While there are countless books regaling motorcycle trips through foreign lands available for purchase nowadays, many of them give the impression that riding around the world is an easy affair.
Although, to be frank, it pretty much is easy in the modern world, with only certain areas (parts of Africa, certain Middle Eastern countries and China) being any great obstacle to the intrepid traveller. But what of when times were different, before the internet made the world so much smaller, before cheap international flights, and before travel sponsorship and book and film contracts?
This book, as the name suggests, relates Maximillian Reisch’s journey to India, made when he was a 20-year-old student, back in 1933. It’s the forerunner to The Incredible Journey, the book that covers Max’s round-the-world trip two years later.
Riding a 250cc Puch, with his fellow student Herbert on pillion, they travelled from Vienna to Bombay, via Iran, Iraq and Baluchistan.
And, on that little Puch, built in Max’s home country of course, just the journey to the Austrian border would have been an adventure, let alone travelling across borders that very few other Europeans had crossed in the early 20th century.
The period photographs of the trip are something of a window into a forgotten world. Or, perhaps more accurately, a window into a world that very few people knew about at the time. Compelling, fascinating and far more worthy of publication than so many other titles.
Priced at £14.99, the book is available from www.veloce.co.uk or from bookshops – you can order it using the ISBN number 978-1-787112-94-0.
Read more Reviews, Letters, Opinion, News and Views in the February 2019 issue of OBM – on sale now!
