The Yetis Continue..

So 3 became 2.. now Shippers normally was the one pushing for a nice hotel with a pool, quite a rarity until he left,then we managed to stumble across a Royal Lodge in the centre of the lake at Pokhara and chilled there on quite a few occasions, facilities were minimal, only hammocks, pools, lush gardens, beer, surrounded by the sound of the jungle, the usual really! We then started to formulate a rough plan with the help of a very generous landlord we met there called Mark, a Brit who had been to Nepal a few times (26 to be precise) so the knowledge and contacts were priceless!




Nepal was at our beckon call, but all the time thinking about how we were going to deal with the Crow, after all, we could end up in a world of shit, illegal importation etc. So we decided to have a go at the usual; just a bit of Paragliding through the Himalayas, a spot of National Park action on Elephants, open-air World Cup viewing with the locals, experimenting with the Crow against all the locals advice and the obligatory naked swimming in the freshwater lakes! Ahhhh, the feeling of freedom!



A few highlights; running off the side of a mountain with another man pressed against your ass and some material above your head in the hope that this combination will keep you alive.. relativley expensive but well worth the experience!




We then decided to go up to the view point where you are able to see the sunrise over a panoramic view of the himalays, so quite high, we thought after seeing 2/3s of the 'road' the day before we could go all the way even though tourists on arranged tours have to walk to the top as it is considered almost inaccessible.

The Crow however flew up, no problems at all...






Not strictly true; stuck in 1st most of the way, we disturbed the mountain peace somewhat, attracting scores of kids who would run along side, jump on the poor crow hanging off her cheering and laughing 'Tempo Tempo' (later we found out this meant 3 wheeler).



After passing all the parking stops much to the locals amusement, astonishment and againts all their advice - we did hit hard times and the Crow had to soak up some serious boulder pain on some unbelievable gradients, all of this at full power and completely out of control! "12 people, roll down and dead a few days before" said one of the locals! We did have to empty her out completely, carry a lot of stuff up alongside, and push her some of the way, BUT she made it!!!!!! Right to the top!


We set up camp, well, eventually, after establishing we were pegless due to a hole in the bag, we had to deploy some resourceful thinking, borrowed a knife off the army to make some pegs and found some random iron girders to ensure our home was going nowhere! Then we had some whisky and brandy, bought some wood and built a fire using our petrol supply..(nothing more on this, all I can say is we had a lot of fun, and you only need a small amount to actually get her going, using anymore may literally blow you off your feet!) So we listened to music and waited for the sunrise looking all around us at the world below on a crystal clear, silent night, quite the tremendous time!





On the way down, we were offered the chance to invest in a hotel being built, met with even more bemused looks and cheering kids and had some rocks thrown at us to get us to stop, not ideal. (This was a one-off, but a good reminder to keep your wits about you!)

So we came down, did a two day trip South to Chitwan National Park, a quick Elephant and Canoe safari taking in the odd Croc, Deer and Rhino before crusing back North for some more lake action!






This time on Kayaks, paddling as the sun was going down, just enjoying life, then we started to get photographed, on approaching our voyeurs we were offered Tequila, in Kayaks, on the lake.. of course we accepted and had a drink with our Nepalese hosts, all in a days work!
The next lake was for the locals, much much cleaner, quieter and ideal for some naked swimming! (Sounds a bit homo, but it was immense to be able to do this surrounded by the Himalayas with the only sound being our bodies, hitting the water trying to do funny penguin dives off the boat!)




It became habit to watch most of the matches in Open-Air bars from 5pm onwards (even Englands dismal performances); a good place to meet Nepalese Mafia, a few more English and of course a guy (Rick) who has a business buying and selling Indian & Nepalese vehicles..what a coincidence.. So this is where we left the Crow, she's gone into hibernation for the Monsoon season and out again in September to flaunt herself and hopefully find a new owner ready for her next adventure! Contact mattprior@live.co.uk if you are interested! We then jumped on a bus to Kathmandu, cruised Bhaktapur (old-school, preserved Nepal)and engaged in some shrewed local purchases, which when valued properly back in Kathmandu were found to be worth up to $2000!! A 4000% return ; ) We left for the UK a few days later with smiles on our faces, mission complete and aspirations to return asap to carry out some hardcore 2-3 week trekkage!

More ideas are in the pipeline...they will of course be well planned, thought out and safe

The Big Push North

So after the Tiger experience we were basically ready to head north to get the Crow into Nepal and to see the Himalayas. With still a considerable distance to cover we aimed initially for Varanasi - which proved to be quite wierd.



Varanasi is one of the most holy places for Hindu's, its on the river Ganges and is where they make a pilgramage to bathe and also have many funerals there. The initially wierd thing is that they would choose to bathe in what is a truly disgustingly polluted river - but it gets more odd. We visited the river in the evening and got talking to a local kid who quite impressively was fluent in English, Japanese, French and Spanish - he was clearly after tips but we decided to let him show us around a bit - particularly after he announced that no-one would mess with us if we were with him "I'm a 24 hour superpower!". He asked if we wanted to see the "burning of the bodies", we were a little unsure but decided to have a look - imagining a sort of stone built temple thing for the funeral ceremonies, but no, they simply light bonfires on the side of the river - quickly we found ourselves stood in the middle of a load of fires, Fyvie noted "Oh look there's a foot hanging out". The worst bit was when they explained that priests, babies and leppars cannot be burnt, they are simply put in the river with weights attached. "The rope rots after a couple of days and the bodies float to the surface",
"what happens then?"
"Oh the dogs eat them"
Well of course, what an obviously perfect solution.

Couldn't take photos obviously but this is a google image one so you get the gist.



Upon leaving Varanasi Matt noted that his watch he'd bought for the trip had been stolen from its position on the Crows dashboard - "I'm fuming, I've let my guard down for one night, never again!"

The following day was a severe pain in the dick. We had our first real navigation problem - with no obvious road signs or proper map we relied on the locals for advice, what we began to realise was that even if they have absolutley no idea where the place you've asked for is, they will still gesture excitedly that you are definitely going the right way and that you should just keep going. We spent six hours progressing a massive 30km in the direction we actually wanted. One highlight was that during this cockup we did inadvertantly get to the end of a road and have to cross a massive dry river bed, through quite deep sand. Half way across the crows gear selector lever decided to stop working, much to our amusement, after some fiddling from Fyvie we found our way across and intercepted the massive bypass that we should have been on all along.







To cap the day off we arrived late in a shitty town that had three hotels, two refused to house westerners, the one that would accept us was presumably because no self respecting Indian would stay there. We rounded the day off with a dinner of Jam sandwiches.



The next day we woke early full of anticipation, the Nepal border was within reach. An intially good drive with a little bit of getting lost, cruising around asking for the Nepal border - saw us eventually make it at around lunchtime. After being greeted with a mile long queue of trucks,the initially intimidating process actually worked out ok - just lots of asking, queueing and getting things stamped - for Matt and Fyvie anyway - I just chilled in the crow 'to look after it'. And so we made it - into Nepal!! 4000km after we started.



After chatting on the border it became clear that the road to Kathmandu was a bit boring and that Kathmandu was just a dirty city - we therefore rapidly changed plans and went further north for the 'romantic' mountain pass to Pokhara. The people of Nepal were impossibly even more friendly than in India - literally everyone shouting and waving at us, kids running after the crow (often catching it up). Within the first twenty mins a few guys on motorbikes started talking to us, they asked us if we wanted to go swimming in this place they new - we caught them up later and they showed us to a completely isolated waterfall and lagoon - all to ourselves.



After the swim we kept pressing north into the mountains and started to gain some serious height - spending the night in Tansen, ridiculous scenery all round, Crow eating up the steep climbs (although oil light flickering). We realised that part of the reason everyone was stood on the streets to wave at us was because in this most peaceful, quiet and tranquil of places the Crows ridiculous diesel rattle could be heard for miles around, I think they were waiting for some sort of invading tank when the Crow cruised up.







The next day was spent cruising up to Pokhara, again the most beautiful scenery, very hard to capture in photos, with the snowy himalayan caps peeking in and out of the cloud.






After a morning messing around in a boat on a freshwater lake at the foot of the mountains I had to leave my fellow rickshaw drivers and head for home. They plan on another week or so to venture south east back into India to sell the Crow, I am writing this from home and miss it big time already, very happy with succeeding to get the crow to the Himalayas and also with easily winning the facial hair contest. (Matt will argue, but the beard is easily better than his Freddie Mercury attempt).

Ships

- A cheap shot here Meer Cat, but I'll leave it be for all to see (click on the 4th picture down in this post and decide yourselves, I think you will see an almost vintage handlebar number and a poor attempt at a 'beard' from the Meer Cat), the handlebar is fully established and going down a storm!

Tigers, Faulty Towers, Death and 3300km Complete!

So we left Nagpur (bit of a dump) after taking a dip in a Western cruiser (posh hotel) and left for the Wildlife reserves.

As usual as long as we were heading Northish we were going in the right direction! Journeying across India, within 20 miles or so, scenery can shift dramatically from desert scrubland to quite dense forest etc - you'll understand more when we show some photos.




Just over a day later after staying at India's version of Faulty Towers with their very own Manuel, we reached the reserve on a single track road with buses still driving as they would on a dual carriage way (and so still routinely being run off the road) we started encountering monkeys and deer.




We thought that it would be fenced off but actually it's more of a protected area with animals free to roam. On arrival (before dusk for once) we went in search for a hotel with safari blah blah. We saw signs for 'Tiger Woods Resort' and thought we should go and have a gander. With no prices mentioned we were shown round the whole resort, first room having a bed with which I can only describe as a round leopard skin number soon to be occumpied by a rather large black girl named Sheniqua! As the tour continued we asked some questions;

'It says on the sign, you have a jacuzzi?'
'No'
(Ok just a straight lie then)
'It also says you have a steam room'
'Yes we do;
(Takes us to room with a bench)
'This is the steam room, this is where we will install the machine, at the moment not there'
(At this point we were giggling like little girls)

Other hotel antics include generally being ripped off, toilets and showers as you would expect but an absolute belter was after a long 14 hours on the road, all knackered, the lights turned off, all of us looking towards the ceiling in some dump of a hotel just off the road and.. stars started appearing, then a rocket and the moon, in the middle, we couldn't work out what the black hole was, eventually.. the fan! They had spent about 20p on building the hotel itself and about double that on these UV decorations you may have had when you were a wee born baby..again a bit more laughter before sleep!

Anyway we got settled after stumbling upon a group of Yanks who thought it was brilliant we had bought a Rickshaw and were cruising around India! (you can imagine in pure yank style - 'No way man' / 'That's Awesome'. Up early again (much to the delight of Shippers and Fyvie) into the reserve in search of a tiger in the wild, which we were told before hand was quite likely.. 5 hours later no luck, with the guides trying to knock off early saying there was no chance, we spotted one chilling in a pool of water, we asked to get out and go closer, this was declined. Soon after he got up and walzed off into the undergrowth, - quite the experience, especially when we found out how they kill their prey and how far they leap! 10 bloody metres!



We left the morning after towards Varanasi (Ganges area). At one point, quite a surreal point in all our lives, we found ourselves in the middle of nowhere, in a dust storm, dressed as terrorists with rags round our heads, shades donned, in the Crow of course singing Susan Boyle, Wildhorses!



Now we haven't really mentioned our day-day on the open road.. General problems as you would expect; water / fuel stops, check oil, directions from the locals, which are varied as you can imagine, our personal favourite, quite a homosexual Indian, with a voice only rivalled by that of the Chipmunks in fluent Hindi (so useless) with us not really listening as we were all so amused by the frequency he was trying to communicate with.

DEATH - this has been more and more frequent, I think now we have seen most animals Inida has to offer creamed across the highway including more and more vehicle accidents, through houses, trees and bridges, some of which out of respect we didn't photograph due to the amount of people killed, one being an ambulance decimated by one of the trucks. Much of this is due to the drunken lorry drivers, did a bit or research - 130,000 killed each year on the roads of India! - Over 350 per day! Almost T-boned a cow a few days back who decided to stroll out of a central reservation at night camoflagued by shrubbery! Since then, our scan now includes even the most unlikely of possibilities..






The Boudoir - has become a multi-fuctional space for all sorts of fixing, repairs, food / water storage, In-Crow Entertainment System, footspa and more recently we have developed a technique for giving us all a shower at once, if you hit a speed bump at 50km/h and one of us has just opened a litre bottle of water! - Tres refereshing!

So we've hit 3300km! (And still not there yet!) Wiper doesn't work, one of the lights doesn't work, both of these didn't when we bought it, apart from that nothing to report, which does seem to suggest that the Crow, Piaggio Ape is somewhat of an engineering marvel!

A few one liners..

'I don't understand why I am only getting 45km/h out of her at full throttle'
'Try changing gear'


'Fruit juice please'
'Cheese omlette, yes master no problem'
'Erm, no, please could we have some fruit juice (with associated pictionary)'
'Yes master, cheese omelette'
(Pointing at a can of coke, saying orange fruit juice, pointing at colour orange aswell)
'2 minutes master, cheese omelette, no problem'
'Ok, f*ck it, I'll have a cheese omelette'

- Similar to the above all over India as you can imagine!

WE ARE STILL IN THE PROCESS OF SEVERAL FACIAL HAIR EXPERIMENTS - 2 BEARDS AND A HANDLEBAR NUMBER, PICS TO FOLLOW