From A2B: Singapore To London – Solo

This entry is part 4 of 320 in the series Adventure Rider Issue #1

From A2B

Covering 35,000km through 27 countries couldn’t be that hard, Nic Cuthbert figured. But for someone who’d only been riding six months and barely set foot overseas, maybe it could be.

Words and images: Nic Cuthbert

I was hugging the mountain on a narrow rocky road, crawling around a blind turn on a sheer, 600-metre cliff face with my front wheel centimetres from the edge, and it gave me an uneasy feeling. Kunzum La Pass in the Indian Himalayas isn’t everyone’s cup of chai. Riding at 3500m elevation with the constant threat of avalanche, and passing out due to acute mountain sickness a real possibility, tests a man’s courage. For me the infamous road, documented in the History Channel’s Ice Road Truckers; World’s Deadliest Roads was all that it was cracked up to be and more. But that’s not where this story starts.

Top right: Big stretches of desertwere easily dealt with by the BMW.Main: Some of the mountain roads were tight and didn’t offer much in the way of guardrails or cat’s eyes. Look down in the bottom-right of this pic to see the road leading up.

From the beginning

I was 12 months into a posting in Malaysia when I started to get itchy feet again. I’d been on the move for the last couple of years with time on the Gold Coast, six months riding a pushy around Australia for charity and six months living the dream in Broome. But what next, I wondered? And how?

After a short time I’d begun thinking like the Malaysian locals and was getting around on two wheels, firstly on a 110cc moped like everyone else, and then not long after, my first proper bike: a Yamaha Virago I named ‘Harriet’. I began doing weekend trips

around the Malay Peninsula, mainly down to Singapore (about four hours’ ride), but also north to Penang, Langkawi and beyond to the Thai border. Before long I started questioning how far I could actually go. Cambodia? Vietnam, perhaps? Why not the UK?

I quickly became an armchair enduro expert, familiarising myself with terms like ‘panniers’, ‘carnet de passage’, ‘overlander’ and ‘adventure touring’. It was November 2012 and I gave myself until March the following year to set off on the adventure of a lifetime: Singapore to London, solo on a bike.

The start at Sentosa, Singapore. Look how clean the bike is!

Identity born

Planning a big adventure, as readers of this magazine may know and I supposed at the time, means a lot of things, but there’s always a start point. Although I had a destination I needed a machine to get me there. I rode both the 1200 and 800 GS from BMW, read half the Interweb and put hours into thinking long and hard about it. Although I could see benefits in both I went with a three-month-old demo F800GS from the UK. Being a demo meant I was able to:
• Get it cheap,
• Get it specced out OEM just how I wanted it, and
• Get a carnet de passage (CDP) issued by the RAC UK.For those unfamiliar with a CDP, it’s basically a passport for a bike or equipment that allows you to keep temporarily importing and exporting it in and out of countries all the way back to its home port. I was able to get the bike serviced in Malaysia before I left, meaning it wouldn’t need going over for another 10,000km. That was handy, because the next nearest BMW dealer was in Delhi, India.

Once I’d bought a bike much of my preparation centred on route planning, obtaining visas and – seeing I’d decided the project would be in support of international aid agency, ActionAid – putting sponsors together.

And so A2B was born.

Friends

Six months after hatching the idea and just six days after getting my WA bike licence (and therefore my international licence) I was on the start line. Bristling with tension for the unknown, excited beyond belief and committed to making it happen safely, I rolled ‘Snow’ – my F800GS – out of Sentosa Beach, Singapore, the southernmost tip of the Asian continent. Ahead of me was a very long road indeed.

The first week or so was fairly easy going and I quickly settled into a routine of ride-eat-sleep. For these first few days I had the companionship of close friends Matt and Sarah, and there was also a big send off from crew and supporters at The Big Bike Shop in Malaysia.

The first couple of days also included my first proper border crossing – Malaysia to Thailand – a procedure I would become tirelessly familiar with, but never expert at. No two were ever the same, and I was to do well over 30 borders by the time I crossed the English Channel.

Boxer

The first hurdle of the trip was to come early in the piece when I tried crossing from Thailand into Burma at Tachilek in the far north, and it wasn’t a surprise.

I’d already been denied entry at Mae Sot, and I knew before I left Singapore that it was always going to be a long shot to get through the country otherwise known as Myanmar. Although it was starting to open up to foreigners, all my
research suggested I’d likely be denied a complete overland experience. After 1200 non-stop kilometres in 14 hours I was

Above: Myanmar was off limits. The BMW was packed up and Nic bought a plane ticket.

standing in Bangkok International Airport trying to book myself and a sizeable amount of excess luggage onto a flight to Kolkata, India. It was clear no-one at Bangkok airport had a written procedure for this, but like most things in South-East Asia, where there’s will (and cash) there’s a way, and after three days of investigation, negotiation, trial and error I had a carpenter banging the last nail into a big box that would carry my pride and joy across to the subcontinent. The adventure had truly begun.

Highs and lows

India could best be described as a lesson in life, and it’s true that most outsiders will never understand the complexities that make up life amongst 1.2 billion others. India included some of the highest points in the trip – like actually clearing Indian customs in the first place, but also riding over Kunzum La in the Himalayas. At 4590m it’s one of the highest motorable passes in the world. India, however, also included some of the darkest moments, like watching a small girl die slowly in the back of a tuk-tuk, coming over the India/Nepal border and sweltering in the heat. At the end of that same day, I was overcome by a mixture

The Himalayas were majestic but challenging. of exhaustion, dehydration and emotion, and passed out in the searing night-time heat, slumped over my bike in the backstreets of Varanasi. It took four days to recover, by which point inhaling the torrid smoke from burning human bodies became too much and I simply had to get on with the journey. India was always going to leave an indelible mark on my consciousness, but as the border gate slammed shut at Amritsar I was glad to put it behind me and saddle up for what was going to be a challenging four-day crossing of one of the world’s more dangerous countries: Pakistan.

Hit for six

Pakistan heralded a change in pace. The vast stretch between Lahore in the east and the Iranian border in the west meant big distances, big temperatures and big unknowns in personal security. As it turned out, most of the last agenda item fell into place when I was visited by the Internal Security Service (ISS) on my second night in the country at the southern town of Bahawalpur. Perhaps this shouldn’t have been a huge surprise, but it explained why it took the hotel owner three hours to “…photocopy your passport, sir”.

Two neatly, traditionally dressed members of the secret constabulary appeared in reception to ask me questions about what on Earth an Australian was doing in southern Pakistan. Fortunately my time in India had taught me the knack of dropping the names of Australian cricketers.

“Yes,” I offered, “Ricky Ponting and I had dinner together just before I left, and yes I’m hoping to catch up with Shane Warne in London”.

Gun riders

The next day, after covering 684km in 58-degree heat through central Pakistan, I was scaling the Central Bhrahui Ranges at dusk. It meant riding the only road to Quetta, a flashpoint of sectarian violence and the site of a very recent smattering of mass killings between Sunni and Shia Muslims. It was also a vital point for the opium-smuggling trade out of nearby Afghanistan. Perhaps I should’ve been afraid, but I pushed on, nervously watching the sun set as high ridges grew on either side of the road and I started viewing the infrequent passing of headlights as a morbid threat. I eventually drew up at a checkpoint with questions of trust running through my head. At this stage of the trip I knew a uniform didn’t necessarily mean authority.

Soviet-era AK47s beckoned me off the road and by their various hand gestures and attempts to communicate it became obvious I’d be travelling no further that evening.

The gents helped me to quickly move the bike into a small but high-walled compound nestled into the side of a cliff. They pulled out a bed frame without a mattress and motioned for me to rest. I was exhausted and more or less passed out, especially after I could see, and was therefore safe in the knowledge that, they had a guard covering the high point of the ridge above the compound.

Later that night the guards woke me and offered me a traditional dinner, cooked in the ground like damper and eaten with our hands around an open fire under a crescent moon. I couldn’t have felt more alive. A short while later I was again putting head to bedframe, this time having asked the guard next to me to point his gun the other way after he’d loaded it, cocked it and neatly placed it under a puffed pillow facing in my direction.

Top left: A remote checkpoint in Pakistan.Left: At least he was persuaded to face the barrel the other way.

Two days, a massive dust storm and 2200km under the protection of the Balochistan Military Police later I pulled up at the Pakistan border ready to tackle the next news headline: Iran

End of part one

Nic’s attempt to make it to London via the deserts and perils of Iran, the exotic sites of Turkey and the historic wonder of Europe continues next issue.

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