Day 15: Back to the plain land.

From today onwards we started the return trip, most of which was uneventful and without photo breaks, so the log is going to be shorter and more boring than the previous days. The plan for today was to pick up some apple products from shimla, and then head to chandigarh to get the bikes serviced before the long run to mumbai. We had called up the chandigarh service center and they remembered us as the 2 guys who rode all the way from mumbai. They said their manager was asking about us, and they told us that we can drop by anytime to get the bikes serviced. It was really nice to get that kind of hospitality from them. We started from narkanda at 9am, and rode on towards shimla. This patch was pretty good during the start of our trip, but it had degraded a lot now, probably because of the rain. We also got some spells of heavy rain and light drizzles on this route. On inquiry we were told that there are shops selling apple products even after shimla, so we skipped the city and took the bypass road.

There was a huge apple market on the way, so we stopped to ask the price of the apples. They were selling them at 800rs for 20kg, which was dirt cheap compared to the prices in mumbai, but sending them to mumbai would have been too costly, so we didn't get any. As we moved ahead, i lost Om and realized that i had accidentally entered solan city instead of taking the bypass. We co-ordinated on phone and decided to meet outside the city. I found him waiting at another store selling apple products. We brought a lot of stuff from here, including apple wine, apple jam, and apple juice. All of that stuff was dumped into my empty saddle bags making them really heavy. It felt almost as if i was also riding with a pillion. I had to constantly keep adjusting the bags, since it was getting too close to the silencer with all that added weight. Luckily chandigarh was less than 100km ahead, so the invoncience wouldn't last long.

The road from here to chandigarh had a lot of tourist traffic and progress was slow. Somewhere in this traffic while i was waiting behind a car, one idiot on a CT100, while cutting through traffic lost control his bike on the slope and hit my bike from behind. I couldn't hold the weight of the bike so i had to let it fall. There were no damages to the bike or myself, but i was more worried about the glass bottles in the saddle bags. The other guy had skidded off the road and he fell of the bike. I tried lifting my bike, but it was too heavy. The people around also stopped to help and it took 3 of them to lift it. I inspected the bike once again and left that spot after giving the other guy a piece of my mind.

I reached chandigarh at around 5pm, and rode straight to the service center. They said that the mechanics had left, and requested us to come early morning. We asked them if there was a good place to stay nearby, and they suggested that we stay at himachal bhawan. They were courteous enough to even accompany us to the hotel, since the road was a little confusing. This level of customer service is very hard to find in mumbai, and we really appreciated their help.





We got 2 AC rooms at 800 per head, which was reasonable compared to the rate the other hotels in the area were demanding. The rooms were huge and very clean. After freshening up in the room, we ordered for tea and a lot of snacks since we had skipped lunch. Later that evening we rode to a mall in the city where we spent the rest of the evening. Anahita and Om played a few games, and we had our dinner there as well. We then returned back to the hotel at around 11pm and called it a night.

Distance covered - 208km

Day 16: Leisure walk in the park

Day 17 & 18 just a race back home. I did took some snapshots but nothing worth uploading.

Day 17

Day 18

We had to get the bikes serviced today, and since the service center opened at 9, there was no need to wake up early. We took our own sweet time to get ready, ordered breakfast, and reached the service center just as it opened. As promissed, our bikes were taken in first so that we could leave early. They told us the bikes would be ready by 12pm, so we had a couple of hours to kill. We got in a rick and headed to rock garden. The place was huge with different rock sculptures. I wasn't carrying the SLR since it was raining, so i had to use my waterproof phone camera to click pictures here.







































It was 1pm by now, so we went back to the service center. The ninja just needed a coolant top-up, so it was ready after drinking half a can of coolant, but my bike was still being worked on. I had asked them to replace the chain-sprocket set since it was worn out and it wouldn't have made it back to mumbai. I also got the carburetor tuned since it was giving me a mileage of 28 after the mumbai service center meddled with it. The bikes were ready by 2pm and we started our return ride. We rode for an hour and took a lunch break somewhere on the highway.



Lunch was done by 4pm, and we continued riding towards jaipur. We took a tea break at panipat at the same place we stopped on day 3 of the trip and then continued towards delhi. We reached delhi by late evening, and luckily there was no traffic. Delhi was crossed within an hour, and we took the next break at manesar mcdonalds for dinner. It was 8:30pm by the time we left mcdonalds, so we rode pretty much non stop from here onwards. Our plan was to ride as much as possible till 11pm and then stop at the next lodge. By 11pm, we reached a place that was 80km before Jaipur, and there was a decent place to stay, so that's where we crashed for the night. After getting the bike tuned, i got a mileage of 35+ on this road. The chandigarh service center did a really good job, and I highly recommend getting the bikes checked there before starting any trip up north.

Distance covered - 400km

Day 17

Nothing eventful happened over the next 2 days, so i am going to keep this log short. We started very early in the morning, at around 6am, since we had a lot of distance to cover today. We had our breakfast at a food court at the HP pump on the way.



After breakfast, we rode for a couple of hours and reached the jaipur-ajmer express way. There was one scary incident on this express way. I was riding at around 120 on the right most lane next to the divider, when out of nowhere a cow jumped across the divider and right in front of my bike. I managed to brake hard and swerve to avoid the cow and luckily i was saved, but after that incident i stuck to the center lane. The problem with the roads here is that the dividers have a lot of grass growing on them, and the villagers let their cattle graze there. There were many other cattle related incidents on this road. I even seen a few dead cows lying on the road side after being hit by trucks. I slowed down a bit after this incident and continued towards ajmer. We took a 30 minute at a CCD outlet near ajmer to let the bikes cool down. After covering some more distance, we stopped for lunch at another petrol pump near rajasthan. The food there was surprisingly good. veg, but good.

From here we rode towards udaipur. There were 5-6 friends of ours who were on a ride from mumbai to udaipur, so we caught up with them in the evening and had a cup of tea while exchanging stories. Some of them were supposed to ride back with us, but they changed their mind and stayed there overnight. It was almost 7pm now, and we could see some really dark clouds in the sky, so we continued riding before the weather got worse. As soon as we left, it started to pour. The headlights were useless on the wet roads, and the rain was making it difficult to see, so i slowed down to 60. Om somehow managed to keep up a decent pace, so i blindly followed his taillight all the way to gujrat. We reached himatnagar at 11 in the night, drenched to the bone. There were a bunch of hotels by the highway, so we stayed in one of them. The first thing i did was have a shower and change into dry clothes. We then gathered in our room and ordered for dinner before calling it a night.

Distance covered - 783km

Day 18

We wanted to reach home as early as possible, so we woke up at 5 and started riding by 6. It had been raining all night, and it was still raining when we left. The hotel guy was concerned and asked us for our phone numbers just to check if we make it safely. We rode all the way upto anand and took a breakfast break there. From there we rode nonstop upto surat, where we stopped for coldrinks. The next run took us all the way upto vapi where we stopped for a late lunch at mcdonalds. Our first meal of the trip was at vapi mcdonalds, and so was the last. From here we rode all the way upto manor. Wwe were making good progress, but then we got caught in this really bad traffic jam. The traffic lasted for atleast 5km, and it wasn't moving an inch. Being on bikes, we could make our way through and within an hour we cleared the jam. The reason for the traffic was a bottleneck where 6 lanes of highway converged into 1 at an intersection, and there was a cop who was stopping traffic every now and then to let the locals cross that intersection. Once we cleared this patch, progress was quick again. We took our last break near fountain hotel, where we exchanged luggage. My saddle bags were empty again, and Om and Anahita had to ride back with 4 bags on their bike. By 6pm, i reached home. It felt good being home after spending 18 days on the road.

Distance covered - 600km
Total trip distance ~ 5000km


This was my first trip to the himalayas, and it was everything i dreamed it to be. Getting out of the hustle and bustle of the city and being on the road in a place so beautiful really puts your mind at ease. There were days on the trip where I had forgotten what day or date it was. We didn't even have to check our watch since there was no hurry at all. The best part of the trip was when we had no cellphone network for 4 consecutive days. Being in the himalayas really does bring you peace from within. It teaches you to look past the things that bother you, and focus on the good side of things. I would say that it definitely changes the way you look at things, and i will try my best to go there once every year.

Om, Angelo and Anahita, great roadtrip there... Kudos to you guys... lovely pictures and write-up.

Re: SPITI Valley - 3 years dream finally comes TRUE : Rivers - Valleys & The GREEN

"international beggar" ha ha! never knew hw they looked before I saw the pic!! LoL

MODERATOR NOTICE:Avoid quoting long posts completely to reply with a one-liner. It causes problems for fellow xBHPians online from mobile devices.

Re: SPITI Valley - 3 years dream finally comes TRUE : Rivers - Valleys & The GREEN

@omvaikul & @angelo_co : am wondering how i ever missed this log till date...

imagine my shock further since i'd done mumbai spiti last year in a tata sumo and you guys [and one lady] did it on 2-wheels!!! OMFG! that too a N250!!! DaFAKKK man!

i myself was stuck in the manali rohtang slush & actually damaged my oil-filter over a camouflaged boulder inside the slush.

had to park the sumo, take help of a local trucker, come all the way back to manali, buy a new oil filter & an oil mini-barrel & go back up to the vehicle - replace it & head on.

since i am partially deaf & have to use hearing aids, i had extreme bout of high altitude sickness once i crossed the kunzum la. hence, on way back i took the relatively safer kaza, tabo, kalpa, shimla, chandigarh, mumbai route.

i dared not take the kaza - rohtang - manali route as every bone in my spine & butt was aching due to the perpetual river-bed driving and also due to the fact that it had rained bl00dy hell in & around manali & the rohtang pass itself was choc-a-blocked for 3 days.

during my drive, i was feeling so frigging proud of achieving something, only to be humbled to the core, when i saw several foreigners peddling their way on their MTB's on that very same track - i was flabbergasted! [our very own @The Monk a.k.a. avinash has been another insane 0bhp biker in the himalayas... weird & inhuman folks these! ]

ever since i've always wanted to do this route on a motorcycle!

if ever u or any of ur friends plan to do a repeat trip, pls count me in - riding to spiti & to tawang are 2 of the several things i want to do, before i go...

Re: SPITI Valley - 3 years dream finally comes TRUE : Rivers - Valleys & The GREEN

Sirjee the peddling foreigners should not have left you flabbergasted. Those guys were probably Israelis selling ganja.

The Pedaling foreigners on the other hand were probably European and might well have left you flabbergasted.

Sorry, but couldn't resist

And thanks for calling me weird and inhuman. Again

Re: SPITI Valley - 3 years dream finally comes TRUE : Rivers - Valleys & The GREEN

ha ha ha [MENTION=38603]The Monk[/MENTION] , as u know by now, a lil typo goes a long way
btw, be it peddling or pedaling, honestly didnt know that israelis were pro's @ this fine art, even @ that high altitudes too!
as for calling u inhuman... oh well.., this is not the 1st time i've done so nor am i the only one who has referred u in this ornamental metaphor... i just call a spade, a spade

Re: SPITI Valley - 3 years dream finally comes TRUE : Rivers - Valleys & The GREEN

What can I say, there are some travelogues that make you fly and this is definitely one of those. Absolutely a bliss to see the photos and the travelogue.

Cheers!
VJ

Re: SPITI Valley - 3 years dream finally comes TRUE : Rivers - Valleys & The GREEN

Nice pics and great write up......