'View from the saddle'

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France:

The roads are generally pretty good with little use of hot tar and scattering of gravel though the close knit tarmac which is great for race tracks and dry conditions leads to poor drainage. So in the rain the roads look like mirrors with lots of spray from the vehicle ahead and I just crawl along especially around the roundabouts.

If the roads are poor anywhere it seems confined to in the towns and villages. I found all the drivrs to be courtesy and well aware of me so they move over in good time. They all seem very good an indicating when going to pull out to over take and i have yet to see one lane hogger although i have mainly kept to the single or dual carriageways. As a blinding generality they do seem to like to keep their engine running when total unnecessary. The stink of fumes when I dived of the Paris perique was dreadful.

Roads are signed but instead of using the name and road number in the towns just a largish random place some distance away is shown with no hint of the road number. This along with the constant lazy use of 'autre directions' (other directions) or 'toutes directions' (all directions) make it very hard to get out of a town on the right road.

My advice would be take at least a compass. To get into the town usually easy as 'centre ville' is marked for every town it seems.

Italy:

Italy Tail-gating and over-taking whenever seems to be the main way of driving for the entire population young and old, male and female, car drivers and scooterists. Infact I was less than 2km into Italy before I was overtaking on a no-overtaking road.

The tail-gating is even more unnerving as they are way into my personal space. This is at its worse in the fast lane of the motorway. Typical situation will be me following a slowly overtaking vehicle from a respectable distance and a tail-gater right up my rear as he sees I'm not tail-gating the vehicle in front of me and so I am not giving the the guy in front of me the message he needs to get his overtake done faster.

The Italian motorist on the motorway also likes to drive a bit in one lane and a bit in another. Even the police do this but I can not work out why, it is not to let me through that is for sure!

During my 3 weeks in Italy not once was a hand waved or a smile given if I let someone into my lane or from a side road into the highway.

Open face helmet:

Open face helmet 28 days into the trip and I remain very pleased for wearing an open face helmet and for the Carberg Downtown S model I selected. Being open face I feel and experience so much more of the country I pass through as the smells, the heat and the light reach my senses.

Sub 40mph I tend to ride with the visor up. If it is very, very sunny and I am riding directly into the sun then I will drop the internal dark visor to protect my face from the sun's rays, I always ride wearing my optical sun glasses.

If it rains I drop the external visor and raise the flip up screen on my MRA touring screen and if I bend just a little further down I am then able to tuck my chin under air flow from the screen protecting me from the pain of 70 or 80mph rain drops. Being open face it is also easy for me to stop and ask directions of anyone on the street without having to remove my helmet to speak clearly or avoid intimidating them. When it is really cold I wear a balacava too altough I hope growing a beard again will negate this need.

Update: more than 20,000km later I still remain very pleased with my Caberg helmet.

Greece:

Greece I flew through Greece in just 3 days. The little I saw of the roads and drivers make it hard to formulate a clear impression. The main thing I noted was just as a road is clearly marked on your new road atlas it does not mean it is completed and ready to use. I did contemplate going down a sliproad the wrong way to join part of the new motorway when I could not see the proper entrance but in the end I did not. I hasten to add the sliproad was new, unused and coned off so no-one should have been coming the other way

Turkey:

Turkey Istanbul, like any big city,, was very busy but as long as you kept your wits about you and were willing to be decisive on your movements so the other drivers could react accordingly, either moving over or beeping they were coming through, it seemed to work. Infact I would say the Turkish drivers are far more courteous than the Italians. Generally on the motorways the drivers gave us bikers space. In Ankara the horn helps. A short bip means 'I am here' which translates to don't come any nearer. A long beep means 'you ?&@!#/*&'. Only Shell, BP and the Turkish PO fuel stations are recommended since, according to the locals, the other stations commonly mixed diesel or water with the unleaded. South eastern Turkey is know by the locals as little India so be wary of the cows wandering freely on the road

Iran:

Iran Each driver tries to make his own small gain to the detriment of the whole traffic flows in the large cities. This is best seen at roundabouts where often the exits off the round about are free of traffic while the traffic fights to get onto the roundabout. This does have the advantage of making it easier to cross the roads as the traffic is so slow you can just walk through it. When the traffic is flowing no vehicles take notice of the zebra crossings instead they continue just driving around the pedestrians. I tried stopping at a zebra crossing but it confuses both the pedestrians and the cars behind.

In southern Iran there is a massive investment in both new roads and upgrading from old single lane roads to modern dual carriage ways. Where this has been done it is to a high standard with fresh tarmac, white lines, numerous signs (most in Fariz and English) although very few fuel stations and even less service stations with restarants etc. The best place to buy petrol is where there is a massive queue of trucks usually at the stations out of town. It is perfectly fine to drive around and between the trucks to get to the unused petrol pump. As far as I could understand there was only one type of petrol though know idea of its octane rating.

The fuel card for the pumps I brought in Maku near the third fuel station through the town, paying $50 for 100 litres. At the station you give the attendant a further 1000 rial per litre, a handling levy I guess.

It was very noticeable how a far higher proportion of drivers obey the speed limits on the open roads than in Europe. Hardly surprising given there are so many police using speed guns on the network. They also seem to have a low tolerance. Since I was stopped for doing maybe 90kmh in a temporary 80kmh part of a motorway when the usual speed limits are 95kmh in the right hand lane and 110kmh in any other lanes.

With the big journeys and the lack of motorway service stations in Iran it is necessary to pee at the side of the road. Where possible I find a tree or bush to hide behind but if none exist, such as in the desserts of Iran, then I use my bike as a cover. The local men however seem to kneel down to pee when in the open how they don't end up with wet knees I'm not sure. The local ladies must have pee bags under their black chadors as I never saw them having to stop in the desert.

U.A.E.: (mainly Dubai and Sharjah)

U.A.E. The UAE compared with Iran is much safer with vehicles stopping at red traffic lights as they would in the UK and no small motorbikes buzzing all around. The safe feeling also extends of the road as anyone committing crime quickly gets deported so there are few petty criminals.

One of the first things you notice is the large size of the cars, since petrol is so cheap at 6.62 Dirham per American gallon (under 30p/litre) there is no incentive to buy small cars and this lack of environmental concern seems to continue with even rubbish thrown in the desert . For the motorcyclist the huge 4x4 cars means filtering between the lanes can be tricky at times as there is little space, luckily the lorries are kept off the main town roads between 6am and 10pm.

Most of the cars have very deep black tinted windows and air-conditioning so the windows are always up, this along with the lack of local people on motorbikes means it is not easy to just lean across and access directions as I used to frequently in Iran and Turkey.

The cities are completely dominated by numerous dual carriage roads and one way systems. Additionally the cities are not pedestrian (very few zebra crossings) or disabled person friendly (very high curbs) so there are very few options for doing legal or non-legal u-turns. Negotiating the city roads can be a real night mare one day I had arranged to meet a friend at a certain coffee shops he gave me the GPS co-ordinates I got within 200 metres only to find it was on the other side of dual-carriage way, 15km, 30 minutes and 2 further bridge crossings I finally arrived!

I arrived during the winter where the temperature dropped to a cool 9 degrees on night and this was reported in the news! It also rained, the first time for a year, and this quite hard for a few hours and the place came to a stand still as the roads have no drains so the water just pools creating huge flooded sections. Orange tanker lorries are dispatched to suck up the water but even three days after some roads remained deep in water. During the summer I understand the temperatures can rise to the mid-40s so few people have motorbikes on the road then.

The worst aspect is the sheer volume of traffic and it can only be set to get worse as endless sky scrapers are being built. Even though the roads are sometimes 6,8 or even 12 lane dual carriages, as is the main north-south Shiek Zayed road, they simple can not cope with the number of huge cars containing one person. A metro system is being built and is due for completion in 2009 but I can’t see how it will make any real difference as the culture is very car orientated particularly the local Emiratees who just honk their horns at the gas station and coffee shops if they want something brought to them. I don’t see them giving up their cars even if they have to take 2 hours to drive 10km to work at 6am. Having taking a ride up the Sheik Zayed road at night between the massive illuminated sky scrapers has to be experienced – it is a long way from being on a lane across the farm in rural Lincolnshire.

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Oman:

Oman Nearly the size of Germany with large areas of desert and with a population of only 2.2 million Oman is scarcely populated. To white faced strangers the local Omani Arabs are friendly and welcoming. However they, like the UAE locals, do consider themselves to be better than the Pakistani and Indian workers and are often rude to them.

There are many miles of delightful sandy beaches and bays to camp in. In the towns these can be the more popular spots and at night the locals will park up their cars and get out their Whisky and beer bottles and drink away. The locals are probably the worse I have seen for habitual littering so there are many tin can ring pulls, beer bottles and plastic bottles in some places. Some of the beaches have Pakistan and Indian workers living on them with the sole purpose of clearing up after the locals. Various turtles visit some of the beaches, e.g. Ras Al Jinz, and getting up early to watch them return to the sea was one of the joys of visiting Oman for me.

Numerous wadis, dry river beds, exist some are very beautiful spots. A highlight being the Wadi Bani Khalid, where a green fresh water warm lagoon is just perfect for swimming in.

Muscat is a modern sprawling city and very, very long (50+ km). It has new shopping malls with LuLu’s, Marks and Spencers etc; numerous building works but thankfully no high rise and high speed internet (Nizwa and Salalah I think being the only other places in the country). Many people from Dubai and Saudi are buying real estate in Muscat and prices, including rents, are increasing fast as it looks to be a good investment. Though be ware there is a positive job descrimation program in place but the expats I met in Muscat seemed to be happy and on good salaries. Most of the expats, like me, struggled to remember which day of the week it was as the weekend is Thursday and Friday. This means there are only 3 working days that co-inside with the rest of the world and likely to limit business to some extent.

Overall Oman is a very safe place, with various interesting sites and friendly locals. Visit it if you can.

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India:

India is big, mighty big. During the 11 weeks I spent in India I covered over 7,000km and saw only a tiny proportion of it, mainly the northwest and the area around Goa. Even though there are 1.1 billion people in India and the cities and slums are very crowded, it was still possible to find areas devoid, or nearly devoid, of people in which to stop to relax and enjoy the sights; (admittedly these places were not as frequently found as in other countries I have passed through to date).

Getting into the foothills of the Himalayas, around Dalhousie, and the prehistoric boulder strewn terrain around Hampi, were the two main natural beauty points for me. Many people recommended Ooty (Ootacamund) and Kerala as being further beautiful places to visit but time did not allow that for me.

The manmade structures of the temples and the Royal elephant stables in Hampi were worth visiting, while the Golden Temple in Amritsar was great to photograph under a setting sun. As my fiancée has not been to the Taj Mahal, I made a conscientious decision not to visit it, saving this reputed highlight for when we can do a trip together. Alang, where the big ships are rammed into the beach before hundreds of Indians begin to rip them apart to reclaim the steel, would have been a highlight for me but unfortunately the friend of a friend was not around on the day I visited so I could not gain inside access to the yard. From the outside it was just possible to see the ships but none of the action.

McLeod Ganj, the residence in exile of the Dalai Lama, and the Anjuna beach in Goa were two great places to relax with fellow travellers and enjoy some international cuisine. Otherwise known as taking a curry break (even two weeks after visiting India my guts were still struggling to recover).

There is no denying India is a dirty place, both on and off the roads. The road grime I had to wash off my face each night after riding was something I have never experienced before and when not riding - whether in the cities, villages or even at beauty spots - it was nearly impossible to get away from the mounds of litter. A perfect example was the Red Fort in Delhi, where numerous tourists go, yet huge piles of litter exist within sight of it and again at the Karla Caves near Mumbai. Here the paths and road ways were swept clean, but look a little over the edge of the path as it circles up to the caves and the glare of the plastic bottles and other rubbish, which has just been swept off the path and down the mountainside, shines back at you. Even at Manikaran, which is a really unique place with both fresh cold water and naturally hot spring water (claimed by both the Sikhs and Hindus to be a holy place), there were mounds of rubbish piled up alongside the river as if it was intended for dumping into the river. Thoughout India it was not unknown to be woken up at sunrise by the scraping sound of a small brush, made from twigs, being swept back and forth across a dusty concrete back yard as the dirt and litter from the day before were swept out into the street and for someone else to deal with – I never found out who though.

With plenty of cheap hotels all across India I decided not to carry my tent and camping gear, just taking an inner silk sleeping bag liner and an inflatable mattress. The silk liner was a revelation as, like my tent in Europe, it made each night feel the same. Thus, when I felt the silk fall across my body at the end of the day it was as if I had arrived safely home. However the lining was not mosquito proof and in both Delhi and Goa the mozzies seemed to like to feed themselves on the fresh white meat of a Westerner. Because of this, I carried a mozzie net, a head net, both insect spray and cream and eventually started to take the anti-malaria pills I had carried from the UK; though whether this was essential is questionable as a malaria test was only £5 and took less than 20 minutes at the hospital I went to in Goa.

Among other aspects for which India is famous are its huge population, its religiousness and its bureaucracy. The government were trying to persuade the populous that one child per family was best in an attempt to bring population growth under control. Nevertheless, the poor uneducated people still seemed to be copulating away without contraceptives, going by the number of children I saw running around the slums or attached to a beggar at a set of traffic lights.

From the religious point of view, I found the Indians to be fervently dedicated , with this affecting everything and everyone. I cannot recall meeting a non-believer there. When my engine was being rebuilt, work could not commence on grinding the valves until prayers had been made to a small shrine, built into the wall of the back street machining shop I was using. Even the engine could not be started after the work until sweets had been placed on it to appease a god. However, I did find all of the religions open and welcoming to me as a stranger and tourist, allowing me to wander about their holy buildings unlike the Islamic mosques of Iran, which were off limits to me as a non-Muslim. The Jain religion was most interesting as they do not believe in harming any other living creature, sometimes wearing facemasks to prevent accidental ingress of a fly and they take being a vegetarian to an extreme by not eating eggs or any root vegetable. They also give their bodies to the vultures and the sun to dispose of, probably the greenest way of getting rid of a body I can think of, with the exception of the need to transport the bodies to a special place. Interestingly, the Jains were also the richest of the religions, as for some reason they controlled the gold and silver markets. With so many religious believers and therefore a proportionate number of buildings devoted to prayer, it was not long into my time in India before I had added temples to the internal list I have of items I really do not need to see any more of; along with churches, cathedrals and mosques. Being in India for the Diwali festival of light was a lucky, if dangerous, happening. For in Diwali the Indians go firework mad. Even as a firework fan, I found 3 consecutive evenings, each of 6-7 hours, of continuous bangs and cracks of the loudest magnitude tiring and when out in the streets, scary as the crackers were lit everywhere: the roof tops, the roads, pavements, and balconies etc.

The bureaucracy in one sense was heightened because of the Mumbai bombings that happened during the November of my visit but luckily while I was in Delhi. Some of the hotels were taking thumb prints as well as photocopies of my passport. To see if a train was available for the day I wanted to travel, I had to fill out a form at the station (which involved a 30km taxi ride as it was not possible to book on-line), which asked numerous questions such as the age and sex of the passengers. Eventually, when my turn in the queue came, I was told the train was full that day, so I asked for the following day instead and even with the form in front of him the ticket officer managed to give me a booking for the next month instead of the next day.

Of course the other thing that India is renowned for in the Western world is its toilets. The worst I had to use was probably a dirty breezeblock shack with no roof and a door that would not shut in full sight of the restaurant, though with no roof it did not smell as bad as some. Generally, it was best to grin and bare it and for sure an unclean squat toilet is far safer to use than an unclean sit-down one.

Throughout India you will see women doing very manual jobs, normally associated with men in the Western world, such as repairing roads, delivering bricks to the brick layers or carrying stones and mud in baskets on their heads. Having visited the mind opening Gandhi museum in Delhi, I understood why introducing a machine, even as basic as a wheelbarrow, would be harmful to India as it would mean many poorly educated people, and especially the women doing these very manual jobs, could be put out of work instantly.

Be prepared to pay 20 times as much as the locals to visit some of the tourist hotspots,. This is something that made me feel as if I was officially being ripped off by the government and is not conducive to encouraging tourism.

And then there is the jam. Having been brought up on my mother’s homemade jam containing lots of fruit and then, in Sharjah, enjoying Stephan’s extraordinarily delicious homemade jams before flying to Delhi, India’s was a disappointment. Even as I passed through the strawberry fields, I never saw jam that was more than a very sweet fruitless jelly tasting only of sugar.

Overall India was a positive experience, but as it is such a big place and with the average road speed being so slow you need to allow a lot of time to explore it by motorcycle and 4 months was certainly not long enough.

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