27th October 2009, 21:34
| #76 | |
| Senior - BHPian  | Quote:
 , in his next trip | |
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27th October 2009, 22:02
| #77 | ||||
| BHPian  | Quote:
The reckong peo guy did not have oil filter, so I had to keep the old one. Quote:
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28th October 2009, 00:31
| #78 |
| Team-BHP Support   | |
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28th October 2009, 01:50
| #79 | |
| BHPian | Quote:
Must be that then. Even the cab guys there was surprised that the car didn't start easily. I've my service due up ahead. Will get the glow plug and the whole starting system checked thoroughly. True enough - 5 degree is not really that cold for the car to start easily. More so when the glow plug gave it about 30 seconds before the first crank (30 secs will still be lesser than what you in total gave it in 3/4 switch on cycles - right?). | |
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28th October 2009, 07:49
| #80 |
| Distinguished - BHPian   Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Gurgaon
Posts: 3,838
Thanked: 3,179 Times
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28th October 2009, 10:22
| #81 |
| Team-BHP Support | |
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28th October 2009, 10:55
| #82 |
| BHPian | Day 8 Part 1 The morning was cold, real cold.  Somehow, I managed to come outside to check if the car would start. The car roof and windshield had dollops of snow deposited on them. Time for hot water treatment, but all hotel staff are fast asleep.  The engine cranks effortlessly. So much difference just by changing engine oil! Ladies somehow fetched a bucket of hot water. The windshield is cleared of the ice and we hit the road.  Plan was to move ahead a little and have breakfast somewhere down the road. Waiting for hotel staff to oblige would have caused much delay. The cloud lifts in a little while, but it's still very cold.  Our first stop was near a waterfall.  It was large and it roared. Sprinkles of water coming upon the road were like ice cold knife.  The water was white, plain milky white.   Some photos,  and videos later, we marched ahead.  Road condition slowly deteriorated and habitation vanished faster. Our breakfast plan was getting in serious trouble, people started to get hungrier by the passing mile. We came across a small village, Akpa. Of course nothing was there for food, but a nice dirt trail led down to the river on our right. We decided that to be our maggi spot.  It took us a good one hour to cook the so called 2-minutes stuff and hence negating all the headway we achieved by skipping breakfast at hotel.  But, it was great fun nonetheless. Roaring river, rocky river bed, snow capped mountains and hot maggi with tea. During cooking, this little gentleman gave us a walk by. We asked him if he wanted some maggi. Guess what?! He refuses!  After tea and breakfast, we start back. My right fog light gets a crack from a jumpy stone chip.  Our little guy surfaces back. He is quite interested in our car.  He looks at it from various angles. After Sonalika Rhino, anyone could be spy!  Back home, I can't even open my eyes without tea, and here I had to mountain drive 2 hours! After tea and breakfast, I felt quite energized. We have had lost quite a lot of time on breakfast, so I decided to speed up. Only to be slowed down.  We got halted at 3/4 such "Men at Work" situations till the Janghi checkpost. Here one needs to enter the details of the car and driver. The cops posted there watch too much TV. They examined the papers and came to know that the car belonged to my wife, and I am the driver. One had to see the winks they exchanged! I felt they evaluated the rich gal running away with driver scenario. Done with the cops, we headed towards Ropa Valley. We crossed Spello in a little while.  The scenery morphed slowly in to more of yellow and shades of brown as we reached the turn off to Ropa Valley.  Given the descriptions on T-Bhp and local information, it was easy to identify. Ropa village is about 12 odd kilometres from the turn off at NH22. The road is narrow and rocky but not too bad.  Some 2/2.5 kilometers inside the valley, one reaches the Ropa gate.  Actually there is no such name, but since the "Checking out of Ropa Valley" snap at Team Bhp, I mentally named it so. And made up my mind to get my Safari snapped here too.  Some unknown river (Not marked in HPTDC maps) flows down below.  Inside Ropa Valley, it’s purely apple country. Every 5 kilometers, a road will go down to the river bank and there would be numerous apple gardens and a small village.  In this otherwise barren valley, one can spot greenery only near the river. And when there is greenery, there are apples.  The road ends at Ropa village beyond which it’s a purely trekking route.  Seeing so many orchards for last half an, ladies want to steal again.  But, so far we found no un attended orchard to steal from. Finally at Ropa, my wife asked one apple guy his permission to pluck a few. They readily and happily agreed and this is what we did –  The apple guys watched us in amusement as we behaved like kids in wonderland.  I for one, don't at all like apples. But, here I plucked and ate them like they were mangoes (which I like, FYI). So much nature can do to you and packing boxes can't. They also gave us 15-20 ripe juicy apples. These were of good taste as opposed to the kuccha ones we plucked and ate. Mom got hell bent in buying a crate from them, it was just "Rs. 20/- a killowow!" But we managed the situation by parallely citing lack of space in the car and furiously winking at the apple guys. She complained for next 50 kilometres about the utter uselessness of such a large car when one cannot carry one apple crate in it. |
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28th October 2009, 10:59
| #83 | ||
| BHPian | Quote:
Let me check it up and post in the evening. Quote:
Hmmm... looks like glow plug was the villain indeed. In light of subsequent starting performance, engine oil could be it too! | ||
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28th October 2009, 11:04
| #84 | |
| Senior - BHPian | Quote:
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28th October 2009, 11:24
| #85 | |
| Senior - BHPian  | Quote:
Ropa valley has this great contrast - Those green-yellow valley colour within the barren brownish earth surroundings. Last edited by adc : 28th October 2009 at 11:27. | |
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28th October 2009, 11:28
| #86 |
| BHPian Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: Kottayam
Posts: 588
Thanked: 8 Times
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28th October 2009, 11:52
| #87 | |||
| BHPian | Quote:
Thanks man.  Quote:
And, snaps tell, I was not let down! Especially, your "Checking out of Ropa" was a must for me. Quote:
You know.. Rs. 450/- for a Pizza or for 450 rasgullas! You can never convince them. | |||
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28th October 2009, 13:36
| #88 |
| BHPian | Day 8 Part 2 We are all energetic after eating some real nice apples and dodging the crate. My wife tries to hike this little stream by the orchard. By now she got much better at these and the sheer fun of watching her struggling on rocks had significantly reduced.  After she's done, we start back from Ropa.  We cross all the apply villages on the way back. My mom longingly looks at them, and grumpily looks at us.  Soon we are back on NH22. Yes, look hard, there's a road kinds thing on the left.  The road leaves us speechless for long.  We push a little more and started to look for lunch, we surely were not going to eat maggi for next 100 years to come. We have had enough of it.! We cross Pooh in a while.  We checked out at a place after pooh. They could cook dal chawal for us. Gleefully, we ask them to get started. In between the conversation, they ask me where was I headed. I say Tabo! They calmly inform me that Malling was CLOSED. It was like a lightning strike for me. What were we gonna do then? They said it was closed for last two days and is expected to clear up by today evening. They also asked me not waste anytime en-route and rush, as the place has tendencies of getting shooting stones from above after vehicles start running. So I’d better not attempt it post sundown. Lunch order cancelled, we rushed to malling. The road deteriorates just a little, but the surroundings more than makes up for it. Even with our minds occupied with malling, we can't help but get engrossed.  As we progress to Khab, the road appears to enter a canyon. It becomes kind of dark, and gives a very very sinister feeling. Our minds already tensed, gets affected more.  Soon we reach the Khab Bridge. I always wondered what was the big deal about it, it was just another BRO bridge. Only upon reaching there, I realized what was the deal!  Since a while now, I kept stopping every other oncoming vehicle and asked the nullah status. Many of them came from Nako. They had waited two/ three days for the nullah to open up and now were coming down. We were more and more depressed. Meanwhile road condition also kept us concerned. When it was good, it was really good. And when it was bad, it was crazy.  We started to climb the Kazigs, and the river was left down below.  The view of the loops from near the above is breath taking. From the photo one can hardly understand the sheer steepness and the climb of it.  We spotted the Ka village, it looked nothing more than a few dots on the dotted yellow exapnse.  To reach the Nullah fast, I had really pushed it hard up the Kazigs. Near to the top after crossing Ka Village, I felt a slight dizziness. I guessed it was nothing but a head rush. Still gave myself a 5 minutes break.  The roads right from the Ka village till nako is in splendid condition, but scary nevertheless.  We reached nullah place around 3:30 PM. Oh yeah! It was CLOSED, and for good. Look at the situation here – One would wonder how the JCB got there!  One of the guys there (from the road building agency) came to our car and asked if the car was from Maharastra, as he was. We chatted up a little and got to know that a big rock (bang in the middle) in sitting on the road. Road on both sides of the rock have vanished. They need to clear up the debris on both sides of the rock and then find some method to dislodge it from its king’s throne.  Once the big rock goes, it’d be 2/3 hours job to get the place suitable for movement of smaller vehicles. The area in general looked like this.  We came back to the glass house. It's near where the Army camp of malling is situated, about 1 kilometers from the Danger Zone.  The locals were frequently running across the slide. If anyone reading this has played Prince of Persia – Sands of time or later, would understand the concept of wall run. The running across the slide is just PoP wall run. You start on a ledge, jump on the wall and run! While running your body is almost parallel to the horizontal. You need to jump on to a point which is significantly higher than the other side ledge, else by the time you reach there, your vertical downward movement will take you below the ledge. And you'll die. I don’t know if you could understand this,you would if you’ve played PoP. Else check this out - Everytime someone runs across, the JCB stops. And it takes good ten minutes to get back to the job, and someone else had queued up for running by then. We figured, it was not gonna happen today, so we better go to Nako and find us a place. Meanwhile, tourist cabs were pouring like anything and everyone had similar plans. So we hurried down to Nako to secure a place before Bengali brigade parades in. We stopped at the bus stand. There were two hotels, one on the left and one on the right. Without looking at anything, we took the one at the right. Rs. 450/- per room.  The room was bad, even by our humble standards. The toilet stinked so bad that the owner himself had put agarbattis in his toilet. However, he gave us rice, dal and curry to eat immediately. Basi or whatever, we gulped down like cows. Food was good. After food, when we regained our senses, it was already about 5 o’clock. Sun was still there, but it did not feel like so. Gust of cold wind started and took away whatever body warmth we had acquired during the day. Post sundown, we stuck to the room. Even if one peeks outside the door, his nose would freeze and break off. This was getting to be the coldest weather I had ever experienced in my life. In the evening we sat close to each other. The power went out and it was candle stick time. We enthusiastically lit up five six candles to warm up the room along with lighting it up. I don’t know if the warmth increased or not, but room was surely and quickly filled with carbon monoxide giving everyone a tough time to breathe. So we had to keep the door open for ten minutes for fresh cold venom to enter in. We sat around on the bed and discussed strategies. What if the nullah didn’t open tomorrow? Today it was 9th October, and we must return to Mumbai latest by 16th October. My wife has got a flight to catch on 17th. We will check out the situation tomorrow. Case A :- It would open during the day (10th October). . We wait, cross and reach Kaza the same day (10th October). 11th and 12th we tour Kaza, 13th we reach manali, 14th rest, 15th Jaipur, 16th Mumbai. Case B :- It would take one more day and would open on 11th. We wait and reach Kaza that day, 11th October. 12th and 13th Kaza tour. 14th Manali, 15th jaipur, 16th Mumbai. Case C:- It wouldn’t open for good. We go down to Rampur by 10th night. 11th Manali, 12th Kaza, 13th Kaza, 14th Manali, 15th Jaipur, 16th Mumbai. We also discussed giving it up all together and touring some parts of Rajasthan instead , maybe Udaipur. We also thought of visiting Amritsar. In all that confusion, we ate and went to bed. How do people survive here, and why do people survive here? This is nothing but a barren dessert of cold wind. I can’t much express how we passed the night. I must have woken up a hundred times and tried to fetch some warmth out of the stone cold blankets. |
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28th October 2009, 13:41
| #89 |
| Team-BHP Support | |
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28th October 2009, 13:53
| #90 |
| BHPian | Bypass  This is the bypass road. - Green Arrow. The earlier road is situated down below - Red Arrow. The earlier road is completely out now. The bypass road was made to avert landslides!  |
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