India and the Border from Hell

Chaos. All around me is total chaos. It's pissing with rain, the traffic has built up to an incredible level and seems to go on for miles. There are trucks, cars, buses, motorbikes, cycles, animals, people -everything! All of which are intent on making as much noise as possible. On top of all this, the road has turned into a muddy bog, full of potholes, all of which are brimming with dirty brown water.

Welcome to the Nepal/Indian border! At the Nepal side, I meet a Spanish guy in a 4x4 also doing a RTW trip but in this rain, I'm jealous of his car right now. We chat for a bit and I find out he came through Afghanistan which is an interesting route. He said there wasn't much tourism there and frankly I'm not surprised! We get our Carnets and passports stamped out of Nepal and bid each other farewell as I was off to squeeze into the soggy traffic while he sat in his nice, dry car. As nothing appeared to be moving, I edged over to the left side of the line to see it I could get any further and I immediately encountered a deep muddy drainage ditch which I attempted to ride over- Big mistake! My front wheel lodged itself at the bottom. Fortunately a guy walking past agreed to get his hands dirty and we managed to get the bike over it. Shortly after, I had to ride though a very long brown puddle about 10m across and sure as shit, the bike stalled and I went over. I remembered my bike lifting training in Boulder, Colorado and got it upright straight away (thanks again Chris!).

After about 1/2 hour of pissing around like this, I finally found my way to the Indian Customs office. The office was quite dark and the ceiling fans were running at full pelt and I was greeted by a couple of officers with epaulets on their shirts and big mustaches and immediately asked to join them in a cup of chai so I figured I must really be in India. They were very methodical and all my details were written down slowly in longhand in an old fashioned ledger book. The tea arrived, delivered by someone I can only describe as the Customs office 'gimp', the nearest equivalent I can think of is poor old Baldrick in the Blackadder TV series. He was a wretched looking man in ragged clothing who after putting down the cups, sat back down in the corner of the room barefoot and stared at the wall. Later one of the officers wanted something else, so he shouted at Baldrick who meekly shambled over and set down the item. Straight away, the officer picked it up and moved it 6" to the left, putting it down with a irritated thump and his head gave a little wobble of disaproval.

Once I'd got the formalities out the way, I set off on the road south which frankly didn't impress me much. Again, the traffic was present and the condition of the road itself was just bloody awful. Every time I'd get up a bit of speed, a new, deeper pothole would rear up and I'd have to slam on the brakes. I took the smaller road thinking it might be quieter and although this was the case, it was a far worse road. The potholes count got far greater, the wandering animals increased and the driving standards plummeted. Yes, this really was India. By the end of the day, I reached Gopalganj, a small town of little interest but I'd been riding for 12 hours and had averaged 30kph all the way. Not a great result really.

Riding on roads like this. All day long.

I think someone was still stuck in this cab...

By now, this was becoming a familiar sight....

Exhausted, I rode into town and got the now familiar crowd of men standing around to stare at me when I stopped to ask for directions to a hotel. It was a basic place, not very clean and there were bugs walking all over the floor but beggars can't be choosy. The staff were really weird here too. Once I got into the room, all I wanted to do was shower and lay down, something I thought would have been perfectly obvious but my door was knocked on no less than 4 different times, each for utterly bizare reasons. The first was to check if I had any soap, then none arrived. The second, there were 4 men, 2 of which I'd seen before, the others I hadn't. One of the ones I didn't know said he's been staying in the room before and needed to 'check something' before trying o barge his way in. A brief 'get the fuck out my room' seemed to suffice but 20 minutes later I got yet another knock, this time asking if I wanted chai. When I said no, the then tried to offer me drugs. Finally, 2 more guys knocked again shortly after asking something equally bizzare, but all the time peering into my room. Although there was a restaurant in the hotel, given the cleanliness of the place and the thorough weirdness of the staff, I decided to forget dinner and stayed put, not leaving the room.

Kathmandu

Making new friends in Katmandu

I stayed in Kathmandu for a week in the end, mainly because I was waiting on my visa for Pakistan. I hung out with Nick, the Frenchman for a bit and it was good to have someone to go out and eat with for a few days. He was making a video documentary in Kathmandu about the street children and some of the footage I saw looked really professional so I hope it comes out well. Every morning while I was staying in Kathmandu, I got woken up by the large group of Japanese who congregated outside in the yard and began doing speeches which ended in regular applause. Not what you want at 6am I can tell you. Nick doesn't really like the Japanese. He told me a funny joke they have in France: A Japanese guy comes back from his holidays and his friend asks him 'so how was your holiday'. He replies ' I don't know, I haven't developed the pictures yet'.

The day before I planned to leave Kathmandu and see the something else of Nepal, I found out that the petrol situation hadn't got any better. While i was working on my bike, a guy at my hotel was going for petrol and said he'd keep a space in the queue for me. When I got there, the were literally hundreds of bikes and cars all over the place but somehow I was ushered into the front near the pumps. The little garage was expecting a delivery that afternoon and word had obviously got out. While waiting for the delivery, I was just chatting to some of the local guys who were very interested in my bike, especially my plastic fuel tank which they have an unbridled desire to tap all the time and while grinning say 'plastic?'. After a couple of hours, a dirty fuel tanker pulled up on the street, its horns blaring and the place went nuts. I couldn't fathom how they were going to get near the tanks to fill them up with all the traffic. Somehow, through the chaos of people and vehicles, enough people shouted seemingly random instructions and amazingly, a bit of space was cleared for the tanker. Once the tanks were filled and the tanker moved off without running anybody over, the pushing and shoving started but somehow I got served after about 20 minutes. I even got a full tank which was impressive given the locals were restricted to 5L each. After this episode, I decided to head to India as I couldn't face doing this every time I need to fill up which is normally every day

"Just popping out for some petrol, I'll be back some time tomorrow"

I needed to get a Letter of No Objection from the UK embassy to go with my application which cost me 4,930Rs for a 4 line letter- the bastards! I eventually got my Pakistan visa, though despite telling me to come back on Thursday morning, they told me to come back again the next day. Grrrr- As I'd already packed up and left my hotel at this point, I managed to convince them to give me it later that day. So to fill in 3 hours, I went to Pashupatinath which is a holy Hindu site. I watched to cremations being carried out by the river which was pretty fascinating. The body is laid out on a wooden base on a stone plinth by the river. The priest is the guy who does all the preparing while the male members of the family gather. No female family members are allowed as being the delicate things they are, history has it that when a woman's husband died, the wife tended to throw herself on the funeral pyre given that her life was no longer worth living, hence 'no women allowed'. The eldest son also has to shave his head and face beforehand, then the fire is started using embers which continually burn as no matches or lighters are allowed. It takes a few hours for the body to pretty much disappear though certain bones may remain i.e. breast bones of males and pelvises of women. Once it has been mostly reduced to ash the whole lot is rather unceremoniously brushed off into the river. This place was actually the site of the cremations for the murdered members of the Royal Family a few years back.

And in to the river with the ashes

After getting my visa, I rode over to the east of the city to Bhaktapur , an old town but they wanted 750Rs for tourists so seeing that was half my daily budget, I rode on to the hills further east. Unfortunately its the rainy season so there is a lot of cloud cover and I figured that I probably wasn't going to see Everst off in the distance and decided to head for the Indian border to the south. The traffic around Kathmandu is basically bloody awful but at least it started to clear the further away I got. As KTM is in a valley, the road south winds up into the mountains and is pretty slow going as it twists and turns all over the place.


I met a German cyclist on the road who was fun to talk to and we agree to try and stay at the next village though when I get there, I'm told there is nothing so unfortunately we don't hook up as I have to keep on going till I find something in Palung, luckily just before dark. I take a small room with a family though there is a young guy in the room when I'm shown it. When I question the father about whether I'm getting a single room, the son is turfed out. The toilet downstairs is filthy and I try to hold my breath for as long as I can but its never possible and resort to breathing through my t-shirt which frankly doesn't smell much better but at least it doesn't smell like a rank toilet. The guys young daughters are good fun, though practicing their English on me while I eat my dinner. I was up early the following morning and left at 6.40am which is pretty good for me. I mainly didn't want to stay and use the toilet again though. The road started descending from about 2,500, though there was lots of rain and cloud so I coudn't enjoy the views for most of it. From Palung, it took around 4 hours to reach the Indian border and thats when the fun really began...

Nepal

I took the ironically named 'Royal Air Nepal' flight, ironic as they've just kicked out their king, which was actually quite good with decent food and best of all, a complimentary bar. We flew over what I took to be Burma, mainly because half of it looked flooded but I couldn't be sure as they didn't have the fancy monitors with GPS mapping that we are so used to on flights these days. I'd met a French guy at the airport who'd been volunteering in Nepal before and knew a decent hotel as we shared a cab into Kathmandu. In a scene marginally resembling 'Wayne's World', there were five of us squeezed into the smallest white Suzuki 800cc taxi- the Frenchman, a Japanese guy with a ukalale, a guy trying to divert us to his hostel, the driver and me, although unfortunately Bohemian Rhapsody was conspicuously absent.

Thankfully the Frenchman's recommendation is good and the hotel is quite nice. For 600Rs a night (just over 4 quid), I get a double room with bathroom and cable telly. I could go cheaper but as I'll be here for the best part of a week, I don't fancy living in a hovel for the sake of saving a few pounds. As Saturday is the weekly holiday here, I delay going to the Airport to retrieve my bike till Sunday.


My first impressions of Nepal are that it's a large dirty city with crazy drivers continually beeping their horns every few meters. I think this is what I thought India would be like and I was kind of hoping Kathmandu would be a nice, quaint Alpine town- but its nothing of the sort. I see a lot of street kids here, and I'm told not to give them money as they spend it on glue to sniff. Some of them are very young, and wander the streets in little gangs. There are a lot of foreign volunteers here, a bit like NW Thailand again, most of them working for various orphanages. Mothers with babies follow you around asking for milk for the baby but if you buy them any, you should open it as they take it back and get money for returning the unopened bottle.

On Sunday, I prepare myself with all the paperwork I think I'm likely to need and get a taxi to the airport. Thanks to Horizons Unlimited, I knew roughly what the procedure should be and how much I should expect to pay but some of the reports I'd read were a few years out of date. I had plenty of time to prepare though as I'd been awake since 6am listening to the racket the Japanese group of volunteers were making outside. They were lined up like some military parade with someone doing a talk to which they enthusiastically cheered. Anyway, before I could get out to the airport, I needed a few litres of fuel first as TAC had made me drain my tank before it went on the plane. As there is still a fuel crisis here in Nepal, its hard to come by and you can either wait hours at a garage or get some on the black market. On the street, I asked around and before I knew it, a young guy was leading me through the streets to a small shop on the far side of a busy junction. The shopkeeper had a potential fire bomb sitting around with loads of plastic water bottles of petrol and several larger jerry cans but at least I was able to buy 4Litres for the outrageous sum of 175Rupees per litre. At around 130Rs to the UK pound, you can do the maths.


On arrival at the airport, you go to the Thai Airways office to the left of the passenger terminal and get your Waybill forms. Then its another taxi (and more bloody bartering to agree the price) to the Customs Warehouse Complex where your 'helper' will quickly appear. I decided to use him as I knew all the forms would be in Nelapese and figured that was the easiest way to go. The building was another faceless concrete structure with no names on office doors and rubbish strewn all over the floor. As no one appeared to be working yet, I was given a small glass of local tea to drink with my helper, an older guy wearing one of those colourful Nepali hats a bit like a Fez. He turned out to be quite useful although I did end up filling in the engine and frame numbers for him. He would whisk me around the building, patiently waiting for some overweight grumpy official to take the papers, scowl at them and then angrily scribble an initial or something on the top. This went on for I don't know how many offices until I was finally allowed to get my crate. It was brought out and plopped on the floor of the warehouse, right where a bunch of guys were hanging around for their shipments. I explained I needed to do quite a bit of work to get the bike put back together and eventually got it moved to a quieter corner of the room. I shouldn't have bothered though as in minutes, I had a crowd of around 30 men, all standing 2 feet away with their hands behind their backs, patiently watching every single move I made, and generally getting in the way. It was as if they were watching some strange creature in the zoo, which I guess they sort of were. If I dropped a bolt or something, it was quickly picked up and handed back to me. At one point, I just stopped and looked back at them all and laughed, saying 'haven't any of you lot got jobs to do!'. 5 hours after arriving at the airport, i was free to leave but not before paying the customs and warehouse charges, and of course, my helpers fee. In total I paid 1223Rs, which was just under 10GBPs.

Riding back to the hotel, I used my GPS which I'd thankfully marked the location otherwise I'd have been up the creek a bit. As I got closer to the center, the streets narrowed and the numbers of pedestrians, bicycles, animals and rickshaws built up, the bike eventually stalled and wouldn't start. This has been happening a lot of late though i haven't figured out the cause yet. I started pushing the thing through the streets but thankfully the engine caught one last time and I managed to ride all the way back, getting hopelessly lost on the way obviously.

Get me the f**k out of Bangkok!

On Monday, I finally got the green light to take my bike over to Trans Air Cargo's office in Bangkok but as if written in a script, I got pulled by yet more cops literally 100m from the cargo office! Using my awful Bangkok street map (with most of the street names written in Thai script) i found the street where the office was located, which was on the other side of the busy Rama road I was traveling on. There was a central reservation so I couldn't turn into the street and as i was waiting at the lights to carry on until I could do a U-turn, I was waved over by a copper. Again, I'm not entirely clear why I was singled out for the 4th time but being so close to my final destination mightily pissed me off! I picked up something about a bus lane but there only was one lane so who know. Anyway, he wanted me to 'step into his office' which was a portacabin under the flyover to which I refused and stated I wasn't leaving my bike. I think this pissed him off as he could hardly start to demand cash in front of all the other traffic. So holding one of my lousy fake licence copies, he wrote me out a ticket and told me to pay at some police station. Yeah, sure! From there, it took at least half an hour buggering about in one way traffic until I finally arrived at the TAC office.

At the TAC office, they measured up the bike for making the crate and to my surprise, they allowed for me removing the front wheel and handlebars etc as Thai Airways were charging by volume weight so overall size is critical in keeping the cost down. I returned to the office a couple of days later and they had the crate parts made up. I removed all the parts to make the bike as small as I could (front wheel, mudguard, screen, mirrors, and handlebars) and wasn't looking forward to putting this lot back together. I was quite impressed with how small the final crate actually was (66Wx192Lx116H, total weight 250kgs including luggage and crate which was 60kgs), I really don't think they could have physically got it much smaller. Unfortunately we had to wait to get a flight booking and find out the final cost. I didn't get this until late Thursday afternoon and as TAC amazingly didn't take Visa, I had to take out the full amount in cash. My final bill was 30,500THB (around $900) which was a little cheaper than I originally thought but still pretty expensive.

Finally on Friday morning, and once I knew that the bike was actually leaving, I ran around near my hotel trying to get a flight for myself to Nepal, eventually getting one for 10,000THB which was flying that afternoon. However despite my rush, as I knew they flew at 1pm, it was delayed by 3 hours. The guy who sold me the flight ticket told me I was 'man very hurry', and I guess he was right. It's sometimes a bit stressful dealing with shipping bikes and sorting out flights in such as short space of time that thats all you can focus on. Overall, since getting back to Bangkok last Monday, it's taken 2 full working weeks to get the bike on a plane. But it's finally done though.

Anyway, on to Nepal....!

Oh, and the final scores for Thailand are:
Overlander 4 : Bent coppers 0

Back to Bangkok

What 2 quid a night buys you in Bangkok

Today I rode the 660kms from Ventiene in Laos to Bangkok in one go as I'm very keen to get the bike shipped to Nepal as soon as possible. Fortunately the roads in Thailand are way better than Laos and this one is a 2 lane highway so I can cover a much greater distance than I have of late. Because the road is so much better, I decide to use my mp3 player today to help pass the time and head south to the sounds of The Greyboy Allstars. I figured that it would be around 7.30pm and dark by the time I got to Bangkok but as I planned on going back to the same guest house I stayed in before, it wouldn't be too much of a problem.

The battery on my mp3 player lasts the day until I get about 30kms from my hostel however the shear volume of traffic around me makes me decide I really need to concentrate now and switch it off. Its dark and I'm in the middle of about 5 lanes, each of which is solid with traffice inching its way forward, with hundreds of mopeds buzzing between the vehicles like flies. Its also raining heavily and I eventually find out why the traffic is so heavy- the roads are flooded to a depth of around 8" in places. To make matters worse, the bike decides to stall on me and won't start. I push it between the cars to the side of the road, eventually getting it started again after about 5 minutes. It did this in Vangvien too after a night of heavy rain and hope this isn't the start of some new problem.

It's painfully slow squeezing my heavily loaded bike between the traffic and trying to avoid any more encounters with mopeds as they fly down the gaps. It takes 2 hours to get through this and is well after 9pm by the time I eventually reach my destination, flopping down on the single bed in my cell-like room. I've scanned and emailed off all my documents to the shipping company I'm going to use to get the bike to Nepal, here's hoping they don't take forever in organising it.

As part of my prep, I get a new front tire fitted but as this is Bangkok, I manage to get myself stopped by the cops going and coming back from the shop. It took me a lot of energy to decide to cross town in the first place so this was all I needed. The first cop explained I should have been 'left' and not 'right' or something. Who knows. He took a look at my frankly shoddy licence copy, laughed and said it was a copy. I somehow convinced him it was my real license though and we commenced the now familiar routine. Wave a ticked in Thai at me and say I'll have to go to the Police station to pay and get my fake license back. But then he tells me 'but you don't know where Police staition is?'. I tell him just give me the address and I'll find it, though as I suspect he knows he isn't actually holding my real license, he repeats 'ah, but you don't know where... etc'. He now begins the begging for money bit where he mutters 'maybe you can, erm, eh, maybe you pay something..' but he can't quite say it. After a minute or two of this, I'm waved on without paying anything again.

On the way back from the tire shop, unbelievably the same thing happens again though this time, its one cop on his own and he can't speak English so after a brief flutter on his radio, I'm waved on again.

So currently, the scores now stand at:
Overlander 3 : Bent coppers 0

I quickly tire or my depressing cell-like room with no windows and the constant noise of tuk-tuks accelerating all night and find something much nicer for a little more cash. If I'm going to be here for a week or two, I might as well not be tempted to commit suicide in the process. I also manage to get some more bike prep done, stuff that I should have done in Australia but ran out of time. As my horn broke in my accident, I get a local guy to fit two loud ones and sort out the new wiring. This will be essential in India where you need to be heard. I also get some perspex cut which I'm going to try and fit to my headlight as I'll need something to protect the glass from flying stones on the rough roads.

And yesterday (4 July), I finally get the green light to take the bike over to the shipping agents on monday so hope to be in Nepal by the end of next week.

Laos Part 2

Riding in to Luang Prabang, I was looking for a guest house called Clear Water GH that someone had told me about. I generally go with accommodation recommendations from other bikers as the place will have decent parking and hopefully no bed bugs. The Tourist Office is rubbish here, they have no leaflets and their suggestion of asking people on the street for directions to the hotel really wasn't that helpful. After riding around town for a while and getting nowhere, a guy on a bike arrives and knows where the guest house is- though it isn't called Clear Water, its called Cold River. I'd looked at the bit of paper with the name on only that morning and somehow during the ride there, the name had morphed into 'Clear Water' in my mind. I remember thinking on the way in, 'what a shit name for a guest house, the river's brown!'

I meet some German cyclists who've ridden all the way overland from Germany over 2 years. They came via Tibet and China, would be nice to do that too rather than shipping but I know its not that easy for a motorbike and would be very expensive. I stayed a couple of nights here and checked out some waterfalls but unfortunately missed the best one I'd been told about as my map had it marked in the wrong place. I then continued south to Vangvien, which I'd heard was a bit of a party town for boozed up young backpackers and it was. I found a really nice place to stay overlooking the river for 50,000kip run by a friendly Norwegian guy, Arne. I also met Grant, an Aussie tour guide who'd just bought a brand new moped there for $500. We rode over a rickety bridge and behind the mountains through some really stunning scenery to a small lagoon where we swam for a while. I'm not sure my photos do it justice but I took hundreds of pictures anyway. I also manged to get someone to repair my boots and Arne helped with the translations. 'Nam bo pai' is basically 'waterproof' so I managed to convice the woman that I didn't want here to sew the boots back together. The next day, when I picked them up, I was quite pleased with the results. A few days later, they got the ultimate test riding into Bangkok in during a torrential downpour.

I rode with Grant down to Vientiene, about 250kms away but following a moped isn't exactly exciting cruising at 30mph all the way though I got used to it eventually. I also couldn't believe my fuel economy, it had gone from an average of 20Kms/L to nearly 30! Unfortunately I don't think I'll be riding all the way home at 30mph though. On the way into town, we meet a couple on a hired dirt bike who invite us to a beer. Never one to refuse a free sunset beer (or any beer for that matter), we follow them to a riverside bar and end up meeting another guy who Grant knows so its quite nice. We eventually leave and look for a hotel, though not before Grants moped runs out of petrol. I go off looking for a garage for him but they all seem to be closed however an ex-pat guy on another dirt bike I meet at the traffic lights knows where to go and I follow him for about 10 minutes until we find some people selling bottles of fuel by the roadside.

We ride around the town looking at places to stay but a lot are full or too expensive. Eventually as is usually the case, we end up at the first place we looked at which is a bit of a dump but at least we can park the bikes in the reception area. After a fairly bland green curry, we find a bar and watch Germany getting beaten by Spain. Its a late night as the footy didn't even start till about 1am but in my windowless room the next morning, I'm unaware that its only 9am when I get up. Feeling pretty lousy, I pack up and get through the Thai border before filling up with gas and eating breakfast. I plan to ride all the way to Bangkok today so sense it's going to be a very long day.