THE ENFIELD DIARIES - Published in Riders' Digest magazine

Part 1. 1998-2000

I’d been backpacking in Asia long enough to abandon commonly held concerns about protocol and safety. So when a dashing young Dutchman on a motorbike invited me to accompany him on his motorbike into a restricted zone in the Thar desert between India and Pakistan, it seemed perfectly normal. There’s something about India that makes the bizarre quite acceptable and I had not the least hesitation to go with him.

I’d collected information about local camel safaris from Jaiselmere in Rajasthan and was on my way for lunch to read through them and decide which one I would go on. As I approached a restaurant away from the tourist area on the main road, I saw a big, dusty man with red hair and a beard get off an dirty old-fashioned motorbike and enter the restaurant. As I had an interest in motorcycles I gave the motorbike a look-over before going inside to find the owner. It was unlike any of the modern bikes I had owned and I assumed it was an old British motorbike restored for travel in India. The rider was in the cool gloom inside the restaurant and asked him if he would mind if I joined him for lunch, apologetic as he looked hot and weary and perhaps wanted to be alone…

We spent the rest of that day together and before I retired to my crumbling hotel inside the walls of this sandcastle city in the desert, he had asked me to explore the area as pillion on his motorbike.

I abandoned the camel idea and we spent four surreal days together, blagging our way through security posts camping in the desert, letting down the tyres to ride across the sand. I learned that Enfields were originally English made but proved so suitable for all-terrain use in India, the Indian Army and Police bought and shipped the entire factory from Redditch to Madras where they have been made ever since meaning production had never ceased since their design in the 1950s. We camped unobserved in sand dunes and watched the sunrise and talked about our travels and our lives. We parted with each other’s postal addresses, not emails. “The one who isn’t going doesn’t wait for the bus to go”. He and the time we spent together became a memory as I continued to Mumbai to meet my daughter and he headed towards Pakistan. On my return to the UK three months later after a full year away, there was a letter from him waiting for me. I replied to the Dutch address he had given me. We said things like “Wasn’t it great! Where are you and what are you doing?” and that, I thought, was that.

He turned up on my doorstep in Bristol four months later and asked me to return to India, buy my own Enfield and travel with him. He was seventeen years younger than me, very handsome and an ex-lifeguard so it didn’t take more than a minute or two for me to decide. We spent a month or so getting to know each other better whilst he earned enough money for the trip. Thinking it would last a maximum of six months, I little knew that the most adventurous, audacious and exciting years of my life were about to begin.

When my shiny, new Enfield stalled in the chaotic Chennai traffic for the umpteenth time and I was deafened and choked by buses, lorries and motor rickshaws, I wondered if I’d made the right decision to spend £1000 on this machine for my 50th birthday. Why had I let Hendrikus’ Enfield travel tales inspire me and not listened to my friends and colleagues who urged caution?

“What about your pension?”, they’d cried when I told them I was giving up my secure career as a health visitor and going off to unfamiliar and probably dangerous places.

I eventually exited the city and was some way to learning that apart from having two wheels, Enfields are not a bit like the Japanese motorbikes I had previously owned.

“What do you mean, I’ve got to change the oil?” I retorted when Hendrikus told me about maintaining this relic of a past age. I’d never as much as picked up a spanner before, taking my Suzuki GS 500 for an annual service only once it was warm enough to emerge from the garage. I thought the little tool kit in the side box of the 500cc Bullet was for someone else to use, along with the manuals.

Sorting out documents was a lengthy, frustrating paper chase from one end of Chennai to the other and back again. In the end, fifteen signatures from five different departments had been required to take possession of my Enfield. I needed to go with the dealer to get a letter from the British Embassy which would enable me to apply for an Indian driving licence. I also had to provide proof that the money I had brought with me in Travellers’ Cheques was really mine. I needed a No Objections Certificate to prove the Enfield was mine and not stolen but was told at the office I would have to get a different form first from the AA. Then we had to go to the Police Crime Records office.

I had a crash bar, luggage racks for my soft bags, and car horns fitted, and paid extra to have the Enfield painted black. Standard with the bike were lifelong road tax for Tamil Nadu and ladies’ handles for sari-clad women pillions to hold onto, necessary for the families of up to five we saw on one motorcycle. I quickly had to unlearn modern bike foot controls. Not only was the gear-change lever on the right where the back brake should be, but the gears were ‘First up, all the rest down’. It gradually dawned on me that a huge part of travelling with this thing was the thing itself. Keeping it happy took up a good deal of the time. I’m a ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ woman. Hendrikus was an avid if not obsessive maintenance man. Even when I knew I’d only run out of petrol he wanted to strip the carburettor. I had to put my foot down sometimes but actually found the work of identifying and fixing problems fun and challenging, although if I’d been told before just how much attention it required I would probably have gone for a different motorcycle. It was a good way to learn how a single cylinder four stroke works as he insisted I watch and help every time jobs needed doing.

In March 2000 we left Chennai. Being on tight budgets we stayed in cheap hotels or once plush but now faded Government Resthouses. We slept by rivers, in parks or off-road in orchards. Twice my bike fell on me during the night as I slept beside it in mango groves and learned to tie it to a tree to stop being squashed and soaked by petrol. I fell in love with the bike, India and, after almost fifty years’ regimented normality, this blissfully unstructured and aimless life.

I developed a ‘travel grin’ of childish contentment. On quiet roads I could ride side-saddle or stand on the saddle with one leg out behind me, or cross my hands on the handlebars operating the throttle with my left hand enabling hand-holding with Hendrikus. He held sweets out for me to grab as I went past chugging on deserted roads. Sometimes the throttle cable stuck so riding with arms folded was fun. We rode without helmets whenever possible, rarely going faster than 40mph, (the road conditions not allowing for much more). We had no need to hurry and could talk to each other as we tootled along. I could feel the warm wind, hear the engine, smell the aromas and taste the dust of India and see all round. For me, it was worth the risk.

We passed villages made of mud houses with thatched roofs We chanced upon a wrestling competition in a dusty field in deepest Tamil Nadu.. Agile fighting between wiry, fit men dressed only in underpants was similar to ours only in that the winner was the one to get the opponent’s shoulders on the ground.

We joined in cricket games and went to markets for food and entertainment. I had my silver ring turned into ‘gold’ and my fortune told by a parrot who picked a card with its beak. I learned to enjoy chai, the sweet, milky tea which had made me retch in Asian homes when a health visitor. We ate street food and drank tap water as Indians do. Every day was an adventure. Sometimes we would travel as little as 50 kms before finding a place we couldn’t bear to pass. Other times we’d ride all day, stopping only for food and drink. Often we washed and cooled off in a river or water tank, joining local children with their water buffalo or camels. People were friendly and interested in us as we rode on country roads strewn with millet drying in the heat, where most foreigners don’t go. This is the real benefit of having your own transport. I’ve backpacked and travelled by bike. Backpacking is harder work. Everything has to be carried, bus and train times and tickets obtained. With a motorbike, you just sling all your luggage on the bike and go where and when you like, avoiding running into unwary people and animals, and enjoying roadside views, fruit and drinks. Just Heavenly! We always found petrol when we needed it.

India is noted for its bad roads and poor driving standards. I crashed into ditches to avoid dithering scooters and bicycles. The main roads can be awful with potholes and heavy, dirty traffic. In cities, traffic flows like water, a rather good system. Vehicles inch themselves into the flow, everyone shuffles to make room. Away from the cities, on the little roads, there is local agricultural traffic, huge hay loads, herds of goats or even ducks to contend with. A duck-keeper shepherded a thousand or so ducks to a large pond for their daily swim while we parked the bikes to watch them.

I never felt unsafe in India. Only when we had to sleep on a pavement in Calcutta one night and I woke to find someone trying on my glasses did I feel anyone would rob me. Yes, curious locals would surround us when we stopped for a fruit juice or for fuel, and fiddle with the Enfields’ levers and switches but luggage was left untouched on bikes for hours whilst we went to explore.

We went to Andhra Pradesh because Hendrikus wanted to do an IT course to help him get a job. After riding through a nature reserve, we stayed in Hyderabad for three weeks in a cheap room which flooded every time it rained. I breakfasted on delicious masala dosa with fresh mango and learned to ride my bike on my own through crowded streets, avoiding speed bumps, chickens, people and cows. One evening a calf got loose and I acted cowgirl, leaping off my bike to grab the rope around its neck. It was stronger, heavier and more desperate than me and it tore off dragging me behind it before I had to let go rather than be run over on the main road.

Finding some fresh coconut more crisp than it should be, I discovered a large piece of tooth had become dislodged so had a major rebuild done at a local dentist for which I paid a relatively small amount and which has been entirely satisfactory ever since.

I also took the opportunity to have a haircut at a Muslim beauty parlour where the women took off the outer wrappings to reveal fashionable clothes beneath. I watched intrigued when a procedure called ‘threading’ was performed to remove unwanted facial hair.

On a cinema visit, the manager who was also the ticket vendor, ice-cream seller, and projectionist, was so thrilled that two foreigners had graced his cinema with their presence, he treated us like royalty, showing us to the best seats, and not starting the film until we were comfortable. At the interval, he collected us for a ‘Thumbs Up’ Indian carbonated cola drink whilst he proudly showed us the projection room. Sad to say the twenty year-old British made sound system was unbearably loud and muffled, necessitating fingers in ears for most of “The Beach” which was hardly discernable anyway but the sparkle of our host more than made up for the film quality.

Battling with mosquitoes was an anticipated way of life. A spider in my sleeping bag wasn’t and I was left with tiny fang marks on my leg and the feeling that a cigarette had been stubbed on it. Scorpions like spending the night in boots. Frogs are soothing when you are sleepy at dusk after a day’s motorcycling if you don’t want a conversation without shouting over the croaking.

In Orissa, a rickshaw darting in front of me made me wobble and fall off. It was then I noticed primer under the black paint where I had a scratch on the tank. I had paid extra to have a grey bike painted black and had been well ripped off for a non-existent paint job. I laughed. It is all you can do in India, there being no point in getting wound up about anything.

It was so hot, my contact lenses almost became welded onto my eyeballs and after a lunch stop I returned to the bike and had nasty burns on the inside of my fingers when I pulled in the clutch lever. Sweat dripped off my nose even when I wasn’t doing anything. Mending punctures from fiendish thorns or discarded nails in blazing sun wasn’t much fun but generally I loved the heat.

River-crossings were plentiful and although I managed to keep the bike going through deep, rocky ones and skilfully negotiate awkward tracks, I’d occasionally fall off at the simplest obstacles. I hit a patch of sand and crashed, going flying into a hedge. At last Hendrikus had his wish to explore the carburettor when I kept stalling. A rubber washer in the choke had perished leaving it on permanently. A bit of inner tube did well as a replacement and is still there. We entered Puri at festival time when the god Jagannath is paraded around the streets and huge wooden chariots are made - from whence comes the name ‘juggernaut’. Here, also we saw a little hole in a wall where customers were furtively buying hash.

My bike had a service in Enfield-mad Cuttack in a brand new workshop which was blessed before the procedure with incense sticks and prayers.

We were now on the border between West Bengal and Bihar and had found a dhaba, a roadside restaurant truck stop where we would stay the night, under a canopy outside on charpois, wooden beds strung with …well, string! They had run out of beer and we were directed to a nearby off licence across the border in Bihar. Hendrikus came on my bike with all my luggage and we approached the checkpoint. The police officer wanted an astronomical amount for letting us through even though we said we would only be a few minutes. So I rode round the barrier and went on. After we’d bought our beer, heavy rain reduced visibility and my bike stalled at the barrier on the way back. As my police friend angrily approached I kicked and kicked the starter which was hard with Hendrikus on the back. Finally I was successful and rode off again at his raised fist. It would have been a most expensive beer if he’d caught me. The rain was torrential that night and in the morning the friendly manager said, “God has washed your motorbikes!”

We left the area with its dead dogs, goats and overturned lorries at the roadsides and made our way to Darjeeling which was like being in a different country. We had to stop and cool the bikes after low gear climbing for hours. Sikkhim was different again and we saw Kanchenjunga in the distance, the world’s third highest mountain. It was here that I discovered what happens when the Enfield’s neutral-finder doesn’t work. (I believe neutral-finders to be unique to Enfields) Leaving the mountainous capital, Gangtok, a long road descended into the distance. Already doing quite some speed, I kicked the neutral lever with my heel and took my hand off the clutch. Just before I went over the handlebar, I had the wit to pull the clutch in again as I snaked down the road. It had gone into second gear instead of neutral. I’ve never trusted it since, always letting out the clutch ever so gingerly.

Even though I had no carnet de passage (vehicle passport) I was allowed into Nepal and the ride to Kathmandu (one of my favourite five roads) was thrilling as I swung from left to right on the bends, up and down mountains. Nepal has a reputation for being slightly less whacky than India but here I saw a naked woman walking along a road as if it were quite the normal thing to do.

It was inevitable that at some point Hendrikus and I should lose each other. On a road to Delhi we each thought the other was in front. Fortunately we had already chosen a guesthouse there, either would wait until the other turned up. On the way my clutch cable broke and as I started to replace it, two local chaps turned up to help. They snatched the spanners from me saying, “No Madam, we must arrange this for you”. They sent a man to the local Enfield mechanic who came within minutes and the job was done. They then invited me to stay with them when I explained I had lost my partner. They took me out for a meal and gave me the best bedroom to sleep in. I found Hendrikus the next day at the Delhi guesthouse. My first experience of travelling alone had been a success.

Whilst waiting for my carnet to be arranged ready for Pakistan, we went to Kashmir with its armed Indian soldiers on every corner. On Srinagar’s lake, we stayed in a houseboat. To access this by bike I had to ride up a flight of steps, stopping smartly at the top to avoid riding into the lake a metre beyond.

We were turned back from the ‘pretty way’ through the mountains back to India as the army had intercepted a message that we had been spotted by the mujahideen in the forest. We had already been under curfew because of an attack on Hindu pilgrims at a festival we had visited only a few days before. The army engineers repaired an oil leak on my clutch case before we left, though.

The carnet took ages to arrive and Hendrikus went on to Lahore without me. I stayed at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, one of my favourite buildings. When the carnet arrived the border crossing into Pakistan went smoothly. We had some vague plan to try to get our bikes into China even though we knew it was highly unlikely. But a trip to the Chinese border would be interesting anyway. As usual, we did anything we could to ride on dirt rather than tarmac but the route we took was as hard as I could do or ever want to do again. We left the Karakoram Highway (KKH) at Naran and proceeded up the Khagan Valley which for the most part is little more than a goat track. I fell off countless times and once almost dropped over the edge and into a steep valley far below. Sharp, jagged rocks littered the track which was waterlogged when it wasn’t crusty and rutted.. I lost items from my luggage as the bike was being bounced and bashed on boulders. Every inch was hard-won, loosening nuts and bolts. I was scared and tired and insisted we camp as cold came with the dusk. In the morning the thermometer showed 5 degrees. An hour later it had risen to 48 degrees in the sun as I washed in a stream. We crossed a bridge with so few planks they had to be shuffled from behind us to in front by a man as we walked the bikes across. The track got harder and I lost count of the times I had to tell myself, “I can do it!”, because I knew there was no going back. We met nomadic people returning to the lower slopes with their sheep for the winter. Unlike in other parts of Pakistan I’d seen, women’s heads were uncovered, the mountain people having their own rules about that. We reached 4366 metres from where we could see Nanga Parbat, and began the final ascent to lawless Chilas back on the KKH. Some shortcut! Hendrikus’ front wheel fell off due to a lug snapping. String and cable ties to the rescue! Exhausted, we fell into a good hotel despite the cost. Next morning I gave a man who had five gunshot wounds some pain-killers. He was on his way to Gilgit some distance away as the rival gang who had shot him threatened to kill him at the local hospital. His ambulance was an open truck.

We were destined to have a long stay in Gilgit ourselves as Hendrikus’ battery was not charging. No Indian spare parts in Pakistan of course, so there was nothing for it, we bought many metres of copper wire and painstakingly wound two new coils using a vacuum cleaner nozzle as a frame for each. It worked and we travelled on to the Chinese border, through the gorgeous Khunjerab Pass where we were stopped by a man on a BMW being filmed on his travels. He told us he couldn’t go further due to snow and ice on the road and advised us to turn back. We scoffed at his heated hand-grips and carried on. At the border, after taking tea with the guards, we peeped over the barrier at the stunning snow-topped mountain ranges into China that we could not visit by motorbike. To make up for the disappointment, I slid about on the snow towed by Hendrikus on his Enfield. On the way back, because we were freewheeling to save petrol, we were unheard by a herd of rarely seen Himalayan Ibex which we observed for some time.

We decided to head west and spend the winter months in the Chitral area eventually moving into Iran from Balochistan when the passes opened again. We were making our way to beat the snow along the Shandur road when I was hit by a cherry red 4WD coming round a sharp bend in the mountain track. With river far below to the right and mountain immediately to my left I had nowhere to go and waited for the inevitable crunch. I knew my leg was broken. I looked down and my right foot was facing backwards. I reached down and felt the grinding of bone as I turned it to the front. A compound fracture meant a return by plane to Islamabad, flying in about an hour the same distance it had taken us three weeks by Enfield but the view was so stunning it was almost worth it. Would I go back to Britain or stay in Pakistan? As Browning wrote, “So free we seem, so fettered fast we are” !