I figured that since the first Israeli I had talked to had been able to get third party insurance without ownership papers, so if I could get that, I’d feel good enough about the whole thing. I stayed in Arambol that night in order to get a luggage carriage installed the next day. Once that was done, I went to Mapusa and found an insurance agency. Of course, the insurance agent at the end of the long seated line of insurance agents asked for the ownership papers and the previous insurance. I should have seen this coming - idiot. I walked out in a trapped daze, wondering how Dan, the first Israeli with insurance papers and no ownership papers had done it.
I fired up the Enfield and drove back down to Palolem in a nervous daze.
That evening, after talking to Sophie about the problem, I walked back to the bike, reeling over my stupidity and my next move. Perhaps it would be best to just put a ‘For Sale’ sign up on it now and get rid of it before it gets me into trouble. Like I’ve said, I’ve always been a kid who, for the most part did things by the book. Paranoia gets some strange and truly ridiculous ideas breeding in your head. I saddled the bike and just then an Aussie with golden blonde hair down to his shoulders, a guy in his mid forties rode up on an old army green Enfield Bullet. I struck up a conversation with him to get a more informed opinion. I told him my issue with the papers.
“So I’m thinking of just putting a for sale sign on her now, I don’t know, what do you think? Should I just go for it, instead?”
“Aw yea man, you gotta go. Its incredible out there. Getting up early, getting on the road by 5 and watching the sun come up over the land. Yea, don’t worry about the police. They’re just a paid mafia anyways. Even if you had your papers all in order, they’d still take money from you.”
“What about insurance?”
“Any accidents are settled right there on the road, all anyone ever wants is money. I’m not even sure if insurance claims ever get processed to be honest. And I’ve never heard of anyone getting pulled over for speeding. They see you coming, see that you’re a tourist and they pull out the stops because they know they can get money out of you. I’ve been riding this bike for 15,16 years so a few of the cops around here in Goa know me, so whenever they see this bike they stop traffic. I usually just flip them the bird and turn around and take off. Come back in an hour, they’re gone. And a lot of the time I also just blow right past them. They never chase you, they don’t have radios or any of that stuff, and honestly they can’t be bothered. I got someone to draw up papers for this bike a while ago, you know, just something to carry really, with stamps on it, something that makes is look official, but its total bullshit. Each state has different looking papers anyways”
“So you think it’d be worth it? Just to go like I’ve got it?”
“Oh yea, sure, don’t let this stuff hold you back.”
I wasn’t totally reassured but what he’d said made me feel better. I was a bit sick of being ‘the tourist’ and I knew there was an ‘India’ out there that perhaps I was missing out on. Part of this India seemed to be that there were discrepancies between the Book of Law and the Book of Custom. I knew that India had a reputation of bribes and corruption, and that regulation was in many cases simply an avenue to be avoided for personal gain. Was this risk my entry fee for seeing, experiencing - tasting an India that my contrived tourist experience had shielded me from? To hell with the books, I’ll write my own.
The girls took off the next day on a bus, and once I’d gotten new tires on my Enfield, I took off. Hoping that her good will would rub off, I had Sophie name the bike. And so Sasha she was. My back pack, sleeping bag and camera bag were all strapped on to the luggage rack and I made my way to NH-17 (National Highway) to trace my way down the coast and hopefully meet up again with Sophie in Kochi, two states down, about 1000 kilometers. Within half an hour I saw the border crossing that marked the division between Goa and Karnataka. The beige uniformed police officer was slumped back in a white plastic lawn chair and his eyes traced my route as I made it but his expression couldn’t have been more… apathetic. I just rode through.
NH-17 is a winding road that changes in quality depending on which district it is cutting through. And much like a mid-western highway in the United States, it cuts right through towns, turning into ‘Main Street’ for a kilometer or two before thinning out again. For all its bumps, torn up sections and lack of consistency, NH-17 south of Goa is a great road to tour. As the land rose out of the Arabian sea flatly or in great rolling hills punctuated and severed by inlets and rivers, my way along 17 took me to sights that will live with me forever.
I remember crossing one of the many bridges and looking out over the water. The land was lined and crowded with the infinite thick green of palm trees and a lone fisherman out in a boat that looked as though his grandfather might have used, hauled up a net, patched and sewn, for the gifts of the sea, led astray by the currents and the land wriggled and struggled for a freedom no longer theirs.
That was what my hunt for Royal beauty had been about. Yes, I had searched for and found my Enfield but the nature and the vision that it harked after was an idea, an expression of freedom. Open road, unbound by bus and train timetables. Direction and time, both of them mine. Myself, a slave to neither.
I fired up the Enfield and drove back down to Palolem in a nervous daze.
That evening, after talking to Sophie about the problem, I walked back to the bike, reeling over my stupidity and my next move. Perhaps it would be best to just put a ‘For Sale’ sign up on it now and get rid of it before it gets me into trouble. Like I’ve said, I’ve always been a kid who, for the most part did things by the book. Paranoia gets some strange and truly ridiculous ideas breeding in your head. I saddled the bike and just then an Aussie with golden blonde hair down to his shoulders, a guy in his mid forties rode up on an old army green Enfield Bullet. I struck up a conversation with him to get a more informed opinion. I told him my issue with the papers.
“So I’m thinking of just putting a for sale sign on her now, I don’t know, what do you think? Should I just go for it, instead?”
“Aw yea man, you gotta go. Its incredible out there. Getting up early, getting on the road by 5 and watching the sun come up over the land. Yea, don’t worry about the police. They’re just a paid mafia anyways. Even if you had your papers all in order, they’d still take money from you.”
“What about insurance?”
“Any accidents are settled right there on the road, all anyone ever wants is money. I’m not even sure if insurance claims ever get processed to be honest. And I’ve never heard of anyone getting pulled over for speeding. They see you coming, see that you’re a tourist and they pull out the stops because they know they can get money out of you. I’ve been riding this bike for 15,16 years so a few of the cops around here in Goa know me, so whenever they see this bike they stop traffic. I usually just flip them the bird and turn around and take off. Come back in an hour, they’re gone. And a lot of the time I also just blow right past them. They never chase you, they don’t have radios or any of that stuff, and honestly they can’t be bothered. I got someone to draw up papers for this bike a while ago, you know, just something to carry really, with stamps on it, something that makes is look official, but its total bullshit. Each state has different looking papers anyways”
“So you think it’d be worth it? Just to go like I’ve got it?”
“Oh yea, sure, don’t let this stuff hold you back.”
I wasn’t totally reassured but what he’d said made me feel better. I was a bit sick of being ‘the tourist’ and I knew there was an ‘India’ out there that perhaps I was missing out on. Part of this India seemed to be that there were discrepancies between the Book of Law and the Book of Custom. I knew that India had a reputation of bribes and corruption, and that regulation was in many cases simply an avenue to be avoided for personal gain. Was this risk my entry fee for seeing, experiencing - tasting an India that my contrived tourist experience had shielded me from? To hell with the books, I’ll write my own.
The girls took off the next day on a bus, and once I’d gotten new tires on my Enfield, I took off. Hoping that her good will would rub off, I had Sophie name the bike. And so Sasha she was. My back pack, sleeping bag and camera bag were all strapped on to the luggage rack and I made my way to NH-17 (National Highway) to trace my way down the coast and hopefully meet up again with Sophie in Kochi, two states down, about 1000 kilometers. Within half an hour I saw the border crossing that marked the division between Goa and Karnataka. The beige uniformed police officer was slumped back in a white plastic lawn chair and his eyes traced my route as I made it but his expression couldn’t have been more… apathetic. I just rode through.
NH-17 is a winding road that changes in quality depending on which district it is cutting through. And much like a mid-western highway in the United States, it cuts right through towns, turning into ‘Main Street’ for a kilometer or two before thinning out again. For all its bumps, torn up sections and lack of consistency, NH-17 south of Goa is a great road to tour. As the land rose out of the Arabian sea flatly or in great rolling hills punctuated and severed by inlets and rivers, my way along 17 took me to sights that will live with me forever.
I remember crossing one of the many bridges and looking out over the water. The land was lined and crowded with the infinite thick green of palm trees and a lone fisherman out in a boat that looked as though his grandfather might have used, hauled up a net, patched and sewn, for the gifts of the sea, led astray by the currents and the land wriggled and struggled for a freedom no longer theirs.
That was what my hunt for Royal beauty had been about. Yes, I had searched for and found my Enfield but the nature and the vision that it harked after was an idea, an expression of freedom. Open road, unbound by bus and train timetables. Direction and time, both of them mine. Myself, a slave to neither.
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