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 INDIA ENFIELD CHALLENGE

by Madeleine Harper

First printed in the June 1999 WIMA GB newsletter

The India Enfield Challenge was a 1,000km sponsored motorbike ride around Southern India involving 120 participants. It raised more than £100,000 for a hospital in Kerala, which specialises in palliative care for cancer sufferers. One of only 12 women, Madeleine Harper describes the experience below.

When I signed up for the India Enfield Challenge, I was filled with trepidation. For a start, I am not a bike buff and even though I have a Yamaha 900 Diversion at home, that doesn't mean I can change oil, fix spark plugs or even put my bike on its centre stand. Nor am I the endurance type - two hours in the saddle is the most I attempt on the M4 before stopping for cafe lattes at the Welcome Break service station.

But unfortunately there aren't any Welcome Breaks in Southern India. Add this to the fact that we would be spending up to ten hours a day on our Enfield 350

Bullets meant that it was with some anxiety that I pledged my name to the cause, started raising funds and went out and bought a state-of-the-art kidney belt.  I was heartened however by the fact that there would be 12 other women on the trip. Surely these girls would be just as nervous as I was? Er, no. It turned out that the girls were even more gung-ho than the boys. Vicky, Nessie, Sam, Mandy et al clearly knew a thing or two about camshafts and Suzie, our team leader, was a fearless Amazon who roared around in a trademark yellow silk shirt looking like Lady Penelope on speed.  Maud, an exquisitely well-groomed Virgin Atlantic air stewardess, who I'd singled out early on as a potential fellow wimp, turned out to have death-defying riding skills and shot round hairpin bends in the Western Ghats at a speed I would have found disturbing on a straight section of the M40. Sisterhood there might have been, solidarity in cowardice was clearly out. Our official starting point, after an arduous air trip involving delays, stopovers, lost luggage and around 36 hours of solid drinking, was a dusty town called Kottyam in the Southern Indian state of Kerala. Here we were given a ceremonial send-off by local dignitaries and a clutch of folk musicians before setting off on our gloaming Enfields to conduct a lap of honour round the town centre. Within seconds of us speeding out of the parade ground, the combination of having gears on the wrong side of the bike and unfamiliar brakes meant everyone immediately either stalled or collided into each other. The locals, out in force to cheer us on, just watched with amazement as we collapsed into instant chaos.

The next day we set off for real - bracing ourselves against the chill as we started the climb up to Kodaikanal. The curves tightened and a spill of diesel on a bend claimed the first victims of the day.  Reaching the crest of a hill I looked back at the long, long line of Enfields labouring up towards me whilst in front of me, the mountainside fell away to a vast plain. It was a beautiful sight.

Organiser John-Mark James had devised a careful system, which split us into three groups, each with its own team leader and back marker. An arrangement which unfortunately stood no chance whatsoever of working. The next day, John Mark came up with a new system. This involved narrating complicated route directions at breakfast over a loudspeaker. Some people wrote them down diligently, others put their trust in God. The God types always got lost.

Every day, we would be up before light, grab a chappatti or two, leap into the saddle and set off.  Okay that's rubbish.  What would really happen is that we would engage in a 15-minute aerobic workout with the kickstart, then 10 minute verbal reasoning with the decompression valve. Eventually, the engines would fire up and we would sit proudly astride our beasts like an army of ill-equipped yet enthusiastic warriors.

On Day 2, I had my first major problem - I couldn't get out of the hotel grounds. Ineptitude and a godawful hangover garnered from the previous night's snake-dancing extravaganza meant I kept stalling on the steep slope onto the main road. A stream of Enfields roared past me as I struggled to keep my bike upright. In the end, Michael, my long-suffering riding "buddy", had to push the bike up the hill for me.

It was a long, hot, magical day as we rode slowly down onto the plains and then wended our way through "village" India - remote hamlets where the sight of any Westerner would normally rate a mention on the six o'clock news. Heaven knows what they made of 120 Westerners riding Enfields. For some people - men, of course - the Challenge became something of a race but Michael and I took it all at a leisurely pace, leaving every day with the first group and arriving every night with the stragglers, breakdown victims, Enfield engineers and the official Challenge ambulance.

The Enfield Challenge was not so much a Challenge as a celebration of what is really possible in this life. Every day on the trip we saw sights to make the heart sing with joy - from the breathtaking scenery to the glorious smiles of the local people as they cheered us through their villages. Good will enveloped us everywhere and part of the excitement of the trip was knowing how exciting it was for our Indian audience. Imagine 120 Enfields going through your home town!

Then there was the thrilling and terrifying National Highway 47, a road on which truck drivers got their kicks by aiming straight at you and which covered you with an inch-thick layer of grime after just two minutes.  In fact going through any town was a reckless dice-with-death as you dodged and weaved round lorries, buses, cows, elephants, rickshaws and countless pedestrians.

But after five days and 1,000km, the adventure finally came to an end. We'd been up and down mountains, across sun-baked, dusty plains, through densely thicketed bamboo forests and acres of scented spice plantations.  We'd raced past elephants, water buffalo, wildfowl and Hanuman monkeys. We'd drunk endless cups of tea with the generous warm-hearted people of Kerala and Tamil Nadu.  And we'd raised £100,000.

Of course, our nonchalant approach meant Michael and I were three hours late for ceremonial end-of-trip lap of honour around Calicut but we did make it in time for the end-of-trip celebratory rock concert and martial arts demonstration. It was an evening of high emotion as 120 riders kissed their bikes goodbye, gave each other emotional, teary hugs, swapped e-mail addresses and prepared for a gruelling 36-hour journey back to London.

Global Cancer Concern is now planning a series of further rides - a trip to Ladakh in the Himalayas beckoning in July, North India in November and Southern India next year. The India Enfield Challenge is genuinely the trip of a lifetime so don't miss it and start raising your sponsorship money now.  For further details please call Fiona Shapcott at Global Cancer Concern on 0181 993 7651.”

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