Bikers' Bookshelf

They shared the same alcohol fuelled dream – simply to ride away from it all. Join our brave heroes in this irreverent but true tale of their travels through India and Nepal on their noble steed ‘The Purple Haze’.

In an age of expensive, extensively researched motorcycle adventures, of specially equipped, precision engineered German motorcycles equipped with satellite navigation, learn how on a shoestring budget they careered from the southernmost point of India through the heartland of the sub continent to the extreme north and the high Himalayas of India and Nepal on their ancient, Indian built Royal Enfield Bullet, guided only by a misconceived perception of their own abilities and a battered copy of the ‘Lonely Planet’.

Share the intrepid pair’s experiences of five and a half months of life on the road.‘Pigs; dogs; kids; chickens; bicycles; cows; donkey carts; cars; trucks and buses all pursued their erratic courses around us; a torrent of vague, scuttling shapes flitting under our front wheel; a tide of large, ominous, garishly painted outlines bearing down on us horns blaring, lights flashing, offering no quarter. It took its toll’.

From Kanyakumari to Kathmandu to Kashmir, travel through palm groves, deserts and mountains. Read how they bravely dealt with illness, landslides, scorching heat, severe scrotal rash and a deluge of liquid cow manure.

Marvel at how, despite being terrorized by vicious monkeys, enveloped in ash from a human cremation, baffled by exploding bowel movements and finally left stranded on India’s infamous ‘Road of Corpses’, they always managed to make the best of situations. ‘At this moment in time as we chugged onward towards Pokhara, the heat of the sun reduced to a soporific warm glow by the forward motion of the motorcycle, I was in heaven. Life could never be better than this. I snatched a quick glance over my shoulder to check how Starter Monkey was doing after his exertions. He was slumped, half lying against the backrest of the bike, eyes closed, his face pale, a thin trickle of saliva running from one corner of his mouth. But it didn’t matter! I could be happy enough for the both of us. ’They would appear to many people throughout their journey as unlikely travelcompanions. Chris Reese, a.k.a. the ‘Captain’, a fat, white haired, cynical andembittered old man and Gareth ‘Starter Monkey’ Dickinson, his lean, dreadlocked,young and optimistic work colleague and reluctant manservant. It was an unusual image not entirely lost on the author.‘I had that terrible, pallid white skin so reminiscent of a maggot.

The waistband of my trousers cruelly cut into the vast, amorphous entity that I used to call my waist, which now prevented me seeing my feet when reclining on the sand. I resembled a wheel barrow load of molten lard carelessly spilled onto this pristine beach; in total contrast of course, to Gareth. Slim as he always was, no matter what time of year, no matter what food and drink he stuffed into his body; he was tanned and looking like a native. I’d already begun to loathe the little bastard.’ Captain & The Starter Monkey is a momentous motorcycling saga. Read it now.