London, eastwards...

In order of importance...
Number one, a louder horn. It really can save your life. And by loud, I mean Walls of Jericho volume. There's more detail on how to make all these changes on Deti's transalp pages http://www.ta-deti.de/ta/

Distance travel on a Transalp

Like descending into the steamy bowels of hell, ten miles of diabolical duodenum

6am in France. Why are these road markings so difficult? Ahh, my first lesson. Doing a roundabout clockwise at is not correct. Roundabouts are anti-clockwise on the continent sonny-boy. D’oh. Gives me a mantra for each time I get on the machine: “drive on the right, nice and steady”.

My first breakdown. The bike not me.Get cut up on the autostrada by a hearse at 120kph. These roads make me appreciate how well Britain regards safety. Green for go, explains my Italian friend, red for stop—if you want—and flashing amber for whatever.

Over the Kkatari pass in thick fog. Good job I can’t see down those drops.
Oh no. Greece also has a fuel strike. Stuck for seven days in Metsovo. A tourist trap town. The restaurants won’t serve us. Don’t know why. We go in, get ignored, hear some derisive comments and leave sheepishly after a few minutes perplexed. So I cook pasta on my camping stove on the balcony in the driving rain. I thought people liked travellers. Throw away some useless knick knacks.

Wearing full length thermal underwear makes me want to do a knees in the air dance and sing show tunes.

Bananas, fairy chimneys and underground cities.According to the guide book, Incekum’s golden crescent of sand is deserted. Pass through a similar setting covered in hotels. Turn around ten miles later. Lesson here is don’t buy out of date guide books. Things develop. The standard of rooms is the highest I have seen. A mainly German clientele. Figures. Hot showers a relief after the tepid stuff that trickles out elsewhere. But after being sternly addressed in German through loud hailers in the expensive hotel grounds by men with walkie talkies I decide to move on.

Katmandu is full of backpackers moaning about India. That’ll teach them to listen to the Beatles.Nepal is lovely. So calm. Katmandu is full of backpackers moaning about India. That’ll teach them to listen to the Beatles.

Biting off more than I can chew? The Annapurna Circuit trek looks nice in the guidebook. Go for it. Not very sensible. But 21 days walking and climbing a pass of 5500 metres sure cleans out my lungs a treat after all those lorry fumes.

Can’t brake or use the clutch but my fingers aren’t blue any more. Meet three British guys who are cycling to Sydney today. To keep up the calories they are eating three meals for my one. They have no guidebooks or maps. A pocket diary with a Times world map printed in the back cover is sufficient. With a ruler and a splodgy biro they have drawn a line from London to Sydney: “it’s for directions”.

The lure of sheep brain and some air guage karmaSeeing spaghetti in a restaurant gets my hopes up. A break from the twice-daily low quality kebab. Receive wheat-based sludge in a sandwich. This proves to be my best meal. Can’t find breakfast. The preferred option here is sheep’s head: brain, eyes and cheek. Sometimes with feet on the side. For some reason this never caught on with Kelloggs.

Racing nomads and a feminist statement.Go down to Bandar e Abbas from Shiraz to get some warmth. Palms appears. The smugglers run the town, shipping in white goods from across the straights of Hormoz. The police stand aside as the fridges are wheeled across the port road, back pockets bulging.

Curry, hardened steel and the anthropomorphic fallacy.

The embers from last night's fiery barricades have died down...The embers from last night's fiery barricades have died down, but tension is still high following Saturdays gun battles between police and Sunni muslims. Three mullahs have been arrested and four days of general strikes have ensued. Gilgit: definitely the place to come for a rest. Stories vary, but it seems a Shii schoolboy tore out a page from his Sunni religious textbook. This escalated quickly. Now there are burning tyres on each street corner and every man carries a firearm.

Tampons stops Transalp shocker.Entry into India is a bit of a gas. They are a bit wary of foreigners since a German couple drove a whole van of rifles over the border for the Kashmiri rebels: “open please”. The elderly customs officer can’t make sense of my girlfriend’s tampon collection. But he is sure that they are suspicious. He holds one up. I make some nodding and smirking type moves to let him know the general nature of the items. “Women’s things” I say. It doesn’t help. So I search the English vocabulary for a more precise description.

A lady with a lama, and some motorbike existentialism.I make small talk with the lady on the roof terrace in Delhi. “I am travelling with a lama” she says proudly. She stretches a sheet between poles: “He doesn’t like the sun”.

“Right”. I have heard of a guy doing it with an elephant; his book is in the travel section at Borders. An Andean quadruped would be easier to feed I guess. “No trouble getting him up the stairs?”

She furrows her brow “No. Of course not. He’s very fit”.

“What does he eat?”

Vanity, curruption and my Steve McQueen moment.Lots of black smoke from the back of the bike today. So I learn the meditative benefits of carb dismantling all evening. Doesn’t do any good though.

The monsoon builds

Picturesque poverty, but terror is riding pillion. Despite their purgative effects on my stomach, The Ghats along the western coast are quite an experience: each climb and descent two thousand metres on Indian hairpins. They certainly focus the mind. Just the one near death, but my cornering is super sharp. The bike coughs a bit up there. Something about the altitude. Maybe I should re-jet or somesuch, but hell, I'll only be coming down again. Otherwise, the machine seems to like mountains (it’s in the name I guess), the gearing appears well judged.

Bar girls, elephants and mean dogs. I will miss Thailand.The place is sticky the way a foreign metropolis should be. Lots of "Hello you want to be my friend?" The heels and crimson paint landscape is a bit of a shocker after the subcontinent. The women are up front all right. I get my first proposition in the terminal.

Opium and suffering the out of context problem.Everyone likes it here. There’s nothing to dislike. There's nearly no traffic outside the capital so you can indulge yourself happily winding through the misty mountains for hours on end. And, above all, they have coffee and baguettes (the legacies of France). Now how good is that? The people are calm and friendly. And the backpackers can pretend that they are discovering it for themselves.

Real difficult getting the toothless hotel lady out of my room. I think she is after more than an extended English lesson.Overland bikers tend to gravitate together; the magnetic pull of the aluminium panniers or something. Seven of us cross en mass into Vietnam. It is great fun. What a sight we make ploughing north through the rain to Hanoi. Feeling smug. Hanoi is my favourite city so far. It is small, it is raining, there are few tourists. Perfect.