Jacqui Furneaux explains why fate chose the 500cc Enfield Bullet for her seven-year adventure around the world.
Fate had engineered the situation to make us arrive at the same time at a little roadside restaurant in the sandcastle city of Jaisalmer, India. I wanted somewhere away from the touts to browse the camel-safari leaflets I’d picked up, an additional jaunt to enhance my backpacking experiences in Rajasthan, India. The tall, sturdy young man looked hot, dusty and hungry as he dismounted from a motorbike the like of which I hadn’t seen before. I stopped to look at it as he disappeared out of the dazzling midday sunshine and into the comforting gloom of the restaurant. I had owned only Japanese motorbikes and assumed that this unfamiliar model must be an old English one. As he sat down at a table, I approached him and asked if he minded my joining him as I was interested in his motorbike. He didn’t mind.
Our lunchtime conversation resulted in my abandoning all thoughts of plodding through the nearby Thar Desert on a camel and accepting his invitation to ride on the back of what I now knew was a 500cc Enfield Bullet. After four exciting days roaming and wild camping in the desert, we went our separate ways; he towards Pakistan and with my sojourn in Asia at an end, I went by train to Mumbai for my flight home.
Imagine my surprise when he turned up unannounced in the UK some months later and asked me to buy my own Enfield and join him for further exploration with him in India. I could have said “No” I suppose but his tales of the freedom of the open road lured me and I said “yes”. Yes meant leaving the UK again after eight months of earnest but unsuccessful attempts to fit back in after a year away backpacking in Asia where we’d met.
Imagine my surprise when he turned up unannounced in the UK some months later and asked me to buy my own Enfield and join him for further exploration with him in India. I could have said “No” I suppose but his tales of the freedom of the open road lured me and I said “yes”. Yes meant leaving the UK again after eight months of earnest but unsuccessful attempts to fit back in after a year away backpacking in Asia where we’d met.
So you see, I didn’t choose my 500cc Enfield Bullet. It was chosen for me by fate and a handsome stranger. But I did choose to explore the world on it long after I left him in Australia after travelling together for four years and carrying on alone for another three. My Enfield and I have been together for twenty years and ridden eighty thousand miles through twenty-seven countries. Would I choose this motorbike again? Oh YES!
Jacqui’s book, Hit the Road, Jac! Seven Years, Twenty Countries, No Plan is available from Amazon or www.jacquifurneaux.com. Click here to read our Hit the Road, Jac! book review.
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