A longer day today but I really didn’t feel the distance until the last 5km. We started at 8am and worked through some traffic leaving Abottabad. Stopped for a breakfast of omelette and naan at a small cafe about an hour into the ride. A man at the cafe stopped me to say how pleased he was to meet me. The people of Pakistan are so nice that this is a very comon occurrence. Moin started shooting video of the conversation and prompting the man with questions to ask me. Where do you come from, are you enjoying Pakistan, what are the differences between Americans and Pakistanis? An impromptu interview.
We spent most of the day in the Kaghan Valley with a few gains and losses in altitude. A fun day of riding with switchback climbs and sweeping twisty descents.
Rough roads
The roads today were the roughest I have seen yet. I’m having a great time with some of the most challenging riding I have ever done. There were long stretches of near single lane because the hillside lane was filled with debris from rock slides. Pot holes were everywhere and almost as bad are the roughly patched pot holes that are really just a load of concrete dumped in the hole and not flatten to the road surface. When you hit them they launch you like a jump. All of those years of BMX and mountain biking are really paying off. Before the trip started I had been concerned about doing the Water crossings on a Vespa with 8 inch wheels. We hit a quite a few water crossings today.most of them quite small but a couple caused a big splash. My concerns were for nothing, they are actually kinda fun.
An unexpected surprise today was seeing a huge mountain with our first snow covered peak. I wondered what great name mountain I was seeing. I asked Moin at the next stop and he said, ” nothing special… Just a hill, you haven’t seen the mountains yet”
Speaking of snow covered peaks while stopped on the side of the road a motorcycle with a box on the back and a speaker blaring “it’s a small world” drove by slowly… WTF an Ice cream man way out here in the middle of nowhere in Pakistan? We waved him down and enjoyed a treat. Ice cream was only 50 rupees, I gave him 100 and you would have thought I had given him a million dollars. He was a good sport and posed for pictures.
Both Bagel and Moin ran out of gas today within 1km of our final stop in Naran thank goodness for the support van. I can’t imagine how difficult this trip would be without assistance. When we stopped for Moin’s fuel issue there were a bunch of small children who were fascinated by us and the scooters. Bagel became the ambassador and handed out candy to them. I took the moment to take photos of their grandfather.
Just as we were getting into Naran, I was getting tired. The ride up to the hotel included riding straight through the bustling Naran Bazaar. The town of Naran is located on a hillside and the bazaar tightLy lines both sides of the street on a hill that is just steep enough to be troublesome to navigate at slow speed. It was crowded and stop and go. That’s when one of the things I have or ride about happened I stalled the Vespa in the middle of the Naran Bazaar! I was in first gear and the car in front of me stopped. I didn’t grab enough clutch in time to prevent the stall. So there I was in the middle of a crowd, trying to kickstart a vintage Vespa while trying to keep it from rolling down the hill backwards (the front brake doesn’t work) and then I had to jump on and get moving again.