[Red Liner]

This log picks up from here (Riding across India's worst Heat Wave | Bangalore-Himachal | 2022)

The following log is almost a live log, as I am currently riding around some of the highest mountains in the world - in Ladakh, which is a part of the Trans Himalayan Range.

If you're visiting, say hi like fellow inmate Laurent Bendel - Read his phenomenal ride thread here

Kick stands up - who's in?

[Red Liner]

I was up bright and early this morning. I had just arrived the prior night into Himachal, one of the densely forested states that comprise of much of the lower and mid himalayas and abuts the bigger guys in Ladakh where I was heading, and Tibet across the border where I was about a decade back.

This was going to be my route for today. I had carefully marked this to make sure I was off the main highway that routes through Shimla, the capital of Himachal and overstressed with tourists and cagers. This back route that I had marked was going to be more scenic, less tourists, more gravel trails, less tarmac. Let's find out shall we?

First goodbyes to the loving local fam who took care of me and fed me well for the journey ahead. Future BHPian in the making?

The trails ye seek abound there, mortal

I had great conversations about life, family, having a wife or not to with the lovely granny here. She was very forthcoming about her own life which helped me introspect about my own concepts of life, family and about having a wife vs a companion.

It was finally time to get on the KTM and get going. Today was going to be a long day of riding and I wanted to keep aside plenty of time for photographs.

I was down into trail country right away. Not before I lost my way a couple times though lol! Luckily a few local belles came to my rescue and put me on the right "track".

The "Right Track"

Ensconced by pine trees, early spring is a great time to be riding around the Himalayas. The trail continued to be mild until it suddenly began degenerating on the way down the valley.

The promised lands did not disappoint today.

[Red Liner]

The trail kept winding downhill alongside a river that was flowing down fast from the mountains.

As soon as I had crossed the valley, the views opened up again - from brown and rugged to green and lush.

Those white things you see are covers - covers over apple plantations to protect them from monkeys, birds, and anyone else who might destroy this prized crop of the Himachal Himalayas.

Yes its tarmac, and most of Asia is getting fresh tarmac everywhere because, why should we be third world anymore?

I was getting hungry and it was close to brunch time. I spied a little restaurant and more importantly a cute local woman manning the counter. I turned around as quickly as I had whizzed past the place. I decided to halt here for a bit to get some rest, get some grub, and make some conversation with her and her son.

[Red Liner]

Further down the road, I spotted a Himalayan and a 390 Adventure stopped by the road and I recognised the plates to be from far down south. Never one to miss meeting fellow motorcyclists on the road, I halted to make conversation.

I quickly found out that the guy on the right had suffered from a major heat stroke whilst riding down the main highways across India to get to where we were. I made had made it a point to hydrate and pace myself, but I guess he paid the price for not listening to his body. He was hospitalised back in Agra (remember the Taj Mahal?) and had somehow pulled himself through to get back on the bike. Character building?

The forests we were riding along were utterly dense. We decided to ride together before a fork would take them to the Spiti Himalayas, whilst I would continue forth to the Ladakh Himalayas.

At one point, I had not noticed a turn off the highway I was following I had to take, and continued on. I stopped to ask a couple of local kids if this was indeed the way to where I was heading to for the night and they nodded in unison. Happy with the confirmation, I ploughed on.

At some point, I had this intuition that the route was wrong. I had the proverbial sinking feeling in my chest. So I stopped, pulled out google maps and consulted with an adult this time, and yep, I was down about 50kms on the wrong route. And I had to head back another 50kms.

Now a 100kms out of whack in the mountains is probably like 200 kms off the route map on flat freeways. I am a conservative rider even on the motorway, so in the mountains I was doubly cautious about some idiot driving into my lane around a corner.

I managed to get back on the right route this time, and I decided to continue making constant easy progress as opposed to barrelling down the road to stop for a break every hour. But I had to take a break now because I was stopped by HUGE congregations of local people in their traditional finery from about 50 villages around the area - for a big fest!

One side of me knew that this was a spectacle not to be missed - but the other side knew that if I did get stuck here, then I would have to spend the night with them. So a quick picture later, I was off squirrelling around the traffic that these little mountain roads could barely handle. Being on a motorcycle truly helped.

Here was another road block. But this road block was one I enjoyed. A local shepherd with about a 100 sheep crossing the valley. Brilliant.

With sheep hopping around my feet, my heart aflutter, I finally made it to my destination. A friend's place in the beautiful valley of Jibhi over the famed Jalori Pass.

This would be camp for the next two nights. And I wasn't complaining one bit.

[Red Liner]

I spent the next two nights with my friend and his family getting some rest and recharging myself.

It was time to say goodbye and hit the road again. Today's journey would be from Jibhi to Jispa. I was taking the Manali-Leh route to the upper himalayas.

The Himalayas are the greatest source of water for the Asian subcontinent. Most of the great rivers of India and China originate from the Himalayas to flood the vast plains of Asia. Without this source of water, these countries would probably not even exist. But more than water, India and China has become far more resource hungry in the past few decades. And that includes the hunger for electricity to power all the factories and households the two largest populations in the world demand - a consolidated 3 billion people! I still keep shaking my head over the number.

So both countries have turned to hydro-electric power and have built huge dams across all major rivers in the Himalayas. But this has come at the acute cost of ecological disasters. Entire villages which have existed for centuries have been forced to move and their lands flooded. Mountains have been carved unscientifically to make roads and infrastructure to support these dams. Entire forests and the animals and birds that live there have vanished. And god help the people living downstream if there is a cloud burst or a glacier breaking upstream. Such things have already happened but everyone seem to be turning a blind eye.

I crossed Atal Tunnel by forenoon. Atal Tunnel (also known as Rohtang Tunnel) is a highway tunnel built under the Rohtang Pass in the eastern Pir Panjal range of the Himalayas on the Leh-Manali Highway in Himachal Pradesh, India. At a length of 9.02 km, it is the longest highway single-tube tunnel above 10,000 feet (3,048 m) in the world. With the existing Atal Tunnel and after the completion of under-construction Shingo La Tunnel, which is targeted to be completed by 2025, the new Leh-Manali Highway via Nimmu–Padum–Darcha road will become all-weather roads. Else access by road to these areas is usually cut off with the advent of winter from Nov-Apr every year.

And just like that, I was standing face to face with some of the highest mountains in the world. Now, the real trip begins.

[Red Liner]

Now I was well and truly on the famed Leh-Manali Highway.

The Leh–Manali Highway is a 428 km (266 mi) long highway in northernmost India connecting Leh, the capital of the union territory of Ladakh, to Manali in the state of Himachal Pradesh. It connects the Manali Solang valley to the Lahaul and Spiti valleys in Himachal Pradesh and the Zanskar valley in Ladakh.

It is open for about six months in a year, from first week of May (when the snow is cleared from the highway) to October, when snowfall again blocks the high passes on the highway. The Leh–Manali Highway acts as a trunk route for various India-China Border Roads in Ladakh and Himachal. It has been designed, built and being maintained by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) of the Indian army. It supports the heaviest army vehicles.

The high mountains start almost immediately, and it felt good to be riding away from the sweltering plains of India.

It was time for breakfast now, and I halted at a truckers stop - also called a Dhaba in local parlance for a meal of eggs and chai.

This lil runt came running up to me in hopes of food. I got him a pack of biscuits which he refused to touch. Smart guy. He wanted the eggs and I don't blame him one bit.

I dropped off the pack of biscuits with a few workmen who were building something next door and was back on my way again.

Soon I was at Jispa, and I hooked up at this homestay run by a local family. One thing I noticed was most "camps" or so called "homestay" were run by a bunch of youngsters. These kids are usually from neighbouring Manali. What these kids do is to take a property on lease for the year and then run it as a hotel or camp site. I totally wanted to avoid such places and always prefer to stick with the local families endemic to the area.

My point is simple: Drive your tourism dollars to the local economy to the local people to ensure they deem it viable to continue living there as like their forefathers. This ensures continuity of culture, traditional practices and the way of life which is completely tied in to the lands they were born in.

I spotted a Royal Enfield and wasted no time in making a new friend right there. He was on his way to Leh, so we figured we would just ride together. He sized up my KTM and said there was no way he could keep up with me. Little did he know that I was to be slower than him throughout the whole journey over the next couple of days!

I had ended up skipping lunch, so stepped out to get myself some snicker bars to get energy levels up. Dinner would be a while away. The views around the place were gorgeous.

[Red Liner]

My luck, the gentleman who owns the homestay at Jispa was a qualified Tibetan doctor!

The way these traditional doctors usually work is, they read your pulse first to understand the overall constitution of your body and if there are any obvious issues that you might be facing. Me, for instance, I had tingling sensations in the tips of my fingers and sometimes it could turn out excruciating. I looked this up and figured its one of the symptoms for B12 deficiency. This doctor kind of confirmed that as well - he just mentioned it was a vitamin deficiency.

If I had stuck around, he would have stuck up a bunch of these herbs into me for sure. I just got myself some B12 supplements from Amazon. Things have been okay since.

Another big win if you stay with such homestays is, they most usually are farmers of some kind. Which means they grow their own vegetables, probably have their own cows, like this gentleman did. So all our food was from right around there and not market bought.

The next morning it was time to bid good bye to the loving family who took care of us.

We were off riding into the high mountains again.

Cellphone networks are pretty much done after you exit Jispa towards Ladakh. I wasn't complaining.

High altitude lakes fed by glaciers beckon.

[Red Liner]

We were making steady progress that morning. But the weather was decidedly turning bad now.

We had reached the first of our high altitude lakes on this route and this is Suraj Tal. Suraj means the Sun, and Tal is Lake. So it's the sun lake. His nemesis, Chandratal, or the Moon Lake lies in neighbouring Spiti.

Is that a "heart" I spot down there? You tell me.

This was early May and though the roads had just opened, snow that had piled up over the winter was still all around us.

I did NOT scribble that.



But I think much needed around the world now.

[Red Liner]

Those Klim goretex pants were put to the test.

The Indian army had done a pretty good job of clearing the ice and snow off the roads. Some of these ice banks were pretty high!

The views were absolutely gorgeous and the vistas were slowly opening up to us.

Down the road, I came up to this group who were obviously having trouble with one of their bikes. Something off with the fuel pump I guess. I lent them the Indian equivalent of gorilla glue - Mseal.

One of them was having a little snooze. But I think it was more the early stages of altitude sickness and tiredness creeping in. You can get altitude sickness if you travel to a high altitude too quickly. Breathing becomes difficult because you're not able to take in as much oxygen. Altitude sickness, also called acute mountain sickness (AMS), can become a medical emergency if ignored.

Somewhere along the way, I met two more motorcyclists riding by themselves and we figured we would continue riding together. This was a Hero Xpulse, an Indian rendition of the CRF maybe? Without the side stand shoe, the bike kept tipping over in uneven terrain - something there was plenty of.

Anyone wants that bedroom behind me for the night?

[Red Liner]

Climbing down from Suraj Tal, the skies turned blue, and the weather was sunny again and everyone seemed buoyant.

Its unbelievable how crystal clear the water is seen from a distance. You could probably count the pebbles in there.

The weather kept see sawing as we continued riding through the vast Himalayan terrain. The roads were good.

Standing at the beautiful Sarchu River as the backdrop and the mighty Himalayas standing guard over her (and me!)

We were now nearing the famed GATA Loops. The GATA Loops is a series of 21 hairpin bends that lead to the top of one of the highest motorable passes in the Ladakh region that is Nakee La. The Loops, as the name implies, is a stretch of loopy road, having 21 (some say 22) hairpin bends that falls on the Manali-Leh road at a height of about 17000 ft. I would NOT call these twisties! The entire series of loops is about 10 km and every loop measures 300-600 metres. However, as an exception, the last two loops are apparently 800 and 1 km long!

There's an interesting story about the GATA Loops, called the Ghost of GATA Loops. India is known for the supernatural, and the GATA Loops are not one to be left behind.

A Ghost Temple

As travellers passing through the Gata Loops reach the 19th bend, it is hard to avoid the gory sight of mineral water bottles and several packets of cigarettes strewn outside a small road-side stone structure. So, the next obvious question is – why all this?

Well, an old story related to this site takes us back to the year 1999 when a truck carrying goods crossed the Rohtang Pass during one of the winter months. Kunzum Pass, at the other end, was closed due to the snowfall. Soon, it started snowing heavily and made the roads a bit difficult for the truck. Inside the truck was its driver and a helper, who was not keeping well.

No help, no food

As fate would have it, the truck broke down on the 19th bend of the Gata Loops. The driver and the helper did whatever they could to repair the truck, but in vain. Finally, they decided to wait for some time to seek help from a passerby. However, they did not know that since the Rohtang Pass had been shut, it is not possible for any vehicle to cross the path.

Driver decides to walk ahead

Now, after waiting for hours with no help in sight, the truck driver decided to walk to the nearest village to fetch a mechanic. Since the helper was unwell, he decided to stay back inside the truck and take care of the cargo. The driver reached Sarchu, the nearest hamlet, but before he could retrace his steps back to Gata Loops, it had started snowing heavily.

A shocking sight

After a few days, when the weather cleared, the driver set out for his destination to take charge of his truck and his helpmate. As he reached the spot where his truck had broken down, to his utter dismay, he found the dead body of his helpmate.

It was obvious that the helper had succumbed to cold, hunger and thirst. Soon after, the local people buried the dead body of the deceased at the road side of the 19th bend.

s the days and years passed, travellers crossing this route have reported seeing a fairly young man coming on their way to ask for water and other stuff. On realising that the man could be none other than the ghost of the helper, the local villagers have set up a small shrine to appease the spirit of the man. Passerbys often offer mineral water and cigarettes to the shrine to avert the wrath of the ghost or to avert any calamity on the way.

Well, I didn't spot any ghosts out there, the only thing I was worried about was a huge traffic pile up because of errant cagers who don't know how to drive up these mountains and stall their cars, or truckers who spew pure dino oil out of their exhausts heaving their way up these mighty mountains!

Anywho, we managed to reach Nakee La Pass. Actually, its just Nakee La. Because La means Pass in Ladakhi. And the name La-dakh means The Land of Passes!

[Red Liner]

The views from Nakee La was stunning. Finally, after weeks through the scorching summer of India, I was somewhere around the top of the world.

We were running late. The motley group of riders I was with had made an ambitious plan of reaching Leh in a single day - well over 300 kms of high altitude roads, tracks and passes! Our collective brains reached a consensus that it would do us best to stop at Pang, a tiny settlement somewhere half distance for the night, and continue our journey to Leh the next morning.

Looks like a LOT of motorcyclists stop here. Is your sticker on there?

Since I was going to sleep at a pretty high altitude for tonight, I decided to take a diamox pill as insurance for the night. The rest decided they would brave it. Well, I was the only one who got some sleep that night. Everyone else woke up with migraines. I had learnt from prior trips that AMS or altitude mountain sickness is something that has to be taken quite seriously - because once you get it the only way out is to go back down lower so your body acclimatises.

It was time to say goodbye to our kind hosts and hit the road. But first the tab!



We were now inching close to Morey Plains.

More plains, originally called Kiang Chu Thang in the local language, is a plateau on the Leh–Manali Highway. Kiang Chu Thang means a plain where the kiang (Tibetan wild ass) does not find water. It occupies 40 km of the highway between Leh and Pang. The plateau has an average elevation of 4,800 metres. The road is flanked by beautiful mountains on both sides. At some places, it runs along the Sumkhel Lungpa River, featuring stunning sand and rock natural formations.

And disaster struck.

[Red Liner]

The morey plains can be very deceiving. Long endless stretches of tarmac flanked by seas of high altitude sand that is more akin to fesh fesh. The guy ahead of our little group lost concentration and veered his royal enfield off the road and took quite the tumble. Watching the whole thing happen right in front of me was quite disarming.

Luckily other than the front fender clamping down on the wheel, nothing else was amiss. So out came my trail tools to help mend things.

After a bit of banging the fender and all our heads, things seemed fine.

Banging the Fender


And our heads


We were off riding again, and this time everyone was a trifle more cautious.

Somewhere along the way, we met with another bunch of motorcyclists who were just wrapping up Shinku La Pass and were on the same stretch of tarmac back to Leh. This is the first gen 390 Duke with a Yamaha 450 kit - suspension, brakes. English guy, sticks this bike back in Delhi and returns every summer for a ride out into the himalayas.

Sibling bovines - cute and very cuddly.

We were within striking distance of Leh now.

[Red Liner]

We had crossed over Tanglang La earlier that day. That was our last pass on this particular journey.

Taglang La or Tanglang La, elevation 5,328 metres (17,480 ft), is a high altitude mountain pass in the Indian union territory of Ladakh. As of September 2018, the Leh–Manali Highway leading south from Upshi to Tanglang La is paved, with the exception of a very short (approximately 500 m) unpaved section just north of the pass. The pass itself is paved. On ascending the pass from the Moore plains the road is well paved with occasional streams crossing.

Ladakh is beautiful mountain country. Where else do you see colours of these sorts blending into each other?

Finally with the blessings of the gods, I had made the tumultuous journey from down south of the equator to well over the top of the world.

It was time to give the lid a rest and take a walk through the main Leh market.

One day, when the planets and stars align just about right above Earth, you were born. You weren't in control of the circumstances in which you arrived onto this planet. And nor were you able to determine much about the environment you grew up in until you tended to begin making your own decisions. You asked to be fed by crying out loud, and for some of you lucky ones, food was on the table. If you had to pee, you were probably taken to the washroom and had your diapers changed. School was good, and birthday parties were the norm for most years of your early life.

But most people in this world don't have it this lucky. What you may have considered the norm is actually a very lucky streak that only a whisker of our planet's population get to experience. So why not get off your couch and travel? And I mean really travel. You don't have to travel to third world countries to experience poverty and how people of all denominations deal with it every day and still get to smile. Maybe just get around to parts of the state or country you live in and actually live around with people who have always had it tough but yet share what little they have. Spend less money on those toys and gadgets or the next big motorcycle and more on getting to places and meeting people.

Because before you know it, father time has sped by, and the grim reaper comes calling. And when you are lying down counting your last few breaths, what would you rather remember? All the things you bought, the money in the bank stashed away, the expensive motorcycles you rode around in, and the many girl friends you entertained?

Or how many people you may have touched, ever so small, ever so lightly - but a touch is a touch, and if that brought a smile on someone's rough day, isn't that worth all the riches in the world?

If I were to sum this part of the adventure, it would be these two pictures. To truly experience the up's and joys of life, one must traverse the dungeons of ones mind and all the trials and tribulations that come with our intertwined existence.

And I think a true blue motorcycle adventure trip teaches all that life has to offer in one go. So just trust the universe and go will ya?

[Aditya]

Thread moved out from the Assembly Line. Thanks for sharing!

[gyanbaba]

One word - Fantabulous!

Every line was such a pleasure to read.

To truly experience the up's and joys of life, one must traverse the dungeons of ones mind and all the trials and tribulations that come with our intertwined existence.

The conclusion has ignited the fire.

This June, I couldn't go beyond Baralacha La, due to the fuel shortage and mountain sickness with kids.

I am like holding myself till September so that the roads get cleared after the recent rainy havocs in Himachal.

Soon, I will be out in the Himalayas with my Black Night Fury, to experience all that life has to offer in one go.