Zen and the Art of Motorbike Riding in India - Part 5

I am now in Kasol in the Paravati Valley and like the lotus eaters I have lost all will to move. it is like being in a picture postcard. It is not at all what I had expected, I had imagined a broad valley where you could not see the sides and little mud villages scattered around the countryside with thousands of Israelis riding between them on motorbikes and endless trance parties.

Well the bikes are here and I believe the parties will be here soon and the thousands of Israelis are here with more pouring in every day. But the scenery is completely different, We are high in the mountains, in the (lower) Himalayas actually and the valley is narrow and intensely green with snowcapped mountains (Again! For F%^$ sake, youve already used that word several times before - true, but these arent towering above me) at the end of the fast flowing Paravati River just outside my room. It is like Paradise Regained except you have to make allowences for time and place. There are as many signs in Hebrew as in Tel Aviv and that is the main language spoken here (more I am sure even than signs in Hindi). I will be staying here for a while.More about Kasol will come later.

But I really wanted to tell you about our journey from Rishikesh to here. In Rishikesh the guys I'm travelling with met "Papa" an old (my age) Norwegian hippie type who has lived here for the last few years riding around on the most elaborate Enfield I have seen to date, in fact whenever our convoy stopped the rest of us were ignored as the locals all rushed to crowd around Papa. Papa is permenantly stoned, at levels which I can only imagine, when I met him he was sitting in one of the popular cafes in Rishikesh so stoned he could not talk. For the first hour I only saw him move when someone offered him a chillum which he always accepted with alacrity, drew deep into his lungs and only exhaled when he had passed the chillum to the next person. Never said a word nor did he react to anything said to him, just sat staring stonely, stonedly ahead. Rrom time to time he would come out with a sentence which while gramatically and syntaxicly correct, is connected to nothing we may be talking about.

At one of these meetings it was agreed that Papa and a couple of other bikes would join us on the journey to Kasol. the journey kept getting put off (mainly for sexual reasons with which, unfortunately I had nothing to do)but finally it was decided that we would leave on Saturday and at 7:30 am on Saturday Pappa was at our guesthouse on his bike ready to roll. But no-one else was (I was but I'm not admitting that). Eventually everybody was organised and ready to go. We were, Papa, Houdini (an Irishman), Gutte (Elad) with Gingi riding pillion, Noam and myself.

The first days riding was relatively easy and trouble free although the roads were at times bad and I did get slightly sideswiped but with no real damage. The scenery was amazing and we drove through mountains, valleys and plains all green and bright with gezillions of monkeys frolicing by the side of the road. The ride was great, Papa led the convoy and was perfect, he rode neither too fast nor too slow, if he got too far ahead and lost us he stopped to wait and all this time he never really said a word. Even when we took a break to skin up or have a drink he didnt talk, unless it was about the journey or to cough as horribly as I do after he took a pull on the chillumm and he took a lot of pulls! Towards evening we reached Punchkol and wanted to stop for the night and Papa wanted to sleep in the great out-doors while we all wanted a hotel. There did not appear to be any guesthouses along the way but every couple of kms we passed a turn-off with a sign to Punchkol and on a whim I said we should turn off at the next one and we did. We turned into a different world, broad, villa lined, empty boulevards which led us to 2 beautiful hotels, we couldnt afford to stay at either one and ended up in the "Suud Memorial Boarding House and Hospital"! where all the rooms are dedicated to one Dr. Suud or another or his mother which was no more than adequate but did have A/C in desert cooler form and hot water for bathing - a prerequisite after a Hard Days Ride. While wew were at the hotels we decided to check them out and ended up in the elegent bar of the Shiraaz - and us so dirty and scruffy after the day's ride - we had vodka, beer and coffee and determined to return for dinner. on our way to the hotel for dinner we passed through a magnificent neighbourhood of lovely villas each with 2, 3 or even 4 cars and a couple of matorbikes in the closed off parking area attached to each house. "Yeah" I said, "but wait until we see it in the morning, it will be as rundown and bleak and unfinished as anything else we have seen here". And we continued merrily on our way to dinner which was as exquisite as the hotel promised. I felt like I was back in the time of the Raj, clean, quiet, neat dining room with old wood panneling and furniture (not the usual plastic garden furniture you find in most restaurants) clean, quiet neat waiters (who except for the chap in charge not one of them understood a word we said to them), the food was excellent (I had the Chicken Stroggonof - delicious). It was a Magic Moment in India.

The next morning when I looked again the villas were still perfect, we could have been in Tarzana or Herzlia. We were up and on the road early(ish) and riding happilly along with only about 230 kms to do and a mostly good road beneath our tyres. And then it happened (okay so thats a cliche but it did) I came round the corner in Mandi and there was a car in the middle of the road and Houdini almost, but not quite, under it. Of course we all pull over and rush over to see whts happened and how Houdini is. he is almost alright, some bangs and bruises and aches and pains but not out of it. Fortunately there is a bike shop just opposite (there is almost always a bike shop opposite - not neccessarily an Enfield shop but you can get most things done in any 2 wheeler garage) and they manage to straighten out the front wheel and the handle bars and poor Houdini is ready to roll again (with the help of a couple or more pain-killers and a few pulls on a joint). In the meantime Papa has been sitting on his bike starting it every few minutes and revving for a while and then turning it off all the while muttering (in a loud voice for all and sundry to hear) that he's ridden bikes in much worse condition - from manali to Delhi with the handle-bars parralel to the bike, from Rishikesh to Agra with one whell and a broken leg and mor in that vein. And all the time we can see a neon sign flashing in front of his eyes saying

"Kasol! Kasol! Kasol!" he is totally focused on getting there that night.

We move off and I can see that Houdini is a bit nervous (the old falling off a horse thing) but as he rides he regains his confidence and is soon doing fine and I am hard pressed to keep up with him (for some reason I always end up as Tail End Charlie), Papa in the meantime is lost to sight, he has obviously forgotten about us completely and is racing to Kasol. Then Gutte and Noam start dropping back and after a while we discover that Gutte has lost 1st gear and is only able to use 2nd occaisionally and we are climbing really steep hills with quite a lot of traffic and its hard to start the bike in 3rd! Then of course we lose Houdini and finally manage to limp into Bhuntar just as darkness falls. We quickly check into the first decent (!) guesthouse we find (actually it was quite comfortable and we got a fair supper and the service was good so please ignore my earlier snide punctuation). Gutte and Noam go off to find a mechanic and return an hour later to report success and the bike would be ready at about 11 the next day. And it was.

The next morning was a bit of an anticlimax, we got up late, lazed about, collected the bike and rode leasurely to Kasol on a beautiful mountain road with magnificent view and a river flowing below and then before us were the aformentioned snowcapped mountains and we were in Kasol.
And you will get more about Kasol later if you have the patience.

Thank you Papa and Houdini - wherever you are.