Donna-Rae’s Parkinson’s medicine, while questionable about dealing with Parkinson’s disease, seemed to make her body impregnable for other germs, viruses, or bugs.  Not so for Gregory’s daily vitamins.  A serious intestional amoebic bug grabbed Gregory in Kathmandu and halted his hunt for Yeti.  While Donna-Rae shopped Gregory was dropped.  He forgot about motorcycles, riding good roads and hunting Yetis. What he thought about was toilets, toilet paper, then Vaseline and how Buddha may have not wanted him to hunt Yeti.  As he wandered the streets of Kathmandu, moving from one toilet to the next, he forgot about trying to manage the freakish paperwork and expense of trying to ride through Bhutan, India, Burma and then into Thailand.

     Freak Street in Kathmandu was the end of the Hippie Highway, famed in the late 60’s for hashish bars, cheap lodging and trading tales of what had happened to the travelers from Marrakech, Morocco, the beginning of the road.  Donna-Rae wanted to see what it was like today, but street demonstrations halted her hunt.  It was riot time in Kathmandu, and the anti-government parades were being met by government officials swinging batons, shooting guns and tossing tear gas canisters. Any leftover hippie from the 60’s would have had enough sense to blow town and not weed, which is what Donna-Rae and Gregory decided to do, neither being smokers and both being on enough prescribed drugs to keep a small gorilla zonked. 

     Pictured here in Chiang Mai, Thailand, Donna-Rae was trying to learn some of the secrets of the “Land of Smiles.”  A month before she had been at the North Cape, in Norway, where, in July 1907, the King of Siam (now known as Thailand), King Chilalongkhorn had visited.  Pictures of him, far away from the warmth of his Kingdom, caused Donna-Rae to relate to his lust for travel and adventure.  Remembering Freak Street in Kathmandu, the demonstrations, then the dangerous flight out, she knew Gregory was close to right when he wrote, “What a long, strange ride it has been.”

     Thailand was wet.  Rains had caused the Ping River to rise above its banks.  It was the worst flooding in 40 years.  Motorcycle gear that Gregory had stored high and dry when he left two years earlier was covered in mud and growing green fungus.  Motorcycles in the same room had water over the seats.  It was an ugly time.  A check on the conditions of the roads to Ankor Wat in Cambodia and the Plain of Jars on Laos resulted in messages, “Forget it.  Come back in three or four months.  It’s still raining here.  The only way to visit now is by airplane.”

    Donna-Rae and Gregory circled around in wet Thailand while information flowed in with then rains.  They decided not to tax their hammered budget with further flights, hotels and rental 4-wheel drive vehicles.  They parked their motorcycle on high ground, shipped some packages home and flew onto their next stop, Hong Kong.

    The pair had been rolling around the globe for over a year.  It was time to think about getting back to the reality of life off the road.  Shown here, they were still smiling, warm and dry.  The memories of the cold wet north of Finland were fresh in their minds.  The thoughts of more wet in Cambodia and Laos, coupled with frazzled clothes, tired credit cards and taxed patience with each other made vectoring home look like an oasis in the Sahara.