International Travel news - Round India by motorbike

Motorcycling all the way round India would be a challenge for anyone, let alone a 77-year-old. But then our writer isn't your average septuagenarian

This is a confession. I've been at it again – travelling, and on a motorcycle. Though only a small one, it feels quite sinful.

I am 77. I should know better, grow up, act my age, potter sedately round a golf course in an electric buggy. But, no, I choose to spend six months exploring the Indian subcontinent.

My wife, of course, is pleased to have me out of the house. Men, when they don't work five days a week, occupy too much space. We have irritating habits – not putting the seat back down, leaving dirty socks and underpants on the floor, failing to put the milk and butter back in the refrigerator.

What do my sons think? The older two, in their 40s, merely shrug; Dad's acting true to form. But Joshua and Jedediah are university age. Ancient Dad playing Che Guevara is an embarrassment. Their gap-year friends message me: "Hi, Simon, have you left yet? We're in the Andaman Islands."

To which Joshua posts: "Oh, my God, my 78-year-old dad on Facebook."

I reply: "Only 76, please. I will celebrate my 77th birthday in Goa."

Fellow oldies corner me and ask questions. How are your preparations going? What route will you take?

What should I answer? That planning is time ill used, time in which to grow nervous, fearful even, relive two heart attacks suffered 15 years ago in Guatemala's highlands or dwell on a more recent memory of a truck smashing my leg the first day of my ride north from Tierra del Fuego – which meant five weeks in plaster and having to carry crutches on the bike all the way to New York. So, no, no planning, no wiggling a toe in a swimming pool. Leap is the only way. Pack the bare necessities: six months of heart medication, good shoes for meeting rajas and maharajas (mine are 20-year-old Church's) and wear one of those multi-pocketed waistcoats to avoid mislaying the essentials.

I haven't visited India in 40 years. Delhi is a shock. When I was last here only sadhus talked out loud to themselves. Now everyone does it, rich or poor, old or young, all yakking into mobile phones. Fewer cows wander the streets, more cars – and myriad cab and tuk-tuk drivers practise unmetered highway robbery. Traffic circles and intersections are reminiscent of first world war aerial combat; every pilot picks his own line of attack – go for the gaps or lose your tail.

Am I scared? Yes, obviously.

Humid windless winter days shroud the Mogul splendour and Victorian pomposity in a veil of blue exhaust fumes. Wise travellers wear surgical face masks. But oh, the food! I head for the old Muslim quarter beside the Jama Masjid mosque for divine kebabs — and being an offal lover rejoice at delicately spiced lamb's brain.

Forty years have passed since I last sought wisdom from a Sufi teacher at the shrine of Nizamuddin Auliya, the Sufi saint. His son teaches now the same heretical message: God doesn't mind which route you take to him, only that you arrive.

South next, to Agra, astride Honda India's latest 125 cafe racer (model name Stunner), fire-engine red and comically unsuitable as the mount for an overweight antique. This is a land of flat dusty fields stretching to a mirage-quivering horizon. Drivers respond neither to law nor logic.

Each mud-wall village is a chaotic marketplace, full of handcarts, pedal-bikes, rickshaws, cows, goats, pigs, sheep, the occasional donkey or elephant. I pass men in white dhotis, women in brilliantly coloured saris. Tractors, trucks and buses barge past with sirens blaring where I creep timidly, British interloper guilt-ridden by childhood memories of the Empire. I stop for tea and a crowd converges – though the bike is of greater interest than the Ancient Brit.

Agra's Taj Mahal is a grotesque monument to the male ego: marvel at the wealth and power with which I immortalise my love. I prefer to cross the Yamuna river to a tomb of modest size but of exquisite delicacy, where the parents of Nur Jahan lie side by side, lovers holding hands for eternity. Such tenderness and beauty bring me close to tears. Everywhere I go, people are keen to talk. I fall into conversation in the great courtyard of the Red Fort with the president of a Delhi-based American software corporation. He spends his days facing a computer monitor yet loathes computers. Computers destroy the family, he says. But they are the main link to mine while I'm travelling.

At Akbar I visit the red sandstone imperial complex of Fatehpur Sikri . "Do you find this beautiful?" demands a small aggressive Indian gentleman as I admire the intricate carvings. "No, no, this is not beautiful," he says. "Have you seen Hampton Court? There is beauty." So he continues until, in desperation, I ask of his companion, a tall younger man in short sleeves and trainers: "Do you have to listen to this?"

"Listen? I've been listening for six weeks. He's my dad," he replies, accent indelibly marked by an English public school and the home counties.

Jaipur, rose city of Rajasthan, is hosting a literary festival when I arrive. Famous writers bask in five-star luxury at the maharajah's palace; bulge-bellied Indian movie actors glide self-importantly among their worshipers; meanwhile the poor sleep and breed and cook and defecate on the sidewalk.

In Jodhpur I admire the art deco splendour of the Umaid Bhawan Palace – 347 rooms, 15 years in the building, the charitable maharajah's make-work project for his starving subjects. Why not a city sewage system?

Pushkar is a haven for pony-tailed relics of the psychedelic 1970s still searching for enlightenment in a cloud of smoke. Staff and guests sit glaze-eyed in the hotel garden. Stars sparkle. The holy lake is empty.

Gazelle gaze as I stop beneath a tree on the desert road to Jaisalmer. Here, below the golden walls of the fort, I watch two Sikh brothers rebuild a 1961 Royal Enfield Bullet motorbike while a craftsman tailors me a bag in camel hide. Keep the myriad fortresses and palaces; this is the Rajasthan I love: rich gummy scents of the desert, dunes trembling in the heat, the lifted upper lip of a camel as it nibbles the few thin green leaves on a thorn tree; scrawny goats perched on a branch. I halt in a village and loll on a string bed in the shade, sipping sweet milk tea.

Leaving the desert aridity behind, I head south to Mumbai and then to Goa, the winter goal of our 1960s overland trips. This is a green land of forested hills, milk-coffee rivers, coconut palm and rice paddy. Immense rain trees offer shade. The sea perfumes the air with salt and iodine. Menus feature fresh fish and prawns. I was warned Goa had been ruined. But not for me, nor for the thousands of tourists who bask in the sun. The sand is as golden, Goans as welcoming. The bungalow I rented on Calangute 40 years ago has become a beach bar. I luxuriate at the Taj Hotel's cliff-top resort. A band plays me awake and the front desk manager calls, "Happy 77th birthday, grandfather. Up you get. We're going to give you a wonderful day."

Then I'm heading south through Kerala's magical canals and lagoons to the very tip of India at Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu, to go paddling at sunset, one foot in the Indian Ocean, one in the Bay of Bengal. My journey is half way done.

Bad experiences? Not even a puncture. However the heat is intense. Oven-baked fields wait for the monsoon rains. I race north up the east coast to Kolkata, but with Sikkim and Assam as my goal, leave at dawn and ride all day. Kodaikanal, Mamallapuram and Puri are way stations, and I pause for a day to explore Orissa – the byways of its littoral, the emerald paddies, creeks and ponds carpeted with lilies and water hyacinth where herons, white egrets and water buffalo stand. Straw-roofed huts are reflected in a temple's water tank.

In Kolkata I am banned, to the embarrassment of my Indian hosts, from the bar and dining room of the city's most prestigious social club. My social sin? Wearing an Indian shirt (collarless). Poverty in Kolkata may be marginally more obscene than in Mumbai or Delhi – yet this is a city to love for the energy and humour and generosity of the people. My guide to the city is Indian food writer Colonel Rajan Bali. We set out for lunch or dinner, the colonel in the lead, each of his first few strides accompanied by a clap of his hands. Such were the games-master encouragements of my youth: come on chaps …

So onward and upward to Sikkim, land of spring where rhododendrons and primulas paint high valleys and the magic peaks of Mount Kanchendzonga shimmer in sunshine. Sikkim's women own themselves and wave and shout and laugh as I pass. Brightly dressed pickers speckle tea gardens. Wisps of cloud curl through pine forest. I ride at dawn and pray beside Khecheopalri Lake, follow friends in their jeep up a military road from Lachung to the snow line: these are my memories. By this stage I have met many people, I am befriended by all ages, my own is irrelevant, and I have found it is an expanding friendship that directs me onward. You must visit so and so. They're expecting you.

So it is in Assam. Here I discover the tranquillity of the raja's 19th-century compound in the small town of Abhayapuri; the gateway town of Guwahati, one of India's fastest growing cities; and the Kaziranga national park, where black rhino waddle in baggy bloomers of armour plate. All I need is a last hurrah ...

I am warned that the road over the mountains to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh is bad. I can handle it. The road climbs first through clouded forest, visibility 15 metres. I halt at a tiny tin-shack teahouse. Two inebriated young tribal police with big guns demand a kiss. They give me a peck on the cheek and I flee. After a night's sleep at Dirang I face the Sela Pass, the high route into the Tawang valley, once part of Tibet. Bits of road have fallen down the mountain. Bits of mountain have fallen on the road. Wind blasts a chilling cold off the snow peaks. Old fool, frightened of heights, don't look down. I reach the top at 4,180m and am too exhausted to dismount. Yet the descent is glorious, the climate changing from late winter through spring to early summer as I wind my way down. A last climb to Tawang town and clouds close in. Thankfully there are places to stay, interesting food to eat, the monastery to visit. Rain falls continuously for five days, stretches of road turn to deep liquid mud. The bike has no chance here. A 4x4 pickup is the only solution. After a final dinner with much beer with the military commandant on Assam's border, two soldiers escort me to bed and my journey is done.

What have I learned? That I am no longer a teenager. But what the heck? Go for it, grandpa. Go for it. This is living. I'm already back on the road … I have just started a trip through California and Mexico and I'm planning to be in Nigeria in February for my 78th.

Way to go

Blazing Trails Tours (01902 894009, blazingtrailstours.com) has two-week motorbike holidays to various regions of India, including Rajasthan, Goa, Kerala and the Himalayas. Prices range from £1,499 to £2,650 and include bike (usually a 350cc Enfield), mechanical back-up, medical and luggage-carrying support and B&B accommodation but not flights. In Delhi, Lalli Motorbike Exports (+91 11 2875 0869, lallisingh.com) rents 500cc Royal Enfields from around £235 per month.