“The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated” – Mark Twain 1895

My apologies to all those who confused lack of wifi with severe health problems. I am alive and well and now back in England. It shows how comunication has changed, 43 years ago when Jan and I left to travel the world, the only effective way of letting friends and family know where we were was the humble postcard.

Now comes the hardest part of the whole trip; finishing the BLOG. I’ll start where I left off, at the town of Shimla, with monkeys trying to get into my Hotel room.

My last treat of street food as I left Shimla

Morning wakeup call from a monkey

How do you move your fridge?

I’ll be posting Blogs over the next days and weeks, but mean while here’s a picture quiz.

Describe what you are looking at?

Answers will be on my last blog.

More blogs to follow soon

A TALE OF 3 EATIES

Eating is very important to me. Whilst the rest of the west worry if they are eating too much, I worry if I’m eating too little.  I probaly need a minimum of 5000 calories a day (more in the mountains), and judging by my belt I’ve already lost 3 inches off my waist .  I’ve just travelled across the plains of Northern India that connect Nepal with the Indian Himalayas. I didn’t particularly enjoy the cycling and here’s a few words to describe those few days;

Hot at night, Even hotter in the day, Humid, Dusty, Dirty, Piles of rubbish, Poverty, Large lorries,  Polution, Potholes, Enormous potholes, Continuous houses between towns, Lots of people.

If you have a romantic image of India try visiting this part of India.                                                Now amongst all this I have to the find somewhere to eat.

July 8 th

I tried to find any where that vaguely resembled what we would call a restaurant near the guesthouse I was staying in, but with no success. So it was one of the, what I would describe as a transport cafe, by the side of the road. Dirt floor, broken dirty tables, sort of kitchen out the back with no running water and a wood fire for cooking. However in return the owner and his family would be lovely and always made me feel I was the most important customer they had ever had. Not a menu in site and only a smattering of English and so the food adventure began. It would always involve rice, but beyond that I didn’t always know what I was eating. The worse thing was the ‘CLOTH’. They always had a dirty cloth tucked in their trousers that they used to clean everything. Now I can accept cleaning the tables with it, but if a plate was not clean they would use it to clean the plate. Now you all seen those microscopic images of hairy germs, well thats how my eyesight went. I could look at those cloths and see gigantic hairy germs taunting me. I would spend the whole of the night wondering if I would ever leave the bathroom for the next few days, but surprisingly I was never ill once.

July 9 th

I had reached the Himalays and started my first big climb and exactly 4000 ft I saw the most extraordinary and unexpected sight I had seen the whole trip. A Mc Donalds. This I could not  miss, and I’m not even a fan of them. I ordered a Big Mac and sat down savouring the moment before my teeth sunk into the bread role. Yes, yes, yes it was totally devoid of any taste, bland, just like the chemists in Detroit, or where ever they live, had designed it to be. My taste buds had been overloaded for the last 2 months, and they were enjoying a brief holiday. The burger itself was of course not beef, but chicken, cows in India are found in the middle of the road, not the middle of a role. All in All a beautiful bland meal. And the best bit was the toilets were cleaned every 2 hours, and signed to say they had.

 

 

 

 

A Not photo of Mc Donalds. If you want a photo, go to your local Mc Donalds, it will be identical to the one in the Himalayas.

Later on July the 9 th

My afternoon snack was street food. My usual method of ordering was by pointing and then wait and see. He took two, sort of scone looking things, and flattened them with his thumb and then into hot oil to cook them on a paraffin burner. Once cooked he sprinkled them with crisp flakey pastry and now came the mystery bits. He offered me a choice of 3 large vats, one was a dark green, one was black, and the other white. I refused the white, recognising it as kurd, but the other two were generously ladled on and then a selection of spices were sprinkled on. It was delicious. Welcome back India, good bye Mc Donalds. The dark green and black liquids were I think sweet and sour working perfectly with the spices and scones. I’m writing to the Mc Donald chemist of Detroit and recommend they employ him, they will find him on the road to Shimla, between the mini bus and the big lorry.Street food blissThe plains of India

A short nervous blog

It’s Tuesday morning, the 12th of July and I’m in my hotel room in Shimla in the Himalayas.  The monkeys are going nuts this morning and are sat on my window cill putting their hands through the bars and looking very cute hoping I’ll give them food. This is a big day for me because I  leave to go to the Spiti Valley which means I have to climb to nearly 15000 ft. I’m split down the middle in terms of nerves and excitement.  To get through the valley will take me about 15 days or longer and I probably won’t have WiFi during that time. So wish me luck because I’m off.

Onion Johnny is in the Himalayas

The Himalayas started for me when I climbed up to Darjeeling at 7500ft. They immediately gained my respect and frightened the hell out of me. Darjeeling  sits on a mer foothill and it took me a very full day to climb it, and  I’m planning to climb to twice the height which is the second highest road in the world. Well that was 3 weeks ago,  and although I don’t keep any records, I sure I’ve done over 50000ft of climbs already (good training ).

So how do I climb a mountain? Well the short answer is very slowly and that is something that I’m the best there is. At the moment I’m climbing multiple climbs each day of between 1000 and 3000 ft and its vital that I don’t blast the first climb and have nothing left for the rest of the day . I’m carrying  20 kg or more of luggage so it’s straight into my lowest gear at the start of the climb. This gives me a typical speed of 3 mph, increasing to 4mph when it flattens out, and decresing to 2mph on the nasty bits. I’m sorry if this is a bit nerdy, but heres a bit of maths. If the hill is the best part of  10 miles then I’ll be climbing for 3 hours AND I LOVE IT. The scenery is big and magnificent but it is still the people that make it so incredible.

Let me give you 24 hrs in the life of onion Johnny in the mountains. I stayed in a hotel in the town of s and got chatting to the owner who was quite young at about mid 30 s. He invited me down to his office and there I got the shock of my life. He showed me a selection of photos of drug and achohol addicts within the town. He, without any help from local or national government,  was running a rehabilitation program for local addicts. His dream was to set up a home where they could be helped and vaguely hoped that I was some eccentric millionaire who could held him. I went to bed deeply moved by it all but frustrated that I probably couldn’t do anything to help him.

The Hotelier and his dream.

The day  started on my first climb of the day into the mountains. At about mid morning a motorbike pulled along side me and started chatting even though he was going the other way. He insisted I follow him and he took me for a breakfast of rice pudding, curry and tea. He gave me his mobile no and insisted I ring him if I had any problems at all. He tried to give me money which I just about managed to refuse. Can you imagine this ever happening in the western world.

Bring treated to a breakfast,  I’ve lost count of how many times this has happened to me.

The Himalayas had the nasty habit of serving  up a big climb at about 4.0 p.m. when I was at my most tired and in need of somewhere to sleep. My mapping wasn’t good enough to show where the top was so it was I started the climb hoping it would be a modest one. Two hours later, with no sight of the top I knew I was in for a late night. I came to a mountain village of about 20 houses all facing the road with each of its occupants sat on it doorstep, very remanisant of Britain in the 40 s and before. Now my speed of 3 mph was a lot slower than the speed of the doorstep telegraph,  and before I reached the middle the whole village had turned out to chear me on. These villages are very communal and even the people having their evening wash by the side of the road, in a state of partial undress were cheering me on. The children were all running along side me desperate to touch there hero. I was no longer Onion Johnny,  I was Bradly Wiggins  escaping from the pack and winning the Tour de France. I entered that village with tired legs, I left as a young 30 year old who really could win the TdF.

The village that helped me win the 2016 TdF.

Now for some photos.

The scenery is big and beautiful, and these are only the foothills.

Monkeys are never far away, and so are other things!

 

 

 

 

 

Land slides, big and small are never far away. I always ride on the opposite side of the road and keep listening all the time.

I love the mountain paddy fields, not a square inch is wasted

Nepalese children are how I would design children if I was God. Nepalese architecture

 

It’s July 3rd and I’m about 3 days from entering India, where I do the big boys mountains.

Non tourist Photos of Kathmandu

 

Sharpening my Swiss Army penknife, its powered by a bicycle chain

Cows are never far away in Kathmandu

Many of the houses in Kathmandu are in a poor state of repair, and will fall down soon.

When it rains, the roads become mud baths, even in the centre of Kathmandu.

Collecting litter to make a meagre living, and often involves children.

Not everyone has a home

STOP PRESS:Old male hippy attacks old female hippy

June 20th

I arrived in Kathmandu, about 1/3 of the way through my journey,  and suffered a serious case of reverse cultural shock. For the previous month I’d only met one group of 3 westerners  (they were English), and everyone else I’d spoken to or seen, were either Burmese,  Indian or Nepalese. I went to the Hotel area in Kathmandu which consisted of tacky souvenir shops, mountaineering equipment shops in case you had forgotten your Everest climbing gear, tour shops so you could climb Everest , and of upto 5 star hotels to stay in. None of this had I seen as I travelled across Nepal. It was brimming with westerners, broadly of two groups. Firstly there was the young hippies  (gap years), they typically wore some local clothing, a pigtail (the men that is), and a tattoo or two. This group I’m quite happy with, after all I was almost one myself 40 years ago when I travelled the hippy trail down into India. Most of then will return back to their homes and become the bankers, property developers, teachers etc of tommorow and a little wiser for their travels.

The other group were the old hippies. These were people who were hippies in the 70’s and the dominant slogan at the time was “make love not war”, and part of us all wanted to believe in it. With hindsight “make money and keep the wars” would of been more appropriate,  because this is what the original hippy generation did. Of course some of them had  held onto their original high ideals  (love and drugs) but I not sure if it really has helped the world to be a better place (famine etc).

And so it was I was wondering around Nepal tourist town when I came across an old female hippy about my age, you know the sort, scruffy white hair and dirty clothes (her not me). She was berating a taxi driver for keeping his taxi idling, telling him how he was polluting the world. I rounded on her, and asked her how she got to Kathmandu  (plane of course). I then told her that the taxi could idle for a 1000 years to match her pollution from her plane flight (I love making up facts,should of been a politician ). I said a few more things about the footprint of the west, decided I was ahead and left it at that. The ageing female hippy was speechless with her mouth open, the taxi driver said to me “Well said” in a very English way and shook my hand, and I walked away feeling the moral victor.

A bit of remorse of course set in,should I of attacked someone who was only saying what I would in a slightly different situation. I think what happened says more about me and how my travels are effecting me, and what’s the point of travel if it does not make you think about the world. Up to this point I’d  mainly travelled amongst poor people and I know their carbon footprint is less than a 10 th of the west, so I think I was right, what do you think?

Photos of the non tourist Kathmandu to follow when internet stronger

NEPAL,the friendly capital of the world

June 17th.

Blogging out of order, I’ll try to catch up soon.

I crossed into Nepal 4 days ago and here’s a photographic summary so far.

The border town where I stayed.

A people carrier Nepal style, and they all look happyOk what’s he fishing for? You’ve guessed, drift wood

I always have to remember what colour my bike is!

First you see, then you don’t. Time and again it’s the women in Asia that do the hard manual work

And then I turned north into the Himalayas,  off the beat on track of course. These mountains are brutal and far worse than anything I’ve  met in the Alps. First they soften you up with repeated climbs up to 2000 ft and back down again, and then the real climb starts.I had already had many Nepalese tel me that (old man on a bike) you can’t go over the Himalayas on a bike, and as I ground my way round hairpin after hairpin I began to believe them. I did my good deed as I became the hero of a mountain village by providing a pump to inflate a motorbike tyre, this I felt was my ying, my yang would find me. It began to get dark as I progressed up the hairpins and my energy levels hovered just above zero. So camping it was to be. Now finding somewhere to camp on a mountain side is hard because nowheres flat. I spotted a piece of grass on a corner with a man stood next to it. I asked him if I could camp, and he said no but pointed to a house. I pushed my bike up to the house and was instantly agreed I could, and as I was his guest I must have a meal with him. First thing to arrive was moonshine, served out of an engine oil can, and I’ve definitely have no hairs left on my chest. An excellent meal followed, all from his garden, and i slept so well that night in my tent. I woke at about 7.00 a.m and breakfast was ready for me, the generouserty of the people I’ve met on this trip continues to astound me

Breakfast with Bbale, my host for the night

I left Bbale with another hour of climbing and a decent that made it all worthwhile,  leaving about 60 hilly miles to Kathmandu. 

I met up with “3 gradient sisters” who pushed me up a steep bit (I was still cycling), but what I didn’t relise at the time is they decorated my bike with flowers

 

5 star hotels, eat your heart out

One of the delights of how I’m  traveling is I never know where I’m sleeping each night until it happens.  This would infuriate many of you, but for me it’s all part of the fun. Let me give a typical day of how it happens. Not there is ever is a typical day, but that’s  what I’m  on about.

I’m  in Nepal and cycling towards Kathmandu and at about 4.ok p.m. onwards I’m looking for somewhere to sleep. Nothing presents itself and by 6.00 p.m I’m thinking that this will be my first night in the tent.It’s starting to get dark and I come across a barrage (bridge ) guarded  by police men.I ask them if they know of a hotel (using sign language ) and they point me down a lane, the main inhabitants of which are goats, chickens and pigs. I cycle down about 1/4 mile and find nothing that even looks like a house, let alone a hotel. I ask someone and they get on their motorbike and take me back down the lane and point me to an even smaller lane. Down I go and come to a collection of what I imagine to be farm buildings. I make contact with people, and after a bit of discussion it’s agreed they have a room. I’m led up a ladder to a small, but delightfully rustic room. By this time I’ve acquired a 11 year old boy, who a sort of guide come impromptu butler. He takes me on a tour of everyone in the village, the one whom interested me particularly was the one who was a good swimmer, and made his living by diving into the barrage and retrieving  drift wood, often complete trees.

After the tour I told him I wanted to get washed. He took me to the wash room that consisted of the normal hole in the floor, plus a very old conventional hand pump. Now the trouble with a old pump is that while you’r pumping you can’t wash, and while you’r washing you can’t pump. My 11 year old butler understood this perfectly, and with a lot of coy undressing from myself we had a bucket shower, with him doing the pumping. In England of course I would be arrested (67 old has shower with 11 year old) , but in the context, I can only describe it as beautiful in the traditional meaning of the word.

Nice and clean I joined the family for an evening meal, their 10 month old daughter had decided wrinkly old white man was the funniest thing she have ever seen, so the rest of the evening was spent playing with her.

I finally went to bed and reflectected that 5 star hotels have so much to learn on how to give their customers a memorable nights stay. And all this for under £5.00.

Once I get to Kathmandu  I will hopefully update my blogs.

Photos will follow when internet stronger.

My 6 star hotel and the 6 star owner with his wife and butler

The journey to the Indian border,prehaps?

24th to 27th of May

I felt I have already earnt the first 100 miles (and some) going north, so I took the easy option and took a boat. Myanmar is covered in giant rivers that snake their way 100s of miles inland, and so at 4.00 a.m. I left Monywa on a boat heading north  on the Chindwin River.I felt very English and very Victorian. The boat was full of Burmese people with goods of every description from motorbikes,to sacks of food, spare parts etc,  with the people sitting on them, under them and besides them. But not the Englishman, whom I imagined to be on his way to inspect the company plantation in 1892. I had paid the same as everyone else, but I was given 3 seats to myself, which allowed me to sleep on the 14 hr journey. Every so often someone would  get off, not a jetty in sight, the boat would ram the bank and the passenger would jumped into water and the boat would reverse and away we went. I knew my turn would come with a bike in both hands. After about 16 hrs we reached the town of Kalewa, my destination some 30 mile from where I had  reached a few days earlier. Then the fun started. It was the first town of any size after 100 miles and as the boat started it ramming procedure lots of smaller boats drew alongside, and mainly women, jumped from one boat to the other carry food, and trying to be the first. Simultaneously people were trying to board the boat before any one got off, this was Burma. I of course had to get myself off together with my bike which was on the roof. Then out of fresh air a group of young lads spotted white Victorian gentleman and knew they were on to a good thing. Their first offer was 100o k (60p), but I’m no pushover, and after hard negotiation I got the price down to  5000 k (£3), and worth every penny. They formed a chain and never once got the bike wet. I found a very colonial looking guesthouse costing almost nothing and waited for the local policeman to arrive.

My bike being unloaded from the roofThe view from the guesthouse window in Kalewa, a town with a real frontier feel to it.

The next day I followed the river further upstream, on a road that was mainly unsurfaced, to the town of Mawlaik. Found a lovely guest house facing the river. Within 1/2 hour the local English teacher presented himself and declared he would be my history guide to the town. The town was full of large houses built by the British in the 19th century to house senior officers and administrators. Being on the river, the the town was strategically important, first to the British, and then to the Japanese. The English teacher was in his 70s so remembers the war ,and the stories were horrific. I also became an English teacher for 1/2 hr and helped to build the local Monastery.

The English teacher and his class

An English colonial house,  note the two chimneys in a country where its never much below 30. A Burmese farmers house and a pig that now lives in an colonial house.

The women do all the hard work when it comes to building a Monastery

 

I left Mawlaik to head for the Indian border about 100 miles away. But first I had to go up a jungle mountain road. This was a very quite road and very, very steep. There was no question riding parts of it, so there was a lot of walking. The steepness of the road meant that I had to lay almost horizontal with the  road and use just my toes to push forward. If by luck, on one of these steep sections a motor bike would come along, they would abandon  their bike and the two of us would push until it flattened it out. I called these good fellows “my Gradient Brothers”. Now I was beginning to be worn down by all this pushing, when suddenly all was forgiven.  There was an elephant in front of me. He wasn’t wild but was a working one pulling timber out of the jungle. He was controlled by a young lad entirely using his voice, and his family had probably being using elephants for many generations.

The jungle road

That’s all now, next time I’ll  tell what happened when I got to the border.