Cracking the Code on Covid Travel

It seems impossible to have a conversation about Covid and more specifically about travel during it without touching a nerve somewhere. The topic is as polarised as climate change, racial equality, immigration and pretty much every other social theme of our time. I am not going to wade into that mire. It’s way too tiring. If you are a person who believes that until Covid is ‘over’, the world should remain ‘sheltered in place’, you might be better served spending the next 10 minutes in your garden. But for those of you who accept our new reality and despite this will continue to live your life, read on.

If you have not travelled much in the last 22 months, especially internationally, one basic fact should be understood: the rules have not only changed, they refuse to remain static. So, if an international adventure is stuck in your near-term mindset, don’t despair. With a lot of stamina and some clever sleuthing, catapulting yourself from your Covid penitentiary into our beautiful world is a few clicks away.

Making a commitment..and when

Let’s be honest: the airlines and companies like AirBnB have been pretty horrible throughout this pandemic. I personally have lost thousands on flights that had to be postponed or cancelled, losses that have posted as revenue to the carriers but a big expense to me. And I know I am not alone. It took a while to figure out the best tactic: don’t book more than 3-4 weeks out. As we all know, our current world can become a very different place in a short period of time so a brief gap between booking and travel constrains this risk. And of course, choose a tour company (like ours, for instance) that has the deepest disdain for large, inflexible airlines and one that treats its clients the way we would want to be treated. This means 100% flexibility of your booking in the Covid world.

Getting ready for departure

Disclaimer: All facts may become fiction without notice.

We field questions daily about the rules for travel. The question ‘do I need to be vaccinated’ is invariably among them. Obviously, whether you vaccinate or not is a personal decision. But if you decide not to, you will encounter a strong (quarantine) headwind wherever you go.

Let the fun begin!

Step 1 – Get International Travel Insurance.

This was a strong recommendation well before the Covid waves started crashing over our beach party. This coverage usually cost about USD75 and covers you for illness and injury during your trip. So ‘if’ you take a tumble and need to come home in first class wearing a cast, or ‘if’ you contract the dreaded Omicron or some other letter in the Greek alphabet and require some hospital time, you can rest assured that you will not have to max your credit card getting the care you need. Allianz is a good one that we use, but there are many out there.

Step 2 – India & Nepal – Your ticket to the big show

Time to get real: if you want to travel internationally, you are doing yourself a disservice by not getting vaccinated. That said, this is your choice so if you are down with the facts and don’t mind sitting in a quarantine hotel at your expense, have at it. Once you are past this, the process is straightforward: get a PCR test prior to your flight (how long before varies but usually no more than 72 hours), complete your Passenger Locator Form for the destination country, get your visa and off you go. See? Simple.

Step 3 – Staying safe on road

Once we’re on the road, everything is pretty much as it always was. Kathmandu or Delhi traffic madness (the best video game in the world), stunning vistas, winding roads, sublime food, beautiful smiles. Wearing a mask in hotels and restos is left to the guest although they are still required in taxis and busses. We wear them to keep the dust out of our lungs but short of that, your adventure rolls on as your dreams imagined. Let the awesome unfold!

Step 4 – Getting ready to make your way home

We expect the service level of our hotel partners to be equal to that of our tour company. That means we take care of everything. 24 hours before you depart, our base hotel in Kathmandu, Delhi or wherever will arrange for a reputable local lab to come to the hotel and take bio samples from our entire ride crew. 8 hours later, the results are delivered and you are ready for re-entry.

Step 5 – Navigating your arrival

This is where things become variable based on your home country. Most require the completion of a Passenger Locator Form that essentially captures all your personal data including your vaccination status, your negative PCR result and proof that you have booked a PCR test to be taken upon your arrival back home. (As I write this, the UK has just done away with this silliness but who knows, the madness may yet return.)

The happy ending to this bureaucratic ball of twine is that it really isn’t that difficult. Like adventuring around India or Nepal for 12 days on a motorcycle, it may seem daunting but once you’re done you’ll give yourself a pat on the back and wonder what all the fuss was about. And as far as the riding is concerned, you’ll kick yourself for waiting so long and start planning your escape to do it all again!

Thanks to the pandemic, some things may take a while before they return, if they ever do. Crowd surfing at a live concert, eating without care on busy streets, or hanging around to say “bless you!” after someone sneezes still seem part of the distant future.

For most of us, traveling has been restricted and reduced to either going through old photos or exploring our backyard or rooftop. During this time, incessant research on our dream ride has been our primary way to cope with the travel ban.

But the travel industry will resume in time because it plays a key role in people’s mental wellbeing and sense of purpose. And one of the first types of travelers who are most likely to get back on the road is the adventure motorcyclist. Research shows that 75% of travelers are seeking remote destinations with fewer people. Something adventure bikers around the world have been pursuing ever since motorcycles were invented.

The question is, how will adventure travel in India and Nepal be different compared to pre-lockdown back in March 2020? Here are some plausible predictions as we anticipate travel reopening eventually.

More personal space. In theory, you may get a little more than elbow room now that social distancing has been drilled into us for over a year. This does not mean traffic becomes any less chaotic or interesting in the billion-plus nation of India and 29 million in Nepal. It just means that a bunch of bikers having chai on the roadside won’t gather a crowd of curious onlookers in under 30 seconds.

Less “chalta-hai” attitude. This common Hindi saying implies an easy-going and nonchalant approach to everything. “Chalta-hai” is about making do with the bare minimum. The “new normal” may make that attitude less acceptable. For adventure bikers, it could mean not leaving things to chance but doing due diligence. From getting vaccinated, being first-aid trained, to learning basic motorcycle repair and maintenance, being better-prepared will ensure a less worrisome ride. For those posting their trip online, expect to be held accountable for how responsibly you travel and not just where you ride.

 

More empathy. As riders head out this summer there will be a heightened awareness of their privilege to be able to do so. To show their gratitude many may support NGOs working with the marginalized or take up a local social cause. The recent past has made it clear that even the smallest act of kindness can make a massive difference. Leaving only the paid professionals to navigate through the post-pandemic wreckage isn’t an option for the healthy, no matter what their profession. And as bikers pave the way for other tourists to return, the hospitality industry will hopefully begin to view them as partners in reviving tourism and there would also be more unity in the adventure motorcycling ecosystem.

 

These are sobering times, especially as India and Nepal continue to wrestle with the second wave of the pandemic. Much has changed, a lot has been pruned and shaken off and most of us have come to some conclusion about what we want to cherish and nurture. Besides family, community, and our vocation, one of the things many of us hold onto is the inexplicable desire to ride out on a motorcycle adventure once again.

It was one of those biting mornings of late September in 1926, the kind that you know will lacerate your cheeks like a thin ice whip when you get up to speed, when the three bikers convened in the Stretford neighbourhood of Manchester. Their annual pilgrimage to the ancient town of Holywell in Wales was 53 miles of partially paved roads and cobbled streets away. Their transport for the ride, an OK Supreme, a DOT and a Douglas – three now defunct British motorcycle marques that were among the most sought-after of the era – stood fuelled, polished and ready for action. The women who piloted the machines, Babs Nield and Dot Cowley, both accomplished flat track racers, and their friend-slash-motorcycle-junkie, Agnes Golden, were still in their 20’s and anomalies of the riding community. As three of the first women to hold motorbike licenses in the city of Manchester, they were unabashed saboteurs of the stereotypes that were hung on women in the early 20^th century. The nation had only just recently given women the right to vote, they were banned from work after marriage and the notion of a woman even driving  a car seemed like heresy. But none of that mattered at all because Agnes had a mission for the gang: to ride to Holywell, collect some of the holy water for which it was famous, and transport the precious liquid back to Manchester as a gift for her religiously devout mother to cleanse her transgressions. And so, the young women clad in leather, heavy canvas and waxed cotton headed west toward North Wales in the cool morning light.

The roads were rough and only partially tarred so exceeding the 20-mph speed limit was out of the question. Horse-drawn carts still jostled with motorized vehicles for the same swath of macadam and cobbles. Escorted by the stares and jeers of those they passed on the way, the exotic trio arrived in the late afternoon and set to their task of filling Agnes’ grandmother’s flask with the waters from St Winefride’s Well, since the 7^th century a site of Christian pilgrimage. The next day, the flasks were filled and attached to the rear of Agnes’ bike and the women made their way home. It was at about the halfway point while riding through the village of Brooks Bar when a stray dog bolted from under a parked wagon and across the path of Agnes’ front wheel. She was fortunately moving at a slow pace but the evasive action caused her to lose the control of the bike and it went over in the middle of the road. She was unharmed and the bike was fine but the holy water was lost, spilled across the cobbled road like a bucket of mop water. It was Dot who spotted the solution that would set them back on their way. One of the large troughs scattered at regular intervals along the route for the purpose of watering horses would become the source of their faux holy water. Their flasks now refilled, they set off for the final leg of the weekend’s journey and reached home by nightfall. Agnes’ mum was waiting at the doorstep having heard the small-bore bikes from a half mile away. She beamed as she watched her daughter arrive home safely carrying the precious liquid cargo from Holywell. She could not wait until the flasks were in the house before taking a sip and declaring it ‘the best holy water she’d ever tasted’.

 

The women drifted apart over the decade that followed. Both Dot and Babs pursued their careers as flat trackers and Agnes settled into her role as a wife and mother to five children during the great depression. As soul destroying as it was, her bike was one of the first possessions to be sold off. The family scraped by in the pre-war years and then absorbed the full brunt of the Blitz from their simple two up / two down in the rough neighbourhood of Stretford. The Christmas Blitz of 1940, a ten-hour brutalizing by the German Luftwaffe that killed 73 people in Stretford alone on the night of 22 December, nearly led to the demise of the whole family when a bomb hit a school next to their home but failed to explode.  For Agnes, dreams of motorcycling seemed as faint as the heartbeat of a loved one near death.

 

Six years later hardship struck the family yet again when the River Irwell burst its banks and flooded the entire neighbourhood. As the water levels subsided, Agnes’ husband, Steven and youngest child Charles came upon a 1935 Norton that had been submerged in the floodwaters for over a month. Over the months that followed, the two painstakingly restored the bike in the sitting room of their little house. Charles still recalls vividly when his father first kick-started the resuscitated machine and the thunderous exhaust brought down 100 years of soot and grime from the sitting room fireplace, filling the room with blackness and roars of laughter. The home was a disaster, but they didn’t care because their mission had been accomplished. A week later, for her 50^thbirthday, Steve and Charles presented Agnes with a gift that rekindled a flame that was never quite extinguished: After 16 years, this pioneering woman was once again a motorcyclist.

The Norton was hers.