Even the best laid plans....

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We had a rest dat in Pokhara when Raul's bike got fixed , Kjell's got a new set of chain and sprockets and mine som general love and tenderness.



It's surprising how easily they squat on the ground and fix your bike, oil everywhere and very few tools, it's 30 years back in time when mechanics were dirty and oil all over the place, and not even the tiniest computer anywhere.



Newly oiled bikes and still dusty we roll back to the hotel and then it's dinnertime and maybe a beer.



As my digestive system is intercoursed by the food I decide to abandon the veggie diet and go for a steak with potato wedges, yummy I feel better almost immediately.



Kjell's got a fixation on spagetti carbonara, which he eats almost every day for dinner and insists that coke does wonder for his stomach so against all my principles I have a coke, I've never like coke but with a spot of rum it goes down.



We, the carnivores, hit the street and go back to the hotel to sleep



After a nice breakfast in our hotel in Pokhara we decide, well we had already decided, to go to Bardiya, a national park in the western Nepal.



Pack the bikes and off we go, my newly lubed levers are smooth as silk, we head toward Butwal where we're to take a right and go west.



The road is great, no better it's lovely, more curves than you can ask for and not that much traffic, we zip along and stop for a tea in some ram shackle road side restaurant, the plates and the cutlery is on the ground outside being pre cleansed by hens and dogs.

No wonder that my stomach is FUBARed.



We normally stop every hour for tea and in between as to see that every one is doing well. After the tea we go on enjoying the beauty of Nepal and and the curvy road, Raul goes first and is gone in a jiffy,



I'm last as always, careful does the trick, when I come around a bend and see a bike in the ditch and Kjell lying on his back a meter or so beyond in the ditch, not moving a fin.



I brake and get off my bike in three shakes and get down in the ditch and he's alive!



Fuck, that was on Pucker moment.



We talk and he can move all his limbs and feel every part of his body but is a bit incoherent.



I remove his helmet and we gently lift him to a sitting position with his back towards the mountain, we , is me and a zillion Nepalese who have stopped and kindly offer their assistance.

As he sits there he goes into some kind of shock and for a while you can only see the whites of his eyes and his faces is paler than a fish's belly.

Being Kjell, who has a bit of everything in his pack including a coke, he has a few sips and slowly the sugar pulls him out and some colour comes back in his face.



The police comes and they also stop a car who is in locus of an ambulance that takes him down to the local infirmary.

Raul has come back when somebody saw him down the road and told hime that a biker had had an accident.



Kjell gets a check up and then we try to find some food and end up with bananas and cracker and coke, sugar, carbs and more sugar for him and he slowly gets alive again.

Thank Dog for ATGATT, all the gear all the time, hadn't he worn his back protector, I even don't want to thing what could have happened to his spine.

Slowly slowly we get down to Butwai and find a hotel and the dinner.



The next morning Kjell says that he's not going to Bardiya because he's not feeling too kosher and tells us to go on without him.

What kind of manure is that, Raul and I tell him that there's no way he's going anywhere on his own so we cancel Bardia and got to Chitwan national park which is on the road back to Kathmandu.



We're now in the low lands of Nepal and it's warmish and a lot more traffic, on national highway number two..

We get rooms in a hotel with a very nice garden, get sorted and have a nice sun downer down by the river.



We arrange for a whole days worth of game drive in the park and stroll down the main road in the search of refreshments and dinner.

The restaurant serves the best meal I've had so far and the waitress is a lovely lass with a big smile and as we have to be up at six we hit the sack early.



My bed has two mattresses as it has a foot board and is too short for me, with the two mattresses my feet hang out over the end of the bed, as usual.

A lousy breakfast and we're off, a canoe across the river and our jeep awaits us and we set forth to infiltrate the park in the search of wild life.

The elephant grass is so high that you can't really see any thing as we bounce around on the bumpy road.

By three o'clock or so we've seen a monkey, some deer and the rear part of a rhino and had a nice and tasty lunch.

Frustration is rampant and and we just want to get back and rinse the dust out our parched throats when the driver stops and asks us if we saw the tiger that crossed the road, nope ,nope and nope.

We stop the car and wait for about fifteen minutes and then the Tiger comes out on the road some fifty meters or so behind us, thankfully the guide has some good binoculars and we see it as it saunters down the road away from us, unfortunately no pics but I imagine that most of you know what a tiger looks like, a big cat with stripes in it's fur.

We meet some Dutch girls that were on a parallel game drive for dinner and get to bed rather late, past eleven which is a record.

Raul and I have decided to cut our trip short as we can't be arsed to ride all the way back to Bardiya so we go with Kjell towards some lookout from where you can see Mount Everest, of course it's already programmed into his sat nav, he's prepared for everything, to Nagarkot

Going from Chitwan to Nagarkot is going uphill on a very narrow road against the traffic which is quite heavy due a holiday, its very steep in some parts and we're running low on petrol, the local bike shop sells us 3 litres each, in 1 litre water bottles..

Same lovely Asian workshop as In Pokhara, everybody is on the floor and few tools and lots of people.

As always in Nepal we're treated with friendliness.

We slug on and have lunch is some wayside restaurant serving Dal bat, the most common dish in Nepal, lentils, rice, some kind of chutney and some veggies, it's cheap bunot for me, well I like it but other parts don't.

The view is breath taking and the it's all down hill from there, I actually prefer going uphill as it's easier to stop, a bit difficult as the ratio between up and down is 50/50.

We arrive sound and safe in Nagarkot, Kjell is rather worse for wear.

The last 25 km or so are quite bad considering that we're going to the best spot for watching the Himalayas , we find a nice hotel and soon find our way to the restaurant for cocktails and dinner.

We can see an itzy bitzy peak jutting up over the clouds and then the light is gone.

The next morning we rise with the sun to see the mountains, no such luck, the mists rises as quickly as the sun and there are brief glimpses of peaks but nothing more.

Raul and I hit the road to explore a bit and it peters out into nothing, we go down a steep slope and my bike feels really weird, like the rear has increased in weight or a flat.

There were some kids running around screaming and chasing us, they are now half onto my bike and scoot off when I holler at them.

I''m not that good on off road on my lonesome but four up is a big no no.

We get back to the village and have lunch and then back to the hotel, I forgot to bring my dinner jacket so it's the normal ruffians that dine together.

The next morning we see some of the mountains in their snowy splendour as we eat breakfast.

Then it's back to Kathmandu to return the bikes and pack up.

We meet Grant and another Yank that went up the same road, the only I might add, to Mustang and we do what every male would do in those circumstances, we sit down and have some beers and talk about our trips.

Dinner bed and then it's time to go home.

Conclusions: Nepals is nice, the Nepalese are very nice, the food is kind of not very nice bar a few exceptions. Some of the roads are not roads, mere rocky paths.

Would I go there again, probably, but not on a Royal Enfield, anything but.

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Photos

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Working elephants in the early morning