Tim
and
a
cautionary
tale

first published
25th May 2000

part one
part three

Having had a grand send off form all the guys at Himalayan Mountain Bikes (HMB) who arranged so well our passage to Lhasa, we had completed the first proper days cycling of the expedition for myself and Nick with a mainly downhill and enjoyable ride to the rafting haven of Barabise on the Bohte Kosi river. On the morning of the second day, I was as disorganized as ever and was therefore last to leave the hotel with the others already disappearing up the road. Being in the middle of a course of antibiotics for my assorted stomach problems, I had kept the necessary tablets in my wallet in the hope that it would remind me to take them before and after meals twice a day but were invariably forgotten to be taken at the most appropriate times, forcing me to gorge between meals - purely in the interests of long-term health you understand!

With my wallet uncomfortably lodged in one of the many pockets of my shorts, after only a couple of yards I hopped back off my bike and swiftly swallowed the second tablet. The mid morning traffic had been building in the main thoroughfare through the town and a local / tourist bus that was previously stopped had again began to squeeze its way through the melee up hill, destined for Kodari and the Nepalese border with Tibet. On the edge of the tarmac safely on the side of the road, or so I thought, I was hurriedly stuffing my wallet back into a pannier pocket to try and prevent further delay to our intentional early morning departure and catch the others up. Meanwhile the bus continued to approach and just as I had finished buckling down the pocket, the vehicle clipped my back wheel, spinning the front wheel into the road and directly in its path.

As with every bus in Nepal, the driver is accompanied by at least one loosely termed conductor. Their role ranges from collecting fares to hassling in attempting to organise the untidy rabble that represents its passengers that are strewn aboard the deck. They then spend the rest of their time hanging out of the door shouting or whistling instructions normally how many millimetres there are to spare as they career round a corner with a drop off the side of a valley rim of some several hundred metres directly below the occupants noses. People imagine that cycling within these countries is a hazardous business, but in the main you are in control of your own destiny. Certainly there are numerous close calls as a cyclist forcing you into a pavement or onto the verge off the road, but personally speaking I would much prefer that set of circumstances to being driven by a lunatic whose philosophy to overtaking on blind corners is tied closely to his religious beliefs of reincarnation in that if it is his day to die then so be it!

In this instance both myself and the driver’s assistant were shouting and screaming at the driver to stop as I watched in horror as the front of my cycle became twisted and contorted under the weight of the still advancing bus. I leapt directly in front of its path, my arms spread eagled across the radiator grill and now in clear view of the unresponsive driver that had eventually halted to avoid running me over with the whole of my bike only a fraction away from the buses front wheel.

The driver and the majority of passengers dismounted onto the road as onlookers quickly formed an unruly squabbling mass that was so typical of a chaotic Asian street scene, the like of which I had witnessed with bemusement on many a previous occasion but never before had the misfortune to be at its centre! In a grave state of shock I rounded the bus to drag my laden bike from underneath and instantly saw that the damage inflicted making it unridable. The pronounced bend in the front wheel and rack combined with a bent right pedal and crank arm being the most glaring casualties.

By this time the rest of the group had returned, being no doubt drawn by the commotion, to help their stricken companion. They rallied round inspecting the bike, berating the careless driver and arranging a lift for myself back to Kathmandu as this was our only hope in attempting to replace or repair the broken parts through HMB to get back on the road and hopefully reconvene at the Nepalese border town of Kodari either that evening or at worst first thing next morning. After all, quite disastrously following the passport fiasco that had only been resolved the afternoon before our departure, I had contrived to place yet another substantial stumbling block on our entry into Tibet.   part three