It All Seemed So Logical

The next morning I woke up at six to fix the bike. I was eager and confident, and I just needed to apply logic.

I removed the headlight to get to the cabling. Easy. I was looking for a loose cable. I switched on the ignition and the indicator. I gently touched cables. Whenever the indicator went on, I had a circuit. I quickly narrowed down the problem to a plug. Four cables left the ignition lock, arrived at this plug. At the other end, four different cables disappeared into the interior of the bike. I noticed that the plug wasn't locking properly. When I lifted it at one end, the indicator beeped. When I let go, there was no connection.

I needed insulation tape, or a plaster. I walked up and down the town, and eventually found insulation tape. By this time Sarita had woken up, and she was helping. The insulation tape wasn't sticky enough, so I went back into town to look for super glue. When I came back Sarita had tied string around the plug - but still, it was losing contact.

I applied superglue to the plug. I knew I had to work swiftly, to squeeze the plug together, get the indicator going, and hold it there until the glue dried. Unfortunately, the glue dried at the wrong moment. The plug was now solidly glued together in the wrong position - and we now found ourselves with a difficult problem. There were no mechanics in town. And Manali was a six hour ride away over the Rhotang pass.

I decided to cut out the plug, and connect the four wires from the one side, with the corresponding four on the other side. While stripping the wires, I shortened two of them by quite a bit - but no problem. When I connected all four wires, there was no ignition. Strange. Perhaps the plug served a different use, and that it did some weird stuff inside, switching wires around.

No problem. I held the ignition lock in my hand with the four wires sticking out of it. So the ignition lock just connects these wires in some way inside the lock to switch the bike on and off. I didn't need it. I could just hotwire the other four cables disappearing into the bike. The ignition would always be on, but it would be fine for the day.

I tried all combinations of two and two wires. Nothing. I tried all four together. Nothing. I tried different combinations of three together. One of them worked. I didn't think it was intuitive, but it did work. So the plug or the lock must connect three wires together, and the fourth is just a dummy - to fool fiddlers. Solved. In the mean time we had collected several interested onlookers, and I was relieved I didnt have to fail in front of them.'

We had breakfast, and I was proud of myself - I had hotwired the bike, and gotten us out of a remote settlement. An alpha-male.

After breakfast we packed the bike. I checked the indicator - we still had ignition. I kickstarted the bike. I noticed smoke coming from the wires. I quickly jumped off and blew it away, and thought that some of the wires might have been creating a short circuit. I insulated all of the loose wires to make sure they didn't touch each other.

I kickstarted again - this time several hard kicks, when a dangerous amount of smoke came from the cables. It didn't want to stop and everything heated up and started glowing and melting away. There was nowhere I could switch off the bike - it was hotwired. "Water - we need water", "Hold the bike - HOLD the bike!". I was blowing and trying to rip the wires apart but it was so hot, and they were all twisted together. I was very aware of the petrol drip coming from the carburettor and the proximity of my head to the petrol tank. "Shit". I ran around the bike and tore out all my bags from the side case to get to the tools. I emptied them out onto the ground, and took the pliers and started cutting wires.

The toxic smoke died down, but all the wires had molten together and apart into a sprouting mess of colour and black plastic.

How could it have ended up this way? It all seemed so logical.

I had to call Arun in Delhi and tell him about this little mishap, and if it was ok for me to leave the bike in Keylong. It was ok.

We instantly became backpackers again, carrying our stuff on our backs and waiting on the side of the road for a bus. Whenever we heard an Enfield we watched it pass by and gave each other a look - it could have been us.

Rhotang La ("Pile of Dead Bodies") was simple. Just very very long. It took about three hours to cross the pass. Two women vomited (neon yellow with a porridge like consistency) out the windows.

Back in Manali now. Seeing all the old faces again, sleeping in the same room as we did before. Meeting up with the jeweller again (I enjoy observing his lazy eye). Manali has emptied out - the season is almost finished. There will be a last batch coming down soon from Leh, and then it friezes over and everybody goes home.

Sat on the Veranda last night and laughed about the Keylong incident.

Picked up some more Tibetan medicine from the monastery here. Leaving tomorrow for Shimla by bus. Then a toy train to Kalka. The pick up a passing bus to Dhera Dun near Rishikesh.

There we will do a ten day Vipassana meditaion course - an austere ten days of silence and little food and early mornings.

Not too sure when next I will email - perhaps only in two weeks time.