The Gratuitous Umlaüt Motorcycle Club

It started, like most good ideas, over a beer.

We'd met a couple of ragtag randomers in Agra who were also on their way to Nepal. Bike touring came up in conversation, one of us had done it before, it was perfect! Rock n roll, rev it up let's ride.

We trekked with these oddballs (see previous entry) and then our collective focus turned to the upcoming petrol-fest. The first and most obvious problem was that we didn't have a bike between us. This should have posed no problem - You can't throw a stone in Pokhara without breaking the window of a bike hire shop. Up and down, we did the rounds looking for something suitable. Hmm, not so much on offer when you actually have some criteria, like comfort for example - or safety.

Eventually we managed to scrounge up a pair of dubiously named Yamaha "Enticers". Ok then.

Despite the paedophile-inspired name, we took these machines on a short half-day trip as a bit of a shakedown before the main event. Up the winding mountain roads we went, over the top and winding back into the next valley - perfect roads for a bit of scenic touring. Perfect except for the potholes that is - there are lots of those.

Everything was amazing - there was talk of buying our own bikes - we were unstoppable! Then it got cold. Then it got dark. Then our headlight started sort of...dying. This wasn't supposed to happen - we had the newer looking bike anyway! Still, it did happen and it was pretty scary. Traffic in Nepal is a bit dodgy at the best of times, but when you're light-less at night it's a tad worse.

Unfortunately, we survived long enough to rent the same bikes again the next day (they did fix the light). With the promise of a 5 day road tour things looked pretty rosy and we set off in high spririts. We set out vaguely in the direction of Kathmandu without much of a plan. The road out of Pokhara was pure smog but afterwards things opened up a bit and we found ourselves cruising through some really beautiful scenery.

As night closed in we stopped at the somewhat-misleadingly named "Holiday Resort". After some negotiation we got a couple of the 'basic' rooms for a bit more than we'd wanted to pay, and settled in for the night. Something was wrong. Oh yeah, we hadn't seen another guest the whole time. The place might as well have been deserted. A ghost resort. Of course, the word 'resort' means something slightly different here, being like a bit of a spread-out hostel with outdoor areas and an un-manned bar. No problem, we're hardcore travellers, we don't want luxuries anyway. Breakfast would have been nice though!

Eventually we saw a couple of guests so at least the feeling that we were part of some kind of horror film subsided. As there wasn't any breaky on offer, we headed off early in search of food. While poring over the Nepal road map, we spotted a 'highway' running north from just beyond Kathmandu. This road went all the way to the Tibetan border. Sensing an adventure, we voted to give this route a go to see how far we could get before bad roads, mountains or (eventually) Chinese border guards stopped us. With this
plan in mind, the umlaüts rolled out for the day.

There was only one immediate obstacle, in the form of a nasty looking ring road around Kathmandu. We'd eyed this up on the map and didn't really like the look of it. Whatever, we'd deal with it in the morning, hopefully having slept just outside the city.

Looking back, it seems that our collective spirit seemed to be slowly dying from a point about an hour before Kathmandu. Here the roads turned into some kind of sick joke, the traffic (trucks and busses mostly) was solid and all-polluting and things went from fun to hellish pretty quick. There is no concept of 'roadside' repairs in Nepal. If a truck breaks down (and they do - often) they fix them 'on road' as there's usually nothing but a sheer drop next to the road itself. As one can imagine, this leads to all kinds of
traffic jams, usually up steep sections of twisty mountain blacktop. Not that it's all black either - this part of the journey would have been more suited to dirt bikes, as the road was part tarmac, part rubble for most of the way. Eventually and after a few hairy moments we crossed the pass and descended into the Kathmandu valley. Right on time for some peak hour chaos!

It's difficult to describe the sheer scale of the rush hour in this city... There are no traffic lights or roundabouts as we'd know them back home. An intersection could have several hundred cars, bikes, trucks and vans waiting in each direction, and be controlled entirely by a couple of guys in white gloves and a hat. It's mayhem. As luck would have it, our first black-hole like crossroads was also the site of our first break down. Eek. Wasting little time, we managed to push the bike off to the side but still managed to get in everyone's way. Vehicles appeared from every direction - all seemingly targeting our bike. The impending catastrophe never came and we managed to get the bike going again (a suspect clutch proving responsible) long enough to cross the evil intersection and park it.

More upset ensued thanks to the bastard clutch and unhelpful hotel staff, until we stumbled across a reasonable place to lay our heads. Showers were had by all and we headed out for dinner, which was both tasty and cheap. Score. The baying of wild dogs kept us up but all in all it wasn't a bad night.

Morning came. Plans changed. After the hellish struggle of yesterday, several members wanted to turn back. The group reached a consensus - we'd backtrack an hour or two and turn south, towards Chitwan national park where we'd bathe with Elephants and generally have more fun than we would by battling with trucks up to the border. First things first, we stocked up on Malaria tablets (less than 1 penny per week... hopefully they're at least somewhat effective!) and face masks to combat the terrible pollution - see picture of Ben's previously white tshirt for details of this! Yuk!

About 2 ours into our journey, we twigged that something was wrong - we'd been going for ages and still no turn off. A quick check with the locals confirmed our error. The stupid tourists had missed it. Not wanting to backtrack, we compromised again. We'd keep going back towards Pokhara and take the next turn south, in a town called Mugling, where we'd spend the night.

We arrived in Mugling. Being on the countries major trucking route and being (allegedly) rife with prostitution, it wasn't the most savoury of resting places. Still, we didn't mind and found ourselves reasonable accomodation for the night. We were relaxing in our room when the first wave of mosquitos hit. All of a sudden they were everywhere. For every one we killed, 3 more appeared like some bizarre undead army. We checked the bathroom - more! We quickly set to work cutting a swathe through the hellish hoardes.

Knee deep in wings and blood, the place was starting to look like a slaughterhouse. From across the hall came the occasional 'crack' of a flip-flop against brick that let us know we weren't alone in our struggle. After maybe half an hour (who knows, it could have been days, weeks even) the swarm subsided. We had been victorious. The bodies of our foe lay in tribute to our bravery - we had won the day.

Later that night, we sat around reflecting on the hidden meaning of reality and the nature of buddhist reincarnation, only to find (not surprisingly) that none of us believed in it. End of conversation.

Over breakfast the next morning, we made our 3rd and final compromise of the trip. The guidebook said that our road south was pretty bad, and full of trucks. "Screw the Elephants, let's just drive back to Pokhara". So we did. Today was much better on the roads - we had them to ourselves for much of the time and the views were amazing. Birds were singing, the air tasted cleaner. Life was good. Then the clutch packed it in.

We had pulled over to photograph the view and despite grabbing the lever with all my might, the bike wanted to keep going. Ok - engine OFF! With maybe...hmm, about zero experience between us, the boys looked into the problem. Luckily it appeared to be just the cable, which we thought we could probably rig into something working. We borrowed some rudimentry tools from a local man - we now had a tea spoon and a butcher's knife to work with. Things weren't going well but we made the best of it and after much effort we came up with something we thought should do the trick.

Time to try this baby out - fire it up and... still no clutch. The sun was beating down and we were getting a bit fed up with this. It was decided that Ben would take the other bike into town to try to find a mechanic... time passed.

...The mechanic returned with a new clutch cable and took about 2 minutes replacing and fine tuning it for us, all for the princely sum of about £3. Thank you! Back on the road, we made good time into Pokhara until when right at the last minute...nothing. Our bike again - this time the engine just seemed to die. If the bike really was out to get us, it could hardly have picked a better time to do it. Main street - bikes everywhere. Again, Ben was sent ahead on the other bike to the rental shop, where there was a lot of mucking about. Eventually a couple of the guys jumped on a bike and followed him back to the site of the breakdown, where they also failed to sort it out. We left it to them and got a ride to the shop. They blamed us.

We settled on paying the full rental amount (not what we had originally planned given the hassles we'd had) but under the threat of a full engine rebuild due to the apparently blown piston, paying the rental fee seemed like a good deal, and only left us down about £8 at the end of the day.

Speaking of which, it's the end of the day. Having bathed, chilled and written the blog

it's now time to hit the town for some pasta and beer.

Umlaüts out.

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