Sydney to London on a105cc Honda callled Dot

It's taken a few days to slowly upload but here's an impromtu video I shot on my way to Rishikesh the other day. I'd just come through a town that had pissed me off that much I had to mount the camera and ride through again.

Apolgies once again mother for the blue language.

Part 1

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Part 2

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Part 3

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Hi Nat, first time Ive seen your movies and they are great.

I,m picking up an accent and is it from the Midlands (uk)?

keeping riding my old mucker and stay safe,live the dream.

The other day I read on some blokes T-Shirt as he dismounted his Harley 'ALL MEN DIE BUT NOT ALL MEN LIVE.

Nathan you are truly alive.

Your description certainly makes it sound a lot like Ankh-Morpork. Do you think that's what Pratchett was thinking of when he wrote it? Keep it coming please. Love your narrative!

Thanks for clearing up the email address snafu. I was able to cancel my original gift to the 'bad' add'y and sent it to the proper one. As I was listening to you ride & rant, I kept thinking; "this is so like Monty Python. I can almost see Michael Palin perched on Dot." (no offense).

....you stop seeing things for what they are but for how exciting or sensational they appear....

One of the varieties of the "observer effect". It can drive you mad. Probably no more an obstacle to any 'true' experience now we have internet cafes and cell phones. Travellers have been doing it since... well, when did we start taking notes on one another?

You've probably been doing this all of your life anyway. All of us have. Overdone it can lead to uncertainty, hermeneutic circles, self-consious fogs, lost opportunity for experience, and just maybe a future Nobel in literature. Hell, nobody gets it all in life. But decisions are overrated anyway. There is no real method to this. If you're going to go overboard with it, then you will and there's no sense questioning it. You probably won't.

You seem to be making some pretty fantastic tracks right now while many less courageous are fretting over whether to change cable television providers or if they're a rimless or plastic frame type of guy.

It never does to think too much about stuff. Probably the least useful time I ever spent was in utterly forgettable late night bullshit sessions about such as the above when I could have been out seeing the world.

he is a knob and may not have been that impressed by your efforts, obviously being more impressed that somebody had downloaded a podcast of the show in tibet(although the rest of the team were!), but the posh radio 4 lady read out your post card!

i think becky fanices you.

keep it pinned and good luck with the chinese bollox, hope you have more luck than i did.........

this may mean nothing to a lot of readers, but scott mills is a radio dj that does the afternoon show on radio1 in the UK. he is a knob(just in case i didnt make that clear)

I have had this conversation with quite a few travel writers over the years. I rode my bike around the world from 2003-2005 and plenty of ADVriders have given me a hard time for not doing a ride report or book, but the phenomenon you describe is what kept me from doing it. The best ride reports are done during the ride not after the fact and it was sheer selfishness that kept me from doing what you are doing. Which way is better? Dunno.

Where are you staying? I was just there in December.

Very insightful and entertaining. Thank you for a wonderful report. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>

your funny....
You'll dance and sing around in your skivvies but are embarrassed by 121?
With the one to one I thought you may have worked for Apple

Mate, at some point try to acquire the following items: gloves, boots, and full face helmet.

Ride the bike with the headlight on if possible.

Seems like a lot of people love you. I love what you are doing.

Be safe homeboy.

Keep it up Nat, you've inspired me to join this here site, and I'm upset that shipping my BSA over to New Zealand next year from England, for a 5 week tour, is costing me more than your WHOLE trip

Perhaps I can buy you an Ale when you get to Dover?

You know, I see a lot of people giving ewan and charlie heaps for promoting adventure biking but at least they got their visas SORTED BEFORE THEY HIT THE ROAD.

The reason you guys get delayed is because background checks are done ON ALL TRAVELLERS by the apropriate intelligence agencies before they are allowed to just punt through .

There is no point bitching about the burearacacy just because you failed to deal with it . Asia in general has every reason to treat westerners with caution . End of patronising rant .

Where's the adventure in THAT??? IF he wanted SAFE, he'd 'a stayed home and gone to the pub...

The uncertainty of it all, from the riding "gear", to the bike, to the layout of the trip and all, that is a bare essence back to basics.... Otherwise he'd have a great big touring rig and see it all from a very different (and perhaps sanitized) distance... Not knocking that type of travel, but that wasn't what he wanted, nor is it what he is about...

Good on ya Dude, and Dot, keep on thumping.

I hear what shortclone's saying, but mate, do you really think the Jedi and his mate really sorted their own visas out, or did their maids and butlers do it?

And yeah, I think missing out on all the admin and bureaucracy of a trip like this does mean you don't live it quite so vividly. I've said it before, riding is the easy part, it's everything else that provides the real turbulence. The shipping and visas and route planning...

I can see where having all that sorted in advance would have its benefits, but the way Iran's changed this trip for me and many others makes me kinda glad I'm doing it this way.

Just received my documents for China, which means I can get my visa. Also have everything sorted for Kyrgyzstan so Hannibal's plan might finally be coming together.

It is said that the adventure is in the doing. no one ever said the adventure is in the organizing. Nathans journey in a large part, is about spontaneity, going where you want when you want and dealing with it when you get there. Bitch away, it just adds more spice to the RR.

Thanks for the street-level view of India, Nathan. I bet you can't wait to get back out into the wide-open spaces and up in the cool air across a few mountain ranges.

<dl><dt>"Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential." Winston Churchill</dt></dl>Nathan, your RR is the first thing I check when I wake up in the morning, which trumps the fact that I'm closing my business that I've had for 30 years. Your fortitude and your come what may attitude keeps me alive.

Methinks "shortclone" has another persona and possible other agenda.
For a 'noob' he sure knows his ADV ...

Don't take the snideness to heart Nate & good luck in a swift
safe passage thru Pak.

Remember to pack oxygen for Dot on the KKH!

Phew it&#8217;s hot here today.

Got up early, had breakfast with a couple of Canadian girls who arrived last night and then went off to the Chinese embassy to hand my forms in. I got a tuk tuk there and of like any other trip the, we guy tried to rip me off. He started at 80R, that was too high, I said 50, He said 60, I agreed and off we went.

China visa sorted.

But this little tuk tuk episode ties in nicely with an email I received from an Indian guy today. He&#8217;d seen the videos posted previously and wasn&#8217;t very happy with what I&#8217;d said about his country. I watched it back. I agreed. &#8216;Nuke them all&#8217;, was a bit harsh.

I hope here to explain my comments and also, more importantly to apologise.

I suppose it&#8217;s hard to comprehend for anyone who&#8217;s not paid the place a visit but at every turn, on every Delhi corner someone will try and trick, cheat or lie to you. That&#8217;s just how it is and you can&#8217;t escape that reality, as much as it might make a Indian reader blush. At times it&#8217;s a loathsome place with you left wondering how can so many people treat you with so little respect and dignity. You&#8217;re a target to exploit, not a person. Then you see them doing it to each other and you sort of understand.

Take my queuing incident the other week when I got in a verbal scrap with a chap who tried barging me out of the way. It was incredible. It was like a line of animals trying to get to a tray of meat. No manners, no courtesy, no decency. Then there&#8217;s the masseuse of Varanasi with his 20R massage he suddenly wants 250R for. More recently a guy at the train station dressed official attempted to get us in a tuk tuk and lead us to a random place far away from where the tickets are kept.

It&#8217;s a scam, just like the shit on the shoe &#8217;I&#8217;ll clean it off mister,&#8217; or the fake gems to carry home, or the houseboats in Kashmir that don&#8217;t exist, or if they do exist double up as hostage cells where people like my ex-girlfriend are given no choice but to pay extortionate 'release' fees or be abandoned in the middle of nowhere.

Even the water you buy is tampered with a drill hole in the bottom for God knows what reason. You can&#8217;t disguise all that. It happens to everyone who travels here. Every night in our backpacker hotels we sit and download the tricks that have been pulled on us that day. We laugh, but sometimes we cry.

Same as when I&#8217;m riding I can&#8217;t ignore that people will drive at me head on giving me the ultimatum of moving or dying. I will never understand that mentality. It was a little like that in Indonesia but there they drove with skill and grace, not a finger permanently on the horn and a prayer to the almighty. In Indonesia you got used to it, but here you&#8217;re in constant anticipation of an explosion going off in your underpants as a lorry skittles you into the afterlife. It&#8217;s not nice. You can&#8217;t disguise that.

Switch on the TV and you also struggle to swallow the total over reaction towards the recent attacks on Indians in Australia. A systematic and coordinated attack on their students abroad is how they see it, not realising the guys doing the thumping couldn&#8217;t tell an Indian from a Pakistani from a Sri Lankan. They just see a small coloured fella and take his money and give him some fist. Kevin Rudd was bang on when he said it was just the ugly face of urban life. It happens everywhere, even to white tourists in India, so it was quite an eye-opener to see Australians so quickly all painted as rascist. You can&#8217;t disguise that.

Then there&#8217;s the man in the local shop explained how he needed to vet his daughter&#8217;s proposed partner, investigate their parents, take two years before he will give her his blessing. The ultimate family man you might think. Then he tells me how tight the pussies of the Thai prostitutes are that he goes there to &#8216;fuck.&#8217; He curses western culture and our fragmentation of our families and will not accept the flaws that go with his own, not realising the person he&#8217;s telling this too is sat there thinking he&#8217;s a prick. You can&#8217;t disguise that.

But I think that&#8217;s the difference, in the west we&#8217;re openly critical - sometimes overly - of our methods and mentality of our past. We&#8217;re reflexive, examining ourselves and asking constantly I am doing this right, should I have done that, do I need to apologise, give someone a hug and back down. Just like the British have (overly) done with its colonial past. In India and the rest of the countries I&#8217;ve passed through however, there&#8217;s been much more blind nationalistic pride on display. They never critique their own culture, never accept their wrong-doings or faults of their present of their past. Just insist it&#8217;s the best way. Maybe we need more of that in our own countries, I don't know.

Blend all these recent experiences with five hours on a motorbike in the scorching sun and there you have my justification for what was a completely irrational and outrageous rant in the best tradition of all improv rants.

While the points mentioned above will never sit at ease in my stomach, I do not hate the country or its people, and I am sorry if my videos have caused offence. I certainly didn&#8217;t intend for that but can see how it has happened. I just sometimes get frustrated by it all and go too far. As I may have done now. So to all Indians and anyone else offended by that video I am genuinely, whole-heartedly sorry.

But just as I&#8217;m now holding my hands up and saying fair point, apology needed, I do think India and its people needs to accept the country doesn&#8217;t always treat its guests as well as it could, leaving many tourists with a bitter taste in their mouths as to just how badly they&#8216;ve been treated and tricked. Because the truth is it can be a hostile, rude, arrogant and treacherous nightmare of a place, and I would like to think my countrymen would treat a guest better than I have been treated here.

But when the dust settles I don&#8217;t hate the country or the people at all. Instead I respect very much their hard work and determination to succeed in a country still lacking some of the modern infrastructure we take for granted in the west, and can, if I&#8217;m honest, understand why sometimes this tricking shit happens. Locals see us with money - often too much of it - they have far less and need more to survive. It&#8217;s only natural then that they would employ dubious tactics to get a little extra of ours.

As my Sikh tuk tuk driver said today, &#8217;you can&#8217;t blame us for trying.&#8217; I had to agree. I don&#8217;t blame him, but at the same time he can&#8217;t blame me for being pissed off when he tries.

So there you go, another apology from the Postman. Guys, I'm sorry. I love you really.

&#8230;. As a follow up to this, I don&#8217;t know if other ride reports get the occasional negative comments like I do - some justified like this one on India, others like the man with his knickers in his twist about visas not so - but there&#8217;s no way I&#8217;m ever going to drop the honesty and openess that perhaps flames the criticism in the first place. So if you have a serious point to make then please make it constructively, like this chap did today. I respect and appreciate that.

But if you&#8217;re complaining for no other reason than to start an arguement or shoot me down then piss off and bother someone else.

I don't want to be showered with glory and sometimes get quite embarassed by some of the praise cause' at the end of the day I'm just a regular chap riding his bike between two points. But neither do I enjoy the unneccessary questioning of a trip I've given everything last penny and ounce of effort to. Especially by people who dare not do the same.

Shit, was that another rant? I've got to start breathing more.