Globe Gallivanting- motorbiking across the world

The route to Lahore was very long.     We rode into Rawalpindi at 5pm, and hit the Lahore motorway (the only main road in Pakistan).   For five minutes we were on perfect black tarmac doing 110kph on a near-deserted road, with encouraging Lahore signs ahead.  We estimated arriving in only 3 hours!!     Then we got into a police chase. It ended with them pulling in front of us and telling us over and over and over that the motorway was not for bikes.   (This is because Pakistani bikes only go up to 250cc, and wouldn’t be capable of the minimum speeds needed.  We tried in vain to explain this.) The officer took Adam’s driving license to the car, and pretended to need to examine it. Then they started the engine.   They were about to steal his license so we would have to follow them to the station, without even telling us. I may have gone slightly mental…I got off the bike shaking with anger and stormed up and snatched the license from th...

  We left Gilgit as planned.  The massive problem with the bike turned out to be the starter motor.  It was a good job we had Brock the mechanic to help, and a mechanic scraped the carbon off some important bit, and it was all go again.  In England they would have just replaced the starter motor completely.  Here, anything is possible.  With Manfred purring happily again, we bombed it down the hill.  There were no major hiccups, and it all went a lot easier the second time.    We bounced over the same holes and through the same rivers, and whizzed through checkpoints with made up visa numbers and silly occupations like ‘gymnast’ and ‘dictator’.     We raced all the way through to Besham.  We stopped for lunch in Dasu.  We met a guide, who advised us against staying in Besham & Batagram because of the Swat Valley fanatics.  He mimed a giant beard, to explain.   (The Swat Valley has its transport hub ...

  The next morning saw us head towards Skardu, after a jump-start from the noise-makers.      We stopped briefly at a chai stand for an informative and friendly chat with a family from Karachi.  We swapped conspiracy stories about 9/11 and discussed Zeitgeist.  They answered the marmot question- this was a National Park for bears.  Bears like trout.  And marmots.     We photographed the bridge that was featured on all tourist posters across Pakistan, and were pleased we had made it.      At Satpara Lake we ate fish and chips courtesy of Peter.  It was excellent, and made up for not catching any. They were damming the lake.  Jack looked pleased.  The roads around Skardu were a bit scary, even with our now frankly vast experience of road conditions.  We went through a river, and then wound round mountains, stuck to the side like those things that slide down windows… Yaqoob miraculously squeezed us thro...

  The next day saw the Germans head off towards the Khunjerab border to look at China.  We bucked the trend for a bit of anti-social alone time, and headed off to find the walnut cake.  Karimabad was only a couple of hours down the road.  We found the cake.  We ate the cake.  We fell in love with the cake, the café, and the town. It was perfect in every way so we found a hotel and stayed the night. We met a great Lahori guy in the café.  He told us how his whole family thought he was mad for being there as it was so dangerous, and then laughed.  We clicked. Our hotel was amazing, with sunflowers and apricot trees, and a goat we fed.      We met some fellow hotel-dwellers, and spent a pleasant evening gabbing over a big communal meal.   We found a Brock, a young Aussie mechanic who was on a 2 year trip round the world.  There was a Peter, an old hippie anarchist; a lanky guy with bizarrely loud Homer Simpson patterned...

The next day we were due to leave for Passu, a 3 hour drive away.   It took us 8 hours.  The place was full of JCB s, excavating vast chunks out of the mountains to widen the road.   The ‘culvert construction’ diversions continued, mostly into mud.     We only fell in once, when we were going through a river and hit an underwater boulder.  There was no disaster though, I jumped off and pushed the bike back up, and we carried on.         We stopped for watermelon and mango juice at a roadside shack, by a bubbling brook that the drinks were kept cold in.       The route was stunning.  Every time you turned a corner it got more incredible, with massive mountain vistas.  There were huge chunks of snow and ice.  There was an enormous glacier in the distance.     The water rushing everywhere meant there were fruit orchards and grassy meadows.   The restaurant was perched high on a rock in ...

  We didn’t get attacked by any cheetahs.  There was a fairly horrendous attack of food poisoning though.  I woke in the pitchblack, covered in sweat and groaning with stomach pains.  I spent the next 6 hours until daylight making painful urgent excursions up the hillside with a headtorch on to deposit my Pringles in strategic locations.  Vomiting whilst wearing a headtorch is a bizarre experience… With daybreak, I started to deposit from the other end too, which got a lot more difficult as people started walking up and down the hill.  Then my legs gave way in the middle of the path, and I sat there pathetically, unable to stand, while Adam and the German slept on.   Eventually Adam got up and rescued me. They were quite sweet about it and barely mentioned the violent noises they’d been subjected to all night. I had a beautiful private moment of hilarity at about 7am, when I had made it up to truly spectacular spot to erm, deposit.  I squatte...

  We set off up the Karakoram highway on my birthday.  The day started well, with Adam supplying a beautiful chocolate birthday cake, with my name piped on the top.  (He had left it in the hotel kitchen’s fridge for the night with the staff’s permission, and when he brought it in, we discovered with much mirth that the hotel manager had actually eaten a large chunk out of it.  It was hilarious.  I tried to picture an English Travel Lodge manager taking a large bite out of a guest’s birthday cake, before it had even been presented.  It didn’t work.)     Anyway, the cake was a great start, and we set off up the hill.  The road rose 2500m in 80kms.  Not surprisingly, it was very steep.  Equally unsurprisingly, it got a lot cooler, quickly.  I was very pleased by this, as was entirely fed up with sweltering.    At this juncture I might explain something.  My bike jacket is black.  My helmet is also black....