The home of automatic scootering

The slowest way round

I’d been in Sydney for nine months chasing a woman before immigration told me it was time to go. I had a return air ticket, have always hated flying, so I looked outside at the decommissioned Australian Post bike I’d bought off eBay for £400 and thought: “I know, I’ll do the trip on that”.

To be fair, she wasn’t in the best of condition. She had a spoke missing, leaked oil and four days into the adventure (somewhere around Brisbane) her bottom end went. The bike you see in these pictures isn’t the one I left Sydney on then; it’s the replacement, Dorothy, who over the next eight months travelled 22,000 miles, through 18 countries, over the Himalayas and through the jungle, needing only a new front sprocket and eight replacement back tyres – but managing all the way with the same front one.

Granted, Dorothy was slow and people sure did laugh, but around Bangkok, Delhi and Kathmandu, she was lithe and agile; her semi-auto box and small dimensions were perfect for carving through traffic. But that’s the misconception with this adventure motorcycling thing; that you need an expensive BMW or KTM kitted out with all bells and whistles – you don’t. Just recently an American rode around the world on a vintage hard-tail Harley, while a Frenchman is about to complete his ride from Paris to Vietnam on a Vespa. Even crazier are a couple who rode from Australia to India, two-up, with all their luggage on a bike just like Dorothy, a Honda CT110. They’re now in Japan!

But you don't have to ride that far to feel the blast. To my mind South East Asia is perfect. Fly there, pick up a dirt cheap moped and thrash it around Laos, Cambodia and Thailand until you both blow up. Riding the coastal roads of Italy and Greece would be cool on a Vespa too, certainly better than following the current trend of buying a Royal Enfield in India and wrestling death on those roads. Central Asia, especially Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, is also stunning - and while we’re at it, let’s not forget a little island called England which you could spend a year riding around and still not see all of it.

My favourite is still the Australia Outback. Riding across a red desert at 45mph flat out with a huge dome of sky sat on your helmet gave me goose bumps, still does. You could go ‘Down Under’ for a month, buy or rent your own Dorothy and say to hell with those people who say 'grow up, settle down, and buy a house'. There’s a world out there, one with open arms and smiling cheeks that allows you to cruise a moped right on through. The people telling you not to go are only letting their own fears speak out.

In true cheap bike style, my GPS system was a notebook I scribbled a crude map of each country in and showed it to a ‘local’ whenever I was lost. I cooked instant noodles over a crude gas burner using an old sweetcorn tin and ate it with a plastic fork. My riding boots were a pair of Converse, my sleeping bag a fake North Face from India, my rain suit a salmon-pink two-piece donated by a stranger in Nepal. My tent cost me £15. I had no money to purchase necessary things such as socks and matching gloves. I made do, fixing and stitching and not getting upset when those travelling on better bikes looked at me like poo. But if riding rubbish bikes and travelling slow is what makes the difference between giving it a go or being sat at home asking 'what if' then sleeping in Russian hedges, bring it on!

The hardest part for the bike was the Himalayas. I wasn’t carrying any bigger jets, so beyond 3000 metres she really struggled, barely able to get out of second, then once we passed 5000 metres, over the second highest road in the world, she barely got out of first. Often the engine would die completely (often in the middle of a water crossing) and take a minute to settle before restarting. Just a bit more power though; maybe one of the modern 150cc water-cooled engines and she’d have been perfect for the narrow rocky roads, or for that matter, the whole trip. The pace in most countries is hardly ever more than 50mph, with it only the German Autobahn that I wished Dorothy could do 150mph.

As for the rest of the riding, well, that’s the easy part. It’s the logistics, bureaucracy and downright dirty scoundrels at the border that ruin your day. Trying to leave Kazakhstan the guard locked me in a room and demanded $200US. I said no and waited five hours until he let me go. The Ukraine officials were just as bad, searching us with dogs and latex gloves, thinking I’d brought drugs in from Pakistan. Being on such a small cheap bike, I’d argue I was poor as they were and often they’d believe me, though not in Indonesia where they always wanted me to pay a fine.

But never underestimate what travelling with a cheap bike can save you. For example: to take Dorothy abroad I needed a document administered by the RAC called a Carnet de Passage (or bike passport) with its cost calculated on the value of your bike. Even Dorothy’s Carnet cost £400 with the fee for a bigger bike running into thousands. You get some of it back and there are various ways to pay it, but it’s a big expense. Then there’s the difference weight makes to shipping and freighting. Dot only weighs 95kg and still it cost £450 to fly her Bangkok to Kathmandu. Add all that to the £10 I lived on per day and the budget for the trip (including the bike) was £6000. That’s still not as cheap as flying Sydney to London, but it does suggest you can set off on a big trip for less than the limit on a couple of credit cards. Not that I’m suggesting that’s how you fund it (but you could) - and that’s how I did.

As for life on the road, there really is nothing better. I’d wake at 5am, pack up the tent, skip breakfast, hit the road and for the rest of the day just keep riding through all these strange places, stopping for pictures and to drink tea with all the people who’d invite you in. At Dorothy’s 35mph average pace we could cover 350 miles a day, sometimes more. At night I’d eat cheap food from a stall, find a place to pitch the tent out of sight, sleep, then wake up and do the same thing again. The first few nights of wild camping you’re twitchy and nervous; even now I still sleep with a big hunting knife. I bought it in China, which by far was the hardest country to enter. To take a foreign bike in, you need a stack of paperwork and a guide to escort you all the way. That took weeks to arrange and cost the best part of a grand, but after Iran refused to let me in, there was no other way around other than through Afghanistan. So there I was, flat out, trying to keep up with my guide Abdul as he led the way in a Mitsubishi Shogun that kept breaking down. I met a couple of English guys who’d bought bikes in China and saved all that hassle. They’d had a great time riding from one end of it to the other.

Just be aware of the dangers. A French traveller, kidnapped in Pakistan, is still missing, while tourists in India have nasty smashes all too often. It’s tragic, sobering stuff, with you regularly riding with your bottom clenched as tight as a vice. But that’s the risk, that’s the chance, that’s the excitement. Eventually you develop a ‘faith’. I’m not sure if it’s a religious one, but having survived so many dangerous days, you begin to think who the hell is keeping me safe; is it me, is it ‘him’, is it luck, is it fate, I should be dead by now? Not that you need to fertilise monstrous bo**ocks before you leave. I remember sitting with my head in my hands at East Timor airport. I’d just landed and was petrified, scared silly of the street outside. But you get used to it, grow to love it. A mate’s just been telling me about Egypt and how they daren’t leave their hotel compound. On a trip like this there’s no compound, no place to retreat. You’re there, in the middle of whatever shit you find yourself with no place to go but back on the bike. It’s brilliant!

The only real barrier to any of this is time. Don’t worry about cash; it’s the trip of a lifetime, pay the credit card off later. But time, family, jobs, commitment, that’s a whole different kettle of fish. I was on the road eight months and for that I know I was fortunate. All I can say is that a motorcycle adventure doesn’t need to be that long. It can be a month, a fortnight, a week. Heck, it can even be a day if you blast off the cobwebs chasing someplace new.

Mine and Dorothy’s next adventure is from Leeds to Leicester for a wedding at the weekend. Where will yours be?

WORDS & PHOTOS: Nathan Millward
ADDITIONAL PHOTOS: The Hulsmann family and Nancy Kaiser

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