Nearly 4000m up on the cold and desolate border between China and Kyrgyzstan, Dean Martinello was compiling a mental list of all the stupid places he’d been with Betsy before this trip.
Three thousand clicks through the Congo in first gear, dodging armed bandits in the badlands of the Sahara desert, stuck in a
bog in Siberia…
As the snowstorm approached he tried to reassure himself that this situation was no harder. But there was one big difference. This time he had his “pillion in a million”, Sal Clark, to think about.
Sure, two years ago she’d happily survived for 12 months on the back of Betsy, Dean’s temperamental KTM Erzberg racer, travelling the length of the American continent.
But this time was different. They had upped the stakes big-time, deciding to ride from Adelaide, South Australia, all the way to Europe. Just the three of them.
In the previous eight months they had ridden along the best and worst of roads through Timor-Leste, Indonesia and up some of the remotest parts of Asia.
The heights of Nepal had been conquered, but now the bureaucratic bullshit of a border outpost was about to bring the couple undone. This was big. It was shaping up to be the ultimate test of a long-standing relationship.
It was 4pm and Dean was at the gates of the 3600m Torugart Pass with a snowstorm fast approaching and a girlfriend screaming at the official holding the key to open the huge metal gates leading out of China.
Eventually they were waved through and rode 6km into Kyrgyzstan to be met by another set of gates. Now it was snowing. In summer.
A big yellow four-wheel-drive adventure truck pulled up. The couple had met this French family a few days earlier and it was a welcome sight.
They sheltered inside the vehicle to make a plan after Dean parked Betsy facing the gusting wind so the KTM wouldn’t get blown off its sidestand. It was now minus 2ºC, they were at 3600m and the road to Naryn, 200km away, stayed at that height.
Frenchman Olivier suggested they all stay up there for the night in the truck, even though he needed to be on the other side of the country in
three days and could only travel at 50km/h.
Dean and Sal didn’t want to put the young family out so they rugged up, trudged across to Betsy, wiped the snow off her seat and headed off.
“If it gets too bad, just stop and we’ll be behind you,” Olivier called down from the heated comfort of his megabus.
It was a surreal feeling riding out into the storm with snow streaking into their helmets.
Soon both Dean’s hands went numb from the wrists down, so intermittently he tucked one behind a knee to get it out of the wind and get some blood moving again.
The road was wet, and ice was a real worry.
He hit the intercom.
“Babe can you hear me?” he yelled.
“Yep,” was the reply.
“Okay. So if we hit ice on the road, we might fall off. If we fall off, don’t put your hands or feet out, get it?”
“Yep.”
“You cold?”
“Yep.”
“If it gets too bad you let me know, okay? We can stop.”
“Yep.”
Every 30 seconds Dean scuffed a boot on the road, trying to sense how much ice was on the surface. He was constantly wiping snow off his helmet visor. At one point his hand just scraped across a layer of ice and he had to scratch at it to restore his vision.
A turn suddenly appeared and he went for the brakes, but they started sliding on ice. As panic welled up, his frozen brain was overtaken by the survival instinct of a seasoned motorcyclist. Without thinking he opened the throttle to get the rear wheel turning at the same speed as the front. Then he braked again, more softly this time.
The couple made the turn, but soon afterwards Betsy started to misfire badly. A carburettor was icing up. At this stage they still had 100km to go and cantankerous Betsy had resorted to either running wide open full throttle or not at all.
Salvation came in the form of a wind-swept official checkpoint. The passport inspection gave the idling bike a chance to thaw out its carbs.
Off again but reaching the end of their endurance levels, Dean regularly tapped Sal on the leg to see if she was alright. A squeeze of her knees on his hips was the reply. Dean knew she was hurting, but would never ask him to stop.
As if on cue, the temperature started rising slowly, eventually to 5ºC, and the snow stopped.
They had punched through the storm and as the sky turned blue and the sun shone the couple started punching the air as feeling returned to their hands and feet.
Soon they arrived at Naryn, a picturesque mountain town of 25,000 people. There was a bank, a tiny apartment with a hot shower and a double bed too short for Dean to stretch out on. But it was sheer luxury and came with stifling heating. Perfect!
Cashed up, Sal headed out to buy pasta, a beer and a bottle of wine, while Dean unloaded Betsy.
“It had been a really hard day, but one we’ll both remember for a long time,” Dean said later. “It was the sensation of riding into the snowstorm with fear, excitement, cold and panic all rolled into one.
“I guess moments like that can’t really be described, but these are the exact travelling memories I cherish the most.”
Sal said one of the most memorable things for her was Dean’s riding. “We had rain, wind, snow, ice, hail, thunder, mud, water crossings, cows, horses, dogs, sheep, missing bits of road, gravel and massive puddles, and not once did Dean lose control of the bike and fall over.
“There were a few close calls, and some screams from me, but amazingly we stayed upright. Sure, there were some moments when Dean forgot what side of the road he was supposed to be riding on while oncoming traffic raced towards us, but he soon came to his senses, remembered we were no longer in India and swerved to the ‘right’ side of the road.”
Together, they made it. The relationship had survived its biggest test.
Sally says
After travelling 70,000km as a pillion I feel I can share what makes the rider on the back happy. It’s simple – a happy rider (Dean). Sure, not too hot, not too cold, not wet, not too boring, not too exciting (not too many water crossings or sandy roads) but, most of all, a happy rider.
When there is something wrong with the bike it occupies every part of Dean’s brain. It seems that to try to diagnose any problem with the bike usually involves accelerating really fast and then braking suddenly – time after time.
This gets a bit tiring and painfully uncomfortable but I try to remain calm as I know that whatever is going on in Dean’s head is more painful. He constantly considers worst-case scenarios, but he always fixes it.
On the flip side, when Dean has ‘Bike Zen’ he is happy, we ride faster and there are more wheelies. A happy Betsy and a bit of testosterone results in a raising of the wheel. It’s almost phallic and I feel like I’m imposing on a private moment between Dean and Betsy but I do try to embrace the airborne happiness. While gripping on for dear life.
Dean says
I’d like to say that I invented the term Bike Zen, but it may have been my brother, or it may have come from that book. Wherever it came from, it’s the state of mental clarity and feeling of harmony experienced while riding a motorcycle which you are responsible for maintaining, and which is running perfectly.
After a couple of months without Bike Zen, we got a healthy motorcycle again, and therefore a happy rider. The issue had cursed me through several countries and eventually I traced it to a small part in the carburation.
I wasn’t even aware of how frustrated I had become until I found myself punching the fuel tank after missing a highway exit.
“Are you okay, babe?” Sally asked me on the intercom.
“Yeah, this misfire is just really killing the riding vibe.”
“Well, why don’t you just fix it then?” she said.
I love the way she thinks I can fix everything. Each time something goes wrong and I pace around muttering about needing parts, or asking how the hell am I going to fix some catastrophic breakage, Sally just sits there and waits for me to do it.
“You know one day it will stop and I won’t be able to fix it,” I advise her.
“But you always fix everything, babe,” she replies.
Betsy
This 950cc KTM, Number 36 of the 100 limited-edition Erzberg models, was intended as a rich person’s plaything. Instead it has racked up 250,000km since 2008 travelling over 70 countries. Its first big trip was 45,000km and 27 countries in 2010. Dean did that trip with his brother Paul.
But why did he choose a motorcycle with such a narrow focus?
“72kW and 90Nm of overkill,” Dean replies. “We test-rode a few options and narrowed it down to a sensible list. Then we saw the 950 SE and Paul realised it was faster than his Ducati Hypermotard.”
Modifications to the bike included installing custom rear hand grips with heaters attached and modifications to the seat to make it more comfortable.
The 33-litre fuel tank was from Safari Tanks. When it failed at 230,000km Safari sent out a replacement to Pakistan FOC!
Dean says Betsy “runs on anything”, after he retuned the ignition map. And the V-twin is unburstable. At 95,000km Dean fed it new pistons and barrels, main and big-end bearings. At 200,000km he slipped in new piston rings.
But honestly, was it really the bike for the job?
“We went two-up along goat tracks that BMW GS riders we came across wouldn’t do solo,” Dean replies. Nuff said.
Snapshots from the road
Lobo’s classic early 70s anthem for freewheelers, Me and You and a Dog Named Boo, was a number one hit around the world. It summed up the decade when a young generation got on the move. For Australians and New Zealanders it often involved an overland road trip to Europe, starting in Timor-Leste. Dean and Sally followed in the tracks of these 70s adventurers, but decades of political change meant their route took some major diversions.
Timor-Leste:
Back in the early 1970s, the infamous ‘hippy trail’ took adventurous young Australians from Darwin to the former Portuguese colony, then north via the islands of Bali. Timor-Leste was a cheap place to hang out back then, before Bali was ‘discovered’. But now, when the country is still recovering from decades of political upheaval, the Australian Government urges travellers there “to exercise a high degree of caution”. Our travellers only found friendly people but a high cost of travelling largely due to hotels and restaurants catering mainly to well-paid NGO workers. They took a 14-hour overnight ferry to Flores in Indonesia crammed with locals and livestock and slept rough on a blow-up mattress. All the islands in Indonesia are connected by daily ferries.
Indonesia:
Dean found motorcycle paradise in a series of uphill hairpins on the island of Flores, but the realities of life on the road soon became apparent.
“I threw gears at the bike in quick succession into hairpins and that motor makes a glorious sound as its pops and growls under hard deceleration,” he remembered.
Sally remembered it differently: “I spent two days holding on to the bike so hard that my biceps started rapidly ripping themselves into form.”
One day they knocked out 640km over 14 hours with progress slowed by local road rules and a mix of pedestrians, small motorcycles trucks and buses.
“We were passing a vehicle roughly every five to 10 seconds,” said Dean. “In Indonesia you are supposed to give way to traffic entering a road, even on Highway One, so you have to watch out for little motos riding straight out in front of you. Sometimes one of these would flash past me and I’d try to follow them but they would swerve like MotoGP riders between trucks and buses. They were a lot braver than us.”
Malaysia to Laos:
Three months into their big road trip, the couple had acclimatised to Asian traffic and its accompanying smog, as well as budget accommodation and its associated primitive ablution facilities, bed bugs and mosquitoes. They’d survived Malaysia’s version of the Hotel California. Cheap, dirty and
inhabited by a group of eccentrics living on the edge of insanity, these dodgy digs became their backstreets base in Penang for a week. Getting out of Indonesia had also been a bit insane – Betsy had ended up lashed to the bow of a high-speed ferry captained by one of Asia’s more colourful characters. Thailand was a blur of great riding roads near Chiang Mai, brilliant street food and the anticipation of heading into Laos via Cambodia. They certainly got off the beaten track in Laos, thanks to Dean’s sense of direction. This involved several hairy creek crossings and a river trip with Betsy manhandled onto a tiny wooden passenger ferry.
Myanmar:
Their time in one of the world’s fastest-developing tourist destinations was limited due to regulations requiring non-tour-group travellers to have a government-approved guide. Here Dean experienced one of his most bizarre ‘Bike Zen’ moments. Noticing a small puddle of oil under Betsy he soon discovered that the plastic sight glass had fallen out of his rear brake master cylinder. He followed the tiny trail of fluid back to the Thai border. Out in no-man’s land the trail ran dry but a few metres farther on a glinting piece of Perspex revealed the sight glass. Zen or what?
“In many ways our big journey actually started in Myanmar,” Dean said later. “The idea of a ride around India, Nepal and Myanmar was the seed that grew into the plan to ride all the way to Europe from Australia.”
India:
Sally and Dean intended to spend as much time in India as possible. These were Sally’s thoughts after two weeks…
“I think it’s amazing that cows, goats and dogs are free to roam as they please across busy highways; that the women wear brightly coloured saris and look stunning against the grey dusty backdrop; how much rubbish there is everywhere and the complete disregard the people have of it; the amount of men that need to urinate in full view of everyone at any given time of the day (one day I counted 30). And the attention Betsy gets is completely ridiculous with people even wanting to touch her.
“Despite all this and the gruelling days of riding, there are many sights, smells and people that put a smile on our face. Choosing to ride a bike around India may not be the smartest thing we’ve ever done but we have only just started so that could still change.”
The couple criss-crossed India, from its chilly mountains to it sweltering coasts, and out into arid but magical Rajasthan and then to Goa, which they described as “the hippy apocalypse”. The sprawling country of contrasts left lasting impressions.
Pakistan:
The Australian Government didn’t want them there but Dean has another take on a much misunderstood country.
“I emailed the Australian Consulate in Islamabad, at the request of the Pakistan consulate in Canberra, to register our travel. They replied: Your proposed travel from Islamabad to the China border crossing through the Pakistan province of KPK is dangerous and we strongly urge you to reconsider this … we regret we are unable to provide a letter stating that such a visit is welcome.
“It seems that the Australian Government’s stance on travel anywhere except New Zealand is that it’s dangerous so don’t go! They have travel advisory warnings for every country we had been in since leaving home.
“No doubt Pakistan is a dangerous country to travel in, and some parts are definite no-go zones, but we didn’t go to those parts. Equally it was an incredibly interesting place to see, full of welcoming and generous people. It’s a shame that a few extremists have given the entire country such a bad reputation.”
After weeks immersed in mountainous northern Pakistan, Sally had this view: “Seeing how beautiful it is here makes us regret not being able to go through more of Pakistan, but the security issues make it too hard. There is a really rich history in this area and the locals are starving for tourists to visit as they once used to before 9/11. It’s such a shame that the wars in Afghanistan have left Pakistan so susceptible to terrorism.”
Iran:
Another country with a bad reputation, Iran proved to be the exact opposite of typical Western preconceptions. Helpful passers-by bought Dean and Sally a SIM card for their phone and refused to accept payment. The couple camped out in the desert and visited 2500-year-old Persian ruins.
Sally recounted another example of the locals’ generosity.
“While we were in Tehran we were invited out by a guy who owned a KTM,” she said. “He and his friends took us to a restaurant overlooking the city lights. We had a really interesting time learning about how Iranians really feel about Iran.
“The people there were so lovely and welcoming and out on the road we were forever getting waves and big smiles from all the cars that passed us.”
Turkey:
By now the relentless 42oC heat was sapping the mental strength of our travellers. But Sal also described a tinge of regret as they finished crossing Turkey.
“We saw the Mediterranean as we arrived into Istanbul and realised we were officially on the continent of Europe. Everything felt European and so, unfortunately, did the prices. Filling the petrol tank was now $60 as opposed to $5 in Iran.
“It started to feel like the challenging part of the trip was over and now the main challenge would be not to spend too much money.”
Europe:
An arc through Eastern Europe and then Italy, Spain and France was a holiday in itself, but for the two travellers used to an unscripted life on back-country roads it was a culture shock. Too many tents in the campgrounds, too many diversions to spend money on, too much stress about conforming to the daily details of Western culture.
Sal described the feelings many couples get at the end of a long journey: “It was all very nice but there was a feeling that the wheels were starting to fall off … starting with Dean getting sick of seeing me in the same clothes (it had been a year to the day that we left), But also our bags were breaking, the GPS kept freezing and turning off, my suit was no longer waterproof and half the bike was being held together with zip ties.”
Eventually Dean, Sal and Betsy arrived in Amsterdam and the by-now crotchety old KTM was shoe-horned into an apartment lift to get her off the street. Perhaps Betsy was as upset as Dean and Sal after they arrived at the KTM factory to find staff showed little interest in their adventure – and even wanted to charge them for a factory tour.
“I shouldn’t have been surprised as the farther we were away from the big KTM dealers the better we got treated,” said Dean, who described how a KTM workshop in India gave him the space and tools he needed to do a full service on Betsy.
The trip was at its end with just one leg left: all three flew to Melbourne in time for the MotoGP race at Phillip Island and a leisurely two-day ride home to Adelaide.
And what about life after the big trip? To quote that classic Lobo lyric: “Oh how I wish we were back on the road again.”
