Re: Ek couple's Ladakhi adventure. Tadka maarke!

Nice Clicks there Viper1089. Great to know this being done on a Bonneville and also helmets off to Sayali for enduring the complete trip with that hard suspension. Hope the gear lever is fixed now. Gotta ask though, are those Viaterra leh saddlbag's used on your trip?

Re: Ek couple's Ladakhi adventure. Tadka maarke!

Awesome Bro tum to bum ho awesome ride Bro like to join U

Re: Ek couple's Ladakhi adventure. Tadka maarke!

That Bonny is such a beautiful motorcycle. Brilliantly written. Nice pictures there, mate.

Re: Ek couple's Ladakhi adventure. Tadka maarke!

Day 15: Leh- Sonmarg
Hotel Sonmarg Glacier.
Cost: Rs 1800/room+ 600/ lunch + dinner + snacks.
(overall a great hotel to stay)
Distance: 350 kms approx..
While on this route we encountered the famous traffic jam at Zojila. A 4 hour halt due to 200 army trucks- convoy passing.


We visited the Kargil war memorial while returning:


Feel proud of our national flag:


The tiger hill hidden amongst the trees and the road:

An incident happened which could have been something or could have been nothing.
The moment we passed Kargil a group of three riders with pillions and one with three people overtook us just before Zojila.
In the next half hour we realized they were stopping at some intervals and the moment they would see us in the distance they would immediately start riding ahead of us. This happened three times and we felt a bit suspicious of the group. Since next up was Zojila which had numerous lonely patches we decided it would be better if we were accompanied by someone.

We saw a Scorpio coming up from behind. We asked them to stop and explained our situation to them. They were a very helpful group of 5 from Punjab who were going towards Batal lake. They asked us to ride in front of their car and said not to worry as they would be with us till we reached a populated are/road. A few kms ahead we came across the same group again who were waiting around a corner. This time even the guys accompanying us felt that their behaviour was suspicious. The rider group again overtook us and the car and then we never saw them again. At a check point just before Zojila the army officer told us that Zojila was in a traffic jam and that we should go “araamse”.

After a 4 hour long halt due to traffic jam we bid adieu to the wonderful group who had made us feel safe and thanked them.
They took a left towards Batal while we continued towards Soinamarg. The route till Sonamarg was full of traffic and very busy.
We reached Hotel Sonamarg at around 4 pm.


Day 16:
Route planned: Sonamarg-Srinagar-PatniTop
Distance : 280 kms approx.
Hotel Subhash palace : Cost Rs 1900/day + Rs 600 (lunch Dinner and snacks)
(next to Hotel patniTop)
The ride was pretty easy we thought. But to our bad luck Srinagar had evidenced some serious riots just a couple of days back in protest of the Palestine-Israel issue and the roads had been closed and cordoned off.
This meant we had to take a lot of diversions and spent almost an hour roaming through the city asking directions to reach the highway. Finally once on the highway it was a relief and a straight road to PatniTop.

We reached Patnitop and this time stayed at the hotel I had mentioned earlier.
A group of 20 Foreigners on bullets had also arrived that day at the same hotel.


Day 17:
PatniTop-jammu-pathankot-Ambala
Distance; 460 kms approx..
Hotel Mirchi.
Cost same as mentioned on our way to leh.
Nothing much to write on here as this was the same route that we had taken while going towards Leh.



Day 18: Ambala-Jaipur
This time we decided not to take the off the highway route and decided to go thorugh Delhi.
This was a more disastrous decision we ever took.
The traffic jams of Delhi were horrendous. We had just encountered heavy spells of rain near Ambala and were completely geared for rain while in Delhi it was super-hot. We did not get a chance to stop on the road and remove our rain proof liners. At one point of time I started feeling dizzy and completely dehydrated while riding through the Delhi traffic at 20 kmph for an hour at least. Once we reached somewhere near Gurgaon we stopped, removed the liners had lunch, water and only after that felt a bit ok to ride on.
We took the same route and reached Hotel Highway King at Jaipur.




Day 19:
Hotel Highway king, Jaipur to Hotel sarvottam, Halol, Gujarat.
Distance 700 kms approx.



Day 20: Hotel Sarvottam , Gujarat to Pune (HOME)
Distance 590 kms approx..
This was the home stretch. Which we did comfortably as all the routes were already known to us.
Once home we had ridden 6500 kms total on the Pune-Leh-Pune ride.




A photo I took once we reached home safely.


A Closing Note:
The initial cost that the tour operator had quoted for a couple of 1.5 Lakhs for 7 days turned out to be a ride with a total cost of 66000/- with 20 days of adventure and an experience to traverse across half of the country.
It’s an out of the world experience to share an adventure with your life partner. We felt extremely happy that we decided to go on this adventure ride and we would surely cherish it all our life.
And this trip would not have been possible without our wonderful bike the Triumph Bonneville.


Hope you all enjoyed the log and that it would in some little way help you to do a similar kind of an adventure on your motorcycle.
Cheers.

Re: Ek couple's Ladakhi adventure. Tadka maarke!

Great tour man! Touring with better half is an experience itself, which begs to repeat itself. It's like falling in love again and again with the same person after every such trip. Also, you have really put the bike to its expected use

Did you go to see the glaciers at sonamarg? The Hotel Sonmarg Glacier, is it on the left hand side of the road from Zozilla to Srinagar? I think I stayed there too

EDIT: Corrected. I stayed at Hotel Glacier heights. Sorry got confused by the 'Glacier' in the name.

You have held back a number of pictures it seems Beautiful captures btw.

Re: Ek couple's Ladakhi adventure. Tadka maarke!

How did you manage to pack so lightly for a couple on such a long journey?
How much did the luggage's weight play in handling while offroading or on slush?

Re: Ek couple's Ladakhi adventure. Tadka maarke!

Putting it to test was one of my intentions. Had heard a lot about the sturdiness of a Bonneville on various forums. I am happy I got to experience it too. The bike performed flawless even with all the different quality of petrol from 6 states used.
The total number of pictures is just too much to upload. I think there must be more than a 1200 photos in all. Had to choose the best of them to post on the log.

We had quite a bit of luggage if you see. A saddle bag, tank bag, a tail bag and a backpack carried by the pillion. We packed sets of clothes for 5 days in all. We used one side of the saddlebag for each one of us. All other anciliary things went into the tank bag and the tail bag mounted on the luggage carrier. things like documents, food, caemra went into tank bag or the backpack. It was a difficult task getting all in but in the end it worked out very well.
As for the handling of the bike it didn't make any difference. I had the luggage balanced and so it handled really well. On extreme bad roads we were carrying only half empty saddlebags so it was not that difficult. The Metzeler tyres performed really great on wet and dry conditions.

Re: Ek couple's Ladakhi adventure. Tadka maarke!

Wonderful narration and pictures. Simply amazing!

Re: Ek couple's Ladakhi adventure. Tadka maarke!

What an amazing tour, one of those rare times I enjoy a write up as much as or even more than the photographhs. What an awesome couple. Keep riding, have fun..

And got a list of places to stay when I finally go on my Leh tour..

Re: Ek couple's Ladakhi adventure. Tadka maarke!

Brilliant Stuff kudos to the both of you for completing the ride. Awesome Pics to compliment.

Re: Ek couple's Ladakhi adventure. Tadka maarke!

Thanks. Its great to see everyone liked the log.

Re: Ek couple's Ladakhi adventure. Tadka maarke!

Fantastic travelogue - one of those rare 'daymaker' sorts. Epic and congrats on pulling off this enduring ride.
Inspiring mate.

Re: Ek couple's Ladakhi adventure. Tadka maarke!

Undoubtedly ultimate travelouge.. Well narrated and full of thrill.. Once started I could not stop until I finished reading it.. Hats off to both of you..
And it goes without saying "its extremely motivating for the newbies into Bike Riding like me.. :-) "

Re: Ek couple's Ladakhi adventure. Tadka maarke!

I have no words to describe my appreciation . I was in college in 1984 when i dreamt of travelling on my RD 350 to Ladakh You lived thro my dreams ! Awesome , congrats to you both especially to your wife as it is much harder being a pillion.

Re: Ek couple's Ladakhi adventure. Tadka maarke!


Thanks! True it is a dream ride and I am lucky to have done it.