Trustee Paul Crosby took time away from work early this year to fulfil a challenge he’d first considered whilst in Chennai volunteering for the Batemans Trust in 1998.
During that year, undertaking conservation work for Batemans, he had dreamt of buying a Royal Enfield Bullet, a motorbike still being made in Chennai, and riding it all the way back to his home in Kendal, Cumbria.
After running out of excuses and reasons not to do it, Paul learnt to ride a motorbike earlier in this year and the dream became a reality as he flew to Chennai to begin the 18,000 mile journey, travelling through 18 countries, over Himalayan mountain ranges and across central Asian deserts on an epic four month adventure.
The simple plan was to ride the Karakoram Highway and the Silk Road from China back to Europe, and hope to bring awareness and raise funds for Batemans Trust along the way.
He started the journey by spending some precious days at the girls hostel in Chennai, being impressed by the independence of these incredible young women. He took time to test riding the bike and going out to see the outreach project in action in Sendrambakkam, the site of our proposed school, where Batemans is already helping the children of local communities with its outreach programme.
Waving goodbye
By the beginning of April with the bureaucracy dealt with, the Enfield engine roared and Paul waved goodbye to a leaving party of smiling girls at the hostel and headed north across central India.
His planned route took him through the India plains and up into Nepal, part of which, from Agra to Kathmandu was shared with Lawrence Jacob, a friend and old St George’s student who made the start of the journey so much more interesting, from laughing over spicy cucumbers and juicy mangoes bought from street sellers in India to an epic seat of the pants side trip to remote Mustang valley in the West of Nepal.
In Kathmandu Paul was joined by his nephew Alex Wilton who had enthusiastically agreed to go in to Tibet with him and together they completed a huge loop across the Tibetan plateau to Lhasa, the spiritual home of Buddhism in the East, taking in Everest base camp on the return journey to Kathmandu.
Alex was even newer to motor biking than Paul, who now had a few thousand miles under his belt, having only passed his test weeks before arriving in Nepal!
High passes, frozen fingers thawed out on cups of Tibetan salty butter tea, mixed with huge landscapes and dramatically perched Buddhist monasteries made Tibet unforgettable.
After some much-needed motorbike repairs Paul strapped his kit to the Bullet and left Kathmandu, descending briefly to the Terai seeing tigers and hippos in Nepal’s Bardia National Park before climbing into the hills. Travelling slowly he went up past Haridwar making Puja submerged in the holy river, and on to Rishikesh, performing Aarti, the Hindu ceremony of light, and sending a lamp along the Ganges wiping away his sins.
Along the Ganges
Paul continued on and upwards to the start of the Indian Himalaya in Himachal Pradesh, eventually reaching the high and remote Buddhist city of Leh in Ladakh, on a dusty Bullet starved of oxygen from the altitude going over 5500m snow topped passes and bouncing along unmade roads gouged into the sides of mountains.
Lake Pangong, at over 80 miles, felt endless, stretching through military zones westward across into Tibet; its serene ice blue water and colourful mountains were an isolated highlight.
The mountain passes nearly finished off the Bullet and with a clogged fuel injector, stretching timing chain and burnt-out clutch the bike was hoisted into the back of a truck for a small final section of the mountainous road back to Dharamsala, the home of the Dalai Lama.
“My gratitude goes to Adarsh, the gentleman trucker who saved me and took me to the nearest Enfield garage in Manali,” says Paul. “With the bike serviced the road descended to Amritsar and its magnificent Sikh Golden Temple on the western edge of India before crossing the Wagah border to Pakistan and Lahore. This was the start of the Karakoram Highway and I headed north through Islamabad towards the apple orchards of the Hunza Valley, at one section riding with an armed motorbike escort and at another staying in a fortified hotel with armed guards.
“The journey took me along increasingly narrower roads in tight river valleys as this ancient pass cut into the mountains connecting Pakistan and the Indus Valley to Kashgar, the oasis town in western most China and a major hub on the Silk Road.
Dream come true
“It was a dream come true to start passing through places I’d only heard of in almost mythical stories. Kashgar led on to Osh along the Pamir Highway in Kyrgyzstan and through the mountains to Bishkek where I managed to finally secure my route from central Asia back to the middle east by gaining a rare Russian visa.
“Now came Central Asia as I travelled from oasis town to oasis town visiting the ancient cities of Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva as I ventured deeper into Uzbekistan before heading across the endless straight roads of Kazakhstan, its sand and salt marshes, towards the Russian border.
“Having made two good Russian friends while riding in Tibet, I was fortunate enough to be guided through Russia, sampling caviar and cold vodka and being looked after with generosity before moving from Chechnya up through fume-choked tunnelled passes out into the fresh wooded mountains of Georgia with its mediaeval hilltop abbeys, decaying soviet architecture and forgotten spas, where Stalin once bathed.
“Once across the border in to Eastern Turkey the trees disappeared and the heat of what was once Mesopotamia hit me as I visited Mount Nemrut, the ancient city of Mardin and the prehistory of Gobekli Tepe, considered the oldest temple in the world at 12,000 years old.
“Moving through Turkey I enjoyed the ancient Greek city of Ephesus, one of the seven ancient wonders of the world and, moving north, the equally famous Troy, site of the Trojan war, in the Dardanelles.
“Turkey was brought to a close with a visit to Istanbul, its mix of Christian and Muslim culture showing me I was now entering Europe. My intention had been to go through Greece and cross to southern Italy by boat, but I decided at the last minute to ride through the beautiful and under-explored Balkans taking in Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia on my whistlestop tour to northern Italy.
“Now truly in Europe my adventure felt more like an 18th century architectural grand tour as I took in Venice to give my nod to Marco Polo and the end of his, but not my, Silk Road, visiting Palladian architecture in Vicenza and reuniting with my family to relax by a lake, get used to being with people again and wash some clothes!
“A sleepover in the shadow of the Matterhorn finished my stay in Italy. I rode through the long tunnel to France and Chamonix, where I bumped into an old climbing partner to reminisce about the mountains before spending another night in a mountain hut as a farewell to the hills.”
Afterwards he rode up through France and crossed the channel to a hero’s welcome from friends as he did a victory lap around the uk to end up parking his bike outside his house in Kendal with his family cheering me home.
“Almost instantly it had been the people who had made the journey into something special. The generosity and kindness of the strangers who helped me along the way is what I will keep with me. From the girls in the Batemans Hostel in Chennai right through to the Marcin, who helped me change my flat tire on the M6 an hour from home!”
