Zahedan, Iran

Woke up late today. Are on the bikes at 07.00. The first hour is spent finding a petrol station. We manage to drive in the wrong direction on a one-way street and get told off by a policeman. We try to look as guilty and remorseful as possible which seems to be a good approach since we get off without a ticket. It's a bit different here than in India or Pakistan. The traffic rules matter here.

Everything is fairly cheap here and the petrol is VERY cheap. An American dollar is worth 7900 rial according to a reasonably official exchange rate. To fill up both bikes with approximately 30 litres cost 13500 rial - 1.5 dollar - should be about SEK 0.70 per liter. My internal calculator and I are on holiday.

The roads are really great and the average speed is a bit higher here. We are often overtaken. The cars, especially the lorries, are in a much better state than before, lots of Volvo and Scania.

We stop for drinks as usual. It's not that hot, only 15 degrees Celsius this morning. It will get hotter during the day though. Now we are approaching the real desert, only sand in all directions. Bert read 45 degrees Celsius on his electrical thermometer before it gave up. The wind is quite strong and the sand creates mini-tornadoes everywhere. It's actually hard work to steer the bikes against the wind.

The navigation works fine though. On the first 300 km there was no alternative road whatsoever. It feels like the roads in Lapland, only less forest to look at.
We make a stop outside a town called Bam to buy a couple of sausage sandwiches and 4 drinks. It costs outrageously 18000 rials (SEK 20), which is a lot more than 30 liters of petrol. After a while the sky is getting dark. Rainy clouds are appearing and the wind is getting even stronger. It looks like we are going towards bad weather - not much luck with our deserts. It gets cold and we regret not having more on.

The bikes seem to like the cold better than the heat. For a while there in the heat it seemed like we were getting steam in the carburetor. We are accelerating up to 110 km/h - they must be ready for that now - at least now and then. Afterwards it's hard to go back to our usual 80. The goal for today is a 480 km trip to a town called Karman. When it looks like Karman is approaching we stop and check for hotels in the Lonely Planet. We make an attempt to match the map to reality, but fail completely. At least half an hour is spent without finding anything corresponding to what's on the map. Eventually three guys, probably students, come to our rescue. They speak English and offer to guide us to the hotel - true heroes. We were probably on the wrong side of town because it took us 20 min of driving before we arrived. In the hotel we meet the owner who welcomes us in English and with tea. He is very friendly and lets us park the bikes just below our bedroom window. They will lock the gates during the night.

There is an Internet access here in the Hotel and we will try that later. I know I have to catch up on the English part - Thousands of apologies to all of you who are not so good at Swedish.
08 April
Dalbandin, Pakistan

We had to wake the hotel staff today again. Two of which were practically sleeping on our bikes. Very good security here. It's a chilly morning. Complete MC-outfit today with an extra dust discriminator.

The road couldn't be better and hardly any traffic. It's almost too good. It's more fun driving if there is at least something happening, uphill, downhill, another vehicle, or at least a turn so you get to practice steering. If only the landscape changed a little, to avoid the feeling of not going anywhere. Nothing. The only change are the marks every 1000 metres. The road is so straight that there are warning signs for all curves of more than 30 degrees. They tell you to reduce the speed to 60 km/h and that overtaking is forbidden. There is at least 30 km between any curve and the road is as wide as the E4 in Sweden.

One more thing that our school books told us about deserts was that they are big. If we didn't have the road to follow this would have been pretty scary. We see a few creatures who have failed to reach their destination and remained here.

Bertil is ahead trying to keep our cruising speed of below 80 km/h. After about 100 km it's time for our first fruit break. Bert has checked his watch and can tell that our average speed the first hour was exactly 80 km/h. The bikes can probably handle up to 110 but Lalli has warned us. The oil distribution to some parts are not able to handle it more than around 10 minutes. We don't want to risk any problems here so we're taking it easy.

Some ordinary checkpoints with the military police to check our passports here and there, but otherwise no disturbances. How the petrol smuggling business works is a mystery.

It were supposed to be 290 km to the Iranian border and at noon we have reached the village of Taftan at the border. A really dusty and messy place. We go directly to the immigration office on the Pakistan side. That was wrong - we should have done the customs first. Where is the customs ? We ask around and have to go back 5 km to a house with a tiny sign saying that we have come to the right place. The three people working inside are quite friendly and ask lots of questions about the trip and about Sweden. They offer us tea while they check our papers and they are ready before we are.

Next stop is immigration again and that works as smoothly as the customs. Now we are out of Pakistan. On the Iranian side it also goes well and we exit Pakistan and enter Iran in less than an hour. Considering the time difference we have won half an hour. Driving on the right again is unusual. We have been on the left side for 3000 km now. Luckily the road is still very straight. Hope the bikes can handle it even though they are designed for driving on the left.

The road is just as good on the Iranian side and the 90 km to Zahedan passes fast. Judging from Zahedan, Iranian towns are quite different from towns in India or Pakistan. The streets are clean and wide and with not so much traffic. The houses look like something from southern Europe. We have no local currency yet and finding a bank is our highest priority. It turns out to be difficult. It's Sunday and most places are closed. We find a hotel recommended by Lonely Planet with a very big safe to park the bikes in.
We can pay with US$ in the reception and can even get food for it. Lots of chicken with rice. This is our new record. 400 km, checked in to a hotel and food in our stomachs and still it's only four o'clock in the afternoon.

We go for a walk to try to change some money. Some school children show Bert the way to the town's luxury hotel which has an Internet cafe. As it turns out we can change US$ 100 in the reception there. Now we are rich. 750 000 rial in our pockets and now the last days diary text and images will be published. Sorry for the last days lack of updating but the technology has not been on our side.

To make up for it Bert has drawn a map on how far we have come.
07 April
Quetta, Pakistan

Our morning ritual is beginning to feel very familiar, except that this morning we had to wake one of the hotel staff. He slept on the floor at the reception. We checked our bikes before heading off. They look horrible after yesterday's dust and mud. Somewhere we have read that they will consume 1 litre of oil per 1000 km, so we add some. Most of it seems to find it's way down to the chain. Probably sensible. Since we're driving about 400 km per day we have to check these things.

Today is the first day of full MC-outfit. It's probably not more than 15 degrees Celsius. We are grateful for the cool weather but aren't deserts supposed to be hot?

Out of town in the right direction. We practiced this in Delhi. Just outside the hotel there is a police checkpoint. They check everyone who is out this early. We stop and buy some fruit because we are not going to go through yesterday's diet again. We buy oranges, small pieces of sugar-cane and a weird fruit which looks like a kiwi. They must grow close to or below ground because they are very dirty. They are quite tasty though.

The road looks wide and nice into the desert. It follows a railway track up and down the mountains. Very beautiful but quite different from Swedish scenery. We stop at a place with a view for some fruit. The landscape becomes flatter but there are still some stones and dry bushes. The visibility is not great from all the sand in the air. It looks like a scene from a computer game where you fly an airplane over desert. Brown ground and sharp black mountains sticking up. Maybe this is why the Americans seem to enjoy flying over Afghanistan. You can really recognize the scenery from the simulators.

The mountains turn out to have an important task to perform. They protect the road from the wind. The road follows the mountain as far as possible. When we come out to the flat parts the wind gets really strong and the sand behaves as the snow does at home. It's just hotter and doesn't melt when it gets into your mouth.

Some of the sand on the road makes it really tricky. We have heard somewhere that you should drive as fast as you dare over this - and preferably faster. We don't dare to go very fast. All our luggage makes it feel like going cross-country skiing through powder snow. We decide that reducing speed just before the piles of sand and accelerating through them works best for us. It gets really exciting when the sand blows up in the air and makes it impossible to see further than about 10 metres.

Now there's no doubt that we are going through the desert that we learnt about in school. The temperature is now around 40 degrees. We often pass vehicles with all sorts of problems and had to stop. They don't seem to have prioritized their preventive car maintenance. We also see quite a few camels. I guess this is their environment. If Zeb Macahan had been an Arab he'd probably looked like some of the locals we meet. It's strange that even how far into nowhereland we are going there are still people along the way waving at us when we are passing. Wonder what they are doing in middle of a desert and how they got there.

Our plan today was to get to a place called Dalbandin. A village between Quetta and the Iranian border. That town turns out to be a candidate for the title "Middle of nowhere". It has at least 1000 km of desert in all directions. There are a few small stores and only one house with more than one floor. That house turns out to be their best hotel and the only place with electricity. We check in to their VIP room for 500 rupees (SEK 100).

The bikes goes through the restaurant and into the kitchen. The owner of the hotel tells us that the petrol station is closed but that we can get some cheap illegal petrol smuggled from Iran. It's about SEK 2 per liter. The normal price in Pakistan has been SEK6 per liter.

The hotel owner is a resourceful man and finds someone who washes our clothes and even digs out two bottles of beer from the local black market. It costs as much as the room but.... All alcohol is, according to all information, strictly forbidden in the country but from the beer label there seems to be a brewery in Rawalpindi just outside Islamabad. We say goodnight to the bikes and to ourselves.
06 April
Fort Munro, Pakistan

The same morning ritual again. It's cold enough for the MC-jacket. Bert has a stomach problem again so we are prepared to stop at any time in case of an emergency. Bertil has lived with the local bacteria for a month now so he's a bit better off.

The road is a bit straighter now. We have reached the highland at about 2000 metres. In every village we pass they have bumps on the road to reduce speed. We have both run into those bumps with a bit too much speed causing our load to fall off. Everyone we meet or ask for directions is really friendly. Despite their poor English they all want to shake hands. The only unpleasant people we have met so far was some kids throwing big stones at us. We contemplated a while about what can be done with such kids.

Since Bert is not really 100% well and we don't really know what's ahead of us, we decide to try to reach Quetta tonight. It will be a bit far but then we know we will end up in a nice hotel.
We have not yet eaten breakfast but we decide to wait. We try to hurry and feel a bit worried. We have been warned about this part of Pakistan by Lonely Planet too. We are just 40-50 km from Afghanistan, not that the Afghans would be more criminal than others, but having some sort of war that close makes us want to pass fast.

We do our best to look out for Usama Bin Laden. The reward of 25 million US$ would be welcome to our travel budget. The problem is that everyone looks like him. Long dress, beard and a white sheet around the head seems to be fashionable this year.

In school we learnt that deserts are warm and dry but that doesn't seem to be the case with this one. It is not very warm and quite wet. Finally we reach Quetta, a town filled with police, military and pollution.

After about an hour we find Hotel Lourdes. A very colonial atmosphere and quite expensive, but we think we are worth it after 11 hours and 420 km on bikes. It's been the hardest day so far.
05 April
Okara, Pakistan

Early morning start again. Before, we didn't understand why we had to get up in the middle of the night but now it actually feels quite alright at 05.30. Up and go. The bikes sounds like cats which had too much whiskey last night and it's really great to watch a town waking up. Lot's of tired people with piles of things to sell at the market. Dogs and donkeys going through trash trying to find something to eat for breakfast.

The roads, so far, are very good. A two-lane motorway just like E4 in Sweden. The only difference is that every now and then we meet a tractor or donkey going in the wrong direction. We had forgotten to insert the "waypoints" in the GPS so we had to surprise the locals with some high-tech on the road.

We have breakfast along the road. They serve eggs and toast but no beans today. There are not as many places to eat here as in India. We are short of cash and decide to stop in a messy place called Multan. The map in Lonely Planet didn't help us much. After some language problems we find a bank that agrees to change some money for us. On the road again, now towards Dera Ghazi Khan. After consulting Lonely Planet Bert finds a nice place called Fort Munro. It's an old holiday resort for the British during their times in the area.

The bikes are making some odd sounds and we decide it's because of hot weather and bad petrol. However there is some electrical problem with Bertil's bike and we have to restock on fuses.

Just after DG Khan we are stopped at a friendly police checkpoint for a passport control and some notes in a logbook. It's probably so that it's easier to trace us if we get lost. At the checkpoint there is a big sign saying that we are now entering "tribal country", which probably means that the law doesn't work exactly as intended here.

Soon the road narrows and winds. The mountain roads we thought were so beautiful in Rishikesh seem quite ridiculous now. Quite sharp curves and exits meet with overloaded lorries. They don't like to give way so we have to overtake them. A bit scary at times but better than breathing in the exhaust behind them. We notice that the scenery is fantastic, when we dare to look around on the straight parts of the road. We finally reach the highland of Baluchistan, where we will spend our remaining time in Pakistan.

An amazing view of the last part to the hotel, by a small lake. We are probably the only guests here at 2500 metres above sea level. Time to do some trouble shooting on Bertil's electrical problem. The occasional stops on the steep roads hasn't been too pleasant. Shortcut found and problem solved.
After a gigantic chicken and rice dinner we go to bed. The thick blankets probably mean we will not need any AC.
04 April
Amritsar

The border to Pakistan doesn't open until 10 o'clock so we are not in a hurry today. We take the opportunity to get extra copies of all papers. There will probably be more of yesterday's situation.

The last 20 km before the border is a ghostly deserted area. India and Pakistan don't seem to be the best of friends. We see some military along the way but they seem tired.

We are at the border at exactly 10 but have to wait 15 minutes before they let us enter. We thought there would be a queue but it's just us. We ask around and get told that there's just about 10 people passing through per day. The likes of us, they only see a couple per week. On the Indian side there is a usual paper exercise. Everyone tries to look like they are doing something important but everyone is waiting for the woman from yesterday. She is the one in charge here. Today she is a bit happier and starts reading all our papers carefully. Lots of checks and stamps later she seems pleased, returns our passports and lets us out of India. Two hours was faster than we hoped.

The actual border is next with another Indian, who Bertil probably insulted severely by asking him if he was a Pakistani officer. The Pakistan side next. A smiling military just waves us through the border and into Pakistan customs. Here it gets strange. A man at the customs asks very odd questions and implies all sorts of uncomfortable checkups and time we will have to spend there before we get through. However Bertil is having a private chat with one of them and 20 US$ puts everything right and we are out of there.

Inside Pakistan we notice that the roads are great and the traffic is poor. Who told us they where going to be bad ? People seem poorer here than in India, at least the houses look worse. Fewer people know English and every time we stop there is a crowd turning up to admire our bikes.

At 15.30 we are ready for breakfast but it should perhaps be called something else by then. A place by the road again. They are good because we can always see the bikes and we can at the same time watch the fancy lorries.

Around five we start looking for a place to stay. Bertil's brother who lives in the area has warned us from driving in the dark. The risk is not enormous, but a few foreigners have been quite badly treated here lately. A war nearby doesn't bring out the best in people. We find a place called Okara and after asking around we find a reasonable hotel. The room is nice and they have a garage built like a big safe where we can keep our bikes. We go over the bikes before we leave them there.

After washing, eating and no beer drinking there is not that much energy left. The sun has been quite strong and despite border controls we have made 180 km today.
Bert has made a map on how far we have come.
03 April
Ludhiana

Not too early today. We must mend Bertil's pedal and the stores don't open until 09.00. The reception calls a taxi for us which takes us to the local Enfield dealer. We find a pedal for SEK 14. The original Enfield pedal would probably have been twice as expensive. We are lucky today.

We head off towards the border. 100 km to go and we arrive at 15.00 and the border closes at 16.00. Everyone seems to work fast to get us out of India as fast as possible. Everything works fine until we run into a military woman. The first time we've seen that type of green on a sari. She wants copies on all our papers on the bikes, so we have to go back and spend the night in Amritsar. Tomorrow we'll make a new attempt at the border.

We need copies of the passports, visas, driver's license, insurance, receipts on the bikes, receipts that we have changed money in a real bank etc. etc.

We find a quite nice hotel in Amritsar and perform some motorcycle maintenance before going to bed.
02 April
Delhi

An early morning start again, we are getting better and better to handle the Delhi traffic. We manage to get out of town without any problems at all.

Out in the countryside the roads are getting much better, the motorcycles feels like they will go for ever, and much faster than we are driving them. Itīs hard to keep the speed down. We are aeting breakfast on a truckers place again, this one with an effective watchdog that keeps everybody off.

After 450 km itīs time top find a place to spend the night, just outside Ludhiana in Punjab we found a fine hotel. We are asked to purt our bikes on the backside of the hotel, at that moment Bertil:s kick-pedal breaks off. One of the spareparts we didnīt bring. It must be something wrong with the material, it should not break like this, itīs 14 mm of steel. We tried to weld it togerther but it braked once moore, this time causing Bertil:s leg to be cut a little. The only option is to get tho the town of Ludhiana tomorrow and by a new one, luckily we are still in India and spare parts are easy to get.

We are having dinner at the hotel and takes a couple of beers, probably the last ones before entering the "dry zone" of Pakistan and Iran.
01 April
Delhi

Today is the day when everything should be ready. We start to spread out all the spareparts on the floor, it is 181 different items, many of them 2, 4 or 8 pieces. In total over 500 parts, not included the tools.

When everything is packed, first in plastic boxes to keep the different parts separated, then in the metal boxes attached to the bikes, we mount the big pink packs that Bert has made.

Everything is ready and we are prepared to leave, just one more thing. Lalli:s friend wants to perform a ceremony of blessing the bikes, in order for us to have a safe journey. He puts some small stickers on different places on the bikes, ligths "smoke-pins" and put a ring of flowers round the headlight. Then he starts to sing, and asks Ganesha, one of the Indian gods for help to make our journey safe.

We leave Lalli:s company for the last time this trip, and discover that with all our luggage mounted the front wheel barely touches the ground. Bert is taking photographs of the meters, our trip home has just started.

Just to play safe, we have kept the key to the apartment, when we get there to leave it, the clock is 5 pm. Itīs not very smart to go back to the traffic when there is only little more than an hour light left. Our first day on the trip resulted in 7 km distance.
31 Mars
Delhi

At last we have managed to get the money to Lalli, he get paid, we get a very formal reciept and everything is finaly in order. The work on our motorcycles has proceeded, the begin to look a little more complete again.

The next task for today is to sit down and decide what spareparts we need to take with us. In most parts we follows Lalli:s suggestions, we begin to realize itīs a long trip when he recommends us to take 10 new oilfilters, just to be able to maintaint the service intervals on the way.
30 Mars
Delhi

We have left the bikes at Lalli:s place, itīs time for service. Whole India has a holiday today, but Lalli and his mechanics decide to work for us today anyway, what a wonderful company. Our timeschedule are beginning to look a little bit tight, we had not expected to stay so long time in Delhi. There is a long journey and we only have 6 weeks before our jobs are expecting us back in Sweden.

Itīs time to tell a little bit more about Lalli and his company - Inder Motors. He has been selling bikes for almost two years and are selling most of them to foreigners like us. Itīs a lot more work to sell to us europeans because we are not familiar with the Indian way of doing things and needs much more attention and customer service. Lalli says that probably even the Indian market would appreciate a higher service level, as soon as they discover where to find it.

At the present time he sells about 5 bikes a month, but the intention is to increase that to at least 10. After that he can get a contract direct with the Enfield factory and become a licensed dealer. That will probably open up the Indian market a bit.

What made us like Lalli from the start was that he never told us the normal phrase "No problem sir" as an answer to every question we had. Instead of that he asked us a lot of questions of how we had prepared for our planned journey. Over the time we more and more got the feeling that you do not buy a motorcycle from this man, you adopt it. All his mechanics acts like they really love this machines and really want to take care of them the best way.

If You want to get in touch with him try the telephone numbers and ask for Lalli Singh.

+91 11 5728579 or +91 11 5722869

If You prefer e-mail:

lallisingh@vsnl.com



The overhaul is a lot bigger job than we could have dreamd of, 5 mechanics attacks the bikes and starts dismounting them to pieces. Every little detail is checked, and everybody check that we follow what happens and understand how everything works. The cylinderhead is removed and one person spend two hours to cleanwe
Itīs beginning to get late, time to get home for some sleep, the overhaul vill continue tomorrow.

We have been a little lazy in updating the website, time to shape that up. The normal procedure is that Bertil is responsible for the text, he is the one to blame for all the misuse of this beautiful language, and Bert is fixing all the pictures and the technical stuff involved.
29 Mars
Rishikesh

Our alarm clock starts 05:30, we have decided to get up early and drive a little bit further up in the mountains, the roads are impossible to resist. After another 40 km we reach a small town where two parts of the river Ganges joins, that probably makes this little town extra holy. There are tempels everywhere and itīs obvious that many Hindu people are coming here because of the river.

Time to turn back. After little more than half the way there is a total traffic jam. A bus has crashed in the middle of a small town and are blocking all traffic in our direction. All twowheelers manage to get by the accident and suddenly the road are nearly empty. Luckily we are now allowed to drive in 70 km/h so we are really enjoying the driving for a while.

This time we have learnt our lesson about the traffic, we are navigating with the GPS the last 15 km, tight together. The meters on the bikes are now reading 1600 km, we decide that its time to start the overhaul, a little premature.

Bert have had problem with his stomach the whole day, so we go direct home, both very tired.


28 Mars
Delhi

Following Lalli:s suggestion we are heading for a place called Rishikesh, about 250 km north of Delhi. Itīs a small town just where the Himalaya begin. The road is OK, it seems to be an area where the sugarcanes are growing, we see all types of transports overloaded whith the the long thin sugarcanes. Now and then we smell the sugar refineries, its smells like burned candy.

At last we can see the mountains build higher in front of us and soon we reach Rishikesh. After a quick refueling stop we deside that even if itīs begginning to get late, we must continue a little further along the inviting mountain roads. After 25 km its getting dark, time to find somewhere to spend the night. After asking around a little we found a camp for rafting expeditions, it seems to be very popular to go rafting on the river Ganges. This camp has the most luxous tents we have ever seen, 15 square meters with a real toilet and shower, just 10 meters from the river.

Sitting around a big fire at the riverbed, we are chatting with a couple of Indian families on rafting expedition. Someone gets a guitarr and we discover that Hotel California seems to be popular in India too.

Dinner at 9 and the to sleep, no need for air condition tonight, itīs 11 deg C.
27 Mars
Delhi

We have got some "homework" from Lalli, we are supposed to drive the bikes until the meter says 2000 km, and drive them very carefully. The engine is designed 1948 and should be handled according to that. After the runin period is finished Lassi:s mechanics will perform a complete overhaul to check that everything is in order for our long trip.

Our plan is to start driving early in the morning to avoid the heavy traffic. Good plan, but we get totally lost and spent 2.5 hours to try to find the way out of town. During that time the traffic peaks, driving starts to get very "interesting".

Finally we managed to get out of town, in the right direction, towards Agra this time. Time for a late breakfast, we drive for another 100 km before we turn back.

On the way back into town we lost sight of each other. After spending about an hour trying to get contact again, we gave up that and started to find the way to Lalli:s shop. Bert had a little easier task, using the GPS.

After a short meeting we got home to the apartment for dinner together with Kerstin. She is leaving for Sweden tonight.
26 Mars
Delhi

We had scheduled a meeting with Lalli today at 11:30, to finish some paperwork and mount the frame and the big metalboxes on the side of the bikes. Before the meeting, we had some time to look around Dehli:s old town, and the differentmarkets. We also tried to find an open bank office, to get the money for the last payment of the bikes, but no success, it appears to be some sort of holiday today as well. Lalli didnīt mind, so we got all the registration papers together with a bag of spaer parts and tools. At 15:00 we finally left Lalli:s workshop and hit the road, actually the same way to Jaipur as yesterday. Today we felt a lot more relaxed, everything worked so well, the engines ran very smooth on the 4:th gear. The expression "King of the Road" got a very real meaning for us. What a feeling to finally drive our own brand new motorcycles. After 50 km and 3 hours, to find our ways in Dehli is much harder than we thought it would be, we stop for a soft drink and starts heading back. When we get closer to Dehli, the traffic started to get more intense, much more intense. The bikes seems to get rather hot when the speed is under 5 km/h. To sum up the day, its an unbeatable feeling to drive around like this. We both agree that this trip seems to be a very good idea.
25 Mars
Delhi

At last together in Delhi, its time to see our new motorcycles for the first time. We went to Mr. Lalli:s shop, and there they are. We have been talking about this moment for months. Everything seems to be OK, the big fueltanks looks great. The black colour on Bert:s bike is also good. Of course we must try to sit on them and get the feeling. We are as happy as kids in a toystore.

Lalli:s friend took us on a short testdrive, first on a deserted parking, then on an 80km long drive in the not so heavy Dehli traffic. Slowly we begin to adapt to drive on the left side.

After our drive in the hot (34 deg.C) sun for 3 hours, we really deserved a beer. Everybody in Dehli are voting today, because of that ist "dry day", no alcohol to be served anywhere. To celebrate with Pepsi is not really the same, but we are still happy.
24 Mars
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