The Long Ride Home

Motorcycle adventure. Adventure motorbikers are rough, tough guys and gals, out there in the wilds, relying on their own resources? Right? Er…maybe.

I’ve just finished reading Sydney to London…The Long Ride Home by Nathan Millward. It’s a motorcycle adventure, a bright enjoyable read, with good descriptions of some challenging riding and some pithy insights. It all starts with an Australian girlfriend called Mandy; an ex-postie bike, a little red 110 cc Honda; and the spontaneity of a young Englishman.

Deadlines, threats, risks. Fear. These are the kinds of things that might come to mind when planning a long motorcycle adventure trip through many exotic countries. Some can spend forever planning – the over-planning of the dreamer who ultimately never manages to go on the big trip. But maybe it is easier to sail past all of that; avoid doubt and indecision; and just get out there. To quote Nathan - ‘I had the only planning you really need – to be certain that it’s something you have to do. Not want to do, because that’s not enough.’

And although the lack of planning was often endearing, it contributed to some of the difficulties Nathan met along the way. The untried, un-serviced, bike bought through eBay; the last minute dashes to meet visa deadlines; heel-kicking for days after missing the rare ferry; or having to walk the visiting girlfriend through a riot-prone area in Bangkok because the taxi couldn’t get past the roadblocks.

What do you need for the ultimate ‘please yourself, take your time, meander about’ adventure trip? Nathan seems at times to have had little in the way of protective gear, images of crashes tell a story. Tools? Um …forget the tyre levers. Wild camping? Yes, tight budget. Camping equipment? Err …maybe a sleeping bag. Tent? …Get that later. Stove? Not now thank you very much. Torch?

To quote again from Nathan – ‘no commitments, nothing to go back to, no job, no kids, no mortgage.’ No mortgage, right, but thankfully there are still credit cards to help carry the burden! And our intrepid rider still had to contend with the sweet impact of his interactions with his family back in the UK. Pulling out of an earlier planned trip after speaking with his nan; delaying telling his mother that he had started a ride by motorbike back to the UK; and just why did the batteries not get replaced in the GPS location transmitter provided by the parents?

The Long Ride Home contains much good descriptive prose. An early image is the culture shock on arriving in East Timor after flying out from Darwin, contrasting the poverty in a post-war torn country with the wealth imported for the benefit of the UN peacekeepers. Then there are the descriptions of the altitude problems, mainly for the bike, going over the Himalayas on the Manali to Leh Highway. The difficulties in mending a puncture on the approaches to the Baralacha La high pass, holding tools with frozen hands, being forced to ride into the hours of darkness searching for refuge. I recalled my own experiences riding in the Himalaya, but then I was riding with a larger group. Riding alone (or with a fellow-traveller you have only just met) through these challenging environments really increases the risks.

And Nathan certainly didn’t shy away from attacking the more challenging roads. There was the beauty of the Karakorum Highway leading up out of northern Pakistan into China, running the gauntlet, riding alone on sufferance through the Swat valley where the welcoming friendliness encountered elsewhere had given way to a brooding mistrust amongst reports of kidnap and the Taliban.

Alongside the big challenges, the book is, at times, also imbued with a certain naivety. The ‘you guessed it’ consequences for the camera left in the shower-room for safekeeping. The willingness, almost a preference at times, to ride through hours of darkness, whereas the soothsayers among us might point out that this is the time of most danger on unfamiliar roads.

Sometimes the odd point does grate. It was interesting to read of the reverence for the King in Thailand (supported by strict criminal laws against disrespecting him!), but I wasn’t buying the conclusion that in England (quote) ‘neither the queen nor religion means anything to anyone any more.’ Yes that’s right, you won’t be arrested in the UK just for perceived disrespect of our institutions! We have basic freedom of speech and no-one is prosecuted for treason these days.

Nathan speaks of sipping flavoured tea with other travellers at the lodge in Malaysia while enjoying movies. He watched ‘Into The Wild’, but hoped for a better ending to his own adventure. I had read the book recently. Maybe Nathan’s decision to grow his beard and not to comb his hair was a nod in the direction of Chris McCandless, the young American who starved to death in the wilds of Alaska on his great adventure.

Although there are some similarities, the contrast between the two young men and their different adventure experiences is quite sharp. I guess Nathan wanted his independence but didn’t really want to break away. For Chris McCandless it wasn’t just a rite of passage – he truly wanted to escape from his family – finishing high school to meet his parents’ expectations; leaving on his big trip without telling anyone where he was going; covering his tracks; letting his family suffer knives to the heart through not knowing where he was; giving away his family inheritance money; burning his cash; eventually abandoning his car and living the life of the hobo.

The Long Ride Home challenges quite a few assumptions. I admire the author’s honesty in telling his tale. With his low budget trip he succeeded in achieving things many of us never get to do in a whole lifetime. Ultimately it took guts.

You can find out more about The Long Ride Home here: http://www.thepostman.org.uk/