Enfields In India with Global
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.