The following account has been considerably shortened and simplified, for the sake of readability, and to save me from having to relive too much of the stress involved!...

When I went to pick up Rolfe at Chennai airport, I almost didn't get there in time. The bike was overheating and seizing up every ten minutes, and it took two hours to get there. Rolfe arrived feeling wiped out, as one does after a long-haul overnight flight. He hadn't slept at all. I explained that the good news was that I had found us a nice room on the beach in Mamallapuram, which was 50km south of the big city and away from noise and stress... The bad news, though, was that we had to drive into the big city -- right now -- to get the bike fixed! He was a trooper, and ready for his Indian adventure. He said, ""If that's how it is, then let's go!"

The ride into Chennai was horrible. The day had become very hot, the traffic was rush-hour awful, and the bike had an extra person with all their baggage on board... progress was slow and stressful. We finally made it to the motorcycle ghetto area, where all the shops for miles around are about bikes and bike parts. As the Royal Enfield factory is in Chennai, there are many mechanics who specialize in these bikes here. We found a place recommended by everyone, as THE BEST Enfield guys in India, for three generations!

Rolfe and I sat in the sweaty workshop, with Rolfe's baggage, for six hours while they took my engine apart. View image, View image They decided that it needed to have the cylinder rebored, and a new, larger piston put in. The awful part is that I had ALREADY had this done in Goa, during another nightmarish and expensive week of bike problems... But we then discovered that the piston in the bike was still the original, and that the Goa mechanics had ripped me off, by charging me for the major repairs, and then simply putting the bike back together and sending me on my way... BASTARDS! (Any bikers reading this are advised to steer well clear of Sonny and Bonny). I know they move to the Himalyan town of Menali for the summer season, so I plan to pay them a visit, when I pass through there in April...

So the Chennai mechanics did all the work in one day, while we waited, and then we set off, wxhausted, back to our room in Mammallapuram. But before we even got out of the city, the bike overheated and seized in exactly the same way as before!!! It took us 3.5 hours to drive 50km back to our room, arriving late in the evening. I was ready to kill somone. At this point, I seriously considered walking away from the bike completely.

The next day I called the shop. I cannot say I was impressed with their work, but as I had already invested 1500Rp with them, they were willing to accept responsibility for getting it right. As the bike was in no state to drive, I had to pay a truck driver 900Rp to carry it, and us, with all our baggage, back into Chennai. We had booked tickets to Delhi, leaving that evening, so the mechanics had to try and sort out the problem in time for us to make that train. Again we waited for hours while they traced the underlying problem, which had not been solved by their rebore. They did manage to fix it, then Rolfe and I rode the bike on a hair-raising, hour-long, test drive around Chennai, to make absolutely sure it was finally working properly. We made the train, loaded the bike in the luggage compartment, and settled into our sleeper bunks for the night. The Enfield is less a mode of transport, than high-maintenance travel relationship!