Real amazing ride, beautifully narrated and stunning, stunning pictures.

Way to go guys !!

Thanks buddy :-)

awesome ride guys

awesome ride guys, keep it up. By the way was Manish Negi (Fauji) from TAPS
(Dhaula Khan) by any chance - name is quite familiar

.... and very common too. Nope he is a product of KV FRI or Indian Oil-Dehradun

Best travelogue

Hey Dude .... awesome pics man ...... i have read a lot of logs, but have never read a log so composed .
I really loved reading through it.
I was supposed to go there the same time when u had gone, but one of my friend had to cancel the trip because of some unforeseen reason, so the trip got canceled.
we have decided to do the trip next year for sure......

Man i have to say .... the pic in your teaser post ( in the hills with all the snow around and a single bike with the headlights on) was the best among the all...... loved that pic ...

Day 9: Leaving Kashmir and a bit more..

dhadaam.. dhoodum.. dhadaaamm...

The truckers were done with Sonamarg i guess. We were not in much of a hurry. The luxury of a carpeted room and its Akai LCD TV(yes! its still alive) with Katrina swaying to Dhunki laage early in the morning was temptation enough to take it easy. The plan was to go beyond Jammu and possibly Samba so that we could have it easy on Day 10. This meant no sumptuous breakfast. Just a few biscuits and the hope of having a hearty one in Srinagar. The hotel boys were all smiley smiley and extra helpful. Okay! a fat tip was in order. Checked the bikes. The zma was losing it, literally. The fairing was a bit loose and it was giving some weird noises. The carb 220 needed a chain spray and my bikes sensors were blinking merrily. A choked air filter and low oil warning. Naah.. just ignore it. Lets do some riding.
So, at eight in the morning, charged up on Parle G, we fired up.







My mileage had dropped considerably on this section and a petrol station was really needed now. Ok. Now check the photo below.



Yep! From afar we mistook the R in Pari.. to be a K. Anyway, filled in a token amount of petrol to keep the bike happy and we zoomed ahead. Our pilot Shubrata was in a hurry as usual. Didn't notice that Negi wasn't in my rear view mirror. Kashmir is what they say it is.. a paradise. I so wished that i could have a little house there by the water front, at the foothills with a little garden, growing all the grass in the world Maybe even invite some of the terrorists over for some delightful wazwaan and hypnotic grass. The world would be such a wonderful place if grass was legal... Ah! my solution to the kashmir problem.

Anyway, beyond ganderbal and a big convoy, Negi was the problem. We were waiting at this signboard which had Delhi written on both the roads. The locals assured us that we were on the right track while we bought three apples for ten rupees. A steal, isn't it. Nowadays, apples are those stickered fruits which you look at with wistful hungry eyes in a super market while the board proudly proclaims.. 240Rs/kg. Negi was still a problem. I was getting a bit jittery. A fauji in kashmir is always on dicey territory. He had had the good sense to wipe out the ARMY sticker on his number plate. We wondered what could be holding him up. As we dug into the juicy apples, Negi came around. He had been stuck behind the convoy. Oh ok! Our Captain Slow had had a problem with the army trucks.

Moving on, we were now in the valley and zipping along some delightful roads.



We had decided to give Dal lake a pass as entering a busy city at ten in the morning wasn't a very good idea. Did i mention that it was hot. I didn't mention that we were over dressed. We stopped at a bakery and made friends with the owner there. The respect for bikers was evident here too. A few mutton patties and some sweet contraptions settled in our stomachs, we moved on and tanked up. The petrol pump boy was excited and so were the other motorists. Three non-bulleteer tourers and all their gear does grab attention. The female in a similar gear with the bright pink helmet grabs some more. Only thing that grabbed my attention was the slightly cheaper petrol.
Apart from a few confusing diversions, the road was good. Anantnag was next on the agenda.

18 years back, papa was posted there and as a Army colonel, he had flushed out some militants there. Today, Anantnag was a changed town. Car showrooms and commercial enterprises dotted the road and we actually got stuck in a traffic jam. Yes, the army presence was omnipotent all along the valley - reassuring or a bit eerie, take your pick. A dhaba stop for some tea and another round of parle Gs done, we moved on towards the Jawahar tunnel and the final/first view of Kashmir.







The titanic viewpoint is not a tourist trap. It is a beautiful view point and a memorial to a brave engineer who was martyred there. The cameras were taken out for the final hurrah and the last flurry of pics. We were now moving out of the beautiful part of the journey and onto the mundane ride back home.

Jawahar tunnel had always been a fascination to me. I had been brought up being infrequently reminded of the time when i had cried as a baby, being stuck in a jam at the tunnel. Now that was 25 years back. Jawahar tunnel of today is a modern, safe yet exciting tunnel. For the second time in the journey, i missed the thump of a bullet. Ok, i could have settled for an inline 4 too We made a video of it. No, nothing exciting. Watch it if you have some patience and care for the little shout of delight i made at the end of the video.



Beyond Jawahar tunnel, the roads were uniformly good and the traffic uniformly bad. All the goodwill i had for the truckers in the valley and in Ladakh was now rolling down the ravine. We crossed town after town, hopped from one hill to another, yet--Jammu was far. The hills were unexciting and the muddy water below was no Indus.

Wifey kept herself busy with some random shots



Got stuck in a traffic jam at the base of Patni Top. It was a Sunday and all the junta was out in full force. Negotiating the mad truckers and the lidless bikers, we finally stopped for a break here. Since the Fuji of Fauji and the Nikon of Shubrata was now packed up and decommissioned until further notice, my Canon did the honours.



All the way till Udhampur, we wrestled for our own space on the road. I made two scary mistakes in a space of few kilometers and this really jolted me up. The honeymoon was over. Better to concentrate. Janmashthami celebrations were going on and i did see a few Anna topi clad children dancing away to glory. My idea of Udhampur was stuck in 1996, a fauji cantt with not much else. Today, udhampur was a bustling city with the cantt just being a part of it. We had a sync up and then, i started ripping. I had spent three delightful years in Nagrota as a kid and i was desperate to see it again before the sunset.

Just a few kilometers before Nagrota, i recognized hills which had seemed like massive mountains as a kid. I peeled my eyes to get a glimpse of that bookstore where we made our annual trips to get the freshly printed books with its Gandhi's Talisman imprinted on the first page. I looked out for the dosa shop and Charles, a childhood friend of mine. Even the open air theater in the cantt where i had sipped many a campa cola and munched on yellow and white popcorn with its 4 rupee tag. Alas! it had all changed. Kargil and 1999 hadn't happened then. Beyond the bustle of the market, Nagrota was today a heavily barricaded cantt.



Nostalgia wasn't easy to shake off.Beyond all those barricades, lay some sepia tinted memories of my childhood.

The overhead tank with its Madhumakkhi kaa chhatta and its ghost stories


Ahead of Nagrota and onto the few kilometers of hilly road which led to Jammu, i remembered the many trips we used to make in the Bajaj Chetak. Me standing at front, papa driving gingerly over the curves while mom clutched my sister in her hands. Like all twenty year olds, Jammu had changed. We decided not to venture too far into the city and got down to negotiating with the first hotel in view. A couple of minutes, a few army references and we were heartily welcomed by the owner. Our busy street view rooms were nice to look at. The cherry on the mango shake was the AC. Ah! we switched it on and set the temperature to an optimistic 16 degrees. You see, over the last eight days, we were more acclimatized to the cold than to heat :-)
The hotel had a bar and we were in the mood. A few breezers, some pahaadi chicken and lots of headless and slurry conversations done, we headed back to the rooms. The room was not cold, nah.. it was bloody stuffy and warm.
The sly caretaker assured us that the AC was fine and it would start cooling now. We ordered dinner and waited. And waited... and waited. The bloody AC wasn't impressed. It kept on humming and puffing without even a single degree drop in temperature. Another visit by the very sly caretaker was reassuringly fruitless.
It was now eleven at night and i finally blew a fuse. The hotel owner went around running to find another room while the now very very sly caretaker avoided me and my wrath. Ten minutes later, the brand new LG AC in the seepy and damp corner room did wonders for my blood pressure and the temperature. I settled down into a bacardi sprinkled sleep with no mood to ride tomorrow. Who wanted to go home to the dull plains. I just wanted another ten days of paradise.

Day 10: Back to Base

The hotel guy was apologetic even while handing out the bill. We were unapologetic on not handling out any tips.
Jammu at 8:15 am was a busy city. An auto-rickshaw driver(generally the most reliable sources of info) guided us about the road to take to get out of the city. The karizma was giving trouble again. We looked out for a highway dhaba with a puncture shop. 50 kms down the road, finally got to a dhaba that fit the bill. Ordered some paranthas there. The guy asked.. sirji ek dum mastt desi ghee ke banaa du..
Haan haan.. bilkul -- big mistake.
There was something wrong. Maybe the paranthas were not perfectly round, or the aloo wasn't spread out evenly. I could immediately feel that my stomach wasn't happy with it. Anyways, we moved on.
The road till pathankot had a few diversions here and there to keep us busy. Beyond pathankot, we encountered some awesome roads. But the big problem was the sun. It was beating down on us like crazy. Even a liter of bottled water wasn't of much help. I was struggling now as my lovely cordura jacket was akin to a sauna belt.
It didn't help that we lost sync with Shubrata. At one of the diversions he waited for us while we missed him. A few phonecalls and a sweaty and frustrating wait in the sun later, he was back with us.It was almost one o clock and jallandhar was still 30 km away. My stomach had had enough. The search for the first available petrol pump began. Stopped in the shed, and ran to the petrol pump, paper soap in hand. Yes, it was a weird scene alright. A fully geared up jadoo figure running into the bathroom. The locals had a good laugh and i had a good relief.. finally.
I had lost a lot of water and wasn't physically capable now. Lay down in the shed while wifey gave some ORS (yup -- we were well prepared) This was just what i needed. With renewed vigour, we started up for the final stretch --- only uptil phagwara.
The heat was really getting to us now. Phagwara was a quirky town with very narrow diversions and hundreds of diesel cars of all shapes and sizes. Just by the road were strange theme parks/restaurants which resembled english castles and forts. It is a weird world there. The traffic was really bogging down our spirits. Just by a petrol pump (they should rename it as diesel pump in punjab) was an AC fast food outlet. We crashed in there for a bit of late lunch.
Half an hour after we had finished the dry and stale sandwiches, we still refused to move. Felt like taking a night halt at Ludhiana as the heat was really sapping us out.
Shubrata had a flight to catch and he was in no mood to part with the rest of his salary to buy another air ticket. Fair enough! We trooped out and i switched on my mobile and took a pic and shared it on FB. Let my lazy friends "like" the pic while we persevered towards Delhi.
Sirhind has this floating restaurant on a canal which has never appealed to me. Just so touristy. Today, its AC and its chilly blast of air was too much of a temptation. We wasted another hour there and had some chicken sandwiches. A thumbs up for the AC and a big hands down for the sandwich.
Beyond Sirhind, my stomach grumbled again. Damn! one more pump and the "Jadoo" me rushed to the toilet. A common problem we face while stopping at small places is that people think that a roadshow is going on. They surrounded my wife while i relieved myself - basically gawking at her. She shouted and they dispersed, perplexed that why a woman would wear that alien outfit. A police walah nearby apologized and said.. Madam ektually aapne jo kapde pehne hai na.. aisa inhoney kabhi dekhaa hi nahi hai..

Fair enough! We rode ahead and did triple digit speeds to catch up with the other two. Synced near Ambala for the final push to Delhi. Ummm.. actually just the next 50 km. Stopped at this dhaba for some tea and the last pic of the ride.



It was around ten when we reached Murthal Pehelwan dhaba for dinner. The gobhi paranthas were as fresh as ever and the desi makkhan was pure as ever. This is what a parantha should be!
Entered Delhi and were hounded by some flag waving lid less Anna supporters beckoning us to race. Kept my cynicism in check as i had a ride to complete.
As the clock struck twelve (actually when my casio buzzed that it was a new day - but the standard phrase is more dramatic.. isn't it ) , i pressed the lift button. The four of us were tanned, famished and dead tired.
The newspaper was lying about at the door. Some kirana store flyer too. A quick shower and data transfer from the cards to the lappy over, we settled down. Gmail had missed me a lot and i had a hundred new mails. Fb and its notifications had notched up an impressive number too. The phone was brimming over with new messages. We were back in the networked world.

Hey! Thanks!
Do make it next year to Ladakh

Dude,That's one hell of a log...Man, you should try writing a book on our travel... With your narrative style it would me a hot seller...

Thanks buddy
Sure.. as long as it pays well i am willing to chuck my boring IT job

A journey to the heaven thru the hell...
Man amazing pics, and superb narration...

Amazing trip. Love the videos. God knows when I will be able to make my Trip there

Thankyou!

Thanks!
Here are a few more vids which i didn't post correctly earlier.

Rohtang Slush - YouTube

Pushing the bike when it refused to start :-)

Pushing bike in Rohtang Slush - YouTube


Will post some more vids later.

EDIT:

Posting

just completed reading the log. awesome writeup and some very impressive captures bro \m/

Thanks buddy.