A Fine Pony

The Abbot and one of the young monks came out to see us leave on the final part of our outward journey to Padum, which at that time was as far as the road went from this direction.



We were early visitors to Rangdum that year and discovered no one had ever visited there on a motorcycle. The monks were very interested in the BMW. The Abbot, with a twinkle in his eye, said to us "A fine pony you have there."

To say the conditions in the Monastery were basic would be, lets say, perhaps a little over complementary. It was certainly an interesting experience and, as we were soon to discover, we left with a few irritating passengers.

A Great Adventure

In my early thirties I had one of those adventures of a lifetime that always seem to happen to other people.

I met a guy with a 750cc BMW motorcycle while on a boat from Kuwait to India. When the ship docked at Bombay, the customs officials impounded his machine, due to their not accepting his Bahrain customs documents.

We had parted company at the docks after arranging to meet up later. It was much later, in fact three days later he emerged from a crowd in the middle of a Bombay street (it was still Bombay then 1981) with the sorry tale.

We pooled efforts, appealed the Indian Customs decision, bought time and acquired a Carnet from Lahore. We teamed up and, successfully on the road again, I was treated to a remarkable experience.

Amongst many I suppose one of the most memorable events was travelling from Kargil in Kashmir to Padum in Zanskar. The road was un-metalled and only open from late June to October due to the high passes (over 4,000m) being blocked by snow and ice.

About half way is the Buddhist Monastery Rang Dum Gumpa, a modest yet imperious building perched atop an isolated mound of Himalayan rock standing proudly above a great plain at the conference of two glacier fed rivers.

It was a sublime adventure. The picture here just about sums up to me what biking is all about. Thanks to Trevor Thomas I had a really great adventure.

(Olympus OM1n 85-250mm Zuiko Kodak Ectachrome)

The Bus Pass is Nigh

I was born in the year the 1948 National Assistance Act finally saw the abolition of the Poor Law. I shared my infancy with the National Health Service and was probably inculcated into left of centre political thought by some secret ingredient in National Dried Milk, the only baby food I could digest without vomiting.

In terms of politics I am much the same now but sadly there seems to be precious little left of the ideology from those heady years of our burgeoning Welfare State.

As for politics today, there is a sense that things are being done to us rather than for us, something we Boomers should start to take seriously. Joan Bakewell recently wrote in The Independent, "I've seen the future, and it belongs to the old." As usual there is food for thought in her comments, we ought to be prepared to ensure our futures are secured on our terms.