21-28 Oct: Into Nepal

Packing up the morning after the cricket match, there was 550kms between Chandigarh and the Nepalese border, averaging 200kms a day I allowed two nights on the road then hoped to cross into Nepal early on the third day.

Before hitting the road, I tried some local cuisine in a restaurant called Subway. I had a long sandwich made for me by a lady in thin plastic gloves. Sometimes when you don’t know what the roadside will provide you through the day you need to play it safe.

I can’t to be honest remember too much about the ride, the traffic was incredibly congested most of the way from Chandigarh to Rudrapur and the air so hot it feet like riding into a huge industrial, dust belching hair dryer. All roads to the border, especially single carriageways need to be ridden as dual carriageways with at least 2 lanes of traffic flowing in each direction to facilitate maniac over/undertaking at every opportunity.

Being forced off the dusty road by a truck for the 10th time

Thanks to a bridge closure and no posted detour, I end my penultimate day in India about 80kms from the border, nothing terrible but further than I’d hoped for. The smell of freedom, on the morning I was to finally leave India was the smell of somebody else's B.O thanks to the rarely-laundered towel I'm provided with at the hotel. I know worse things happen to people in the world but it’s just not a great start to the day!

Seeing a sign to Mahendranagar, with (Nepal) written after it took me off the main road onto a bumpy riverside track. Whether its a play between two neighbours or what I don’t know, but countries seem to give up laying roads about 1km from the border, it was the same going from Germany to Poland and many others. Either they can’t decide who pays for it or just border crossing happen at desolate outposts of the countries you're crossing between so nobody cares.

Either way, the track turned into a bank of rounded pebbles, basically a dried riverbed by the time you get to the Indian Immigration hut, easily missed as you’re attacking the pebbles with some speed to avoid slewing and falling off. Happily though, having chosen a minor border crossing rather than the main one nearer Varanasi (a city I wanted to see but missed for lack of energy to ride the massive distance in Indian traffic), there was no queue at all and a few friendly helpful officials. Passport stamped in no time and onto the Customs hut.

Leaving India - Immigration office

Carnet stamped out, my bike is no longer legally in India

Taking 4 days to get stamped in, my bike’s carnet was stamped out of India in 40 minutes, delayed only because the official was taking a tea break and offering life advice. I really need to get a wife SOON because his deputy didn’t and he’s 56 and single because he couldn’t make his mind up. With that duly noted and in my back pocket, there were several army checkpoints to pass, not clear whether Indian or Nepali but all friendly and passed with a wave.

First riding past the Nepal Immigration office, I was turned back be an army man at the barrier to a small green house hidden down a hill from the road. Like everywhere in India, the Nepalese border continued the tradition of noting everything in a huge paper book before getting an entry stamp in my passport, then off to Customs.

Nepal immigration at Mahendranagar

The customs hut was right next to the official “pass this and you’re now in Nepal” barrier and an incredibly friendly place. Letting me write my details with the bikes chassis and engine number in the book, without inspecting it as they should have done, I was welcomed to Nepal as their guest and offered a biscuit. You really can’t beat that for a good start to the journey.

(Insurance Digest: I made it all the way through India without being asked for it. Good news, since I didn't seem to have any.)

Country number 19 came as a welcome surprise. Instantly calmer roads with little traffic, fewer potholes, beautiful scenery, pretty ladies in vibrant scarlet red dresses, how does life know how to change so much at the border which is only a line on the map! You notice people on the roadside walking about with beaming smiles like Bob Monkhouse on a really good day.

Empty roads, unbelievable in India!

Army check point

After a night at a roadside lodge (£2) it was time to head on towards Pokhara, not the most direct route to Kathmandu which was my real aim, but the lowlands of Nepal are swarming with midges and mosquitoes due to stagnant water pools used by farmers. Pokhara, up in the mountains was fresher to the point of being chilly on a night and pleasantly free of insects. As well as being stunningly beautiful with c7,000 metre mountains all around, a huge lake and convenient shops selling the first trekking and camping equipment supplies I’ve seen since leaving Slovenia. 

Mountain roads to Pokhara

Bridge repairs

An Austrian cyclist riding around Nepal

All purpose 3 wheeler seen all over Asia

End of the day sunset

Cheap roadside lodge

Road to Pokhara

 

Road to Pokhara

 

Minor problem, soon fixed

Lunch break near Pokhara

Pokhara lakeside

Resting for a day getting my clothes washed and bike thoroughly cleaned after a dust and oil onslaught from almost 1,000kms in the last week soon meant it was time to get moving to Kathmandu to meet Asia who’s coming over for a few weeks biking and hiking on the Annapurna trail.

With Nepal being such an amazing country for motorbiking, it gathers overlanders in one relatively small place in such a way that I passed a Swiss couple Fabian and Janine soon after leaving Pokhara. They’re heading into India on two new Yamaha Tenere’s, very nice bikes. 

Road to Kathmandu

Fabian and Janine

Passing in opposite directions on the road with hearty waves, we both rode to a parking place for a chat. Unfortunately on setting off, Janine rode over a big round stone and toppled off, denting her pannier which was no major issue, but also the handlebar guards which meant the front brake leaver was stuck on. There are time’s when you give sympathy but just have to think, wow that wasn’t me for a change! All sorted it was off to Kathmandu for me.

No great stress on the roads except the last 30 kilometres which turned into tarmac like a ploughed field. Heavy rains in the monsoon coupled with condensed heavier traffic of lorries and trucks onto the single carriageway road seem to have ripped it to shreds but it was still possible to arrive well before it got dark.

Riding through the narrow streets of Kathmandu

Kathmandu becomes very condensed in the centre, a lot like York. Riding up streets no wider than the Shambles in places was a bit nerve wracking in a ‘should I be here?’ sense, but other bikes were using it so why not. Exchanging some raised eyebrow glances with European tourists as we all squeezed bye was amusing, but by chance I found a main road and some people to ask where the hotel the Swiss couple recommended was.

Is there a sign saying dirty bike storage
on the driveway, oh there is.. come on in

Dutch couple setting off for a run around Nepal
www.nowayback.info

At the Discovery Inn, home for the next few days until Asia arrives, there was a Dutch couple to chat to though they set off today for a quick ride round east Nepal before flying off to Thailand. They’ve used the same air freight agent that introduced himself to me by e-mail a month or so ago, and recommended him highly as friendly and capable of taking care of everything from paperwork to crate building which is a huge relief.

Also of a huge relief is a small second floor restaurant around the corner that sells steak. Proper, big, juicy steak. After leaving steak-free India I had such a craving! If I’d have stayed there another month, I’d would have had to stab a holy cow on the roadside myself, cook it with a cigarette lighter and face the consequences!

Nepal in short is turning very quickly into a highlight of the trip, shopping is cheap and convenient, places to say are like-wise, the food is delicious and varied between Indian, Chinese and continental types, roads are good, great in places and the temperature is hovering around the early 20s through the day.

Next brief update from Pokhara before we head off trekking, then probably a fuller one as we’re waiting for the inevitable aches and pains to ease off.

Nepal brief update

One of the things you look at when studying geography is why things chance so much when you cross an international border. There's no real reason, it's just a line on a paper map, most of the people on either side feel they're from the same 'region' and the physical landscape doesnt change much yet everything is different. India, despite its charms, is a bikers hell, dirty, polluted, overcrowded and with fast deteriorating roads full of insane drivers. Nepal is a bikers paradise. Great roads in reasonable condition bar the odd landslide, barely any traffic to speak of., people drive slowly and curteously Life goes more slowly and whilst there should be more poverty (there are few if any billionaires here like in India), there seems to be more quality everywhere, in buildings and how people look after their local places.

My laptop battery's fast running out so a fuller update to come, but for the first time on this trip, moving one side of a line on a piece of paper brought a chalk & cheese change transformation in circumstances. I'm very much looking forward to the next few weeks!

08-20 Oct: Chandigarh and Amritsar (Part 2)

Often distances can be deceiving, a simple 230kms to Amritsar sounds like the work of an hour or two, but nearly five hours and much sweating and cursing later, I was riding over an overpass into Amritsar with the recommended Tourist Guest House somewhere beneath. After negotiating a monster roundabout, finding a slip road down below the elevated road, the Tourist Guesthouse was hidden among a bunch of non-descript dirt covered concrete buildings. Surprise though as I rolled in to see Big Tom previously met in Delhi walking out a room to his big BMW 1200gs. 

The Tourist Guest House, a bargain at £2/night

A surprised Big Tom

Tom had been there a few days sorting out an issue with his carnet i.e. that it has expired. It was good to share some food and drinks with an Icelandic brother also staying there, especially as Tom has a huge bottle of Absolut vodka he needed to get rid off. Sadly this was because one of his factory fitted Touratech panniers had fallen off with cE1,500 worth of kit in it. Ouch!

The next day Tom set off with an ‘I’ve had enough of this’ to the reportedly clearer roads of Nepal. Before he went though we had time to go through a quick bit of biking therapy, just knowing someone else finds the same frustrations as you is relief in itself. 

Amongst others, we covered: 
 

-       - People riding alongside you trying to talk as you’re both avoiding oncoming traffic, then because they’re looking at you, they star riding into you without realising it shoving you off the road

-       - The fact there’s no sensible driving test, people just learn how to move a car forward and break, then to survive, so there’s no codified rules of the road (there are no traffic police or sign-posted instructions because there are no rules to enforce) which makes for the beep, head on dash into any gaps infront of you, beep, then jam the brakes when something’s coming and beeeep at it approach. That they’ve managed to broadly adhere to ‘drive on the left’ is something amazing.

-       - People beeping endlessly, especially when in grid-locked traffic. No-one can go anywhere, so why?? Just why! Also being at us on bikes when we’re in traffic, as soon as we clear the obstruction, it makes you give it some throttle just to leave the beeping offender half a mile down the road behind you – beep at that.

-       - The hope of finding 5 minute of peace to get a drink and scoff some lunch. As soon as you park up, a crowd appears either gawping or asking the same set of questions, how much, mileage, how much, petrol or diesel, how much, how many cc, how much, what make... We’ve both taken to dashing into a shop to grab a bottle of water, riding fast out of town and down a side road into a field to hide behind a tree to get a drink and just a few moments of peace. But still the come, out of the ground and thin air it seems. There’s no such thing as privacy or personal space.

-       - Trucks or busses that pull out to overtake another slow moving bus/truck, clearly see you coming  but then fully pull out and start to overtake at a snails pace, forcing you into the sand at the side of the road

-       - Potholes! Like the rest of India, roads are repair upon repair upon bodge upon repair and with the lack of lanes, surfacing and anything else to give some order, roads really shouldn’t work, but like much else, despite having the odds of reason and logic against it, despite potholes and all the rest, they somehow do.

-       - Lastly!! Bikers but usually cyclists who pull out of side roads or busy roadsides without looking, get to the centre of the road straddling both lanes, then pull a face of dumb confusion and mild terror as they realise there are vehicles coming at them from both directions at speed that now have to swerve to avoid the idiot. A simple glance, one second before pulling out would do!

Tom leaving en-route to Nepal

 Aaaaand relax, though thats just the tip of the iceberg, lets move on.

Amritsar has grown up around the Golden Temple, the holiest site for the Sikh faith. Sikh people with their colourful turbans are a joy to spend time with. Their faith is based around kindness, inclusion of outsiders and sharing which you can’t grumble at. The temple, as all Sikh temples gives food and beds freely to those that them and accepts donations from only those that can afford to pay. A small museum on site detailed the history of the faith that seems to involve an incredible number of martyrs. Being sandwiched between the Hindu’s of India and Muslims of modern day Pakistan, the religion that has never had its own state has survived despite many attempts to subdue it.

After taking your shoes off, storing bags and washing hands and feet, all explained by patient visitors who understand you don’t know the process, seeing the temple complex itself is sublime. A square shaped outer-building all white marble carved and inlaid with geometric and floral patterns, surrounds a holy pond, in the centre of which a temple laid with gold leaf holds the text around which the faith is based, their version of a bible. 

I actually spent hour after hour walking round the complex as the sun set sending the whole place into a purple and gold haze under artificial lights. I guess a kind of karma exists in India, and like Agra with the Taj, where there is a stunningly beautiful monument, so the rest of the town turns into a pit of equal filth to balance it out. I’ve not seen a more litter strewn city than Amritsar, and once you’ve seen the temple, the temptation really is to get moving. Even though the guest house was costing a friendly £2 per night, Chandigarh and the India v England game was calling. 

The Golden Temple sat in the holy pond

Sun setting

I always feel self-conscious about taking
photos at religious sites, but here loads of
kids and adults wanted to get in the shot

Dusk at the Golden Temple

Lit up at night

A typical street in Amritsar, rubbish strewn and dusty

Retracing the same road as a couple of days ago, but this time with insect bites from the cheap but infested with ants and flies guesthouse, four nights in a decent hotel in Chandigarh were in order. Sadly a cold and the bites ruled out pretty much anything other than wandering from the hotel to a coffee shop because it was in range whilst wearing flip flops. No matter though, the days flew and the 20^th came round.

The match, a one day international starts at 2.30 making it a day / nighter finishing probably at about 10.30. Fearing another mozzie attack after the sun set, I went in jeans and long sleeves, a bit warm through the day, but bearable, and it certainly did the trick with no new bites after all.

Despite apparently no cameras being allowed in the ground (they were very clear), I took mine in no problems, and as everyone ignored the seating arrangement, I moved around to find two fellow brits over in India to watch the series. The game was tight with England loosing narrowly in the last over, a much improved performance on the first two matches. The real joy though was spending a day chatting in natural English, drinking tea and snacking on samosas in the warm evening air.

Cheering for the TV cameras

Alistair Cook opening the batting...

... and is out for 3! (Some Indian fans paid to
get my face painted outside in the queue)

The kids next to us getting excited

England accumulating runs

Dominoes pizza delivery in the stand!

An outnumbered group of England fans

England take the field under lights

India making good progress

Indian fans making some noise

Argh, we're done for...

Really there was no better way to say bye to India, a day with nothing that could have been better, except perhaps the form of Tim Bresnan who had a shocker! Arriving back at the hotel at 11ish after having my photo taken about 50 times with fans outside the stadium who do the same to any foreigner (how do you like it here? Can I/we get a photo? Cue about 30 mobile phone cameras jostling for space), there was just time to pack and get ready for departure the next day. 

Ahead is about a week of constant riding morning to night to get to Kathmandu in Nepal in time to meet my friend Asia who’s coming over for a few weeks, hiring an Enfield and joining me for some walking, maybe the Annapurna circuit for a month or so.

08-20 Oct: Chandigarh and Amritsar (Part 1)

I was reading through some of Paige’s travel blogs (who I’d met in Abanheri a few weeks ago) and really enjoyed all the small details of Indian life she’d picked up and put across from food to details of roadside life. Then I kicked myself because I’ve been on the go for months and completely missed the chance to put across anything like that that really gives a sense of place from the minutiae of daily life. 

Then I saw her description of adventurer and this and that which gives pause for thought. I’d agree that booking onto an Exodus bus tour in Asia is something brilliant to do and certainly adventurous, but does a bus tour with all accommodation, food, tour guiding and generally everything apart from deciding where to point a camera really get you the Scouting badge of an adventurer? Possibly it does, however I’m just using it as a point to excuse my at times near total lack of interesting notes about the places I’ve been to in favour of blander “well it was a long day in the saddle” twaddle. There are times when it would feel great to be chauffeured on a bus to a site, dropped off for 20 minutes, snap some photos, reloaded, type up some notes on the bus ride, then fed and hotelled for the night. The point is when I get to type these updates, it’s invariably at the end of a few days having seen so much, but also at the end of several scorching days battling through you-would-never-believe traffic to find somewhere to stay before the ‘you can never let it happen’ scenario of being stuck on the roads after dark.

Daily traffic grind, hour after hour!

So anyway... Chandigarh has the benefit of being one of the last major cities you’ll come to in north west India, so to some degree, all roads head there which made for a long but reasonably straight forward navigation-wise two-day ride there from Nainital. Ever optimistic I’d hoped to do it in one day, but here 250-300kms is about the limit you can make in a day simply because of endless congestion reducing average speeds to a touch over 30miles an hour (50km/h) if you’re lucky. 

I’d planned to stop at Rishikesh on the way as a friend Stuart from work had mentioned it, but seeing an  unexceptional town full of yoga places, ashrams and spiritualists, decided it really wasn’t for me and ploughed on to fortunately find a roadside motel as the sun was setting.

Arriving in Chandigarh the next day was such a pleasant surprise. Set on a rigid numbered grid system, the city is a breeze to ride round and find exactly where you need to be simply by counting off the 1,200x800m grid squares as you ride Milton-Keynes like from roundabout to roundabout. 

Chandigarh's grid squares

Chandigarh is a relatively new city, commissioned in the 50’s after the British helped Unified India split into India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Punjab and Haryana provinces lost their capital Lahore to newly formed Pakistan, so Chandigarh was commissioned as a new shared capital for the two Indian provinces.  A huge design team led by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, famed for massive schemes best understood as ‘monsterous 60s crap flatbocks’ to most people. Schemes like this rarely work in Europe because they look too perfect on paper, you live here, work over there, go here for leisure and draw some neat roads between the zones and bingo. Build Le Corbusier’s ville de trois millions d’habitants and the trois millions would only pee in the stairwells and spray graffiti, but in India, you’ll end up with ten million people squished in and the whole ‘plan’ takes a back seat as daily life over-comes and dominates it in a way it never could in the west. 

Most buildings in India look as if someone found a secret Ugly command in AutoCAD - Ctrl-Alt-Shift-U - and kept hitting it repeatedly. Chandigarh though has some genuine interest with state buildings in particular stunning examples of ‘truth to material’ modernism (picture from the internet as I caught a cold and couldn’t face hiking over there sadly!!). Unlike most of the rest of India where you find an amazing sight in the middle of chaos and mess, Chandigarh is a lot more even, no incredible world heritage spectacles, but instead a clean, green city with a walkable city centre and some excellent coffee bars and cafes. 

Chandigarh theatre

Neat, clean streets - a rare sight here

The rose garden (sadly out of season)

Secretariat building (pic from the internet)

So after a few days looking round various sites including Nek Chand’s brilliant rock garden (a bit like the forbidden corner but more arts and crafts) with everything made from recycled waste I actually felt really relaxed. In a city that’s a doddle to find your way round, with little hassle from streetside vendors, lots of greenery and parks it’s easy to get comfortable, but I was there for a reason, to grab some tickets for the forthcoming one day international cricket match between India and England. 

Nek Chand's fantasy rock garden

Sculptures in Nek Chand's fantasy rock garden

Waterscape in Nek Chand's garden

 After a long wait hearing they were on sale on either the 11^th, 12^th, 13^th or 15^th, it turned out the 15^th was the big day. Packing my kit and riding down to the PCA stadium across town, I bagged a ticket and set off for a couple of days in Amritsar for a change of scenery and to tick off a final big sight of my time in India – the Golden Temple.