Adventure bike brother-hood
Words by - Johnny Bang
Amristar To Lahore - About 50kms New Horizons |
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We left Amritsar at noon, cleverly waiting until the sun was highest and most fierce before donning our leathers and riding into the 45 degree overcrowded streets. We stopped at Yamaha on the way out of town to be ripped off for bike oil and chain lube. We found out later that we were in the middle of an Indian heatwave where temperatures exceeded 50 degrees and had been attributed to the deaths of over 2,000 people.
It was an easy ride from Amritsar to the border, though leaving India was somewhat difficult. Or maybe just time consuming, in that for the first time since Malaysia we were made to empty the contents of all our bags and let customs rifle around in there. They also picked up an indescrepancy in my carnet (a misprinted G as a 6 in my chassis number) and I had to declare I didn’t have a satellite phone (which I kinda did).
Pakistan was a lot easier though - I think this is because they were about to close, and they had turned off all the lights in the building and shut all the windows, so it was stinking hot. We were ushered to a small sauna room and we all sweated (literally) while a friendly but flustered Pakistani man in his 50's manually input all our bike data into a big leather bound book that seemed at least 50 years old. I imagined all the overlanders, all the vehicles and their tamers that had gone us. Nathan Millward on his Postie, Jono Gibson on his Enfield, maybe even Lois Pryce or Ted Simon. If there is a brotherhood for overland travellers, admission is surely presence into books like this.
We left as the famous military parade between the two borders was starting. This was something I had wanted to watch on the trip, but we were late to meet our contact in Pakistan, so I guess that parade is going on the 'cool things I missed - I should have been more organised' list.
I had made a friend through the couch surfing website and the address we were looking for was house 133, block A, Lahore. We found block A, but the problem was there were 3x houses that were numbered 133. We knocked on all of them, the last one being the right one.
We were staying in a big, 3 story house with a big gate and a high fence. Ahsan lived with his brother’s family who lived on the lower floor and we had the whole second floor. Ahsan was keen to show us the best Lahore had to offer and we were not disappointed. We had dinner at Andaaz restaurant rooftop which was probably the best meal I have had all trip.
We had a walk around the old, walled city, and saw the new Grand Jamia Mosqu, a new mosque, and the largest in Lahore that has just been built in a new suburb (Bahria Town). In some ways this is a very western city, particularly the new suburbs on the outskirts of town. Being a whole new master planned suburb built on a Greenfield site, I draw a lot of comparisons between Bahrain town and Robina, on the gold coast. Only instead of anchoring the suburb with a train station road shopping centre, it was anchored with the third largest mosque in Pakistan.
It was an easy ride from Amritsar to the border, though leaving India was somewhat difficult. Or maybe just time consuming, in that for the first time since Malaysia we were made to empty the contents of all our bags and let customs rifle around in there. They also picked up an indescrepancy in my carnet (a misprinted G as a 6 in my chassis number) and I had to declare I didn’t have a satellite phone (which I kinda did).
Pakistan was a lot easier though - I think this is because they were about to close, and they had turned off all the lights in the building and shut all the windows, so it was stinking hot. We were ushered to a small sauna room and we all sweated (literally) while a friendly but flustered Pakistani man in his 50's manually input all our bike data into a big leather bound book that seemed at least 50 years old. I imagined all the overlanders, all the vehicles and their tamers that had gone us. Nathan Millward on his Postie, Jono Gibson on his Enfield, maybe even Lois Pryce or Ted Simon. If there is a brotherhood for overland travellers, admission is surely presence into books like this.
We left as the famous military parade between the two borders was starting. This was something I had wanted to watch on the trip, but we were late to meet our contact in Pakistan, so I guess that parade is going on the 'cool things I missed - I should have been more organised' list.
I had made a friend through the couch surfing website and the address we were looking for was house 133, block A, Lahore. We found block A, but the problem was there were 3x houses that were numbered 133. We knocked on all of them, the last one being the right one.
We were staying in a big, 3 story house with a big gate and a high fence. Ahsan lived with his brother’s family who lived on the lower floor and we had the whole second floor. Ahsan was keen to show us the best Lahore had to offer and we were not disappointed. We had dinner at Andaaz restaurant rooftop which was probably the best meal I have had all trip.
We had a walk around the old, walled city, and saw the new Grand Jamia Mosqu, a new mosque, and the largest in Lahore that has just been built in a new suburb (Bahria Town). In some ways this is a very western city, particularly the new suburbs on the outskirts of town. Being a whole new master planned suburb built on a Greenfield site, I draw a lot of comparisons between Bahrain town and Robina, on the gold coast. Only instead of anchoring the suburb with a train station road shopping centre, it was anchored with the third largest mosque in Pakistan.
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