A Last Chance Powerdrive Part 2 Of Death and the Desert

By Benedict Beaumont

When you long for Emptiness.
When you long for an End.
You can find it it the Desert.

In October 2011 a burnt out teacher decided to change his life. Benedict Beaumont quit his job as a secondary school teacher, flew to Delhi, bought a Royal Enfield Motorbike and drove through India.

Part 2 of A Last Chance PowerDrive, Of Death and the Deserts, carries on where God's on Tour and Dreaming in High Places finished off. It takes Benedict and his bike Amblis deep into the Deserts of Rajesthan where ultimately he confronts his own mortality.

'A Last Chance PowerDrive is an Eat Pray Love for Boys with Motorbikes'. It weaves the stories of the people he meets with his own personal history as he takes his bike Amblis deep into the mythical desert heart of India.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Benedict Beaumont
• Release date: Jun 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476062914

Benedict Beaumont

Benedict Beaumont has led several lives; IT engineer, Secondary School Teacher and Chef to name but three. He grew up in the south of England, but has travelled extensively. He divides his time between Asia, the Alps and Brighton.

Book preview

A Last Chance PowerDrive

Part 2 Of Death and the Desert

By Benedict Beaumont

Copyright 2012 Benedict Beaumont

Published by Benedict Beaumont at Smashwords

Cover by http://peterwoolf.com

Proofing by http://martinmayhew.com/

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.Com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

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Authors Note

This book began life as a blog as I travelled around India on a motorbike. I was mostly by myself, and I wrote to give myself something to do whilst sitting alone in a restaurant of an evening, trying not to look like a Johnny-no-mates. A lot goes through your mind when you are travelling about in a different culture, and if you don’t find some way to get it out, either by sharing it with someone else or scribbling it down like a demented monkey, then the bouncing thoughts can drive you mad.

I had no intention of turning the blog into a book, certainly none of publishing it, but something happened late on the trip that changed my mind, hence here we are. If you would like to find out what that was, well you are just going to have to keep reading!

There are a lot of stories that I haven’t told in this book. Please take a moment to visit my website http://benedictbeaumont.co.uk/ where I have posted a couple (the password Amblisss will open up all the restricted posts). Whilst you are there you can also download sample copies of my other books including my first novel ‘Letter to India’ and ‘Gods on Tour’, the prequel to this book. There is also a fb page facebook.com/alastchancepowerdrive to like, which has some excellent promo videos and numerous photos of the trip there too.

Finally, please could you review the book. All feedback will help me make the next version better.

Now enjoy the ride. Remember, tramps like us, baby we were born to run.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Pandit Jhee and the Angel Factory

Three Tests Completed with Help

Simple Things with Many People

Dreaming in Jaipur

In Pushkar it’s all about the Girls

Repelled by Religion, Embraced by Spirit

Brahma and the Lake

Driving a Song and the Black Knight

The Legend of the Priest House and Knights without their Armour

The Crash

The Aftermath

Something Changed

Why I am Here Part 2

The Moment

The Yellow Knight and Gulzaman’s Son

The Highway of Lost Soles and Other Irritations

Three Reasons to like Hissar and a Gentle Blessing

Come on baby, hold together

Acknowledgements

About the Author

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A Last Chance PowerDrive

Part 2

Of Death and the Desert

Introduction

I lay on the bed of the hotel room, fully clothed, staring at the ceiling. Although it was cooler than when I had arrived in Delhi a month earlier, the air conditioning was still a relief from the sweaty mid day heat and pollution outside. I luxuriated in the cold blast of air, but inside I knew that it would only be a temporary distraction. Not every problem could be solved by finding a room with a working temperature control.

Ten minutes earlier I had waved Dan off to the airport. We had hugged and said our goodbyes, jokingly in the way that men do to hide their emotions, but inside my heart was beginning to sink; I was going to miss him. We had spent almost every minute of the last few weeks with each other, at most fifty metres apart. We had shared stories, adventures and even faced potential death together as we had crossed the mountains.

I would feel lonely without him I knew. Probably I would feel miserably lonely. But it was more than that I was worried about. Without him around to distract me, I was going to have to start facing some pretty difficult questions. Whilst he was here, I was able to ignore them, but now they came crashing into my head with a vengeance.

Many were on a similar theme; ‘What was I doing here?’, ‘Why had I come?’, ‘What was I trying to prove?’, ‘Why was I putting myself in danger driving round on dangerous roads with incompetent drivers all around me? Although it was difficult, I felt I could answer these ones.

After five years of working in a state secondary school on the South Coast of England, I had quit my job as a teacher and followed a dream. I loved teaching but the relentless pressure was too much; it had made me depressed, dis-spirited and close to breaking point. I had given all I could to my pupils, but eventually I was left empty and exhausted. I needed something different.

But why India and a motorbike? At first I wasn’t sure, but then a few days before whilst driving over the peak of Kunzum-La, a half buried memory from twenty years before had come to me. A chance conversation with school friends on a drunken night out had taken root in my brain, growing like a little seed, until its branches spread out all through my being and I could think of nothing else.

At the time this realisation had seemed like a major breakthrough. I had suddenly felt a great exultation in life as I fulfilled a twenty year old dream. An incredible and dangerous dream. This memory had helped me to the peak of the mountain.

But where did that leave me now?

If I had completed the task of why I was here, where was I going to next?

Suddenly it felt like a hole opened up in my stomach. Maybe it was the inevitable anticlimax after so much excitement and adventure of the last few weeks, but a huge wave of emptiness engulfed me. I suddenly felt nauseous as the questions I couldn’t answer started circling round in my brain.

‘Where was I going?’ ‘Not just here right now, but with my life?’ ‘What was I going to do next?’ ‘Teaching was the most worthwhile and meaningful job I had ever done. If that wasn’t enough for me what was?’

My head was pounding, so I rested it against the cool leather headboard. I really was beginning to feel quite sick.

Something about resting my head on a cool surface gave me a strong feeling of déjà vu. This had happened to me before; several years previously I found myself at a crossroads in my life with just a big blank page ahead of me. It was different circumstances then, and not of my choosing, but the outcome was the same.?

I closed my eyes and remembered.

****

I leant my head against the beam that transversed my bed. It was cool, and I could feel the knots and whirls of centuries old wood press into my forehead. Ed and Rob, respectively the guitar player and singer in the band, now harbingers of doom, were before me, shuffling from one foot to another and looking uncomfortable.

Ed's voice was droning on. I knew I should pay attention to it, but my thoughts strangely were elsewhere.

... it’s not that we don't like you Ben, I mean, you're ‘The Man’. You've done so much for us. It's just that, we decided that we had to make some changes....

I had often thought about the beam that was now holding my head up. The house had been built in 1820 during the regency period in Brighton. At that time the British Navy was decommissioning all its ships as the peace with France was holding and a large fleet was no longer needed. Ships timbers were prized by builders as they had been aged by years of submersion in countless oceans and were less likely to fail than freshly cut oak. I liked to imagine that these timbers had come from a ship that had seen action at the Battle of the Nile or Trafalgar. There were some impressively old looking initials carved deep into the wood.

It's not your playing either, Rob took over. Normally he was a study in indie laconic cool, a speech like this was really making him sweat. I mean you are a great bass player. Really great. I think though we're kind of pulling in different directions, we want to go somewhere different to you. I think we all know that it’s not working in the studio...

For about a hundred and fifty years, my attic room had just been an attic; a musty dusty place, seldom visited. There was a big hook above the hatch which I imagined was used by Victorian servants to haul up trunks but a disco ball spun there lazily now. I watched the lights flicker off it and