Turning off the King's Highway, we enter the trees and follow a trail towards the jungle. It starts out with a gravel track, easy enough, winding through villages, keeping the pace down to reduce the dust created in the village. The gravel gives way as we start climbing to a rutted path, which is more challenging to negotiate. The ruts get deeper, muddier and strewn with large rocks. This is the most difficult terrain I've ridden, so I keep the pace down to prevent an off; my off in India almost ruined my trip and I don't want to risk that again.
The bikes are proper offroad machines, 250cc with big knobbly tyres and bouncy suspension. They tackle these conditions easily... or rather they would in the right hands. Alas, these hands are not those. And like many others I struggled at times. At other times I got into the groove and zipped along coping with the muddy ruts, rocky paths and sometimes at the same time low hanging bamboo branches. Dealing with these whilst simultaneously absorbing the bumps with springy legs is quite a task. Not only do you negotiate these at the same time, you are constantly looking 10-20m ahead to plan your route. Failure means either falling off, or being whacked in the head or body with stiff bamboo; both painful.
Perhaps even more difficult than going up is coming down in the same conditions. Keep the speed low, lowish gear, weight back and only use the rear brake if you have too. At least that seemed to work for me, although there were a few sticky moments.
Either side of the tough rocky ruts there were long stretches of dirt road. The dirt was reddish-brown coloured and each biker left a trail of red dust hanging in his wake (this trip was all male). It was important to leave sufficient gap for the dust to have settled so that the obstacles, such as ruts, rocks, cows, or people could be seen. These dirt road sections were also shared with cars and lorries so these were an additional hazard.
We stopped to take in fluids frequently as it was 30-35C, and riding in these conditions is hard work, so were all sweating profusely.. We'd turn up on mass at these stops on our dedicated offroad machines and I couldn't help smiling when locals on tatty 110cc step-through mopeds, two or three on each one, turned up just after us. We encrusted with padding and protection, they in their flip flops and t-shirts. The only token protection would be a hat to keep off the sun.
Ducky, my rubber duck mascot, enjoyed the ride and still has a grandstand view strapped to the top of my headlight. The brown patches at his base in no way reflect his reaction to the few hairy moments he saw, they are the dust from the road. Probably.
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