Moto-Hike: Run From The Sun

Video Snippits From Pakistan and SE Asia

2006-10-11T00:02:00.000+01:00

Heres a couple of 5 min or so videos compiled from footage shot.

SE Asia

Pakistan

Enjoy!

Return Party

2006-03-07T18:25:00.000Z

Just to let you know we will update the weblog over the next couple of days but if you didn`t know we are returning on the 10th March will be having a couple of parties to celebrate..... details below.

Please come and celebrate our safe return THIS WEEK in London

DATE: Friday 10/03/2006
PLACE: The Castle, 115 Battersea High Street, Battersea,London,
SW11,tel: 020 7228 8181
MAP: http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?xR6972&y6459&z=0&ar=Y
TIME: 7.30pm

Leeds Party _ 18th March

As well as the party in london there will be a knees up in leeds on
Saturday
the 18th of March. Venue TBC, email us for details and directions!!!!!!!!

Rory and Chris

www.moto-hike.co.uk
http://moto-hike.blogspot.com/
Remember to win a bike and donate to SOS Villages simply text 'karrimor' to 60999

Helicopters and Blizzards? Got to be a Turkey!

2006-02-16T14:35:00.000Z

Crossing a border is an exciting event for us. It means a whole new country of fun is about to unfold plus we get more stamps in our passports. Woo hoo!!!
I love everything about stamping.
The guard reventially removes the stamp from the draw. He then gives you 'the look'.
'The look' means he's assessing you, making his final decision on whether you're worthy of entry to his precious country. While pondering this he'll ink up the stamp, carefully rocking it side-to-side to get a good even covering.
Then he lifts his head, gives you the final 'look', then

WHHAACCCKKKKKK!!!!!!!

Stamp in the passport and we're in, woo hoo!!!! I love it......
This happened seemlessly in Turkey after a ride up into the mountains of the Iranian border region.
As we got closer and higher into the hills it got colder and snowier but the immaculate Iranian tarmac remained clear as ever.
Upon arriving in Turkey the conditions seemed to nose-dive pretty much immediately. The roads in Iran are perfect. Wide, smooth, well kept tarmac as straight as a die for thousands of km's through the desert. Turkish roads(or certainly these ones) on the other hand were rough and pot-holed, bringing back memories of the attrocious conditions in Cambodia. Our planned route along the Iraq and Syrian borders looked like the best bet for low-altitudes, but the roads were less travelled than the more northerly route. Continuing to climb we soon came across the first snowy patches.
Now neither Rory or I had ridden on snow before so this was somewhat of a baptism of fire on our heavily loaded bikes. we continued to climb and i watched the mercury on my thermometer drop below 0 and down to -5. The cold isn't too much of an issue as we'd been well equipped with quality winter gear by our sponsors Karrimor.
Our main concern today was staying upright! We travelled along in 1st or 2nd gear at between 10 and 25km's per hour gradually gaining some confidence, or enough to relax our tense grip on the bars. Inevitably we had a few minor spills, but quickly got moving again.The weather now really started to hit and visibility dropped to, well pretty much zero. The road was totally covered with a thick blanket of fresh snow and it was impossible to make out the edges of the road or anything else for that matter. Only the occasional largely buried road sign assured us we were on a road, as we approached the top of a 2100metre high pass.
The reality hit that things weren't really going that well and we could be in a spot of bother. We'd travelled about 35 of the 42 km's to Yuksekova when Rory performed an incredible pirouette in front of me, ending up buried in a massive drift at the side of the road. I slowed to a halt and congratulated him on his form, 3 years working for the Northern Ballet Theatre means i know a good one when i see one!
We heard a whirring noise getting louder from above and moving to the side of the road. Suddenly a helicopter plunged out of the gloom beaching in a massive drift in the field next to the road.
We looked at each other in dis-belief. What on earth was a helicopter doing out in these conditions(we found out a couple of days later)?
We rushed off into the snow and found the unconcious pilot being freed by the passenger. Between the 3 of us we managed to get him free and drag him towards the road. We made it about 30 metres before a huge explosion catapulted us into the snow bank on the roads edge. This luckily revived the pilot.
He was struggling to breathe and we decided to perform an emergency tracioctomi with a biro i'd nicked from the border, who says crime doesn't pay. I made a small slit in his throat with my leatherman and popped the bic in(sans inky bit) using the technique i'd gleaned from too many episodes of casualty.
After his breathing stabilised we got him on the back of Rory's bike and slowly set-off for town.
30 mins later we arrived at the snowplough depot and sent the pilot off to hospital in a giant volvo machine. We were given tea, fed with lovely broth and put up in the accomodation block while we awaited the arrival of the president.
Having heard of our dramatic rescue he was flying down to present us with the Turkish Medal of Valor and key to the city.
We then went out to get pissed with a bunch of Kurdish folk.

There was quite a dramatic thaw the next day so we refused the offer of a days skiing and took the opportunity to get to Van. There was 50kms of snowy roads, but the remaining 150km's were clear. Amazing considering we crossed a 2730metre pass, the highest of our whole trip!

The guys at the ferry port recognised us as our rescue had been shown on the tv news That night we took the ferry to Tatvan where unfortunately we were met by a very heavy snow storm. It took several hours to get to the train station only a few kms away. We stayed there that night and got a train west, away from the mountains, in the morning!
I'd picked up a spot of bird flu and spent a day recovering in bed. Even the next day I was feeling a little wobbly on the bike and cut short our riding when some weather started to come in. The next day saw even more heavy snow and we made slow and wet progress towards Adana.
It had to happen eventually............
Rory had a puncture and what was going to be a nice easy day turned into a bit of a nightmare. The puncture wrecked the tube, but more importantly getting the bike off the motorway and out of the attrocious weather had also wrecked the bead on the tire. We didn't realise how badly at the time and just got on with changing the tube.
Things went from bad to worse when we realised the nearby hotel had nowhere we could safely park our bikes so we had to head on to the next town some 40kms away.
By now we were very cold and very wet and very sick of this god forsaken hell hole of a country.
Turkey was out to get us, or thats what it felt like. I mean what sort of country has the Doner Kebab as its national dish?
Having not exactly having a great range of dishes on offer in Iran the complete lack of anything other than kebabs was criving me insane. I'm sorry, ıts just not right. You can't eat that many kebabs and not have any serious social problems. I know this stuff, i ate way too many kebabs for a while in my youth and it ruined me, or maybe that was the beer, whatever.......
I promised Rory that i'd really let rip on Turkey, but I feel kind of guilty about it now as there have been some nice people. Let me expand.....
That night after fighting a few more k's up the motorway we were done. I mean really done, it was about 1am and we'd been on the go since 8am or so. Allah was smiling on us in the shape of Hossain.
Hossain looked after one of the little tea-shop/bogs on the motorway and kindly let us use his box room with heater for a few hours kip and to dry or soggy kit.
We woke up after a few hours kip and left after he took 20mil lira off us for the privilege(about 15USD). Couldn't say no as he had gıven up his bed, but we're used to getting hotels for a thrird of that! I'm not looking forward to Europe. Lots of chilly camping I reckon.
Things didn't exactly get better in the morning.

** Grand Mosque Adana **

After about 30kms I lost site of Rory in my mirrors. After waiting a couple of minuted I headed back down the hard shoulder to find him in a slight pickle.
His rear tyre had decided to leave the rim, pretty scary at 120kmh! I was despatched into Adana to find a new tyre while Rory spent some qualıty time with my iPod.
I found a good tyre place near the motorway exit and waited for news of his enquiries. It seemed no-one in the whole city had a tyre to fit our bikes, doh!
I headed off to the net cafe to try and contact or only friends in Turkey.
I'd contacted Paolo and Iqbal Volpara of www.motoreast.com several months ago regarding our route across Turkey and they'd been incredibly helpful.
I called Iqbal and she quickly got on the case, having secured a new Pırelli via Yamaha in Istanbul within a couple of hours.
Its presently winging its way to Adana and we hope to be on the road again tommorrow heading towards a ferry for Greece....

** Spot our snowplough rescuer approaching **

OK I admit it. We never rescued the helicopter pilot, but contrary to reports in the press we never got rescued either.
After picking Rory's bike up post pirouette a vision of light appeared in the distance. Well, a very big and bright orange thing noisily approached.
A tanned man climbed down from the enormous Volvo snow plough and went onto perform the international sign-language for "What are you stupid english guys doing out here in these conditions, you must be mad!"
We'd got very familiar with this message from our many previous scrapes, its
normally followed by the, "fancy a cuppa?" signing.
Our new friend plowed us a 'road' and we slowly followed him for the remaining few km's to town.
Upon arrival we were given tea and a delicious meaty potato stew from 'restaurant Rashid', or the canteen run by Rashid. We were in the Khurdish part of Turkey and were quickly corrected after calling it Turkey, "NO turkey, Khurdistan!" After warming up we enquired about a nearby hotel, but were told we'd be their guests. We were taken over to the office/accomodation block and settled into a lovely warm room. After being presented with some excellent maps of Turkey by the big boss, we had a rest before heading out to eat, again. We found our rescuer at work levelling the towns streets with his friends in equally large vehicles. Poetry in motion! I even got a ride in his cab.
At this point a Ronnie Wood look-ee-likee turned up with a video camera and took a few pictures and some film. The day ended perfectly with our first beer since we'd left Islamabad, how different things could have been!
We found out the next day we'd been on TV and then a couple of days after picked up our emails regarding coverage in the UK. It seems Mr. Wood had spun quite a yarn!
A ten-hour rescue by helicopter. We'd only been in Turkey for about 3 hours and had the helicopter attempted to fly we probably would have ended up with a rescue like the one i made up above.
Bottom line is that he's got an aweful lot of publicity for our trip and the competition(Text KARRIMOR to 60999 to win a Yamaha XT660x, closes 31st March 2006), which all being well will get lots of cash for SOS Children's Villages and in turn save many children from a miserable existence, instead being a very happy memöber of a very large family.
So thanks mr. reporter, we owe you one.

Right, see you next time when we really must have left Turkey and be on our way to visit SOS Children's Village in Sarajevo.

Hasta Luego

Chris

Kickin Up a Storm

2006-02-09T17:08:00.001Z

** Esfahan Imam Square **

Man, Quetta was expensive!! Still, good to know we are bırd flu free as well as all kinds of nasty diseases that can spoil your day. 600km to the Iran/Pakistan border, at best the road was greasy asphalt at worst it was multi directional deeply rutted desert track........ The bikes were made for this kind of stuff, on the occasional time we met any other traffic we would fly past noting the bobbing heads and axel jarring bumps wıth pity. It was awesome, huge dust clouds pluming from the back tires, our hard earned, weather beaten tans were soon reduced to ashen faces and grit tear streams carved down our cheeks, the Black and Whıte Mınstral Show auditions would have been a breeze. The best riding since Vietnam, the only thing that kept a huge smile off my face was the fear of stripping all the enamel off my teeth.

Taftan is a dusty one horse town, with the boarder crossing closed for the day it we were faced with an anti-climax of sitting out the evening in the only hostel in town, with no electricity or food. Fortune was smiling on us (perhaps it knew what was in store for us the following day....) in the shape of a Mercedes 804 camper, and a dinner invitation from its German occupants. The nıght ended strangely when we returned to our hotel as we had a pretty angry manager and a policeman waıtıng for us...... They thought we had been kidnapped by local Al Qaida gorillas, it was nice to be missed. Satisfied we climbed into bed to the thoughts of an earlier coversation wıth Chris still running through my head; if you were adopted by a gay couple would you rather they were two gay men or two lesbians? hhmmmm....

Crossing into İran was a sinch, with all the hassle of gaining visas we were expecting complete disassembly of our bikes at gun point looking for anti-nuclear power leaflets.
Desert.... That's all really, miles and miles of sand dunes, grit and dust... ıt was boring..... doh! Mother nature had something to spice the journey up for us though, wıth ıncreasing regularity we were getting flashed at by passing motorists, confusing it with well meaning greeting by our new hosts we simply waved back. The point they were tryıng to express was the impending sand storm........... İt was brutal the bikes were leaning at a 45 degree angle to counterbalance the strength of the storm, visibility down to about 15 ft, it was hellish. The side of my neck was red raw from the attack of the small stuff, this was nothing compared to Chris who had an open faced helmet, hıs lıps were bleeding from the raw power of the sand blast, he was screaming in agony for about 50km. The paint work on one side of the bıke was stripped, but left us both with gleaming tires, engine casing and boots.
The relief of making it to our first destinatıon inside İran was short lived due to the utter devastation of the aptly named town Bam. It was on the receiving end of a huge earthquake in late 2004, the effects were overwhelming, nothing was left standing, including Arg-e Bam an ancient mud cıty, the jewel of İrans tourist crown, over 2000 years old. We stayed ın the only hostel left, Akbar Tourist guest house, a mixture of rubble, tents and newly built dormitory. If you needed a reminder, at the front of the hostel is parked a grotesquely misshaped Enfield Bullet, the owner an English guy traveling from İndia back home was one of the 26,000 people killed that morning. We found it suprising that a government who barely tax their people and subsidies the petrol so it works out at 5p a liter have left the town to fend for itself, the quake could have happened yesterday from the state of the place.
For the next three nights İ woke up from varıous nightmares involving earthquakes, one of them İ actual found myself on the floor, with the visit to Kashmır still so vivid İ guess it started to get to me.

637Km to Yazd and it felt like a different planet, it was stunning, Chris and İ have spent the past 5 months avoıiding cities, due the headache of dealing with traffic people and the bikes but Yazd was worth a visit. The traffic was still a nightmare with Chris getting T-boned by a crazy scooter driver. We spent a relaxing day visiting the various restaurants and getting completely lost in the old town and miles of bazaars. One thing İ have learned, however hardcore you think you are there is always someone out there that can out do you, we met another German couple Ralph and Ava they are 18 months into a 3 year world tour (they got 3 years off work!!! Take note WCE), having just popped up through the North East of Afrıca www.motorradnomaden.de they were full of useful tıps and were ınstremental ın our new purchase of bar mıts for our cold hands.
Onto to neıghbourıng Esfahan or Glorıa Esfahan as we dubbed it. Famed for its grand mosques and enchanting brıdges we spent two days hangın out with friendly Mullahs, carpet salesmen, smokıng pipes and drinking bucket loads of tea. At this point concerns about the impending bad weather in Eastern turkey started to manısfest its self, paralysis by analysis you could call it... We looked into every possible outcome, bought a couple of train tickets in case we got stuck further up North, rope for our tires to help with traction in the snow and spent hours following the weather forecasts on the net, then decided 'sod ıt...Lets go and have a look for ourselves'

I have been begınıng to think about home quite a bit recently, it probably has a lot to do with the amount of miles we are covering always going west. The amount of time you have to think whilst riding is nuts, İ would like to say İ spend my tıme contemplating human nature, the planet, social and ethical issues but İ mainly think about how much İ miss cheese, will anyone notice my beard is such a disgusting color or who would wın ın a race between a bear and a dog.... Deep
I wasn't expecting the warmth and hospitality that has been shown to us, Iranıan people are really cool, the BBC dıd a poll the other day as to the most unpopular natıons and Iran came fırst (closely followed by the states). If only it wasn't such an arse to get your visa here it is a blinding place to come and visit. Folk are continually inviting you for dinner to meet theır family's or going out of their way to show you round, welcome you and generally make sure you are enjoying yourself, no one asks you for money. Its easy to confuse politicians with the population of a country, most people in Iran think theır PM is an idiot, see they do have something in common with Amerıca. People do feel pretty strongly that they should have the right to have nuclear power here, and it's pretty hard to argue, but its pretty clear Iran politicians are useless when it comes to making friends so no body trusts them, stalemate

Qom ıs the ultra-conservatıve holy cıty of Iran, it was weird, we dıdn,t lıke it so left (we dıd bump ınto a lorry drıver from Scarborough though, he rocked). The trıp to Tabrız rıght up on the N/W border of Iran was epıc, but would not lıke to repeat ıt ever again... My feet have never been so cold, beyond cold they chilled the hotel room when we trampled ın. We came over a mountaın pass ın glorıus sunshıne ınto thıck fog,snow, sleet, raın,wınd -5, I couldn't see a thing... Should have dıed, but usıng my rıght hand had to wıpe my goggles every 5 seconds whilst slıpping the clutch.... Crunch!
We had a day ın Tabrız, Chrıs and I fıgured we would buy a barrel of saffron (the most expenseıve spice ın the world) then sell it on our return for huge profits...... until we found its not actually that expensive. Then on advıce we frequented a Turkısh style bathıng house, looking to get butchered, beaten and pulled back into some sort of shape by a masseuse, that dıdn,t quite come off as we had hoped ether, it seemed to be one giant shower room. There were guys sharing cubicles and rubbing each other wıth soap, we stayed for about a mınute then ran out whilst trying to dress ourselves. Goodbye Tabrız......... Good food though.

Kandovan ıs a weird name and a bizzare place, about 50km south of Tabrız this little mountain village is home of the cave dweller. I'm not sure if the rocks were hollow to begin with or some hot shot property developer saw a gap ın the market but the habitants of Kandovan all live in oddly shaped stones. Hıgh on a mountaın sıde the village ıs an array of Pıcasso shaped homesteads complete with massive St Bernard dogs that growl fıercly whilst you try and navigate the steep and slippery passageways linking one to another. It would have been cool to stay longer but we were short of time and had a ferry to catch across Lake Orumıyeh, the water is only about 18m deep ın the mıddle and is really salty. I think it was salty there was no way in hell I was getting in to check it out, but unless there was a huge lımescale problem all the rocks and jeti fastenıngs were covered ın a white fur.

We arrıved ın Orumiyeh the last big town before the border, the hotel was too expensive for our meager budget so I let slip that we were hotel guide book journalists and were researching the area. 1/2 prıce room and the manager practically tucked us up ın bed........ Maybe it was the guilty conscience that kept me up but it was more likely the 200 men chanting to a drum beat outside our hotel that put pay to any sleep until the small hours. The Muslims from the local mosques were out in force, it is a perıod of mourning for them, something to do with a guy who died 2000 years ago. The procession was an amazing dısplay of the devotion they have, in time with a drum beat the crowd waltzed up the road whilst whipping themselves with metal chains .... erm ..whıps. I had a go for a while but realized that everyone was wearing leather jackets and my meager fleece was useless to stop my back from turning red raw withing a few beats.... I withdrew to the sidelines to let the wıppıng boys do theır stuff.

next stop Turkey..........

love and flowers

The jolly Ginge

I ran and ran and ran to Iran...........

2006-01-25T07:15:00.000Z

It finally happened!
After nearly 8 months of investigation, planning, emailing, visiting embassies and getting nightmare tales of refusal from other travellers, we've got the magic stamp!
Our passports now proudly display a 15 day Iran tourist visa and it only cost $370 USD for the privilege. Yeah, you read that right. All in, including the $35 USD fee per visa charged by the travel agency in Shiraz ( www.key2persia.com ), it works out about $185 each. Ouch.
Anyway, its done now and should be the last big paperwork/visa/shipping hassle we have to deal with on our way home.
Our escape from Islamabad was not without drama. In fact we created quite a drama at one point, but i'll come to that later...
We spent one night on the outskirts of Peshawar, trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible after the American bombing mission nearby on the 13th. It turned out we needn't have worried too much, as the subject never came up and, as usual, the hospitality of our Pakistani hosts was of the highest level.
We set off the next morning planning on a long-days ride as we wanted to clear the 'tribal areas', famed for not being too welcoming to foreigners.
About 40km's down the Indus highway from Peshawar we passed through Kohat, a major centre in the tribal areas and a place best avoided according to our guidebook. It seemed we were in luck though as we approached a tunnel that indicated a new route bypassing the town.
A few hundred metres from the tunnel mouth we were signalled to stop by three guys. We normally don't stop, but this was a rather frantic and serious stopping request, so i obliged.
The guy went on to explain in iffy English that motorcycles were banned from using the tunnel and we'd have to use the old road through the mountains and the town. Rory had other ideas......
"Just go!"
I expressed my concern about this plan of action, but before we'd really discussed anything we were heading towards the tunnel at great speed....
Past 1 guard who jumped out in the road in front of us
Past another
Into the tunnel
Out of the tunnel
To be greeted by a very large number of guards, some with guns.
I kept the throttle wide open. Stopping wasn't really going to help now, so running was the best policy.
A couple of km's down the road i noticed flashing lights in my mirrors and then Rory disappeared. A few seconds later i slowed down and turned around to go find him.
I found him and about 20 guards in half a dozen cars and pickups with flashing lights and sirens blaring.
The Project Manager of the tunnel turned up in rather a bad mood. It wasn't as bad as mine though and i let rip at Rory, "You *$&^@*@# Idiot!!"
The Project Manager looked rather sternly at me thinking i was shouting at him.
"Not you, HIM!!!" I explained.
The dressing down from mister manager included some classics including, "I couldn't care less if you were George $%^&-ing Bush!"
"I'm going to make sure the police throw the book at you, deport you!"
"Forget about your bikes, i'll bloody burn them!"
Harsh words indeed and pretty scary at the time as we didn't know who these guys were or what authority they had.
In the mean time we called the British High Commission in Islamabad and luckily for us they had good relations with the chief of police in the area.
Mister Manager disappeared off promising to return with a firing squad and two body bags. Thankfully that was the last we saw of him.
After more waiting around the tunnel company's attorney turned up and took our particulars. He was accompanied by a reporter friend who started snapping and took down the story from the guards and us.
After more messing around and a visit from the plod we were eventually sent on our way.
Apparently the story would be circulating in four national papers the next day!
We set of early again the next day hoping to make up some lost ground and to get to Zobh by nightfall. The road to Zobh had restricted access and required a permit, which we didn't have, but we'd spoken to an English chap in Islamabad who gave us hope. Charles had passed that way a couple of weeks before and said the road was fine and he'd had no hassle, easy.
60km's down the road, just as we started to head into the mountains we were met by some guys in a sooty van with a snazzy blue light.
"Where permit?"
"Err, we left it at home, the dog ate it!"
etc. etc. as those well used homework excuses came flooding back.
"You not go here, very dangerous road, terrorist area!"
We knew that was it as far as using this road went. We knew the area was considered dodgy and is rather close to the Afghan border, but from our point of view it halved the journey time and meant we could be in a 'safe area'(ie. one under full goverment control) by nightfall, which was surely better.
He directed us back to the Indus Highway and explained we should go and stay in Dera Ghazi Khan and then leave early in the morning to hit Quetta by nightfall. So we did.
Only problem being that when we reached D. G. Khan we were promptly ejected from all the hotels! Apparently the government had decreed that no foreigners are allowed to stay in the city or within a 30km radius as Al Quaeda were operating in the area. Doh!!!
The result of this being a 56km night ride east across the Indus to Mussaffabargh where we were allowed to stay. Thankyou mister sooty van copper!
We decided we'd had enough of all this rubbish and we'd nail it to Quetta the next day, a run of 550km's through the mountains.
Rising early we departed not long after sunrise. Blasting along the flat and straight roads of the 'no-go' area we started to climb into the mountains of the Suleiman range by about 9am. After the stopping fiascos of the last couple of days we planned to only stop where we had plenty of time to see oncoming vehicles, or hide. Getting turned around from this road would mean a huge detour almost via Karachi!
The road into the mountains was one of the gnarliest we'd ridden, with very tight hairpins around blind bends and 'variable' road surface. To be honest we like the dodgy surface, the bikes are made for these conditions and its a lot of fun.
After a great ride up to about 1300m altitude we reached the high plains where we were stopped at a military checkpoint.
During our ride through Kashmir and up the Karakoram Highway we'd stopped and registered at checkpoints frequently so we weren't too worried. Unfortunately this was for a different reason....
Eric Saue, who we met in Amritsar, had spoken of being given a Police escort along large parts of his route through Pakistan. We really didn't need this, we can travel much faster along the rough roads than jeeps etc, so we definately wouldn't make it to Quetta by nightfall.
After a lot of waiting around and many requests to leave we were eventually told we could go alone! Seems they couldn't muster a guard. This cost us just over an hour and we could have really done with it.......
We flew along the next section of flat, smooth, empty roads across the high plains, cruising at about 110kmh for ages. This abruptly came to an end as the road suddenly ran out. The surface become broken tarmac and gravel, with a choice of alternative tracks through the desert that now surrounded us. Slower going, but a lot of fun!
About 70km's of this followed and we relished the opportunity to give the bikes a good work-out.
The road returned to flat, smooth and straight across the barren lunar-esque landscape. We went as fast as we could hoping to get to Quetta by dark, with the temperature dropping quickly and the wind getting up.
We made a decision to find a hotel about 80km's from Quetta, as it was getting serously cold and there was real frostbite potential.
Unfortunately the only town we came to was basically full of smugglers selling dodgy Iranian petrol and the only hotel wasn't actually a hotel! We settled for a cup of tea and a roasting wood stove to heat us up for the dark ride ahead.
We were truly granted a miracle as the road ahead featured cats-eyes, first we'd seen since Islamabad! This may not seem like a big-deal, but our lights are a bit rubbish and Pakistani drivers dont understand the dipped beam concept. The cats-eyes allowed us to cruise at about 80/90kmh and we arrived in Quetta in just over an hour.
The hotel we'd planned on staying in turned out to be more pricey than we expected, but it seemed very secure and we were exhausted, so we went for it.
The Iran Consulate was our goal in Quetta, or liberating our visas from it. We turned up expecting an easy procedure, only to find out from a Spanish couple that due to new rules(bird-flu in Turkey) we had to have a medical! We spent the afternoon collecting new passport photos and anxiously awaiting our test results. I always have passport photo issues(i normally look like a serial killer) and the bloodtest had left me looking a little pasty. This time i'd look like a hungry vampire!
Im very pleased to say that we both came up clean for a whole host of nasty diseases.
Yesterday involved abstract, freestyle queueing at the embassy for hours. I really had no clue what was going on, but eventually we got to the counter and confirmed they'd received our approval number from Tehran. This was a massive relief as the Spanish couple had been stuck there for five days waiting for this to come through.
So there it is. We leave for Iran in the morning, a 600 km blast across the desert to the land of CHEAP petrol. A couple of years ago it was 7p a litre, but ive heard its gone up. Even if its tripled its still going to save us a fortune every day, woo hoo!
Don't forget to enter the competition to win a new Yamaha XT660x plus runners-up prizes of Karrimor bags and goodies.
Just Text " KARRIMOR " to 60999

Ta-ra a bit!

Chris

Christmas till Birthday

2006-01-15T14:33:00.000Z

The live Aid song had been echoing around my helmet for the week before Christmas, compensation for not having to brave Christmas shopping in England. I think my brain has reconised a lack of repetitive festive music! I don't know many of the words so have blended it with Cliff Richards 'mistletoe and wine'. Worryingly I remember all the words to that one, 'A time for giving and sharing'. The only thing Chris and I share is the smell of too many days on the road without a shower. Our socks now sleep outside, as they need the space to walk around. In any case we are worried they may attract mice. I keep a spare pair of warm clean socks in the bottom of my sleeping bag for the colder nights we have been experiencing, the only problem is, as usual with my socks I have managed to loose one of them.

Let me lift off where Chris finished, Christmas eve was a blur.....
Having no access to alcohol due to a local election taking place, we soon found ourselves bargaining with the owner of a local restaurant. Feeling slightly embarrassed by having one of his customers on his knees pleading for a bottle of cider, he let us drink under the proviso we hid the bottles under the table...... This arrangement worked well until the 5th or 6th bottle when I became confused and began hiding my full glass of cider under the table, drinking from the bottle.
We spent the evening in the company of ....erm...people...... I do remember one quite vividly. An enlightened Australian who 'saw ghosts' they came to her in the middle of the night, sat on her then asked her where to go? Sounds weird, well it is, she however was pretty down to earth and wasn't pulling our legs....
After studying under a Tibetan Lama she now sends them outside to a portal... Maybe she was on drugs afer all. Trying to understand I explained that, whilst in India, I have seen a lot of goats and will now send them to a portaloo..

Christmas day was great, Chris and I exchanged presents, I then went and exchanged his present for something I wanted 'the Dalai Lama's auto-biography' which Chris then exchanged and read before I had a chance to read the back cover. Christmas dinner was spent overlooking the Himalaya on a little picnic spot we found. We ate spinach tart, cheese and biscuits, drank fresh apple juice and listened to Chris' Northern Soul collection. Whilst missing our family's we rather liked being able to walk around without feeling bloated and too warm. Chris has spent quite a few Christmas' away from home due to his skiing career, this was my first.
We had been on the bikes everyday pretty much for 3 weeks and enjoyed the break.
We headed off to Amritsar on the NW boarder of India/Pakistan, the Punjabis were great and we spent a lovely evening marvelling at the Golden Temple. I think we both marvelled at it because we had no idea what was happening. The protocol of taking our shoes and socks off and walking around gave us cold feet but we were uplifted by the groovy live music they provided with a guy sat crosslegged randomly conducting with a fly swat.
Our socks had not run off on our return and we went back to our hostel to eat with a Norwegian scientist traveling in the opposite direction to us. He was riding an identical bike to ours, thus confirming we all made a great choice in selecting our Yamaha TTR 600's, we all felt very clever.....
The next day it took me 45minutes to get my bike started...Doh, and thus began the decline in my bikes ability to start without a jump start

**Boarder guard gets to know 'Stan'**

We missed the famous boarder patrol opening, the only passage between the two countries, because we are lazy and were not prepared to get up at 4 in the morning to join the 2000 Indians who shout obscenities at the equally large gathering of Pakistanis on the other side. Our crossing passed without incident apart from one official insisting to go through my wallet... He took 10 euros out and told me he would keep it as he collects foreign money. Strange he didn't want any of the Vietnam Dong or Cambodian money left loitering in my back pocket! The tables were turned when he left his office and I found 500 rupees by his desk (as luck would have it almost a perfect exchange rate). I spent the next ten minutes worried I may get my hands cut off.

We spent the next couple of days at the SOS village in Lahore, a huge city with infinite possibilities to get completely lost. We had to tow my bike through part of it due to my inability to get it started... That was very scary.
The village is set up exactly the same as all the other SOS's around the world with 10-15 children sharing a house, there was a school next door that as well as schooling the orphan children intergrates them with other children in the community. Big thanks to everyone at SOS for having us, Chris and I really enjoyed playing with the kids all day. Lahore SOS is the National head office so they were very busy trying to deal with hundreds if not thousands of recently orphaned kids coming down from Kashmir. They are temporarily being housed in Lahore while SOS and other NGOs work to build new homes for them in their own communities. SOS intend to build four new villages in Kashmir in the next 2 years.
We spent a great evening at the SOS youth home which houses boys aged fourteen and up. At this age (in Pakistan) they are segregated from the girls and housed in what reminded me of boarding school, a very happy place and it was great to eat beef again!!!

** Interrogation at the entrance to British Diplomatic Enclave**

From Lahore we headed North to Islamabad for a quick stop to celebrate New Year, that was the plan...
We could blame it on the bike and say because it was in need of repair we had to stay for five days but that would be a lie, really we stayed because we were made so welcome by the British embassy. Emma(Visa's) and Kevin (Narcotics) gave us their house, got us drunk, gave us cigars and we ate all their cheese...
They didn't know how to get rid of us. It was our first proper bed in months (actually I had a bed, Chris slept on the sofa claiming it was his 'natural habitat') We watched a lot of TV, Ricki Jervais' Extras ws the funnyiest series I have ever seen. Which reminds me Chris told Billy Connolly (see previous weblog) that he knew someone that worked with Ricki and he was a righ t*at...... I agreed with Billy and said I liked him, infact I agreed with everything Billy said, even when I didn't understand what he was saying...

** Camp 1 of rather a lot...**

With a bit of umm'ing and rr'ing we decided it wouldn't be bad taste to head North through area struck by the earthquake 3 months earlier. We took a kind of back road to the Karakoram Highway that passed through a place called Murrie, our first encounter with snow. About 40Km south of Muzaffarabad we happened upon the first full scale camp on our route. It was a Turkish Red crescent camp that houses around 2,500 people (approach 275 families). In an act of kindness we were invited to stay the night. We were shown around and gained an insight into the day to day operations of a camp of this scale. To say that Kashmir people are hospitable is an understatement, everyone was very friendly and welcoming, so welcoming that they fed us twice that evening, which left Chris in real pain (for days!).
It would be understandable for people to take offence to us as the British were responsible for splitting Kashmir in two halfs (Indian and Pakistani). You can understand their claim when the 'K' in Pakistan stands for Kashmir, but there was no resentment displayed to us. People were very interested in finding out how Pakistan is viewed in the UK and were worried that the media was distorting Pakistani people into being viewed as extremists and terrorists...
We left feeling guilty that we hadn't done anything significant to help but vowed to return on our way back to Islamabad, (Chris left still feeling bloated). Needless to say from then on we saw many, many camps.

The next night was spent at a Cuban field hospital. We were both very well and in no need of treatment but were invited in by a lovely Pakistani couple, although things could have turned out differently......
We had just driven through Chattar Plain on our way over the top of the pass when our first 'accident' struck. As accidents go it was fairly minor. A driver in a beat up old car (are there any others)slid on the ice and went straight into a truck coming in the opposite direction, I in turn went straight into the side of him.... I was traveling at about 5 mph and the bike was already on the ground when I hit the car, so no damage, plus I was fine. The only damage was a carton of orange juice exploded in my bag covering my dirty cloths in stickiness, and my beloved wooden scull (aka Stan) that was displayed on the front of the bike had broken into three parts. When asked by a policeman if I was alright I explained I was fine but 'had broken my scull in three places and was still missing 3 teeth'. He looked at me with a puzzled grin and waved me off with his highly polished stick
The couple we stayed with were very much in love and obviously respected each other. They were expecting there second child, their first having unfortunately died the previous winter. Chris and I were in total admiration of them and as Chris said 'they confirmed that not all men treat their wives badly out here'

In total we drove about 600Km North on the Karakoram Highway to Gilgit. To say it was cold is rather like asking if the pope wears a hat, at night it got down to -25 degrees (although we don't really know). The cold weather caused a phenomenon inside your helmet when without warning all the snot in your nose suddenly comes gushing out all over your screen...nice. We followed the route of the river Indus all the way with jaw dropping scenery and neck breaking cliffs at every turn. We were dealt a good card in the fact that that it was 'Eid', a Muslim holiday rather like Christmas, meaning not too many people were travelling. This gave us a chance to travel the Highway alone and marvel at Nanga Parbat, the 9th highest mountain in the world, in complete serenity.
After taking 4 days to travel up we made it back to Muzaffarabad in 2! On arrival it was getting dark and, having heard the Americans were in town and in possession of the best Philipino cooks around, we decided to call in and meet the troups. Now I knew Chris wasn't keen as throughout the trip everyone had been slagging them off, but I figured they will be cool, glad of friendly visitors....... They told us politely to sod off as it was 'against protocol'? Like they have protocol for two British bikers anyway. The encounter left a bad taste in our mouths, especially when in response to our reason for being there one of the officers couldn't hide his disdain for us and looking down his nose said "so you guys are just travelling around on bikes eh....That's all?" .... 3 days later the Americans bombed a village north of Peshawar, missing their intended target and killing 13 innocent civilians. I guess they are just killing people.... That's all

We found friends and tireless kids back at the Turkish camp where we stayed for about 40 hours. We were hoping to help put up the new winter tents, but instead were put to 'work' with the Children as it was still Eid, doing the 'Hokie Pokie'. That's what they call the 'Hocie Cokey' out here, have you ever tried to do the whole song with more than 50 kids, it turns into a battle, a fierce battle.
All the children in the camp had just been given a present ranging from footballs to building blocks and within seconds the camp erupted into a huge game of volley ball with thousands of players and hundreds of balls. It led them to be introduced to basic 'Rugby' which in turn led them to injure each other........ me bad

On our way back we decided to visit 'Bagh' the town that three months previously was shaken to its foundations and was in the unlucky position of being at the epicenter of the quake. They were celebrating Eid when we arrived, slaughtering scores of cows and goats for the feast.
The town had been badly struck and there were wrecks of homes everywhere you turned. The aid workers were still busy building temporary accomodation and fixing the roads, accompanied by the thumping noise of helicopters travelling to and froe between the more cut off villages nearby. The roads, whilst OK, were incredibly difficult to travel with mud and ice added for a little fun!!

We have now returned to the bosom of the British Embassy, well actually Sandra (visa section), who unwittingly put us up after bumping into us at the 'British Club' planning an imminent departure to Quetta and then Iran..... Again we got delayed by the comfort offered to us here, Chris and I watch a whole 24 episode series of 'Lost', bloody great! Along with pizzas, steak and lashings of alcohol we are stronger than when we arrived. Our Birthdays were spent in two halfs, the first up until 4 am at the British club celebrating 'International night' (we could barely walk). Some guy succeeded in beating the odds of 1 woman to every 6 men and ended up having a threesome in the toilets, he has now felt the wrath of the committee and has been banned for life.... bet he's gutted. The second half, a Thai evening at Kevin and Emmas house with all their friends.

until next time, enjoy the bad weather, and your jobs, but don't forget to text 'KARRIOMOR' to 60999

Love and flowers

Rory and Chris

2006-01-15T11:30:00.000Z

Hello people, welcome to 2006 we've passed the half-way point! We're very behind schedule with the updates and must apologise for ongoing computer nonsense. This should get us up to Christmas time with some photos from Pakistan loaded to the Galleries to the left.

We're in Milton Keynes,
I keep doing that,
We're in Islamabad, but the places are so similar its a bit difficult to feel your not in the dreaded MK. The fact that we're also on British soil doesn't help either. Well strictly speaking we are as we've been squatting in the British diplomatic enclave. Its weird being here after the impression you get of the place from the news, well maybe not the place, but normally when you hear people reporting from Islamabad its about terrorists or some other bonkers Islamist stuff and you expect the place to be like Beirut, well its not, its MK2!
The bikes we're a bit ill when we arrived so we luckily found the best mechanic in Pakistan(who spends most of his time tuning up Fireblades etc for rich ministers sons), spending 3 days before our trip up the Karakoram Highway at his workshop restoring them to their former 'just about running OK' state. Rory's bike wouldn't start without being towed 3 days of riding, it just didn't want to leave India, which brings me to......
INDIA!!!!!!!!

On my last instalment i was feeling a little less than positive about India. The cyclone left a load of Madras under chest deep water and it took 5 days for our bikes to arrive and clear customs. We went to the Royal Enfield factory and it was boring, plus their bikes were made of cheese and they wouldn't let us ride them, although this made sense with all the water and sandbags round the factory. Got a t-shirt though........

We found Madras a rather horrible city made far worse by the devastation caused by the cyclone. Getting out of the city was a relief and rollin again was definately what we needed.

Things started to look up as we got out into the countryside, rolling hills and palm trees signalled what we hadn't expected. As India is on its way(rapidly) to out-populating China as the worlds most full country, we didn't expect to be able to swing a cat. South East Asia was rammed with people and it was really difficult to find anywhere to camp in your own space, largely due to all the paddies(fields not irish). Campin in a big puddle sucks ass! India had plenty of room for campers like us. We'd become rather low on funds and needed to cut back on digs money and food. A diet of biscuits samosas and crisps was to keep us fed, with lashings of tea.
Our first camping night found us perched atop of a hill overlooking some valley or other, lovely, hmm lovely.

Heading west we had to navigate Bangalore, which turned out to be a bit of a nightmare. The map shows the National Highway going straight through the city and onwards, but obviously this wasn't the case and we got thoroughly lost. Luckily we found a guy who was going the same way and followed him out of the city. This was after my bike overheated when stopped and then wouldn't start. We got surrounded very closely by about 100 men all taking turns to ask me the same questions, 'how big engine', 'what your country', 'what average fuel consumption', 'how much?', blah blah, etc, etc. Eventually i overheated..........

I got used to it after a couple of days and we just learned to stop in places where there wouldn't be many people, or i should say men as we only actually spoke to about half a dozen Indian women in our whole 3 week visit.

**Ebeneezer's Family**

An old chap called Ebeneezer started talking to us in some little town when we stopped to check our map(ps. lots of indians speak excellent english so its a doddle to travel there, although their directions are usually rubbish). He then invited us to his wife's wake who'd died the week before, which we found a little odd, but he was a nice old guy and really seemed to want us to go, so we did for a bit. It was more of a big gathering to celebrate her, a couple of hundred people were due, but we were early so had a natter with the family and some of their leper mates from the colony around the corner, then made our excuses and did one. weird but nice

We kept riding west towards Goa, visiting Hampi on the way. Its a hindu pilgrimage place with loads of old temples and cool rocks and rivers etc. Quite nice, spent a couple of hours there then left.

**Riding through some of Hampi's Temples**

We didn't really hang around anywhere for long, we were due in Dharamsala in the himalaya on 24th December and it was a seriously long way so we had to get a wriggle on.

Theres lots to tell, but its a bit dull for a while so i'll sum the next bit up.......
Goa's like Benidorm
We didn't actually spend anytime there really but passed through and it was bizzzzzeeeeee with package tourists in most of the areas. To the north and south end theres still some nice hippie types living the long-term. We got guided to a nice place called Gokarn by 2 germans on an enfield on our arrival, met a heavily-tattooed geordie gypsie hippie biker guy called Guy who directed us to a place in the north. A day and a half later we arrived in said place and bumped into Guy's mate Dean while buying a tin of Heinz baked beans(pricy but they tasted the nuts!). Dean and Guy had been riding Enfields around India + most of the world for the last 15 years. He gave us a lovely route through the 'Western Ghats' mountains into Rajastan, which was a highlight of our riding so far.

Part of this route took us through a place called Panjin. As usual we new nothing about this place as we can't really be bothered to read 'the travellers bible'(lonely planet, yawn).
Riding along the road we could see a massive valley floor with a huge lake, so we pulled off the road onto a large plateau perfect for taking pictures(said picture being at the top of this weblog entry). Riding back up to the road bit we saw a load of westerners pull up in jeeps and on bikes,
'what is this?'
we thinks
They're paragliders we soon find out as they start getting big parachutes out and leaping of the cliffs! Looks like fun. We started to have a natter with an english bloke, called dave. He knew an aweful lot about paragliders and soon we did too, on top of this though he knew a lot about the area. Freddie Mercury went to school here, ace! More importantly he mentioned Billy Connolly was in town(well, more of a village really). Now, both Rory and I were brought up in houses where billy was worshipped as a god so it was too much of an opportunity to miss.
We did the unthinkable,
we went to the hotel where he and crew were staying(shooting a movie) and had dinner. Rory managed to be stood next to billy in the queue for the buffet for about 5 minutes, but his eyes were transfixed by the trays of international cuisine, so he never noticed. Then billy left, doh!

'It was never meant to be mate', says i
But rory looked like the world was going to fall on his head in 2 minutes(or he wanted it to).
Gutted wasn't the word.
Luckily one of the supporting actors came over and we got talking. He mentioned billy had a day of the next day and we should come see him at breakfast.
We camped out with the para-loonies and went to meet Ranjit(actor guy) in the morning .
And Billy turned up! wooha. It was good fun as well, we all just sat around chatting, drinking tea, eating breakfast and laughing until lunchtime. Billy's into his bikes so we had a common interest and believe it or not(if you've watched Parkinson) we did easily as much talking as he did. So all in all it was a lot of fun for everyone involved, and then he bunged us some cash, even better!!!

We set off to the next town and bought some monster horns designed for trucks that make an ace-
"AAAARRRROOOOOOOOOOGGAAA!!!!!!!!"
noise
They're so big we had to strap them to the jerry-cans on the side of the bikes, cool though they look like anti-tank guns. Pleased with or new weapons we made a very noisy exit from the town and headed merrily north

Billy jinxed us

About 100 km's down the road a hit a pretty big pothole and my shock absorber exploded leaving me bouncing down the road doing my best Zebedee impression. Arse.......

We changed route to head for another dreaded city, Pune(which is probably where you talk to all your tele-banking Indian folk as most of India's call centres are located there), as we'd been given a name and a rough address by some blokey with a roadside mechanic shack. About 50k's later we arrived in the right area of Pune and looked for this guys shop. It was late and we counldn't find it so instead we stopped at 'A1 Shock-Absorber Repairs', seemed like a good bet.

*Lesson learned*

Indian mechanics are(largely) skilled in butchery, or they must be as thats what they did to my bike.

Several stressful hours later i had a sort of reassembled bike and a big bag of nuts and bolts they failed to find the right holes for. Oh and the shock now had some electricians tape wrapped round it

Rory had found a hotel with parking nearby so we got unpacked and started to make a 'plan'. This involved sticking my bike on a train to Delhi and getting a new shock pipe and rebuild kit sent from the UK. Dull

Next morning i decided to have a wander around the garages nearby to try a last ditch effort to get it repaired in town. Amazingly enough i walked straight across the road from the hotel into the first mechanics shop, to find an imported Honda motorcross bike. You don't get imported bikes in India(unless they're nicked) as the import duty is 500% of the value!

It turned out this was the guy we were looking for!

Charma, as well as being a famous motorcrosser, is also an actor and stuntman, obviously. His mechanic/protege/apprentice rang him up and he promised to come down and assess the situation. Due to impossibility of getting bits from abroad he'd had to do the same repair to his bike on numerous occasions. He sent me off to strip the shock from my bike and i returned it an hour or so later. He went off and by 9 o'clock i had a newly rebuilt shock with a new braided hydraulic hose(the bit that blew up) and refilled with nitrogen!

In the mean-time a really big bloke called 'Papu' had decided to befriend us. Papu had the biggest wad of cash i've ever seen in his pocket and seemed to be treated with massive respect by everybody. It turned out he was the local 'money-lender' and general big cheese. He found us very entertaining for some reason and decided to buy us lots of tea and lollies, then bottles of whisky then buy us a massive feast of a dinner and then paid for our stay in the hotel!

In the middle of this weird freebie Charma turned up and took Rory outside for a 'little word in yer ear son'.....

"Papu's a friend of mine, but be very careful, he can turn. I've personally seen him in a fight with 7 men and him win."

Rory neglected to tell me about this and we continued to arse about. Luckily he didn't turn and everybody's still got their own teeth.

We left to head through Rajastan, 'the desert state', in the morning.

I'd never been to a desert before and this wasn't really looking like i'd imagined it, no sand dunes etc., but I guess the enormous number of camels would give it desert status! I find camels highly amusing animals, nature produces some bizarre products
Rajastan was great. The people were ace, which is usually the case with country folk wherever we go. We'd stop, people would give us tea and have a natter, but all in a very un-intimidating and easy going way, which is amazing as, as usual there were regularly crowds of about 50 people having a nosy at the aliens from england.

One particularly nice evening was spent camping with a bunch of farmers out in the sticks. We sat around the campfire drinking tea and chatting in vague 'hinglisgh'. One of the guys, who was the first we met when he turned up and started to help Rory fix his bike, had the biggest permanent grin i'll ever see. He was an old-ish chap with incredible silver hair. I can see his face very clearly in my mind and thinking of it makes me smile a lot. Good chaps, all of them. The next morning they came to wake us up and took us to their village for breakfast and lashings of tea.

We continued through Rajastan via Jaipur with more similar meetings with lovely farmer types.

After Rajastan we enter Punjab, home of most of India's Sikhs, where the foggy and icy mornings we'd encontered in Rajastan continued. We found our strangest camp in Punjab when we set up on the lawn of a Sikh 'Marriage Palace'!. This coincided with the GPS unit going bonkers just as we could have done with it giving us an idea of our altitude as we entered Himachal Pradesh and the Himalayan foothills.

Entering the Himalaya region was extremely exciting and a lifelong dream. It really is amazing to see how this gigantic mountain range just folds up from the flat plains for hundreds of kilometres to the south. Around every bend were more and more mountains and valleys and rivers and gorges and waterfalls and trucks. Forgot to mention, India is full of gazillions of massive trucks. They're everywhere and they're all beautifully decorated. You see a ridiculous number of overturned trucks. Trucks there carry loads that are at least three times what would be allowed in the UK. You see lots of crashed ones as well. We use our 'aaarrrroooooooggaa' horns to fool them into thinking we're big trucks going faster so they get out of the way, a bit. You still get forced of the road by an overtaking truck about once every hour, but you get used to it and become prepared to 'give way'!

Our destination was Dharamsala, the home of 'the Tibetan Government in Exile' and his holiness The Dalai Lama, plus the biggest community of refugees from Tibet.

It took a couple of days to get there on the twisty mountain roads, but as we got higher the sun got brighter and the air got clearer and life got sunnier in general.

The Tibetans actually live in McLeod Ganj which is about 10k's up a steep and twisty road above Dharamsala. We discovered this after our initial inquiries with people in Dharamsala found A, noone who'd ever heard of SOS and B, no Tibetans. As we didn't have an address or a working phone number things were a little fraught until we stopped for a nibble to eat and a quick consultation of the Lonely Planet book.

Our eventual arrival at the TCV (Tibetan Children's Village) was met with a great fanfair, not!

Due to Christmas Holidays a lot of the staff and children were elsewhere and it seemed the message regarding our arrival had never got through. Consequently the village director got rather a shock when two englishmen on motorbikes came knocking on his door!

The TCV complex is very different to the other SOS Villages we've visited, largely due to the unique situation that brings its inhabitants. Basically its absolutely enormous looking after upto 2000 children at a time.

I was aware of the 'Tibet Question' before our trip, but spending time at the TCV and in Mcleod Ganj really gave me a feel for the struggle. Its quite incredible talking to the kids(and adults) about how they arrived in India. Basically most Tibetans fleeing the Chinese occupation of their country choose to cross the mountains on foot in winter, as they're worried about the heat in India!

What was truly astounding and a great reflection of the strength and mindset of these people was how they reflected upon their journeys. They all describe it as extremely scary, but fundamentally as the most incredible experience of their lives. They don't whinge or complain about their hardship which leaves many of with missing fingers etc from frostbite. I think a lot of their spirit comes from their utter devotion to the teachings of the Dalai Lama, a frankly astounding human who i've come to respect enormously..

Although we never actually met him there is a strangely relaxing atmosphere in the whole town and i can understand why the Tibetans are so keen to be close to him. I don't know how the whole reincarntion thing works or understand some of the more 'magical' aspects of Tibetan Buddhism, but i know the Dalai Lama is a very wise man who keeps hope alive in the hearts of his people. He's getting to be an old man now and i'm sure the long term fate of Tibet and its people will be decided outside of this lifetime. This poses many problems as the last Panchen Lama(second spiritual leader) to be chosen in 1995 was kidnapped by the Chinese government and has never been seen since!

Our visit to the Village was very different to previous ones as after being showed around by the director we were left to our own devices to stroll around and chat with people. There's such a great community feeling there with everyone helping each other to make the best of their lives, emphasised by the huge mural above the playground saying,'OTHERS BEFORE SELF'.

As usual we left feeling humbled by the extraordinary people we'd met and generally feeling glad to live in a world thats not just full of baddies, but real goodies as well.

I hope they get to go home one day.......

We spent our Christmas Eve enjoying a couple of quite beers in town celebrating with a mixed bunch of travellers, locals and psychic mediums and got up for a different style of Christmas day than we're accustomed to. But i'll stop there for now to let Rory pick up the tale of our exodus to Pakistan in a few days.

Until then check out the new photos from India and Pakistan in the galleries to the left, should give you the gist of where we've been and what we've been up to...

The Competition is now running until the 31st of March, so if you fancy winning that brand new Yamaha XT660x, get texting KARRIMOR to 60999 and get some pennies for the kids of SOS Children's Villages

Hope you're having a great 2006!!!!

Chris

Just to let you know..............

2005-12-27T16:34:00.000Z

A real quickie, we're at the India/Pakistan border and will be crossing tommorrow.
We'll put a full report from our incredible ride through India when we reach Islamabad in a few days, but for now we've put a few low-resolution pictures in the India gallery to the left(or at the bottom depending on which browser you're using).
Have a great new year
Loads of Love
Chris and Rory

Three countries, two u-turns and another typhoon!

2005-12-05T11:13:00.000Z

After weeks of trying, or some trying weeks, you choose as you see fit, we've finally got out of Thailand!

Its been a game of two halves for the last month or so. First half we made bumper progress everyday travelling through southern Vietnam and Cambodia, and then in the second we kind of stalled in Thailand. I suppose you might say we got on the defensive trying to protect a tenuous lead and then let it slip away. Let me expand......

If you've looked at our last weblog entry you'll have seen what a fantastically fun time we had with the kids at SOS in Dalat. Anyway the whole thing was totally ace, kids had a blast, we had more of one and we've been exchanging emails etc since, so i think everyones happy..........

(PHOTO:Stilt house next to a school in Southern Vietnam)

We shot off Cambodia bound after a couple of days in Dalat. It was a relatively sedate couple of days riding to the border after we made the wise decision to avoid Saigon. Cities are a great place to visit by the usual tourist means, but attempt it on a motorbike and suddenly it becomes a right pain in the behind. I think our threshold for "forget about it, toooooo much hassle" is a population of five million. We'd seen far too many cities already so we aptly dodged Saigon favouring a couple of days in Phnom Penh where we had 'connections'.

It made a really nice change to enter a country where we just rolled over the border and got on our bikes. The Cambodian customs are preddy chilled (ie they'd rather sit around chatting{and drinking beer} than check any goods coming in) and we had to practically plead on hands and knees for them to stamp the carnets for our bikes. When we left the country we couldn't get them stamped out as the boss had gone to Phnom Penh for a party and took the stamp with him! They let us out anyway, they really couldn't give a toss.

REWIND./...........

First thing we saw on crossing the border was a brand new humvee full of beautiful girls. Ace!
We later found out this belongs to the kings nephew. Apparently he got a little upset with a man he crashed into a while back. The guy started shouting at him, so nephew hops out with a couple of sub-machine guns and opens fire killing the guy and everybody in the car........
we were very careful not to scratch the humveeee
(NB: i wouldn't be writing this if i were'nt a couple of thousand miles away from said guy, but i feel safe with the Indian Ocean between us)

I'm giving a bad impression of Cambodia, but it really is nice place. Contrary to what we'd been told, we saw no guns and had no hassle from the cops. In fact its a tremendously beautiful(if a little flat for my taste) country full of really nice chilled people without limbs. Oh, i was going to mention that later but it slipped out.

In China a lot of people wear glasses
In America theres a lot of fat people
In India people are rather partial to a curry
In Cambodia theres lots of people who've stood on land mines

The Khmer Rouge really were a right bunch of numpties, evil psychopaths for sure, but numpties and paranoid to go with it.
Anybody who thinks mining your whole country and not recording the locations(in case of capture by 'the enemy') is really a bit thick, me thinks.
So now they're still de-mining the country at enormous cost 25 years after the Vientamese took over Phnom Penh.
Its pretty good now, but we still saw quite a few white sticks out in the countryside marking un-exploded mines.
It put a bit of a downer on the country for me, little kids all twisted and broken got a bit hard to stomach after a while, but moving on........

(PHOTO:Rory and Ady at Darra's bike shop in Phnom Penh, genius mechanic who sorted our multiple niggles)

Phnom Penh's bloody gourgeous and home to a bunch of ex-pat dirt bikers who showed us the sites, got our bikes fixed and showed us a good time for a couple of days. We arrived on the king's birthday so the whole place was chocka with everyone one out dancing in the streets and the party spirits were in full flow. Luckily we'd pre-booked a room at the California 2 cafe/hotel, hangout for said bikers and the place to find out road conditions and routes in Cambodia.

The roads are pretty variable, in the last few years they sorted them out in a big way, but theres still loads of iffy dirt roads which are major routes. Good fun, but slower going and not nice to the bikes. When there are more potholes per square metre than flat bits you take a bit of a battering, i tell thee.

We shot up the excellent highway to Siem Reap for a visit to the ancient capital of the Khmer kingdom at Angkor. The massive site covering 20 odd square kilometres contains dozens of mad old temples, Angkor Wat being the most famous.
I learnt during this trip that i'm not really a buildings person, i like natural stuff, mountains and rivers etc., so although they were really incredible and wonderful creations of man blah blah, the temples didn't really get me excited.

Apart from one

I can't remember what it was called but it was way deep in the jungle. The jungle vegetation had made light work of the massive stone structures ripping them apart and wrapping themselves round the walls like a python crushing its prey to death. I liked it!
Definately the most bonkers trees i will ever see. I truly believe Geiger came out here before he designed the Alien's layer, the roots were insane. The trees were literally growing off the walls and these were seriously monstrous 200 foot+ mega trees. Anyway i liked the trees, i've stuck some pics in the galleries to the left of the weblog.

(PHOTO:A dog takes shelter from the oppressive heat next to a floating village on Ton Le Sap lake near Siem Reap)

We went out on a couple of Jim's 'temple hunts' in the area around Siem Reap, but without our luggage as he'd warned us these were BAD roads.
While riding along behind the usual 'family on a scooter' you get round these parts, the scooter suddenly came to an abrupt halt.
'Dad' sprinted into the field at the side of the road and started grabbing frantically at the earth. He'd grabbed a snake by the tail and in two blows to the ground, WHACK, WHACK, he'd smashed its skull to bits! He casually wrapped the 6 foot plus creature around his fore-arm and hopped back on his scooter, smiling with delight at the thought of a snake butty for tea, mmmmmmmm.

We had heard bad stories about the road west to the Thai border. Most trashed in Asia was the general consensus. As usual in Asia, this is no accident and somebodies making a truck load of cash. The deal goes that Thai airways bung some Cambodian government guys a lump of cash to not repair the road, therefore ensuring tens of thousands of rich westerners pay the extortionate ticket price to fly Bangkok-Siem Reap rather than loose all there fillings on the bus.
(NB2:This cannot be 100% confirmed as the accurate truth, but it makes for a good yarn and, again, i've got the Indian Ocean to protect me!)
I tell you what, its a bitch of a road. Hard broken tarmac for about 150kms to Sisophon. Really hard on the bikes, with constant potholes. They were kind of consisently about a foot/18inches across, so i took to standing up and blasting over them lettin the suspension move beneath. Rory decided to stay sat down more taking all the bashing in his back, the next day he realised this might not have been the best technique.............

(PHOTO:Rory talks philosophy with the monks and contemplates a 'career move')

We went half way along and then headed north towards a different border crossing we'd been told about near a load of mad temples. The guy who owned The Hotel California in Phnom Penh, Jim or 'temple raider' as we dubbed him, is seriously into temples, or hunting them at least. He locked us in his office one day to blind us with thousands of pictures of temples and GPS points for them all. After a couple of hours of this he released us into the freedom of the bar, where we quickly forgot everything he'd told us.

Anyhow, the road to the north wasn't really much better and had the added joy of rain to turn it all into a muddy mess. It was better than the main road, but the surface and the weather gradually deteriorated into crap and worse. Soon we realised our worst fears, the hammering from the potholes had been too much and Rory's rear rack had lost one of its steel mounts and the front rack had snapped at one side. Unperturbed we stuck it all together with gaffer tape and made haste for our overnight stop getting there just before dark.

The Khmers can be pretty 'horizontal' at times, but Rory found the speedy gonzales of the cambodian welding community. By the time i'd got out of bed he'd returned with a fully repaired bike and we were on the road for the Thai border by 10.

Crossing the border was crossing into a different world.

Thailand is a rich country, Cambodia is painfully poor.....

Another big shock was that they drive on the left in Thailand, but i narrowly avoided the head on collision with a land cruiser...........

Cambodia side had rough as hell dirt roads and a couple of portacabins for customs formalities(surrounded by a massive casino, gamblings illegal in Thailand so they all come Kampuchea for a flutter), whereas the Thai side has billiard table smooth tarmac, nicely laid out buildings, road signs that actually mean something and big american cars.
Thailand has fat people, we haven't seen them for quite a while.
Thai roads have more cars on them than motorbikes, weird and scary for a bit.
Thailand has its own police force specifically for tourists

Whichever way you look at it we were in a very different place.

We stayed in Surin for a night before heading into Bangkok.
That was a shock as well, driving in cities is always a nightmare, but Bangkok has some special problems all of its own............

Just when you think its all going well and you've got your route nailed things all go to pot.
"Hey we just roll down that motorway and do a left and we're their dude, doddle!"

Motorbikes aren't allowed on motorways in Thailand. AAAAARRRRRRSSSSSSSEEEEE!!!!!

So we roll up to the toll booth and they say "No!",

"Eh?"

Copper comes over and instructs us to turn around. This was all very friendly and everything, he directed all the traffic away etc.
But then he points for us to drive back up the 3 lanes of oncoming traffic and find an exit onto the side road. He wasn't winding us up either, so we did. Very odd and somewhat scary. A bit up the road we find a barrier we can sort of prise open and sneak through. We look back down the road at the copper and he waves to say we should go. Odd...........

To cut a long (and dull) story short we eventually got to the only place we knew about in Bangkok. That evil hive of scum and villainy known as Khao Sanh road........
I think the drunk tourists got a bit of a shock when we roll right down the middle looking for some digs(NB3:digs not drugs). A nice Burmese guy stopped us at the end of the road offering us an extremely cheap, nearby safe-haven for us and the bikes, result!

Our plans for Bangkok were simple. Get a couple of things fixed, arrange the shipping from Malaysia, try sort the remaining visas out, visit Rory's old school pal and pick up the tyres and stuff the ballet had left in a theatre for us.
In any 'normal' city this should be 2 or 3 days easy work. Unfortunately Bangkok is no normal city.
The traffics a nightmare
The public transport is crap
Its so big none of the cabbies know where anything is
There are multiples of every street
The addresses are always wrong
Nothing sticks to normal opening hours
AND we were in the party centre of a city that likes to party.

Don't get me wrong, we really did try, but after 3 days we'd spent a fortune on cabs and phone calls and all we'd managed to do was get a camera fixed and meet Rory's mate. And drunk a lot.

Progress was painfully slow plus expensive so we cut our losses and got the heck out of Dodge quick smart.

Heading south down the coast we planned to stop on the island of Ko Phangan for a couple of days, take in the scenery and the Full Moon Party and then get to Malaysia to ship the bikes via Krabi and Phucket on the west coast. The sunset that greated us on our first night on the island was undoubtedly the most spectacular of my life.
As the sun dipped lower in the sky the light was absorbed by the whispy clouds in the sky throwing of a kaleidoscope of swirling colour, like an artist frantically mixing up oil colours on his pallet. The whole transition took over an hour a demanded dozens of photos.

While on the island we got some interesting info leading to a literal u-turn in our plans.........

Due to Malaysia being a bit overbearing as fair as import/export rules go it would take a full 3 weeks to get the bikes to Madras. Obviously after the mayhem with shipping the bikes before we still didn't believe this.

The local muslim seperatist loonies in the south had decided it was a good time to start blowing stuff up right where we wanted to cross into Malaysia.

Sod that, so back to Bangkok we went to arrange the tried and tested route of airfreighting to India. More money but way less hassle.

Our second stint in Bangkok started much as the first one had..........
"We'll just get a bite to eat and watch that ace guitaring-singery dude who does the 'welcome to the hotel khao sanh road' song"
It was all going well until two familiar faces walked in. On the first night we'd hung out with two south african dudes and had a right old giggle, well they turned up again and sat in the same seats. So as before we joined them and continued where we'd left off........

Anyhow, moving on. We took the bikes to the shipping agent to get them measured up for crating and our swanky crates were delivered and packed the next day.

Rory's old pal, Troy, from his school days near York had moved into the family hotel business and offered free hospitality to us in Thailand. With a few days to wait for the bikes to go India we shot up to Kanchanaburi for a couple of relaxing days with some friends from Bangkok.

If you've ever seen 'the bridge over the river kwae' you'll have seen Kanchanaburi, and yes, they do milk it to death. Its actually quite a rubbish bridge, rebuilt after the infamous bombing by the British POWs. I suppose its rubbishness explains why it fell down so easily. The town was in a massive build-up to the 60 year anniversary which was the following week and a huge fair had sprung up around the bridge, meaning you couldn't really see the bloody thing!

Anyway, we didn't do a lot. Rory slept, hung out by the pool and claimed to be 'catching up on the diary', and i hired a mini 250cc chopper and went up to the Erawan National Park. Theres a crazy 7 level waterfall there which has multiple pools of crystal clear water, great for swimming in. They're also full of crazy fish who like to nibble on you as you swim about, bloody big n all, some over a foot long. Nice swim but i can do without getting tongued by an amorous fish!

On return to Bangkok we bought the last two tickets for the plane to Madras and headed off to Rory's pal Pak's house near the airport for a few hours kip prior to a 7am flight.

As usual i deemed it our last chance for real food prior to our guts demise in India, so we had a mega-bucket at KFC at 6am.

Our bikes would be travelling with us on the plane, so our excitement built when we saw them sat on a trolley next to our plane.

"Rory, that guys pulling them towards the plane, they're going on.........
Rory, that ***** done a u-turn and they're going back towards the warehouse, expletive, expletive, blah, blah, blah..............."

It turned out the boxes were 3 inches too high to go through the loading bay so they had to wait for a bigger plane the next day.

Obviously this went tits n all as we were greeted with an imminent cyclone upon arrival in Madras meaning that flight got cancelled. On top of this the loony cabby who picked us up also managed to crash into the back of a bus while enjoying a marlboro light pilfered from Rory. Just like Vietnam, a crash, a tropical cyclone and some missing bikes.

But have no fear, it will be all right on the night! We're used to this kind of nonsense now anyway and, lets face it, it was never going to be easy. We've learnt many important lessons, the biggest one being that when you're destiny is removed from your direct control, be that by government, weather or air/shipping lines, its going to take some deep breaths, more time than you can think possible and often a load of cash before you regain control. Thats Life......

AS usual our delay may have been somewhat fortuitous as we met another motorcycle traveller heading in the opposite direction to us.
Dankmar is a chap from Munich who is a little 'wiser' than us. I'm not sure exactly how much 'wiser', but considering his last trip to India by motorcycle was 42 years ago, i reckon he's pretty 'wise'.

Dankmar has ridden down from Germany via Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, AFGHANISTAN, Pakistan and Nepal. Yeah, you did notice that bit, he's one of the first people(maybe the first) to cross Afghanistan by bike since the war. In his words(sans accent),

"the people were incredibly hospitable and friendly, but as soon as you put them in control of a vehicle they becoming maniacal psychopaths intent on running you off the road at every moment!"

Glad we're not going!

We're presently trying to convince him to go west on his loop around southern India and accompany us to the west coast. Its always nice to travel with others and i'm sure we'll pick up many valuable tips on the way.

We caught the last day of the India-Sri Lanka test match this afternoon. We would have been fools to miss it as the stadium is about 400m away from our hostel and the tickets were $3!

Time to go and shout at Air Sri Lanka again. Next posting should find us near to, or in Pakistan making plans for a 'different' Christmas and more SOS visits.

Hope you have a good one. But if you want to make it better.......

DON'T FORGET TO ENTER THE COMPETITION TO WIN A NEW YAMAHA XT660x.

JUST TEXT

KARRIMOR
to
60999

Someones going to get a great unexpected pressie in January, it may as well be you!!!

Chris

PS. the indians all wobble their heads a lot when they talk to you, ive found myself doing it as well, which is all well and good but i keep getting motion sickness.........

PPS. MOST OF OUR PHOTOS FROM CAMBODIA AND THAILAND ARE WITH OUR BIKES SO WE'LL UPLOAD THEM WHEN WE NEXT ARRIVE AT A GOOD INTERNET PLACE!!!!!

Piles Of News

2005-10-28T12:16:00.000+01:00

Life is beautiful things are great, the Prime Minister has given us our bikes back, god rest his soul, he is not dead that was Ho Chi Minh. I keep getting them mixed up, bless them both.............. they are great. In fact Ho Chi Minh is in Russia on holiday at the moment, removed from his tomb and taken on a tour of ze Rushka, he should have gone to Hong Kong to the New Disney World I feel, get some colour in those cheeks of his.

We are both in great spirits having just travelled the first 1,200km of our trip from Hanoi to De Lat over the newly formed Ho Chi Minh Highway, leaving the tourists to trail down the coastal route we decided to go native and get some jungle action. We had a great and very speedily organised send off by SOS Children's Villages in Hanoi, hopefully they were not too scared by the sweat that poured off us both in the blistering heat. The children aged between 3 and 6 met us at the gates to their village with dozens of red roses that got planted all over our bikes. Chris somehow got more than me I put it down to his height and they were less terrified..........or they simply liked him a lot more.

Anyway we spent a couple of hours playing with the orphans and letting them sit our bikes. The 'mothers' of the orphans, of which there were 14, were fantastic and a pleasure to talk to, as were the staff/directors who have been an enormous help to us since we arrived.

The first days ride was great a bit of off-roading and a chance encounter with an elephant, who's admirers stole all our newly acquired roses (surely to give them a better home than we could provide).

Day two was epic, from the map it looked like we could make De Lat in the South within 4 days, but when we were told the road hadn't quite been opened yet we figured a formality or a ribbon cutting ceremony was all that stood from commercial traffic using the route, not (as we found) the 40KM of road that hadn't actually been built yet! The mud came up past our knees in some places, nothing could get through. We lost count of how many times we wiped out. The bikes were a nice browny red colour from-all the clay and we looked like a pair of swamp creatures.

Visions of our trial's in Wales came flooding back with Chris' mental aversion to riding in mud it was torturous and very slow going. After a particularly difficult section that involved a lot of picking the bikes out of the mud only to drop them 10ft up the road we were welcomed into a local man's house to have a drink and a bite to eat...... a real relief from the heat and the exhaustion of the day.

Unknown to us we had stepped into a madman's house, a guy so intent on getting us pissed and making us stay that I still have the marks on my arms from him pinching me and wrestling me to the floor. Whilst his family looked on in mild amusement (I don't think it was the first time they had seen their father behave like a lunatic) we were force fed rice wine. The only resemblance it bears to wine is that it comes in a bottle and is wet. After 9 shots of this stuff we were drunk and were in real danger of staying here for the rest of our lives (which would have been cut short in the middle of the night by a machete wielding Vietcong)

The past three shots had been flung over my shoulder through the open window, Chris was not as fortunate and his eyes were beginning to focus on his nose....... this couldn't last, crazy man had cottoned on to what I was doing and was watching me drink this stuff, which now had pickled wasps in......... Chris ate his wasp merrily. I grabbed the bottle and threw the whole lot out the window, not the best thing to do when you are a guest but we were out of options. Unperturbed our host grabbed a microphone and started singing Karaoke. I kept him entertained whilst Chris sneaked off and got his bike ready. Phase 1 of our escape was complete after 40 minutes of the very drunk and violent man screaming Vietnamese love ballards and leaping around accompanied by my loud, but incoherent attempts to sing along. I escaped, but not before he had turned my engine off 3 times and dug his nails in to a few more unprotected fleshy parts of my arm. Chris found out as we were leaving our host was the local policeman...... figures.

We didn't get very far that afternoon....... we do not recommend drink driving but the mud did seem to take on a whole different texture almost like gravy and I enjoyed sliding through it wondering where the hell we were and how many spokes I had on my front wheel. We made camp at the bottom of a gravy hill with a huge truck blocking the path, it was 2 hours before it eventually got pulled out by a cement mixer with a JCB pushing it. We had the company of what seemed to be 3 gay construction workers and a fire. With a belly full of noodles we slept in our tent bang in the middle of the Ho Chi Minh highway satisfied and exhausted.

After the mud we hit the rain, we were heading to Khe Sahn, home of what was the biggest American Marine base in the Vietnam war in 1968. The rain was so heavy it was bouncing 2 ft off the tarmac...... we were back on the trail at least. The rain was so heavy we couldn't find the base and slept in a rustic hostel instead.
3 days of heavy rain was not good and we passed by Hamburger Hill, The Glory Zone and Rocket Ridge without being able to see much except the occasional low flying chicken/pig/child, only coming to a complete halt for mud slides and wandering Buffalo. We were averaging about 6 hours in the saddle and 10 hours on the road every day which took its toll.
Having no arse does not help and ended up stuffing my pillow down my trouses, to cope with the 180 degree turns we were making on every corner through the mountains.

Arriving in Da Lat was breathtaking, like in the alps the road snakes its way up to a very pretty town. We were greated by a guy who told us the route we had taken was closed to tourists because of 'trouble's......' we came to the conclusion he was talking bollocks after secretly being quite impressed with ourselves for our intrepid ways.

We touched base with SOS and organised to come back the next day at 4:00. Once in our Hotel I touched my base and realised my worst nightmare........... grapes, farmer Giles...... Haemorrhoids.....dreadful piles! or to be more accurate, pile. Our diligence on the first aid kit has paid off (the 5 P's - Proper Preperation Prevents Painful Piles) and Anusol has come into play so has lying on my front. I shiver to think what might happen to my bottom over the next 23,000km......watch this space.

Turning up to the orphanage/village on newly jet washed bikes we were met by a dragon, several clowns, 3 four year olds in pink shirts and dickey bows, 6 girls dressed as kings, 1princess, 2 clouds and 2 suns.

I stalled my bike and dropped my helmet making our impressive big entrance.......... We sang some songs played some games, neither of us could figure out the rules to, then danced for 80 kids in a dragon outfit within the first 20 minutes.

We were then ushered into a small hall for lots of speeches and more singing and dancing. It was overwhelming, the amount of preparation and effort the children had gone to to welcome the two of us, every single performance was fantastic, I felt like a proud parent watching their child in a school play. We found out a lot about the kids and the life that SOS provides for them, they are all without exception wonderfully happy, cheerful and hardworking kids. It was easy to forget what circumstances led them to be living here but with amazing care and support they are having the childhood any child their age deserves.

Speaking to one small boy he said it was sad I only had one sister, he had 38! I agreed but them imagined growing up with 38 of my sisters!!!

A huge thank you to Mr Co the director of the village, Mrs Won secretary/translator and Anna from SOS Kinderdorf International in Austria. It was certainly the highlight of our trip so far.

Next stop Cambodia.................

Vietnam or Bust?

2005-10-13T14:02:00.000+01:00

Many apologies to everyone following our progress 'Run From the Sun' has hit a few problems and instead of updating we have been running around with our fingers crossed, we are sorry, the past three weeks has been fairly frustraiting.....

The problems hit when we realised due to a fault with the shipping the bikes were going to arrive in Beijing 2 weeks late so we made the decision to pick them up in Hong Kong and start our journey from there. Hong Kong was fantastic with many a friend made and good times had and the arrival of our bikes was pure genius, the bikes had been shipped to Dubai by accident so were Fed Exed to us, I was hoping they would air drop them onto Mount Davis where we were staying but we had to go and collect them like the average package. The paper work we had to get our bikes into China (issued in Beijing) gave us free passage into China, not an easy task...... unfortunatly because the bikes were now in Hong Kong we would have to re submit to bring them into the country... damm. We spent a couple of days scouting and spying the boarder crossings trying to find a smuggling route, the lorrys seemed to pass the check points without stopping we found our alternative way into China..... or so we thought. The boarder crossing have to be the most sophisticated in the world with huge X-ray machines checking every lorry that passes...means no passage for us....damn

We decided to cut our losses and ship the bikes to Hai Phong North East Vietnam, not an easy decision because customs are much tighter in the ports than they are at the boarder crossings meaning more people to pay off. There was also no plan B originally if we found it a nightmare to get into Vietnam we would take a trip to the Laos/China crossing and head South that way. But with the alternative a 4 month expedition around Hong Kong we sent them on their way.....

The bus journey to Hanoi, well several bus journeys through China took 23 hours, 1 day quicker than the train. Our shipping agent Claudia and local business man Mr Duong Duc Tho started helping us with the preperation of the imminant arrival of our bikes. Within a week it looked like we had it sorted with a little money, support from SOS Vietnam and Mr Tho's business/government contacts we would be the first guys to bike through Vietnam on bikes over 175 cc for a very long time! As we are now learning on this trip always expect the unexpected.......
Overnight our chances of getting the licences went from 95% to 50%.... The Traffic police would grant us plates if we had a document signed and stamped by the Prime Minister of Vietnam, not a guy I am in a lot of contact with. The paper trail seemed endless with well over 1000 pages of documents and 8 government/police departments to talk to, non of which talked to each other, getting to the Prime Minister seemed a tall order....
To cut a long and rather dull story short we did it, well a very little, lovely and unassuming lady named Mrs Hanh found a way......... we should be on the road by Friday 21st ...... but we are trying not to get too excited.

Of course it would be silly to sit around and wait for things to sort themselvs out so Chris and I have spent the time exporing what Vietnam has to offer, man is it beautiful. Our journeys have taken us East to the Cat Ba Islands, thousands of teardroped shaped mounds sticking out of the clear blue sea. We toured around in a little fishing boat that had no exhaust so the tranquility was slightly interupted but the scenery still jaw dropping. The bays were still recovering from the typhoon that hit earier in the week (which penned us into our hotel as we were surrounded by flood water) so not so many tourists. A good thing when we seem to be repeating our story of ill faited attempts to get started.
We stayed in a port town called Hai Phong which is where we will be picking our bikes up from, one night someone from the holtel let themselves in whilst we were sleeping and stole Chris's phone and travellers cheques. The hotel manager didn't seem to care too much so we got the police involved, two days after the theft we had 6 policemen visit us. Unfortunately we were not expecting such an early visit and after a night of drinking gin our statement were blurred at best. The excitement started when the police visited the crime scene (our room) not too sure what they were hoping to discover but Chris and I looked on willingly that prehaps they could spot some clues..... instead Chris noticed that his camcorder had dissapeared from his bag. It was there when we went to bed......... suddenly there was mayhem Chris and I launched ourselves at the hotel manager who we suspected all along. It was a relentless torrent of abuse aimed at our evil hotel manager, he tried to run but couldn't hide Chris had him pinned up against the wall downstairs whilst I pleaded with the police to arrest him. The fact that it took 6 policemen 3 hours to report a stolen phone the chances of them doing anything this century was nill. The police ran away from the scene never to be heard of again, despondant I returned to the room to see what else got stolen and what turned up in a bed side cabenet...... a camcorder.....ah. two hours later we were thrown out of the hotel.

It was time to get out of Dodge, back to Hanoi and we hired two russian 125cc Minsk's with a plan to head North up to Sapa, we had heard about this place in the mountains that was meant to be breath taking and a chance to home our off roading was irresistable, the round trip was about 1000 km spread over 4/5 days. We left with one t-shirt each two tin's of peaches and a bottle of water...... The first day was off road to Duang ho just south a huge lake, the trail was about 120 km long and ranged from rocky inclines to single path walkways. First time for a while where Chris and I had a constant smile on our faces, the feel of riding was making us really miss our own bikes that were still in the same box we had packed them up in 4 weeks previously.

A lot of people we had met travelling around SE Asia had told us they found the Vietnamese unfriendly, and I suppose coming from places like Thailand they seem that way as they don't always carry huge smiles on their faces. The people we passed on our trip were fantastic, High Fiving kids on the side of the road and waveing at everyone going by. Chris complained of a sore wrist because of all the waving he had been doing all day, I collected a bruised hand from high fiving a 7 year old whilst doing about 30, the poor kid was left spinning on the side of the road. Life seemed a lot calmer than the manic break neck speed of Hanoi and I guess people just had more time on their hands to take notice, after a great 2nd day we climbed up to Sapa early afternoon where again the people like the scenery were welcoming. It does seem that the women are much happier to talk and have fun than the men who work half as hard and are normally found at the back of the shop/cafe/hostel on a sleeping mat dozeing.

Apparently there were 54 different ethnic groups in the mountains I don't know how many we met but it seemed each village had a very different feel from each other. In Hanoi their direct translation for mountain people is 'savages', they are anything but.

The journey back took on a feel of driving through Peru with huge green mountains and a scar from a landslide about every 5 km. The roads we chose were free of tourists and more importantly mad bus drivers tearing around the tiny roads on the wrong side. The trip back to Hanoi was going well until we hit the rush hour traffic on the West of the city, everyone drives scooters in Hanoi we were in a scooter jam for a solid three hours, we probably moved 1/2 km in that time, it was chaos the traffic police had given up directing traffic and spent their afternoon watching from the sidelines as the anarchy ensued. By pure coincidence we bumped into Mrs Hanh who gave us the news we had been waiting for........ the prime minister of Vietnam had signed and stamped the documents allowing us to travel freely through his country..... Yippppe!

As I write this we expect this will be our last night in Hanoi we are leaving to Hai Phong in the early morning to sign the last of the papers needed for customs to release our motorbikes, I imagine our next entry will be a lot more up beat and excited but "in Vietnam....always expect the unexpected"

(Click on the "Vietnam 1" gallery to the left for more pictures)

Watch out Becks, Moto-Hikers coming through!!!

2005-09-11T16:11:00.000+01:00

We've had another interesting few days in Hong Kong. Still here, althoughwe will be leaving in a couple of days, honest!
Yamaha in Hong Kong arranged a press event for us at their premises on Hong Kong Island. Journalists from 3 of Hong Kong's online bike mags turned up to take photos and quiz us about our 'cwazy journey'. We had a great time! Forget the Beckhams, Rory and Chris really know how to turn on the heat for the paparazzi.....
Check out the first article at www.bikehk.com (try http://www.bikehk.com/photo/2005/p004425/report.asp and http://www.bikehk.com/photo/2005/p004425/report.asp?page=page02.asp fo direct links)
We've already had emails through from readers pledging their support, hopefully some cash money for SOS should follow soon!

The mechanics at Yamaha kindly did a few little jobs we needed doing to the bikes. Luckily for us their head mechanic, with 30yrs experience, was a fantastic welder, fabricator and machinist, so the jobs were carried out quickly and to a remarkably high standard. We can't thank them enough for this assistance.

Just as we were leaving an Englishman called Andrew arrived on an old Yamaha Tenere. This the original long-distance adventure touring bike of choice and the spiritual father of our bikes(they still use the same engine many years later in the TT600R), a very rare machine in this part of the world. After a quick chat with Lewis the manager i found out how rare, its the only one in Hong Kong! Not only this, but its first owner was none other than Jackie Chan, cool huh?

Late last night we were disturbed by the sound of loads of bikes coming up the road up Mount Davis. We felt it our duty to investigate......
We met our first Hong Kong biker gang! Luckily this bunch seemed less into the drug-dealing and murdering of the Hell's Angels and more into hanging out with their mates and having fun, our kind of people. They all road Japanese sports bikes from 250's up to 600's and had a deep love of Valentino Rossi, one of them not only having a Vale-replica bike, but also a replica hair-do!
We chatted for a while and had a good laugh.

Hopefully we'll be in Vietnam by this time next week and be doing some serious mileage towards our first SOS visit!
Chris

2005-09-06T02:17:00.000+01:00

Run From The Sun is in its third week now and we find ourselves high atop Hong Kong's Mount Davis.
After a massive delay in the shipment of our motorcycles it was decided we should start from Hong Kong to stay closer to our "schedule".
Then the bikes got sent to Dubai!!!!!!!!
So after several fraught and worried days with our only transport(and most of our kit) "lost at sea", they finally arrived in HK last Wednesday.
We are now awaiting official clearance to enter China.

In the mean time we've been sorting out our kit and the bikes. We realised we'd totally overdone the amount of stuff we brought, so a big box of stuff is bobbing its way across the seas back home as we speak.

If anyone out there knows any "top men" in the Chinese government, army, police or customs, please send answers on an (e)postcard........

email posting

2005-08-16T04:00:00.000+01:00

Chinese computers seem to be barred from viewing blogs, so we'll be posting
by e-mail for a while. No Photos though, sorry!

Competition time!!!!

2005-08-12T14:48:00.000+01:00

Spread the word!
Win Win Win ! ! !
Give Give Give ! ! !
Each text costs £1.50 of which all profits(approx.£1) go to SOS Children's Villages.
For terms and conditions go to:
http://www.karrimor.com/tandcbikehike.htm

weblog posting by text activated

2005-08-10T23:09:00.000+01:00

Mobile updates are possible now using txt messages.

Only one week to go!!!

2005-08-10T15:01:00.000+01:00

Preparations for our Run From The Sun are in the final stages.
Rory is already in China, getting to grips with the "system".
I fly out next Wednesday and rendesvous with Rory on the 18th in Beijing.
The shipment of our bikes was delayed by a couple of weeks, so they're going to Hong Kong now, in a bid to keep near to our schedule.
I'm in the process of wrapping up my life in England at the moment. Packing up years of accumulated junk is not what i really wanted to be doing for my last week here, but such is life.
A combination of excitement and blind panic has gripped me, in less than a week I shall be in Beijing for the start of the most intense six months of my life.
Fingers crossed eh!

Chris

Run From The Sun 3 Peaks Challenge: How was It For You?

2005-05-02T19:14:00.000+01:00

A big thanks to everyone for the enormous efforts on this weekend's incredibly succesful 3 peaks challenge. There should be a full report and photos in the next week or so. In the meantime could you please take five minutes to post your feelings on the whole experience. Thanks for coming, we were great!

Moto Hike

2005-04-04T12:39:00.000+01:00

In the beginning.........