She's on fire!!!

No time to rest! The day after passing the blizzard, there was a big festival at a monastery called Hemis, an hour or so from Leh. It is the biggest monastery in Ladhak, quite beautiful but to packed with people for our liking. Tons of tourists and locals were crowding the central area where the masked dances would take place. The battle for the longest camera lens was on. Me and my mate Jose, a professional photographer ran around nuts with the cameras inside the monastery. We managed to elbow our ways to some prime spots "ringside", just by the allowed line, guarded by 8year old munks with bamboo sticks, hitting people like the LAPD shouting"back please, side please!!"The dances were a bit lame, but the feeling, costumes and masks were really breathtaking. It was a shame it started raining towards the end and most people ran away and didn't see the finale.

So, it was time for another Enfield experience. Jumping on the bike to drive home, I tried to kick start her and small signs of life next to nothing. Suddenly Sharon points out some smoke under the seat. Looking down I saw a fire big enough to BBQ hot dogs. Eject! Eject! I jumped off the bike faster then lightning, then got to my senses as Sharon threw water on it. The wires were totally burned away... Again, we had to roll her down as far as possible since we were high up on the mountain side. By the road we tried to fix her by cutting of the back break light wire (U never use that light anyway) and fixing it to the battery. Another start, another fire, stopped by Jose and a bottle of water. We had to stop a vehicle a get a thicker wire to connect. A nervous start again; supervised by Jose 'the fireman' ready with one hand full of sand, one with water, it finally seemed to work. The drive back to Leh was a nervous one though, with Sharon constantly looking down under the seat. During the drive I knew I had to change the whole electric system. I refuse to feel like a mafioso, waiting for the bike to explode every time I start the bike! Next day I changed the whole dodgy 8volt system to a normal Enfield 12volt. It was amazing what difference that made. Most importantly my horn now sounds like a trains and people and vehicles jump to the side as like one was coming! Now, hopefully everything is sorted with the bike. And no more Enfield Club stories!

After all of this, still Sharon has turned a liking for driving Enfields and wants to get her own. After an intense hunt for a bike for sale, we found am older model with a deep booming engine 'Bobob boboobo' So she bought him and named him 'Bob'. Now, Bob and Vaselia is going together for adventures up north, on to Zanskar Valley and further on to Kashmir and Srinigar!

Vaselia vs Blizzard

When you have a motorbike in India, particular an Enfield, it becomes your world and decent mechanics here and there becomes your, want to be, best friends and saviors. There you spend allot of time together with other enthusiasts, fighting for the main mans time and attention, sucking them up with chai. There is always something more to fix, improve and decorate. Also my circle of friends tend to be more bikers now days and more and more conversations about our toys. It was about time that my bike got a name and what could a Cloud better want then the goddess of wind carrying me. So her new name is Vaselia, the goddess of Wind, Stars and Travels. I also invested 4€ on a full face helmet, making my looks change from teenage skater to a Power Ranger wanna be.

After fixing her up and giving her a nice cosmetic makeover, it was time to take her out for a new trip. We were going to Pangong Lake, a huge lake up in the mountains, crossing over from India to Tibet. Sharon, an English girl I met in Leh came on the back of my bike and a french couple I met coming to Ladhak, came on another. The roads in Ladahk are quite good and it was a nice drive past valleys and over the worlds third highest motorable pass. Vaselia was going very well, until the other side of the pass where I had to drive through a small river and she just died coming out on the other side. Luckily the road was down hill and just using the breaks I managed to navigate her down hill on some dodgy road with the horn barely sound able and trucks popping up around corners. The battery seemed to be dieing on me as well and instead of a beep there was a pathetic sheep's baaa. In India, worse then having bad brakes is having a bad horn. Somehow we made it down and the engine came on and off all the time until it just died again outside of a guest house in a village.

Next morning the power of the bike was completely gone and after a bit of panic and running here and there looking for a new mechanical savior, we checked the battery one more time and saw that one of the wires were off. She was OK again after fixing that! Off again, continuing to the Lake through a bit dodgy roads and crossing rivers we finally made it there. The Lake was beautiful, constantly changing color depending on the light, going from dark blue to turquoise with the brown mountains surrounding it. We stayed with a really nice family in their small house over the night. It is amazing in these parts how it can be so extremely hot and when the sun is covered or goes down, how cold it gets. Up here is the only place they say you can get a sunburn and frost bite at the same time! The temperature ranges in the summer between -2 to 40 degrees. The people here are so resistant to the weather the didn't react to the flux's, we kept changing clothes.

When we woke up in the morning, it was snowing! Our hopes for a change didn't come and foolishly we left anyhow to go back to Leh. "Down" at the lake it was snowing, but up at 5000 meters it was a blizzard raging! I couldn't see anything with the helmet visor down, so with it up and having horizontal snow flying in to my eyes, I could see a bit of the snow and icy "road" winding up. Vaselia struggled bravely on upwards, but she was so hot I could smell the engine and hear her sizzling the snow before landing on her. At times the loud roar barely took us up. Crossing the point of no return, it was better to go on forward to the military barrack on top of the pass. I was pushing her like a lunatic, not to unlike Quin in the movie "Jaws", shouting "come on you #&'é" and singing madly, as the machinery was on the brink of collapsing. With Sharon pushing on the worst snowy bits, Vaselia made it to the pass and to the surprise of a Indian gentleman watching two snow men on a snow bike, ecstatically driving passed the tea house, shouting victory slogans and continuing downwards. I couldn't feel my fingers anymore and my boots were covered with ice, but I didn't want to risk getting stuck on the top for a few days. As we came further down, the soldiers of a station rescued us with two gasol stoves to warm our limbs and some hot chai for our dumb heads. To this day I'm still a bit numb on my left finger tops! In the end of the day, another experience and another story for the guys of the Enfield Club. Having the bike and driving it for barely a week I haven't done too bad at all, earning my "Wheels"

My new Lady

So, there's a new lady in my life... She is 19 years old, weighs 160kg, Indian with English descent, has a loud roar when she gets going and needs lot's of attention and service!! Yes, she is a proper 350cc Enfield Motorcycle!

I remember when I first was going traveling outside of Europe. I went to the doctor to get all kinds of vaccines, mosquito nets and malaria tablets. The doc told me something that I would keep in my mind until now. He said "Claudio, it doesn't matter how many of these shots I give you, as long as you don't drive a motorcycle abroad, chances are you are going to be fine!" Hehe... If he only knew I was going to drive a bike through India, where 300 people a day die in traffic accidents! So, I got a cool half face helmet also for safety, making me look something like a skater. Anyhow, he should have better told me about all the head aches and tantrums this bike could bring.

Straight after I bought her, I had her checked up at Anu's workshop (a well known mechanic apparently) and next day me and Tashi head off on one of the most spectacular road in the world. 500km, it can only be opened during the summer months, it's going over the second highest motor pass in the world before coming down into the Tibetan plains and finally reaching the town of Leh. This is considered one of the most risky roads in India, because many parts of it is not really a road, sometimes it's as wide as a Swedish bicycle lane (and trucks try to pass each other there!) and as the snow and glaciers melt the avalanches keeps destroying it. There is constantly 1000 of workers mending the road, so mainly the military can get through. Many people were trying to talk me off from going, but I guess it's nice conditions to start learning how to drive an Enfield!

Day 1: We were supposed to meet another Belgium couple and a German dude to go together for the tripp early in the morning, but my bike broke down just at the intersection and I couldn't get it started... This was shit, just had it serviced for a full day!! After calling down my sleepy, hangover mechanic to the road and checking the bike for two hours or so, changing this and that, we discovered the fault. I had put in some metal spare parts in a compartment on the bike filled with electric wires... ooops, as we opened the compartment there were electrical fire works sparkling away in there; and also in the mechanics eyes, looking at me sideways! 4 hours later we were on the way again!

The partly muddy road winded slowly up to a high pass were Indian tourists were enjoying 100x10 meters lenght of snow with Yaks pulling them up, and going down on big tires. Some youth were hip hop dancing, fully dressed to their ears like Eskimos. After that first mountain pass, the road was really good and it was a nice travel in the valleys.

Day 2: This is life! Riding an Enfield a bit nonchalant with my feet up on the leg guard, cruising amongst the most amazing scenery I ever seen. Spectacular mountains, deserts, lakes, canyons and sand rock formations. The road gets a bit tricky here though, but my Lady is holding up really well. By the side of the road we pass many groups of workers, hacking big rocks to smaller pieces with sledge hammers, the smaller bits with big hammers and finally knocking those rocks to gravel with small hammers. This is proper medieval work and the workers are black, fully dusty and probably earning shit. In the evening we made it to Pang, an isolated oasis of a few tents for food and sleeping matts. Our heads are a bit spinning from the ascent to this 4000m something altitude.

Day 3: In the morning I put in some engine oil and when I start the bike, she starts spewing out oil in a big leak all over the ground... my poor baby! I can't drive the bike any further, with no oil the engine would crash after a few km. We try to close the leak with some M-Seal (a poxy kind of mass that turns rock hard), but as soon as the engine starts, the leak finds its way out. A big biker gang ride by and a mechanic give me some more M-seal, not to any use, the oil kept leaking out. After a long day of frustration, Anu and his group of customers suddenly appears and comes to stay the night in Pang. Finally I can get some proper help from the famous mechanic. He gives me some M-seal and advice how to put it on... wow, surely this has to work now...

Day4: I try the Anu way and wait a few hours, but big surprise, leakage streams out.. Time for another solution! On the road, a truck had stopped with some problems with the cooling system and we ask the driver if he can help us to take the bike to Leh. For 500 rupiees he agrees and we struggle to load the bike up on the truck which is loaded with cement to take to Leh. After some food and drink, the driver tell us to wait by a main road in Leh at 8 o'clock the next morning. Finally everything sorted, we leave some bags in the truck as well and head off on Tashi's bike! Driving over the worlds second highest motorable road, we finally made it to Ladhak. Ladhak region is a part of Tibet and is more Tibetan then the Chinese counterpart where much of the culture has been destroyed. Here all monasteries and cultural heritage remains untouched. Amazing scenery of green valley and brown coloured mountains as we drive all the way to Leh. This is can not be called a city, it is more a small town with a few main streets. This that used to be a very isolated part of the world, is now getting crowded with tourist shops and Internet.

Day 5: Up in the morning a stand by the road at 8! One hour pass, two, three, four... f^&k!! The truck is not coming. Tashi is saying not to worry, but that's pretty hard for me. At least I have a photo of the truck and the licence plate. Being only one road between Leh and Manali, I start back tracking the check posts for to see if the truck already has passed towards Leh or not. After a whole day checking everywhere, it seemed that it still hadn't passed the mountain pass to Ladhak. But I had to be sure, so I hitchhiked all the way back to Pang on a truck. Finally reaching there at dusk, I saw the truck but no sign of the driver. Not much to do, I'm sleeping in the truck. In the small hours of night, a drunk driver stumbles in to the small driving area. When he finally understood who I was, he started an endless monologue in Hindi for ages before passing out next to me. Before having this wonderful experience of sleeping together with a drunk Indian truck driver, with whiskey breath on my face, I understood the the cooling system was broken and it would take two more days before he would make it to Leh.

Day 6: It's amazing how many people you met that you knew from before somewhere. 3 friends on bikes had been staying the night in Pang as well and were off to Leh, but no space for me with luggage. I hitched a ride on a truck back to Leh after breakfast (after Mr. Drivers morning drink) and after a long day, I finally came to Leh at night and updated my friends about the situation.

Day7: Finally I have a day to relax. I had a nice walk around this town, seeing the market, the castle and the mosques. This place have some nice restaurants and hanging around the tourist street I met allot of people from Vashisht. A group of western, long timers in India, all experienced biker, had heard what happened to me but the story was way out of proportion. It was like I handed over the my totally crashed bike to Aliens and were told to wait for a week for it, somewhere out in the desert. I don't know who told this story to the Enfield Club, but he sure broadened this out!

Day 8: So today I was finally going to get my precious baby back. I had made arrangement to met the truck by the main post office (where he was going to offload the cement) at 9 o'clock onwards in the evening. Again waiting, waiting, waiting for hours until around 11 the truck pulled up. I climbed and opened the door and three strange men sat inside and wondered who I was... I was certain this was the same truck and asked the guy's for the plate number, it was the same and I started yelling 'This is my truck!!' They guy's had no clue what I was on about and they told me the driver had been drunk half ways and had ran off into the desert somewhere. One of the guy's was the truck owner and wondered if the bags were mine. I told them I didn't give a shit about the bags, I want MY BIKE!! After I told them my story, they looked in the back and found my bike there. I was told they would offload it the next morning at 5, so I could come and get it then.

Day 9: 4.45 I woke up the gang in the truck. 2 hours later my lady was off loaded and finally back in my arms!! First thing was to take my baby to the doctor and have her stitched up. Then off to the beauty parlour and have her washed and cleaned from all the cement dust. A 3 day trip had turned out to a long journey, but finally everything had turned out good!