Raid-de-Himalaya 2010

Imagine a motorcycle race that lasts for a week, the majority of it run at over 10,000ft and topping 17,000ft several times. Put yourself in the saddle of bike charging through huge landscapes, surrounded by colossal mountains, drawing thin air into aching lungs. Now look down and to the left – yes, that’s just thin air between you and the valley floor 1000ft below. Stop looking now, or you might just follow your stare into an abyss of no return.

Mid-way through a 50-mile, closed roads stage, you are trying to stay standing on screaming thigh muscles, attempting to keep the throttle nailed and the track in focus on a dry, boulder-strewn riverbed. Ahead on the climb to the saddle of the pass may be snow, ice, mud, shale and deep sand in the high-altitude desert of the Indian Himalaya. Rapid, frozen-hand descents are arse-clenching agony and if you fail to knock off the speed and get it turned you are gone.

Each crack-of-dawn morning the only certainties are adrenaline and discomfort; probabilities pain and suffering. But master these personal challenges and you will be rewarded with a satisfaction as deep as the gorges beside which you have been racing, delivered in an otherworldly location of staggering beauty.

The event in question is the Moto X-treme Raid-de-Himalaya, the planet’s highest – and probably most underrated – race. This year it was run for the 12^th time and my wife Suzie and I were working as ‘officials’ – bike scrutineers and timekeepers. My involvement in the Raid goes back four years; Suzie’s twice this time.

Until recently the (FIM-sanctioned) Raid-de-Himalaya was overwhelmingly a domestic Indian affair and generally it’s the local mountain lads who do best. Though there have been wild-card foreigners show up in the past, competing (or not) on a variety of machinery, most succumbed to the mental torture of trying to keep a pace when a slight misjudgement could have them soaring into space, with enough airtime to contemplate certain death. Altitude sickness, stomach upsets, crashes, mechanical failure and the sheer frustration of trying to cope with Indian-style organisation have also taken a toll.

Typically, of the whole field, some thirty per cent will be gone by the end of a gruelling first day, and only around a third will see the finish. With 30-40 bikes starting, this almost guarantees finishers a top ten. But only thrice have non-Indians finished the course and but once has someone not from the area won the event.

But it seriously looked like things were about to change for the 12^th running of the Raid, with the appearance of a predominantly orange ‘Team Rallye Austria’. Pre-race talk was abuzz with conjecture over whether the outsiders could oust the local champion, Ashish ‘Rocky’ Moudghil, and stop him claiming his fourth title on the trot.

A video appeared on the Raid website (www.raid-de-himalaya.com), showing Team Austria’s preparations. There were liveried mechanics preparing immaculate rally bikes in uber-sterile workshops, stacks of mouse tyres awaiting shipment, shiny spare wheels in abundance and more sponsor stickers than you could shake a set of Renthals at. And (I may have imagined, or assumed) there was a display of confident arrogance, a background buzz of cocky assumption that all this clinical first world preparation and technological supremacy would blitzkrieg local, developing race-world grit.

I have to admit that, forgetting historical lessons from Stalingrad and the Khyber Pass, the team’s professional gloss provoked me into making similar foolish assumptions – surely experienced European enduro riders piloting the latest examples of off-road excellence would ride all over the slightly rag-tag Indian teams. My assumptions were only reinforced when I scrutineered the Austrian bikes.

Of the five Austrians and single German in Team Rallye Austria, we had three big KTMs, with half a Touratech catalogue thrown at them, prepared to Teutonic perfection. There was also a Yamaha WR450 in full Dakar trim, a standard old Yamaha XT600 Tenere and a well-used Suzuki DR600, piloted by Austrian female rider and past-finisher, Klaudia Honeder.

The top Austrian rider, Helly Frauwallner, had some serious form: twice Austrian junior motocross champion, six-times Austrian champion, German Championship runner up, winner of the crushingly tough Rallye Mongolia and runner-up in the Paris-Dakar Heroes Legend event. There’s plenty more in Helly’s CV, but not the space on this page. Of the others, one had come close to finishing the Paris-Dakar and the others, though having a lot of experience, and judging by their kit and machinery no lack of cash, were, as it transpired, pretty average pilots.

Several of the better Indian riders were relishing the opportunity to pit their skills and guts against classier than usual competition and for the event as a whole this had to be a good thing, raising the profile of what must be one of the most challenging motorsports events on the globe.

But assumptions were to be the undoing of my predictions and Team Austria’s hopes of a win.

I had assumed that the newcomers would do their research, recce at least the more navigationally challenging stages and arrive in time to acclimatise themselves culturally, physically and mentally. The Austrians, though, appeared to have assumed that with their superior experience, machinery and technical nouse, they could just turn up and be competitive. I even have a suspicion that certain among the team assumed they could simply pitch up and win.

But, cue the cliché: to finish first, first you have to finish. To go fast in this environment and survive takes a fine blend of balls, balance and brain. But bull-sized spuds, the balance of a lemur and the frontal lobes of a chess master mean nothing if you are putting all this resource in the wrong direction.

At the end of day one, Suzie and I were flagging in the field following the day’s last transport stage. Asish, as expected, arrived first, followed by the usual suspects and three late Team Austrians, one very late Austrian and an hour-long wait for the final pair who had become lost, run out of fuel and eventually arrived the wrong way through our time control and so were technically disqualified. For the team’s top riders, two hours behind the leader, any chance of a win was now looking slimmer than a freshly ironed flatworm.

As they had come so far, a restart was granted, but again they got lost on day two (in a competitive, closed roads stage) and so with no podium possible, the two of whom so much was expected retired with tail-pieces between legs.

Ashish Moudghil proved untouchable on his Yamaha WR450, finishing nearly two hours ahead of another Indian on a KTM 450EXC and notching up win five in six years. Of the Team Rallye Austria finishers, the results were the opposite of what one might have assumed: Stefan Rosner on his 25-year-old Tenere missing out on second spot by around 30 seconds, with DR-mounted Klaudia close behind. Only 12 bikes finished and three of Team Austria’s riders were in the top ten (the other out with a broken collar bone, discourtesy of an icy steel bridge).

Those who saw completing and surviving the Raid-de-Himalaya as challenge enough and made the fewest assumptions did best. Perhaps a lesson for those who assume the latest hyper missile will make them faster, or deliver more personal satisfaction.

Most of the Austrian team had a great time in the Himalaya and said they’d be back – and I hope they will, though maybe not if they’ve read this... If there are any Brits out there who fancy a go in the Moto X-treme, or two-day novice ‘Alpine’ class, then drop me a line at damon@blazingtrailstours.com and I’ll fix you up with an entry and back-up.

In India, they say ‘anything is possible’, but in the Himalaya, ‘assume nothing’ is the more useful philosophy…