India - The High Road

The high road


I'm always up for a challenge, so when an old mate suggested I come to India and ride up to the Himalayas with him on a classic (read; old and beat up) Royal Enfield, I jumped at the chance. Fate took a hand and two months later I was unemployed and standing in the foyer (posh word for that shit smelling dump) of a hotel with my girlfriend, in Karel Bagh New Delhi, India, being right royally fleeced for all I was worth. Alex wasn't due to turn up for a week and we had to buy a bike and meet him 200 odd miles away...


Who are these people?

Kirsty; My then girlfriend, my now good friend. This is rare in my experience, so I'm very happy with the arrangement.
Alex; My old mate from ten+ years back.
Inga; Alex's then girlfriend! A sweet, mellow Icelander.
Balu; American guy I bought the bike from.
Laura: His Italian girlfriend.




Follow the Leader

Something about the big, bearded guy on the huge green motorcycle that materialised out of the crush, past us and back into the swarm of people on Paharganj main bazaar jolted some part of my memory. Even though I'd never set eyes on him before, I knew through the haze that he was important to the overall success of our trip in some way. The insistent tugging on my arm grew stronger "That's Balu!" said a voice from my shoulder. Shit! The bike Dude! I was off, running through the alternating waves of incense and effluent, dodging peanut roasters, pedestrians, drum salesmen, the ubiquitous cows, beggars and map salesmen (India maaap, Delhi maap, India maaap, Delhi maap) and the odd turd, with Kirsty close behind me, feeling stupid at shouting the name of one of the jungle book characters (BALU!) at the top of my voice (I almost expect him to turn around going 'Mowgli? is that you?') until he finally hears me and swings his bike around to take a look at these crazy, pasty white sweating loons (we'd been in India two days), charging down the road shouting his name.
"Hi man, I'm Dean." I say breathlessly when we catch him up "One of Alex and Cherie's Friends, they said to find you when I get to India if we wanted to buy an Enfield." He looks blankly at me for a second then takes his sunglasses off.
"Oh Alex, Ok Dude" He says, in a 'Down New Mexico way' drawl, remembering our friend from his previous visit. "Take my number and gimme a call tomorrow, 'bout twelve. I got a couple of bikes for ya to take a look at", (after giving me some bullshit about how he's not out to make money). Then he just roars back into the crowds, leaving us to pant and give each other incredulous looks. Almost too easy...

Falling in Love

We meet Balu the next day, as arranged, at a hotel in Delhi which he leased as a waypoint for his motorcycle club, and he shows me a 1987 model Bullet Electra 350cc for about £200 (they really were that cheap! Expect to pay about £400-500 now though), black with a silver go-faster stripe down the tank and rear mudguard (at about 12 horse power, it needs a go-faster stripe) and I fall in love instantly. Boys don't grow up, our toys just get more expensive.
Balu shows me how to get her started. It's a bit like kicking a donkey to death, but with precision. I get her going, rev up, let the clutch out too fast and suicide wobble down the alley opposite the hotel at warp speed, legs akimbo, missing cars and walls by inches and disappear around a bend like a monkey on a waterslide. A worried looking Kirsty and Balu appear before long and have a laugh at the good natured taunts coming from the Sikh family that live above where I'm sitting, flustered and desperately trying to start the bike. I've flooded it in my panic and have to be shown how to prime the donkey to kick it to death again.
"Oh man!" says Balu, " I wish I'd had my camera for that, I didn't think you were comin' back alive!"
At about 11:30 that night, Balu took me on a ride around Delhi (after I'd sat on the bed for an hour trying to visualise the whole gear change/ emergency stop/ swerve out of a cows path thing; the foot controls are reversed!). The streets are quiet, apart from a bit of traffic on the main roads, and I start having my first 'Easy Rider' moments. Great until I stall the bike while moving (how the fuck I managed that I still don't know) and skid to a halt on a busy round about, causing much cursing in about twelve languages including English from Balu.
I've never been in a place where the rules of the road are so bendy. The first cab ride from the airport was a lesson in abject terror, a very 'stiff upper lip old boy' affair on our part and a very 'never say die' affair on the part of our driver and his shotgun navigator, staving off trucks/ bison/ cars/ buses/ cows/ rickshaws/ elephants/ people/ bikes/ dogs and beggars with curses and hand waving. Everybody makes six lanes out of three and the round-abouts are a test of courage to get on to and off of... but nobody ever seemed to actually hit anybody else, so, only with a very calm acceptance of fate did I begin to enjoy and come to feel at home on the Indian roads, Indian style, Indian rules. The basic rules of the road for bikers (or anyone else really) are these:

1. You will primarily gain progress through your strength of mind or the size of your vehicle.

2. Imagine reading the highway code drunk. Then tear a few random pages out of it. Then chuck the rest in the bin.

3. Always use your horn. Even when in doubt, honk your head off. You'll probably mostly just be adding to the cacophony of noise, but it saved our lives more than once all the same.

4. On the open road it is generally not a good idea to stop for man, beast or half assed, stick waving police road block. The reasoning behind this is that the police will only ever want to hassle you (and they can't exactly chase you so ignore them unless you want directions) and if you hit some one/thing/dog/wild pig etc and stop, then a crowd could form and things could get nasty, with people asking for money (honest guv that really was my half dead, mangy blind blatantly stray dog and now you owe me £3.75, even though it nearly put you in hospital walking out into your path at the last moment... If thats your dog, mate, you should be giving me money). If you feel really guilty about any kind of incident, or if it involved another person and was your fault then stop at the next police station, If you can find one, where you'll probably get fleeced. But that's better than a real kick in the teeth.

5. Don't bother filling your tank with petrol if you aren't about to use it. Petrol is comparably expensive, and tourists with big flash bikes are going to get targeted at night when the bikes are all parked up in a line outside the hotel. Interestingly enough, all the people that stole my petrol always left me just enough to arrive, sputtering and running on fumes, at the petrol station the next day...

So anyway, that first night and the night after, Balu takes me out on some pretty cool rides, the roads are quiet and I get to see some spots I'd probably never have found or would find again on my own. We passed through slums that looked like piles of junk dropped from a great height, until you notice the orange glow of cooking fires coming from within, and realise that some of the tattered material hanging on the piles of junk are clothes, and that there are people lounging in the shadows. We passed fancy apartments without a soul in sight or light on, rode fast on smoothish highways, slow down bumpy roads and tight alleyways and had a few forays onto the pavement. This guy can ride.

Rites of passage

At 5am we're out in the cool, quiet darkness, loading up the luggage rack that hangs over the back wheel of the bike with our excessive amount of baggage, ready to set off on our road trip to the Himalayan foothills. The porters look on in mild curiosity (the one's that aren't sprawled about fast asleep in the tiny reception) as I try to start my bike for the 900th time. The battery is dead 'cos turd brain (me) left the kill switch on after the last late night ride. Turd brain is sweating and thus, swearing fluently. Balu hears the commotion and comes downstairs, transplanting the battery from his own bike to mine. Now all the porters are awake and watching with the twinkle of great amusment in their eyes. I get the impression they might start phoning their friends if we don't get out of here soon.
So, at 6am, we wobble off towards the horizon, and at about half past six we're hoplessly lost in horrendous traffic, after having blindly gone off in what we kind of think is about the right direction, ish. We spot a highway overpass after a while and head for that, nearly being killed by huge buses in the process. The traffic is hardly moving when we get there and it's a real strain on the legs half walking a heavy bike with 90 kilo's of luggage and girlfriend on the back up the highway ramp at snails pace. My clutch control is still a wayward beast, capable of catapulting us into the back of whichever unfortunate soul we happen to be behind. This is, however, bloody good practice, despite my new thumb blisters. We're greeted at the top by a view of the heat-hazed highway stretching out languidly in front of us, and to the right, a small oasis with a woman walking Bison slowly through a flooded field below the centre of the raised highway loop. It is quite a surreal scene, but an endearing one. We decide, after seeing a sign for Agra (south of Delhi), that we can't possibly be going in the right direction.
At 9am we sit in the shade and let ourselves and the bike cool down, we're both burnt to a crisp. It's an air cooled engine, and the air in the sun was nearly as hot as the bike, since we'd only moved about a mile in the last two hours. We're both experiencing a strange, 'black eye-snot' phenomena, too. At 10am we were watered and rested enough to turn about and ride northeast back across Delhi. In the relentless stream of traffic we had buses slowing down to allow it's full complement of occupants to smile and wave and shout encouragement. Our frequent stops were often punctuated by college kids telling us stuff like 'welcome in India' or 'have safe journeyings', and one very young lad was even brave enough to come forward and kiss Kirsty's hand with a bow.
It's about twelve o'clock now and we're flying along a big main road 'cos I think I've worked out where we're going. I'm also feeling quite confident after throwing myself unwittingly into the deep end of riding in India's capital city, remaining unscathed and mastering the bike in the process. Suddenly our precious (but actually useless) map tore loose from the bungee it was stuffed into (we must have hit a new top speed record, maybe 40mph?), and flew quite majestically through the air before nose diving under a bus. We flew around Delhi seeing some of the sights and having a whale of a time for a couple of hours, taking in a brewing violent protest against an Indian Army tank at the bottom of an Oh-my-fucking-god-it's-a-dead-end, and the India Gate, which we couldn't really get near enough to appreciate, even though the road around it is gridded and it seemed, at first, that it couldn't be easier to ride under it. I think the sun must have been playing with my head, because as soon as we had decided to 'Call it a day, have a shower and eat at that nice restuarant' the sign for paharganj came up and we were outside the hotel in ten minutes. On the way there, riding slowly through a small backstreet, I slow to a stop but I'm too tired to remember to put my feet down and a slow majestic fall from coolness, into the mud, ensued. We arrived drenched (it had started raining heavily five minutes before) and checked back into the same room. The hotel porters look at us as though we're raving mad, and the note I leave for Balu reads something like "Hi man, got lost, map flew away, fun though, see you 2 moro".

R&R

We wake up about midday after our exhausting foray of the previous day, and start preparing for another attempt early the next morning. I tell Balu about the day before and earn the nickname 'Wrongway'. We spend the rest of the day eating and smoking and watching 70's bollywood films in our room.

Welcome to hicksville

Wake up at midday again. Whoops. I'm feeling ill and it's my birthday. Kirsty, Laura and Balu go to a traditional dance recital and then visit every sweet shop in Delhi. I'm too ill and I can't be bothered, so I go back to sleep after more joints and Bollywood films.

False start

At 5am we get the bike loaded up, started and about 30 ft down the road before it dies and will not start again. I keep trying to start it until my leg starts twitching and spazzing out and give up, push it back and check back into the hotel. The porters look at us as though we really are raving mad.

Alexander the Great

One of my bestest buddies Alex turns up and we chill, meet people, have a good laugh and get wasted. We go for a midnight ride on my bike and I gun it through a puddle that turns out to be a lake in disguise and the water splashes up to our chests. I begin my usual futile attempts at starting her up until Alex asks for a try. I show him the ropes and he starts it more or less first time...
When we arrive drenched and laughing our heads off at the hotel, the porters, who obviously already think we're crazyer than crazy people in a crazy place on a particularly crazy day, don't bat an eyelid. Progress.

The cafe racer

Time is getting on and we're getting twitchy. We're only here for five weeks and we've spent a week and a half in Delhi already. We've got to get going in the next two days.
Alex buys a tasty 'Ducati GT' looking 1972 Enfield from Balu and we set about servicing it and changing the clutch. Small groups of locals gather to point at the dirty swearing sweaty westerners and ask 'you sure you mechanic?', including one boy of about eleven who offered to do it for us. We eventually get the job done and bare greasy chests with grunts of manly pride. We take the bike for a ride that night but it's hard to get very far as the bike has no headlight. The police don't seem to mind though.

On the road to Haridwar

5am: Finally - We're leaving on time and in the right direction. Alex comes to see us off (poor bugger looks knackered) and the porters are nowhere to be seen. We'd recce'd the route the night before and were cruising across the main road bridge over the Yamata river north of Delhi in no time. About 20 miles out we stop and take in a beautiful sunrise across misty green fields, hardly a soul in sight, only the odd worker on a typically quaint patent butchers bycycle, swishing quietly past. By the time the sun has been up an hour or so I'm getting burnt knees but there's no relief to be had, as most of the way, at least three quarters, the road is lined with shanty huts or squat, shadeless square concrete buildings with blue Pepsi branding all over them (try getting a fuckin' bottle of Pepsi and you'll be disappointed). The bike behaved quite well, pushing 80kph at top whack, about as fast as you'd want to be going on these roads. The petrol tank nuts keep coming loose and it rattles like hell when you rev above 3000, I hand tighten them every 2 hours or so but I need a spanner really. The gear box is a bit of a random beast too, sometimes needing to be forcibly kicked into gear, other times smoothly changing down or up 2 gears with a small touch, usually at a crucial point, like when there's a truck vs coach race bearing down on you...
Other than that the first part of the journey is a series of disjointed flashes in my head. One is of the remains of a head on lorry smash. I've heard stories of people coming across a recent crash to see another two trucks being loaded from the wreckage while the drivers are still dying in their cabs.
We hit a dog at a busy crossroads; so much weight was on the back of the bike that we popped a wheelie as the front wheel hit him and missed him with the back wheel, so he was a bit shocked, but not so shocked that he couldn't chase us barking and snapping as we wobbled off on one wheel. Big bugger he was, too.
The road was just two lanes, one each way, Half tarmac, half dirt, (not actually bad if you're used to British roads and/or as mad as me) interrupted by sections of lunar landscape with huge, deep watery craters, absolute free for all, every man for himself until the real road returned. I actually did quite well over these bits, gunning it through the pools of mud alongside the 'road' the trucks etc were trying to climb.
Most bits of 'official' villages that lay alongside the road had three short, high sleeping policemen 100 feet or so before it, but as it all pretty much looked the same, there was no telling when you were going to get three short sharp shocks that threw you into the air and pointed you in another direction before you landed.

Bursting at the seams

We hit Haridwar about lunchtime after seven and a half hours of hard riding and stopped at a shop just out of town to get a drink and chill in the shade for a bit. We looked in the rough guide for a hotel and checked into one that looked good, on the main drag which cost the princely sum of £2.30 for the night. I was very proud of the way I'd managed to haggle the proprieter down from £2.70. Within 20 minutes we were asleep fully clothed lying diagonally across the bed. I woke up about seven that evening to a gummy mouth and runny guts. Nevertheless we thought it would be a good idea to explore and get something to eat, so we showered and dressed and set off for a walk along the main drag, catching most of the people coming back from putting candles in little paper boats on the ganges in a Hindu ceremony that we had said we wanted to see. Needless to say we hadn't got up in time.
After a while we stopped at a small cafe, relaxed and set about some french fries and a couple of lassi's with gusto. We had just finished when I made the mistake of thinking I could squeeze out a sly fart. A look of horror passed across my face and was mirrored in Kirstys as I stood up and hissed 'get the bill' at her and ran downstairs to the toilet. Having not been in India long I forgot to grab some tissues from the table. I wasn't too keen to try the jug of water yet either. Then I noticed a poster on the wall next to the toilet of some bollywood/music starlet, backed with slightly damp cardboard that tore off in sheets, and used that instead. My trousers, light blue, light cotton numbers were completely destroyed, with shit all down the legs, so the walk back to the hotel was a bit of a mission. I didn't trust myself to run so we had to stroll along as if we hadn't noticed. When we got there, the porters looked at us as though we were mad.

The holiest of holys

We hit the road about ten thirty in the morning and are soon on a rising leafy road, more monkeys, cows and Sadhu (wandering Indian holy men), and then more potholes and slow moving buses. I came quite close to kicking some poor guy on his patent butchers bike into a pretty deep ditch when we got the short straw in a fight between a fuckin' great big lorry and a coach, which left me with about two feet of road to cling to. He was lucky, so were we.
We rode through the main holy town of Rishikesh and down past the Ramjuhla and Laksmanjulha bridges, heading further up into the hills to chill and check out the scenery... Well, actually we had just ridden too far and were on our way into the mountains and running out of petrol... But we made it back to Laksmanjulha, and across the footbridge on the bike, around a cow that had planted itself right in the middle of the bridge and into the waiting arms of the local cops at the end of the bridge. The smartest looking cop (the only one in full uniform and not wearing huge, prison-white trainers), said;
"David Beckham!"
(Not really, that's just what everbody else said. I'd thought the mohawk was a 'Good Idea' at the time). What he actually said was;
"Papers".
So I pull them out, he grabs them and pretends to read them. I know he's pretending because they are upside down.
"Licence"
I explain that it is in the bottom of my huge bag, strapped to the back of the bike.
"You English?".
"Yes".
"OK! (with a big smile) You go".
Weird.

We turned right at the end of the bridge and rode parallel with the river Ganges for about a mile, past stalls and shops and on to a lane through leafy green semi jungle, dotted with small stone temples and benches for the pilgrims. We were looking for a particular Ashram we saw in our guide book, and followed the map down a steep path strewn with nasty sharp looking rocks about a mile further on. We reached the bottom and asked a bored looking, muscular Sadhu lounging on a fruit cart if he knew where it was. Without a word, or change in bored expression, he led us down to the Ashram, where the security guard took one look at us and said 'No' and shut the gate. Nice. I tried to say thanks and chat to the Sadhu but he wasn't having any of it.
So now we had to ride 100m back up the rocky slope. Had I thought it through I'd have taken the luggage off and left it with Kirsty at the top of the slope, then ridden the much lighter bike up, but I didn't think it through and the valve from the rear tyre wanged past my ear about halfway up. Bugger. We struggled the bike up onto the roadway, where a passing imitation willys jeep taxi thing took us and our luggage back to Laksmanjhula for twelve pence.
When we got out we were approached by a very well educated but obviously poor local boy of about eleven who got us into a good ashram pretty quick and came with me to get the bike while Kirsty settled in. I rode it back to the kids mate, a tyre walla (walla means 'someone who does'), at about 10mph, wobbling all over the place on the flat tyre, with him laughing his head off behind me and calling out to the passers by in Hindi. The new inner tube cost seventy pence and was done in ten minutes, and I gave my new friend Rs800 (£10) for his help. He near shit his pants, and I can still see his amazed smile. I never did anything like that before or since, but I just felt he deserved it as he'd made my life immesurably easier in the short term (And I could afford grand gestures for once!).

Google me a sign

We spent the next few days chilling out, getting stoned and stuffing ourselves silly with excellent food from a nearby tibetan owned restaurant, then riding about on the mountain roads nearby. The road signs are hilarious but distracting, and I had a few wobbles from laughing hysterically at the inane wordings that, for the very life of me, I can't remember any of. No doubt if you were to put ' funny Indian road signs' into Google image search you'd have chuckle. The roads themselves are very cool in a leafy, twisty, climbing, timeless (will it be an oncoming bison cart or truck on the wrong side of the road next?) kind of way, and the 200+ ft sheer drops constantly on one side are fun, too.

Alexander the Great (slight return)

Alex turns up looking beat and suffering from black eye-snot. Inga wisely gets the train. Al's bike needs a new carb and he drops it off to a mechanic in the main town.

Rollercoaster

Alex and I go for a ride to the main town and pick up the bike. Alex rides like he's invincible and I'm soon doing the same, until the pin that the cluch lever pivots on snaps and I'm stuck in 3rd. We leave the bike by the side of the road, next to a petrol station under constuction and ride back to where we'd come from on Al's bike, narrowly escaping death with Al laughing hysterically and me with a mouthful of his dreads trying to see what the hell's going on. This cat can only have a few lives left...

Then, after an evening smoking chillums with some friendly but slightly serious Sadhu's, I got tonsilitus. A week of pain and sleeplessness followed.

Blame your tools

I, at this point, decided to give up on my goal to get to the Tibetan border and high mountain passes etc. I was enjoying the time spent with Alex and it wasn't really realistic, not on my poor bike with it's 12 horsepower, and me still feeling weak after my ilness (with decidedly less than 12 horsepower). Added to which I didn't fancy shelling out for all the stuff the bike would need for an extended trip to the real mountains, like, in no particular order; chain, clutch, new back wheel and tyre, new air filter, brake cables and pads, headlight bulb and switch, new front tyre, a new gearbox and a good tighten up all round. I could have done all this stuff, but to be fair I couldn't be bothered, I was on holiday, not a RTW trip. I'm slightly worried that Balu sent me off on this bike with a marked map and advice on reaching the high mountains. He was a hospitable, knowledgeable, and for the most part, sincere host, but surely he knew that bike wasn't up to it?

Cheech and gong

We visited a hilltop 'spiritual center' one evening, as we'd heard about a Gong meditation session led by an old Dutch hippy woman that had been here for years, probably since the trail from Istanbul was abandoned. We were all completely stoned on genuine Nepalese Temple Ball (and if you don't know what that is, I 'ain't tellin'), so, when we entered the leafy, flowery, cool and relaxed courtyard an hour before sundown to be met by a happy gardener and about five boisterous dogs and pups, it was like entering another world, away from the dust and hawkers of the main streets of Ramjhula, at the bottom of the hill we'd ridden up to get here. The Lady of the manor arrived presently and we found some other keen meditators lounging on the steps of a small hall in the grounds.
When a few more arrived and there were about nine of us, we entered the hall.
"Ok everybody, go to the corner there and take a cloth and then sit down in a circle around the gong". (She had a thick Dutch accent, and I could go all phonetic here and start writing 'Shhit in a Shhurcle' etc, but I wouldn't dream of taking the piss). We obediently sat in the shhurcle... shhorry... sorry. Circle, clutching our cloths, and our host outlined the procedure.
We basically had to lie in a circle around the large gong in the middle of the room like spokes in a wheel, heads towards the shhenter, sorry, center, with our cosmic cloths draped over us from knee to chin. We then had a small folded cloth that served as as a blindfold that we draped over our eyes as we lay down.
Our host then kneeled in the middle of the circle, in front of the gong, and explained that she would talk us through the relaxation part, with help from her trusty instrument.
"Ok, everybody, I want you to think about your toes, your big toe, your small and middle toes, all of your toes. I want you to relax them, feel the tension flow from them like water, Relaaaax! " And with that she hit the gong, droning the last parts of the word with the sonorous tone of the gong itself. I got the giggles and let out a snicker before I could help myself. I heard a snort from the other side of the circle that must have been Alex. She ignored or didn't notice this rudeness, and continued with the routine, doing tops of feet, ankles, front lower leg, back lower leg, upper front leg and upper back of leg, then;
"Now I want you to think about your back, your upper back, your lower back, your erm, middle back". I couldn't help myself and whispered something like 'And now relax your upper middle lower front right left ventricle' which even got our usually ultra polite and respectful Kirsty snickering too. When, after it had all gone on for so long it wasn't funny anymore, she deemed us suitably relaxed and started wafting the humming gong over our heads. That was good. Really good. Like the first time you hear Pink Floyd at Pompeii in a cafe in Amsterdam. Wow. I floated on a sea of silken threads, the heavenly sound of the gong slipping over and through me like a healing breeze... Then I feel asleep and started snoring. More playground snickering followed, I'm told. One of our fellows made a dramatic exit stating 'I can't take the flashbacks, man' as her sicknote. Wuss.
I remember waking up near the end, with a guy playing small, mellow fluttering licks on an old 3/4 size spanish guitar 'to bring us back'.
I felt wonderfully refreshed after my nap, and after sitting up and realising it was well into the evening, we all left looking for a good meal. Our mate Grant had asked me repeatedly to find him a authentic gong, ('I want a propa one, like'), so before we left I asked our host where she had bought hers, thinking it must be some kind if ancient Tibetan number.
"London", came the reply.

...And saint Joe Public raised the Beatles up on high...

We visited the Ashram one afternoon that was made famous by the Beatles vist in 1960/70-something (it's a bit like Butlins, really - Ringo Starr), and it was actually somewhere I'd consider going back to next time I'm in India.
We climbed over a brick wall patrolled by monkeys and were in. We were at the front of the Asram complex, either side two small conical topped gatehouses held up two dark green wrought Iron gates with danger, forbidden, tresspassing and yada yada yada signs, that led up to a courtyard with a large building at the top end. Probably reception and pilgrim parking zone. The Authorities closed this place down because after the Beatles came here, the place quickly became a beatles shrine due to the sheer weight of westerners dropped on it, and it was supposed to be a Hindu place of worship and refection, not some Beatles Graceland. Behind the reception was a grey three storey apartment block, and then behind that was another and another, this place was huge! Easily the size of two or three council estates. Some two or three of these apartments had the waving glow of a cooking fire reflected onto the walls, and we passed the squatters by quietly. We turned right down a smaller path and came across tens of small, domed stone huts lining the riverbank. Think Hobbiton crossed with an Indiana jones set and you're halfway there.
After some exploring we sat up on one of the small balconys that each hut had and ate the cake we'd brought with us and smoked a few joints while the sun went down over the river Ganges. I noticed a few of the crumbs fom my cake were wandering off on their own and bent down for a closer look. Ants. Soon there were more, and they set-to trying manfully (or antfully, if you like) to tow the whole wrapper off over the edge. I took pity and tore it into smaller pieces so they could carry it off. Bad move, they called their friends. Luckily it was getting dark so we buggered off. I Came face to face with a big nasty looking flourescent spider strug across the path at one point, and lo, was tons more careful from that point onwards.
We climbed back over the monkey wall and I split my cotton pants. Again. I'd been splitting them from backbone to belly button everytime I got on the bike (not to mention the anally destoyed pair), and now I'd done it again. I couldn't be bothered to worry about having my pants hanging out and we had a wonderful meal at a fully fuctioning Ashram (no westerners) for about 30p before turning in. Luckily our Ashram didn't have porters, so no funny looks.

A brush with the law turns into a pain in the arse... (as usual)

We decided, as it was only a few days to departure, that we would take a last ride up into the hills and spend some time on the riverbank (sand) on the way back. We got to the first fork in the road and were waved to a stop by some cops in the road. I innocently (read; 'stupidly') turned the engine off.
"David Beck..." no, no really...
"Papers please". Said a young cop. Kirsty had those in her bag, got them out and showed him. This caused a bit of confusion, as he couldn't work out who's bike it was. Then he asked for my driving licence, which was back in england (I told him it was at the asram).
"No! You must now actually walk back and get it also!" he spat with much head wobbling. Not so impressed with our Englishness this time.
Kirsty and I started walking back, with me spitting impotent flames (they had the keys and even if they didn't they would have wrestled me to the floor before I'd have had time to kickstart the bike. Why did I turn it off? In fact, why did I bloody well stop? I want to start listening to my own advice, me...). We were stopped short by a fat sweaty copper who'd probably been chilin in the car because I hadn't noticed him before.
"Come back, pay fine and you go"
Kirsty had to pay the fine because apparently it was her bike, even though she'd only been holding the papers and even though the fine was for me not having my licence. Go figure, as our american cousins like to say.
Kirsty got her first ever police ticket (it got framed). Then, after all the pointless messing about I was ready to rumble, gunning it away from the poor cops in a cloud of dust and hanging round the bends, parting the seas of monkeys on the way like our ol' mate Moses. About eight miles into this breakneck tear up, we ran out of petrol. Dickhead.
We dejectedly got a lift back in one of the many willys jeep taxi's, and got crammed in with the women and luggage in the rear. I'd left the bike at the edge of the cliff, and quite frankly didn't give a shit if it fell or was pushed the 250 metres into the river below, hopefully bashing off the rocks on the way down. The bike, as I may not have conveyed in my fairly up-beat narration to this point, had been a real bugger for a week or so. I'd gotten good at starting it now but I couldn't stop it from stalling all the bloody time, and the exhast was now getting so hot whenever I rode that I had scorch marks on my legs. I still loved that ol' thing really but we needed some time apart.
The next morning I did a deal with a taxi driver in crude Hindi and sign language for two 2L coke bottles of petrol to be delivered to an amiable, toothless and smiley old fellow who ran a stall across from where we were standing, by noon. At noon I went back and got a lift from one of the jeeps, and swug around hanging on to the rear luggage rack like a native. I suddenly felt, with real clarity, that I was starting to relax and leave the stresses and pace of London life behind me and really appreciate this wonderful place I'd found myself in. Sodding typical, with three days to go until I had to go back and find a job.
I got back to the bike, clutching my greasy bottles, about 24 hours after I'd abandonded it to find it still perched in the edge of the cliff but missing the battery and petrol filter, and looking like it had been half-heartedly bashed with a rock. I found the battery up the road and attached the petrol hose straight onto the carb. I started it with the battery wires held on with my fingers (not recommended) and rode the sputtering beast back to the Ashram. We loaded it up and rode straight back out on our way to Delhi.
After 10 miles, 2 hours, about a million or so (can't be sure) breakdowns, a burnt leg and toasted wiring, I wanted to sell the fucker for scrap and walk all the way back to Delhi, but a young lad on a flash Enfield beckoned and enticed us to a mechanic called 'Lucky' who condemned the bike as unride-able (might just be the coca-cola in the petrol, i thought), but for the one-time-special-price of 8000 rupees (£100) he could have it like new in two days. How much do you want to give me for it, said I.
I got about £160 for it in what quickly turned into a very shady deal and we jumped into a little white dusty shopping trolley driven by a quiet, chain smoking, betel nut chewing loony for the journey back to jolly old Delhi. It went quite well until the end, where we were held up by utter gridlock about 15 miles outside Delhi. I Got out and walked up a-ways to see what the hell was going on and found a dumb arse copper, hemmed in by honking cars lorrys and scooters, standing right in the middle of the total chaos, waving his arms and blowing his little whistle with his eyes screwed tightly shut. Not your day either, pal.
After goading our driver into some light off roading, we were past the traffic and into Delhi proper. We spent our last couple of days and last few thousand rupees on a shopping extravaganza and ordered banana honey pancakes before we left for the flight, at four in the morning from room service. Lovely.
When we arrived back at heathrow the world seemed a different place, I'd not been away from our scrubbed, glass and concrete country for that long since we went to stay with my aunt and uncle in malayasia, 14 years before. It seemed alien after the rough but endearing India I'd come to love, I felt out of place, the gaudy, indulgent nature of our affluent culture hit me in the face like a warm custard pie, rich and sickly. I longed to return to India for so long but had to find a job and live in civilisation for a while longer, I had a morgage and my grandad, my best mate, was very ill and my mum was having a hard time of it so I couldn't just disappear of to live my dream of fantasy hippyness, life was calling me hard.


In reflection

In reflection (I love that phrase, I can just see myself looking all inchewelectlly-like, chin in hand, reflectin') I accept it was only a few weeks, not anywhere near enough time to get under the skin of a country as vast and diverse as India, even the little bit I did see. But I also reckon that, armed with my new experiences, I could go back and make it all the way up to the highest road in the world, dans le Himalayas, for about £1200 and be in comparable luxury for the month.
Hmm, so, I'll need some tough boots and jeans, maybe some decent sunglasses this time... Oh. And a job.
Thanks for reading.