march and tried to find out what it was about. The peoples protests about the current monarch had been successful and the King had been more or less overthrown. Two hundred and thirty seven years of monarchal rule had been over thrown by people power. It was a historic day, and I’m glad to have witnessed it.

I then headed of to the bar where I had watched the Arsenal v Barcelona game the night before as they had a live band. I got talking to the headwaiter and had a really good conversation about the political situation in Nepal. There was a really good live (covers) band playing there and they played lots of Hendrix, AC/DC, Black Sabbath etc. The guy is married with two kids (4 & 9) and this is his second job. His other job is Auverdic massage that he runs with his wife, he kindly offered me a massage, but I think he took some offence when I told him that I’d rather have one from his wife!

Nepal Valley

This was my introduction to Nepal, such a change from the chaos and dust of the Indian roads.

Stairway to Heaven……. 17th May 2006

Stairway to Heaven……. 17th May 2006

I didn’t set my alarm last night, as I wanted to hang around Sunuali until the banks opened, so I ended up watching Star Movies at 07:00. There was a film / documentary on about the 80’s TV show, Different Strokes. I remember watching that when I was a kid (wot you talkin’ about Aidan?) so I started to watch it. I missed the beginning of it but it seemed to be a film about the stars of the show and the effect it had on their careers. It also had the original actors come in every now and then to talk about the effects it had on their lives, it was really interesting. Arnold ended up working as a security guard, Willis ended up in prison on attempted murder and various other charges, Kimberley died of a drugs overdose.

There are no ATM’s in Nepal, which accept Cirrus cards, so I had to make a cash advance on my Visa card and I got to the bank in Sunuali at 09:10, but they didn’t open until 10:00. I thought about hanging around there as I really needed to have so Nepalese Rupees just in case I needed petrol etc, I had a look at the map and the next town was 30kms away so I thought that by the time I rode there it would be 10:00. I got there at 09:45 just as the bank was opening its doors, and the staff couldn’t have been friendlier, the whole process took just over 20 minutes (they had to wait of the days exchange rate to come through). It was at this point that I decided not to go to Kathmandu. I am sick of the chaos attached to big cities (thank you India) and I need to chill out after five days in Varanasi, so I decided to head to Pokhara, which was 165kms from Sunuali.

Pokhara is a touristy town on the banks of a lake in the foothills of the Himalaya and beside the Annapurnas mountains. I liked the fact that it was only 165km’s from where I was, as I didn’t fancy another ten-hour bike ride like yesterday, no matter how nice the scenery. After Butawal (where I went to the bank) the road to the mountains started, well that is to say the pot holed dirt track with spectacular gorges and valleys started. Have you ever felt complete joy in your heart? It hasn’t happened to me for a while, but it really hit me about five minutes after Butawal. I couldn’t believe the amazing scenery, the deep blue sky with white (and, dare I say ‘fluffy’) clouds, fields of green and people who actually smiled and waved at me. I felt like I had grown a couple of feet and I couldn’t stop smiling and singing to myself (and anyone one who happened to get in earshot!).

I don’t think I mentioned it before, but the Indians hardly smiled or waved at me as I rode along, which was hard to get used to after riding in Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. Hell, even in England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Greece, France, Spain, Germany and anywhere I else I’ve ridden people have waved and smiled, but India rarely. In fact I reckon that more people greeted me today than in the whole three months I spent in India. It took a bit of getting used to, why are these people smiling and waving? Why are they shouting ‘hello’? Why are bus drivers waving me past when I haven’t blasted my horn ten times? Why when I stop am I not asked the usual boring questions? Why are the people so friendly? Why are the women smiling and showing their shoulders?

As I mentioned above, I have been fortunate to have ridden motorbikes on some amazing roads especially in Spain (Granada), Ireland (Kerry) and Crete (near Malia), but none of them can hold a torch to the road that I was riding on today. I’m sitting here grinning like a Cheshire cat just thinking about it. I wish I could have stopped and typed this as I was going along, as my little brain was totally mesmerised by the beauty of it all.

The roads were generally good, there were dodgy bits now and then, which looked as though they had been washed away by monsoon rains / floods, as the mountain always looked pretty scarred by rainwater at these points. I couldn’t even begin to guess the amount of times I stopped along the road to take photos and to just sit in the silence. SILENCE. I forgot what that sounded like after spending the last three months in India. Have you ever truly felt silence? It’s eerie after all this time in S.E Asia and India. I even switched my motorbike off going down a couple of the mountains and apart from the sound of the tires on the road; all I could here was the wind in my ears and birdsong. From mountain peaks to glacial valleys I was grinning ear to ear. The other drivers helped make the experience even more enjoyable, they were actually courteous, and this made the ride so much more pleasant. Not only did car drivers pull over to let me pass (something that happens in the West of Ireland), but they also didn’t try to run me into a ditch when we were meeting face to face.

God was a biker. I have no doubt about that. This road generally had great visibility and I could often see ‘through’ three or four corners, which meant that I could use the whole width of the road as I was riding. I was going from a rainwater drain (on the left) to a big drop on the right (anything from 20 metres to 300 metres) at between 60kph and 80kph, and I had the road to myself. Perfect biking roads, although I had to concentrate really hard as I didn’t fancy peeling myself off the mountainside or valley floor. The best thing about the whole ride is that I know that this is only the ‘appetiser’; I’ve got the Himalayas to come yet!

I was about fifty kilometres from Pokhara when the clutch on the bike started to play up again. I felt the bar lever loosen so I started shifting up the gears by the ‘clutch less’ method and continued to motor on. This was good until I got about 20km’s from Pokhara where I was up and down hills all the time so had to change gear more frequently, and the most horrible sounds were coming from the gearbox. I managed to ‘nurse’ the bike until I got to the edge of town and I found a motorcycle mechanic. As I pulled in the, bike was screaming for mercy and stalled. The guy had a look at it for me, but didn’t know anything about Enfield’s, he did a quick adjusmentt and when I tested it the bike was worse than ever. He adjusted it back to ‘normal’ and told me to visit the Enfield showroom in town and even drew me a map. He wouldn’t accept payment. I limped into town, dreading having to stop or slow down as I’d have to crunch through the gears, and I stopped at a busy looking bike mechanics (I didn’t bother trying to get as far as the Enfield guy, as he was the other side of town). The chap there gave it the once over, and looked as though he knew what he was doing (he found the clutch cover for a start) and he adjusted it, he then asked me for an outrageous (!) ten Nepal Rupees (about 0.06pence GBP), he then jumped on his bike and rode off. I hadn’t tested my bike at this stage, but he was gone (with my six pence in his pocket!), I tried the bike and it was working fine, the boy done good! I don’t know how long it’ll last for, but I had a good look at what he did and it seemed straightforward enough…

I made my way to the lakeside, which is the backpackers area and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. A supermarket. An f’n supermarket. Pubs. CD shops. Bookshops. Restaurants. Civilisation! I found a really nice guesthouse for 200 NR (Nepal Rupees), which is about £1.70 GBP, result. I then went for a quick walk to the supermarket to see what they had (I can’t believe that I got all excited by a supermarket). Wow, it was like Aladdin’s Cave and I bought deodorant, olives, cream crackers, tissues, Swiss cheese and pork luncheon meat (I hate the stuff and can’t remember when I last ate it, but it was there!!). I even found a pub that is showing the Arsenal v Barcelona Champions League Final tonight, at 23.45. Rock on! I also found numerous shops selling trekking gear, including boots (which I need for the bike) and even a Paragliding place. I haven’t paraglided since I dislocated my shoulder in a motorbike accident about four years ago, and my licence has expired, but I’m really tempted to do a nine day course here – I will fly around three of the four highest mountains in the world, not Everest though 

I had dinner (first meal of the day) in a bar / restaurant overlooking the lake and I had the most gorgeous lasagne (with salad and garlic bread) that I’ve had in years and it was washed down with two bottles of Everest beer. The beer here is lovely, it’s brewed to a European taste (Dutch / German) and is so much better than the battery acid they sell in India. The whole meal came to £3 GBP. Did I mention how friendly the people are? I didn’t get hassled much walking down the road either, none of the name/where from/salary/married questions. Bliss on a stick. I love this county to bits and I’m only here a day, roll on the next however long!

I haven’t even mentioned how clean the country is. Why is it so much cleaner than India? They are neighbours and both are relatively poor (don’t believe the bullshit about India being the up and coming economy – they’ve too much sh1t to sort out before that happens). So how come Nepal is so much cleaner? Answers please on a postcard, first correct answer wins a bag of Laks Crisps.

Question for Chrissie: Why didn’t you tell me Nepal was this beautiful?

And I nearly forgot to mention the roadblock that I had to ‘run’. I was only out of the guesthouse three or four minutes out of Sunuali and I there was a big traffic jam in front of me, as well as a lorry jam heading towards the Indian border. I managed to weave myself to the front of the jam and found the road blocked by a couple of 4wd’s and cars. I pulled over and tried to assess the situation, should I stay or should I go? (as the Clash said) I decided to ‘risk it for a biscuit’ and go for it; the only way around was up a curb, over a bit of rough land, back over the curb and on the away. I got over the first curb all right, but as I was going over the rough ground I noticed that there was barbed wire on the ground blocking my progress. I looked around and found a couple of bricks which I placed over the barbed wired and rode over it, hoping the bricks wouldn’t move and leave me with a puncture. I’m glad to say that I negotiated the hazards safely and was soon on my way, I really hoped that this wasn’t going to be a regular occurrence. I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t sh1tting myself as I approached the roadblock, the ceasefire is only back in operation two weeks (and I’m probably part of the first batch of tourists to return) and it’s funny how quick your bravado leaves you when faced with such a situation.

Break for the border…..

I intended to set off early this morning, so I set my alarm clock for 05:00 – as happens every time I set my alarm, I woke up half an hour before it was due to go off. I had a shower and packed and by the time I loaded the bike it was 05:50. I’m really glad that I did the reccy last night as it made a difficult part of the journey so much easier. Sarnath is a small town about ten kilometres from Varanasi; once I got there the road should have been easier to follow. I managed to make it most of the way there under my own steam, but I did stop and ask for directions twice along the way.

After I got past Sarnath I had a Brucie Bonus – the road signs were in English as well as Hind and I found Highway 29 easily enough. Ghazipur was an easy 69 kilometres away and the road was good, the scenery was changing from burnt out arid land to lush green. The ride really reminded me of my time spent in Goa and especially Kerala; it was nice to leave the city behind.

The towns were really whizzing by and I was enjoying the ride, the next big challenge was Gorakhpur. This was the town where I had to make a decision – do I continue to head North and cross the border at Siddhartha Nagar or head East and cross the border at Birganj. Siddhartha Nagar is a ride across minor roads and leaves me a much longer ride to Kathmandu, whereas Birganj is a much longer ride on the Indian side, but leaves me a straight ride to Kathmandu.

Gorakhpur was a nightmare. It is a real busy ‘crossroads’ town and none of the signs are in English. I stopped to get some petrol and got talking to some guy at the pumps, he told me the way to the border at Birganj and I followed his directions. I got hopelessly lost. I hadn’t a clue where I was or where I was going. I stopped and asked a couple of people for directions, but no one spoke English. I found a road that crossed a bridge so I took it, but it came to a roundabout after about 2kms and was stumped again. I stopped and asked someone the way to Birganj, but I couldn’t find anyone who spoke English. I was very stressed out by this stage and took the right hand turn.

I got a couple of km’s down the road and it turned into a dirt track, I did a U-turn and went back to the round-about and took the left turn. I hadn’t a clue where I was and I was trying to find someone who spoke English to hopefully get some directions. I was looking out for a doctors surgery as the odds were higher on finding an English speaker, I rode for a couple of more km’s and I was just about to turn around when I spotted an address on a roadside shop. I managed somehow to find my way onto one of the roads I was looking for. God only knows how I managed to find it, but somehow I did. A total accident.

I had originally intended to stop for the night in Gorakhpur as it was 200kms from Varanasi and a further 150 kms from the Nepal border, but by the time I reached there it was 11:00. I decided to continue on and try and make a run for the border and get through immigration and customs. Gorakhpur was a pain in the arse and it took me an hour to get back on the right road. Actually it wasn’t the right road as I had decided I was going to go through the Birganj border, but it was a road on the map so I decided to go for it. After Gorakhpur the road took a turn for the worse, the surface was ok, not too many potholes, but there were so many bumps in the road. I couldn’t ride over 60kph for most of the ride as anytime I rode over that speed, I spent more time in the air clinging to the handlebars, than I did in my seat.

I so nearly lost control of the bike at one stage when I hit a row of three dips (each about a foot dip) and the front of the bike went real light, the brakes didn’t do much good as they weren’t air brakes! I had to put up with the usual appalling driving from the Indian drivers and I lost count of the amount of times I had to swerve to avoid oncoming bikes, cars, 4wd’s, trucks and buses.

The border closes to traffic at 16:00 so I tried to put a sprint in, as I wanted to get out of India and have a clear run to Kathmandu in the morning. I passed a town called Mahrajganj, which is about 80kms from the border, and I noticed that when I pulled in the clutch the lever was hitting the handlebar – this shouldn’t happen. I pulled in at the next village (not on map) to buy some water and as I did so the engine cut out. I pulled in the clutch and tried to wheel the bike forward (as it was still in gear), but it was a real struggle; the clutch was definitely playing up. The bike was fine once it was in top gear and was really motoring, but it was a struggle to drop down the gears. I learned how to change up gears without using the clutch years ago and I used this technique to get me to the border.

I was looking out for the Himalayan Mountains and I took great joy in watching them unfold before me as I was riding along. I can’t believe that I’m so close to Mt. Everest and I can’t wait to see it in the flesh.

I was expecting a bit of hassle at the border as I read that the $30 USD visa is only accepted in $’s. I only have $13 dollars remaining from my time in Cambodia, but I decided to go for it anyway. I have never been through such an easier border crossing, it was an absolute doddle. The Indian side took no more than three minutes which, to be honest, I wasn’t expecting. I crossed into Nepal and went to Nepal Immigration and they couldn’t have been nicer. They asked me to show me my country on the world map and they couldn’t believe how small it is and we had a good laugh as they processed my paper work. The $30 USD visa lasts for 30 days; they gave me 60 days for the same price. They had no hesitation in taking 1500 Indian Rupees instead of the dollar, despite all the crap mentioned in the guidebooks.

I had to present my bike to customs on the Nepal side and that took about 40 minutes to get through, it also cost me nearly £30 GBP for my bike for one month – which I hadn’t been expecting. I then went to find a mechanic to have a look at my clutch and I came across one a couple of km’s up the road, he had a look at my bike, oiled my chain, cleaned my bike and more importantly adjusted the clutch and I’m pleased to say that the bike is working fine (touch wood). I’m really proud of my ‘iron horse’ today; I can live with a minor clutch adjustment after all the abuse I put the bike through.