Re: From scorching heat to freezing cold! A ride of a lifetime! (Nagpur - Leh - Delhi

Yeah man...bring it on !

Re: From scorching heat to freezing cold! A ride of a lifetime! (Nagpur - Leh - Delhi

nicely leh'd ....great pics..

Re: From scorching heat to freezing cold! A ride of a lifetime! (Nagpur - Leh - Delhi

I was glued to this thread since 5 hours. It was amazing so far. Please post the rest of the log also buddy. And congrats for completing this ride of a lifetime.

Re: From scorching heat to freezing cold! A ride of a lifetime! (Nagpur - Leh - Delhi

Sarchu's plans for us:

*sounds of water dropping...it's raining? I thought to myself. Too tired to even open my eyes I dozed off again.
This was probably at some 6:00 - 7:00 AM.
I woke up again later. But this time, to a knocking at the tent door.
It was the tent owner Tansen!

"Neend hui nahi kya? Breakfast nahi karna? Chalo utho utho, bahar aake dekho!"

I could still hear the sounds of water dripping outside. Expecting to see a gloomy weather, rain outside I opened the door.
I was totally shocked to see that it was sunny! I walked a few steps and then realized that it had snowed all night and the snow that had accumulated on the tent tops was now melting in the sun.It was brilliant!

It was exciting to know while we were sleeping unaware, all this was happening around us!.

"Bohot baraf giri raat ko, aapki bikes pe bhi baraf jam gaya tha.....par maine saaf kar diya subah.. "

Tansen told me that it was snowing all night, and our bikes were totally covered with snow. But not to worry, he had rid our bikes of the snow in the morning itself, before we woke up.
Instead of thanking him, I exclaimed "kyu saaf kiya?? mujhe dekhna tha "

Went back inside the tent, kicked Amogh a couple of times to get his a** off the bed and come out ..
It was already around 9:00 AM and we were still tired from the previous days ride.

While Tansen continued his chatter, "aaj subah se koi bhi gaadi nahi aayi hai us taraf se"...pointing towards the road we were to travel.

"Barlachala me baraf padi hai, rasta band hai"We were kinda relieved that we didn't have to ride that day..
The day was pleasant, bright and sunny, with a slight chill in the air.
Had some tea and Parathas for breakfast.
It was almost always windy there...


btw, here's Tansen!



The place where we stayed..




















garam chai!!






ahem...The luxurious facilities..






Decided to try starting the bikes to check whether they were coping well. The R15 started in the 2nd try. While, the apache took around 40 kicks to get it going. Like rider like bike, eh Amogh?? On the previous days ride, I had noticed some weird sounds from the steering column. I thought it was due to the steering center bolt having come loose. So I tightened that, it was a whole half-turn loose! Both of us then did some other tightening here and there ...Even after a good 10 minutes of idling the bikes, the engine and exhaust were still cold to the touch. Not that we were to ride anywhere, so we killed the engines and decided to take a walk around Sarchu.






A huge group of bulleteers, complete with a pilot car heading towards Leh....



Being as remote as a place can be, Sarchu had no cellphone coverage.
On asking around, we came to know that there was an army camp, where they had a satellite phone.
So, to take our chance, we went there.
They allowed us to make phone calls but charged us at the rate of 6rs/min, to which we happily obliged.I called my Dad.

It was a good two days since there was no communication between us and them.

Dad answered the phone, and he immediately said "It's so nice to hear your voice!"

I realized that they would've been worried as they had no news from us for all that time.
He was concerned about the bikes and our health, to which I told him not to worry..

Such moments are really priceless and ones that I can never forget all my life.

Soon enough, the group of riders we had met the previous day joined us. They had halted at an establishment around 60kms short of Sarchu. And had a tough time making the ride from there to Sarchu.
Sneh's bike, the CBR had a flat rear tyre and he had no option but to ride like that for this stretch.
He also fell a couple of times because of the difficulty in handling on the terrain. The Ninja too, Gaurav (the Ninja's rider) complained was not responding well at all.The rest too were totally unwilling to continue riding and decided to load their bikes in a truck and reach Manali.

Amogh and I were slightly disheartened looking and the guys getting their bikes loaded onto the trucks.
But we decided to stay the night and ride the next day to Manali.We did our part in helping the guys to do the loading and saw them off.
The truck driver planned to leave as soon as the roads cleared, which he expected was somewhere around the evening or night.

There were a couple of riders more, stuck in Sarchu along with us...
including the scooter guy Narender, whom we met at Khardungla top.

We told them to let us know before they left in the morning, to which they agreed.We though of taking a nap around 6:00 PM as we were really feeling drowsy. We planned to wake up in an hour or two for dinner and to charge our electronics once Tansen starts the generator at 7:30....

to be continued...........

Met a guy there on his Honda...He was from Sweden!









----consecutive posts auto-merged-----

Hey! yeah, been long since the last update.. Sorry for that! really couldn't find enough time..
btw, do read the update



Thanks man...

Thanks a lot bro

Re: From scorching heat to freezing cold! A ride of a lifetime! (Nagpur - Leh - Delhi

Worth waiting.................. Awesome stuff............. Pics are stunning as usual............

Re: From scorching heat to freezing cold! A ride of a lifetime! (Nagpur - Leh - Delhi

Longest night of my life, leaving Sarchu..leaving a piece of me behind..

I opened my eyes to total darkness....
Thinking it must be around 9:00PM, pushed Amogh multiple times to get him to wake up

"Dude, I'm hungry.."
"Umm....sleep man...."
"Dude, I need to pee, get up"
"it's too cold, I'm not coming out.."
"ah..what time is it anyway? eh?"
"must be around 1 in the morning man.."
whoa whoa whaat!!?&^@!

That said, I started cursing Amogh for not listening to me while I was telling him not to go to sleep at 6:30 in the evening..

*Total darkness then suddenly, we could hear dogs bark just behind our tent, the wind howling, forcing the tarpaulin sheets surrounding our tent to flutter violently.

Me, sitting upright by then staring into the darkness, already spooked heard some scratching right on top of our tent.. Just above where we were sleeping....

"What the f**k was that!!?!!"

By then, though still laying on the bed, Amogh was wide awake..I told him to get the f*** up and find the torch...

It had been long enough since we had gotten the luxury of electrons flowing through the charging circuitry of our otherwise useless electronic devices, so they too were powered off and no more useful than plastic bricks.. Actually bricks would have been more useful..We atleast could toss a brick if we had to, without later cribbing about it

Fumbling through the darkness, came a tiny light from Amogh's trusty old Nokia! It still had some battery left, and the screen light was just enough for him to search for the torch.

Finally, after a few tense minutes Amogh was back on the bed. Now both of us were sitting tight, pointing the torch everywhere!

The used to go away, and come back the moment we slid into the warmth of the razai..

This continued multiple times, with me waking up at every noise and pointing the torch in the direction where I thought the noises were coming from.

This went on for quite some time..Amogh being the lazy a*se he is, was no more spooked by those ungodly sounds and those ungodly hours..
Finally, we got a glimpse of the silly "rat" on top of our tent which was making those sounds...
An occasional loud "hushh.." "pssshhhhh.." would scare it away for sometime..
This kept happening, and at some point I fell asleep again...

Woke up around 8:00 AM or so in the morning...Immediately woke Amogh up and told him that we have to leave..

I went out to the road, just to see that ours were the only two bikes left...
All the other riders had already left!

It was frustrating that although we told them we could leave together, no come took the pain to atleast informing us that they were leaving...

Instead of changing into our riding wear, we chose to keep what was already on and wore our riding gear above it

Although there was still no traffic going the other way, I was keen to take a look at Barlachala, which was the source of the jam..
Tansen too confirmed that the roads were sure to open in a couple of hours max..

So, after a quick, light b'fast, we saddled up and left towards the pass..though, it was not before making a promise to Tansen, which I'm not sure I'll be able to keep, that I would return some day soon and that I would stay at the same place, and that he should not forget us...
He gave me a warm hug before patting me on the shoulder and telling us to have a good journey



222 to Manali!



By 8:50 AM or so, we were on the road and were finally heading towards the world we were more familiar with, towards the world as we know it, finally, after so long, we were heading home...
It was only this day that it struck me that our trip was nearing its end...
It was a mixed feeling..There was still quite some riding to do, still a herculean task reaching Manali..but still I didn't want this to end, though I was now missing home and am sure that they were missing us too...

Back on the road, we were thoroughly enjoying the ride...I was totally looking forward to reaching the top, and seeing the snow that was blocking the road, for myself..

After a small bad patch immediately as you leave Sarchu, the road was good for quite sometime.. Ofcourse, by then our definition of "good" had changed ..

Crossed Bharatpur, a small something in the way :P
The roads were pretty good, we also crossed a few makeshift (?hopfully) bridges..some had huge gaping openings between two metal sheets...
It was fun crossing them..atleast for me.
At one point, Amogh got too worried and stopped..I had already crossed the bridge and so could take a few pics and a video..Luckily there were a few maintenance workers, who helped in placing the sheets properly enough for Amogh to pass..
















Crossed a few people on their bikes and a guy on his cycle , he told us that there was a lot of traffic stuck up on top and that we should head back, or at least stop at a dhaba that was a few clicks ahead...
I was way too excited to see the jam for myself so, we carried on to the top..

look at the snow!






























There was a lot of snow there..It was too bright and too cold..
One could barely keep his eyes open...Thank god for my tinted visor on the LS2..I was saved both from the sunlight and sun-tanning!



One hour at the top, and the altitude got to both of us..We had a nasty argument up there..on some silly issue though..not worth mentioning..
Though soon enough we came back to being the best of buddies, just like nothing had happened...

Bikers coming from Manali:





to be continued.......

Re: From scorching heat to freezing cold! A ride of a lifetime! (Nagpur - Leh - Delhi

Awesome stuff, waiting, waiting for more...

Re: From scorching heat to freezing cold! A ride of a lifetime! (Nagpur - Leh - Delhi

Again you are keeping us waiting I'm awestruck with the amount of snow in the pics

Re: From scorching heat to freezing cold! A ride of a lifetime! (Nagpur - Leh - Delhi

hi
i observed that your shoes are not wet even after crossing nullah with mr narender, can you give suggestions how to keep them dry or what you did. thanks ..

Re: From scorching heat to freezing cold! A ride of a lifetime! (Nagpur - Leh - Delhi

We bought rubber boots in leh, however we never used them. Unless they are soaking wet, your shoes will dry quite quickly. For a water crossing, you can even cover your feet with a plastic bag. We saw riders do all kinds of jugad..

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

Re: From scorching heat to freezing cold! A ride of a lifetime! (Nagpur - Leh - Delhi

Man this wait is killing now.......... Update the rest soon........................

Re: From scorching heat to freezing cold! A ride of a lifetime! (Nagpur - Leh - Delhi

Awesome ride. Indeed.

Re: From scorching heat to freezing cold! A ride of a lifetime! (Nagpur - Leh - Delhi

Had a lot of fun going through the thread. Nice and precise narration. So good, i felt like i was travelling with you guys... How about the rest of the story?

Re: From scorching heat to freezing cold! A ride of a lifetime! (Nagpur - Leh - Delhi

come on mate you have stopped almost near the the end ............

Re: From scorching heat to freezing cold! A ride of a lifetime! (Nagpur - Leh - Delhi

Hey Bro, It seems like you had a hell of a adventure, the thread was really awesome and it was so real that i was enjoying it sitting at my bed. It was really good, the pics were amazzzzzzzzzzzing.

Planning to go there next year around march.

In case any updates or information for me please contact me at [email protected]