Trip Stats:
Odometer: 2,103 km
Chindi - Mandi (summary)
Progress: 99km
Time: 03:57 hr.
Avg. Speed: 25 km/hr
(altitude chart)

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2003-06-03 - Chindi - Sundarnagar - Mandi (Day 49)

I am up for breakfast on the hotel grounds at 7:00am, pack up, and am ready to hit the road by 9:00am. Mohinder says goodbye before heading off to catch the bus to the school visibly upset that I will be setting off alone and constantly reminding me to write. Mr. Sharma presents me with one of the flowers from his garden to wish me on the way and I set off down the mountain toward Chindi. Again, it is just a lovely morning with cool temperatures but the sun out and few cars on the road.

This part of the country is valley upon valley and I spend the next hour going down one then an hour going back up. There is a bit of stress in this part of the ride as with the rides to Mr. Sharma's and Mohinder's homes, as well as the extra 40 km rides to Mohinder's school, I do not think I have much petrol left. The Enfield is not giving me much in the way of clues besides still hearing some sloshing in the take for how much fuel, I have left but the only course except just wait and hope in Chindi is to drive down to Sundarnagar, which is the closest place for gas - 80 km away. I figure the chances of running out of petrol are about 70%, I am just hoping that I can get to at least 20km away from Sundarnagar before I run out so it will not be too hard to find a car to take me in and get a ride back. What is worrisome about this is that I would have to unpack the bike and take all the luggage in which would be a pain as well as very time consuming.

It seems that there is always so much to stress about driving here that it takes the most part out of the fun of riding. Whether it be the amount of petrol left, sand on the roads, water washing out parts of the roads, trucks on one way lanes coming around a corner without blowing their horn, or bike problems, riding here is simply too high stress to be "fun" like it is in so many of the other countries like Thailand, Taiwan, or of course the United States. As I am thinking about the bike in general I note something that took me a while to figure out about the Bullet and assuming there might be someone as backward as myself, I will write it down to hopefully save someone else the learning curve. The front and back tires on the Enfield are different with the front being a grooved "highway" tire and the back a knobbed "off-road" tire. After all of the slips it has finally occurred to me that the bike is slipping because of the front tire, which has little to grip the sand and dirt covering these roads. My training has always been a little higher pressure on the front brake then the rear but on these types of roads that is extremely dangerous and the opposite is actually called for, as the rear tire is the only one that can grip these roads.

I hear the screeching of tires just as I see the truck - a big oil truck coming around the corner to the inside, which had not blown his horn and apparently had not heard mine. As these are all one-lane roads, his being on the inside leaves me nowhere to go and I hear him lock breaks and start to slide. I am not going very fast, already so paranoid about these roads that my average speed now is only 20 km/hr but still its fast enough, and instinct pulls the bike all the way to the edge and brakes. However, in a repeat of the previous run ins with trucks, the bike catches in the sand at the side of the road, and slips out from under me, this time however, the mountain is there and I can do nothing to avoid the rock coming at my face. I see it come in then it all goes black.

I stagger up crawling out from between the bike and the mountain, raise my hand to my face and it comes away covered in blood. The oil truck has stopped and the five guys inside are standing on the other side of the road watching me. I am dazed and simply stand there, covered in dirt, blood and shacking from the fall. They just stand there and look at me. I am positive the scenario goes like this, while it is already surprising that they stopped at all, if I do not get up or am really hurt, they get back in the truck and quickly drive away. If I get up and am presumably unhurt enough to turn around and catch up to them, in that case they will do what they can and try to smooth things over. Lovely. A bus comes along and as the truck and the bike are blocking the road the guys decide to take some action with one moving the truck and four helping me pick up the bike and move it to the other side of the road behind the truck. Again, I was very lucky and nothing on me is broken, the bike is scuffed up a bit but again, it took the fall without having anything break. The gash on the head seems not to be very deep and while my head is pounding, there probably is not any major damage.

Now is a good time to mention what makes the Enfield Bullet one of the most dangerous bikes for Western riders I've ever seen and the reason why I would discourage anyone experienced in riding in other countries from riding or buying an Enfield Bullet. The Enfield is built on a standard I've never heard of any other bike following which is having the gearshift on the right and the brake on the left. To put it simply - the Enfield has the safety equipment, the brake on the wrong side. In an emergency, you react by instinct not by conscious decision and in just 7 weeks, I have had three run ins with trucks and jeeps not using horns and coming around corners all of which have left me relying on my reflexes to avoid an accident. All three times, I have gone down, luckily unhurt but there is no telling if that will be true next time. The reason I am going down is very simple - the instinctual reaction for someone with riding experience is pressure to both the front and rear breaks and to go to the side. However, because of the Enfield's engineering - the instinct to engage the rear break has your right foot downshifting on the gearshift and the front pulling the disk and swerving. The front break taking the full momuntum of the bike and turning will quickly slip, especially when there is sand or dirt on the roads like is the norm in Himachal and the bike goes down, out of control, and the rider goes either under the bike or over the handlebars. If this had been another bike, the equal pressure on the front and rear breaks would keep the bike up as it swerved, hopefully avoiding the problem, but with just the front tire gripping, and probably locking, the bike will go down. Period, that's it - your instincts are going to put you on the pavement.

For the Indians, they may have learned on an Enfield so are at much less risk then a foreigner and probably will underplay the risk as they don't have the same instincts as someone who's been riding bikes anywhere else in the world. What's worse, the risk is doubled in that if you do finally get yourself trained to use the brake on the left, once you return home or ride somewhere else, you have the same risk all over again of in an emergency situation you are just going to be using the front brake which will drop the bike. Added to that, the Enfield design must have both the left and right hand sides of your brain both take action at the same time as one side controls the front brake and one the rear as opposed to the rest of the world's bike design where the left side controls front and rear brakes. My guess is this makes things even slower and less likely to be smooth, which is the only thing that is going to keep the bike up.

If I were to do it again, I would have bought this bike but would have settled for the 350 Thunderbird, which has reversed the design. The 500 Bullet with a disk brake on the front simply has too much stopping power on the front tire and with a loaded bike like a traveler will use, and instincts from riding elsewhere, the bike is far too likely to go down on you if there is an emergency.

A last note - so far all three falls I've been under the bike which considering the Enfield's outrageous weight would have maimed me if I did not have crash guards and the iron luggage rack in the back holding the bike up as it slid down the road. I had never used crash guards on any of my bikes before and after these experiences, I'll never ride without them again. If the Enfield drops with your leg underneath it and goes down the road, you are not going to have that leg. Period. Get the crash guards.

I pick myself up, make it the last 20 km to Sundarnagar, and find the petrol station knowing I am running on fumes. It did not surprise me to find that the petrol station I had traveled 80 km to reach, was also out of petrol. Lovely. There was hope though in that 8 km down the road was another station that the attendant said had gas. I make it, fill up and finally have that bit of stress gone for at east another tank. There is new stress in that the roads have widened out into wide two lanes with my reaching back down to the flat lands and the temperature is back up to 100 degrees F. The wider roads have brought back passing which is treated as a sport. The roads are filled with tractors doing 30 km/hr and since this is a heavy tourist zone, we have the tourist jeeps trying to do 70 km/hr and the busses and trucks filling the range in between. The passing is insane with horns a constant blare is traffic from the other side makes the risk just a little too high. I am in the flatlands only 10 minutes when I am longing to be back in the mountains where the single lane certainly has its problems as my head is constantly reminding me, but the driving on these roads is as bad or worse due to Indian driving attitudes.

The rest of the trip into Mandi is uneventful and still covered in blood and dirt from the fall I find an internet café to let everyone know I am all right and upload the site. The café is running six computers, two with web cams, through a single 56k modem and the upload of the most recent journals and photos takes 6 hours. Not exactly, how I planned to spend the day but I do get to catch up on the news and with friends.

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