Motorcycle Explorer October 2014 Issue 2 | Page 35

Overlanding
Overlanding by motorcycle has been the dream of a
growing number of people since before the Second
World War, though few have actually attempted to
go out and do the big trip. I suspect that even now
there are few more than 1,000 people who have
actually ridden their motorcycles around the world.
When you think that at the UN’s statistics say that the
world’s population is around the 7,211,239,210
mark, that’s not a lot of people. More people have
been lucky enough to ride the full length of a
continent, but even so, their numbers aren’t that
great either.
Is there a price to pay for having had the opportunity
to complete a dream adventure? Too right there is.
There’s the investment of time and money of course,
but in the extreme an overlander can be unlucky and
find themselves in threatening situations. My
partner Birgit and I had arrived in the tense air of
Nepal Ganj, one of the border towns between India
and Nepal. The number of men hanging around
surprised us, and the number of police in full riot
gear was worrying. We wondered what we’d ridden
into. The town stayed quiet until the middle of the
night, but at just after one in the morning it erupted.
The first thing we knew that something really was
wrong, was when shouting began between men in
the corridor outside our room. We’d gone to sleep
with earplugs in because of the constant banging of
people’s room doors. The corridors were totally bare
of furnishings, so any sounds made there were
amplified. The noise got louder, and it sounded as if
the number of men doing the shouting was growing.
Below our first floor window there was the sound of
running feet, wood being banged on corrugated iron,
shouting, and gunfire, and then screams penetrated
our earplugs. I looked out, and the sky over the town
was a flickering orange, the stench of burning rubber
wafting in through our open window. In a quiet
moment we heard panicked footsteps scurrying past;
the runner was breathing in short hard bursts. He
stopped for a few moments at the side of the hotel
and then, as we heard more running feet and the
shouting coming closer, he took off again. We sat in
bed looking at each other, wondering what was going
to happen next. Would the fighting spill into our
hotel? Even the mosquitoes seemed to have taken
cover. Luckily in this instance we were indoors and
behind high walls but on the streets, rioting and
burning raged through the night.