Motorcycle Diary: Day 1 – Bird on the Wire

5.30 am. I wake, I see heavy rain. I turn over in bed and think I’ll leave tomorrow.

I should be leaving Diego Suarez and its beautiful bay at the northern tip of Madagascar, to motorbike to Majunga on the west coast: about 900 km. All going smoothly, and if I don’t, through curiosity, divert along the way I will allow myself 4, 5, 6 or 7 days to do the trip.  It’s a kind of freedom. I think of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Like a bird on the Wire’.

I have done the trip a couple of times before – I know the difficulty of the road. However, at the moment there are added complications. Cyclones and diluvial rains have brought down bridges and washed away parts of roads. Many shops in Diego are almost empty because supplies are not getting through. The road is impossible for lorries, but maybe possible by motorbike. The rainy season is starting.

People tell me that several ‘private’ toll-payments must be made on the first part of the trip. Diversions mean that traffic goes through private land and some owners ask money to let you through. It is taking some 7 hours for minibus taxis to do the 130 km to the first town: Ambilobe.

I am always nervous doing a trip like this. There are risks: being robbed as I have already been, having a mechanical breakdown in the middle of nowhere, an accident as roads are often atrocious and drivers unpredictable. Of course, I don’t have to motorbike. People say that, at my age, I am silly and irresponsible. However, the pleasures are many.

There is pleasure in a 6 am ride towards a distant horizon. There are spectacular landscapes and wonderful vignettes of daily life. Each day, for many Malagasies, is a survival test. Maybe, for me also, it’s a matter of staying alive in another way. There is always, also, the pleasure of learning new things. I recall these words I once read:

“You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.” T.H. White: The Once and Future King 

Next day, I leave at 6am as planned, after a cold shower and a cup of hot, black tea. The bike starts first time, sometimes it’s moody. I have my travel bag strapped at the back. The town of Diego Suarez is already buzzing. Tuk-tuks are running around and kids are starting out for school.

Dawn, like nightfall, comes quickly in Madagascar. I love this time of day. The air is fresh, the wind in your face is cool. There are the sights and sounds and the smells of the morning. Smoke is floating across my nostrils, carrying smells of charcoal burning, camomile tea heating, coffee brewing, rice cakes cooking.

I usually stop to have one or two strong black Malagasy coffees at a wayside shack. Madagascar is the one of the few African countries I know where I can have breakfast on the road at 6am. I might also have sugary cake or two, maybe a rice cake that I know the lady serving me my coffee has gotten up at 4 am to cook. When I say thank you and good-bye in Malagasy she chuckles, she likes it.

I wear a lightweight jacket and long light trousers for the coolness of the morning and to protect me from the brutal heat of midday. I make sure my helmet visor is down: it restricts vision but protects the face. I made the mistake once of a long ride without the visor and wasn’t pretty at the end.

The first section is difficult and total concentration is needed: it is changing gears and braking constantly –there are few moments in top gear. The road is devastated.

I get a scare when all movement is blocked at one point. There is a lorry stuck in mud and water. There is just one very narrow raised mud ridge possible. It is  barely wide enough for the motorbike wheels. I need the help of two young men supporting me on each shoulder and running alongside as I ride across. A slip and I would be into the mud, bike and all. I would have stopped to give them the little money they were clamouring for, but I was afraid to topple in the mud and be trapped; I throttle  on feeling guilty.

It’s November and the mango season has started. The wonderful, majestic, evergreen mango trees are giving, once again, their plentiful luscious fruit. A mango tree can continue to give for hundreds of years. Mangoes lie crushed on the roadside. Kids are throwing stones and sticks at the unripe ones as I did with apples as a child in Ireland. I love the beauty of the tree, admire its abundant generosity and enjoy its fruit.

About midday I see I have not made the progress I had expected so I decide to sleep in the first town. I’ve been in the saddle for about 6 hours. The first town is Ambilobe; it’s a dusty town, only important because it is a crossroads town. The very difficult road that leads to the east coast, the fertile region of vanilla, cloves, wild pepper starts here. I have made up my mind to tackle that road one day.

Ambilobe has three small and very basic hotels, I’ve slept in all three. One of them is a little cleaner and maybe a little safer than the others: that’s the only difference.

I feel my shoulders, arms, hands, and wrists aching as I haven’t motorbiked for a while. I murmur to my Kawasaki, “Well done”, and look to where I can have a cold beer, a big one.

I take a room in the first hotel in town. It’s clean, not always easy to find.  I’ve stayed in it before. It’s run by a bearded Muslim man who loves his Koran to the point where he has framed citations from, I assume, the Koran, on each wall of the room. I admire the Arabic calligraphy which, I imagine, is exhorting me to be good.  There is little need to worry, I am too tired to be anything but. I sleep soundly, protected on every side by Koranic quotations. Hopefully there is no beer detector in the place !