MUSEUM SPLASHDOWNDippy the diplodocus greeted visitors to London’s
Natural History Museum for 35 years before standing
down last December. This month, his replacement is
revealed: a 4.5-tonne blue whale skeleton diving
through the Hintze Hall. The jury’s out on its nickname
so far: our money’s on Whayne. ILLUSTRATION BY RUI RICARDO/FOLIO ART. PHOTOGRAPHS: ©2015 CASSON MANN, CHANCLOS/SHUTTERSTOCK, MATT MUNRO, ALISA FAROV/SHUTTERST
OCK, WESTEND61/GETTY, MICHAEL HEFFER-NAN, RAGA JOSE FUSTE/PRISMA/ALAMY, MULIT-BITS/GETTY, KIM JAEHOON/GETTY, LISA M?LLER/EYE EM/GETTY. PREVIOUS PAGE: IVO SCHOLZ/MYSWITZERLAND.COM/ALPINEHUTSANTONIA BOLINGBROKE-KENT is a travel writer. Her new book,
Land of the Dawn-lit Mountains: A Journey Across Arunachal Pradesh- India’s Forgotten Frontier (£9.99; Simon & Schuster), is out now.
I’ve never thought of myself as a biker. I’m not one of
those big hairy blokes who congregate at B-road cafés of a
weekend, don’t own a leather jerkin emblazoned with the motto
of my local motorcycle club, and would struggle to explain the
difference between a two-stroke and four-stroke. But I firmly
believe that motorbikes are the best way to travel.
Like intravenous drips, these two-wheeled wonders inject you
into places that lumbering four-wheelers can only dream of
reaching. I’ve wound my way down narrow tracks in the depths
of the Laotian jungle, ducking under trailing bamboo; bumped up
steep, rocky mountainsides above the silvery waters of Lake
Baikal and woven along muddy paths to remote tribal villages in
Arunachal Pradesh.
Even if a four-wheeler could reach these places, where’s the fun
in seeing the world from inside a cage? On a bike, for better or
worse, you and your environment are one. You can smell the
piles of buffalo dung, the wafts of frangipani and the musky
mammalian scent that just might be a bear. You can feel the hot
desert wind on your face and the cold mountain chill in your
hands. Occasionally, on days when monsoon rains have left me
wetter than Jacques Cousteau, I’ve fleetingly wished for the nice,
warm shelter of an enclosed vehicle. But the post-ride elation, the
feeling that I’ve battled with the elements and won, has always
made up for the soggy ordeal.
Four-wheelers might give you some of the benefits of a motorbike,
but there’s no adrenaline-boosting acceleration at the turn of your
wrist, no wind-in-your-face euphoria, no frisson of rebelliousness
or liberating sense that, in this increasingly sensible world of
rules and hi-vis, you’re doing something wild and free, and
possibly a little bit dangerous. On a bike you’re shoving two
fingers up at humdrum reality and riding into the unknown. And,
as it turns out, bikers aren’t just big hairy blokes. They’re scraggly
old men, glamorous young blondes, middle-aged
housewives. And me. And we’re all united by one thing:
not the love of bikes, but the love of what bikes
represent. Freedom.
SOMETHING TO DECLARE:
Motorbikes are the best way to travel