To fly like an eagle

Another dream came true today. I jumped out of an airplane. The smart part of your brain tells you that it is just bullshit to actually do this, but there is another part that is not quite as rational as the first one. The way up is very chilly, you sit in a tiny airplane with 3 other victims plus their instructors, who decided to feel the need of having pure adrenalin rushing through their veins. At 12,000 feet the glass door of the plane opens and you get a glimpse of what is waiting for you out there. The sun is shining, it is freezing cold and all you can hear is the roaring of the engine and the wind pulling the plane up and down. You can barely hear the commands of your instructor and you just hope that it was nothing really important. Number one sits at the edge, and there she goes with a deafening scream- number two goes right behind. You scoot forward nearer to the door- slowly you realise what awful mistake you made when purchasing that trip straight to hell. Number three goes and the glass door closes again, as you, of course, booked the jump from 15,000 feet. Good Job! The plane pulls up and although your instructor still sits right behind you, you feel like somehow you don’t belong there. 3 minutes and some more absolutely unhearable commands later the glass door opens again. It’s your turn. You sit at the edge your feet pressed under the plane, your hands on the harness and your head looking upwards into the bright blue sky above you. You don’t have any physical contact to the plane, as you already hang in your harness outside the plane. Now you wait. It takes ages. They told you the instructor would tap your shoulder, when it’s going down. No tap. No tap. No tap. Why did you want to go skydiving again?
Tap.
Fuck.
A sudden move and you fall into nothing. Houston, we have a problem. Your mind cannot believe what happens, as you turn upside down and all of a sudden you see the ground where there should be the sky. That moment burns itself into your memory like a 10,000 Volt electric shock. It is fast. Too fast. Your eyes get the size of satellite dishes. Every muscle in your body tensions and 10 seconds later your throat hurts- you just noticed that you were screaming all the time. Your mind realises that you are still alive and gives you back your senses, that had been turned off in preparation of dying. You feel the air at the speed of 200 km/h cutting your face like razor blades. Your eyes fill with tears, because the storm tries to blow them out of their holes. Your body tells you that you can start to breathe again, as this was the last thing you were worrying about recently. You barely find the time to look around and see the incredibly beautiful landscape below and the mountains in the distance. No cloud in the sky. After 60 seconds of pure insanity, mayhem and excitement you feel something pulling upwards. Your instructor opened the parachute. It gets silent- no roaring of wind, no inability to breathe. How long had the parachute flight lasted?- You have no idea. Did you enjoy the beautiful landscape? - What? What landscape? You just jumped out of an airplane, you had other things to do than that.
You land sitting on your bum. Earth has you back. How did the Teletubbies put it? “AGAIN, AGAIN, AGAIN!”

Mike, the shepherd

I SHORE A SHEEP! Somehow I was lucky again. I managed to tick off another thing on my todo list while travelling. After arriving in Christchurch I had some days and nights in the very nice and busy city to get used to the western way of living again. This was not as easy as I thought. I am quite sure, that I had a reverse cultural shock. I felt the need to reflect on my travels so far and to calm down somewhere far away from everything. I called Walter, a dear friend from home, who lives in New Zealand now, to ask him if I could stay at his place for some days. When we met he told me that he works on a sheep farm and I could stay as long as I want. Furthermore he offered me to work on the farm as a woofer, which means I work on the farm for food and accommodation. Perfect! That was exactly what I was looking for. So here I am since two weeks I work as a shepherd at Marama Farm near Gore ( www.maramaorganics.co.nz ( the best lamb meat ever!!!!)) Shearing sheep is an incredibly exhausting job. You grab the sheep on the front legs and lift it up- it looks a little like dancing. Then you push it between your legs so that it sits tightly as you start to shear the belly.
After shearing I had the opportunity to slaughter a sheep. I hope that nobody feels offended by me, telling this story. As I eat meat and I very much enjoy doing so I thought it is only natural if I at least once in my life see and feel how it is to kill my food before I eat it. First you have to push the sheep down on the ground so that it can’t move. With the left hand you grab its head and pull it backwards. With the other hand you cut its throat. Then you pull the head further backwards until its neck breaks to give the sheep a fast and painless as possible death. The sheep here live a very good life and they have the probably most beautiful and widest landscapes for themselves.

Good bye, India

A ticket from Goa to Mumbai please

Packing all your stuff on a bike is an adventure in itself. The need of luggage racks and straps and strings to fix all the stuff is obvious. The good thing on the other hand is that you yourself never have to see how awful it looks until you break down with the machine and let a mechanic take a test ride. Needless to say, that there where plenty of opportunities to do so. Furthermore I want nobody to ask about the financial side of all that. A train ticket from Goa to Mumbai is about 900 rupees. The petrol alone for the bike for the distance of 1000km exceeds that amount by far. Not mentioning the price for spare parts and mechanics. But what you get is an experience that you’ll never forget. Riding through the Konkan hills between Goa and Mumbai is like a dream coming true.
Many times the police tries to pull you over as they are listening for the sound of Bullets. I guess they are not to blame as everybody is just trying to make a living as well as possible. Bribery is a common thing and it became a main source of income to many people. What you learn pretty fast is to not pay attention when a policeman waves at you to stop you at the side of the road. There are two options how to behave in a situation like this. Number one is to not see them, pretending that there is something wrong with the bike, looking down at it and adjust the carburettor idle screw, and pass them. Number two is a little more cheeky, as you just wave back at them and smile and pass them. Either way they are not following you because there is certainly someone else coming their way, who is willing to stop and pay the price for not knowing how to behave in that situation.

“You have drugs!”
Talking about the police a little incident comes to my mind, that occurred one night at the beach in Goa. A couple of friends and me where sitting on the beach having a nice bonfire, playing guitar and having a good time, when two policemen came along and chased us away, as, according to them, it is not allowed to be at the beach at 4 in the morning. We were not willing to get in trouble and left the place to head home, when we noticed, that the two policemen came after us. I was with two friends, a girl and a guy. They stopped us and claimed that we have drugs and that they have to search our bags. They grabbed the purse of the girl and started to go through it with a flashlight. “You have drugs!”, they said, “You will be in great trouble!” Being a little drunk in the middle of the night on the beach stopped by strange policemen was quite scary. I looked into the purse, saw the wallet of the girl, grabbed it and pulled it out, holding it in the face of the policemen I said: “This is the money- this is not what you are looking for right? So I keep the money!” After the money was not there anymore he was not interested in the purse at all. But started to bother me: “You will be in trouble after this, you have drugs, show me your pockets.” I took the purse of the girl, gave it to her and sent her and her friend away from those guys. To the policemen I said: “We don’t have any drugs. You are not from the police. I want to see your licence! You don’t even have a licence, and I will go home now.” I turned and walked away. Some nights later I saw them again on the beach as we passed they tried to stop us- we just kept on walking ignoring those fucking fake policemen at the beaches of Goa.


Mike, and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I finished my job at the garage with grief and sadness as I knew it was time to move on and continue my travel around the world. For giving me the opportunity to work as a bike mechanic I will feel deep gratitude to Tikey and Pakshish forever. Many years ago I felt the need of getting involved into engines and mechanics and now I see that this kind of work is nothing of what it looks like from the outside. All the oil and dirt is nothing but camouflage to the deeper meaning that lies underneath. There I found a world full of fascination and wonders. Nowadays I compare pretty much everything in life to the maintenance of a motorbike. To me it became a philosophical pattern, which accompanies me along my way. Knowing that it will take me a long time until I will have the chance to work on bikes again causes a certain feeling of lacking a part of myself.
I noticed, that I have a little bit of a talent in fixing bikes. Distinguishing between a good and a bad bike mechanic is easy- you see it in the way they behave with their tools and with the bike. I try to fix all kind of things along the way and this caused some friends giving me the nickname McGywer. ( in reference to an 90ties TV Show, where a guy makes all kind of handy things out of a pencil and a hair needle ;-)) I can’t help to be proud of one special fix I did on the bike. Every Bullet engine has a compression screw, which can be opened to get the piston into the right position for starting. If that compression screw is broken, the engine can not produce enough pressure to enable the spark plug to ignite the fuel mixture and cause combustion, meaning that the engine will not work at all. It happened that I went to a bike mechanic as I saw some oil coming out of the compression screw. What this guy did was horrible: He took a wrench and tried to unscrew the compression, with such unnecessary power that it seemed strange to me right away. Two minutes later he showed me the broken compression screw and said that it’s not working anymore. He had pushed so hard that the screw just broke apart. WHAT AN IDIOT! I said he should get me a new screw as he broke the old one. “Spare only in Alibag, Mister.” Alibag by that time was 40 km away. So I took the damn screw and tried to put it in to make the engine produce enough pressure again. Impossible. The screw was screwed. I had to find a solution to get to Alibag. In the dust I found a bottle cap and thought, the engine block is made of aluminium and the bottle cap too, so it might withstand the heat of the engine and can be bent a little. I fixed the compression screw with two bottle caps. One day and 40 km later a garage made me a new fitting for the compression screw, after driving all the way to Alibag with two bottle caps on top of the engine.


Selling my soul

My plan was to ship my bike home, with a lot of spare parts so that I could keep on working on the bike once I’m home again. That plan failed as it is impossible to get around the officials- Even bribery is not possible at the moment as everybody is afraid of terrorism. So I had to sell the bike. It broke my heart. That is all I can say. I kept the ignition key to remind me of everything that happened. After all I can say one thing: I learned to ride bikes on a 25 years old Royal Enfield Bullet in India. Now I truly can ride bikes.


India, the mix of feelings

Once more I find myself in the situation of not being able to describe in words what this adventure means to me. What India means to me. On the one side India is a country where anything is possible. Whatever comes to your mind you can go there and do it. Enjoy a crazy lifestyle, live cheaply and without worries about anything. The way you can handle official matters by paying some “official” fees enables you to do whatever you want. On the other side most Indian people are very rude, impolite and incapable. Of course there are exceptions and please don’t get me wrong I do not want to prejudge anyone, but I spoke to many people, who confirmed my feeling in that case. Most Indians are uneducated and therefore unable to do their job right.
Ordering a pizza on the phone in Mumbai, for example can’t be done without a 15 minutes telephone marathon, where you tell them your name and the address of your hotel at least 8 times. Many times you find yourself in the situation that you try to buy something and the person you talk to turns away in the middle of his sentence to talk to one of his friends.
Or sitting in a restaurant and ordering two beers talking to a grunty waiter: “Yes Mister what you want?”- “We want two Kingfisher beers, please.”- “Mild or strong Kingfisher?” – “ We would like one mild and one strong, please.” – “We don’t have strong.”
On the first day in India a woman told me one advice: “There is no “thank you” and no “please” in India. Get used to it! If you want something you go and get it with boldness and self confidence.” After two month I truly know what she was talking about and I am very grateful for that advice. The rudeness of the people really got to me and leaving India caused a feeling of sadness and happiness at the same time. I think India changed the way I deal with people. I became more direct and maybe a little bit ruder as well. It was a big lesson I learned and thanks to India I found new sides of me, which I never would have guessed that are there. If you try to find yourself- go to India but don’t be upset with the result.

“The journey to Christchurch” or “Dubai, the big one”
To get from Mumbai to Christchurch took me… let me see… 3 days. The itinerary is as follows: Mumbai to Dubai, Dubai to Bangkok, Bangkok to Sidney, Sidney to Christchurch- all carried out by the Emirates. My flight departed in Mumbai at the 31st of March at 4:30 in the morning. The first thing that happened was a delay of 2 hours, causing that I did not get my transit flight in Dubai. At the counter of the Emirates Airline a nice lady told me that there is another flight in 3 hours, but I told her what a great job she is doing and smiled at her. So she gave me a very nice hotel room and a flight on the next day in the morning, giving me the opportunity to spend one day in Dubai, for free, in a wonderful hotel. Dubai is an incredibly big, rich, clean and rich city. I name rich twice for a reason! Everything smells like money, and arriving as a budget backpacker feels like stumbling into a gay night club- you just don’t belong there- and everybody seems to know. I tried to rent a motorbike, but there aren’t any bikes on Dubai roads at all. I asked one guy on the street where I could rent a bike but he couldn’t find out eighter. His name was Felix and he offered me a tour as he is a tour guide. I refused as I wanted to do my tour alone with a bike. 6 hours later I called him, as it is literally impossible to rent a bike in Dubai. Anyway I enjoyed the tour with my tour guide, who showed me everything driving me around in his car for 3 hours. I told Felix, about my travels and we had a really good conversation. I told him, that I want to go to San Francisco and buy another motorbike: He laughed and said: “Oh Mike, I’m sure god will give you a good one.” That made me happy.
There is the biggest aquarium in the world in Dubai- and real big sharks are in it. And there is the biggest tower and the biggest hotel and the biggest of everything pretty much. In my hotel I ate so much that I’m still not hungry.


I got my flight on the next day that took me to Bangkok. But before I boarded I got stopped by the immigration control. I had to answer awkward questions about my travel and my visas and if I had an onward ticket from New Zealand. I said yes although I didn’t have one- I printed out some flight itinerary from Auckland to Fiji, which I showed them on demand. I was very lucky to be here in New Zealand now. Everytime I had to pass passport control (4 times) I had to go through the same procedure: “Mister Kuebel, could you please wait here for a minute a colleage from passport control will come back to you soon.” I felt like a criminal and the fellow passengers thought the same- I saw it in their looks “See that guy- something is not right with him.” I finally got to Christchurch. Cheers man!