UK to Australia by Motorcycle 2007

At the edge of the earth

2008-03-13T12:37:00.001Z

When I finally escaped the captivating but typically Australian branded 'Snowy Mountains' and approached Sydney, the excitement of finally reaching a destination that I had been working towards for the past 10 months and 27,500 miles built up. They say that life is a journey, but ever since I had left London, this journey had become my life. I wasn't sure if I wanted it to go on or to end. As I was riding into town, I started to recognise the roads from when I had lived in Sydney 6 years ago. Then, seeing the city of Sydney standing tall in the distance, the AMP tower, the Anzac Bridge, the Opera House and, of course, the Harbour Bridge, I realized the enormity of what I had done. Now that I knew where I was, I headed for a spot that was as close as I could get to the Sydney Harbour Bridge and decided that that was the end. I had wondered how I would feel reaching this point and now I knew! Whilst there was a sense of achievement, I just thought 'oh, that's it then'. It felt very business like, closing the deal. Perhaps the fact that there was no welcoming committee reminded me that it was a personal dream that I had fulfilled.
It wasn't really until the next day that I really felt that I had arrived. As I crested a hill, nearing Bondi Beach, the sea suddenly came into view. For some reason, driving over a hill, or around a corner and being presented by the sea sparks something inside of me. I had done it! It felt like the edge of the earth. If I went any further, I would be IN the sea. I had gone as far as I could go and the adventure of a lifetime was now truly complete.
A couple of days later, I did a day trip down the coast. All of this time, it had been about the journey and not the destination, but now that I no longer had a destination, the journey seemed less relevant. It was time to move on to the next chapter and take a break from this journey and see what adventures the next one has to offer. Perhaps, it has already begun without me realizing it.

The United States of Australia

2008-03-06T12:32:00.001Z

The rugged coastline being pounded by the white waters of the Indian Ocean and the long straight roads of nothingness were all meant to be part of the experience, but I was bored. I had now titled Australia as the USA (the United States of Australia) because of its newly found love for rules and protection for the foolish. It used to be that when hiking along a track, it felt like exploring. If you were foolish enough to fall over a cliff, then it was your fault for being stupid. Now, there are warnings every couple of paces and barriers just in case you can't read the warnings and want to sue!
Just as I was following the coast around to Sydney, disappointed by the weather and after 7000 miles of coastline, having seen it all before, somebody suggested that I visit the mountains. Given that the highest mountain in Australia is only around 2500 metres, I was hesitant at first, but as soon as I began to ride along the Great Alpine Highway, the spark was back. The roads were great, the scenery varied from winding cliff roads to winding forest tracks. It was all new. Similar, but different to the Karakoram Highway. As a bonus, the weather had improved. A 2 day planned detour ended up being almost 2 weeks. Whilst I covered over 1500 miles on those fabulous roads, I also slowed right down in terms of moving on every day or so. I stopped in the tiny villages and sat back to watch the world go by. Previously, I had ridden along main arteries and noticed many capillaries (tracks) leading off to the sides - some sign posted, some not. They seemed to apparently lead to nowhere, but now I ventured into them, sometimes finding dead ends, but always finding something of interest. The tracks looked worn and beaten, but I was no longer on the 'beaten track'. These places weren't towns or even villages. They led to another world, a world without time or want. This world escaped the Americanisation of the rest of Australia and offered silence and unspoiled nature. I almost expected to see Felicity Kendall here as this was living 'The Good Life': self sufficiency and integration with the surroundings. The people were warm and genuine here, wanting nothing but to talk and share. Throughout my trip, I had found that those who had, wanted, whilst those that did not have, gave. This is where the heart of a country's real culture lies, and I was delighted to find it in a part of the world that had begun to wane in my favours. I should not have been surprised as this has been the case in most of the places that I visited - get away from the service industries that deal with tourists and people don't try to extract what they can from you. They give the most precious thing that they can: their time.

The Nullarbor in a jumper

2008-02-16T02:12:00.002Z

Leaving Perth on the west coast of Australia and heading inland across the Nullarbor Desert was both exciting and daunting. The Nullarbor Desert is considered to be one of the most remote roads on earth. There are 1400 miles before the first signs of civilisation are reached and a further 800 before the next major city of Adelaide.
I set out, equipped with extra water supplies, some 'emergency food' and a mind prepared for some 50 degree blistering heat and the possibility of coming face to face with some of the indigenous people. In essence, I didn't know what to expect but had all sorts of expectations.
When I had been travelling down the West Coast, I had received warnings about Aboriginals who stood across the road, joining arms so as to force vehicles to stop prior to stripping them of their worldly possessions and feeding them 'to the lions'. I had seen the Aboriginals in the cities and villages and been approached by them with requests for 'smokes'. I had seen them staggering around drunk on alchohol (alchohol genetically has a poisonous effect on them). Despite what I had seen and heard, my view remained that those of them in the big cities, mixing with us Westerners had been led astray and lost their ways, whilst those living in the way that they did naturally, out in the bush, would behave totally differently.
After just a few miles on the road, I found it necessary to stop by the side of the road and don some extra clothing. I was cold! It was 9am in Australia, and for the first time, I needed MORE layers to keep me warm. This continued for the whole crossing of the Nullarbor, and somewhat took away from the challenge of the remote road. The road surface was excellent, albeit very straight. At one point, it was dead straight for 90 miles. The days were long but there was no point in cutting a day short and looking around as there was nothing to see. Anywhere! The evenings gave way to some of the most stunning sunsets over the barren landscapes. In the southern hemisphere, when the sun sets, the 'show' has only just begun. Within 5 minutes, the sky will have turned red and purple in one of the most eerily serene displays that can be seen. As expected, the terrain changed constantly, from forest to bush land to scrub, on to cliffs being pounded by the fierce seas and then to vast open brown fields that had been raped of their crop. The sheep and cows replaced the kangaroos and flies and the landscape became more and more manicured.
After a few weeks' break from riding, it was great to be back in the saddle with all of the time in the world to contemplate nothing and anything.
Continuing along the Great Australian Bight, a coastal region along the south of Australia, I arrived at some tiny seaside towns. Each of them looked pretty much the same with a pub (known here as a hotel), a pier, a caravan park and a smattering of shops. What they also had in common were slogan. Every town in Australia seems to have a slogan, be it at the 'gateway to the goldfields' or 'where the vines meet the ocean', no town can have a town status until it is famous for something. The vineyards of the Barossa Valley and Adelaide Hills were yet another change in landscape, this time calm and almost Tuscan in feel. The lines of vines in the fields played an interesting illusion as they flashed past.
Still on the subject of towns and places, the names themselves are also quite interesting. Whilst many come from England (e.g. Brighton and Hove), others are chosen based upon 'appropriateness'. There is a desert, which is quite big and has sand. They call it the Great Sandy Desert. There is also a mountain 'range' with snow on it. It's called the Big Snowy Mountain. I stayed in one seaside town called Coffin Bay, but did not dare to ask why and say no signs of a booming trade in undertakers. Of course, one of the most famously named of Australian places is a road the follows the coast of the sea and had great views. The Great Ocean Road really is outstanding. Not only is it an excellent driving road, but the views are unbelievable. The rough seas beat away at the cliffs and beaches relentlessly, leaving behind an array of rock formations. This, combined with both sharp sunlight and a hazy mist from the sea results in some of the best sights seen during this trip. Whilst I generally try to spend more time seeing sights with my own eyes than I do taking photographs, it is almost impossible along this stretch of road. The road is only 120-odd kilometres long, yet it takes hours to complete the journey. The reason is because I (and everyone else) never travel more than 500 metres before stopping at the next viewpoint and gawping at its beauty. Depending on how many times I stop, I could be in Melbourne in a couple of hours, or I could be there next week.

3200 miles in 2 weeks!

2008-01-01T01:48:00.000Z

Australia is known for having among the toughest quarantine regulations in the world. Before loading my bike onto the ship in Singapore, it was dismantled and washed 4 times with a power hose and, short of using a toothbrush, every piece of dirt was removed. Whilst the bike travelled by ship, I flew into Darwin. When I landed, it was a balmy thirty-odd degrees at 1.30 in the morning. When the light returned later that morning, I was already off, visiting the various customs, quarantine and shipping offices to get things though as quickly as possible. Most previous borders had been crossed with me travelling together with the bike. Having the bike out of my sight introduced the potential for things to go wrong. For it do have been sent to the wrong port or the wrong country, or to be tied up in bureaucracy. In the end, after a couple of paperwork glitches, the bike cleared quarantine's intense scrutinisation and I could finally move onto the step of registering the bike and getting it appropriately insured. Whilst in Kazakhstan, the concept of insurance was both unfamiliar and not expected by the law, in Australia, it is sensible, required and enforced. To the people at the Darwin vehicle registration office, I was too unusual, so they gave me a waiver document and left me to get to another state of the country for them to sort it out!
So, off I went into the remote wilderness to explore this massive, sweltering hotpot of nature. On the first day on the road, I saw everything from kangaroos and cows to a swarm of dragonflies, which left both my bike and myself splattered with a yellow goo! And, of course, how could I forget the flies. It seems that as soon as I stop anywhere, I am allocated a hundred flies that swarm around me incessantly. They land on your eyes, on your lips and are enough to drive an insane person even more so. It's just another of the angles of nature and wildlife that one must get used to out here. There is a lot of roadkill here. These are animals that have been hit by cars and trucks and just lie by the side of the road. Visually, you become accustomed to this quite quickly, but, riding a bike introduces a new aspect to it. This is the smell of the dead animals in the scorching heat. Riding a bike, I had previously described one of the benefits as being able to smell the surrounding environment, but here, it is no longer a positive! The trucks are big. In fact, here, they don't call them trucks, but 'Road Trains'. They often lead 3 trailers, can be up to 37 metres long, have over 80 tyres and can take up to a kilometre to stop. It is these guys that leave the trail of animal debris strewn across the road. When you see the road trains coming, the only option is to move out of the way. When they are passed in the other direction, the amount of air that they displace can be clearly felt on a motorcycle, when one mush crouch down to maximise the aerodynamics and hold on for dear life!
I must say that the roads here are excellent. Clearly marked, pretty straight and as smooth as anywhere else that I have visited. After a couple of thousand miles, I have still not encountered a set of traffic lights and the Aussie rural idea of a traffic jam is having to stop at an intersection for 15 seconds. In many of the previous countries, whilst I could travel at speeds of 100 km/h, I could only usually average 60 km/h. Here, you can just sit on 100 all day long and whilst the distances are vast, you can get to places much quicker. With such high temperatures (e.g. 47 degrees centigrade), the bike overheating becomes more of a concern. It is probably my fault because whilst I was in Darwin, I bought a digital thermometer, which details the temperature to a tenth of a degree. The result is that rather than thinking that it is hot outside, I now know that it is and set myself targets of when it would be prudent to stop. Initially, this was an arbitrary 38 degrees, but that was significantly overshot by 10am on the first day, when it hit 42, and so the target continues to move upwards, but the bike seems to be running fine.
The sights so far have been impressive. In Australia, everything is the biggest, deadliest, hottest or most remote. Cruising in a boat down the Katherine Gorge was a humbling experience. The vastness of it, especially at the end of the dry season, when the waters run up to 15 metres lower than usual. The red rocks signifying this country rusting away are now familiar, as is the residual sand that covers my bike and is in my clothing and luggage. After riding for 1300 miles, I finally reached the coastal town of Broome. It is a bit of a tourist mecca, but the beaches are white and the 'surf is up' in the sea. When it comes to this sport, I a merely a spectator. If I was to partake, I would become a spectacle and an opportunity for the excellent Aussie life saving crew to jump to action. It was a bonus for me being able to swim in the sea here. I had thought this was the season for stingers (also known of as the box jellyfish, famous for being somewhere between deadly and merely life threatening if they sting you).
For the time being, the status of my trip has been firmly repositioned from an 'adventure' to a 'holiday'. Travelling down the West coast pretty much entails visiting a series of sunbathing and snorkelling beaches, occasionally interrupted by the odd 600 mile area of nothingness. The coast really is stunning here. The Ningaloo Reef running from Exmouth and the Cape Range National Park, through to Coral Bay and Monkey Mia offers white beaches, marine wildlife (including manta and sea rays, sharks, dolphins, the extremely rare and unique dugongs and turtles). The sea varies in colour from clear to green to blue. The sky rarely seems to show presence of clouds. That is, except for when it rains. It is then that the heavens literally open and everywhere is flooded. December is firmly in the wet season, and the volumes of rain explain how one can be in the middle of nowhere, on a totally flat plain, only for there to be a flood depth marker of over 2 metres high. To reach this kind of depth must take vast amounts of rain. The winds can be pretty fierce too. On one occasion in Denham, a gust actually picked up my tent, leaving it more to resemble a kite than a tent. The result was me comically chasing it across a campsite!
Christmas day on the West Coast entailed a visit to Coral Bay beach, only to find an ice snowman there, and a Father Christmas coming ashore to give the children gifts and, of course, the traditional five and a half hours of snorkelling on the reef. I had not planned out be out for so long, but ended up following a turtle for some time and then hunting for baby sharks in a secluded bay. By the time I got out of the water, I think that resembled Father Christmas as well. During the day, my sun block had worn off and I had got a little burned.
With festivities out of the way, I pressed on towards Perth, stopping to explore Kalbarri National Park over New Year. Kalbarri is a series of gorges lying along the Murchison River and is just 600km short of my 3 week stop-off in Perth. Celebration was in order after having completed 21,000 miles and reached the final destination country...
...albeit with another 4000 miles to be covered before reaching Sydney.

House and huts

2007-12-10T06:34:00.001Z

I had imagined Bali to be an idyllic, small island which was underdeveloped and heaving with local culture. In reality, it is fairly large, hugely westernised, heaving with partying teenagers and the beaches are not quite the picturesque white sand and blue seas that my mind had pictured. But, I suppose that I did opt to stay near to Cuta, which is the Asian equivalent of Ibiza.
In recent years, Bali has been hit by two bombings, both targeted at tourists - particularly Australians. I made a visit to one of the memorials that had been built after the 2002 bombing. It listed around 200 fatalities and it was upsetting to read the names of young couples and brothers and sisters that had been innocently caught up. As I walked down the steps from the memorial, a local girl approached me and told me that she loved me. It had been over 5 minutes since I had been offered drugs, women or transport, but on the steps of a memorial seemed even less appropriate than the previous 200 times that I had been asked that day. Needless to say, her feelings for me went unrequited!
In order to better experience the culture of Cuta, a visit to a nightclub could not be ignored. These were as well set up as a club anywhere else in the world. There was the usual scene of drunk people, an abundance of drugs being pushed, along with the now not uncommon fare of local girls. Needless to say, I only partook in dancing and drinking (after all, it is easy to get dehydrated in these hot climates). I rarely get around to visiting nightclubs nowadays and whilst dancing to some of the house music. In case you are as unfamiliar as that music as I am, it is the type which has something of a repetitive beat and continues indefinitely. It was some way into the night when it finally occurred to me where the name 'house music' came from. The DJ puts on one record and then goes back to his house, puts on the kettle, watches some TV and perhaps has a bit of a snooze before returning back to the club 20 minutes later to change the record. That must be it!
After all of that exertion, I decided that it was time to head somewhere a little more peaceful. I took a small, fairly high powered speedboat and in less than two and a half hours, found myself in another world, on Gili Air. Gili Air is a small island, around a kilometre across and was much closer to what I had expected from Bali. Whilst it was still lacking in its cultural offering, it did provide peace and much better beaches. There is no motorised transport on the island and the transport is by donkey drawn cart. Hotels had small huts along the beach with open air showers and bathrooms. Even the water here was of the saltwater variety. Whilst tourism had hit, it seemed not to have impacted it too much.
The coastline is marked by coral, which made for excellent snorkelling. The array of colours of the fish was stunning and I managed to track down some 'puffer' fish which, as the name implies are puffed up, almost like a ball.
It was low season and there were barely 30 visitors to the entire island, yet there were, perhaps, 15 hotels and even more restaurants. The tourist trade in the area has been feeling the pinch as Australians (their primary visitors) have avoided Indonesia in the post Bali bombing environment. This meant that all offerings for drugs and tacky bracelets were focused on a much smaller crowd! The locals felt that speaking with an Aussie accent made them more understandable, greeting visitors with 'arwrite maite, ow you doin, no warries'. This sounded anything from incomprehensible to ridiculous and comical but, given that they were generally either trying to sell me a 'massage' or drugs, understanding was not top of my list of priorities.
Despite the 'friendliness' of the locals, Gili Air was a great place to kick back and relax for a couple of days. The sun shone, the waters were calm and reading and choosing food from a menu were the most stressful occasions of the daily routine.
Next week, the final leg of the journey begins. It is likely to involve a couple of days to get the bike released from customs in Darwin, followed by a 2000 kilometre ride out to the West coast. The time out taken in Bali prior to this was therefore far from unwelcome!

A fugitive in Singapore

2007-11-29T16:03:00.000Z

Singapore is known for being fairly regimental in terms of what the law allows and more importantly, what it does not allow. Smoking and eating is not allowed pretty much anywhere. Durian, a fruit that is known for being smelly is forbidden on the train network and crossing a road either not at a crossing or when the crossing light is red are all fineable offences. Bring in spitting and eating chewing gum, (which I might add are absolutely necessary in an Asian country) and you realize that things could get expensive.

Getting a bike across the border from Malaysia to Singapore should be simple enough, however it involved crossing the border twice, a visit to the AA, half a dozen pieces of paper and more patience than I am usually credited with having. One of the hoops that I had to jump through was to buy a passcard for the toll roads. The only downside of the passcard system is that in order to pay, a small electronic box must be fitted to one's car or bike and these are not available to foreigners! I was advised to avoid the chargeable roads so as to avoid a fine equivalent to around £25 each time I passed a toll road monitor. I was soon to find that avoiding them was pretty much impossible as there is no warning as to which roads they are on and there is no option to turn off. I had my photo taken by around half a dozen toll cameras and then decided that things were starting to get expensive given that all that I was doing was riding 10 miles from the border to my hotel! The only option was to duck into a petrol station and wait until it got dark. As a motorcycle rider, it is generally advisable to travel during the daylight, but on this day, I was a fugitive and had to stay off of the roads until after 8pm when the toll system was switched off. Finding a hotel in the dark without a booking, with no map, at the right price with safe parking is no easy feat, but by 10pm, I was installed in an overpriced hotel in the wrong part of town with not terribly safe parking. It turned out to be fine, but I was scared to ride my bike in fear of the dreaded toll roads which I was unable to be charged for in any way other than by a fine! I travelled on the rail system for bulk of my time in Singapore and even managed to track down the officer in charge of the road toll system. After a brief sob story about my trip, the charity and how I was a poor, victimised foreigner, they agreed to 'knock off' the fines. Phew.

The next couple of days were spent arranging shipment of my bike to Darwin, Australia, which was pretty straightforward, but required plenty of running around to get stamps and carry around scraps of paper to here, there and everywhere.

I did manage to catch up with a couple of old friends, which was good, before booking a flight to Bali for a week for a well deserved holiday whilst my bike makes its way to Australia. It will be another traumatic week of beaches, sunbathing and eating, but somebody has to do it!

Kisses from KL

2007-11-15T04:16:00.000Z

Landing in Kuala Lumpur (KL) airport as the sun rose, I was eager to find out when and if the bikes might actually turn up. It would be a couple of hours before any offices opened but the civilised airport with 'proper coffee', pastries and wifi was a welcome means of passing the time. When office hours finally did seem to be in sight, I made a call to the cargo offices, who duly explained that the bikes had been held up in Colombo, Sri Lanka (where they had been due to have had a connecting flight) due to problems with the dangerous goods paperwork. Things didn't look good and it looked like the problems from India were to take yet another final sting and a flight would have to be taken to Sri Lanka to sort out the current mess.
An hour or so later, a call finally revealed that the cargo officer had had a wander around the terminal and 'found' the bikes. To say that this was a relief would be something of an understatement.
Immediately racing around to the cargo terminal, a convoluted process to get the bikes released was anticipated. In practise, it couldn't have been easier. A bit of running around, a stamp here, a signature there and a little reconstruction to put the bikes back together and some vital fluids to make the bikes 'dangerous' again (i.e. fuel) and we were ready to go.
It was at this point that Malaysian hospitality started. The cargo officer enquired if we knew where we were going to and subsequently offered to drive us to our hotel with us to follow. Whilst we would have eventually found it, it did manage to save us well over an hour of getting lost.
Wandering around KL, everything was new and exciting. In reality, everything was merely clean and civilised with air conditioned shops, cars that didn't try to mow you down and a 20th century attitude to business. I was back in the Western world, but with a feel of the orient. Walking past people, I would often have 'kisses' blown at me. Coming from men, I was a little troubled by this until I worked out that that is the way that Malaysians attract your attention. Rather than calling out, whistling or honking their horns, they put their lips together and squelch a kissing sound! Not something that I can get used to without chuckling to myself.
KL turned out to have some pretty knowledgeable mechanics, one of whom managed to fix a problem that I didn't even know that I had (so, many thanks to Sunny from Sunny Cycle!). Keeping the technical stuff untechnical, Sunny cleaned out something in the engine that was clogged up from dirty fuel and now it feels like I have a new bike. Put that together with marvellous roads, sun and a fresh set of my favourite tyres (the last set lasted for 18,000 miles which is 3 times that which you could usually expect) and I was in motorcycling heaven.
Heading up through the winding roads of the Cameron Highlands (although I think that the 'wetlands' would be more apt) to visit the tea plantations, the temperature dropped to a pleasant 16 degrees. This is a stunning part of the country with some of the best roads that I have seen since China, almost 4 months earlier.
Probably the riding of the best road coincided with my birthday as we headed down to Palau Penang (Palau means island) which is joined to the mainland by something like a 4km long bridge. As I was unpacking my bike at the hotel, I heard the rumble of another 'big' bike. When I looked up, I was surprised to see another overlander. It had been over 4 months ago, in Kyrgystan that I had last seen another person venturing around the world on a motorcycle. Mick, a Scotlander has been all over Africa, North and South America and was on his way back home after almost 2 years.
It was in Penang that I was introduced to 'hashing'. At first, I was a little concerned by a sport with such a name until it was revealed that the only vice involved was drinking copious amounts. Hashing involves running around the countryside, searching for pieces of paper and getting very muddy and lost before returning back to a party at someone's house and enduring a unique ritual. This ritual involves being made to sit on a block of ice, being sung at and being forced to drink a can of beer whilst having icy cold water poured over your head. My life is now complete!
After the exhaustion of, well, pretty much nothing, it was time to hit the beaches of Langkawi, a 2 hour boat ride away. Here the beaches finally resembles the ideal. White, fine sand (no rocks, syringes or tat-sellers), warm blue seas and excellent food.
From here on, I suspect that idyllic beaches will feature more and more as I head through Indonesia and Australia. If you suffer from jealousy and aren't enjoying the winter, I suggest that you stop reading these trip updates or jump on a bike yourself and head on out here! That said, I am sure that there will be plenty more obstacles to be overcome on the way through Indonesia.

They whisper, I shout

2007-10-31T16:38:00.000Z

There is a game called Chinese whispers, where you tell one person something, then he tells another person and so on. Eventually, you hear the story back again, but it has taken a different form. In India, there is something that I call Indian whispers. In this, you tell them (or someone sees) one thing, then they tell EVERYONE else in town, with the result being that random strangers come up to you and tell you "ah, you're the man on the motorcycle" or "you bought this from that shop". There is no such thing as privacy and no such thing as a secret in India. As a visitor, your business is always public knowledge.
Kerala delivered on its promises. The beaches were heavenly, the weather pretty good and a good balance of opportunities to relax and to meet people and unwind. After almost a week, it was time to press on with a fairly major part of the trip - arranging transport to Malaysia. After some searching around at the local Kerala airport, we found a shipper who gave us a quote for sending the bike to Kuala Lumpur. As one may expect, all of the questions were asked as to what was included and we were finally given a confirmation as to what the upper price might be. The best location to leave from was defined as Chennai (also known of as Madras), so we decided to make our way there. After the horrendous roads in the south and the driving standards that were becoming beyond a joke, it was decided that a train would be the quickest way to complete the 700 mile journey and move on to the next country before visas might need to be renewed. The train ride proved to be simple enough so we headed straight to the shipping company to start on the paperwork. With a 5am arrival and Indian business hours starting at 10am, some hours later we finally got to it. Paperwork started well with customs forms dealt with almost entirely on our behalf. The other areas that required our attention was a confirmation from the Police Commissioner that we had not been involved in any accidents (I kept quiet about the cow!) and declaring that the bikes were technically dangerous goods for the purposes of air transport. We even managed to package up the bikes before being told that they would definitely be on the next day's flight to KL. A couple of hours before the flight, we were to find that prices had gone up and that they had not been correctly identified as dangerous goods. Despite frantic attempts, we could not manage to get all of the necessary declarations in place in time, with the result being that we also had to delay our personal flights.
Unfortunately, we have been disappointed too many times in India by empty promises. The locals just don't like to give you the answer 'no', so you are always kept hanging around with the confirmation that there would be 'no problem'. This was probably the most frustrating part of India travel and eventually, the knowledge that even the simplest task will be made a mess of becomes exhausting. Having spent almost three months in such an environment, the desire to move on to the next stage of the journey became overwhelming. When the final departure arrived, even the trip to the airport disappointed. The rickshaw broke down, so, in order not to miss our flight, we flagged down a taxi. He turned out to be a student who was a maniac driver who wanted to impress us with his stupidity. In this he was quite successful and even had the audacity to request a tip! Upon arrival at the airport, the flight was delayed by an hour. Yet again, we had not failed to be disappointed.
The visit to India had been fascinating with the full spectrum of people and places having been presented, however there had been a sensory and stress overload that finally wore me down to a level of absolute exhaustion. I had not outstayed my visa, but I had outstayed my sanity tolerance! It was time to move on and I was shouting out to do so. Some how, I am sure that I will be beckoned back, but for now, back to the trip to Australia and it was time to begin exploration in the next country.
N.b. For those of you interested in the technical details of flying the bikes, go to the 'Planning' section of the website and then to 'Bike Transport'.

Palm trees and Jaffa Cakes.

2007-10-25T08:52:00.000Z

The chocolately smooth roads leading south from Pune proved deceiving as I entered the Karnarkatha state below Goa. Whilst the scenery was among the most idyllic that I had seen in quite some time, the roads degraded to a level that I hadn't experienced since Kazakhstan. The only differences are that India is far from being a remote country and that most of the other drivers acquired their driving licenses by driving for more than a hundred metres and having been lucky enough to avoid bumping into a cow (which is better than I had managed in the north). This spicy concoction made for some of the toughest riding that I had had to do. The roads were pot-holed and covered in gravel. Around every corner (and even along every straight), a bus or coach driver could be found on the wrong side of the road, hurtling towards me. They travel at such a speed that they could not possibly stop or even pull back onto their side of the road. As you can imagine, this didn't make for an enjoyable journey.
Despite the roads and the psychotic driving, Karnarkatha is stunning. I stopped for breakfast one day by a beach simply marked from the main highway as 'Palm Grove Resort'. I ventured down a narrow lane and found myself in a village, fronting the beach. They were simple people, living simple lives. When I got to the tiny resort, unfortunately, they were unable to make breakfast for me as I wasn't a guest, so I sat on the beach and ate some Jaffa Cakes that a friend of mine had brought of Pune for me. Not a worry in the world, and this is how the locals live - just without the Jaffa Cakes!
It was around a thousand miles to get down to Kerala, where I was due to meet up with Jim. The day times had the contrast of the beauty and the miserable riding and the evenings were merely stopover points.
On one of the days, my gears became gradually harder to change. It was almost as if the clutch was not disengaging properly. Some simple diagnosis found that the clutch cable wire was starting to break. Whilst I had a replacement, I wanted somewhere comfortable to change it, so pressed on for the evening. Fortunately, it held out, although it was holding on by a single thread of wire by the time that I changed it.
The next day, the bad roads continued. Just before lunch time, I went over a big bump and then found oil all the way down my left leg. This did not seem good, so I pulled over and immediately, my audience amassed. I quickly found that my oil filler cap had fallen out and this was the source of the boiling hot brown liquid. Obviously, when I had taken the bike to bits to change the clutch cable, I had failed to properly tighten it. I called over the police, who were dealing with my crowd control and asked them to keep an eye on the bike, whilst I found a local and asked him to give me a ride back for a kilometre or so, so that I could see if I could find it. To no avail, though. I was in the middle of nowhere and the part that I would need was a very specific size. I started to think of temporary fixes that I could make. One of the policemen came back with a piece of bamboo shoot, but I wasn't terrible comfortable with that in case it seeped sap or debris into my engine. His next suggestion was to put a condom over the top! Not the wisest idea given that the oil temperature runs at 95 degrees! Finally, on of the policemen sent a crowd member off somewhere. Twenty minutes later, he reappeared with an oil cap for another bike. It wasn't a direct replacement and the thread was a little short, but it would do the trick.
Finally, I completed my ride into Cochin, arriving a little later than I had hoped and found a suitable hotel. Fort Cochin is a quiet area of the city, right on the sea front. It was quite badly impacted by the Tsunami of 2005 but had recovered well. After 4 long days, it was time to relax and take a cursory glance at the Chinese fishing nets, churches and the synagogue, which is one of the oldest in this part of the world.
On the final day on my way down to meet Jim at the beach, I decided to do an overnight cruise on a houseboat on the Kerala backwaters. Here, I chartered what seemed to be a massive boat for one person, to take me along the waterways. It was serenely peaceful and in the evening, my three crewmembers and I moored by some palm trees lining the canals. Here, I was served an Indian feast. In the morning, we continued exploring the area before heading back to where I had parked my bike before I completed the 50 or so miles down to Varkala Beach, a small, slightly touristy place that would be my recluse for the next 5 days. It was time to properly relax after the long ride down and to unwind before the next step of the journey - shipping the bike to Malaysia, which was not expected to be a simple thing to arrange in bureaucratic India.

On hold, waiting for parts.

2007-10-14T06:09:00.000Z

The next few weeks were an enforced break from riding the bike. It was spent with the family of a friend in Pune, a family who have now become like family to me. I was welcomed like a son and had the opportunity to live for a couple of weeks as if I was at home. The pleasure of waking up in the same bed for more than 4 days was a forgotten experience to me and I finally had the chance to relax properly.
In Pune, the sights that I saw were no longer those for tourists but just everyday living in India. I attended an Indian baby shower party, celebrated the Ganapati (the week long festival of Ganesh, the Hindu elephant God) where the streets of Pune amass with crowds. I visited local sporting clubs, experienced being driven in cars by Indians (gulp!), as well as making presentations about my trip to students at the Firodia Hostel. I met everyone from the Mayor of Pune, who officially welcomed me by crowning me with a Maharashtra hat, the Commissioner of the Home Guards and of course (!) the Press, but more on that later.
After a week in Pune, I decided to make a week long visit to the world renowned beaches of Goa. This time, without my motorcycle, I was a regular tourist and no longer a rock star. Whilst I missed the constant attention from locals, I also enjoyed the anonymity of not being hounded with questions. It turned out that I had chosen entirely the wrong time of year to come this part of the world. Yes, it was monsoon season and it was in full flow and I only managed a day and a half of sun. As this is, first and foremost a motorcycle trip, I decided to rent a Royal Enfield Bullet bike to explore the countryside. It was hugely different from my bike, being much more agricultural to ride, aswell as the gear controls being on different sides. After a day of trying to get to grips with it, I felt as if I was being unfaithful to my bike and sent the Bullet back!
Upon returning back to the dry of Pune, my part eventually arrived. As I had by now come to expect, the Indian courier company failed to allow everything to go smoothly and were unable to locate my parcel for a day or 2, but I was comforted to finally have it in my hand. A friend introduced me to a local mechanic who had a good workshop and was familiar with foreign, larger motorcycles. It was here that I set about replacing the radiator, changing the chain and sprockets and putting in some fresh brake pads. I was able to do most of the work myself, only occasionally needing to consult the owner/mechanic, Sheri, on how to do something. By the end of the day, I was mobile again and keen to make sure that everything was working again, so I arranged to visit a friend in Mumbai for the weekend.
As in Pune, in Mumbai, I was visiting a friend, so the focus was on relaxing, enjoying myself and meeting people. Other than a coffee by a beach, fronting the Arabian Sea, I saw nothing of the city. What I did see was how young people live. They have great parties, dress fashionably (in a Western style) and love to shop. They work hard (6 days a week) but play hard too. A weekend visit was not long enough to pay Mumbai (or Bombay as the locals still call it) justice, but enough of a taste to see city life. Riding back to Pune, which is just over 100 miles away, being on a '2 wheeler', I was not supposed to take the Expressway. On the way out, I had correctly taken the slower highway, but I decided that I would attempt the impossible. I snuck onto it at the second junction and prepared my excuses (that I did not know that I wasn't allowed, that the sign must have been obscured by a truck, that the last policeman had said that it was OK and that this was a big bike, so I did not think that it applied to me. I was also to play on the fact that I had a foreign number plate and that they could never trace it!). Various highway maintenance, toll booth attendants and police tried to stop me, but I played dumb until they eventually relented and permitted me to carry on for a bit. Temporarily, I was a fugitive, trying to lay low! I did, however manage to complete my journey by the expressway, a feat that I hear is nigh on impossible by bike without being escorted off of it by the police.
Upon returning to Pune, I spent another week being filled with copious amounts of delicious food, although starting to learn acceptable ways not having my plate overly refilled by my host. In India, the mother rarely sits with the men of the family and guests, but instead serves the food. I wasn't used to this, so after much insistence, we all ate dinner together! Nothing was too spicy, although the odd green chilly was occasionally challenging.
The rest of my time in Pune flew by. Between me having to do a couple of days' work from my laptop and a series of press conferences and presentations, by the end of it, I was exhausted. The 'father' of the house in which I was staying had arranged for me to meet a couple of people to talk about my trip and to raise awareness (and hopefully money) for my charity, so I held a press conference for around 15 reporters, 10 cameramen and 3 television channels. The day was something of a blur, but most enjoyable. Previously, when I had been in the papers in India, I had found myself on page 3, so, as a joke, I asked the reporters if they could make sure that I was on the front page this time. I was later to find out that page 3 is actually the prestige page for celebrities whilst the front page is for politics!
I awaited until the next day to see the fruits of my work and found myself in 7 newspapers, with 2 'front pages' and 2 'page 3's'! I am still trying to get hold of a copy of the video coverage.
At the end of the week, it was finally my time to move on. I was to head down to Kerala to meet my riding buddy, Jim and to press on to the next country. Having stayed with my friend's family (and now my family) for almost a month, it was difficult to say goodbye, but the show had to go on and I wanted to see the white sands and crocodiles at the shores of Australia before the year was out.

A holiday from my holiday

2007-09-28T12:18:00.000Z

After spending a week in Pune with the family of a good friend of mine, I decided to have a look around Goa and to work on my tan. Also, after the stresses and strains of 4 months on the road, some R&R was in order.
Having now spent two days in Goa, it is clear that I have picked the wrong time of year as the monsoon season is fully evident!

My radiator should arrive next week, so looking forward to getting back on the road. More soon...

Holy cow!

2007-09-13T12:09:00.001Z

Twenty miles back into India, having cleared customs, I was carefully pacing myself so as to be steady on my chain when one of the cows walking across the road decided to change direction. I almost avoided him, but managed to nudge him with my radiator. These animals are so hard to predict, but the result for me was not good. I was fine, the cow was a little dazed and the bike was pretty much OK, but blue water spilled out of the radiator and I knew that a visit to a repair shop was likely, as was a wait for parts to be sent through.
Jim managed to wave down a truck, which, with the help of a couple of locals we managed to load the bike into. Sitting on my bike in the back of the truck, I contemplated how I would have rather had been riding this road, but the cow had thought otherwise! A somewhat disjointed journey followed, being dropped at a railway station, arranging to get my bike onto the train, then waiting 10 hours for the train to take me down to Varanasi, where I hoped that I would be able to have spares sent to. The train journey was comfortable enough, but took 6 hours before I franticly disembarked and had 10 minutes to sprint to the luggage carriage and get my bike off of the train without the availability of a ramp. My bike weight around 230kg and the train stands around 18" above the platform. This really is an adventure!
The next few days was spent arranging for parts and repairs to my bike and looking around the temples and ghats in Varanasi.
Varanasi is quite a small city, but it is very congested with both traffic and people. It is famous as being a direct route through to heaven, so many old people visit in their final years. This includes maharajas, and hence the various palaces surrounding it. A peaceful dawn boat ride along the Ganges is the ideal way to see the Ghats. Locals have their ritual baths there as the dawn breaks. I make it as far down as one of the body burning ghats. I had heard that this was a sight to see, and it certainly was. It is a very graphic experience as the bodies are exposed, but this is a deeply religious and traditional process. The holy men and the children are not burned, but are placed into the Ganges river. I watched only from a distance and then headed back towards Assi Ghat, where I was staying, contemplating how delicate life is. Later in the day, KK, who is a close friend of a friend of mine took me around the university here, which is one of the largest in the world. We then went to visit the Krishnamurti Foundation to make a presentation to the children on our trip. It was great to see the look of excitement in their faces as we spoke of the faraway lands that they could only dream of visiting. Many Indians that I had met had never been outside of their own country. This goes some extent to explain the reason why whenever I stop in the streets on my bike, I get mobbed by around 200 people! KK has been a great host during my stay in Varanasi and I look forward to welcoming him in London.
Arrangements for the bike seemed to go on and on, with numerous telephone calls. Eventually, I decided that the easiest thing to do would be to put the bike on the train to Mumbai and Pune, where I had a number of friends and there were more suitable workshops and to have it repaired there. Varanasi just wasn't equipped for my oversized motorcycle!
...and before you ask, my last words before bumping into the cow were NOT 'Holy cow'!

Nepal, briefly!

2007-09-08T12:09:00.000Z

The direct route out of India and into Nepal turned out to be pretty poorly surfaced and took around double the time that I had expected. By the time that it got dark, I was only as far as the border and there was still almost 200km before the Royal Bhardia National Park in Nepal. The headlight on my bike is as good as useless, so I crept through the night hardly able to see where I was going until I finally found a hotel that was close to the border of Banbasa.
An early start had me across the rather unusual border before 10am. The border was down a narrow lane, then through some woods and over a small bridge. Heading over the border with me were pedestrians, cyclists, the odd scooter and rickshaws. It seems that Indians and Nepalese are free to shuttle between the two countries without the need even for paperwork. I, meanwhile needed to get my passport and carnet (bike paperwork) correctly stamped, so made a point of finding the relevant, but much unused, offices, attended by single individuals.
Having finally reached Nepal, I was expecting to find poorly surfaced roads but was welcomed with well maintained and little used roads. Little used by cars, that is. The roads were lined with women carrying heavy (50kg!) bales of grass on their heads, cyclists and yes, you guessed it, cows sheep and dogs. The difference in Nepal is that the animals don't seem to be as street aware as they were in India. They simply wander around regardless of what traffic may be coming their way. Given that the chain on my bike was looking the worse for wares, I was trying to keep a steady speed, and the constant slowing down was not conducive to doing this. The countryside is stunning here. Extremely verdant, but it is the monsoon season. This area had been badly hit by the monsoons earlier in the month and some parts of the road were flooded.
The people here are very warm. Their look can easily be differentiated from the Indians. Their faces are a little more rounded and smiley. The women are stunning. The way that they carry themselves, the way that they look at you, the way that they dress in their brightly coloured saris. The houses seem to be more solidly built than they were in India and the streets are cleaner. That said, the population is significantly smaller than that of India, so space is at less of a premium. During my visit to Nepal, I frequently found that my watch was incorrect, but it only seemed to be by a small amount. I couldn't work out why it was as it was not by a round factor of an hour, or even the 30 minutes that there is in India. I soon found out that the time differed from India by 15 minutes! Some kind of political message, I expect to demonstrate independence.
Riding into the national park towards the lodge was beautiful. It is quite untouched with a number of villages along the way. There were 3 river crossings to get there. The first two were only shallow at around 4" deep, but the third was nearer to 10" deep and 70 foot wide. Crossing it was fine, but it did result in water getting into my boots! It also reminded me that I was not on a holiday but on an adventure! The lodge in the national park was extremely quiet as I was out of the tourist season and the monsoons had scared away those that there were. All the more peaceful for me!
After a 2 day break, I northwards headed for Pokara, another wildlife area set around a lake. Unfortunately, the monsoon had again been at work. It had caused a number of major landslides along the road, meaning that I would have to head eastwards and go around. This road, however was also closed as the bridge had collapsed when the river had spilled over. Effectively, the west of Nepal was being separated from the East. I sat out the wait for repairs at a resort near to the town of Butwal. More time to relax before acknowledging that neither route looked like it would be cleared in the near future and I would need to head back into India before heading across and back into Nepal. Certainly a long route around. So, after just 5 days, I found myself leaving Nepal already!

What a load of rubbish!

2007-08-31T07:28:00.000Z

Not India! It's a great place, but the locals just don't know what a bin is. It's more than just education as I, as a relatively well educated Westerner, still cannot manage to dispose of my rubbish properly whilst I am visiting. There are rarely rubbish bins and, when there are, upon being full, they are simply emptied out onto the roadside. I have had to resign myself to the simple fact that I may as well just use the gutter myself for rubbish. A decent disposal system would be a huge effort to put into place for a country of this size and only once that had happened would education be worth it. A massive task that would take generations to instil.
The Indians are a fairly well educated people. Obviously, there are extremes and the poor are not fortunate enough to have an education at all, but those that are speak English, have good business minds (albeit sometimes a little pushy) and are keen to progress. There are schools and universities in most towns regardless of size. Around 60% of shop and street signs are in English, which is something that I just can't understand. It's great for me as a non-Hindi speaking traveller, but in non-touristy towns and on roads where foreigners are usually driven around by locals, why would they do it? Speaking of education and the roads, education certainly does not extend in any way, shape or form to driving! Car wing mirrors are folded in. They are an optional extra for motorcycles and they have no road awareness at all, invariably pulling out without looking and drifting from side to side on the road. They love to use their horns (as do all Asians), but at the same time, ignore anyone else's use of it!
The police presence on the roads in India so far has been pretty low, which is good in that they do not ask for my passport and bike documents all day long, but bad in that it is a free-for-all. Speed limits obviously do not exist and, even where there is a barrier between oncoming traffic, use of both sides of it appear to be fair game. The police here bear wooden sticks/canes, which is a far cry from Pakistan where every policeman carries a gun, as do the doormen on most hotels, shops and petrol stations! The police are more for guidance of the law than upholders of it. Whenever asked for directions, they are extremely polite, courteous and helpful. A great trick is to park the motorcycle next to them, in which case, they take the job of keeping the locals from climbing all over it and pushing buttons very seriously! I certainly prefer sticks over guns, and whilst the police are not aggressive, they clearly command respect from locals who immediately do as they are told.
After a number of mainstream tourist stop-offs, my travel companions and I decide to head for the hills, to a small village called Kumbhalgarb. We find a very smart resort type hotel at which to stay and head for the fort, just as it gets dark, at which point it is lit up by an impressive lighting system. The complex of buildings within the vast fort walls are each most impressive in their own right. Access by any aggressor would be (and has proven to be) impossible with the double wall and the hill-top positioning. The temples, palace building and outhouses were each build with intricate detail. This was a great and peaceful retreat from the tourist trail.
On to Pushkar, a small but touristy town towards to the northeast of Rajasthan. Pushkar is known for the ghats (holy bathing spots) around its fairly small lake. Another flat tyre on my motorcycle took up half of my planned short visit, so I had it repaired and extended my stay for a further day. A walk around the lake is a peaceful escape provided that the touts trying to extort money from foreigners in return for a prayer are avoided. The town itself has the now familiar small lanes lined with food, fabric and souvenir stalls plus the odd cow lying in the street and constant hooting from the rickshaws and scooters. Enough to drive anyone to insanity. Following a recommendation from a friend, I made and afternoon visit to Ajmer which was just 11km away. Whilst a much bigger town, it is famous for its mosque, the Dagar Sharif, which is one of the most important Islamic mosques in India. From what I understand, a Dagar is a mosque that is open to all, especially the poor and where people can genuinely pray and be close to their gods. The central building in Dagar Sharif houses the remains of an important Islamic gentleman from Saudi Arabia. Rather than people praying to the West, at this dagar, people towards this central building. A crowd of people patiently queue to make their offering and prayers to this most religious building. It is just one day after the Raqui festival, so there are many people visiting. The fact that no touts or guides have approached me sends a clear message to me that this is not a touristy town and this dagar is a deeply religious place where visitors are respected. My camera runs out of batteries, as I attempt to take my first photograph. I am not too disappointed as it encourages me to look properly around with my own eyes. I watch a group of men in one area sitting on the floor along a long mat. There are, perhaps, 40 of them, each dressed in white and transferring a nut from a large, communal pile in the middle of the mat to a pile of their own as they repeat a prayer. The whole place is busy, but serenely quiet. There are various areas where offerings are made, and others where people lie or sit and contemplate. There are many poor people who have sought refuge during the day time. This non-touristy visit left me feeling that I had obtained a small insight into the importance of religion to these people.
Back at my hotel, I was heading out to a café to quietly collect my thoughts from the past few days when the heavens opened up. Literally! Whilst waiting in the shelter at the hotel, I got talking to a Sikh gentleman and his sister who lived in Amritsar, but who had been in town for Raqui. After some time chatting, Satbir invited me to try on a Sikh turban, an offer and opportunity at which I jumped. Apparently I was the first person that Satbir had made this offer to. An hour later, I was wearing a mustard yellow coloured turban, which was wrapped from around 7 metres by 3 metres wide of cotton. After an extensive photograph session, together with my new friends, their uncle, their driver, and a member of staff from the hotel (acting as translator), I was invited for dinner at a restaurant in town, to which I proceeded (still bearing my turban!). This made for a both filling and fascinating meal and the generosity and warmth of Satbir will certainly be remembered.
The final stop in Rajasthan after Pushkar was Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal. I stayed in a peaceful, but nearby town called Bharatpur, which has a huge bird sanctuary. Agra itself, having one of the biggest attractions in the world is extremely touristy. I visited the Taj Mahal itself early in the morning in the hope of having a small extent of peace in which to enjoy it - and I did, for a while. The Taj Mahal really is as stunning and impressive as people say. It is set in vast, manicured gardens, with perfect symmetry from every angle both in the main, white marble buildings and across the four gates and the mosques that flank it. From every angle, the design of it manipulates the eye to show off its perfection, whether it be the designs on the pillars or perspective of one building through the arch of another. Even the minarets that flank the main building were built at a 3 degree angle so that if they were to fall over time, they would do so away from the mausoleum. The Taj Mahal was built by the (Islamic) Mughal Emperor, Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his late wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died during the childbirth of their 14th baby in 1631. It took 22 years to build, at the price of half of his (quite substantial) wealth. Upon completing it, he wanted to build a second, mirror image set of buildings (in considerable more expensive black marble) across the river from the Taj Mahal, however his eldest son, who by this point had the reins to the family fortune, banned him from doing so and locked him up at the palace/Agra fort! Upon his death, some 10 years later, his body was laid to rest next to that of his beloved wife.
The Agra Fort in itself is most extensive, presenting an excellent view of the Taj Mahal with huge detail. A visit to Fatepur Sikhri reveals another palace and Dagar. The extent of the forts, palaces and mosques in the Rajasthan region has proven to be hugely impressive from all aspects from design to construction. It is only a shame that some of them have not been maintained or restored to their original state. Given the fact that foreigners are charged up to 25 times that for the locals, it is not unreasonable to expect the revenues to be ploughed back into maintaining them. My visit to Rajasthan can have only scratched to surface to its magnificence and perhaps, one day I will be able to do it justice by exploring some of its more remote sights.

White skin tax

2007-08-28T05:11:00.000Z

Raksha-Bandhan (or Rakhi for short) is the festival of sisters and brothers. The girls give their brothers and cousins bracelets and in return, the boys promise to look after the girls. To mark to occasion, over the rooftops, one can see the children flying kites. The whole sky is full of them, wavering about. It is quite a sight as the sun drops behind the fort.
Heading out of Jodhpur, there was some type of a procession or protest heading back into town. Groups from 1 to 12 people walk along with flags, dressed smartly, but brightly. In one of the groups, there is a man lying on the ground. At first, I hope that he is not injured, but as I approach, he can seen to be rolling along. Clearly, this is his protest. A man follows him, holding an umbrella over him to shadow him from the sun. He is still over 30km from Jodhpur!
On the subject of umbrellas, it is not uncommon to see a poor farmer in the countryside, dressed in the traditional orange turban and white shirt, with the shorts made from a wrapped around piece of fabric carrying a stick in one hand and a black English style brolly in the other! It is highly practical, yet looks strange. The roads are a fascinating place from which to see India. Women walk along the side of the road (also, often in the middle of it!) carrying heavy pots and other loads on their heads. They are perfectly poised and balance the vessels with ease. Sometimes, they place a ring on their heads and then carry the pots on top of that. If one stops to ask women by the side of the road for directions, they giggle and run away. I expect that the correct thing to do is to only approach the men. They, themselves are not much use as during a conversation, during which they are likely to point in all directions leading off of an intersection or to point and wave their hands around in such a way that their helpful suggestion is as clear as the water that fills the gutters here!
The next stop is Udaipur, a city of palaces, built around a beautiful lake. From all angles, the restaurants and cafés invite tourists to sit and watch the James Bond film 'Octopussy', which was filmed in the Palace in the centre of the lake. It is a stunning Palace, now turned into a hotel and only open to its guests. From a rooftop restaurant in the evening, the white palace reflects peacefully against the water in the lake. On the shore of the lake, the City Palace is stunningly lit up to show the intricacy of its design and its grandeur. The City Palace is a huge complex of buildings and courtyards. The views from the top, back over the lake do not disappoint. Being a major tourist attraction, there is little calm whilst wandering around it, and as with most of the Indian Palaces visited to date, the outside has fared time better than the inside. Upon exiting the Palace, the pressure to buy something from the touts rises. Whether it is food, gifts, hotels, a guided tour or a rickshaw, they are keen to sell their wares to the 'rich tourists'. Even the Palace itself imposes its own WST (white skin tax). It charges foreigners 10 times the local entrance fee as well as a relatively expensive premium for the privilege of using a camera once inside! This WST has been evident throughout India, and on principle, where possible, those sights are avoided (unless they are the major ones). It is a shame as it just makes tourists feel ripped off and constantly be on their guard for being taken advantage of!
Rant over and back out to the countryside.

Hey, Mister, your light is on!

2007-08-25T12:49:00.000Z

Whereas I was previously greeted by waves when moving and mobs of locals when not, the most important message that is sent to me now is to 'warn' me that my headlight is on. For some reason or another, Indians never turn on their headlights during the day (and almost as rarely turn them on at night). Perhaps it's a power saving thing. In Europe, motorcyclists always ride with their lights on, and on my bike, it cannot even be switched off! This frustrates both the locals who wave their hands in a light bulb fashion to warn us and also me who is well aware of the fact that it is on! I have asked a couple of English speaking locals as to why they get so wound up about the lights affair but none can give me a halfway decent reason. Ho hum.
Riding across to Rajisthan, the colours of the saris, blowing in the wind against the backdrop of the desert sand were stunning. The horse and carts have been replaced by camels and the crowds of people from Delhi have faded away. Rural India seems to be much more traditional in terms of the clothing that people wear. The men wear shorts made from a sheet of fabric that is wrapped around their legs, loosely wrapped turbans in a full array of colours.
The main roads are well surfaced but veering off to a few short cuts lands us well off of the beaten track. The people now look genuinely amazed by the sight of our heavily loaded, oversized motorcycles. Whilst many of the children wave and call out as we pass by, others just look in shock! On these roads less frequented, the sand threatens to swallow them up. In places, all that is visible are tyre tracks. Sand riding on a motorbike is a novel experience to me as the tyres slip around, struggling to grip. The buildings look much more substantial than elsewhere. These are not rich people, but they are not living so densely. The houses are traditional, with curved walls and open cavities for windows.
Eventually, we pull into Jaisalmer, an intimate city in the West of India, within around 100km of Pakistan, which is overlooked by a fort. The alley ways are lined with shops and are perfect for meandering. Many of the hotels and restaurants have rooftops from which the fort can be viewed. This also relieves us from the busy streets with local shopkeepers pushing their wares.
Next stop was Jodhpur, around 300km back to the East. Jodhpur is significantly larger than Jaisalmer and is also overlooked by a fort. This is a much larger fort and is more or a tourist attraction than the fort at Jailsamer, where there is a town within the fort's walls. Jodhpur has a maze of narrow streets where rickshaws, motorcycles, pedestrians and shop-keepers shuffle for space. The true owners of the streets, though, are the cows. They take precedence over all and regularly stop in the middle of a congested alleyway for a lie down!
Around Jodhpur are a couple of other attractions such as Jaswant Thada, a marble memorial-come-temple to a Maharaja and Umaid Bhawan Palace, which is now a giant hotel.
Whilst in Jodhpur, a friend from home introduced me to a relative who lived locally. I was invited to join Mr and Mrs Gandhi and their family for dinner. To my delight, I was traditionally greeted by their son who marked a spot on my forehead, fed me a sweet biscuit and placed a flower necklace around me. After a more than ample feast, Mr Gandhi arranged for a press meeting and the next morning, my photograph, complete with commentary was on the front page of the local Rajasthan newspaper!

Northwest India

2007-08-20T04:00:00.000Z

As soon as I had crossed the border, even though it had only been miles since leaving Pakistan, the temperature and humidity appeared to rise by a notch. The road surfaces improved massively, but with that comes faster (and crazier) driving by the locals. The trucks were not painted as colourfully as they had been in Pakistan, but there were differences apparent in the people. In Pakistan, there had been few women on the streets and those that were were hidden away behind face veils. Here in India, they sat peacefully on the back of scooters that were being driven by their husbands. They wear colourful saris and smile. A smile says a lot about contentment. The men wear western style trousers and shirts, which, I have to say was a disappointment after the traditional Pakistan dress (baggy 'ali-baba' trousers and 3/4 length shirts).
India seems like a relatively rich country in comparison to Pakistan. The roads and infrastructure are significantly better and the villages and towns are better arranged. In terms of the people, there seems to be many more poor people in India, apparent by the hygiene and begging. There are certainly more people here and it is much more densely populated than any of the other 18 countries that I have visited so far on this trip.
After a couple of hours' riding up toward the north-west region, I was greeted by my first serving of monsoon rain. When it rains here, it really rains. Visibility goes to nothing and you get absolutely drenched. The locals sensibly all pulled over by the side of the road to wait it out. It seems that it is an expected occurrence, with even the time being known (4pm). In future, I think that it would be wise to follow the locals' lead! They do, after all have the inside knowledge.
Riding through India felt strange at first. India is a very long way away from London and I had ridden all of the way here. The culture is hugely different and the cars, people etc, are also different. Some days I need to pinch myself to realise how far I have come!
There had been some monsoon floods in the north of India, causing quite a bit of damage. The villages here are so simple here with poor drainage that when it rains, the roads turn to rivers. I had heard about the floods on the news, but it wasn't apparent in any places that I visited.
The first destination in the Northwest was to be McLeodgung, the home of the Dalai Lama. There is more than just a strong Tibetan presence in this region and their peaceful outlook is much less intensive than that in other parts of India. Tourists have turned McLeodgung into something of a hippy town. It is up in the hills, above Dharamsalah. A comfortable retreat to both relax and to escape the heat and humidity. Tourists with dreadlocks like to 'find themselves' here, dressing in sarongs with their dreadlocks and piercings. As you can tell, not my scene, but a relaxed place to mooch around during the days.
Cows wandering in the streets and lanes in the Indian towns (and even cities) appears to be normal, although they end up eating all of the rubbish that the locals have discarded by the street sides. It seems that they are given equal rights to live in the city streets as people!
The next stop in Northwestern India was Shimla, another hill town, this time more substantial and really built into a steep mountainside. On the way across, monkeys were on the road-sides, giving both something to look at and something to dodge! The monkeys were also in the city of Shimla. Many of the houses have grilles on the windows to prevent them from coming in. There was even a monkey temple further up in the hills where the monkeys have free roam and harass the visitors for food, grasping at clothes (not from personal experience, but if you visit, a belt for your trousers is recommended!).
From Shimla, there was a fairly fast road down to Delhi, where, again, the crazy driving went up a notch, which a melee of cars, trucks, buses, bicycles and rickshaws all eagerly going about their business. Delhi, as you might expect is a massive, sprawling city. Upon eventually reaching the centre, I visited the Red Fort and a couple of museums and memorials to the Ghandi family. There were also some massive market streets, packed with people jostling and bargaining. From experience, I can confirm that this is an easy place to get lost in! Unfortunately, most of the items on sale were tat, so I didn't buy any souvenirs, much to the dismay of the shop keepers who were all keen for me to come in for 'just looking'.

Pakistan - India border

2007-08-14T14:08:00.000Z

After a couple of uneventful days in Lahore, Pakistan, we made an evening visit to the famous border closing ceremony at Wagah, the border crossing between Pakistan and India.
At the ceremony, each of the two countries has something of a stadium set up for seating, divided with men on one side and women on the other. Each country blares out some national music. I couldn't hear the Indian music as it was drowned out by that of Pakistan - this is probably intentional. Unfortunately, the music wasn't terribly melodious and all that could be deciphered was the word 'Pakistan' every 3 seconds! As westerners, we were immediately shown to a special viewing area right at the front and soon after, the 'show' began. The guards were smartly dressed in formal army uniform and sporting turbans with fan-like trimmings. There was also a crowd warmer who egged on the audience to ensure that they were louder than the people on the Indian side. Around a dozen guards marched around aggressively, stamping their feed in a knee jarring manoeuvre. There was a certain extent of synchronisation between the two countries, but I think that the jist of the performance was a display of strength and anger towards the other country! Difficult to understand really. At one point, the gates between the two countries were opened (again, each gate targeted to be more ornate than the other) and the flag lowering section began. There was plenty of rope throwing, foot stamping, moustache twiddling and had realigning going on as well as a fair share of accelerated marching with legs raised high. All in all, an interesting show, but perhaps there was more hidden meaning that was not communicated to the viewer. After the ceremony, we took a rather colourful ride back into Lahore. Our taxi driver was somewhat psychotic, driving on the wrong side of the road and eager to pass anything that was or wasn't moving. We made it back to the hotel somehow or another.
The aim had been to return to the border the following morning to actually make the crossing, but a bout of sickness put it on hold for a day or two. Little more of Lahore was explored except for the Old City and main mosque, said to have a capacity of up to 100,000.
The border was finally negotiated without too much delay on the Sunday. There were absolutely no other people at the border that day, but a bit of standing around in the sweltering heat during the processing of the carnet de passage made sure that our first cold drink in India was not far away.

Nearly in Afghanistan

2007-08-08T06:17:00.000Z

It seemed like a good idea at the time, so we decided to see how close we could get to Afghanistan and to see the famous Khyber pass.
Sitting on a bike without stopping, it can be difficult to judge the mood of the locals. All that you can go by are the children lining the streets. On the way to Peshwara, which is around 60km from the border with Afghanistan, it seemed to be changing from that in the North. Some of the children appeared to be picking up stones to throw at us! None of them actually did, but it is generally a clear sign of the thoughts that have been passed on from the parents. This made me a little pensive as to whether our visit to the North-West was a sensible thing to do, but many people that we had spoken to in the welcoming North had suggested that there would be no problem - and there were no problems. Everyone that we stopped and chatted to was very polite and welcoming, generally asking the usual questions of where we were from, where we were going, if we were on motorcycles (even though we were sitting on them at the time(!) and, of course, what we thought of the cricket. Our record audience was around 100 people when we were buying a pair of sunglasses, and, as usual, involved some police to clear the crowd! Often, we just get people standing next to us, staring. The solution to this is to just stare back, and seems to clear them after a couple of minutes. I can't see how seeing 3 bikers filling there motorcycles with fuel can be even vaguely interesting!
A couple of hours of riding later, we were in Peshwara, sitting in Afghan Carpets, drinking tea with the Colonel (as introduced by Stan, the tour guide that we had met in Kashgar and Charimabad). The Colonel was to arrange our visit to the border with Afghanistan, complete with a private armed guard! All was sorted out within half an hour and the next day, we were to leave for the 2 hour drive to the border.
Peshwara is a fairly big town, with a small centre, full of a whole range of shops, but especially motoring shops, so we took the opportunity to have a couple of things made for our bikes. In particular, we went in search of a painter to make a design on our bikes like those on the colourful trucks that we had seen everywhere on the roads along the KKH. An interesting couple of hours later, we were unable to get the painting done, but much wiser in terms of having seen trucks being built and 'decked' out.
Our visit to the Afghan border took us though the Khyber Pass. We were accompanied by an armed guard, but apart from the rather precarious driver of our car, all seemed to be pretty safe. Most of the area around the border is not controlled by the police but by some kind of an independent army called the Khyber Rifles. We got to within a kilometre of the border and this time found ourselves drinking chilled Coca Cola on the top of a hill overlooking the border itself. There was a surprising amount of traffic at the border, to the extent that I'd say that of the 17 borders that I have crossed to date, this was the busiest! Good job that we weren't crossing it!

Karakoram Highway

2007-08-05T08:28:00.000Z

During our stay in Kashgar, my friend, Matt, from London, who we had met up with in Kyrgyzstan had miraculously managed to foil Chinese officials (albeit with some complications) and joined us at the hotel. We agreed to join forces for a while.
Leaving Kashgar, we headed along the perfectly surfaced roads for Tashkorgan, a fairly non-descript border control town in China. Like our entrance to China, this was a good 90km before the actual border and it was here that our passports were stamped out of the country. This was a fairly slow and inefficient procedure, but disappointingly involved us being supplied by a uniformed escort to the outer border.
A very dull 2 hours later, we finally got to the outpost and Matt, who had had to put his motorcycle onto a truck due to not having all paperwork in order managed to at last unleash his bike and ride it into Pakistan.
The Karakoram Highway (KKH) runs all of the way from Tashkorgan in China to quite some way into Pakistan, a total of around 800 miles.
The Chinese side of the road is perfectly surfaced but quite flat, whereas the Pakistan portion is much more winding with frequent landslides as it progresses through continuous mountain roads, following the Hunza River. The Pakistan portion of the Karakoram Highway presented many challenges and surfaces including mud, sand, floods, gravel, pot-holes and then immaculate surfaces! Karakoram means black mountain and is the only link for many communities to the rest of the country. It is quite a poor area, but in Pakistan, the locals are hugely welcoming. This to me somewhat by surprise as I had anticipated them to be slightly hostile towards westerners. Children line the streets greeting us (the education rate is quite low, so they were not at school). We have become familiar with a hand gesture that lets us know that we are riding during the daytime with our headlights on. The locals think that they are being helpful, but motorcycles in the west always use headlights both for visibility and because they are hard-wired to always be on. This sign is seen hundreds of time a day!
As soon as we crossed the border to Pakistan, via the Kunjerab Pass, the roads deteriorated to gravel and pot-holes. We were greeted by a sign saying 'Welcome to Pakistan, please drive on the left' (our last 11,000 miles had been driven on the right!) and a friendly border guard who waved us straight through. The real border was to be some 90km later in Sost. We progressed along the stunning mountain roads, eventually being stopped by a flooded piece of road, which at over 200m long was too risky to try to navigate with the bikes. Eventually, we loaded the bikes (something of a hairy manoeuvre in itself) into a truck to get across. The truck had absolutely no suspension at all and it was pretty uncomfortable riding in the container with the bikes, but it served the purpose. Unfortunately, we then couldn't find a suitable place to unload the bikes (it was almost 2m high without any type of a ramp), so had to stay in the truck for the 60km to Sost. After the 30km/h ride, and 1.5 hour stop as the truck ran out of fuel wait, we arrived in Sost in the pitch black. The border was closed but smiling faces welcomed us. Immigration held our passports for the night but waved us through to a hotel in the town. The next morning, we returned to immigration, sat down with the border guards whilst we filled in the paperwork and chatted before preceding to the customs office where we got our carnets stamped. It was so great to finally see some smiling faces after being in the Stans and China.
A carnet (or Carnet de Passage) is a guarantee that some countries require that declares that a vehicle being brought into a country will be taken out again. It basically states that if we don't take it out, we will pay up to five times the value of the bike. Hence, it's important to get it right! ...but things went smoothly enough and by 10am, we were on our way to Charimabad in the Hunza valley, where one of the guides from the tour groups in Kashgar had recommended that we visit.
The winding mountain roads continued and we passed truck after truck. In Pakistan, all of the trucks are painted and decorated in bright colours with pictures, ornaments, lights and dangling chains. They are quite a sight and it is amazing to see that it is ALL of the trucks.
In Charimabad, we stayed at a secluded hotel up in the hills, where we bumped into another of the Kashgar tours! We joined them for dinner and some illegal alcoholic drinks that had been smuggled in (Pakistan is a Moslem country). One of the girls in the group was so taken by our travels that she (Evelyn) asked if she could join us for a couple of days.
...so then we were four! After taking a look around the cobbled, steep alleys of the village and visiting the fort, we headed on down the KKH to the Sandor Valley. This was another winding road in stunning scenery, following the Ghizer River.
Seeing the reaction of a non-biker to the freedom of being on a motorcycle was fascinating and showed me how lucky I was to just jump on my bike everyday and go whichever way I pleased, when I wanted and to have an unobstructed view of the scenery.
Evelyn travelled with us for 2 days before we dropped her off in a City to meet up with the rest of her tour group. Afterwards, we pressed on Southwards to the bottom of the KKH, on our way to Peshawar, in the North-West region of Pakistan.

Kashgar

2007-08-01T08:28:00.000Z

This was my fourth visit to China, but my first to the Western part of it. Kashgar is nothing like anywhere else that I have visited in the country with a real cultural mix of Urdu, Chinese and Moslem. In fact, it is predominantly Moslem over Buddhist. Street signs are in both Chinese and in an Arabic script and both languages are commonly used (although neither are understood by me!).
Wandering around the streets was fascinating with a range of scents from the street food stalls, many colours from the hat stalls. In common with previous visits to China, I noted that whilst the streets were fairly busy, when you stop to look around and listen, you notice that they are quite silent and everyone is just getting on with their own thing. It's a fairly untouristy city, although we did catch up with many westerners at the hotel, so it really did feel like we were on holiday.
We met a couple of tour groups that were staying at the hotel, who we joined for dinner a couple of times, exchanging stories and answering the usual questions of where we'd come from, if we'd really ridden all of the way from London... Surprisingly, over the couple of days that we were in China, we met a number of couples that had cycled around Asia or even all of the way from Europe!
During our stay in Kashgar, we were not allowed to use the motorbikes, but it was a welcome change to be tourists on foot, so we had a look around the Bazaars and visited the Sunday Livestock market, which was a real hustle and bustle of locals and animal trading. Great for some photo snapping!
...and then it was back to the hotel to prepare the bikes for the onward journey to Pakistan and the Karakoram Highway.

China - the big push to Kashgar

2007-07-26T16:21:00.000Z

We had heard that the crossing to China would be hard. It did not disappoint, even though we had arranged a guide. Without transferring through China to Pakistan, there was only one other way of stitching together the two halves of our trip. That involved Tajikistan and Afghanistan, which was certainly not on the preferred country list!
Other than my worries about whether or not the guide that we had arranged would turn up, I was concerned that we had no paperwork to present the official with confirming that we had a guide, and our meeting time of 11am was unclear (China runs on two times - Beijing and local, which vary by 2 hours).
After leaving Narin, we headed South for around 200km to the first Kyrgyzstan exit point. Our passports were stamped and then we set up camp for the night (yes, it was raining again!). We were within 60km of the Chinese border and there were no hotels. A local on horseback did invite us to stay in his yurt, but by this point, we had already set up our tent and it had rained hard. To get to the yurt, we would have to ride over grass with our road tyres and we risked getting our bikes bogged into the grass the next morning when we exited. We did not want anything to potentially make us miss our meeting the guide at the border to regrettably had to decline. Especially given that it was freezing cold that night (at an altitude of over 3000m), there was a constant rumble of trucks rolling past us and we only had nuts, raisins and a melon as food!
In the morning, we gathered our things and got back onto a worsening track towards the second Kyrgyzstan border, where our bikes were searched, we filled in some paperwork and got another exit stamp?! We received a stern warning that if China did not let us in, our visa would not permit us to return to Kyrgyzstan. We were really reliant on our guide turning up as otherwise, we would not be allowed into China.
Around 10km later, we were at the first Chinese checkpoint. It consisted of one man, who spoke no English. He took a look at our passport, asked us something that we didn't understand before eventually sending us on (without any stamp). Around 20km later, we got to another checkpoint, which was much more thorough and happily we were approached by our guide. Phew! He had turned up after all. Booking stuff over the phone and internet does work!
The guide helped out with translation, our bags were searched with particular interest that books did not contain any political material and then we were on our way...
...to the next checkpoint 80km away. We still had no stamp in our passports and yet we were around 90km into China! The next (and final) checkpoint was down a pretty badly surfaced gravel road with very little grip, so we crept along before finally reaching a pristine surface and the final checkpoint. After they returned from their siesta, the border control police searched our bags again, scrutinised the paperwork (some of which the guide had got wrong but duly corrected) and then an hour to 2 later, we were 'free' to be escorted to Kaskgar.
In China, we are only allowed to use our bikes under the escort of our guide. Given that there are no legible road signs at all and that speed limits change without any warning, it was probably a good job that we had a guide. Whilst it was pretty expensive to arrange, with hindsight, it took a fair bit of stress out of the whole procedure.

Into Kyrgyzstan

2007-07-24T16:21:00.000Z

On our way from Almaty (Kazakhstan) to Kyrgyzstan, we followed the mountains to the border. The temperature was somewhere in the high 30's and we took frequent drink stops, although we had perhaps planned to run out of Tenge (the local currency) a little to finely, meaning that we had a light lunch!
The border crossing was a breeze, being simply stamped out and then stamped into Kyrgyzstan, although we were surprised to see an Aston Martin with British number plates being driven back from Japan to the UK at the border. Strangely enough, the border police took extensive interest in them and I am sure, extorted what they deemed to be appropriate 'fees' from them.
By the time we were on the road in Kyrgyzstan, it was around 4pm, so we headed East along Iszy Kul (Kul means lake) to find somewhere for the night. We cruised through what turned out to be the only town on the north of the lake and next thing we knew, it was getting dark, our headlights were as good as useless and there was not a hotel or guesthouse in sight. We plodded on, eventually rolling into a tiny village where a local offered us use of his living room (for a price!). It seems that the Kyrgyz love money just as much as the other Soviet countries. We were even charged 10 times the local price for admission to a national park area, which immediately put us on the 'rip off the tourist defensive'. Not a good start for our perception of the locals.
The house where we stayed for the night was pretty traditional with a mini farm in the back, an outside clay stove and a tin bowl for a sink. Needless to stay, we left early the next morning for a short 20km ride to Karakol, the main town for the region.
As we rode into Karakol, unusually we decided to stop at a tourist information office where miraculously, we stumbled across a friend of mine from London (also riding a motorcycle)! I had known that he would be in the area, but it was by pure chance that we were in the same place at the same time.
We checked into the same hotel as Matt and then proceeded to sit around chatting for a couple of hours before heading to the Lake for a quick dip with the locals.
For the next couple of days, we joined forces with Matt as we headed for the Chinese border. From this point on, it seems that we would meet more and more Westerners after having seen only half a dozen over the past 2 months. Among the Westerners that we met were 3 Swiss girls (Dyer, Corrina and Anne-Marie) who were cycling (pedal!) around Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. We camped with them one evening (when it poured with rain) and they put us to shame by being much more competent at setting up their tent and at coordinating dinner from the simplest of ingredients.
We pressed on to the South, where Jim and I would go to the Torugart Pass border with China and Matt would peel off and try his luck at another border. Foreigners are not allowed into China with their own vehicles without a serious amount of paperwork and permits, which only we had and the Torugart Pass is regarded as the among the trickiest of border points at which to cross.
On our way out to the border, a bee managed to get caught in my helmet, which ended up stinging me. Not a pleasant experience, but I managed to stop rather briskly before he could have another jab at me!
After a couple of hours of track roads with little grip and constant rain, we found Narin which was a decidedly dull stop off and quickly moved on towards the border with China. The scenery on the way was stunning but there was hardly anyone around except for some trucks carrying loads from China and herdsmen with their yurts.

Almaty and the psychotic drivers

2007-07-16T03:33:00.000Z

Since the second that we entered Kazakhstan, the driving has been 'colourful'! Many of the other cars and trucks are excited to see foreign travellers and frequently honk their horns, flash their lights at us and pull up alongside us to ask 'at que da' (pronounced 'a koo der'), which means 'where are you from'. Once they have welcomed us to their country, the drivers then like to aim their cars at us and then overtake where there is nowhere to go and try to barge us off of the road! It certainly keeps one alert! We hear 'at que da' so frequently, that we've started an 'at que da count', where we count how many times a day we get asked the question. The record is somewhere around the 60 mark.
When we finally rode into Almaty in the south-east of the country, over 8500 miles since leaving London, driving took on a whole new level. The cars were zig zagging everywhere, trying get past eachother. Indicators are merely a decorative item for the cars and speed limits don't exist. They race off of the traffic lights before cars coming the other way have even cleared the path and are impatient beyond belief. One local traffic 'rule' seems to be that if you are coming onto a roundabout, you have right of way over those already on it (the opposite of in most other countries), and very disconcerting to do! To make things more interesting, this only seems to be the rule sometimes.
When we finally found the centre of Almaty, we started to search for a hotel. There weren't too many around, and those that we found were either ridiculously priced (even by European standards) or fully booked. Eventually, we settled into an allegedly 4* hotel that did have space until we moved across to a friend's house a few days later. We could finally relax, sort out the various problems that our bikes had sustained over the tough Kazakhstan roads as well as to give them a good checking over, given that we'd already completed over a year's worth of mileage in the space of just 6 weeks...
Almaty is a tricky city to navigate. There seems to be little in the way of a central square, and it isn't set up for tourism at all (which is fine, but not what you'd expect from such a major city). Most of the sights seem to be around it, with the Charyn Canyon to the East and the Great Almaty Lake and mountains at Medew to the South, which are impressively stunning.
Right now, we're in the hands of the Kazakhstan postal service whilst we wait on the delivery of a new shock absorber from London for Jim's bike and then we'll continue our journey through Kyrgyzstan to China.

A big old place!

2007-07-06T07:45:00.000Z

From Atyrau (in the West), we had around 9 days to get across to Almaty (in the East). This doesn't sound like a lot to cross most countries, but Kazakhstan is the 9th largest country in the world and the roads are not always that great. Combine it with the fact that in order to get from one side of it to the other, one has to zig zag up and down it and that there aren't too many towns to stop off at and all of a sudden, we had quite a number of big days to do to cover the 2200 miles to our destination.

On the first morning, we tried to visit the Caspian Sea, but the road was just so horrendous that it would have taken hours to cover the final 12km to the coast, so we headed back into town to prepare for the long road up to Aqtobe without any fuel stations or towns along the way. This was to be a 600km section, a large part of which was on unsurfaced and pot-holed roads. Our bikes have a fuel range of 450km, so we each bought jerry cans to carry extra fuel and large bottles of water to keep us hydrated.

The road to Aqtobe did not disappoint in terms of being unsurfaced! The pot-holes were massive and required us to zig-zag around them constantly until it got to the point where there was just no road at all, so we headed for the parallel sand roads that the cars and trucks took. Riding on sand isn't easy, so we were slowed right down to just 40km/h. Every 70km or so, there were roadside café/diners, so we still managed to eat well enough and get cold drinks every couple of hours.
Around halfway, we stopped for the evening near to a café in the middle of nowhere and camped. Within seconds of setting up camp, some locals had tracked us down and started looking around, pointing and asking questions (which we did not understand). They were out collecting animal dung to burn on fires and half an hour later, their brother turned up on a motorcycle with a side car to pick them up.
In the morning, after a relatively comfortable night's camp, we went to the café for breakfast and then headed on our way for another long, slow day. Riding off-road is very tiring, but there are no choices but to just continue on. Turning back only presents more bad roads, but eventually we got to Aqtobe, both exhausted, but glad to have seen the back of dirt roads for a while... ...or so we thought.
After the gruelling ride up to Aqtobe, we spent 2 nights there to refresh ourselves as, as far as we were concerned, we had a straight with 4-5 nights' stop offs for our run down to Almaty. Aqtobe was another expensive place to visit, but when you get into town late, it's getting dark and you're tired, it's easier just to give in and pay rather than hunt around for accommodation for hours on end.
So, well rested, we began our cruise down to Almaty, with the first day being a 600km ride down to Aral. By 11am, we had completed 300km and looked forward to arriving in Aral at 2pm, checking into a hotel, looking around...
...but no! Suddenly, the perfectly surfaced road, where we had been averaging over 100km/h ended! It did not become pot-holed like, but just turned to gravel, bumps and nothing. It was also a likely sign that there would not be fuel for some time, and, as we had not expected this, we were not carrying any extra. Some 150km and 4 hours later, it was still a very poorly surfaced track (the word road here would be inappropriate), there had been no towns to pick up food or cold drinks, the fuel reserve light had been on for over 100km and there were hardly any other cars/trucks in sight. Hmmm.
At this point, I went over a big bump as I was too tired to avoid it and two of the bolts on my rear sub-frame (basically, what holds the seat on!), sheared, and the seat slowly collapsed onto the rear wheel. I was only going 30km/h at the time, so ground to a halt to gather my thoughts. Jim, who was riding up ahead of me, came back to give me a hand and we had replaced the bolts with new, super strong ones within around half an hour and were back on the road.
Eventually, we stumbled across a farm, where we hoped that they may have had some fuel, but no such luck. But they did tell us that there was a fuel station 25km down the road. We rode, being as gentle as we could on the accelerator. Our odometers were reading 269 miles when we finally got there. As we'd been riding quite quickly on the silky smooth road earlier in the day, we hadn't expected to get more than 280 miles from a tank, so a refill was most welcome. The fuel station involved a man woken from his Sunday afternoon nap siphoning the log grade petrol out of a barrel into a jerry can which we then poured into our bikes. The cost was more than double anything else that we had paid in Kazakhstan, but at least we were back on the road. The bumpy road! The road kept catching us out. Just as we thought that it was surfaced again, the potholes returned, then went away and then back again.
Finally, after a further 150km of bumps, we hobbled into Aral at 9pm. The hotel was horrendous and overpriced. It was so bad that we didn't even go into the bathroom for fear of coming out dirtier than when we went in! Dinner was underwhelming, so we went to bed hungry and grumpy.
An early start saw us out of the hotel before the bugs could wake up and, today, the road was a fair bit better than the day before, although there were fairly frequent interludes of pot-holes. Jim realized that the shock absorber for the rear of his bike had gone and was feeling all of the bumps. Meanwhile, I noticed that one of the 4 sub-frame bolts had fallen out of my bike and another was loose! I had no spare, so made a temporary fix to the one that had fallen out and began a regular but tiresome and necessary routine of avoiding bumps and stopping every 50 miles to tighten the loose bolt. It was a rather uncomfortable feeling that out of 4 bolts, having 2 replacement ones, one missing and the other loose, but it worked out OK (and was more permanently fixed at the next big town).
At around half distance, we came across a roadside café, where we were delighted to find cold drinks and surprised to be greeted in English by a group of 3 French, American and British people being shown around by a young Kazakh girl. These were the first westerners that we had seen in a good couple of weeks. We exchanged stories and off they went, whilst we caught our breath from the tiring (but not yet finished) day.
Then, 10 minutes later, along come a German couple who were overlanding in a Toyota 4x4! They had travelled around Central Asia over the past 18 months and were almost home. We chatted with them for an hour or so, fascinated by their adventures and picking up plenty of recommendations along the way. Finally, we got back on the road(!), in, what must have been around 45 degree heat and we were back to dodging pot-holes and tightening my bolts every couple of miles.
Three to four days later, after some unremarkable towns (one of which whenever we told people that we were tourists, they looked at us surprised that tourists came to their town!), we were within sight of Almaty. The roads got better and better, as we skirted around Kyrgyzstan, through stunning mountain roads and into the city where psychotic Kazakh drivers take lunacy to a new level.