Get out and ride - It could only get better

Sam Manicom had two problems when he decided to ride the length of Africa by motorcycle. First of all he didn’t have a bike, and second, he didn’t know how to ride one either. Story & Pics Sam Manicom

Within three months he’d bought a brand new BMW R80 GS, quit his boring retail job in St Helier and set off across Europe en route to Egypt and points south.

Sam’s intended one-year adventure the length of Africa turned into an eight-year 200,000-mile journey around the world, via 55 countries.

It had been a long, hard journey up the length of India to the border with Nepal, but then again, travelling anywhere in India by motorcycle is more than likely to be challenging. Every day is an adventure and each one has the possibility to be so extreme that all your senses are challenged. All preconceived ideas you had can be blown out of existence. But without a doubt in my mind, travelling across Asia by motorcycle is the most fascinating and exciting way to see the continent at its best, and worst. You can ride from colourful, exotically scented adventures in stunning landscapes, to be dumped directly into a world of pitiful poverty and danger where nothing seems to go right. The border crossing into Nepal was exactly that...”

Garish advertising posters hung, either in tatters from the walls, or flapped gently in the listless breeze. Mangy, scabby dogs slunk scavenging hopefully for a meal, from one rubbish pile to the next. Penny-sized black flies buzzed like miniature bomber planes from piles of s**t in the street, to land on chunks of meat that hung under the faded awnings of the food stalls.

I’d been disgustingly sick for a week. Dysentery is horribly debilitating, but fortunately I was riding through Northern India with a friend and he had taken care of me. Karsten and I had hurriedly left our last hotel after the Buddhist monks who ran it had tried to take advantage of my stricken state, and had attempted to rip us off. It wasn’t what we had expected from them at all, and the episode had left a bad taste, we headed to the border with Nepal.

As a sort of reward for Karsten’s hotel hunt, fate that night found a use for the fireworks he’d bought. There was a festival going on in the bazaar area; the inevitable crowd grew around this strange tourist who was celebrating with them, with his loud bangers. The darkness hid the filth, scars and lethargy of the day, and this night Rauxal Bazar rocked.

For a change there weren’t any mosquito nets provided in the room, and we paid the price. Our room was dark and damp, and we seemed to attract hoards of these whining, buzzing, bloodsuckers. Mosquito repellent was useless and by 1.30am, Karsten was fully at war with the things, fighting a battle King Canute would have been proud of. In the morning we’d had so little sleep we should have stayed where we were, but this night had been the last straw for Karsten. I didn’t bother to try to explain that mosquitoes wouldn’t recognise the borderline. No, we had to get out of India, that day.

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