^^^ nice pix & wonderful list of things to carry. I totally agree with it. Just would like to alter/add few things.

>> A woolen jacket & gloves can be extremely essential if you going in the early days after opening of passage. If the trip is planned somewhere around May-June-July. It will be die-hard chilled & a winter protection will be highly missed. At certain places, you may be traveling from/staying in the temperature of as less as -10 Degress (e.g. Baralacha La / Chang La). So depending on the month, one is planning to go for the trip can accordingly carry the needed stuff.
>> I dont think even Sleeping Bags will be ever used, but carrying can be useful sometime.
>> A Medical First Aid kit is damn important.
>> Knee pad is also really important. As the roads are highly risky, full of mud, slush, sand, etc. Even we had our shares of minor skids/falls, first thing we fall on is your Palm & Knee. So a Knee pad could be as important as Protective Gloves.

Thanks for your addition buddy !
We missed the First Aid Kit in the list.

we had a plan to carry sleeping bag and tent. But we dropped it at the last moment as this route is not that virgin any more. But if one has planned to try some other route than the normal one, then these may come handy.

Although we were carrying knee pads, we rarely used it. I would suggest to buy a proper branded knee pad from any reputed company. It will cost a bit but will be very useful. We tried to do some cost cutting here and bought a local made Knee pad, which was great to look at, but damn uncomfortable. As a result after first two hours on first day ride, we put them back in the saddle bag and never took them out again.

For gloves, we also improvised a bit. We used inner gloves (used for wicket-keeping in cricket) inside the actual riding gloves to protect our fingers from chilling cold wind. And that worked beautifully to serve the purpose.

Completely agree with u. we did the trip in August, hence it was comparitively warm. incase one is doing it during the snow season, woollens will be needed for sure.

Thanks for pointing out what i had missed.

We did carry a first aid kit with the following :
1. Savlon
2. Soframycin
3. Crepe bangage
4. surgical gauge
5. lots of bandaid
6. Volini Spray
7. Diamox (for AMS). for people who are allergic to sulphur drugs, please avoid diamox. instead try Ginko-Biloba (i have definitely spelt it worng.. Indra please correct me)

Protective gear is must. you dont want to spoil the trip owing to a bruised palm due to a fall (highly common). So gloves, knee pads are very important. if you are not using riding kneepads, do get the sports ones. should save you from the minor scratches and bruises.

Helmets : i would personally advise a good quality full face helmet. protects you from the elements as well as the nasty falls. Please excuse the style icons which claim to be helmets.

IDs : Do carry proper identification documents like passport / voter i card etc. also carry a document that contains all your personal details like blood group, emergency contact nos, home address etc.

Fill chip in with more once i remember..

@burnoutz, yes man the knee pads where damn useful. Each of us had fall atleast twice due to the bad roads or while riding in sand, not knowing where the depth is how much. Because of the bike being fully loaded, its difficult to balance it once it bends. Though the falls where very minor, but the terrain was bad, fulltoo gravel . Hence our gloves & knee pad saved us from any minor bruises possible. My knee pad had deep scratches as once the road was very bad full of stones & pebbles.. U know what am talking about
@pistonHeadz, thanks buddy. The IDs are very useful. Though in our entire to & fro journey no cops stopped us or asked us for this. But this where useful while taking permissions for places like Pangang Tso.

HOW! trivia - I

Manali Masala

We still can't stop laughing, whenever we remember this incident.
This happened in Manali. It was DAY - 02, started with almost drained battery of P220 and then a tire-some tire repairing session of 1 hour of our own. After all this we managed to reach Manali at around 3pm and was looking for a P220 Battery. After a lil query session with some local people, we got to know where will it be available. The road was miserably narrow and terribly steep with lot of jerks. The first shop we got didn't have the stock. From there we got direction to another shop. The road became narrower and steeper as we continued riding and after some time, as the rode became just un-ridable, it seemed we must be riding in wrong direction. We stopped there to ask some one.

As we saw a boy, around 15-16, coming down, we shouted :"yeha bike ke Battery kaha milega?"
He came down running - "kya bike hay apka? Bullet?"
Me and Ritwik were on Electra and Std and Rahul was on his P220.
The Boy observed the Electra, then Std and then his eyeballs became bigger to see P220.
He was staring at the P220 and his expression was like he is standing before some space-ship.
We thought P220 must be very rare in Manali, that's why he was reacting like this.
Rahul asked again : "yeha bike ke Battery kaha milega?"

The boy gave a blank look to us. And asked Rahul : "yeh vi Bullet hay?"

what?!?! a moment of silence and then for the first time on inauspicious DAY - 02, we just broke out in laughter.

Now that was something !! you should have seen the look on Rahul's face.. confusion, disappointment, despair, amusement all rolled into one !! hahahaaaa.. three cheers to the "Bajaj Bullet" !!

Yes i was like "GOD! who is this idiot !#*$#".....It was raining then and i was frantically looking around for battery which will fit my 220 .No battery means disaster for the trip.At that moment a comment like that was too much to withstand.

But this statement should truely be in the Xbhp hall of fame.

Why is this thread dead?

The pics are are really amazing... I have seen 100s of Leh pics but these pics seem to good o be real.....Amazing cam work....The camera and the cameraman really makes the difference

Sorry for the delay guys ! We were totally messed up in office. Will be posting the next by this week end. Thanks for your patience !

Here is the hint of what is coming next !

Finally, eagerly waiting!

your trip logs are worthy of making ppl wait.
Too good

HOW...!! WOW..!!! guys my heart is pumping faster reading your trip logs... ur living your dreams ..!!! lucky ones...

waiting for more...

havnt we waited long enuf....wer are the rest??? pics and logs awaited!!!

Beautiful photos! Waiting for the rest.