Subject: motorcycles and travel

In recent years, I've found a new aim in life: to do as little work as possible and spend as much of my time as I can on two wheels. Work pays the bills, occasionally provides a focus of interest and occupies time, but not a lot else. On the road I have the leisure and the freedom to think. There are people to meet, mountains to see, experiences to be had. Something unexpected is always on hand to bust wide open the comfortable nest of assumptions I carry around in my head. On the road, I can begin to breathe.

I don't do as much travelling as I would like. But in the last couple of years I've had several great trips. To start off the blog, here are a few pics.

The SV1000S in Donegal, Ireland, 2007. Dodging the rain in Donegal is as natural as breathing, but the land is wild and beautiful (and wet). In 2007, I rode over to Ireland from Hertfordshire, taking the Holyhead to Dun Laoghaire ferry. From Dublin, I travelled slowly north-west across the country on minor roads, visiting family on the way. I'm as English as toast and marmalade, but my mother was Irish and, as chance would have it, my son-in-law, foster daughter and some of my grandkids are too. My feelings for the country are mixed. Ireland always strikes me as beautiful, poor, and lonely. It has a downbeat feel to it, full of struggle. Like its people, it is wiry, unsparing and tough as old boots. Maybe my feelings about Ireland reflect my feelings about my extended family, but I can't help that.

Enfield 500cc Bullet in the Himalayan foothills, 2008. Just a little further up this road a cow fell out of the sky and smashed into the tarmac in front of me. It must have stumbled from the cliffs above. The look of surprise on its dead face is burned forever into my memory. Two minutes later it was surrounded by vultures hopping about and preparing for dinner.

There are two distinct views about motorcycling in India. One is that it is a suicidal occupation and only the deranged would attempt it. Indian drivers are gifted with superabundant confidence and no foresight. Suicidal manouvres like triple overtakes on blind corners are not just common but normal. On Indian roads there is no rule (none!) that may not be broken, and there is only one principle that everyone accepts: size matters. Trucks have right of way over elephants, elephants over cars - and cars over bikes. Motorcyclists are the lowest of the low. On Indian roads you do what you like, when and where you like, and it is the job of everyone else to miss you. A lack of skill in these matters is not forgivable.

The alternative view, and the one I have come to share, is that riding in India is a real hoot! Pure exhiliration! Every moment of your ride, you must negotiate with other traffic to find your way ahead. It's a dance in which you must not only expect anything to happen, but you must also accept everything you find. I only fully came to understand this when, about a week into my trip, I saw a youngster riding towards me with what was, to all intents and purposes, a telegraph pole balanced precariously across the well of his scooter. He rode matter of factly without regard to other traffic and other traffic matter-of-factly ran off the road and onto its dusty margins to let him past.

When in India, ride as the Indians ride. If you don't, you will soon find yourself in trouble. Obeying the Indian highway code can be fatal.

Like the traffic, and like everything else about this country, the roads themselves are unpredectable. One moment, you can be riding on good (well, relatively good) tarmac, the next you can find yourself on loose gravel or soft sand. And that sudden change can happen at any time - when you are on a bike leaned over into a corner, for instance. Ouch!

One thing, above all, symbolises the attiude of Indian drivers for me (and the nature of the culture in general.) Before setting foot on the sub-continent I was warned that trucks do not have rear lights. This, I discovered, was untrue: truck drivers are very particular about their rear lights: They paint them on with great care.


Enfield 350cc Bullet in the Palani Hills of Southern India, 2007.

For mile upon mile the road snaked its way upwards from the plain to Kodaicanal, an American concessionary town at the time of the British Raj, set high into the Southern Ghats. Looking down from the flanks of the hills into central India, you can see the Deccan plain fade gradually into the distant heat haze. The Deccan is vast and astonishing, the last, levelled remnant of a gigantic volcanic event that some argue was responsible for the disappearance of the dinosaurs.

The 350cc Bullet is a great bike for riding in India but it's a plank. The cushion duck-taped onto the saddle proved only a temporary cure for the creeping numbness of monkey butt.



I bought the cushion late one evening from a street vendor in Shimoga, a city rarely visited by tourists. I found her standing on a street corner, a slight, vulnerable figure among all the traffic. She had the most radiant and fragile of smiles. Her wares she carried about with her in a huge bundle which she balanced on her head.

While we were bargaining over the cushion, a small man appeared out of nowhere and attached himself to me like a limpet. He spoke rapidly in Hindi. Someone translated. He was - apparently - telling me that he was my guide for the evening, He was also it seems offering me one of his daughters. Under exactly what terms I never found out.
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The Daytona 955i on an idyllic day in the French Pyrennees, 2008. The roads here are custom made for motorcyclists. The mountains are green and expansive. The land raises the spirits and the sun is liquid enjoyment. Warm? Comforting? Seductive? Would anyone ever want to return to the cold embrace of an English climate after this? It can also rain, of course. Hard!

The SV1000S in Donegal again. This time in 2009. Up in the very north-west of the country, the landscape is raw and bold. its rawness gnaws at your innards sometimes, but it's never bleak like some English uplands.

SV1000S in Scotland, 2006.

When I said I was going to ride round the coast of Scotland in November the stormcrows flocked around me, cawing and flapping and telling me I was mad. I would get soaked to the skin they said. I would have a miserable time. Well, they were right: I did get a soaking - on a couple of occasions. But I also got something else - ten days without sight of midges, tourists, or traffic.

In November, the Highlands are beautiful. Woodlands sweep over the hillsides clad in their autumn shades of cream and emerald. Leaves glitter like metallic gold, or glow quietly among the greens. The land is mauve and ochre, yellow and tawny red. Rocks are sandy or flash a brilliant cobalt blue at you as you pass by. Sky, clouds, mist and moorland dissolve into the milky surfaces of the lochs.

One broad valley put me into what I can only describe as a state of shock. The vegetation roared with the colour and intensity of burnished copper. I stopped the bike close to a parked car, one of the very few I had seen that day. Beside it, a Norwegian woman was running up and down, her hands covering her mouth, exclaiming, 'Oh, my god, oh my god.' I could only stare and share her feelings. I have never seen anything so extraordinary, beautiful or dramatic in all my life.

OK, it rains in Scotland in November, but that's only because it rains even in paradise.