Vertigo - Enduro Himalaya

The boundaries of modern motorcycle tours have been pushed back again, as Enduro Himalaya gives you the chance to ride the most incredible mountain peaks in the world

The sun burns brightly, scorching us with a UV intensity you only get at 12,000 feet above sea level. Towering granite mountains mix in the middle distance with stark, snow-capped Himalayan peaks.

As the cameraman sets up his equipment, four of us chat idly, and event organiser Simon squats frog-like on a huge rock perilously close to the cliff's edge. I decide to bypass him by stepping onto the rock's angled
surface in an effort to get past. As I do so, my right foot slips and in one awful second, I realise I'm going over the edge. I grab in vain at some foliage, and then the world goes into slow-motion as I pitch, headfirst,
off a cliff. "Oh, shit..."

The market for two-wheeled adventure has gone off the scale of late. Well-heeled riders are looking for lumps of solid motorcycling exploration and companies like Enduro Himalaya serve it up on a plate. Raise the £3000 fee and you're on the trip of a lifetime. A percentage of the money goes to charity, you get a ride you'll never forget, and everyone's a winner. But what Enduro do better than most is balance hard riding with a waft of danger, backed up by organisation and medical staff that are second to none.

Starting out in Dehli, our first two days are spent edging closer towards the Himalayan foothills and serve to remind you how different it is riding a bike around here. Chaotic small towns, overturned trucks, shit-throwing monkeys and the bloated corpses of dead cows litter the roadside. And rubbish, lots of rubbish. In India, the trash bin is a mythical concept that hasn't yet made it to the common populace.

The second evening is spent in an exquisite Tibetan monastery in the tiny town of Sarahan. The transition from Indian plains to Himalayan region is marked. The roads change as well, the mountain passes from Sarahan to Sangla are spectacular, but the roads were cut through solid granite with dynamite and blood, and there is no Armco to keep you from going over the edge.

We pass through the valleys beneath the soaring 20,000-foot peak of Kinnaur Kailash, and that night get eyeball-wateringly stoned on powerful weed and local moonshine. Staying the night in a campsite in the Himalayas makes you feel 18 years old again, while the steady roar of a waterfall and snow-covered peaks on either side let you know you're camping for real. Washday the following morning was courtesy of the local stream, fed directly by the melting ice high above. Nothing will wake you up faster, guaranteed.

Continue Enduro Himalaya

The next day, the greenery of the lower hills gives way to a harsher environment as the ride climbs inexorably upwards. The group stops at the tiny forest outpost of Burati Thatang. Depending on who you speak to it's either 9km or 119km from the border with Tibet. This is just the way of things around here - the best way to collect information is to ask a dozen people the same question and split an average.

A quiet degree of political turmoil goes on throughout these mountains, but you wouldn't know it. "There is a slow but steady flow of refugees from Tibet," says Toja, a monk who stops for a chat. "Whole families walk for weeks through the mountains to make it here. It is very grave what has happened under Chinese rule. Hundreds make it but hundreds do not." As our cavalcade of Enfields pass through, it's easy to overlook the struggle for life going un-noticed around us.

By the time we're headed towards Tabo, the high altitude, rough roads and continued late nights are taking their toll. Tempers are occasionally flaring, including mine as my Enfield falls apart. First the throttle cable breaks, stranding me outside amilitary base. The camp commandant comes out while the techs fixed the bike with a file and piece of string. "Are you an infantry unit?" I ask. "No, we are missiles. Big Russian missiles. Should we ever need to invade China we are ready." I ask if India currently have plans to invade China. "Oh yes!" laughs the commandant. "Very bad place, we must invade as soon as possible."

With my bike up and running, we scurry along 20 miles before running out of fuel. Two litres pinched from another bike gets us going again, at which point my battery falls off. Ten miles later and my horn bounces down the road. It's one thing to have no throttle, fuel or battery, but to ride with no horn in the Himalayas is akin to suicide. It forms the basis for all life on the roads - without your horn you are as good as dead. As darkness descends, I chug into the night with another 20 miles to go. Unseen chasms drop away on either side, and by myself in the dark it's wonderful to feel alone in the middle of nowhere. Then my fuse blows and I'm left stranded again.

The following two days are the best, hundreds of miles from anywhere and surrounded on all sides by high-altitude desert. The pass at Khunzam La is at 15,000 feet and riding two-up with a cameraman on the back, my poor Enfield really struggles. We blast through 25 miles of brutal boulders, granite dust swirling into the air as the cavalcade fires its way alongside glacial valleys and over rickety bridges. It was along here that three people went down, hard. Peter Kasch had a head-long charge into car-sized rocks, while Simon Callendar clipped a truck and crashed, taking out Brenda Reynolds who was following. How the bikes held together I'll never know, the suspension bottoming-out over bumps like pavement curbs. "That was insane," gasped a breathless Richard McIntosh after surviving the section. "I was following Colin Lillywhite who was pushing it a bit and I was pushing it a lot more to try and keep up! That was the most intense riding experience of my life."

Approaching the Baralacha pass, it was impossible to avoid the altitude. It makes you giddy, causes you to act stupid, and even stops you sleeping. It affects Enduro boss Simon Smith so badly that at the top of one incredible climb he gets all aggressive, starts freaking out at the quality of his goggles, leaves his pillion by the side of the road and then rides off talking gibberish to a passenger who isn't there. But nobody got it as bad as 38-year-old Colin Wilson who got hit with chronic altitude sickness at 17,000 feet. "I started getting dizzy at 14,000 feet, and for every 1000 feet you go up it's like you've drunk another pint. At 17,000 feet I was beyond breathlessness," he says. "I could just about control the throttle but had to ride the last 5km in first gear. But there was no way I wasn't going to the top." When he gets off the bike, Colin is shaking uncontrollably. It looked more alarming than it was; 15 minutes later when his body had re-adjusted he was fine.

After that it was gently, literally, downhill. By some outrageous play of fate, the day we were heading south to Kalka, the Raid de Himalaya was heading north on the same road. Teams of 4x4s bombarded us at every corner. There were a few ashen faces as every rider had their own little brush with death.

I did the Enduro India trip last year, and while it was tremendous fun it was all a little fluffy compared to the might of the Himalayas. People were passing their bike test just to do the India trip, but anyone trying the same for this rally would be out of their depth. "If you'd shown me a video beforehand of some of the stuff we were going to ride over," surmises Richard McIntosh, "I would have told you to stop being ridiculous. But I learned more in two weeks in the Himalaya than I have learned in four years of road riding." It is a fact that on a bike is the finest way to see the world, and there are few finer sights than the Himalayas.

I land in an unceremonious heap with my legs wedged awkwardly beneath me. I perform my normal post-crash routine perfected years ago when I used to have a big crash once a week. Conscious? Check. All major limbs working? Yes. Blood everywhere? No. My head has taken a right crack and my left hand and shoulder are scraped, but otherwise I'm fine. "John!" The sound of my name echoes down and filters into my bruised brain. "Yeah. I'm okay. Yeah, I'm alive!" And truth be told, I'd never felt more alive in my life.

For more information check out www.endurohimalaya.com

ENDURO HIMALAYA - THE ROUTE

The Himalayan range is vast. Covering an area one-and-a-half times the size of France and crossing six countries, it is both fearsome and incredible.

Enduro Himalaya's route starts at Shimla in the north of India, works northeast towards Tibet before looping west through the high altitude desert of the Spiti Valley, climbing to 17,000ft at Baralacha then dropping into the old hippy town of Manali. The 10-day ride is just under 1000 miles, but with average speeds as low as 10mph that's enough for most. Make no mistake, to ride a motorbike around here is quite a feat.

The dangers are very real. Yawning one-kilometre drops are quite normal and one flat tyre or slide and it will take you five seconds to be smashed to blubbery pieces on the rocks below. Tarmac will suddenly be replaced with loose gravel and boulders or, worse still, landslides can remove the road altogether.
Rock-falls are frequent and potentially lethal, while monstrous boulders the size of a Mini line most of the roads.

And when you're off the bike entirely, that's when the Himalayas finally strike...