Himalayas 3 - Breaking in the riders

So the run out day was a breeze. Well a gusty breeze anyway.

First test the gear.
Alex had greeted us with gifts and goodies. We were logo'ed up with new Nomadic Knights stickers for our helmets, a Nomadic Knights neck protector (Made in Italy!) that is stretchy and can be a hood and a hat and just about anything else for the shoulders up. Plus we had a superb guide book with the routes and destinations for each day.


Michael prompted me into getting one of the two electric start bikes which was such a good idea after the challenges of the kick start last year. In southern India my bike had been a challenge. I was inexperienced, had ended up with the lemon and was totally incapable of handling its’ idiosyncrasies. After a week of frustration and salty language, Abi had diagnosed the battery needed replacing. So an electric start was the answer, if the battery was the problem it wouldn’t start in the first place!
The Bullet Boys t-shirt is hidden under the body armour. It was on because two of us were riding.


The armour and shin pads all looked too Teutonic, especially when Alex found Abhi's tin hat completed the image!

Alex gave the morning briefing. An essential part of the day he pointed out how riding in India is completely different. Everyone uses the horn to signal that they are on the road. It’s not aggressive it’s just a signal.
Indicators are occasionally used. Driving on the left in India is not a challenge, especially for Brits. But when a car is happy for you to overtake they put on the right hand blinker. Then you can pass. Of course the car could also be preparing to turn right, which means overtaking would be injurious to your health. The right hand indicator is blinking. You decide.
Buses believe they rule the road. The drivers are paid by passenger kilometre and like to be paid a lot. Since they are bigger than most other vehicles, and especially much bigger than bikes, they overtake when they want, on corners, on blind corners, in villages and on gravel. They can also overtake a car that is overtaking a cow. This leaves you with the strip at the side of the road, if there is one.
So Alex walks us through ways to stay safe. Maximise the line of sight. Always be ready for on-coming traffic, know that anyone can do anything and since you cannot change any of this, go with it.

We mounted up and revved and checked the horns and the lights, the indicators and the brakes. The mechanics had done really well. Presumably they completely stripped and rebuilt the bikes after each tour, but after the massive adventure there must have been some serious work. Ashraf certainly seemed to strip some of the bikes each night while on tour. Luckily we got on as he is part of the Indian multi-cultural melting pot and is very happy being greeted with 'Salaam Aleykum'.

So the ride went really well till the end of the hotel drive when my bike stalled and wouldn't restart.

Ashraf took out a fuse and hot-wired it, which was fine. Of course the group had stopped on the far side of the road, turning left. But they had gone by the time the bike was repaired, so I crossed the road and carried on. This seemed normal for a continental, but in India you drive on the left. So the oncoming car driven by an elderly gentleman was confused and we both slowed to walking pace. I signalled him on, trying to indicate that I was not going to do anything any more dangerous than merely bumbling up the verge on the wrong side of the road, which he seemed to accept. Once past him I switched to the left side and off we went. Of course Abi the Guardian Angel was there sweeping me up into the mainstream, again.

With those errors out of the way it took half an hour or so to get more of a feel for the bike.
It is quirky and was kicked into neutral by every pothole, which made the acceleration interesting. But we got the hang of that fairly soon.
An hour or so later the horn started sounding strange and a few minutes later the bike stalled and wouldn’t restart.

That was another wait with the wonderful Abi until Ashraf the bike mechanic, i.e. a mechanic on a bike, rode up and inserted a new fuse so off we could go again.

Michael had waited for me, being a buddy and we steadily caught up with the rest. Since he wasn’t wearing coattails I had to get used to the bike!
Soon it was fun. I made an error of judgement overtaking a lorry that slowed really suddenly only to be faced with a hairpin, but I had space and nothing was coming the other way so no emergency panic and no harm done. Just a lesson learnt.
Lunch was a Sprite and an ice cream, well plus a cheroot, and we wended our way back up the valley road.

We had started of wondering about fleeces and wet weather gear, but in the valley bottom it was 31^oC.

 We climbed back up the mountain a different way and stopped to take photos of blobs on the hillside which looked like childish paintings of sheep in completely the wrong proportion but which turned out to be netting covering several square km of apple trees, to protect them from monsoon hailstones.
You can imagine the scene in the local shop; I need netting for my apple trees please -
Certainly how much would you like - Oh about 4 square km should do....

Near the top Alex missed a turning, probably deliberately since we were all riding well, so we came a long but interesting way back.
It was fun riding faster than I had in south India and more within my comfort zone. Michael felt the same. Despite the rough roads and tricky bits with sand and wet and rocks and things we felt OK.
Finally back at the hotel where we stayed last night a whip round ensured beer would be available for the evening.
Everyone was tired and dirty and smelly, so I volunteered to pillion with Abi to get it.
Of course it was two cases of beer. One sat on the fuel tank and other I held in front of me trying not to bump Abi with it every time we braked, accelerated or hit some rough ground.
But Abi is such a good rider, he could even cope with me as pillion bashing him on the head with a case of beer for several kilometres of bumpy road.
So we got back with both cases intact.

A shower and a cup of tea later and we were ready to find the hotel wi-fi. That was a forlorn hope. The good part was that we met up with Paul and shared a beer and some life stories.
It is so interesting seeing where people have come from, to get here, biking the Himalayas. It really is an adventure.
Andy wandered up and we all gave up on the wifi and set up a campfire zone, stealing wood and one of the hotel employee’s job for the evening. Still they weren't there and we wanted a fire.
Once the fire was going we carried on the discovery process.

A gang of bikers from Bangalore were also staying the night, so there was some crossover biker talk, cylinder cam piston speed, or something, which all went straight over my head.
Supper was again superb and as an afterthought Alex ordered spicy chicken but the rest of us were too full. So he doggie bagged it.

We found a broken chair near the pile of wood and knew how to make Chris Everard happy. In memory of his sterling furniture burning effort in south India, on it went!

Well after a lot more chat, the bottle of Jura that Michael had bought for Alex as a present, failed to survive the night.
Whether Alex will be allowed to eat his spicy chicken in the room will remain to be seen.

Himalayas 2 - Punjab to Shimla and Narkanda

There seems to be an extra boost from a hotel breakfast. Probably because you don’t make it yourself and it has different ingredients. But you are in a room with strangers. The Holiday Inn proposed a huge selection. I could merely manage exotic fruit and spicy omelette, with a few side forays dipping into pastries and jams. And tea, lots of tea.
The service was always attentive sometimes highly attentive. I wanted to seem polite and ask the waiter about the food, but after doing the same last night you knew it would involve the chef coming out and long involved conversations, which is not what breakfast is about. So for once, and briefly, I remained silent. Of course Michael was not allowed to eat in peace.

We left the air conditioned cleanliness of the Holiday Inn for the air conditioned airport, with two steps in the monsoon as we got into the courtesy car.
Two chaps rescued us from a lengthy queue at Economy check in. They’d tagged Michael for a superior type of traveller and guided us to the unsignposted and discrete Executive desk. I hung on to Michaels coattails as usual to snag an Executive class ticket. The chaps then fussed us through baggage control where I lost a lighter to the ever vigilant and ever present army.
One challenge for us in India is having enough small denomination notes for tips. A quick detour to a Boots the Chemist lookalike solved that with a couple of bottles of water plus some chewing gum to relieve the ever present onion coating on the tongue. This one from the masala omelette at breakfast.
The chaps left us happily with the equivalent of two days wages for a labourer in the poorer parts of the country. We then proceeded to give all our bank details to a machine that did not give us cash. We could only hope it was because the machine was a real one, without cash rather than an elaborate scam. Only time would tell. There were no appropriate error messages. Just a lack of cash.
The executive class boarding passes got us economy class seats near the front of the
plane. More than I deserved but a lot less than the premium Michael had paid for. The business class looking seats at the front were apparently first class., which is unusual for a commuter jet
Michael declined the plastic sandwich and carton of mango juice, but I'm hardwired to eat when it’s available and not leave food on the plate. The sandwich was only half eaten. Breakfast had been good, this wasn’t. Italy does raise your food standards.
The plane was delayed for take-off and landing. Take off because a couple of flights queue jumped, as you do in an airport, and landing because the monsoon had limited the pilots’ visibility.
But we got to Chandigarh and phoned Alex who had not replied to the text about who was picking us up. His phone was out of order.
So we waited till our ‘priority’ bags were close to last off the carousel and found Lovely waiting for us in the main hall. How he does it I have no idea.
Lovely is the COO and Mr Fix-it of Nomadic Knights. He seems to handle logistics and HR, herding bikers and kits to where they’re supposed to be, as well as organising the ‘crew’, our support team.
You can only get into an airport with a ticket and ID and lots of head shaking and stamps.
Lovely is also lovely. And he was there in the arrivals terminal. We greeted him like a friend of long standing and followed him through the fresh puddles to cross to the parking lot.
On the far side of the road were a hundred signs greeting passengers were on the far side of the road. They were obviously not Lovely, who settled us at the mini bus. There we met Paul who had been vagabonding at the airport since 7 that morning, so 4 1/2 hours of sleeping on concrete with his bags for pillows. But seemed remarkably cheery for it.
Paul had a cup of tea which we thought was coffee so we set off for the coffee shop. Michael hadn’t made the necessary stop before a long journey but wasn't allowed back into the airport at all as he didn’t have a boarding card. He can’t be Lovely then.
The coffee shop lady seemed to completely reprogramme the cash till to take the order of one black coffee and one white coffee. We got two cappucinos.
Lovely gathered the other riders from the airport, probably breezing past Michael on the way in.
Keith and Martin were shagged and quiet after a long journey. Andy was more cheery. Paul and Andy were easy to get on with. A lot of boys talk to establish they were good bikers and Paul had been on a Nomadic Knights trip to Rajasthan. Andy was an experienced biker who hadn’t been to India. There were lots of comments and getting to know each other banter on the way.
We left Chandigarh and its huge freshly painted poster adverts. Lovely negotiated the police shakedown, getting our co-driver, Pawanji, to proffer some rupees and just not stopping in the slow moving chaotic traffic.
The drive to Narkanda was long.

It was probably even longer for Paul who had to suffer my seat continually reclining of its own accord, but he didn't seem to worry about it.
We saw villages on steep hillsides, monkeys, guys riding in top of trucks and a pillion holding a plastic sheet above his head like a celebrating revolutionary or victorious football supporter. But this was to protect himself and the bike rider from the rain. We saw some English Wine and Beer Shops, which we guessed didn't do what it said on the label and a Loreto Convent which Michael and I found funny. We live very close to Loreto in Italy which is a very important holy site for Roman Catholics, though almost unknown to the rest of the world.
It is home to the Virgin Mary’s house, which may seem unusual being in Italy, but there is a long and convoluted story behind its miraculous transportation by angels to Le Marche sometime at the end of one of the crusades.

We saw the chaotic driving and rubbish beside the road, the crumbling edges and the precipitous thousand foot drops, the ever present railway snaking and winding an impossible route from Chandigarh to Shimla. Twisting around and through the steep, steep sides of the Himalayas.

And here we are at Narkanda, a mere 2700 metres up, 7 hours and 7000 gear changes later.
In the clouds after a scrumptious Indian dinner with a couple of beers and a couple of drams, the gel earplugs are in while writing these notes, so I can't even hear myself fart, let alone Michael’s moonlight sonatas.

After a stop at the Indian McDonalds (no beefburgers), but a slow introduction for us guests and a chai stop near Shimla we gratefully bumped down the rocky drive to Tethys Ski Resort in Narkanda.

More greetings of old friends, Alex the fearless leader of Nomadic Knights, with big smiles and manly hugs and his wonderful wife Vidyha, whose smile just brightens the heart. Abhi was his usual serene self. Abhi sweeps up the laggards and the wayward. The shepherd, he gives you confidence knowing that he’s there when your bike breaks down, or you don’t know the way, or you just want to rest.

We also met the other members of our support team, in addition to the amazing Lovely and our co-pilot for the drive, Pawanji, there was Doc, who loves taking time from his full time job as a highly qualified doctor to hang around with crazy guys biking the Himalayas. We also met our magic mechanic, Ashraf, who could strip, recondition and reassemble an Enfield in the dark, with his eyes closed, in a clean business suit.

They had just finished a hard two week trip with lots of challenges, but with very experienced riders. We felt a bit like the B Team as we would do a lot less miles but hopefully we'd get to enjoy more of the mountains. So we jossed and smiled and lugged our stuff to the new section of the hotel.

Our rooms were still being finished but were spacious and comfortable. We got a hot shower despite the tap being in a precarious position for guys over 6ft tall, unless you turned sideways. But the shower made everything good and there was a kettle in the room for well-earned tea.

Over supper and a campfire we heard of water crossings and wet, landslides and brake control. Of 17 hour days and being ready to sleep rough. There was a lot of talk of blood, sweat and toil, but luckily no tears.

Maybe in my sleep I’ll ponder the life philosophies imparted as the evening went on. But in the end we are here because we want to experience life in its fullest and funnest.
However the build up for the riding is that it is going to be a challenge.

So I’m looking forward to seeing if the last few months riding have improved my abilities enough to be able to enjoy this to the full.