Postscript: May 2021
This is how it started out!
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After the trip the Tengai would barely pull 55mph and smoked like a chimney. The ethanol in the fuel on the continent had affected all of the gaskets and seals in the carb and the various other faults and damage meant an ignominious end - sold for spares or repair on Ebay for £400.
After 4 extended periods with no speedometer who knows how many miles it had racked up but after four trips abroad, including this one it was probably upwards of 70,000km.
My greater goal was to ride to Turkey (Morocco, although fantastic, was a secondary destination to fill up what I had assumed would be ample time) within the three month period that I had secured as unpaid leave from my job and it was clear with the seemingly constant breakdowns and bad weather that the bike wasn't going to make it.
On my return home I booked an airline ticket to Antalya airport in Turkey and hired a car (Turkish bike hire was prohibitively expensive) and set off to tour Turkey on four wheels. The car hire company was not particularly overjoyed when I returned the car having clocked up 8000km in just two weeks. However I still had a hankering to return on two wheels and set off again on a more modern machine in 2013, with about as much success as this trip.
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11 years on what I felt at the time was an ignominious failure ( given I didn't get the bike to Turkey) has clarified in my mind as the single best bike trip I have ever undertaken and I came back genuinely a different person to the one that had left just a couple of short months previously. Despite all the setbacks and aggravations it gave me a sense of perspective, a resiliance and a way more relaxed approach than I had before I left. On subsequent trips I always feel this kicks in at about the three week mark which for me is when you stop being on holiday and really start to just living from day to day on the journey (man!!).
Also notable was the 'telescoping' of time by which I mean that cramming so much experience into such a relatively short time, where everyday is memorable, has the effect of pushing back everything that preceded it so that although I had only been away from work for three months it seemed literally like years had passed. None of the petty workplace bullshit had any relevance to me although others were clearly still engaged in some kind of power struggle from before my trip which I had no recollection of.
It was a cheap trip, and actually cost less than if I had stayed at home for the equivalent time. I spent just over £2000 for the whole two month period and that included at least 3 four-star hotel stays which could easily have been avoided. This was somewhat offset by the cost of driving 8000km round Turkey on my return with some of the worlds priciest petrol - the two weeks in Turkey cost me more than the whole of the bike trip.
I had 13 breakdowns on the trip although none were insurmountable, 2 sets of tyres and brake pads, 2 speedo cables, 2 oil changes, 4 clutch cables, one replacement clutch lever, two broken plastic panels, a lost handguard and a recurring electrical fault that would just cause the motor to die ot not start, which I never identified the cause of. No punctures although I was cautious whenever I went off road for precisely this reason.
Anyway, its been great to revisit this trip and re-assess what I felt was a failure at the time. I hope the words and pictures have provided a little entertainment to those of you that have persevered through the rantings and minutiae of my diary.
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