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When you are in Sri Lanka you could get some tea right from the source. Mmmm.

Hey, good on ya! Glad to hear you're definitely going.

Interesting place you live there. Nothing like that here. Little burg surrounded by woods and/or fields. Just honest, hard-drinkin' hicks.

If you want to feel that you are living a long, long life then I sincerely recommend you stand in the visa queue outside the Indian High Commission building on a cold, drizzly London morning with the wind whipping round your head.

It was Thursday last. I jumped off a number 176 bus at the entrance to The Aldwych in the West End and headed up to India House between the pompous facades of grand Victorian buildings. This was once the hub of the imperial city - and didn't the Victorians like to let you know it! I looked at my mobile phone. It was 6.50 am. And it was cold.

The entrance to the visa office was at the side of India House. Thirty people were already standing there, pulling their coats tightly around them and sheltering under umbrellas. The queue wound down some steps and along a narrow paved area between two massive grey walls. People were very quiet. Many had brought thermos flasks with them. There was the smell of coffee.

I passed the time until 8.30, when the doors were due to open, by shivering in the cold wind, stamping my feet and watching the sky slowly brighten over the rooftops. At eight o'clock the tall windows lit up with electric lights. The cleaners had arrived with mops and hoovers. It looked warm inside the office. I started looking at my mobile every quarter of an hour and found that I had gone into a time warp because each time I looked, it was only five minutes later. At quarter past eight, the counter staff appeared, took off their coats, shuffled their papers and wandered about abstractely. The doors opened.

I was given a ticket at the entrance and went in. People queued at the counters, then waited again: they shuffled about, or stood or sat on the long line of uncomfortable chairs. They sat buttoned up in their coats, nervously fingering their papers. They made half-hearted conversations. They argued politely with the officials who appeared occasionally from behind a heavy wooden door. The officials hid behind their spectacles and their official looking expressions. The applicants looked anxious and exposed. They fidgeted, wanting to get out of there as quickly as possible

I’m glad that Steve, another bloke going on the Enduro next month, had advised me to get to India House by 7 o'clock. If I hadn’t, I would have had an even longer and much drearier time of it. I might even have waited all day. As I left the building just before 10.00 gleefully clutching my visa, the ticket machine over the door indicated that 248 people had been admitted to the building after me and were now waiting to see if their applications had been successful. Outside, I made a rough count of those in the queue. It snaked over the paved area and up the stairs as before, but now it ran along the pavement across the front of India House and then on round the long slow curve of The Aldwych. There were about 450 people in the queue altogether, I reckoned, with more arriving all the time.

It’s been a busy few days. On Wednesday morning I rode over to see a friend to get a shiatsu treatment on my back. My lower back is now noticeably better, thank goodness. Mostly I no longer think about it. I’m pretty sure that I must have had a ‘slipped disc.’ After millennia of bipedal evolution the discs are still poorly designed for their purpose. And they have a scanty blood supply too. So, once damaged, they heal only very slowly. It is sobering to realise that whatever else you are, you are a work of imperfect natural engineering. Fortunately, the injury to my back hasn't stopped me riding. Once on the bike I am quite comfortable. Wheeling it out onto the road is a different matter, as is swinging my leg over the saddle.

What has stopped me riding - a bit - are the battery problems I’m now having with both bikes. The Daytona battery becomes drained within about three days if the bike isn’t used. I’m pretty sure it must be the new alarm I had fitted onto it. I know this sounds feeble, but I’ve been so low recently and my back has been so painful that I’ve just left it. The battery is probably dead as a doornail by now. I might have a go at getting the battery out and charging it up today – if it will still take a charge. I’ll have to do something about it because the SV is now unreliable as well.

The SV has some sort of ignition problem. Sometimes it will fire up, sometimes it won’t. If the bike has been standing for a while, it often refuses to fire at first. But then, if I keep trying, the engine will suddenly roar into life as though nothing were the matter. That suggests to me that there is a loose connection somewhere. Once the engine has been running for a bit though, it will always fire up first time, which suggests that something is draining the battery as on the Daytona. If that is the case, then it is probably the alarm, again. The SV is fitted with a Datatool 3 and I know there have been problems with that model.

But the SV’s problems didn’t start until Friday, so on Wednesday evening I rode it down to Dan’s place in South-East London. Hell! Am I glad that I don’t live in London! The A12 into his part of the city is a such a long boring road – mostly dual carriageway with a 40 mph speed limit all the way (30mph north and south of the Blackwall Tunnel) and loads of speed cameras. Travelling stop-go-stop-go for mile after mile on local city roads at 30mph is even worse. It drives me nuts.

I’m not a city boy and I find urban areas generally very unattractive. The messy layout and street clutter of British towns is very disorienting, especially when I am on the bike and have to make quick decisions. Individually, urban junctions are not a problem: I can generally work them out OK. It’s having to deal with one complex and unfamiliar junction after another that makes life difficult. I find that mentally very tiring and I get uncomfortably tense.

British cities are not usually laid out on a grid plan, so no two junctions are ever alike. To deal with them, you have to keep your mind in permanent overdrive. It’s not even necessarily the fact that a junction might have three, four, five or six roads going off at odd angles that causes the problem: it is the mess the planners have made of it – traffic islands, a million road signs, nearly as many road markings, badly placed lights, all mixed up with a jumble of railing, bollards and other street furniture to create a visual muddle. And lane markings on the road are never that good. Usually arrows only appear at the very last minute when it is too late to change lanes. Often they have cars queuing on top of them, so you don’t see them at all. London’s narrow streets and generally dense ground plan don’t help either.

I got to Dan’s place at 9.00 pm, too late to see Oscar. But I did get some time with him the next day after I got back from the Commission. He’s very cute. Of course he is!

I had decided during the week to take a ride up to Norfolk on Saturday by myself. When I ride on my own I like to have some sort of a goal in mind, so I was flicking through the web to see what was going on up there that I might drop in on. I was looking for a bike show or anything really that sounded interesting. I couldn't find anything, so started to play around. Quite by chance I came across the website of The Socialist Party of Great Britain.

The SPGB was a strong influence in the early development of my political opinions thirty years ago. And although I disagree with them now on a number of issues, they still remain the only political organisation I would ever consider giving my support to. Until that moment, flicking through the web, I hadn't come across them since I was in my twenties. I wasn’t even sure if they still existed. But there they were. And it was a pretty good website too. Something had dragged them kicking and screaming into the computer age. I read that they were giving a talk on ‘The Moneyless Society’ in Norwich at 2.00 that Saturday afternoon and on a whim, I decided to go along to see what they were doing.

The SPGB has been around for over a century, predating the Labour Party by several years. When I had last been in touch with them I had liked what they said and liked the way they were organised (they are undoubtedly the most democratically organised political party here in the UK and probably anywhere else as well). But I didn’t like their approach to politics – or to each other. Like many other small working class political parties they were very dogmatic in their views and dominated by some quite exceptionally large egos. Emerging out of a pre-First-World-War environment, the party was full of self-taught and incredibly well-informed working class characters - absolutely fascinating people to be with and listen to, but like many autodidacts, often very agressive and polemical in their manner.

In the end I found the adversarial, hot-house atmosphere too unpleasant and I left - I left with thanks for everything I had learned from them but I needed a more discursive kind of political environment. I looked around for many years, but never did find one that I could commit to. I couldn’t find any organisation that answered my fundamental political questions as well or as coherently as the SPGB had.

So what the hell would I find when I went to their meeting up in Norwich? Had they changed? Or were they just the same as ever they were?

I suppose, like many people in their fifties, I am beginning to look back on my life and try to make some sense out of it. Up to now it seems to have been a regular series of false starts – a number of long and intense journeys which, nevertheless, ended up leading nowhere. That’s not particularly unusual, I think, and not necessarily a bad thing. What was not so useful, I now recognise, is that each time I reached an impasse, frustration made me reject what had previously occupied me so completely and for so long. I’m a creature of enthusiasms and when I had got everything I could out of something, I would abandon it and start searching round for something new. Now at fifty-five I can look back on a life strewn with abandoned attempts to make sense of things.

In recent years I’ve begun to wonder about all those rejections and all those half-finished pursuits that have made up my life. I began to wonder if I hadn’t abandoned a lot of what was good along with the things I no longer thought I needed or found too difficult to cope with. Five years ago, I began to realise that all those ideas, those things or people I had rejected - no matter how good the reason for rejecting them seemed at the time - had nevertheless, had a significant impact on me and their influence had contributed to making me the person I am today. I began to realise that I needed to reconnect with my past self and try to tie up some of those loose ends that were still flapping around inside me. I needed to make my peace with those things I had rejected angrily and, perhaps, arrogantly in my younger years.

So I started to revist places where I had once lived and trace a lot of people I had once known to see what I would find. I wanted see if there was some truth about them and about myself that I had overlooked. I've been pretty successful in that quest, and am now back in touch with many people and organisations I had long pushed to the back of my mind. Sometimes it has been a real joy to reconnect. Sometimes it has been a scary and painful business, but in each case it has helped to heal some old wounds, to correct some false impressions and to make me feel much more at peace with myself than I had thought possible.

So, I was suddenly very intrigued with the idea of getting in touch with the SPGB again. I found that quite scary, too. Going up to a meeting way up in Norwich, I thought, would be a good first step. I’d never been to branch meetings in that area and I would be unlikely to meet anyone I knew. I was going, I told myself, just to see how it felt hearing someone arguing the party case again. I wanted to know how their ideas had progressed in that time. I was going to see if my mind would be jogged into remembering something useful or meaningful.

Saturday morning proved to be frustrating. I got out the SV to discover that it wasn’t firing at all. I must have tried, on and off, for fifteen minutes with no luck. I was just about to give up when suddenly I pressed the ignition one last time and the engine burst into life as though nothing were wrong. It was stupid, I kept telling myself. It was a very stupid idea to take the bike on a long journey when it was in this condition, but I was so keen to see what I would find at the meeting up in Norwich that I decided to risk it. Once the engine had been turning for a while, there weren't usually any more problems. Nevertheless, I made sure that I had the number of my rescue service with me before I set off.

The Norwich branch of the SPGB meets in the back room of a small pub just outside the city centre. Well, that hasn’t changed. Smoky pub meeting rooms had always been a norm back in the 1970s. I was a little early for the talk, but decided to go in anyway. They would still be discussing branch business, I thought, but the ultra-democratic SPGB hold no closed meetings whatsoever, so no-one would object. I knocked on the door and walked in to be met by a dozen cheery faces and a friendly welcome. That was different! And the room was smoke free!

They were having lunch and I was invited to join them. I said hello, shook hands and told them my first name. After a moment, one of the blokes sitting there gave me a long look and said, your surname isn’t ******** is it? And then I recognized him - as he had me. It was a look that spanned 30 years. He was up from London. I hadn’t known him very well back in the 70s but we had always got along together. Yet somehow, it was like discovering a long lost friend. We sat for several minutes expressing our surprise and pleasure at meeting each other again.

And the atmosphere of the party had changed. Over the next hour it became quite clear that it was no longer the harsh and adversarial organisation, I remembered. There was a lot of laughter. People were relaxed with each other. The discussions were exploratory, not antagonistic. All that hard-bitten resentment and intensity, which you used to find in people who grew up in the 30s and who had been forced to fight hard for everything they had in life, was gone in this new generation of members.

I had a great evening. Several of us ended up in the pub afterwards. We sat for hours discussing ideas and past histories.

I hadn’t imagined anything like this. I had expected to come away feeling glad that I had made contact again - glad that I'd satisfied my curiosity, but I was sure that I would leave largely untouched by the experience. Instead, it felt like a homecoming. For the first time in thirty years I was talking with people who spoke the same language as I did. When the conversation turned to politics, I didn’t have to explain my thoughts half-a-dozen times before I felt I was understood. There was instant and easy communication. And when the conversation strayed over other areas, it was full of that old energy and that intelligent curiosity about everything and anything that I remembered from all those years ago. I realised, then, how much I have missed that.

I left the pub at about eight o'clock feeling great and promising to stay in touch. Five minutes later, I returned, asking for a bump start! The bike wouldn’t fire. It wasn’t even making parping noises when I pressed the ignition button. I had now convinced myself that there was some deep seated problem in the wiring. Were the ignition circuits functioning? Would she even respond to bump starting? But, ever hopeful even when I've managed to convince myself that a situation is hopeless, I had a go. Fortunately, the pub was at the top of a steep hill and there were plenty of willing hands. I put her into second gear and off we went. In a moment she all was fired up. I grunted my relief, waved goodbye and was on my way.

I took the fast route home. It’s a dead easy ride from Norwich - straight down the A11, then onto the A505 near Newmarket - easy but cold. Ever since I damaged my back, I've been wearing a kidney belt to keep it warm and was duly grateful for it now.

Fuelling her up half way home brought some anxiety. The big question in my mind, of course, was, would she fire up again after I had filled her. I needn't have worried. At least she is being consistent. must be a drain on the battery, I thought, can't be anything else. She is overdue on her next service so I must fix that up tomorrow.

Well, hello! Is there anybody at home?

As I was dozing in bed this morning thinking pleasantly about my trip up to Norwich last week, a slightly embarrassing truth suddenly dawned on me. It concerned that moment when I got on the bike outside the pub and then found it wouldn't start.

The SV hadn't been firing well for a couple of days so of course I made the immediate assumption that there must be some sinister reason for this new refusal - some developing fault in the electrics. (Well you would, wouldn't you?) It didn't occur to me till this morning that there might have been a much more obvious explanation (oops!) It didn't occur to me, in fact, that having parked the bike on the steeply sloping pub forecourt, I would have left it in gear. So when I came to fire it up with the sidestand still down it is not surprising that...

You get my drift?

I don't specifically remember leaving it in first gear but I am pretty damn sure I did. I always do when I leave the bike on a slope. It's like a reflex - like the way I always put the steering lock on, even when I'm in a petrol station forecourt. Just habit.

So getting people to bump start me down the hill was perhaps just a little unnecessary.

I took the SV in for a service on the following Tuesday and the engineer couldn't find anything wrong with the electrics at all. At first, that had me puzzled because I was sure there was a problem. Eventually I just accepted that this was one more of the SV's irritatingly intermittent problems and left it at that. After all, the bike was now behaving itself again and there were other things to think about, like my trip to India.

But something kept nagging at the back of my mind. And this morning I remembered what it was. When I tried to fire her up outside the pub in Norwich, she didn't make a sound. Specifically, she didn't make that farting sound that you get with a flat battery - the sound that she had made previously when she had refused to fire. It was more like the circuit was disengaged... Oh-oh!

It was then that I had my early morning revelation.

But (gnrrrrgh!) that still didn't explain why the SV wouldn't fire up earlier. On those occasions, it made very definite farting noises - definite dead-battery type sounds. So the alarm-draining-battery theory still seems a good one. The SV is fitted with a Datatool-3 alarm which has developed something of a mind of its own in the last year. Sometimes it puts the bike into service mode all by itself without any input from the control fob. Sometimes it will suddenly start making arming and disarming noises without being asked. And once it started making a bizarre sequences of regular bipping noises that neither I nor the manufacturer, nor the manufactuer's manual could make any sense of. I have ghosts in my machine.

The mechanic who did the last service for me, suggested one other possibility. Maybe, he said... Maybe it was the same problem he had once had with a big V twin like mine. On a cold day, he told me, when a battery is just slightly discharged and putting out a little under its maximum voltage and one of the pistons in the resting engine is just beginning its compression stroke, then there sometimes isn't quite enough juice to turn it over. I'd never heard that before, but he said it was a common problem with old thumpers. Somehow, I doubt that was the reason with the SV, but it was an interesting idea.

Anyway, the bump start the SPGBers gave me was probably a useful bit of bonding.

Yesterday, I finally got the battery out of the Daytona (my back has been a lot less painful in the last couple of days - at last - and I can now manage to lug and twist a bit without it going into spasm). It took a fair bit of effort, and I'm sure I contravened several of the laws of physics levering it out past all the overlying wiring (a small design problem there, Triumph!) but eventually I got the little black gizmo out of its strongbox and onto the charger. I was convinced that it would be quite dead or sulphated by now. But, no, it started to charge up right away. It took a full charge pretty quickly too. Great. It can go back in on Monday and I'll take the Daytona into work. I'm dying to get back on it.

Snow! We had snow last week! Overnight! I woke to find it all over my flat kitchen roof and all over the garden beyond. It was only a couple of inches thick but it made a suitably winterish scene. Recently, I'd begun to wonder if I would ever see snow again down here in the South of England. Desipte the occasional high winds, the weather had been incredibly mild all month.

Don't feel nat'ral. Nowt good will come of it, I say! You mark my words.

By the time I woke up, though, the air was clear and the snow was quietly settled. And, by the time I wheeled the bike down the alleyway an hour later, it had started to melt. The tarmac was covered with a lot of slushy stuff that was already beginning to wash away. So nothing very challenging to ride in then, and certainly not the start of that permanent Arctic winter which some of my more doom-laden work colleagues have been predicting. That's the great thing about global warming. We know it is happening. We know it is happening fast. And no-one seems sure how it is going to hit us.

On Tuesday, I rang up a Stevenage dealer and asked how soon he could do a service on the SV (now with 34,000+ miles on the clock).
"Can you bring it in this afternoon?" he said.
"Certainly can," I said, "Give me an hour."
That was fortunate. One of the advantages of getting the work done off season. I wouldn't have to wait more than a day to have it back up and running reliably - I hoped. I rang up the office and told them I would be a little late in.

It was a mournfully expensive business, though - £319. It wasn't the service that cost. The service was only a basic one (I'd had the shims changed and other more expensive stuff done last time). But there was something else. On Sunday, I'd noticed a large rip in the rear tyre. I mean a large rip. And the rubber was heavily worn down in places. I'd been to Scotland and back on that tyre but, even so, it'd only done about 2,000 miles in total. This makes three back tyres in a fair bit less than a year!

No help for it - it had to be changed. I couldn't ride it like that. Despite everything, I opted for another Diabolo. They are by far the best tyres I've ever had on the SV from the point of view of grip - especially in the wet. Maybe this is payback time for the 9,000 miles I managed to get out of its first set of tyres (I will pass by the fact that that uncharacteristic act of economy almost landed me in a field of turnips).

I was glad to be getting the work done so quickly, so rode it over to the workshop in Stevevenage in a good mood. But that rip in the tyre, was making me nervous. I kept imagining a sudden loud bang and then me skeetering across the road in front of the heavy morning traffic. I couldn't get that thought out of my mind and it was hard to concentrate.

Saturday. That's today. I took a ride up to the Ally Pally bike show in North London this morning to buy a few things I still needed for the India trip: some knee armour, some loose trousers with kevlar stitching (like Draggin' Jeans), and an off-roader's net shirt with armour attached (I think it's called a 'gilet' but I'm not sure). I also needed a smart charger for the Daytona.

The ride to London went reasonably well. It's a fast run down the A1(M) to Apex Corner, then a moronically congested squeeze through the London traffic. You just have to filter in London. If you don't you can be sitting around for hours in queues of cars feeling like a total bozo as you watch streams of motorcyclists sailing past you down the white lines and disappearing out of sight. That still really piques my pride.

Although I don't get carried along by other people's opinions much these days, this issue of filtering still gets my vanity. Deep down inside I get a real buzz out of riding the line (I clipped someone's wing mirror a couple of weeks ago down in London, so now I have a little anxiety about it as well). But sometimes I just feel too relaxed or tired or lazy and can't be bothered to summon up the energy and focus you need to do it. Until, that is, I see another biker skillfully negotiating the traffic. Then, I get competitive.

After the A1(M), the route is pretty simple, east onto the North Circular (Oh Joy!) then south onto the A109 towards Bounds Green, then right again along Park Lane to Wood Green and Ally Pally (= Alexandra Palace, the exhibition centre. It sits on an isolated hill and overlooks the whole of low-lying Central London on both sides of the Thames. Great views!). But Damn! I did it again. I missed that last turning and had to take a longish and confusing detour around Muswell Hill and Wood Green in some pretty heavy London traffic. And by this time I was needing the loo - badly. ($"$"%$%$£%!!!!!)

There's an exquisite kind of everyday torture known only to bikers. You know it. I'm sure you do. It goes like this: you're stuck in traffic, you are not sure of your route and you are dying to get to your destination quickly because you are desperate for a pee. Sound familiar? Then, as soon as you hit a bit of open road where you can make some progress, you run right over several really nasssssty little bumps or ridges in the tarmac to nudge your bladder into a state of near hysteria. Yeah? Well that was me, on the way to the Ally Pally bike show today.

From the point of view of making the purchases I needed, the show was a disappointment. I got the trousers and the Optimate smart charger but that was all. I couldn't find any body armour my size, nor could I find a water carrier (though I hadn't really expected to, not at the exhibition - I will probably have to go to a local camping shop for it).

The show was a bit disappointing too. There were lots of stalls but not much that was of any real interest and by four o'clock it was half empty. This year there are two major London bike shows being held within one week of one another. The show here at Ally Pally was being sponsored for the first time by Fast Bikes Magzine. The regular show run by Motor Cycle News (MCN) used to be at Ally Pally but this year has relocated to the new Excel exhibition centre at Canary Wharf. It kicks off there next week. A good idea? None of the big manufactuers were here at Ally Pally. There were not a lot of bargains to be picked up and there was nothing especially innovative or new.

I will have to look locally for the other things I need. I don't really want to have to go to the Excel show next week. Apart from anything else I need to use next weekend to go down to The Lizard in Cornwall and finish off my 'Four Corners Ride'. That will take two days. I've still got a lot of sponsorship money hanging on that for the EnduroIndia charities and I only have another two weeks to get that in. Life is full of difficulties.

Hey D, whoops, been awhile since I actually wrote something in here... Wow, so you're in countdown mode now...eager anticipation...slight apprehension, all that stuff... it's all good!! And in case anyone forgets to remind you... "don't forget your camera!"

Happy trails - gonna be a heckofa trip!

In countdown mode, KC? I certainly am! Just under three weeks now. Or, as a friend of mine would say - just 19 sleeps to go!


........................................................................................................

Really warming up now. Got that excited, slightly nervous feeling in my belly. But trying to stay with everyday realities (far less interesting, but generally needful!)

So, blow me down! You could! I got the news yesterday that Colin Collins, my local motorcycle dealer, had gone into receivership - the place I bought the SV650 and the SV1000S from. So, how did that happen? They were quite a big firm. They have (or had) four shops in Hertfordshire and London. Their showrooms were always packed with new bikes and it looked like they were doing a lively trade. So, big surprise!

Two guys from the bike club worked there. One of them had just taken on a larger financial commitment, moving out of his flat and buying a house. Ouch! And Squeaky had just bought a new Kawasaki Z6 from them (beautiful looking bike), and now can't get his first free service.

Aye Me! This might be a moment for a meditation on the anarchic and inefficient nature of the capitalist system (I can feel myself warming up to the task), but it is late and I have a sore typing finger, so I will forego that one for now.

But, in retrospect, there were signs. A biker work colleague remembers going into Collin Collins to order some gloves a month ago, only to be told they couldn't get them in because the supplier was 'being difficult.' So, you get to thinking, why would a supplier be 'difficult' unless he wasn't being paid.

It's a loss. Though I would never take a bike there to be serviced, I might well have bought a new bike from them in the future, and they were very convenient for accessories and bits and pieces of all kinds. Another bike shop closed down in my home town of Hitchin a couple of years ago. That leaves just one dealer trading in the town, but he's very small and doesn't carry much stock. And, in the last year he has largely gone over to selling scoots. The only decent sized shop is now twenty miles away.

It would be interesting to know whether Collin Collins closed because they were not offering what people wanted - they had a poor reputation for maintenance services - or because the market is contracting. Already the UK has fewer bikers per head of the population than any other country in Europe other than Eire. And with all the restrictions, I'm not surprised.

The other day I heard from a MAG guy (MAG = Motorcylce Action Group) that a EuroMP has been putting a proposal through the European Parliament that would make it illegal for anyone to put after-market gear on their bikes. That would mean only 'genuine' manufacturer's parts could be used. And the whole thing is being driven by - wait for it - BMW! I knew there was a reason I disliked their bikes. Apparently Hein Gericke is also in on the act, but for what reason I can't fathom, because in Germany they carry a huge range of after-market kit.

Oh Bugger! (As you might be able to tell we are now onto the personal bit of this blog.) I rode the Daytona into work yesterday and on the way in noticed that the engine malfunction light was on. dodo! I hadn't noticed anything odd about the bike, so I guessed that it had something to do with the fact that I'd allowed the battery to go flat. And when I rang up the dealers they thought that was very likely too. They said they need to look at it and reset it (Whatever that means. I don't understand electronic gizmos.) Well, they won't get their hands on it until I come back from India because I don't have any time to spare between now and then. I can still run it, but it is operating at less than full power. (Not that that is a problem for normal riding. It has far more power than I would use except in a totally mad moment.)

In the meantime I have stuff still to buy for India. To whit:

Malaria Pills (my one concession to rx medicine. I'm not having any vaccinations)
Mosquito Net.
Some Vitamin B1 to keep the mozzies away (they can't stand the smell)
And some barrier cream.
Some artemesia ('Wormwood' herbal extract) as a prophylactic against Dehli Belly (and other mircrobial invasions)
Some grapeseed oil (water purifier and antiseptic)
Some long sleeved T-Shirts (For the first few days. In my pale white British winter skin I burn quickly and get sunstroke if I strip down in the sun too quickly.)
An 'armour shirt' (I'll try and get that tomorrow from Bike Stop in Stevenage)
A fleece for the mornings and evenings, which can be a little cold.
A camel back water carrier.
A camcorder and a helmet mount.
Another big memory card for my digital camera (I need to work out what all the buttons do on it as well)
A casette dictaphone to keep a record of the journey
A huge bundle of biros (apparently they are in short supply in Southern India and the kids and their parents value them.)
A adequate supply of toilet paper.

Then I need to study the route and do a bit of research on that part of India. The more you know, the more you see (and that sort of thing).

I got my flight details a couple of days ago. Riders are leaving for India on two flights. I thought I was going to be on the afternoon one but there have been some rearrangments and I am now due to be at Heathrow Airport at 6.30 am (Oh groan!). Chris, a friend of mine had offered to take me. He may still, but given this new information I will give him every opportunity to gracefully change his mind. I can catch an all night bus, if necessary. At least with the morning flight there is no longer a 10 hour stopover in Columbo. Heigh Ho!

Oh, and something else to add to the shopping list. A large box of echinacia capsules to take before flying out. I don't want to pick up any bugs from the airline air conditioning equipment and get off to a bad start. I often do when I fly.

May I add to your list?

Batteries. They may be difficult to obtain where you are going.

If you're concerned about the recycled air, you could wear a mask.

What are biros?

blues2cruise wrote:May I add to your list?

Batteries. They may be difficult to obtain where you are going.

If you're concerned about the recycled air, you could wear a mask.

What are biros?

What are biros? God this transatlantic gulf is deeper than I thought!!!! That's sort of like asking, what is paper?

Biros are UK speak for ballpoint pens. 'Biro' was the first firm to manufacture them. I only realised it was a trade name a couple of years ago. Its like calling a vacuum cleaner a 'Hoover' or referring to sticky back tape as 'Sellotape' I guess. (Blues, now you are going to tell me that you don't have Hoovers and Sellotape in Canada and start to make me feel even more provincial than I already do! )

I think I'd feel a bit silly wearing a mask on the plane. It's an issue, 'cos I often do pick up bugs on long journeys - but not that much of a one. Perhaps I'm more self-conscious than I thought ( )

Batteries. Yep, have those in my head, but not on my list. Must get them down.

Cheers Blues

sv-wolf wrote:

blues2cruise wrote:May I add to your list?

Batteries. They may be difficult to obtain where you are going.

If you're concerned about the recycled air, you could wear a mask.

What are biros?

What are biros? God this transatlantic gulf is deeper than I thought!!!! That's sort of like asking, what is paper?

Biros are UK speak for ballpoint pens. 'Biro' was the first firm to manufacture them. I only realised it was a trade name a couple of years ago. Its like calling a vacuum cleaner a 'Hoover' or referring to sticky back tape as 'Sellotape' I guess. (Blues, now you are going to tell me that you don't have Hoovers and Sellotape in Canada and start to make me feel even more provincial than I already do! )

I think I'd feel a bit silly wearing a mask on the plane. It's an issue, 'cos I often do pick up bugs on long journeys - but not that much of a one. Perhaps I'm more self-conscious than I thought ( )

Batteries. Yep, have those in my head, but not on my list. Must get them down.

Cheers Blues

So...

Biros == Bic Pen
Sellotape == Scotch Tape
Hoover == um, vacuum cleaner?
Bonnet == hood
Boot == trunk
Wing == Fender
Fender == bumper
Biscuit == cookie
Northing Wind == Blueberry Torte
Farthing == Not Near Thing
Tuppence == Food Storage Unit
Blood Pudding == Disgusting
Roundabout == Only Between Consenting Adults
Loo == Where the Mona Lisa Hangs



Sorry for the hijack...do I have all that right?

sv-wolf wrote:I think I'd feel a bit silly wearing a mask on the plane. It's an issue, 'cos I often do pick up bugs on long journeys - but not that much of a one. Perhaps I'm more self-conscious than I thought ( )

From what I hear from people who travel/fly frequently, masks are a common sight on planes & in the street, especially in the asian countries...so no worries, you'll just blend in. Around here, it's rarer to see masks on people walking around but I do see quite a few them still.

noodlenoggin wrote:
So...

Biros == Bic Pen
Sellotape == Scotch Tape
Hoover == um, vacuum cleaner?
Bonnet == hood
Boot == trunk
Wing == Fender
Fender == bumper
Biscuit == cookie
Northing Wind == Blueberry Torte
Farthing == Not Near Thing
Tuppence == Food Storage Unit
Blood Pudding == Disgusting
Roundabout == Only Between Consenting Adults
Loo == Where the Mona Lisa Hangs

Sorry for the hijack...do I have all that right?

That's great... I know there's more but we shouldn't jack SV's blog...maybe we can get him or Kal to start a separate thread with a list of that sort....to while away the time until the big trip

..."SV-wolf" who needs to maybe change his name for that "other" bike now...