We recently ran the first Global Enduro tour of Cambodia and Facebook has been flooded with photo albums. One rider, Colin has raised the bar and put up a webpage/diary/album/itinerary about his Global Cambodia experiences:
http://www.walternet.co.uk/holidays/cambodia2009/itinery.html

Despite the wild weather conditions – which added a massive element of Adventure to the exercise – we did manage to get amongst the mighty mountains and the crazy Indian culture. The Himalayas are always stunning, especially viewed from the seat of a motorcycle. The roads are like nothing you’ve ever seen. Huge valleys with tiny roads hugging the edges. Awesome. After the Global trip ended back in Shimla I met up with an old buddy Roger and we went to the Holy City of Rishakesh and rented a another couple of Enfields – a 535 Lightning and a 350 Machismo (great name). On the Lightning I felt like Prince in Purple Rain without the dodgy haircut, big ape hanger bars and laid back riding position. Rishakesh is one of the cities on the Ganges river and is a magnet for Sadhus (Indian dope smoking Holy Men) and spiritualists so is full of a host of bizarre characters and facinating street theatre.

From Risihskesh we headed upto Almora to see Olly’s Mum who’s got a house up there. The weather cleared up and we were blessed with crystal blue skies and fantastic views. Except for being run off the road by an Indian truck driver and getting my first ‘Indian Tattoo’ it was a great ride. Another part of the Himalaya rarely visited by tourists and absolutely stunning.

Always been a lifelong ambition to ride a motorcycle into the high alititude Himlayas and this ambition, almost, came true recently.

I jumped off the Ocean Ranger, after a very wet and windy August summer (ha!) season at sea and headed straight to Heathrow to meet up with the Global Enduro mob, who I would be riding with in India. It was a tired group of 30 guys who arrived at the spectacular Raddission Hotel in Shimla, northern India, almost two days later.

First few days went real well – then came freak rains, monsoon very early. And we went from views of stunning snow covered peaks to floor length cloud cover and crazy landslides, rocks bouncing past the motorcycles. Like being in a Hollywood disaster movie. Now, in India they import absolutely nothing, everything is built in country by Indian companies or local companies with international partners, like the Hero Honda motorcycles or Suzuki Maruti cars. Unfortunately with most of these home grown products, cheap price wins out over build quality everytime. With one notable exception, which I had already spotted – lots of JCB’s and Caterpillar dozers. I hadn’t given it much thought until we got trapped between landslides. Those boys work them JCBs and dozers harder than anything I’d ever seen. On the edge of drop-offs of hundred of metres. And they have to do it every Autumn and every spring as the mountains move to reclaim the roads. Scary dangerous. No wonder they buy the real deal.

So nature prevailed and we were unable to make the high passes we were hoping for – we missed it by one day. Which is probably just as well, as we would have been trapped up there with 150 slack packers unable to get down, cold, at over 4000 metres, in the snow, with limited supplies, fighting over the last bowls of rice and bottled water. Some of them were trapped for ten days. Give me the lower valleys and a bit of rain over that kinda chaos.

Something about Aussies that inspires nicknames, possibly because the average Aussie always refers to his mates by some obscure tag that the sufferer picked up somewhere along the way. Amongst one of the last groups we took out we had Princess, Bug and best of all ManWhore, or Mal. Stopping for a drink in a small village we attracted the usual crowd of bemused locals – a bunch of ten foot tall Aussies, dressed like colour blind power rangers and pulling wheelies on request were bound to attract a little attention – with one local guy in especially high spirits and leading the crowd. A natural mimic he was copying everything the Aussies were saying and throwing it right back at them. Then one of the guys pointed at Mal and proclaimed him ‘ManWhore Wussbag’ and it struck a chord. Our new friend repeated an immaculate ‘ManWhore Wussbag’ which had everybody in immediate hysterics. So he did it again, got the same reaction, bikers and locals in fits of laughter. So if you’re a dirt biker travelling from Ta Seng to Don Diek and someone comes out of a village and accuses you of being ‘ManWhore Wussbag’ don’t be offended, it’s just the Aussies have been through town. Hopefully Taz got it on helmet cam so it might even make YouTube…watch this space…

Even by our own standards of culinary daring-do, a recent four day tour from CamEx HQ, round Sihanouville and down to Koh Kong, broke all records on the variety of road tucker. In four days we managed to sample Khmer (noodle soup, curry, raw spicy prawns), Thai (spicy seafood soup) Russian (palmeny – Ruskie ravioli) Greek (coca-cola ribs) and Mexican (Hurleys knock-out chicken tacos and margaritas on the beach). Not bad for a sleepy little backwater. I’ll start that diet when I get back to the UK. Honest.

Went to a Classic Scramble at my local motocross track in Wales. Loads of pre-75 Brit Irons with open pipes having the wheels absolutely ridden off them by maniacs in open faced helmets and rugby shirts. Old school two-stroke mxers like Yamaha YZ490s and Maicos, the air thick with the smell of Castrol R30 two stroke oil. Bloody Brilliant. I went with Greg the Digger Mun who had cut parts of the course with his JCB and knew the guys who were putting the show on. Greg told me “you gotta meet this bloke, 72 years old and still racing. Right Character.” And so we bumped into the old gent at the top end of the circuit. “You not racing today then” says Greg. “No, sold my bike on Wednesday.” He replies “Had a bit of a stroke or a heart attack on Tuesday. Hurt like hell. So I sold the bike the next day.” Oh. “Did you call an ambulance” says Greg. “Aw, noo,” old man replies “house was in too much of a mess, I’d have been embarrassed.” He says, and wanders off to check another part of the course. Right Character Indeed!
The same day I got an e-mail from Travelling Don, who missed myself and Debs by a day on a remore part of the Ho Chi Minh trail in Southern Laos. Although he did bump into a couple of hardy cyclists we had met the day before, who must have thought all dirt bikers in remote parst of SE Asia know each other. Don sent me a picture of a 72 year old guy battling the sand of the Death Highway, Ratanakiri to Mondulkiri, on a BMWR80GS. Top effort!
Hope I’m still causing as much mechanical mayhem as these two guys at three score years and twelve.

I’m proud to say I’ve had a small piece of my ramblings published in my favourite dirt bike magazine – TBM or Trail Bike Magazine- this month (April 2008) in the UK. It’s in a section called Holidays from Hell – Part 2…Mel, the mags Dep Ed, slung all her dirt bike tour advertisers an e-mail a couple of months ago asking us to dish the dirt on our beloved clients for this section. Names were changed to protect the innocent of course. Mine was about a little trip with did a few years back with the Gnarley Bikers of Bangkok. At a newsagents near you now!

Climbing a mountain covered in lush rain forest there’s always going to be a danger of a little down pour, and this has been quite a wet ‘dry’ season. On the morning of our assault we looked up the steep sided slopes from the village at the base, the summit was obscured by cloud, so there looked like a fair chance we were going to get wet. As it turned out we got a two and a half hour down-pour from first camp on the morning of day two, at around 1200 metres. The sprinkle continued until we got just under the summit and out of the cloud line at around 1500 metres, making the jungle even more green and lush. Tramping along with packs and under dark ponchos lashed by the rain, did conjure up images of ‘Boys out on patrol’ as seen in wet Vietnam-War movies…
The pig trails and deer tracks that make up a fair proportion of the path through the bush to the top are becoming a little bit more established, but with tree cover so thick GPS signals are at best intermittent at worst completely unreliable (at the summit mine read 922 metres, when the height is much closer to 1822!) it’s still very easy to get lost amongst the thick foliage, as Philippe from the Pocket Guide found out last year. But getting lost is not always a bad thing…:
“I hired some guys from the bottom of the mountain who said they knew the way to the top. It became apparent that they didn’t about half way up when we became hopelessly lost. But while lost we came across an aeroplane crashed in the jungle. It was like something out of Indiana Jones. It was a twin engine DC4 or Dakota. The body of the pilot was still in the chair complete with watch and flight papers in his top pocket.”
The plane is thought to have gone down sometime in the 50’s and lain undiscovered ever since. That’s makes it two plane crash sites on Aural and, I’m sure, the mountain has other secrets she is just as loathe to reveal. What might be found in the next 50 years?
The trek went so well we’re already making plans for the Third Annual Chinese New Year Expedition Aural for February 2009. Watch this space for details.
And before we go a big shout out to the guys from the LWF, who must have walked the mountain just before us for spray painting rocks and trees with yellow arrows, trek dates and their initials, and to the head of the mountain reserve and his boys, who have put a Buddha statue on the old observation point on the summit – your trail of trash will make it so much easier for others to find their way to the top in future. Who cares that Aural is a pristine, untouched national park and a national treasure, it needs decorating with graffiti and plastic bottles. Thanks Guys!

Will Red Dread Hero get his seven wishes? (see previous entry for more details).

Having brought the Famous Brown Hat from home the Indiana Jones bit was already well on the way to being realised. We did three days of intense lessons in how to ride a dirt bike down at HQ in Sihanoukville. Falling off the bike within the first 5 seconds of getting on it wasn’t the best start we could hope for, but he picked it up quickly after that (literally, very embarrassed..). Then we threw all the gear in the back of the truck and headed north.

First stop the Monastery in Phnom Penh to get a blessing and meet the Monk who would later provide Richie with his animist Tattoos. After seeing him ride a bike, we were going to need the blessing I could tell. The Monk splashed the Holy Water around while muttering incantations before sending us on our way with a cheery wave. We’d return at the end of the road trip to face the bamboo needle. My buddy Srah, who starred as the cyclo side-kick to Dillons lost hero in City of Ghosts, and myself had been on the trail of ‘The Tattooed Man’ from the movie, a real life respected and venerated animist Tattooist to give Richie his tats. Unfortunately since making the movie he’d passed away. Instead we’d tracked down a monk who practised the ancient art. No motorised guns here only bamboo and needles.

Then we caught up with Joe at the Mekong Crossing in Kompong Cham for a fine curry, burger and some scary stories about some Extreme Rally Raid guys led by Big Ben. Joe just loves to pull those stories out and scare the punters before a big trip…

Out with the dirt bikes and off to the Hill Country, to hang out with the Hill Tribes. I had originally planned to take us over the ‘Death Highway’ between Mondolkiri and Ratankiri before I’d learned how little riding experience Richie actually had. Zero. And the DH has experienced guys in tears and rags. The long way round it is. Richie has his first high speed dirt get off, grabbing too much of everything coming over the brow of a hill. Big cloud of dust later and the bike is upside down and he’s standing over it looking bemused. Almost as entertained as the Khmer guys going the other way in a battered and overloaded pick-up truck. They jumped down, laughing, helped him pick the bike up and sent him on his way. No major damage done. Ratankiri next and Hill Tribes. Tick. No stampeding elephants yet, oh well, can’t say I’m disappointed.

Richie is well getting the hang of this off-road lark and makes easy work of the deep sand which runs for long sections to Preah Khan, much to my surprise. No disrespect to him, sand throws everyone off when they try it for the first time. Lucky it’s a nice soft landing. We camp in the middle of the massive temple complex, under a fantastic starry sky (very little light polution out here). The ‘guard’ drives into town to get us a beer and a very fresh chicken, and even comes back with a couple of buddies to help us drink the beer. Top man. And even provides a sing song for us round the campfire. Great night and camping in an Angkorian Temple. Tick.

To be continued…

Twelve days of the most Extreme Riding to be found anywhere, with the most Extreme Tour Guide your likely to meet, Big Ben. Eleven of us started and much to the surprise of all concerned eleven of us finished (albeit with one rider, Mark, doing the main highway between party locations after damaging his knee). Ten years the Big Man has been trying to break bikes and riders and this was his first 100 per cent finishing rate. Better luck Next Year Ben!