Oslo to Singapore 2006

Text & photos by Tormod Amlien & The Ice Bear. Translation by Kim Scholer.

Part 1 - Part 2

Part 2

Into the Country of Camel-fuckers
Istanbul is a great place if you read about it in travel brochures. Istanbul would probably be fabulous, if it hadn't been for the fact that a fable is supposed to have a moralizing and good end. Istanbul is hell, unless you like to get fucked upside-down financially and mentally.

This time around, just like back in grammar school, we hadn't done our homework. We did not have the visa to Iran. We had, however, been told that we easily could get it at any Iranian embassy within a week. That week turned out to be a month. For a month we were trapped in a city of bandits, and it was the worst month on the entire trip. We were broke and pissed off. We slept badly, we ate badly and after a while we also behaved badly. The walls in the cheap hotel crept closer for every day, and the soul grew full of scars and black holes as time passed by. [Translators note; the above is a seriously watered-down, almost polite, version of Tormod’s original thoughts, when he was stuck in Istanbul]

When we finally got out of Istanbul we had been there so long, that our Turkish visas would expire in only four days. In fact, we had 84 hours to drive the 1,800 kilometres to the Iranian border.

Sleeping with a knife in hand
Turkey east for Ankara was beautiful when it came to the scenery. The roads went from the best highways to cattle tracks. The further away from the cities we got, the more friendly the people turned out to be. The roads snaked up and down enormous mountains, and at the highest peaks were covered with snow. With no doubt it had been the most beautiful part of the trip so far, but unfortunately we didn't have much time to enjoy it.

Instead of moving at a pleasant pace and enjoy the nature, we were forced to drive as hard as both we and the bikes could stand. In the evenings we were so tired that we almost fell off the bikes we stopped and slept besides the bikes along the road. This usually happened in places you really wouldn't want to sleep, so we slept with our hands in the boots, with a knife tucked into the fist.

Eastern Turkey, a beautiful landscape, gravel roads and wild traffic. This was possibly the stretch with the most beautiful view.

We managed to get out of Turkey after a big argument with the Turkish custom officers, who of course demanded money for nothing, as most Turks had done. Thanks to our Turkish friend Adil Ertas the problem was solved; he phoned up the officers for us and threatened with all kind of things until they let us go. It was a good thing we got away without paying, because by now we had only 600 US $ left for the entire trip through Iran and Pakistan, a leg of 7-8,000 kilometres. For this amount of money we had to get food, accommodation and gas.


Back to civilization
After finally getting past the fence separating Turkey from Iran, it seemed like everything changed for the better. The people were suddenly well dressed, more polite and they spoke better English. It even felt like it was hotter on the other side of the border, and the Polar Bear suggested that it was because we had changed time zones. For the first time on the trip we had to produce the Carnet de Passage, the document that is a financial warranty for temporarily importing vehicles to a foreign country.

After this trouble-free border crossing we arrived in a small but busy border-town. We refuelled the bikes with gas so cheap that it was almost fun to fill up the tanks. After the fuelling session we found a small, cheap hotel, whose owner insisted we park the bikes inside the lobby. We were highly exited about this as we had never driven our bikes inside a hotel. The disappointment hung in the air like yellow mustard-gas, when we realized the door was one inch to narrow for our bikes to get in. Anyway, this was quickly forgotten when we got ourselves a shower, clean clothes and white bed lining, after the aforementioned 1,800 kilometres in four days without seeing soap, water or beds.


Iranian joker cop, who put on The Polar Bear's helmet, did the Nazi salute and shouted "Heil Hitler!"

The next morning we changed the oil on the bikes, going up to SAE 50 due to the extreme heat. This turned out to be a good choice. We also quickly went over the bikes, and as it was, they had managed four days of maniac-driving very well. While busy doing this a local engineer showed up and bought us lunch before we headed further on eastwards.

Iranian hospitality
At dusk we had reached Marand and stopped to look at the map and discuss whether we should move on or find a place to sleep for the night. As we stood there an old lad came running and offered us a cup of tea. He was a retired teacher, who spoke good English. To keep himself busy he now ran a shop selling second hand truck parts.

As we sat there more and more people to look at the strangers he had reeled in. Amongst them was one Iranian speaking fluent Swedish. He had been living two years in Sweden during the Iran-Iraq war, and as he was grateful for the treatment he had gotten in Scandinavia, insisting we stay over there that night. This was the nice part of what he did to show his gratefulness; the bad part was that we had to drink of his extremely bad moonshine booze.

The night passed on drinking bad moonshine with carbonated lemonade (which we hadn't done since the age of 16, back home at countryside red-neck parties), speaking Swedish while sitting amidst old truck tyres and parts. We slept inside the shop and in the morning our Iranian friend showed up again, making us an omelette with tomatoes, before we departed.


One of the many times that Iranian youngsters helped us out.


Blood splashing on the bikes
This was in fact the way it was in Iran; extremely civilized, honest and friendly people who’d invite you to their homes and felt honoured if you accepted a meal or an overnight stay. The roads were close to perfect as well, and the gasoline was practically free. We experienced no corruption at all, and when we broke the traffic laws, the police came and kindly asked us to consider not doing it again.

There was just one thing in Iran that was definitely not civilized; their traffic culture. Especially during the night traffic increased and people drove harder. The way of driving itself wasn't any worse than in Pakistan or India. But what made it so bad was that the roads were extremely good, so the Iranians drove way faster than they could handle. We saw a lot of traffic accidents, and at one incident about ten people were either dead or seriously injured. There was a lot of screaming and blood, actually so much blood that it splashed up from the road and painted small red dots on our driving gear. We drove very carefully for a couple of hours till we had suppressed the experience.

Except for the traffic accidents everything in Iran went way better than expected. We drove from Marand to Tabriz, further on to Qom, Esfahan and down to Kerman which was the last civilized outpost in Iran.


Dinner and overnight stay at an Iranian checkpoint outside of Esfehan. As usual people bent over backwards to help us – this time we were short of sugar, which they got us right away. Note the four different uniforms.


Goodbye Civilization. Welcome Terror, violence, Chaos and Desert!
Kerman was a pleasant place and we got ourselves some friends there, whom we are still in touch with. Our friends were very concerned about us travelling eastwards into the Zahedan Desert. Ahead of us there was 250 kilometres of this remote desert before the city of Bam, which still was a study in chaos, ruins and desperation after the earthquake three years previously. After Bam there would be another 350 kilometres with seemingly even more remote desert before Zahedan, a town known for being infested by terror, refugees, spies and a lack of gasoline. Zahedan was last town before the border to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

As a last thing in Kerman we thoroughly inspected and serviced the bikes, as we really did not want a breakdown out there. Again we changed the oil, and tanked up 120 litres of gas and 40 litres of water before heading out for an unknown destiny.

The roads in the desert were good, hardly any curves or hills there. Still it wasn't a pleasant ride. The temperature went up to 55 centigrade, and there was a strong wind and the occasional sandstorms. Both the bikes and our faces got sandblasted. To keep our self cool we had to soak our clothes in water frequently. From being completely wet until fully dry again took less than one hour. There was no law present, there were frequent kidnappings and terrorists were said to be hiding there, so we followed the advice of stopping as little as possible.

In the afternoon we reached Bam, where there was an air of desperation, like it always is in areas hit by disasters. People struggled to survive and were willing to go very far to improve their situation. We looked up the police station and asked for permission to sleep there during the night. After a lot of discussion it was granted, and we slept beside the prison which was a 40 feet container. All around us it was young soldiers, all but happy for being stationed in this mayhem-metropolis.

Our supper was accompanied by the howls from the prisoner in the container and of NS men fighting between themselves. There was jingling from AK-47s hitting AK-47s and stump noises of flesh hitting flesh. Even the police and military were more or less out of control in this city.


Spending the night outside the jail in Bam. Like most other buildings, the jail had collapsed during the earthquake, so a steel container was used instead.


The Zehedan desert of Eastern Iran.


Getting sandblasted in the desert
We left early the next morning, which was necessary if we wanted to make it to Zahedan before nightfall. To sleep out in the desert would be like playing Russian roulette. The conditions were just like the previous day, but things went quite smoothly. The bikes cruised at 70 km/h speed, despite the heat. The only buildings we saw during the 350 kilometres were forts decorated with 20mm machine cannon. Otherwise it was just burned out car wrecks, dead truck tires - and some "Beware of Camels" signs, that bore witness to the presence of intelligent life out there.


Well, were we come from we're really more used to moose…

A couple of hours before dusk we reached Zahedan, sandblasted and tired. At the outskirt of the town we were stopped at a checkpoint, and for the first time in Iran we had to show our passports and give our fingerprints. After this we were clearly instructed to go straight to the city centre, find a hotel and stay indoors until the next day.

This, however, was easier said than done. On the way to the hotel the Polar Bears generator light came on, so we stopped outside a completely run down café. All to a man the clients of this establishment looked like Afghani terrorists, so I was not too confident with the situation, especially not after all the stories I had been told about the town. Despite this we had no other option to replace the brushes on the dynamo, in order to make it to a hotel at all.

As I was working on the bike I heard a voice from above; "Friend, do you need help?" with a clear American accent. As I look up I see a bearded man and I can't help think "Oh my god, he looks like a Taliban warrior". Obviously I was not the first person thinking this. Uncle Sam had thought the same a few years ago. After chatting a while with the guy he told us the Americans had bought him a trip to Cuba in 2003 and gave him a three-year language course at Guantanamo, before he was released and returned. "They gave me a hard time" was our new friend’s description of the stay.

When we finally found a hotel, an undercover cop showed up, and we couldn't move an inch outside the hotel without him on our tails. The next morning he was still there, and now he actually admitted what he was and why he was there. After breakfast he escorted us out of town and to a check point, where he handed us over to the army.


Escort Service, Iran style
The army would not let us go on our own, but insisted on escorting us all the way to Taftan, the Iran-Pakistan border point. Sometimes we drove between pickup trucks with machine guns on the roofs, and sometimes on our own with a commando soldier on each bike. There was a lot of waiting, and the commandos on our bikes were in radio contact with the check points ahead of us all the time. The closer we got to Taftan, the more refugees we saw and the more chaotic it became.

At some point we reached a checkpoint where soldiers of the regular army forces were busy harassing some refugees. I was instructed by my commando to stop the bike, as he felt like participating in the harassment, and maybe even take it to a higher level. One of the refugees had a bundle which he refused to give away, despite all attempts of the soldiers to take it. My commando easily solved this by simply beating the man to death. The man screamed and cried until he could not scream and cry anymore. Some other soldiers tore apart the bundle to find only some clothes and kettles. Some other soldiers dragged away the dead body. We moved on towards the border, but the screams and the look on the dead mans face we brought with us.


Pakistan
This border crossing went smoother than we had ever dreamt of, as the Pakistani customs officers were some friendly chaps indeed. There wasn’t a kilobyte of computer power there, though, so they wrote us into all sorts of books in Urdu, and by longhand. Passports and carnets got stamped, and afterwards we had to drink Chai with everybody there that had anything to say. I almost threw up after cup number twelve, because I really hate tea with milk, but in the name of politeness I drank and swallowed my vomit as I was sitting there.

When at long last released from the tea-party, dusk was already coming, so we decided to stay at the customs station that night. The place consisted of several houses, and a few hundred porters who made a living of shifting goods from trucks on the Pakistani side to other trucks at the Iranian side. Forklifts were pure science fiction there, and bureaucracy made it impossible for the trucks to move over the border.


Mach 4.5 in the Pakistani desert – Tormod doing his best Rollie Free.

Due to our unfavourable financial situation, we had hardly eaten anything but cucumbers with salt ever since leaving Kerman. When you have to choose between gas and food, the choice is indeed simple. Still, to celebrate the successful crossing of the border we decided to buy some eggs, vegetables and bread, and make an omelette feast. The Polar Bear stayed back to be a rare sight for the Pakistanis, who had never seen a live Polar Bear before, while I went into the small border town for shopping. In the evening sun the kids were playing cricket, and as I walked around searching for groceries, I had to accept several more cups of Chai, as not to insult the entire village.

When I got back to our camp and started cooking, we learned that several of the eggs had gone bad. However, we just scraped the mold away and used the part of the eggs that looked ok, and ate it. Without giving any credit to either chef or groceries I must say this was one of the best omelettes I ever had. As a not unknown revolutionary once described, the food was seasoned by hunger.


Playing chicken with Pakistani trucks
Now the route onwards went via Quetta, Loralei, DG Khan, from Rakne over the ‘terrace road’ to Multan and to Lahore, where we were to cross over to India. Baluchistan, the first state we drove through, was sharing a border with Afghanistan, and was relatively underdeveloped and unstable. This was one of the areas where a lot of Taliban leaders were said to hide, and bombings were not uncommon. The government had quite a few soldiers in the area, but it was mainly the local tribes who were in control. This also applied to the law, which wasn’t based on the Pakistani laws, but rather the tribe's law. Most of the towns here were friendly, but a few had more or less banned westerners.


'Danger' sign. Ok, so what's new? (Seen in the desert of Baluchistan).

The first 100 kilometres from Taftan went quickly; it was a good highway with two lanes in each direction. Every third kilometre or so dead camels lay along the road, hit by cars and trucks. When the wind blew the right direction - or maybe it's more correct to say the wrong direction - we could smell the camels several hundred meters before we saw them. They didn't smell like roses.

Then suddenly the highway shrunk down to a three metre wide strip full of pot holes. Often this stripe disappeared because sand dunes had covered it. When this happened we just had to make sure we had enough speed to cut through. When meeting on-coming traffic we had to pull to the left side of the road. With a high edge and loose sand on the side of the roads the bike dug down and with the sidecar still on the tarmac we almost tipped over several times. Despite this, or rather because of this, it was an extremely funny stretch to ride.


Take some Japanese technology in the shape of a Hino truck, and add a healthy dose of Pakistani trucker style.


“Guten tag, Ich bin Laden“....


This camel was our Brother in Spirits, as he was as thirsty as both of us, and as silent as The Polar Bear.


A deep conversation in Norwegian and Urdu. We didn't understand a word of what we said to each other, but he was a nice fellow, who cheerfully smoked our cigarettes. A friendly and curious soul, like most Pakistanis we met.


Sleeping on the roof of the police station in Dalbandin, Pakistan.

We reached Quetta a day or two after a quite decent bombing had taken place, killing twelve people. As soon as we entered town the police appeared and locked us up. This was partly for our own safety, and partly due to spy-paranoia. We spent the night replacing the rotor in the Polar Bear-bikes generator, which turned out to be a complex affair. The reason for this was that we were forced to receive aid from the local camel mechanic, who managed to destroy things faster than I could repair them. His intentions were good though.


The Terrace Road
When we left Quetta there was no chance to ride alone anymore. We were forced to be escorted by the police all the time, so at all times there was a pick-up truck full of police officers with AK-47's. The Pakistanis were indeed friendly and polite, but to be locked in every night and followed everywhere makes you frustrated.

The Terrace Road was worth a chapter on its own. As the name indicates, the road was placed as a corkscrew on terraces in the mountain sides. The road was narrow, and in addition there were road works in process along the entire stretch. The road was the main traffic artery in North Pakistan, with all the heavy vehicle traffic that includes. But then even a heavy, loaded Nimbus is quicker than an overloaded Pakistani truck. As a matter of course we passed trucks on the right hand side as well as the left hand side, although this caused our motorcycle police escort to go ballistic and yell at us. We figured he was just envious because our superb driving skills, or maybe even our high performance infernal machines.


The Terrace Road wound its way along the mountain side, like railroad tracks bent out of shape on a hot summer day.


And yes, every week some vehicles dropped off the Terrace Road.

Quite often the traffic was completely jammed, when trucks met trucks. There was no regulation of the traffic despite the road works, nor was there enough space for two trucks to pass each other most of the places. Sometimes there was just enough space for a Nimbus to pass the trucks, and with ten centimetres clearance to the edge we overtook the vehicles that were standing still. When looking down at our bikes footrests, our glance did not stop until it met the ground a few hundred yards beneath. In lack of beer these days, the adrenaline was welcomed as a good substitute.

In the course of nineteen days we had driven the 7-8,000 kilometres through Iran and Pakistan, and now we finally stood at the border to India. We had $15 left, of the $600 when starting out in Turkey. But we had achieved our objective, though we both weighed ten kilograms less than when we left Istanbul three weeks earlier.


"Wish my girlfriend was this dirty...”


The gate to India, the gate to Hell
We had really been looking forward to reach India. In India we could get cash again, Indian food and – in particular - beer. What actually happened was full stop at the border, bureaucracy like only Indians can perform it, corruption, jungle fever and drunken Sikhs. The latter was ok, though.

As just mentioned, at the border it was FULL STOP. Between India and Pakistan there was a two metre wide stripe of No Mans Land, and that was as far as we got. We were told to wait here, while they checked our carnets. One of the bikes was registered in the name of a company owned by me and the Polar Bear, so we were asked to prove that we had not stolen the bike from this company, or that we owned the company.

After a lot of arguing they let us in on Indian side in order to finish the declaration. And for letting us enter the declaration area they wanted money for their good help. I politely said "Forget it". Then followed three days of arguing for getting the bikes declared. When that finally got sorted out we had to go through a last checkpoint, where again they held us back, once more demanding money for all their excellent help.

We explained very clearly that we had actually not gotten any help at all, that they had just caused the problems all the time, and that this had cost us three days. Besides, we said, we were out of cash. "When you've travelled that far you must have some kind of currency?" they argued.

At this point I was fed up and told them I had some roubles left. They asked how much that was worth, and I said at least 20 Euro. They got extremely happy, in fact so happy that they bought us lunch. I bet they weren't all that happy later, when they went to the bank to learn that the actual value was 25 cent - aside from the fact, that you could not exchange Belarusian roubles in India…


The Polar Bear tries to convince the locals that Nimbus main bearings are even bigger..


The only unexpected technical repair of the entire trip; changing a rear wheel bearing at a back yard workshop in Delhi.


Humidity and fever
With our finances still somewhat in a state of disaster, we stayed in the Sikhs holiest shrine, the Golden Temple, as sleeping and eating there was free. When we left the temple our plan was to reach New Delhi in a couple of days, as it was only a 450 kilometre stretch. Those couple of days, however, turned out to become more than a week.

The heat wasn't too bad, no more than 35-40 degrees, but unlike in Iran and Pakistan, the humidity was strangling us. This combined with that we were completely physically run down after the race through Turkey, Iran and Pakistan, forced us to cancel the first day of driving after only 120 kilometres. At this time we had reached a shitty small village, but the positive thing was that they actually had a decent hotel there. We checked in, had a shower and ran downstairs to the restaurant. There we ordered butter chicken, tandori chicken, white rice, fried rice, yellow rice, all sorts of naan bread, beer and God knows what else. We went from being starved and sober for much too long, to being over-stuffed, drunk and feeling almost sick.

Then the Polar Bear fell sick. When he recovered two days later, I suddenly fell sick. In opposition to the Polar Bear I also had a 40 centigrade fever, and tucked myself in heavy blankets and froze so I was shaking. No fun at all. After two days I thought the jungle fever was going to kill me, so we called in a doctor. He gave me a couple of injections with something and a bag of pills. Another couple of days closer to my resurrection, I was well enough to go out, though I still wasn’t able to ride.

It was time to check out the local bars.


The bastard and the armed Sikh
The hotel receptionist insisted on following us out, as we were the only guests at the hotel. He was a bastard, a bastard that wanted to get drunk at our expense. He continuously said "My honourable guest". We hated him from the first time we saw him.

At the first bar we met a Sikh whose name was Mr Cheema, and he also hated our receptionist the moment he saw him. Mr Cheema was a very drunk Sikh, with a big, nice turban and a mildly violent looking appearance, though in a weird friendly way. Our new Sikh friend bought us cakes and whisky, while the receptionist had to pay himself. When we were up to leaving the receptionist wanted us to pay his bill. Mr Cheema got furious and started fighting the receptionist. Then the owner of the pub came and threw all of us out.

We started to walk back to the hotel, when a small car appeared, and our good friend Mr Cheema hung out of its window shouting while driving. "He's a dirty man! I'm going to shoot him! I got a gun!" The receptionist wasn't quite up to getting shot this day, so he took cover in a petrol station and called some other people. Finally 4-5 people came to help him, but Mr Cheema had also called in a few friends. The Polar Bear and I found it all very exiting - so exiting, actually, that we decided to head for the hotel, while the Indians sorted out these matters themselves.

When we woke up next morning, the receptionist was, regrettably, still around. Disappointed we headed for Delhi. Here we met up with a couple of local bikers we had got in touch with through an Indian discussion forum. One of them was a journalist for Bike India, while the other was working at a car workshop. At this workshop we replaced a rear wheel bearing, which most likely had died because of a river we had to ford in Pakistan. Also, the bikes got washed for the first time since Istanbul.


The small rat and the big rat
Our next destination was Agra, a city famous for being the most corrupt in India, besides being the hometown of the Taj Mahal. After checking out the tourist machine cast in marble, we headed for Chennai, in order to put the bikes on a boat to Singapore. Ever since we left Turkey it had been clear that we would not get time to drive through Myanmar, Thailand and Malaysia, as originally planned. And since we also were stuck for so long at the Indian border, it was equally clear that we would be too short on time to drive all the way through India. To get to Chennai quicker, we decided to take the train with our bikes for part of the distance. This turned out to be a disastrous decision.


Two local 'Mauds' in Agra, a town otherwise known for the Taj Mahal palace and the worst corruption in all of India.

Getting tickets for ourselves was easy enough. To get tickets for our bikes, however, seemed impossible. Eventually we got in touch with a travel agent, who said he could help us. The man looked like a small rat, and his office was two square metres, and the only contents were a plastic chair, a small desk, a phone and a train schedule book. The entire thing stank.

After a short while the rat took us to the travel agency’s main office, which his brother ran. The brother’s name was Subash, and he looked like a fat rat. He confirmed that he was able to get us on the same train as the bikes, so we said ok, but made it very clear that if he didn't deliver what was promised, he wouldn't see a rupi.

First he produced tickets for us, but not for the bikes. As it was hard to get tickets he had to pay an outrages price. We kindly advised him to stick the tickets where the sun never shines, if he didn't get the bikes on the same train. He worked like an ant for two days without succeeding on this. We told him to call the whole thing off and give us back the money, but then everything became very hard for him. Not before I started to take pictures of him and his office telling him I worked for a travel magazine, I got back my money.

Actually I didn't just get back the money; he got so desperate that he tore down pictures from the walls and asked us to accept them as gifts. We accepted a picture of the Taj Mahal, on the condition that he signed it. Moreover, he was so angry that he seriously bashed the small rat. A while later we learned that they weren't brothers at all - the smaller rat was a low-end crook that made his living from finding Subash customers he could cheat.


Indian F****** Railways
By accident we got in touch with a local scooter mechanic, who helped us sort out the matter a couple of days later. The downside of the deal, however, was that we had to take off the sidecars and the bikes had to be gift-wrapped. Further, we got train transport only to Nagpur, which was but half way to Chennai. The transit in Nagpur was said to be easy, but the time consumed already on this train thing was more than it would taken us to actually drive there ourselves.

We arrived Nagpur in good spirits. The good spirits lasted until we realized our bikes had gotten lost by the Indian Railways. The good part was that the railway station had a dormitory we could sleep, while they tried to relocate our machines. Unfortunately the dorm also had a downside; every night we woke up by rats running both over and under our blankets. Our bikes were recovered after a mere two days, but they had gotten more worn by a couple of days on the railway, than by the rest of the trip.

On top of that, the transit itself turned out to be just as hard as getting the bikes on the train in the first place. Now we needed papers from a corrupt freight agent, and the sidecars had become to heavy for the porters to carry. Pure corruption again. It cost us our remaining roubles and another three days before we were back on the train. Luckily enough, once more we were able to leave before anyone got to the bank to exchange the worthless roubles.

As per normal, our bikes were again lost when we reached Chennai. This time it took three days to relocate and release them. It was a great relief to be able to again being able to assemble the bikes, and to know that we were finished with Indian railways forever. The entire show had taken way more time than it would have taken to drive the motorcycles the whole distance.


By air and by sea
Only one challenge was left now; shipping the Nimbuses to Malaysia and Singapore. As for shipping, we had two options: Port Klang in Malaysia or straight to Singapore. We decided to go for the safe one; straight to Singapore. This way we would be sure to get a few days to drive around in Singapore, even with one week extra in the schedule.

We used a shipping agent crook called Satish. The bikes got crated in wooden boxes and we got fleeced by the double of what an Indian would have paid. To compensate for the double-charging they made the crates twice as bad as they should have been. We said goodbye to the bikes, bought ourselves tickets, and looked forward to see the bikes again a week later.


For a week we stayed at the railroad station in Nagpur. Every night we woke up when rats ran under our blankets (honest!).


Singapore, last stop
The Polar Bear and I arrived in Singapore a Friday afternoon. It was indeed annoying to arrive clean and tidy at the airport instead of sweaty, dusty and tired on a worn out old motorcycle.

When leaving that morning I told the Polar Bear that now that everything was over, today he was allowed to drink as much as he desired. He had absolutely no problems with this and engaged in this right on reaching Chennai Airport. In Singapore we checked into a hotel, had a quick shower and went straight to a party with some Singaporean friends. When the night was over the Polar had too little blood in the alcohol flowing in his veins, and we had gotten a worthy welcome in the city state, even though we came without the bikes.

Not unexpectedly, our dear friend Satish back in India had promised more than he delivered, as most Indians had done. One of my Indian friends usually says "Never trust an Indian", and unfortunately it is a bit true. When the bikes hadn't arrived after a week, I phoned up India and asked what was going on. Of course they hadn't been sent yet. I got furious and threatened to send a letter to all kinds of Chambers of Commerce and warn people against using him. I also advised him that from now on all contact between me and him would go through my lawyer. He took the bait and expedited the issue, and eight days later the bikes arrived.

The trip had come to an end for both our self and the motorcycles, and ever since then most things went straight to hell.
 

oOo

The heroes behind the story
Behind every memorable trip there are some people who make it all possible, but who often remain anonymous. For 'King Croesus – Contempt of Death 2006' there were three men in particular, who believed in this project. They faithfully supported us before and throughout the trip, demanding nothing in return. While some Nimbus clubs didn't even care to link to our homepage, those three did everything in their might that we make it to Singapore.

John Carlsen of J.C. Nimbus showed up on his days off from work only to help us. We have never encountered such helpfulness, parts service and sorely needed expertise. John is an asset for the Nimbus community, which we cannot do without. Or, to put it in plain English: Ride your Nimbuses long and hard and when inevitably they break, have John fix them.

Lars Persson of Sweden supported us long before he even knew what our exact plans were. He helped us locate the first Nimbus, and put us in touch with J.C. Nimbus. He knows a lot about these old Danish bikes, was always willing to share that knowledge, and was out tech support (by phone) during the entire trip.

Kim Scholer did his part with research, translations for the homepage, and other support when we were physically and mentally worn down. He is an example to be followed when it comes to long distance touring, and was a great source of inspiration for KCCD 2006.