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!