Globe Gallivanting- motorbiking across the world

We raced down Darjeeling hill quickly. The horrid road at the bottom was busy. There were flat tea estates everywhere, bright green with little tea bushes, all grown to the same height. There was no one around though, so we snuck in and took tea photos. The road carried on and on until we officially arrived in the Middle of Nowhere, otherwise known as Jalpadwara National Park. We spent the night in a great little hotel with giant tiger photos on the walls, and met some friendly army officers who asked what caste we were. It was a hard one to reply to.   The ride across Assam saw us stop for tea in a side-of-the-road shack. As we were sat busily consuming rasgullai, there was an earthquake. The whole place shook, and we watched the bike bounce up and down in a ferocious manner. Everyone ran outside to stare at the roof but nothing collapsed. Everyone else seemed a lot calmer than I did. Later we discovered there had been 6 earthquakes in the last 6 weeks. We troop...

The counter official in the Pakistan embassy suggested we apply for a 30 day visa, so we could look around at his beautiful country.  We agreed, heartily, thereby eschewing all advice the British government offered on their travel websites.  If he was that keen for us to see his country, despite the fact that 3 weeks previously a Frenchman had been kidnapped on our exact route, who were we to know better?  And Pakistan sounded an amazing destination, once you got passed the whole Taliban and Baluchi Independence Party situation…  We applied for a 30 day visa, and left the office on a high.  We had prepared ourselves for a lengthy and difficult interview.  We had even written out our route and drawn a little map. We returned to pick up our Pakistani visa a few days later! While we waited for the visa we went to see the sights.  We photographed the ‘Down with USA’ paintings on the walls of the ‘US Den of Espionage’- the new name for the old US...

The next portion saw us in an enforced prolonged stay in a very soggy campsite in La Lavendou. It rained for 2 days without a break, and the mini-Hitler of the tiny field we stayed in rode around pretentiously in a golfbuggy and muttered about the bike taking up too much room, and our washing being spread on exactly the wrong washing line. He dreamt ambitiously of big manicured campsites with picket fences. There were a few deranged rain-sodden campers about, but no one else in tents apart from us. We still managed to make ourselves some good stove-grub and kept the tent warm and smelling of stew for the two days. We drank cheap red wine from boxes and listened to Nina Simone. It was all rather nice apart from the smell of our socks that wouldn’t dry. The rain cleared on the 3rd day for long enough for us to make it to St Tropez, and we drifted past the amazing restaurants feeling like hobos, and sat ourselves next to giant yachts with their oddly sterile-looking young crews. I pe...