10. The best-laid schemes…

I pay a visit to Tristar and am handed my passport complete with Saudi transit visa!  Wow, I’m impressed, that’s taken less than a week and I feel a bit daft for having doubts it would be granted.  Doubts that prompted me to formulate Plan B, which would mean putting the bike on a truck in Kuwait then flying to Jordan to collect it.  My euphoria is short-lived however when I open my computer back home and get the bad news.  

While in London I’d heard vague rumblings about some ‘activity’ along the Saudi/Iraq border.  My intended route follows Saudi’s Highway 85, which runs parallel to the border for much of its length.  So I emailed our Regional Security Manager enquiring further.  His reply is clear and certainly not what I want to hear. 

Though there’s nothing specific about the border stuff, he reveals the threat level for KSA does remain ‘High’.  But it’s the rest of the message about the “extremely high risk of being killed in an RTA” (road traffic accident) in the Kingdom that really gets me down.  Apparently a recent World Health Organisation report showed Saudi recording the highest rate of road accident fatalities at both Arab and world levels.  He adds that the place is “not biker friendly by any means” and goes on to describe a couple of recent incidents that make the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.  He’s apologetic but says it’s best I have the whole picture and ends with the unequivocal advice – or is it instruction - “Definitely Plan B!” 

This is all very depressing and I feel like I’ve fallen at the first hurdle.  I’m annoyed with myself for not picking up on it earlier.  All that time spent route planning and researching, being concerned about the Balkans and not even seeing the bogey-man right next door.  I mean, I knew driving/riding in Saudi was dodgy, but had no grasp things were this bad.  Sadly, the opening leg of my road trip now has a ‘No Entry’ sign across it. 

I’ve driven and ridden in some hairy places, including Dubai, Oman and, of course, Kuwait.  I’ve driven in Tripoli for goodness sake where the words ‘road’ and ‘sense’ don’t appear on the same page, never mind sentence.  I’ve been driven in equally scary places like Cairo and Tehran and had near death experiences in both. 

On top of this, apart from my sojourn back home, I’ve been using the bike almost daily in Kuwait for the past few months making sure I’m wholly familiar with it and its capabilities – and limitations - as well as getting acclimatised to the rising temperature. 

Over the course of this and previous experience, I’ve evolved the theory that, particularly in a place like Kuwait, I’m actually safer on the bike than in a car. 

On two wheels you are inherently more aware of what’s going on in front, behind and around you – you simply have to be.  On my GS with its upright riding position, I’m sitting at about the same level as a driver in a Range Rover or Landcruiser.  I’m in the scene and reading the road five, six vehicles and more ahead, not just what the idiot in front or next to me might be doing.  And with the GS’s power and braking ability I know – without complacency – that I can get myself out of the way and out of trouble quickly.

Contrast this with your average driver on Kuwait roads.  Sitting in the comfort of an air-conditioned cocoon with power steering and auto gearbox, one hand clamping a mobile to an ear (a punishable offence even here, but seldom enforced), gesticulating with the other hand and steering with a knee.  You get the picture…  They’re in a motorised easy chair, watching the scene unfold in front of them through the windscreen like it’s a video on TV – or worse, a computer game.

Then you get the young bucks who are Playstation-trained, doing all of the above but in high powered sports cars, saloons or high-end 4x4 pick-ups, racing their buddies at 160-180km per hour while weaving through the narrowest of gaps in traffic all the way from one side of a three/four lane highway to the other.  It certainly makes for ‘interesting’ riding.  

But clearly, Saudi is in another league and let’s face it, there’s so much more than just my desire to complete my plotted distance to consider – there's my loved ones back home.  I have to get myself geared up for Plan B. 

Ah well, nobody said it was going to be all plain sailing.