Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Were finally on the road, and after a solid week of riding the scariest roads on earth I'm chuffin knackered. My back and shoulders ache like hell. I think I might need a "massage"!
We left Goa about a week ago and now were in the state of Kerala. The first couple of days were quite terrifying, I've spoken before about the crazy roads but once you get on the main highways it's a whole new ball game! If you show the slightest bit of fear they'll eat you for breakfast, and dinner, and tea!! The roads themselves are bad enough, they go from smooth wide and reasonably good to looking as though someone dropped a scud missile on them in the blink of an eye. One minute your on a fast highway and you've plucked up the courage to overtake and then the road just turns into a gravel track, so you back off the throttle and look up to find two lorries being overtaken by a madman in a coach headed for you! The worst thing though is you can't just go at your own pace, if your not overtaking everything you'll have a lorry up your Arse honking his horn like a madman. It doesn't matter to them if there's someone coming the other way or that they don't actually have the power to overtake the car in front they just go for it. In india the horn is a hundred times more important than your brakes. The coach drivers are the worst they just don't have any fear whatsoever, they blast past everyone swerving in and out through villages with there air horns on continually! If you try and stay behind someone going at a reasonable speed for a break you just get so hassled from all the vehicles behind you, tuc tuc's come up the inside of you and lorries round the otherside. Every lorry seems to leak some sort of fluid as well so if you stay behind them for long whatever it is covers you. Judging by the burnt holes in all my shirts since we left it must be something a bit nasty! Then of course there's the dust, jesus, I've never been so covered in grime and dust in all my life, by the end of the day we look like we've been lost in the desert for a month! After a few days you start to realise the only way your going to survive is to drive like they do " if you can't beat em join em!" you just have to overtake at every opportunity as soon as you can, a moments hesitation and its too late as everyone behind you has come by and your stuck behind the lorry dribbling diesel or battery acid for the next ten minutes until you can make a break for it! By the end the day your body has been so gripped with the fear of your imminent death that you ache from head too toe! Having said all this, in a sick kind of way it's bloody good fun. It's a bit like climbing everest I would imagine, it's terrifying on the way up but when you get to the top your so glad to be alive it seemed worth all the effort! And I can quite honestly say the shower at the end of each day is like you've died and gone to heaven!!
Before we left Goa we met this Canadian guy called Sarej, his parents are both from Bangladesh so he looks like a local. He was a really interesting guy, he'd been in Kerala at a martial arts school training for three months and was in Goa for a few days before getting his flight home. We struck up a bit of a friendship with him and he gave us a lot of tips about the rest of India. I remember him saying " Goa ain't India, you guys are gunna see the real india soon! " which worried me slightly as I thought Goa was pretty crazy! But as soon as we left Goa I realised he was right. Everywhere you go people stare at you with there mouths wide open like they've just seen a monkey walking down the street with a bowler hat on and it said good morning to them. It's a bit unnerving at first and hard to understand as you think they must have seen westerners before. They seemed so shocked it's like they don't know what's going on. You'll be standing on the side of the road having a smoke and when you look up there are ten people with eyes fixed on you and their mouths wide open, but as soon as you smile and say hello each face lights up into a big cheesy grin. It's a bit like being the main attraction in a zoo! Mostly their all interested in where your from and what your doing and keen to know if you like there country or state. It's much more difficult getting directions or buying things as a lot of them don't speak any English, it's usually best to ask someone young as they learn English at school. Quite often when we've stopped people have bought us chi and food and want there photos taken with you, it's nice to think that their genuinely interested in what your doing . We stopped near a school yard the other day and I think every kid in there ran up and shook our hands and introduced themselves, if that was England they would have thrown stones at you and told you to f*** off!! Even riding along on your bike people ride up next to you and start a conversation, which is difficult when your using every bit of your limited mental powers just to stay alive!
The highlight of our road trip so far though happened a few days ago. We stopped in a place called bekal for the night, a nice little fishing town. The next day we got up early ready to move on but we were both so exhausted that we decided instead to take a day off. We wondered down to the beach and were sitting in front of a little shop having a smoke when a big group of local lads came over and started chatting to us. They were a nice bunch all about eighteen nineteen and all dressed in the standard brightly coloured silk shirts, jeans covered in logos and the latest fancy trainers. One of them spoke pretty good English and was very keen to practice it in us. He then invited to see his home so we accepted and he took us a few hundred yards up the beach. We hopped over some rocks and a wall and we were in a little seafront village, you would have never seen it from the beach or the road. As we started to walk through there was a well in the centre with people washing next to it. The lad shouted something in Hindi about "English" and people swarmed all around us laughing and waving, some shaking our hands. There were chickens dogs and goats all over the shop. All the houses were small concrete buildings with galvanised roofs, the sort of thing you might keep some coal in at home! The lad led us straight to his home keen to show off his new find. We walked in the tiny little house and were surprised to find about twenty people, mainly women and children all laughing and shouting, most if the women laughed and looked away embarrassed. It turned out that some of them were just visiting there family while there was a local festival on. They gave us a couple of stools to sit us on and made us two cups of chi and then proceeded to bombard us with questions. It was difficult to understand most of it but the the lad who brought us translated most if it. They were fascinated with my iPod when I took some photos, and all ran off to get there mobiles to show us. Most Indians seem to have a bit if a love affair with there phones. I couldn't believe how many of them could fit in to such a tiny little house. They gave us a guided tour of the rooms. Each bedroom had a plank of hardwood mounted on some bricks with a few cushions chucked on as a bed ( and I've been moaning about how thin the mattresses are! ) I was suprised that even though the rooms were so small they had dedicated the one of the biggest rooms to their favourite Hindu god shiva.They had a statue of her mounted on the wall with candles and incense burning and necklaces made from flowers hung all around it. They all kept asking if we had any chocolate but I didn't so I promised to go back with some the next day. The usual question soon arose " married?" to which I replied " no but maybe one day" so they didn't think I was a complete lunatic. At that point the whole room turned to look at one girl in the corner looking very embarrassed, and the young lad said " you like marry?" then the whole room erupted in laughter except the girl in question. I was tempted as she was a pretty girl but then I remembered reading somewhere that most Indian men had never actually seen there wives naked and thought better if it! So I replied " I'm afraid we've got to leave tomorrow " they all grouped together outside for some more photos and with my promise of chocolates still ringing in their ears we all waved good bye. It was all a bit surreal really I've spent so much time watching tv programs where people travel to far of countries and get to meet locals like that it didn't quite seem real. I felt like Michael bloody Palin!
True to my word ( which you all know I am! ) before heading off the next day I bought a huge jar of chocolates and delivered them to a rather confused looking man who must have been the father of the house and hadn't been there the day before but gladly accepted my gift anyway.
For the next few days we traveled everyday stopping at about five to find a hotel, most of which were ok although a few weren't. A couple in particular weren't much fun as the beds seemed to be riddled with bed bugs or fleas. It's not a nice feeling staying awake all night scratching till your so bloody sore it hurts. We had a problem with dads bike along the way, it kept spluttering and threatening to stop all the tome as though the fuel wasn't getting through. We stopped a few times cleaning the fuel filter, carb and the air filter but it didn't seem to help. So eventually with some local guidance we found a small garage. The owner spoke no English at all so I was reduced to doing an impression of me riding along complete with spluttering engine noises, I felt a bit like crazy frog! He got the idea and started checking all the stuff we had already done, but I thought it wasn't worth trying to explain and better to let him just get in with it. He soon found that his efforts had been wasted and started taking apart the points, smiling at us as if to say "I've got it now!" when he'd finished dad took it for a test ride and reported that all was well. So we paid up the seventy rupees ( about a pound!) and waved to the huge crowd that had gathered around us. But about a mile down the road it started again but this time was much worse and the bike would barely get to twenty miles an hour. So we limped back to the garage and sat down to wait for the owner to get back from lunch. A local guy came over and sat with us and he spoke passable English so when the owner got back he explained what had happened. The guy said there was nothing more he could do and that we needed an Enfield specialist. He write down the address of the nearest one for us but unfortunately it was a good thirty miles off. I'm sure you can imagine how
much fun that journey was! But we got there just as it was getting dark and luckily there was a hotel a few hundred yards up the road (one of the guilty parties in the bed bug department!) so we left the bike in the garage while we checked in to the hotel. By the time we git back he had it purring like a kitten! What a professional! It was a dodgy condenser and rectifier which he replaced at a another very reasonable rate. So you'll be glad to know those butter bearings are rolling on again boys! So a few days later and now were in a place called Fort Kochi, which is a small harbour town and quite a tourist hit spot. Which us a bit weird as we hadn't seen any at all since we left Goa over a week ago. But it's a good place to rest up as there are plenty of hotels and places to eat. The main attraction here seems to be the Chinese fishing nets which are huge wooden beam constructions that are designed to pivot in the middle. Attached to the front is a huge net spread between the beams and in the back there are big boulders hanging from different length ropes which act as a counterbalance so the fishermen can raids and lower the net in and out of the water easily by pulling on the ropes. It's a very clever design, typical of the Chinese, we went in one yesterday and they let us pull up the net. It's surprising how easy you can pull it up because it's so perfectly balanced.
Yesterday we went in a backwater boat trip, we got picked up at 8 o'clock by a minibus and after an hours White knuckle ride were delivered to a waiting boat. We headed off down some canals that looked as though they had been cut into the jungle by hand. They were only just wide enough for the boat. We visited a few small villages were they made rope out of coconut fibre and one where they made calcium out of clam shells. We got fed in a small hut along the way, some rice and some other stuff I couldn't quite identify all served on palm leaves which was cool. It was surprisingly tasty too, better than some if the s*** we've eaten! But the highlight of the day for me was seeing a huge snake slither into the river, it was so fat I doubt I could have gotten both hands round it. It looked like an anaconda but I'm not sure if they have them in india. At the time I had my feet dangling in the water and I could see the guy punting the boat laugh as I quickly took them out.
So tomorrow were off again, headed for a beach called Kovalem right at the southern tip of india. I'm hoping to embarrass myself by attempting to try some surfing. So I'll keep you posted on how that goes! Hope all is well in blighty bye for now!
P.s. I hope you all appreciate reading these blogs as the last two I've had to rewrite about four times as this s***ty iPod app keeps crashing and losing the bloody lot!!!
- comments
Mamfa Gould I appreciate them uncle lee! Nice to hear that you are eating something other than fish and chips now! Don't like the sound of those bed bugs, cor..imagine using a dyson on those matresses!! spk soon xxx
ben come on shavers write summit! your spending to much time riding around with oil on your boots and not enough time writing stuff. wake your game up we're bored s***less here.
Didler Hey you f***er I emailed you and iv had no f***in reply you f***in f***er ball bagging bell end