Top of the motoring world

[shreeda]

Somewhere in March 2012. The mania has struck me yet again. For past three years I have been suffering from this feeling frequently. I want to ride to the top of the motoring world, Khardung La. Manali-Leh-Srinagar road trip is a dream trip for anyone who loves traveling. For people like us, it's more than just a dream, it's pilgrimage. Of course! Beautiful yet dangerous high mountain passes, high altitude deserts, freezing cold, unpredictable weather, challenging road conditions, water crossings, those riding days when you're not lulled by the air conditioner - everything comes together to make this expedition a holy grail for any biker!


Just like every other year, I approached several people with the idea and everybody had their own reasons to drop out. Some of my friends explained how desperately they wanted to do this, but how their work commitments don't let them to do so. I was almost certain, this time also the plan was going fail. But it wasn't meant to. Finally, I had found a team for myself! Manoj and Avinash were ready to ride. And Bhushan joined at the last moment. It was finally my turn to ride through the high mountains of Himalayas.

Here is a little teaser to what is to come!

[antz.bin]

Triplog Approved

[shreeda]

Packing and sending the bikes

Thanks for the approval antz!

1-June-2012, Friday. I have to go to office, but I have important things to do in the evening. We need to take our bikes and saddlebags along with riding gears to the Nitco office in JC road and send them off to Chandigarh. Since we had done our homework, it should be easy.

There were a few contenders for the courier service. GATI, Nitco, VRL and a few more. Railway was out of question as we were traveling by flight and parcel delivery without passenger is rather unpredictable in terms of timing. Everyone except Nitco quoted expensive charges for no clear reason. We had heard mixed revies about each of them. Yes, GATI will pick your bike up from a wider range of places and pack the bike for you. But that's not really a big thing to do yourself, as we found out later. Though price was a minor constraint, I wanted to try out Nitco just for the heck of it. I just wanted see how good they serve at considerably lesser price.

So, in the evening, as planned we went to Nitco office at 5PM. Manoj had brought 4-5 good cartons for saddlebags and riding gears for 20Rs each. Without delay, we started packing the luggage and got it done quickly. All our riding gears along with fully packed saddle bags went into three boxes comfortably. Then we went near VRL office and found some mazdoor log to pack our bikes(We had already done our homework on how and where to find packing laborers.). We did some bargaining to make them agree upon a sensible pricing. They did their job well and we were ready to send the bike by 8PM or so.

Packing charges - 200 Rs/bike and transportation charges - 2500/bike. The luggage transport cost us an additional 150Rs total. The service quality would be completely revealed only when we get the bikes in Chandigarh on 16-June.

My bike packed up-

[shreeda]

[shreeda]

Day2 - Chandigarh to Manali

Expected difficulty: ***
Experienced difficulty: *****
Distance: 290Km
Riding hours: 10

After the yeserday's disaster, all we could do was to keep our fingers crossed. But we had already experienced the North Indian heat session and knew that our best chances for being comfortable lied in leaving as early as possible. So, the plan was to ride out at 5AM. It took some time to catch the right route out of Chandigarh, but we managed to catch up quickly.

I was already sweating under the helmet. For the first time in my life, I was sweating while riding before sunrise! I opened the visor expecting a cool breeze and what struck me was hot air! Phew! I immediately closed the visor.

Roads and traffic conditions were excellent till Bharathgarh. We were not covering ground as fast as we could have. At least I was being cautious not to rip the hell out of my bike as it was supposed to serve me well for next tough 13 days. Then started the nightmarish truck traffic. This really slowed us down. We had breakfast in a small dhaba in Bilaspur. Paratha and bread toast were just awesome!

Rest of the ride today was freaking hot and mostly monotonous. Overtake one truck with great effort and get behind another. Same story all through till Manali. At the end of the day, I didn't even realize where those 4L of water drank went!

Finally! Weather has eased down now. Nice cool breeze all around.

View from where we stayed in Manali

But I hate the traffic in this town. There is only one pathetic road and hundreds of cars queue up there forever. It's horribly crowded. And I'm being nice here when I say hate and horrible. But hey, that's the only way to get access to the wonderful beauty around NH21 going further up. So, I knew I had to live through this mess. Early morning start planned for tomorrow. Lot of arguments on the timings. I have no problem with either 3AM or 4AM, so I let others decide.

[shreeda]

Expected difficulty: *****
Experienced difficulty: ****
Distance: 240Km
Riding hours: 14


This was always going to be an important day for many reasons. First time riding in the Himalayas, crossing the dreaded Rohtang pass and the mad traffic jams it poses, facing high mountains for the first time and exposing yourself to AMS and so on. Our initial plan was to somehow make it to Jispa. But all of us had one thing in common. We had one simple thing in mind. We wanted to make it to Sarchu, instead of Jispa. If we could push harder and make it to Sarchu, we could save a day which could be used somewhere else. Maybe Srinagar sightseeing.

With so many thoughts and anticipation, we started at 4:15AM. Traffic was present, but not enough to slow the bikers down. We reached the top of Rohtang quite quickly. It can be an overwhelming feeling when you cross a high mountain pass on your own motorcycle. Especially if it's Rohtang La which worries anyone who plans to take NH21 to reach Leh. We clicked some pictures and moved on. There was a bit of slush in some streches on either side of Rohtang, but nothing was too tough to negotiate. We reached Keylong quickly and had breakfast there. Just a teaser picture for you. Want more? Go see for yourself!


Rohtang La at its best


Bike taking a break at Rohtang La


En-route Keylong

There is a small village called Sissu before Keylong. I have never seen a village more beautiful than this one. Heavenly place!


Sissu


Our team at Sissu

The roads after here were just off roads. Seeing the volatile mountains around all I knew was, one should be fairly lucky to get out of that place without any trouble. There are signs of landslides on every meter of the road. We topped up at Tandi. My bike drank 2.6L which summed up to an average of 42Kmpl. Not bad


The famous petrol bunk of Tandi

Tandi to Jispa was also a bit of a pain as the bad roads continued. Lots of loose gravel all though in this strech. But Jispa can make you forget what you had to face so far. It's a very beautiful village in the lap of greater Himalayas.


Jispa


A little photoshoot at Jispa - Me with my ride

It would have been good to spend some time there, but we had other plans in mind. As it was only 12 noon, we decided to move on.

Starting from here, the greater Himalayan territory presents itself. It's an un-explainable feeling when you're riding your own bike along this territory. You can only experience it, not explain it. First representative of the big mountain club, Baralacha La was cakewalk. I couldn't help but appreciate the BRO for keeping the roads on this moutain in such a great shape. It's snow all around the road and it is very cold there. It's definitely not an easy job to maintain roads there. We also met two awesome riders Rajinder and Ashish. Rajinder has ridden to Leh about 7 times and Ashish twice. They have also conquered the mystic Spiti valley.


Baralacha La - Frozen

As we started descending from Bralacha La, it started snowing slightly and we missed out Bhushan behind. After half an hour of anxious wait down the mountain at Bharathpur, he came along with Rajinder and Ashish. Though it was still snowing around Bharathpur, we decided to move on from there and get to Sarchu. Next 25Km ride was fairly easy and we made it to Sarchu safe and sound. First day in the Himalayas couldn't have ended better. To top it all, we got awesome dinner with Roti, bhindi fry, dal and chawal at Dorjee camps

Finally, some shots from Sarchu!







Dorjee camps.

[Nagesh Patankar]

Brilliant pics and a nice TLog Shreeda!
Bring it on...

[itsmevini123]

Very good pics, keep them coming....

[NiXTriX]

Great pics man.. Looking forward to the rest.
Don't you have the Duke as well?

Any reason why you didn't take the Duke?

[mansuryayas]

Lovely pics guys, really enjoyed it, waiting eagerly for the entire triplog to come up

[shreeda]

Brilliant pics and a nice TLog Shreeda!
Bring it on...

Thanks a lot Nagesh. More of this coming soon

Very good pics, keep them coming....

Thank you

Great pics man.. Looking forward to the rest.
Don't you have the Duke as well?

Any reason why you didn't take the Duke?

Thanks man.

Yeah, I do have Duke and I had covered over 5000Km even before I left for Ladakh. Two reasons why I didn't take duke. One, I didn't trust any of the transportation means with my brand new bike. Two, the need to carry extra fuel. Apart from these two, I had absolutely no other reason not to take her

Lovely pics guys, really enjoyed it, waiting eagerly for the entire triplog to come up

Thanks a lot. Rest of the log will come in steps. And, so will the details of planning etc.

[shreeda]

[Shivanshu]

good one brother, keep them coming

[shelton_jh]

Nice write up and brilliant pics especially the first one, loved it ! Waiting for the rest

[ridermax]

Wow !! Stunning pictures there. Glad you could make this amazing ride !

Ride On & Ride Safe