Globe Gallivanting- motorbiking across the world

  We rode by jeep up to the Deosai plains and Skardu.  It was a long, long journey. The scenery was, as always, incredible.  The roads were, as always, bloody awful. The Deosai plains are at an altitude of 4000 meters.  The villages had nomads with giant herds of various creatures flocking about, and strange herders on horseback.   I have never been to Mongolia, but according to Jack it was very similar.     The villages up there are covered in 10 foot blankets of snow for two thirds of the year.  It was an unbelievable sort of place. Everyone looked very hardy, like they’d been carved out of wood.     In the back of the jeep the conversations were animated- Peter the anarchist told outrageous conspiracy stories, talking a mile a minute and waving his hands around.  Jack cut in occasionally with a question about dams.  Brock tried to keep everyone serene. Our friendly driver Yaqoob with his amazing hat took...

The next morning we were expecting escorts, and there weren’t any, which cheered us.  We set off, and promptly lost the German. He was doing 80kph again.  Apparently he had somewhere to be.     The land was still beautifully green, with bee-keeper boxes dotting the sides of the roads.  We were rounding the bottom of the mountains, following the river.  We stopped at a check post, where a guard tried to surreptitiously hold my hand while showing me a poster of Switzerland.  It was odd. We were escorted for 15 minutes through the most dangerous part of Kohistan. It didn’t look any different to the rest, and nothing untoward happened.       The mountains were snowcapped, the light amazing, and the waterfalls suitably sploshing.     Shame about the road-  it disintegrated further, with streams flowing over it, and bits of road tumbled into the ravines below.  The pot-holes were truck sized.      ...