Fed-up with lockdown and dying for an adventure? Let’s start here, with my first one back in1998 – and how you can replicate at least part of it.
But first, a handy hint for any of you who stay at home and lead a normal life. Stand back from that corkscrew and keep your hands where I can see them.
It was New Year’s Eve in 1997, and my old mate Ian, home from where he lived in Delhi, called around with a nice bottle of red.
“Here,” I said, as I opened it, “do you know much about those Royal Enfields they’re still making in Madras?”
“Know anything about them? I should say so. I’ve got one myself and they’re wonderful. If you’re interested, I know Nanna the dealer in Delhi pretty well, and he’d send you one for about 865 quid, plus whatever the shipping costs are,” said Ian.
I drained my glass and thought what a very good idea that was. However, by the time we had finished the bottle, and another one, I came up with a much simpler idea.
“It would make much more sense to fly out there, buy one and ride back,” I said to a slightly blurred Ian.
“But you don’t know a single thing about motorbikes,” said Ian, who has suffered from common sense for as long as I’ve known him.
“That’s not true. I did my test three years ago. I know they’ve got two wheels and go until they stop. Besides, my dad used to race them, so it must be in my genes.”
“And how many miles have you done on a bike?”
“Well, let’s see. I’ve been to Lisburn and back for the test – about 30, I suppose.”
I’m not quite sure what happened after that, but five months later I found myself sitting on a red Enfield in Delhi. Beside me on a yellow one was my mate Paddy Minne, since they were the colours of Nambarrie, the tea company whose MD Brian Davis had sponsored us to bring home the first leaves of the season.
We were 7,000 miles from home, we were sitting on the only way we had of getting there, it was 46 degrees in the shade, except there wasn’t any, and we were looking out at roads on which 125 people die every day.
And if we thought India was chaotic, Pakistan made it look like Switzerland by comparison.
In the Baluchistan Desert, which the Foreign Office had warned us not to go through or we’d be kidnapped and shot, we ran out of fuel one day near Quetta. It was 51C, and as we stood there scratching our heads, two men appeared from behind a sand dune carrying Kalashnikovs.
The Foreign Office had been right for once I thought as the taller of the two stopped in front of us.
“Sorry to bother you, chaps, but do you need some fuel?” he said in a cut-glass Oxford accent.
“W-w-well, yes, we do actually,” I spluttered.
They wheeled the bikes around the dune to reveal a Mad Max-style village surrounded by smuggled cars, bikes, guns, drugs and barrels of Iranian fuel, filled both tanks, charged us 50p and sent us on our way with a cheery wave.
In Iran, day after day, we were treated to hospitality which would have shamed most Western nations, and in Erzurum in Turkey, we mentioned to the owner of our little hotel that we had no insurance, since every UK company we’d approached had just laughed at us.
“Try the insurance company down the street. Big grey building. Can’t miss it,” he said.
We walked down, and found rows of chaps sitting at desks. Paddy strode up to the first and asked if he could sort out insurance for two motorbikes.
“No. Quite impossible,” said the man.
“Why ever not?” said Paddy.
“Because this is the office of Turkish Airlines.”
We found the right office, and explained ourselves again to a man with a moustache the shape of a water buffalo’s horns, and only slightly smaller.
He hauled out a calculator, tapped, and breathed in sharply.
“I’m afraid that will be £5,” he said.
“Is that just Turkey, or for all of Europe?” I said.
“All of Europe? Good heavens.” More tapping, and an even sharper intake of breath. “I’m afraid that will be £7.”
We handed over the money and emerged with a piece of paper which may or may not have been entirely useless.
It certainly didn’t help Paddy when a Turkish mechanic snapped a pushrod in half, leaving us stranded in Istanbul for 10 days while Nanna sent a replacement.
Or when he hit a stray sheep in Bulgaria, leaving Paddy badly bruised and the Enfield’s forks mangled.
He limped on through Romania, Hungary and Austria, and one night, soaked to the skin, we were checking into a little hotel in southern Germany when the owner asked us what sort of bikes we were riding.
“Enfields,” I said, sure she would never have heard of them.
“Really? My friend Jochen Sommer is the main Enfield dealer for Germany,” she said.
A quick phone later, and the following afternoon we were sitting in Jochen’s workshop watching him change the forks, with a grin on Paddy’s face as wide as it is possible for grins to be.
As we sat on the bikes in Calais waiting for the ferry to Dover, a middle-aged man got out of a car several vehicles ahead and walked up to us.
“You’re Geoff Hill, aren’t you?” he said. ‘I’ve been reading about you two in the papers. And is this Paddy, who killed the sheep?’
“Bloody hell,” said Paddy. “You kill one sheep, and you never get to hear the end of it.”
That night, climbing stiffly out of the saddle in the Lake District, I glanced down to discover that the entire air filter had worked loose and was only held on by the ignition key, against which it was leaning in a devil-may-care fashion.
“You can take the Enfield out of India,” said Paddy.
“But you can’t take India out of the Enfield,” I said, and was proved right two days later when we finally rolled into Belfast, with car drivers tooting and waving, for the grand ceremony of the handing over of the tea.
Fifty yards from Nambarrie HQ, with TV cameras, journalists and several dignitaries in sight, Paddy’s Enfield finally died.
We pushed it the last few yards and phoned the man from the AA, and when he turned up and worked his way through the wiring, it turned out that one of Nanna’s little helpers had replaced a fuse with a piece of tinfoil.
There. Having sorted that out at last, we produced the leaves we had carried all the way home, and Brian Davis put the kettle on.
There are, you see, few problems that can’t be solved with a nice cup of tea.
So happy planning. Next time, Route 66 – a ride every biker should do in their lifetime, and slightly easier than Delhi to Belfast.
The Facts
Way to Go, Geoff’s book on this adventure and Route 66 on a Harley, is available on Amazon.
Not surprisingly, there aren’t organised Enfield tours from India to the UK, but Blazing Trails (blazingtrailstours.com) has tours in India, Nepal and South Africa from £2,595, including flights.
Oh, and today’s Royal Enfields are much better built than the versions we used in 1998.
Get £30 off your insurance here: MotorcycleDirect.co.uk
