Yet another gearbox problem. This is getting a tad frustrating.
16th May 2006

Rajing it up in Gujurat
Wedding celebrations down on the farm
Berthette goes down with tummy ache
Trundling into Baroda
Berthette gets a present on my birthday

Jambughoda, home of princes

An extraordinary thing happened as we left Baroda; for only the second time in India we were chased by an angry dog. Just as before there had been a succession of other bikes that passed the snarling beast which had elicited not the least interest. Even the thundering Royal Enfields were unmolested by this guardian of Hades. Clearly these dogs are so discerning that they can tell the difference between a double engine (local parlance for a twin) and a vertical single. How very clever.

It only dawned on me how inconsistent we are in Britain about the naming of engines and engine parts after we have been barraged with the “Double engine?” question a thousand times. How is that the names of successively larger engines in English English are; single, twin, triple and four? Surely; one, two, three, four or single, double, triple, quadruple or even solo, twin, triplet, quadruplet would be more appropriate. Thank heavens I speak English like a native, it most be a most frustrating language to learn.

We chose to leave at the crack of dawn as the start of a new policy to make riding in hot climates rather more comfortable. It was well conceived, the streets were devoid of the crowds of motor-rickshaws and bikes vying for pole position, although the few that did pop out of the gloom were unheralded by the gleam of electric light. The cows needed to be considered also, even the whitest of cows are remarkably concrete-grey and hard to make out in dawn’s early light.

Construct a paragraph for youselves here based on the topic of poor signposts tinged with positivism about the state of the roads for once.

We had to pass through the town of Champaner on the way to Jambughoda - in fact we had intended to stop here but had difficulty finding anything remotely resembling a resort, hotel or guest house. It was lovely to take the road through the centre of town which wound through the gates in the fortifications of Pavagadh. Another example of how ancient ruins are still playing host to thriving communities. Thinking back to Europe, and especially Britain, it is a terrible shame that so many of our antiquities are so sterile and lifeless whereas these, granted they are considerably larger complexes, give so much more feeling about how it must have been as a community in it’s hayday.

Jambughoda had appealed from it’s description as the ‘home of the erstwhile royal family of the princely state of Jambughoda which now offers rooms’. We thought it would be nice to see how the other half lived. The approach was unimpressive. Although clearly labelled as Palace Road, it appeared to be just a well maintained farm access. As we neared the palace, the whitewashing gleamed through the trees to suggest we had indeed arrived at the right place.

Yes, there could be no mistake, guinea fowl and geese wandering in the walled garden and a pack of assorted pedigree dogs; labradors, doberman, dachshunds, cocker spaniel, are a clear sign of a certain taste and level of financial security that may be considered princely. There was a little confusion about the cost of a room and meals and the charming young lass we were dealing with was replaced by the stylish and calm demeanour of none other than the Maharaja of Jambughoda, Vikram Singh. We were offered tea which sounded just the ticket and so over tea we chatted about this and that and discussed options for accomodation. It was somewhat pricier (like 3 times as expensive as usual) than we have been used to and the meals were absolutely the most expensive we have seen since N America (10 times as much as we had paid for unlimited thali in a swanky restaurant in Baroda). Brother Will will no doubt point out the exclusivity of the establishment as fair reason for the hike but, at the end of the day, this was just a hotel away out in the countryside. The Maharani, Ganeshwari, joined us for the discussion about food and we compromised on a menu that fitted our budget. Nearly!

The palace was not as exotic as I would have imagined. Simply built and without excessive ornamentation, it had the bearing of a whitewashed lord of the manor’s home, the outbuildings having been tastefully converted into guest rooms. The small shady gardens around the house were perfectly manicured and hosted a large array of imported wildlife and further out than that the estate blended into agricultural land and forest.

A brief history of the lot of the Maharaja is perhaps needed at this point. Vickram explained that his family had arrived from Dhar which is near Mandu. For a day or so I was a tad confused until it was revealed that ‘arrived from’ refers to a period 600 years ago! The story goes that they came to the area and kicked the butt of a despotic baron who was not doing right by his tenants and then established their dynasty on 130-odd square km of land. Princley states of this kind were a convenient way for the British to administer their holdings in India and a fairly healthy relationship existed between the Maharajas and Britain. Indeed, they continued to be really rather well off and there are wonderful tales of some of the rather grander Maharajas decamping to Europe with huge entourages to do the grand tour. In 1948, upon independance, a deal was brokered whereby the princely states would join the Union of India and the Maharajas would retain their holdings. All was relatively well for the royals until the 70’s when Indara Ghandi went one step further and took away the stipends and the bulk of the lands from the Maharajas, with no compensation for their losses. They were left with their home and a little farm land. This seems to have had the same effect as inheritance tax on the aristocracy in Britain and the Princes have had to diversify to survive - many of them have opened their houses up to ‘home-stay’ tourism. Not unsurprisingly, in conversation I noticed Vikram bite his tongue for a second and change the unspoken “Good old days” to the more politically correct “Beforetimes”. I rather boldly asked him about this a little later and he candidly said that it would be foolish to deny that British rule and even as late as the 70’s were good times for the Raj.

As we were completing our tea and finalising our negotiations, we were visited by one of the local farming chaps who had come to invite the family to attend the wedding celebrations for his daughter. His oral invitation was accompaied by a traditional offering of a dish made from cane sugar with a little milk and some kind of nutty seed things - rather like fudge. It was clear that the invitation extended to us, too, and so we were to attend a ‘tribal’ wedding. I guess these are the kinds of advantages of a home stay with a Maharaja compared with a cheap, characterless hotel room.

Dinner that evening proved to be immense. We thanked our stinginess in negotiating smaller than usual meals, otherwise we would have been seriously overfaced. As it was we went to bed with tight little tummies. How Hippy managed the delicious chocolates after dinner, I cannot imagine. (OK so I had a nibble myself) these were quite the most wonderful dark, rich creations and by far the best chocolates we have eaten outside Europe. I’m not sure how Indian taste for chocolate goes but the daughter of the house whose name we most ignorantly cannot remember would do extremely well marketing them in the West. Not sure how they would travel though. Heat and chocolate do not tend to compliment each other. But these morsels were wonderful. Just as good bread throughout the world is often in short supply so is good chocolate, even Cadbury’s is simply not the same outside Europe, it is made to a different recipe, and tastes kind of chalky, and American mass produced chocolate is terrible. It was delightful to be treated to such quality.

Nice night for a tribal wedding

We were rounded up after dinner for a ride out into the country in the boss’s 4x4 to join the wedding party. I was glad that we were getting a ride as I was certain when looking at the terrain that I would have been cursing if I’d had to take Berthette over the uneven land in the dark. He is a little understated, we wove through fields of knee high stubble, over loose tilled soil. It would not have been fun on the bike. There was a comittee to greet us and it was obvious from body language and communication that although Ms Ghandi took away much from the Maharajas, there is still great respect from their former ‘subjects’ and a perception of responsibility and a major comittment in return - the kind of relationship that is mutually beneficial so long as the poor man doesn’t covet the riches of his master.
It must be difficult in such situations where the locals still expect someone to have the dignity of a Maharaja, to provide employment and to help them out in times of need or celebration but really they do longer have the finances or the land to maintain a large staffing level.

Clearly, being with the Vickram and his family meant that we and an Indian family (who were also staying at his home) were also treated as honoured guests. A band of musicians heralded our arrival, accompanied by an escort of dancing ladies. The music and dance seemed different to classical Indian dance, slow, rythmical and flowing. This, we were informed, is traditional Rathwa dance. India being such a large country it is not surprising that the countryside nurtures pockets of individual tribes and customs, that are unique to each area. I felt privileged, with twinges of awkwardness at being there. I was not part of this, I was not comfortable being considered an honoured guest, I felt I was intruding - a voyeur. But yet I am sure that some felt having a number of honoured guest at their pre-nuptial celebrations was considered good luck. I asked if the tribal folk would mind if I took photos of them. I’d intended candid shots of them dancing and playing instruments but an instruction was sent out for candidates to stand in front of us for photo shoot. I snapped off a couple of pics of some old ladies, feeling somewhat embarrassed, and showed the results to them - they seemed pretty chuffed with the results. When I went back to my seat they just kept standing where they were and I presumed the other grockles wanted a picture, too. After a couple of minutes, one of them leant forward and spoke something to me. I asked Vikram what it was that they’d said and apparently they’d asked, “Have you finished with us?” I was mortified that I’d been involved in the humiliation of these lovely folk.

The dancing was clearly for our benefit, and we sat with a table of snacks in front of us as the performance was underway. The dancing began with a small group and gradually more and more people joined the circulating throng. The elders of the tribe, moved gracefully and effortlessly, sensing the music, and the young, self consciously, moved too deliberately to the rhythm. It was clear the traditions are being diluted by modernity, the young lads in jeans and t-shirts looked less dignified than their elders sported handsome moustaches and charismatic turbans. Vickram told me of his concerns that the old ways would be lost, the old customs becoming watered down, the young having to leave the area to find work now that the princely state had been down sized. means that people understandably are tempted by the dress and ways of the city.

Gujarat is a dry state. But we have been reliably informed more than once that alcohol consumption in Gujarat is higher than any other state. Some say it is a means for the police to capitalise on corruption others see it as a way for the state to tax the people by charging for alcohol permits. But whatever the reason, it had clearly not stemmed the production of the local hooch ) from the flower of a tree thereabouts apparently). As honoured guests it was considered good luck for us to drink two glasses each. (Generally it is poor form to accept just one drink and a diminutive second is poured for tradition’s sake.) It would be churlish refuse. It was smooth, I was expecting to have to conceal my distaste, but I was pleasantly surprised. What did make my smile is that it was served up from an Mandarin Absolute Vodka bottle - nice touch!

There was a curious ritual that I did not understand whereby the parents of the bride and groom, gave blessings to the honoured guests, each in turned, bowing and waiing as they did so. What followed was more intriguing, a small amount of money was laid at the feet of each of the Maharaja’s family and then I saw Vickram slip a large currency note to one of the father’s hand, then the small notes were gathered up again. In my ignorance of the traditions I assumed it was a tradition by which Vickram could contribute to the wedding finances and the family save face, by giving a gift to them first.

I gathered from Vickram’s comments that the dancing and music was a precursor to other prenuptial customs, and if we stayed too long the other activities would be delayed, as they could not continue to the next phase until we left. The elders led us out. As we left I heard Ganeshwari speaking to the other Indian family with us, and pointed out the ways in which the local families although poor, decorate their homes and keep them scrupulously clean. Glancing into one of the simple adobe homes, the pride in their homes was apparent. It was clear just as the local people held the Singh family in awe, they for their part had great respect for the people around them.

We were in Jambughoda to visit Pavagadh, which we had briefly ridden through the previous day. It comes in two parts. The first in the valley, a walled city known also as Champaner, with old mosques and such and the second part a fortress up the dramatic pyramidical hill topped with a hindu temple that pre-dates the invasion by muslim forces. It was all pretty old though - 15th century mostly. The mosques were serene and cool places, with subtle yet intricate ornamentation. The classic square entrance, giving rise to an octagonal beams for a circular domed roof. The pinkish sandstone gave the place a soft, romantic ambience. Riding through the gateways and walls to the city you got a feel for the size and status of these ruins that had once been the capital of Gujarat and are now honoured by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

The main sites were rather vulgarly equipped with plastic Disney-esque litter bins in form of human sized rabbits and monkeys, which looked incongruous set against the elegance of the ancient ruins. What were they thinking of.
Ancient Architects 1 ....... Modern Town Planners 0

It is clear from the history of India that the mutual distrust between Muslims and Hindus goes back a long way, with each vying for dominance in different eras. The continued problems in the North of Indian testament to the fact that it will probably sadly never be a comfortable coexistence.

Then it all went horribly wrong

So, we headed up the hill to see the walls of the city that extended up to a high ridge. From the top of the road there is a ‘ropeway’ up to some temples up at the top of the hill- one presumes this is a cable car but we don’t know as we never got there. It was a lovely sweeping road of tight twisties and quite well surfaced. Without going too mad, it seems like it would be nice to trundle up at a reasonable lick. I dropped down to second to get a bit of momentum going and then up to third and then ......... no more changes. Something had gone a bit wrong in the gearbox department. Is it the fact that transmission problems have been so common or has our time in India at last mellowed my temper a little? I was cool and collected. What, me? Third gear was not a bad gear to be stuck in, it was downhill to the main road and then generally flat back to Jambughoda and there were no nasty noises coming from the box, just no desire to change. We turned round and headed for base. As we rode, I mulled the options;

Plan A) Take the gearbox at out Jambughoda and find an engineer locally that could fabricate a puller to open it up. Then order parts and fix while soaking up the mellowness of Jambughoda - but was there an engineer local?

Plan B) Take the gearbox at out Jambughoda and take it into Baroda for fixing - a lot of to-ing and fro-ing on the bus involved.

Plan C) Take the gearbox at out Jambughoda and swap it in the mail with my spare one in England - hugely expensive

Plan D) Limp to Baroda in 3rd gear and hook up with an engineer there - crossing the Mumbai-Delhi highway extremely hazardous and staying in Baroda not a thrilling prospect.

I refused to get stressed over this and when we got back to the ranch I just put all thoughts of repair to the back of my mind and thought beautiful thoughts. Later we had our usual pre-dinner chat with Vikram and discussed the pros and cons of the alternatives open to us. He recommended a motor engineer in Baroda who he had complete faith in who he thought could point us in the right direction if not directly help us. Very promising. We thought that with a crack of dawn start we’d be able to make it into central Baroda in 3rd gear before the traffic built up. It really seemed to be best to run Plan D and see how it turned out.

By now I had convinced myself that the fault lay with a little spring that holds the selector lever against the selector drum but allows it to swing back over little pegs while the gear lever returns to its middle position. Anything else that would give these symptoms was too scary to consider.

Limping into Baroda

So ‘twas on the Monday morning that we returned to Baroda. It was a very mellow ride and even the traffic on the dual carriageway parted like the Red Sea for Moses when we got to it and we just trundled across without even having to slip the clutch. No traffic lights were on Red and we just kept going having only to feather the clutch on a couple of corners. Moments like this inspire you to believe that you have chosen the right course of action and pieces were simply slipping into place. We checked into a slightly better hotel than before thinking that we’d probably be here a week or more waiting for parts.

Janesh at Bharat Motor Repowering was reassuringly positive that he could help me. His machine shop was hugely impressive, full of shiny red gadgets for boring, honing, grinding cranks and all kinds of other motor related undertakings. If there was an enterprise in Baroda that could knock me up a gearbox output flange puller, this was surely it. I arranged to bring the bike in the following day after I’d had a chance to speak to BMW gurus at Motorworks or Motobins.

Motorworks. Phone rings and goes onto a ‘line busy please wait’ message. After 5 minutes I get to speak to a human. I ask for a gearbox doctor, explain symptoms and ask advice. He hums and hahs. I suggest it could be the detent spring on the gear selector. He concurs but does not seem enthusiastic that this is a high probability failure. They do not have the spring in stock.

Motobins. Phone rings. Human answers. He is a gearbox guru. I explain the symptoms. He insists, unsolicited, that it must be the detent spring and that this is a very common problem. He has the spring in stock. In fact he’ll send me all three of the springs in the gearbox as they might as well all be replaced while the box is open in case they have fatigued.

You choose! The only down side is that Motobins do not do fast courier postage to foreign parts. No matter, he can get the parts to dear sister-in-law, Mary, by the following day and she can get them sent with one of her pet courier companies. A call to Mary confirms that she can do this and so it seems that all is coming together. I am positively buoyant on the positive waves that are harmonising around me. OK, so I’m just plain happy that all is going well for once. Even the internet is a mere 10 Rupees an hour. We can use the down time to update our address book and stuff.

I trundled Berthette round to Janesh’s workshop in the morning and he’d made a little corner for me next to the government car that was brought in 7 years ago for repair but was never paid for and so stays rooted to the spot. On the other side of the car was the government heavy JCB forklift whose inertia commenced a mere 5 years ago upon bill default. Janesh doesn’t do work for the government any more as he’s scared of running out of space.

The gearbox was out in an hour and a half - I’ve done it a few times now so it’s pretty straightforward. Having a semi-permanent audience is unsettling but hugely convenient when it comes to that bit where you have to lift this thing and pull that thing at the same time. I returned after lunch for the worrying bit. There are three tasks that cannot be performed with a normal toolkit by the side of the road;

The first is to undo a nut that is tightened to 220 lbs.ft. This is an unheard of torque in the motorcycling world other than in the BMW school of gearbox technology (or lack of it). To complete this task you need a special gadget to hold the flange static and some long levers. In fact, a single stud can be used with couple of long levers to achieve the desired result.

Item two is to break the output flange free from its taper on the output shaft. BMW have a workshop tool that is custom designed for this task. I rather squirmed at the apparatus prepared by Bharat Motor Repowering Ltd. Using two two-leg pullers at right angles on the same long bolt they picked up the four bolt holes on the flange with studs and commenced to tighten. Why so squeamish Pat? The point of the fancy BMW gadget is to keep the pull perpendicular to the flange so that it does not skew and jam itself against the taper. I sweated a few buckets but with sufficient tightening and some generous clouting with a hammer it cracked free. Oh joy.

Finally, it is necessary to heat the end plate of the gearbox to 120 degrees or so to release the gear shaft bearings wherupon a gentle tap with a hammer will release it and the job is a good one. Just keep an eye on those shims.

At every stage I had to elbow in to prevent folk from levering in inappropriate places. I was looked at like I was just a spoiling idiot. No matter how I tried to explain that I have witnessed this job being done and read countless tips about how to open a BMW gearbox, I was obviously considered a complete amateur. I think that maybe Indian culture bestows upon a mechanic magical properties which mean that he believes himself knowledgable about every job he undertakes and his audience are enthusiastic in their reverence. Even Janesh, who seemed above all this, said, “Don’t worry, if we break something we can repair it in the machine shop.” I felt like screaming that if it was done properly there would be no need to break anything. When we came upon another stubborn bolt that is held in with Locktite and so needs to be heated to break the bond, the mechanic just stood harder and harder on my socket lever until it bent. When Janesh told me not to worry because he was an excellent engineer, I had to point out that a good engineer has a feel for his tools and knows their limits.

Anyway, the gearbox was open and that was that so far as I was concerned. A little audience circled around the carcass and weighed up the innards. Maraj jubilantly pulled out a little bit of metal out of the oil in the bottom and hopped around to show me. He really couldn’t understand how I wasn’t really surprised that he’d found the half of a spring that had come loose. I’d deduced (Mr Holmes taught me to do that) what the fault would be and lifting the bit of spring out of the gearbox was simply part of the process of repair. Clearly he was more used to working out what was broken by examining a disassembled unit.

I took a day off from the garage, telling Janesh that I’d let him know when the springs arrived. We achieved nothing. Hippy pointed out that I was being a bit optimistic expecting the parts before the end of the week and so we had plenty of time to catch up on the web site and stuff. True enough but I was on a roll with my positive waves . We finished transferring all the e-mail addresses onto our web-based account and sent out a circular to test whether we’d sussed the mailing list system correctly. I got an almost immediate response from my brother Rob who suggested that I had an ulterior motive and was soliciting birthday greetings. I have to confess that I had completely forgotten that my birthday was coming up. Weird.

Happy Birthday to me

We went to the internet shop to try and get a tracking number for the package that Mary had sent. Mary had lost the telephone number for the hotel so I went back there pick up a card at reception. A man was at the counter making a recorded delivery. The receptionist looked puzzled. It looked about the right size of package to be a few springs and a gasket. It couldn’t be! It was! Three days from ordering on the telephone to arriving at our hotel in Baroda, India and via a third party at that. I think that is pretty extraordinary and deserves a big hip-hip and three cheers all round, what.

With all the to-do I only realised on the morning of Pat’s birthday, that it was a big day. All I managed to achieve for his birthday was darning a pair of socks. I think I owe him a little. Socks are OK for me even if they are more traditional at Christmas.

There was time available to fit the springs and put everything back together. And so I did. Janesh had spotted a small oil leak around the gearbox input shaft. Strangely it was on the casing side - good news as it could be dollied up with a bit of instant gasket, had it been on the shaft side of the seal we’d be praying our way back to Europe. I thought that the neutral switch had been leaking a little, too, so I tightened that up a bit. The casing of the switch distorted a bit as I did so. Whatever.

By the end of the afternoon, everything was back in place and ready to be checked. Predictably, the neutral switch did not work. For all my bad thoughts about the Indian engineers, the only thing that ended up broken was this little switch which I over tightened. Still, its not really hugely important. We can manage without it. I put all the other bits and bats back in place and took another look at that switch. Bugger. Not only did it not work any more but there was a feeble but steady drip of oil coming out of it. To replace the switch the gearbox would have to come out again ......... The good news was that by some bizarre premonition one of the items that Tricia and JP had brought out to Goa was a replacement neutral switch.

I was beginning to get an odd karma kind of feeling about the whole gearbox thing. It runs like this. I ordered a new neutral switch because I thought the old one was leaking. To replace this switch I would have had to take the gearbox out. I really couldn’t be bothered. We took the gearbox out for another reason and discovered the oil leak was from another source and so the switch didn’t need replacing at all. In the process of servicing the gearbox I broke the switch and so I did need one after all. All a bit weird. But surely the spring didn’t break just to make me use the new switch, did it?

Not because it was my birthday but purely out of a spirit of hospitality, Janesh invited us around for dinner. He’d been so helpful in many ways - even suggesting we move around to his mate’s hotel where he negotiate a discount for us. We’d balked at the hotel offer, as we so often do, as we find it difficult to allow people to put themselves out on our account. I wonder if it is a British thing that we find it hard to accept gifts because we feel that are poor at offering them ourselves. We could allow our refusal of offers get to the point where we seemed stand-offish and so we found ourselves around at his house tucking into some excellent home-cooked fodder. Family life was thoroughly modern and a part of Indian culture that we’d never really see other than by an invitation of this sort. Janesh’s wife Deepali is obviously an extremely capable and relatively independent lady. She runs a boutique with a friend of hers and dresses very stylishly. Their son, Ansh, is taking his schooling at and English language medium school that seems to be cripplingly expensive.

Joining us for dinner was Harnish, one of Janesh’s cousins. He’s an accountant and demonstrated a nice fusion of modern Indian and traditional values. He was greatly interested in Guyana and wants to go there to watch the cricket next year. we tried as politely as we could to explain to him the difficulties involved in staying and getting around in Guyana. He seemed undeterred and I hope he gets out there and enjoys it.

The following morning I had the gearbox out again, switch replaced (cunningly made thoroughly oilproof with judicious application of epoxy resin) and gearbox back in again by lunchtime which gave us the afternoon to replace the steering head bearings that I’ve been carrying since they first gave signs of needing replacing in Bangkok, 7 months ago. This was the absolutely perfect place to do this work as they had all manner of hydraulic presses that were perfect for the job. Sorted.

The least I could do was return with the bike with all the kit on, as requested, for a photo call. I gave what I hope was a reasonable tip to Maraj who had leapt to my assistance often although sometimes when it wasn’t really needed. In the final analysis, my experience of Indian engineers would suggest that they are pretty good at performing the tasks they have been shown and experienced many times but are not awfully good at thinking outside the box. Although this might be slightly damning it is a much nicer assessment than that of Jan who simply wouldn’t let them near his bike.

A random thought occurred to me during the workshop hours. We’d been given a tip in Thailand that if we ever got in a hole and couldn’t explain ourselves, find the secondary school where there is sure to be an English teacher who could translate for us. On the subject of mechanics, I reckoned that if you can find an airfield of any size pretty much anywhere there must be some workshop facilities nearby. I could be wrong.

Well, that’s just about it for Baroda. Our final leaving was, for me, about as emotional as I can get. Yes, in our adversity we’d been helped out by some charming people and made some good friends. All I can say is a huge to thank you to everyone, from Janesh, Maraj and Deepali to the nice man at the Lucas/Elf outlet who gave me a discount on the gear oil and the charming newspaper vendor who engaged me in random conversation each evening that I strolled back from the workshop. I’ll remember Baroda fondly - must go back in winter sometime!

Meanwhile, I will remember days sat in a hot room darning and typing, with the delightful intermission of Janesh and Deepali’s hospitality, and the shock of such a rapid delivery of parts from England. Mary, I Thank you.

Someone remind me when we get back to England to see if I ever sent those reversible circlip pliers to Janesh.