Ape_Venture

Australia, South East Asia, Himalayas, Middle East, Balkans, Europe, England

It was early 2022, and my two friends and I were brainstorming holiday ideas after our Europe 2020 plans were cancelled due to COVID. Our 28th birthdays were just around the corner.
“Boys, I’m thinking this has to be a big one!” said my quintessential Australian mate, Jordan. “How about one of those outback budget rallies, the ones where you can only spend 1,000?” Tom suggested in an attempt to please Jordan’s aspirations.
“What if we rode motorbikes to London?”
The three of us had next to no motorcycle experience, and Jordan didn’t even have a license. None of us were particularly in shape, nor do we have any expedition-based experience, yet it was decided in the heat of the moment that this is what we wanted.

Fast forward to June of 2023 and an Events Coordinator (Tom), Office Worker (me), and Public Servant (Jordan), all submitted our resignations and enthusiastically began watching YouTube videos on how to ride around the world.

We all purchased stock Suzuki DR650s following receipt of some advice that they reflected the Cruiser of the motorcycle world. The week leading up to our July departure we filled with “Ben what is this and where does it go?”, “She’ll be right, right?” and “Why is smoke coming from the wiring loom?”
Disorganised and tragically behind schedule, we didn’t even get a chance to ride our motorcycles with their recently added panniers.

Our first stop was Noosa, a mere 60 minutes north of Brisbane.

We were exhausted from the highway drive and questioning each other more in hindsight whether this was a good idea. Noosa is to Brisbane what the Hamptons is to New York.

What happened when Jordan went to exit the main shopping centre car park? He lost his balance and the severely overweight DR slowly but surely dragged the 100 kilo, 6’2” man to the pavement. Land Rovers, Audis, Mercedes and BMW all bore witness to this spectacle. Traffic steadily built up behind Jordan, but no way to exit without our help to pick his motorcycle up. We were the literal definition of “all the gear, no idea.”
Our first stop was Timor Leste, and especially for Tom, for whom it was his first time overseas, the 22-year-old country was a stark contrast to Australia. Infrastructure over there is in its infancy, with electricity transmission lines closely resembling old headphone tangles after being in your pocket for too long.
At a local fish market, I saw a family of five riding on one 50cc scooter. A baby was sandwiched between the mother and father, a toddler stood in the footwell, and the eldest child teetered on the end of the back seat. I thought of my family back in Australia, and how I would consider five of us in our hatchback as a tight squeeze. No one here wore helmets or jackets – just sandals, t-shirts and shorts.

While it seemed daunting at first, diving head first into a country such as Timor-Leste was probably a good thing. We learned some hard lessons straight away. We learned accordingly: do not trust Google Maps, carry provisions in case you get stuck, have an offline translator app downloaded, do not drink tap water, set a meeting point in case someone will go off the road or a break is required, pull the rest to sit in and be cautious of children on the roadside. The list could go on.

We were grateful to be completing the journey via land. Riding between well-formed tourist towns meant that our route involved travelling through rural outposts, that otherwise rarely – if ever – visited by outsiders. It was a special experience characterised by excitement and generous hospitality from locals in each place we visited.

Tired and running well behind schedule on a hot Indonesian afternoon, we decided to make camp in a quiet field. As the sun set, we began to notice shapes moving through surrounding trees, which soon escalated to a small crowd inching in on our set up.
Having just crossed into the country, we had no internet access and began hand signalling sleeping motions to understand if we were allowed to stay. Local children enveloped us, picked up our tents and ran away with them. We took chase, pushing our bikes with half-unpacked gear piled on the seats. Making our way through the foliage, we soon discovered our charades skills were out of practice, and that our gesture of sleeping was misinterpreted for praying.

We prayed, greeted, sang and danced our way through the night, dreary eyed but extremely grateful for food provided by a village whose pride centrepiece was some corrugated iron held together by tree branches and string.
We sat young, joyful children on our foreign motorcycles, letting them beep the horn and ride the engine. Everyone was having the time of their lives. The next morning, we were given water from a truck driver that utilised a tarp to prevent spout seepage and a massive plastic lid to prevent evaporation. This was a far cry from our treated and pressured tap water.

Unplanned interactions such as these became some of our favourite aspects of the trip – experiences we believe are unique to visiting communities insulated from tourist related development.

Reaching the northern-most point of our Southeast Asia loop, we found ourselves in the Vietnamese town of Ha Giang. This area is becoming synonymous with tourism for the scenic roads that connect mountainous towns throughout the area.
Deciding that joining a guided motorcycle tour wasn’t in Ape_Venture style, we planned to follow a 40-kilometre single road from the Chinese border town of Giang Nam to Vinh Quang. One section of this route had several reviews, all stating it was impossible to pass even when it was dry. The alternative path to reaching Vinh was a staggering 150-kilometre detour.
Against the advice of hostel staff, and with a 2-1 vote against a sick Tom, we set off on our short-cut to Vinh.

We allocated six hours for what was likely to be a 10-hour ride, covering 30 kilometres in the first hour. We quickly decided that this was one of the best decisions we had made on tour. But as the road began to climb and narrow into a mountain range, we still felt some entitlement.

Soon enough, it became so cemented that together and not long after a haphazard way to exit, Jordan got gazed at the convoy, determined to complete the final stint and sent it into a rock on Bash! “Time to lift – no point looking” relayed Tom from the middle of the pack, beginning to understand the warnings we had received prior to our departure.

Vegetation became thick on either side of the pathway, which was regularly cut up by hazardous streams of water, turning our path into sludge. Second gear was soon completely out of the equation with the road resembling a hiking track cut into the side of a mountain.

Before we knew it, it was 1pm and we decided to give our batteries and starters a rest as we evaluated our situation. “Bro you are completely covered in crap!” Jordan laughed as he looked at me. I had been pushing the boys through tricky sections and was painted with mud from the rear tyres. It was four hours into the ride. We ate emergency fruit that we had packed and cautiously sipped on our water bottles. “If we turn around it’s long way to Vinh. We could do that or push on for these next few kilometres and be at the town” said Jordan.

He was understanding what lay ahead, as the mountain had no phone reception – something that didn’t fill us with confidence. We had not seen another person since mid-morning. Given we were already three-quarters into our destination, we decided it was safest to push on. Unfortunately, our route began to seriously degrade, with all of us wondering how this was even categorised as a traversable route.

The heavy DRs no longer had traction, forcing us to walk panniers uphill so we could scamper over mud and rock without the added weight. At 8pm I snapped my clutch lever. “Now we are really f**ked,” said Tom, still battling remnants of a flu he had caught earlier that week. We weren’t carrying a spare either.

Sharing the last of our food and water over nightfall on the trail, we discussed at what point we would resort to the satellite phone. It was too far to walk to the nearest village and much too late to move on in the dark, not much faster. Feeling tired, dehydrated and hungry, we next morning zip tied one on with an improvised sleeve fashioned as a makeshift clutch lever.

This was the second time this particular spanner had saved us, as the battery on Jordan’s bike had died from the constant stalling and it was used to directly bridge to another battery for a jump-start.

Moral hit an all-time low when the path that cut into a moss-covered rock section collapsed under Jordan’s bike. “We are so finished!” I watched Jordan lament, as he looked at his bike, now precariously suspended over the steep Vietnamese mountain.

With water running over our wheels after 4pm, it was now far too dangerous to ride. We spent the best part of the next two hours aligning ourselves to the path, shoving all our ropes and long sticks to slowly drag the unwielding bikes to the other side. One might mention that Tom had completely binned and clutch-out braked, battered and dry-lipped from issues, forced to stay awake in 36 hours, we reached our destination from Vinh around 8pm. From that night we began the final bind of our time with the DRs.

May of 2023 found us riding in Ladakh – a picturesque and spiritual region of north India. There is a no-barren, knitted in snow-lodks covering the Himalayas. It took our entire group an hour to photograph the ground as landscapes behind the sky must be seen to be believed.

We loved riding in this environment, with such low oxygen, encouraged caution on our part. “You would be wrong! Confidently delivering a ‘watch this’ over intercom, Tom blasted past, but not thirty seconds later, a visible plume of dust rose into the air. Tom was down. He had crashed and his motorcycle had landed directly onto his foot. When he asked his help to close to his chest, bike tyres still spinning from the accident.

We had not seen another soul that day and there was no phone reception. The good friends that we are, we are first to laugh at each other’s misery, however, it felt a little different this time. Tom rode for the next five hours with a very sore foot.

We made it to a village where we were able to organise a small truck to transport Tom and his motorcycle to Leh the next day. As we watched a cast get fitted to Tom’s left leg, the doctor advised us that the situation did not look great.

In reality was one thing after another on this trip. While Tom rested with an elevated leg in the cab of the truck carrying his motorcycle to Leh, it crashed into an oncoming car. As the other rider walked hands-on-head around his newly written-off car, Tom’s truck driver backed up, paused, and then sped off into the distance, carrying Tom as prisoner to this accident. Jordan followed the truck on his bike in fear of what was just unfolded, sure that Indian road rules stipulated that hit and runs were not acceptable.

Tom later flew home to Australia for surgery on his foot, including the installation of some titanium implants. We met a fellow motorcycle tourer, Alex, and he helped us transport Tom’s bike from the snowy mountains down to temporary storage in Amritsar. Jordan and I became great friends with Alex, consequently deciding to ride through most of the Middle East and into Europe together.

The scenery riding the revered Pamir Highway through Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan often had us wondering if we were still on earth. Sweeping expanses, snow, mud, sand, red rock, and goats continued mile after mile, all without another being in sight. The travelling community in this area is everything you would expect and more. Regardless of whether you travel by horse, motorcycle, truck, car or push bike, if you see someone in this region, you stop, check in with them and often spend a night camping together. Everyone is enthusiastic and happy, which is unsurprising given the effort required to safely travel in this area.

Arriving in Europe was a surreal experience. We no longer heard people commenting “you’re crazy” or “what?” Now they said, wide-eyed “you’ve ridden all the way from Australia?!”

Tom had flown back to continue with his bike after a very short recovery in Australia, and caught us in Greece. Crater formed caverns, whitewashed roads, food, water, and unrestricted travel throughout the EU.

While living out what we had wished throughout our upbringing up until this point, the dream of reaching the dunes became a reality. We had exhausted the road through the Himalayas, Middle East, the Stans and now moved through the Alps.

Tom who had made the final stint to London with a pick-up for a photo in front of Big Ben, had literally biked through two sides of the planet. Making our way through Central London to Big Ben, we recalled the significant moments: navigating monsoon rain, hiking volcanos, being held at gunpoint by the Taliban, filling a tank for less than a dollar in Iran, making the Russian transit visa run in three days, the European Trans Euro Trail and seeing the White Cliffs of Dover.

We absolutely stumbled our way across the world, credit to the kind communities and strangers that helped us along the way. While our riding ability may not have improved drastically over the 70,000 kilometres we travelled, our willingness to ride head-on into whatever challenge came our way certainly bolstered.

Changing a tube or completing an oil change felt like a leisurely activity compared to undertaking motorcycle repairs with no mechanics, no understanding of the local language and no internet tutorials to assist.

While we can offer little to no advice on how to return to a 9-5 job at the conclusion of a trip like ours, we can confirm there is no better way to immerse yourself in what the world has on offer than on a motorcycle.