MEDICATION WON'T SUFFICE

DARJEELING: APRIL 2
Bollywood is shooting a movie at the Hotel Swiss. A tall, slim, very Gay Thirties wears a woollie hat with a bobble. I'm unsure as to his title but he's the man who makes things happen. My camera is beyond him. I traipse from camera shop to camera shop. Darjeeling scores an A+ for vertical streets, an X- for camera technicians. The film crew eat packed lunches and packed dinners leaving me as the only guest in the dinning room. My head hurts. My shoulder hurts. My back hurts. My right knee hurts. These pains are to be expected in an old fool who falls off a bike (even riding zero Ks an hour). Medication won't suffice. I need laughter and a smidgen of five star luxury. The Swiss is a small charming Heritage building and I am not registering a complaint. However, dispelling my misery requires more. For instance a bubble bath...

UP AND DOWN THE MOUNTAINS

TO DARJEELING: APRIL 1
The road winds all the way down through broad leaf forest and all the way up to clipped tea gardens part hidden in layers of mist or low-lying cloud, hairpin turn after hairpin turn, harsh chill down to soggy sweat and back to chill. In Europe the road would be considered single track. Here jeeps squeeze by each other. No busses. Meet a truck and one or other driver pulls to the narrow verge. The drop is only a few hundred feet and is seldom sheer. Imagine rolling down through emerald tea bushes. Not fun but interesting - and probably not fatal. Tin-roof cottages are little bigger than a normal living-room back home. Village shops are smaller. Shiny packets of crisps hang above a tiny counter, open sacks of rice and millet, cigarettes, biscuits, a few bottles of soft drinks. The wind is less than yesterday. The nagging pain in my chest is the same as are the women carrying huge baskets supported on a head band. They respond to my Hi or Namaste with such open smiles, so un-Indian. Old men in wool hats salute with raised hands and flash pink gums. Old? I am probably older. It promises to be a good day...

WIZENED ELF IN GOLDEN RUBBER BOOTS

NEORA VALLEY: APRIL 1
Goodbye to Uttam Paul and the wizened elf in golden rubber boots. Rain fell in the night. The track will be slippery. Having ridden it once, I have nothing to prove. Sensible to load the bike into the pick-up. Comfort is nil: bounce, bounce, bounce.
Walking would be pure pleasure.
We meet an Indian biker/film maker at the track's junction with the road. He films us unloading the bike and I talk to camera – the usual stuff. Why I ride a small Honda: reliability, fuel consumption, light-weight maneuverability. And that there is nothing remarkable in what I do. Millions of people ride a bike to work each morning. All I do is ride further.
Enough talk, get in the saddle: Brmmm, Brmmm...

MELODRAMATIC OLD MAN

NEORA VALLEY: APRIL 1
Pale daylight seeps round the curtains as I pad to the bathroom for the fourth time in the night. Fresh out of bed my balance is never good. My spine and ankles and the knuckle on my right index-finger hurt. Back to bed and I cuddle under the duvets – a few minutes to 5 a.m. and not much hope of getting back to sleep. I face a long ride through the mountains to Darjeeling and wish that I wasn't so tired. This journey has been too much for me. Just this once I'm writing the truth: that I'm scared of failure and scared of suffering some sort of physical collapse. I am 77 years old and having to get up in the night is standard. So are the painful joints. They don't matter. The heart scares me. I intend to keep going of course. I'll enjoy the journey most of the time. It is a great experience. But the fear is there and this wretched exhaustion. Enough of this melodramatic self-indulgence. I'll be scaring my children – that's if they read this Blog. Open the curtains and watch the dawn mist smoke through the trees; hot shower, drag on a thick jumper and sit out on the porch. The Neora Valley is a Wild Life Sanctuary and birds are abundant – though I can't name any. Ignorant Old Man...

SUBSERVIENT SPECIES

NEORA VALLEY: MARCH 31
The three couples from Kolkata represent a pleasant facet of India's economic success –anti TV, anti computer games, pro wild life, pro ecology. Sad that this attitude isn't more prevalent. Mid-age with young children, they explore, on holiday, the less known and less developed areas of India – mountains, nature reserves, wild life sanctuaries, temples and fortresses less visited and difficult to reach. Their advice is to explore the North East States. When I write of their advice I write of the three men. The women remain separate, care for the kids, talk amongst themselves, return to their cabins. A subservient species? What do I know? I am merely an observer.

QUALITIES SADLY MISTAKEN FOR WEAKNESS

NEORA VALLEY: MARCH 31
Stone steps bordered by ferns and bamboo lead to the dinning hall on a higher terrace. Orchids droop between the rocks of the retaining walls. Three further cabins are occupied by holidaying families from Kolkata. The cabins have mezzanines and sleep four. Uttam Paul designed the buildings and oversaw construction by local villagers. His father was a doctor on a tea estate. Uttam married locally and has a house in Lava. He is a neat trim man in his early fifties and speaks quietly and strikes me as both gentle and thoughtful – qualities sadly mistaken for weakness in our modern culture. Uttam is tough minded and a stubborn and dedicated fighter and worker for his community and ecology.

NOT BAD FOR A CAMP

NEORA VALLEY: MARCH 31
I write this on a bench on the log cabin's porch. The driver squats on the outer edge of the car park parapet (dead drop for ever), mobile phone to his ear – calling his wife of course. How is the baby? Villages the far side of the steep valley are a thin scattering of tin roofs on terraced patches of darker green amidst broad-leaf trees. Look beyond to snow caps tinted with gold by the evening sun. There lie the Natula and Gelepla Passes into Nepal and Tibet.

NEAR PERFECT MATTRESS

NEORA VALLEY: MARCH 31
Help Tourism's local director/partner, Uttam Paul, greets me with a silk saffron scarf and glass of locally brewed liquor that tastes of blackberries and is probably lethal. A flagstone footpath and stone steps lead to the comfortable porch of a one-bedroom log cabin. Within lies total luxury: polished wood floors, double bed with top sheet folded over blankets and duvet, near perfect mattress, small dressing-room, bathroom with steam-hot water, thick towels. My only comment, Wow!

FUN? NOT REALLY...

NEORA VALLEY: MARCH 31
And upward...
The small mountain town of Lava is dominated by a modern monastery. The track to Help Tourism's camp is to the right on the final bend before the village. The manager assures me that the track is very bad, better take the bike in the pick-up. As if I can't cope...I'll show him.
The track runs along the side of the mountain through a magnificent pine forest. The first few hundred meters are compressed dirt, easy. Turn a bend and I face a climb over large smooth river stones, first gear, bumpity bump bump bump. The stones kick the front wheel. Stay loose is the secret. Let the bike pick its own way as you would with a horse. A smooth stretch follows then more stones and a steep decent with a sharp bend. Imagine a mountain stream without water. Down hill is always worst. Put both feet down, you lose the rear break and begin to slide. Grab the front break and you're on your butt. So, however scared, you have to keep going - which isn't easy when faced with a 160 degree bend. The camp is twelve kilometers down the track. Twelve kilometers of and ninety minutes - enough time to get accustomed to the conditions and gain faith in your ability and the bike's ability. Fun? Not really...

INTO THE HILLS

SILIGURI: MARCH 31
Help Tourism develops tourism within the community. They have built a camp in the Noreya Valley. The Siliguri office manager comes to the Cindrella Hotel in a four-wheel drive pick-up truck at 9 a.m. He has been instructed to transport me and the bike in the truck. I prefer to ride.
“The road to the camp is not possible.”
“So I will ride while the road is possible”