Anyone who has ridden a camel knows that they are foul smelling, bad tempered, uncomfortable and generally deeply antisocial creatures... but that doesn't even begin to tap their most fundamental characteristic, which is a deep, utter and profound laziness. (That probably does make them still more reliable than a poorly looked after five-year-old KTM 690, but let me not heap more fuel on Tom's fire.) So... in the face of the extreme laziness our own Camel, let me chip in with a little sidebar to keep the punters interested.
So we were three:
A good friend had been on a previous Angolan expedition, so we had an idea of the distances and remoteness involved. I spoke to Beserker and discovered that although we probably had only 700km between fuel stops, the nature of the terrain meant we should plan for more like 1000km under normal conditions. As I said previously, two out of three of the remaining bikes were new to us. Since Tom had thought it a good idea to invite a complete biking novice on one of the continent's wildest, roughest bike trips, I thought it a good idea to equip him with the simplest, most reliable motorcycle known to human kind. And it had to be small (remember: midget). Enter DR, stage left. R32k, spotted on Gumtree in Durban when I happened to be there: 2008, 10,000km and in mint condition. I rode it that morning, called Gaza and told him to buy it on the spot, which he did, beating a queue of 30 people to the prize. It was shockingly, startlingly bright blue, but Topbox ordered a transparent Acerbis 20 litre tank from Italy. 'Natural' actually meant bright yellow, and the beast of burden was immediately christened: 'Buttercup'.
The Midget instantly developed a deep, intense, man-and-his-mule bond with Buttercup. So you can imagine his disappointment whenever we stopped and all the locals - children and adults alike - immediately ran up to the two KTMs and started oohing and aching, and utterly ignored Buttercup:
And when I say ignored, I mean not even the time of day. Out in the cold. Part of the scenery. That's Buttercup behind all of those kids, but none of them are even looking in her general direction. Angola is a bike-mad country. There are 'moto' style bikes everywhere, and their owners are obsessive.
We bumped into hundreds of these little fellas, just about everywhere. So Angolans understand bikes and biking. But they didn't give a shit about Buttercup.
1000km means around 45 litres, even on these economical rides. I'd just come off four years on a lovely BMW X-Challenge that had taken me on memorable trips all over the country. The X, with Touratech tank, carries 27 litters and that Rotax is the most economical engine known to humankind. I reckon it might have made those 700 with a light wrist... or an extra 5 litres somewhere. But my 690 only had the standard 12, so who you gonna call? Rally Raid, that's who. The downside of the X in that configuration is that it's really heavy on the front wheel, and quite top heavy when fully loaded. Part of the move to KTM was the decision that it was time to try something lighter and more nimble, so I went for the little 5 litre rear tank, which only gave me 18 or so, but in a tiny, slim package. So where is the extra 28 going, then?
Carrying a lot of extra fuel is always a challenge on very remote trips. I really don't know how one would manage the 60 liters or so you'd need on a 950. In retrospect, we should have filched the custom aircraft thingies Beserker and Pete made up for their trip. But we decided those R700 green fuel bags were the way to go, and it turned out they are an almost perfect fit for Michnus' ATG pannier bags, with the added advantage that when we weren't using them they would take up next to no space.
So what you're looking at here is a 690 carrying about 44 litres of premium unleaded. Somewhat amazingly, the bike still rode incredibly well. My X was a fantastic bike - possibly the best rough road tourer on the market. Its forte is long, fast open dirt - it's better than the 690 hands down. When the 690 feels skittish, unstable and overexcited, jerking its head left and right like a lively untrained stallion trying to break free from its master (and that's WITH a steering damper) the X simply puts its head down and storms away at speed. But the 690 has an ace up its sleeve. In the tighter stuff it's simply the best, most exciting and racy off-road beast I've come across. I'd specifically set up the bike with all of the weight in front of the rear axle, and despite a slightly nervous start with the extremely light front wheel, after 3 days of the trip I was having the time of my life.
Topic: Ngola Kingdom: Motorcycle (mis)adventures in south-west Angola (Read 63671 times)