Think of it as an inoculation: I bet you weren’t scared or apprehensive about your first night’s rest in Bulgy when you started driving. Fear of the unknown can be a great inhibitor when you drive through new frontiers. You couldn’t hitch to Colombo today using your route! Robert
robert1952:
Think of it as an inoculation: I bet you weren’t scared or apprehensive about your first night’s rest in Bulgy when you started driving. Fear of the unknown can be a great inhibitor when you drive through new frontiers. You couldn’t hitch to Colombo today using your route! Robert
Fear? 
I’ve slept in the shrubs of the central reservation of the main Hamburg /Denmark autobahn and didn’t wake up til dawn.
The young go where angels fear to tread.
The road to India is full of diversions now. When I did it people could still remember WW2 and were enjoying peace. Afghanistan was a peaceful trouble free place for a lone traveller.best country on the whole trip,nobody bothered you.It’s only the new generation that believes things can be settled with war. Unfortunately we have a whole tranche of them in the UK sharpening their scimitars.
harry:
robert1952:
Think of it as an inoculation: I bet you weren’t scared or apprehensive about your first night’s rest in Bulgy when you started driving. Fear of the unknown can be a great inhibitor when you drive through new frontiers. You couldn’t hitch to Colombo today using your route! RobertFear?
The young go where angels fear to tread.
The road to India is full of diversions now. When I did it people could still remember WW2 and were enjoying peace. Afghanistan was a peaceful trouble free place for a lone traveller.best country on the whole trip,nobody bothered you.It’s only the new generation that believes things can be settled with war. Unfortunately we have a whole tranche of them in the UK sharpening their scimitars.
Re fear. My last knockings in Maroc ,I used to stop anywhere out in the country and sleep with the windows open and the doors unlocked. When I woke up in the mornings often their would be a posse of young men that had kept a watch on me all night. Sorta weird. I left the job before things would reach the natural conclusion . 
I was an adrenaline junky.
I never like traveling in cars and do it only when necessary. If I had my way I would still travel everywhere by truck, and have a series 1 F12 globetrotter as my every day driver. So if someone can sort me out with one that’ll do 40 mpg and would squish up into a normal size car so I can park it at the supermarket with out being to obvious I would be very happy.
I’m lucky that I still keep my hand in and get paid to drive trucks enough to satisfy my needs. Still loads of muck and adventure ( well as much as Health and Safety will allow) and I get back to my own bed at night.
As for stopping in dodgy places, it’s like calling a road a killer. It’s not the road or the place it’s usually the people. When I think back on some of the places I stopped in the past I get goose bumps, but the reason I stopped there would be a combination of necessity, convenience, and naivety. Most of the time I got away with it, or not much more than a ■■■■■ along the curtain, but that can happen any where.
Last weeks mud and adventure.
Outside The Eagle take away New Norfolk…
Jeff…
I didn’t seek out desolate places ,it just happened and I.just went to sleep exhausted. Best kips I ever had,no other trucks around. Better than the sleep I’m getting now I’m off the road in a secure environment . Main reason is I’m not working,I guess.
In Maroc 90% of the population are non- aggressive honest folk. 10% are the professional class crims that hang around the ports. That’s why out in the countryside you are more or less safe not parking in a factory compound or paying a guardian.
harry:
I didn’t seek out desolate places ,it just happened and I.just went to sleep exhausted. Best kips I ever had,no other trucks around. Better than the sleep I’m getting now I’m off the road in a secure environment . Main reason is I’m not working,I guess.In Maroc 90% of the population are non- aggressive honest folk. 10% are the professional class crims that hang around the ports. That’s why out in the countryside you are more or less safe not parking in a factory compound or paying a guardian.
That was very true until about 1998 when things deteriorated very rapidly indeed. Robert
Harry. Any chance of a jazzandy style day by day series of your trip to Colombo and back? Please. Jim.
Robert, thanks for sharing all your great photos with us, I should think that most of the drivers on here like myself are really envious of some of the roads that you have been fortunate to travel along. Did you ever go over The Khyber Pass and have you got any photos of the area. A friend of mine who worked for Thor from Stoke in the 70’s took a load of copper to India and I remember him telling me that all the British Regiments who were stationed at The Pass had carved their regiments badges into the sandstone cliffs at different locations along the pass. Maybe Harry saw them or took a photo although like most of us at the time a camera was more of a hindrance than a necessity. Come on Harry get writing about your hitching days there must be more than a few stories on a journey like that.
Regards Steve.
jmc jnr:
Harry. Any chance of a jazzandy style day by day series of your trip to Colombo and back? Please. Jim.
It would mean digging out old passports and stuff like that. I was driving a forklift at Glastrup Glaswerks,on the night shift shunting pallets of empty Tuborg bottles on day 1. Getting out of Cope was a blur,everyone gave you a lift in those days. I remember hitching in the middle of Milan and a taxi stopped and gave me a free ride to the autostrada. I got an over night ride in a FIAT wagon and drag double manned they never stopped all night. When change over came the driver would stand up holding the wheel and the other would slip under him. I got out of the truck in the warm sunlight and gave my overcoat to the drivers,I thought the further south I got the warmer it would get. Bearing in mind that I had Turkey,Iran and Afghanistan yet to come
I’ll think about it ,it’s something I’ve deliberately forgot about because when I got back (,even had to bum a lift on the Ostend / Dover ferry ,being totally skint) I was totally around the bend. I had faced situations which in the normal run of things you wouldn’t have to face in a lifetime .
Ended up in a flash London pad living with a famous model.another story!
It was funny really,she wanted me to be her chauffuer in her new little Mini. It got so I overslept in the mornings,so she took a taxi,& then in the afternoons I would have the car and be at a friends place,she would ring & I used to ask her if she minded getting a taxi. In the end I had the car all week & she used it at weekends to see her parents.
I said the trip had an effect on me and that was one of the ripples…
mushroomman:
Robert, thanks for sharing all your great photos with us, I should think that most of the drivers on here like myself are really envious of some of the roads that you have been fortunate to travel along. Did you ever go over The Khyber Pass and have you got any photos of the area. A friend of mine who worked for Thor from Stoke in the 70’s took a load of copper to India and I remember him telling me that all the British Regiments who were stationed at The Pass had carved their regiments badges into the sandstone cliffs at different locations along the pass. Maybe Harry saw them or took a photo although like most of us at the time a camera was more of a hindrance than a necessity. Come on Harry get writing about your hitching days there must be more than a few stories on a journey like that.Regards Steve.
I think Harry’s your man for this one! The meddling Yanks (and Brits) had already queered the pitch for merchant adventurers like us, by the time I got round to looking at Afghanistan. I’ve met several who did it in the old days with lorries - Bob Mattingly springs to mind. Robert
To be honest,on the way down to Pakistan,there is no sign saying Welcome to the Khyber.’ you know when its over when the white lines in the road just before the PAK/AFG border cross each other left to right. Kinda X but v. squigley. For instance I got dropped off from a truck in the centre of Agra & could see the Taj Mahal behind me but I walked to the other side of town to get the next lift. I had OD’d on temples ,I’d even lived in Jane Buddhist temples as a pilgrim,you get free vegetarian food,served on a banana leaf & a place to sleep.Good crowd the Jane Buddhists. Lots of singing and dancing ceremonies and stuff.All they asked of you was not to smoke & not to have ■■■ on the temple grounds.Hard but fair. Sitting crossed legged on a stone floor to eat dampened your appetite tho’.
harry:
To be honest,on the way down to Pakistan,there is no sign saying Welcome to the Khyber.’ you know when its over when the white lines in the road just before the PAK/AFG border cross each other left to right. Kinda X but v. squigley. For instance I got dropped off from a truck in the centre of Agra & could see the Taj Mahal behind me but I walked to the other side of town to get the next lift. I had OD’d on temples ,I’d even lived in Jane Buddhist temples as a pilgrim,you get free vegetarian food,served on a banana leaf & a place to sleep.Good crowd the Jane Buddhists. Lots of singing and dancing ceremonies and stuff.All they asked of you was not to smoke & not to have ■■■ on the temple grounds.Hard but fair. Sitting crossed legged on a stone floor to eat dampened your appetite tho’.
Aren’t the Jane Buddhists the ones who won’t harm a creature - not even tread on an ant? I was surprised to find Buddhist sites in Pakistan. In fact, up in the north, the mosques are converted Buddhist temples, complete with curled up corners, because the north was so isolated that Islam didn’t reach up there until fairly recent times. Robert
The Buddhist temples are all in India ,Robert. East Pakistan (Bangladesh) & West Pakistan were created to get rid of all the Muslims in India. The Sikhs hated them. It was common for a train full of Muslims would leave New Delhi & arrive in Islamabad with only the driver left alive. There would be an unscheduled stop at Amritsar where Sikhs with their ceremonial daggers would board & slit throats of anything that breathed.Out of ten million migrants ,one million failed to get to their destination (alive)
harry:
The Buddhist temples are all in India ,Robert. East Pakistan (Bangladesh) & West Pakistan were created to get rid of all the Muslims in India. The Sikhs hated them. It was common for a train full of Muslims would leave New Delhi & arrive in Islamabad with only the driver left alive. There would be an unscheduled stop at Amritsar where Sikhs with their ceremonial daggers would board & slit throats of anything that breathed.Out of ten million migrants ,one million failed to get to their destination (alive)
Some beauties still lovingly preserved in Pakistan - I visited the site at Taxila, near Rawalpindi. It had belonged to the Persian empire. Partition was not a resounding success, as history shows us. In any case, the Hindus were the ‘enemy’ rather than the Buddhists at that time (not so now in Burma!). Robert
I was reading through an earlier part of the Astran / Middle East drivers thread recently, in which a blogger asked if any drivers did India. One or two answers correctly stated that borders are usually closed between Pakistan and India so not much long-haul freight would get through.
However, some years ago I started making enquiries about this and I discovered that the well-known Italian firm, Faggioli allegedly sent convoys of trucks into India from Italy, complete with one truck that was kitted out as a mobile workshop so that the convoy could run independently. I also met a Dutch driver with whom I was having a beer in the old Yacht Club in Tangiers docks, who claimed to have done a trip to Calcutta for Dutch Shell. I have no way of verifying these, but I have heard other rumours of overland trucks getting into India. Ford sent a couple of D-series to Katmandu in the 70s (see picture below). We do know, of course, that the adventure holiday companies have sent overland passenger-carrying trucks to India for donkey’s years, but I wonder if anyone else has any news of European freight trucks making it to India. Robert
When i stopped being owner driver and before i moved to Holland i did one trip to Katmandu for Capricorn travel and tours with a coach.In Pakistan i met a German truck from Kreuzpainter Munchen [Spelling].They had just returned from India after delivering diplomatic goods.Speaking to the guys they said they had a contract for diplomatic goods but as far as they knew anything but Diplomatic,red cross,and special exhibition goods was always transhipped at the border.We saw various trucks being transhipped at the border so i have no reason to doubt them.
Which border.Hut? Islamabad/Amritsar? (because its the only one I know) 
Just googled & its Attari-Wagah Border… will have to find that old passport.
Hi Harry As you say Islamabad\Amritsar then a sort of meandering route down to Delhi,Lucknow and across to Birgagi to cross into Nepal,then of course a stop at the Chitwan park to go on an elephant safari photographing Rhinoceros and tigers, and watch elephant polo.This was all in 75 when life was easier before all the tensions of religion,borders,ethnicity etc.I Went again in 1990 to Nepal and Tibet,this time with my wife.I Think that is one of the few places i would like to revisit before i die.Obviously as my wife is dead it’s probably ‘‘rose coloured spectacles’’ but i will never forget Nepal and Tibet.Mike
I think Bestbooties knows someone that did a load to India for Thor Transport, I believe it was a load of copper 
robert1952:
I was reading through an earlier part of the Astran / Middle East drivers thread recently, in which a blogger asked if any drivers did India. One or two answers correctly stated that borders are usually closed between Pakistan and India so not much long-haul freight would get through.
I remember a post quite a while back that mentioned a former “long haul” company called Birdales from Gillingham. They used to run to Rawalpindi in Pakistahn and that area, maybe they also got to India. As a thought,if anyone would know it would be Ferdy de Martin, host of the TopRun website. Maybe send him an email!