The most obvious place in the world for a motorcycle rally? It's certainly not Southern India, I can assure you. For starters, there are the combined matters of lethal traffic, appalling roads and quaint indigenous motorcycles that fall to pieces once you get there. If you don't like curry, you go hungry, and it's virtually impossible to get a decent cup of coffee. I've never been there before because (as everyone knows) it's a dirty, smelly, overcrowded country.
Just the same, after our plane touches down in Southern India, the 100 jet-lagged participants in Enduro India 2005 stagger from the cabin. The harsh sunlight leaves them feeling blind and near-helpless, like sick moles. One especially zealous rally enthusiast tries to roust his comrades in arms with a stirring shout of, "Enduro India 2005 is go!" He is met with an impregnable wall of silence as my eyes look to the heavens. Enduro India, I decide right there, is going to be a disaster.
As usual, I am staggeringly wrong. Enduro India is a thundering success and turns out to be one of the most illuminating, broad-minded and riotously fun things I have done on a motorcycle. By the end of the rally, I have completely revised my opinion of an entire continent and its 1.2 billion inhabitants.
The event format is deceptively simple: a 1300-mile lap around Southern India in seven days on 350cc Royal Enfield Bullets. In practice, however, this requires an organizational feat on par with a moon mission and incredible commitment by both the team and participants alike. In India, where it takes two hours to do something as simple as changing an airplane ticket, it is pretty amazing the enduro happens at all.
Of course it's not a real enduro. There are no points for first place, no checkpoints or special stages. But there are some tough roads to cover, and I challenge anyone to ride 200 miles per day in a sadistic Enfield saddle and not squirm in searing pain. Just getting to Calicut-the city where the rally kicks off-is a huge feat, requiring you pay $800, raise another $5500 for charity, and find two weeks off work.
For the last two years Enduro India has been the product of Simon Smith, 32, from London. "It takes the whole year to organize just these two weeks," he says. "It's a massive task to sort, and if I didn't have some seriously useful people in India helping me out we'd be sunk. Each year we get 1000 enquiries, 400 of those put the deposit down, and 100 of those actually come on the rally.
"But Enduro India seems to tap into something unique with those who make the effort to come. We have something here that puts back an element of danger in life. You don't want a guide to be standing on every corner telling you where to go; you're a big boy, so tune in and use your head. We don't want to hold their hands, we want them to work."
On first acquaintance, a Royal Enfield Bullet might not seem the best bike for the job. The gearshift is on the right side, the rear brake is on the left, and with what feels like 3 bhp there's no power to speak of. When you step off the plane in Calicut, however, you quickly realize not only have you travelled some 5500 miles west, you've also stepped some 45 years back in time. A bike you would normally (and quite rightly) laugh at has suddenly become a valid and useful method of transport. Out here, an Enfield is all you need.
The first two days in-country are spent getting used to the heat, the bikes and the eye-watering local driving style. Trucks, buses, cars and three-wheeler taxis launch themselves at you seemingly without any regard for human life or the most basic of traffic laws. It is perfectly normal to see a car overtaking a taxi overtaking a bus on a single-lane road, and for you to have to take evasive action in the nearest ditch. U-turns are performed immediately and without warning, the use of indicators is deeply frowned upon, and little heed is paid to which side of the road is used for what direction. It's like the entire country passed their test at the post-apocalyptic school for Mad Max motoring.
At 6 a.m. of the first day, all entrants gather round for what will become regular morning briefings: Watch out for this, don't go there, try not to hit that. Assembled en masse for the first time in our riding kit, we are an extremely motley bunch, the riders wearing a bizarre mix of motocross body armor, cheap open-face helmets, cargo pants, knee pads and Hawaiian shirts. It's like the extras in Magnum: PI stumbled onto the set of Death Race 2000. Even at this hour of the morning it's 82 degrees F, and, loaded up with liters of water and gallons of bravado, the 100 riders thread out onto the roads to a fanfare of horns and the odd trumpeting elephant.
Touring through India is a multilayer event. On one level you have the basic enjoyment of riding a lopsided motorcycle around a warm, foreign land. On the next you have the incredible topography of the country-India goes from mountain savannah to tropical jungle to Northern California in the space of 5 miles. And the next level is to witness the deep-rooted and genuine happiness of the Indians themselves. It really appears Southern India is the happiest place on earth. These people are grindingly poor, and yet they could all teach us an object lesson in how to smile and get on with it. When you have nothing it is all you can do to get by, and if you can get by with a smile on your face, then you're a better man than me.
Day two of the rally brings the promised carnage on the road to Palghat, and as we wind our way down the Kundah road, Bullets are going down like ninepins. Fortunately, Indian-made Enfields are largely indestructible, and if the need arises you can fix them with a screwdriver and a size-11 boot. On day three I let my throttle hand get the better of me and seized my Bullet solid. On almost any other motorcycle it would have been the end of my trip, but on the Enfield it was simply a matter of letting the old girl cool down, kick her through a few times, and proceed on my way. Likewise, at some point my kickstarter became possessed and decided to rotate a full 180 degrees at random intervals, whacking my ankle each time it went past. Taking it off and bump-starting was the only cure.
By John Cantlie
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