"The original plan was to meet Aaron, Jared, and Ryan in Kathmandu around the 25th of April, where I would hop on the back of Aaron’s Enfield and the four of us would cruise smoothly through the rest of Nepal. Little did I know when my plane left Los Angeles on April 19th, that I wouldn’t see my friends ‘til May 5th and in Darjeeling, India! Little did I know about motorcycle travel at all when I left the U.S. But now, after a couple weeks on the road here in Asia I understand how quickly and easily an original plan can fall to pieces.

Twelve days ticked by as I waited for three Enfields to pull up in Kathmandu. After Lonely Planeting myself to death on temples, stupas, ghompas, and margs, I began to get irritated and worried. Everyone’s patience has a limit, and my limit is apparently twelve days. Finally, some brief and confusing emails arrived to tell me that the guys were still in India and couldn’t possibly make it to Kathmandu in less than one or two more weeks.

What the hell was taking them so long was beyond me, and why the hell they couldn’t just burn it to Kathmandu and pick me up was a total mystery. But I swallowed some pride and jumped on an overnight bus to Darjeeling, where I was greeted with stories of riding through unimaginably hard rain in Sikkim, rocks the size of boulders laying in the middle of washed-out mountain roads, engines seizing up, and other various hindrances of speed. Slowly it began to seep in—this was going to be nothing like a road trip across the States in my Subaru.

It has taken us two weeks to cover the 600 kilometers from Darjeeling back to Kathmandu, and I have stopped thinking in chunks of time and begun to use kilometers instead. There are just too many factors at play with multiple motorbikes on Asian highways to promise anyone anything in terms of dates and times. Jared got a flat tire on the ride from Hile to Janakpur which cost all of us two hours while Ryan bungeed the old tire onto his bike, rode into the nearest town to fix it, and returned to Jared waiting on the highway to replace it. Crazed water buffalo charging blindly across the highway also slowed us all down a bit that day. Speaking of highway-wandering wildlife, Nepalese goats appear to be the stupidest creatures on earth as they will stand stock still staring down the barrel of a horn-blaring 500cc Enfield careening towards them at 65 kph and simply blink. Not far up Darwin’s scale is the ever-present holy cow, which will saunter across a busy street oblivious to all traffic, perhaps due to centuries of reverence and safekeeping in this part of the world. And it must be said, in all honesty, that mothers here do not teach their children the old adage burned into MY brain as a child—"Look both ways before you cross the street." People of young and old meander into oncoming traffic with the same nonchalance one would normally exude while browsing in a shopping mall.

Aaron’s bike weighs around 400 pounds, our stuff around 80-- he weighs in at 155 and I at 120. Shifting this grand total of 675 pounds sharply to the left and right to avoid absurd obstacles like goats and water buffalo is not only dangerous but can be rather disconcerting! Combine all these obstacles, the occasional drenching downpour, and the challenge of keeping track of two other riders who drive at greatly varying speeds, and you have an average day on the bike.

So, we’ll probably leave the Kathmandu Valley here in a few days and head on towards Pokhara, western Nepal, and back into northwestern India. We’ll try to drive over the world’s second highest motorable road into Leh (in Ladakh) before it closes in September, but with the impending monsoon, who knows if we’ll make it. I begin to think more and more every day, perhaps only the road knows the plan."

LAP