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**HydBiker** · 10-22-2009, 11:44 AM

Originally posted by kri$hna View Post

What is the speciality of Jawahar Tunnel ?? Hav any pics of that ?

Jawahar Tunnel, one of the longest tunnel-road in Asia, links Jammu to Kashmir Valley. When it was built it was the longest road tunnel in Asia.

The tunnel has two tubes each one with a length of 2825 m and is built through the heart of a mountain. The tunnel makes it possible to stay in touch with Srinagar even during winters. In a way it is the lifeline for trade & military operations J&K.

**Praful** · 10-22-2009, 12:57 PM

Originally posted by onlinesatish View Post

Which mean they did have 3 cocks

@praful

Awesome...i mean way too awesome pics

You seem very interested in the things in the menu, why don't you try some

Thanks for the comments!

Originally posted by Mibhin View Post

good going... awesome pictures of the valley.......

i am glued to your log and waiting all the time.....

Thank u thank u...more is on its way albeit at a snails pace!

Originally posted by velociraptor13 View Post

Maybe the sound of the three p220s

.
@praful-good going man.Loved all the pics.

.

ROFL, that was a good one

Thanks!

Originally posted by kri$hna View Post

What is the speciality of Jawahar Tunnel ?? Hav any pics of that ?

Originally posted by DarthVeda View Post

I tried to take a video through that tunnel as well photos from outside but I was told not to by an army man

It's just a tunnel which runs for 2kms through a hill, nothing special.

Originally posted by HydBiker View Post

Jawahar Tunnel, one of the longest tunnel-road in Asia, links Jammu to Kashmir Valley. When it was built it was the longest road tunnel in Asia.

The tunnel has two tubes each one with a length of 2825 m and is built through the heart of a mountain. The tunnel makes it possible to stay in touch with Srinagar even during winters. In a way it is the lifeline for trade & military operations J&K.

Jawahar Tunnel, Banihal Pass |Search Kashmir

Jawahar Tunnel - Google Images

We did not click any pics as both the entry and exit is manned by the army and hence is a defence installation of which photography is prohibited.

Originally posted by Shanz View Post

WOW!!!

How the Hell I missed this thread for so long?

Anyways..
I am Glued,Stuck,Eyeballing on the whole bunch of 11pages and loads of Breath taking pic's.
Ur new Camera shows the diffrence!

Belive me I got FIDA imagining the LEH'ocolic beauty in Pics and throughout your ride uptill now.
The roadside pics at some places are just out of this world.
And next year, I am surely getting LEH'ocolic too..

Shanz

Thanks for the lovely comments dude!

Stay tuned the himalayas start this evening!

**kri$hna** · 10-22-2009, 01:06 PM

ohh ok got it.. I thought is became famous due to some military operations

i need to refresh my history now!!

**Praful** · 10-22-2009, 04:48 PM

Originally posted by kri$hna View Post

ohh ok got it.. I thought is became famous due to some military operations

i need to refresh my history now!!

Time to get back to the school books!

Well its famous more for economic reasons than military.

**Praful** · 10-23-2009, 04:02 PM

Previous Navigation :

0. Teaser
1. Prologue
2. The Riders
3. Day (-2) & Day (-1)
4. Day 1 : Delhi - Amritsar
5. Day 2 : Amritsar - Jammu
6. Day 3 : Jammu - Srinagar

Day 4 : Srinagar - Drass

Wednesday, 23rd September: ..."Trringgg!!! Trringgg!!! goes my alarm...but that doesn't wake me up

. A few minutes later the drowsiness breaks and I am staring at the ceiling of the room, its 6.45AM. Where am I? Blink! Blink!".... And then it hits me. It was just yesterday that I'd landed on heaven on earth, the Valley of Kashmir and now I was at the very heart of it the timeless town of Srinagar. I've read so much about it, seen so much in the movies, but nothing can prepare you for the real deal. I wakeup and walk to the window, whatever little was left of my sleep vanished in a matter of seconds. Within the next few moments I'd changed my clothes and picked my camera. Veda, awakened by the noise asked asked me, "Whats up?". I said I'm going out for photos, half a disapproving nod later he was back into deep sleep.

NOTE: All the pictures are clickable for larger resolution version, except the ones that are already in large.

Good Morning Srinagar, Dal Lake

I came back to the room in less than an hour after a refreshing morning walk alongside the Dal lake. The real ride was to began today, were we nervous..well not really, excited.. Hell Yeah! We had decided that we should be starting by about 8AM today as we wanted to reach Kargil before the day ended and we knew the ride was not going to be as easy as it has been up until now. But it was 8AM already, and we were just about starting to pack our stuff up. The bike's had seen about 850+kms of hard riding in the past 3 days and lots more awaited them, so we decided to pamper our bikes for a bit today. The pampering cost us dearly, not in terms of money but in terms of time. We spent nearly an hour and a half in lubing the chains and cleaning the air-filters on all three of bikes. We also had to tighten Pranay's front forks which we later realized that we had loosened it more than tightening it. It was 9.30 by the time all this was wrapped up, hungry as hell I washed my hands of the stinking diesel and rushed for breakfast. As luck would have it, the place that served breakfast was exceptionally slow and that cost us another hour. Back to the room, we packed up all the mess that we'd created but we still had to tankup and that again cost us another 30minutes. It was nearly noon when we had saddled up our bikes and were on the brink to leave. The hotel guys advised us that reaching Kargil would be difficult as we are leaving this late and we better stop somewhere before that. I was in two minds and unsure of making it, stray thoughts of staying put in Srinagar and starting the next day early in the morning came to my mind and at the same time another part of me just wanted to take a go at..." Jo hoga, Dekha jaega"....(We'll see what happens!). We chose the latter and started towards Kargil. But for today we decided to stop for pics only when necessary and totally unavoidable.

Once on the road, we rode like men possessed, we only stopped to confirm if we were heading in the correct destination. We went around the whole of Dal lake in a circle to exit Srinagar, and just at the exit of Srinagar we found a mechanic to fix Pranay's forks. Once this was sorted out, we were unstoppable. The road passed through picturesque fields and tiny villages beautiful enough to take your breath away, but we had a race against time. We continued our game of ...'look', 'brake', 'throttle'... Our first real break since we started was at 2PM after we had done nearly 80kms in the past 1.5 hours. Road conditions were just about decent, nothing too bad or good either. As I parked my bike at this spot waiting for others to catchup a BSF jawan suddenly appears out of nowhere. He told me that he saw the 'TN' number plate and came to talk as it was his home state. Soon enough Veda and Pranay arrived. Me and Pranay walked down to a stream that was flowing along side the road. I washed my face in the icy cold stream, Man!! it was refreshing! By now the three of us were in awe of Kashmir. Even if I said it is the most beautiful place on this planet it will not be enough. We stopped here for a considerable amount of time and clicked quite a few pictures.

Beautiful Kashmir!!

The Riders...

More of Kashmir...

We did not feel like budging an inch from this place, coz it was so enticingly beautiful. And no picture can really do justice to this place. What we did not know is that it just got better ahead. It was almost as if mother nature had been handed over a paintbrush and an empty canvas to paint on, and nature had painted marvelous huge snow capped mountains lined with coniferous trees as its jewels and green fields of grass, some of which even had a green mountain stream running through it. Amazing! Stupendous! Marvelous! Mind blowing!....even all of these put together would not be enough to really convey how beautiful this place was.

We would be itching to stop every few hundred meters as the landscape had even the slightest of hint change in it. There was one instance where the change in scenery just blew us away. We were speeding up a straight road with the mountainside running along our right, the road suddenly turned to the right and as we turned the vista that opened up right in front of was :O :O :O....A solitary board announced "Welcome to the Enchanting and Picturesque Valley of Sonamarg". And that it was, each one of us stopped here for a few moments to let the surroundings sink in.

We stopped in Sonamarg for lunch, and it was a quick washing down of dal chawal and some sabji. We reached Sonamarg at 2.45 and were ready to move in a record time of 30 minutes. The turn just before the entry to Sonamarg is something that will remain etched in my memory for a long time to come. It was 3.15PM and with Kargil still a long way ahead of us, I was not sure of where would we putting our heads for the night, more so coz the might Zoji La lay ahead of us and last known reports said it was a pain in the backside because it was 8 kilometers of slush....

Sonamarg I will never forget you...

Zoji La was our first pass on the trip and we really did not know what to expect. But before that, Kashmir was not done with us just yet. Once we left Sonamarg behing a gradual climb started. We reached this one vantage point from where everything looked straight out from a calender of Switzerland. After Sonamarg, this would be the second place that just took our breath away and it didn't do that softly...it was a huge blow in which time space continuum seemed to freeze. It was almost as if Kashmir was bidding us a final farewell.

Final view of Kashmir

And soon after this the roads just vanished into dust and so did the landscape as it went from beautiful to barren, though at that time we did not know it but this was truly an introduction of what lay ahead of us. Zoji La is an important pass that leaves Kashmir behind and introduces you to Ladakh, the barren beauty. I was waiting for slush to come up as I had been fore-warned in advance by the inimitable Mr. Sandeep Goswami aka OldFox, but no such slush came as it had all dried and turned into dirt. I still remember the golden words he told us the night before our departure from Delhi and those words remained our motto throughout the trip, he told us..."Leave something for next time..." And so we did..! Coming back to Zoji La, the roads were nothing but loose flying dirt and a huge irritant for the three of us. It affected Pranay the worst, he just cannot stand the dirt and decided to speed off ahead to finish this pass as soon as possible, Veda though not affected that much by dirt was having a hard time tackling the change in terrain as this was his first time on a 220, so the three of got separated and completed this pass at our own pace. Looking back in retrospect, Zoji La was neither the toughest or the most scenic of all passes, it was a mere starter of what lay ahead of us. But the dust had gotten to us all and at the end of we looked like we had been through hell. We stopped once in between to click pics before we got separated, but we were able to regroup at the base of Zoji La where a board announced our arrival to Ladakh.

The might and extremely dusty Zoji La

It was 4.15PM and we were almost sure that we'd not be making it to Kargil today evening. Drass was hardly 39kms from here and we decided to try and reach there before nightfall. We stopped at two places for a break from here and at one place we were stopped by the army for a routine check. Ladakh did not immediately appeal to us, for it was a dusty barren land, but in the days to come it just grew on us. Here are some pics from the stops we took before reaching Drass.

Barren Beauty - Ladakh!!

It was dusk by the time we were nearing Drass. Just before the village begins there was board that announced "Tiger Hill", it immediately brought back memories from 10 years back of the times of the Kargil war. After a little searching around we finally settled for a J & K tourism bungalow for a room with a geyser for 300 bux, but he charged 400 since we were three. As we settled down, memories from the incredible day behind us lingered in our minds. I finally had my quest for non-veg food satiated here, for dinner we had a some local delicacy of lamb prepared for us (Me & Pranay, Veda is a ghaas-phoos eater

). The lamb was probably freshly slain for dinner coz it was the most tender and fresh I've ever tasted.

Thanks to the almost nil-pollution and high altitude the night sky over Drass was filled millions of stars which we usually cannot see from our polluted city skies. This was my first time with the new camera and these kind of shots are new to me so I was not able to capture the sky as well as I had hoped to.

Night sky from Drass, the concentrated clouds visible is actually a part of the Milky Way

The delay in starting from Kargil had affected our plans by bit, now we would have about 280 kms from Drass to reach Leh which is big number considering that this is supposed to be a leisure trip. But starting early was not exactly our forte and that had its own twists for the next day's ride....But more on that later!

Next Navigation

8. Day 5 : Drass - Leh
9. Day 6 : Leh
10. Day 7 : Leh-Diskit
11. Day 8 : Diskit-Panamik-Leh
12. Day 9 : Leh-Pangong Tso
13. Day 10 : Pangong Tso - Marismek La - Leh

**burnoutz** · 10-23-2009, 04:08 PM

nice... good photographs...
i can remember ... upto Sonmarg that route is so beautiful... so green... that was a treat to ride on that...

**rubber_stamp_champ** · 10-23-2009, 04:25 PM

spell bound!!!

treading there next year!!!

**Mibhin** · 10-23-2009, 05:29 PM

Originally posted by prafultripathy View Post

Final view of Kashmir

This is the route to AMARNATH Shrine From Sonamarg Side.....

Awesome pics.... You have clicked some awesome pics.....

**Praful** · 10-23-2009, 05:41 PM

Originally posted by burnoutz View Post

nice... good photographs...
i can remember ... upto Sonmarg that route is so beautiful... so green... that was a treat to ride on that...

Originally posted by rubber_stamp_champ View Post

spell bound!!!

treading there next year!!!

Originally posted by Mibhin View Post

This is the route to AMARNATH Shrine From Sonamarg Side.....

Awesome pics.... You have clicked some awesome pics.....

Thank you so much for the appreciation guys!

The pictures I have posted are not all mine, but also pictures clicked by Pranay and Veda. Each has their own respective watermark in the picture.

**antz.bin** · 10-23-2009, 05:49 PM

Truly breathtaking... Where are my bike keys!!!

**velociraptor13** · 10-23-2009, 06:19 PM

Praful bhai,aapka to jawab nahi

.Enjoyed the entire pic cum write up with a packet of lays chips

.One word to you-

**Praful** · 10-23-2009, 08:46 PM

Originally posted by antz.bin View Post

Truly breathtaking... Where are my bike keys!!!

Thanks dude

Originally posted by velociraptor13 View Post

Praful bhai,aapka to jawab nahi

.Enjoyed the entire pic cum write up with a packet of lays chips

.One word to you-

Hahahaha...that was a good one!

**DarthVeda** · 10-24-2009, 12:06 AM

Originally posted by prafultripathy View Post

The bike's had seen about 850+kms of hard riding in the past 3 days and lots more awaited them, so we decided to pamper our bikes for a bit today. The pampering cost us dearly, not in terms of money but in terms of time. We spent nearly an hour and a half in lubing the chains and cleaning the air-filters on all three of bikes. We also had to tighten Pranay's front forks which we later realized that we had loosened it more than tightening it.

Don't forget the "big" lecture we got from the shop owner how we "dirtied" the place and how "indians" dirty everything... that guy went on and on and on...

It was 9.30 by the time all this was wrapped up, hungry as hell I washed my hands of the stinking diesel and rushed for breakfast. As luck would have it, the place that served breakfast was exceptionally slow and that cost us another hour.

No NON-VEG there either

The hotel guys advised us that reaching Kargil would be difficult as we are leaving this late and we better stop somewhere before that. I was in two minds and unsure of making it, stray thoughts of staying put in Srinagar and starting the next day early in the morning came to my mind and at the same time another part of me just wanted to take a go at..." Jo hoga, Dekha jaega"....(We'll see what happens!). We chose the latter and started towards Kargil. But for today we decided to stop for pics only when necessary and totally unavoidable.

That was a scary though to stay in srinagar for one more day!! and though I hated the words of not stopping for photos on the way, I knew we had to cover lot of distance and still rue the chance of not stopping on the way for the initial stages.

The road passed through picturesque fields and tiny villages beautiful enough to take your breath away, but we had a race against time. We continued our game of ...'look', 'brake', 'throttle'... Our first real break since we started was at 2PM after we had done nearly 80kms in the past 1.5 hours.

I was going slow and seeing the scenary that I lost track of my bike and almost went out of the road to hit a cliff, fortunately I was doing 20kph and managed to stop in time. And to those thinking I was going to fall off, I was on the cliff side of the road

As I parked my bike at this spot waiting for others to catchup a BSF jawan suddenly appears out of nowhere. He told me that he saw the 'TN' number plate and came to talk as it was his home state.

You disappointed so many jawans from TN in this trip

There was one instance where the change in scenery just blew us away. We were speeding up a straight road with the mountainside running along our right, the road suddenly turned to the right and as we turned the vista that opened up right in front of was :O :O :O....A solitary board announced "Welcome to the Enchanting and Picturesque Valley of Sonamarg". And that it was, each one of us stopped here for a few moments to let the surroundings sink in.

I am pretty sure that the road is done in that way for that very purpose!

The roads were nothing but loose flying dirt and a huge irritant for the three of us. It affected Pranay the worst, he just cannot stand the dirt and decided to speed off ahead to finish this pass as soon as possible, Veda though not affected that much by dirt was having a hard time tackling the change in terrain as this was his first time on a 220, so the three of got separated and completed this pass at our own pace.

Indeed, this was the dustiest pass ever!! I got stuck behind a truck for 30 seconds and it threw so much dust that I had to stop and wipe my visor as I couldn't see anything front of me. And in this Pass, you can't travel like as the drops are scary!!

After a little searching around we finally settled for a J & K tourism bungalow for a room with a geyser for 300 bux, but he charged 400 since we were three. As we settled down, memories from the incredible day behind us lingered in our minds. I finally had my quest for non-veg food satiated here, for dinner we had a some local delicacy of lamb prepared for us (Me & Pranay, Veda is a ghaas-phoos eater

). The lamb was probably freshly slain for dinner coz it was the most tender and fresh I've ever tasted.

The roti-chapathi cross breed was not so bad either

Thanks to the almost nil-pollution and high altitude the night sky over Drass was filled millions of stars which we usually cannot see from our polluted city skies. This was my first time with the new camera and these kind of shots are new to me so I was not able to capture the sky as well as I had hoped to.

I was in awe at the night sky, and tried to take photos of it in my Powershot S5 IS but sorry to say the results were pathetic at best

, no tripod and only 15 seconds exposure!!

Also, this would be our first night of experiencing "cold" temperatures and it didn't disappoint

**Praful** · 10-24-2009, 03:37 PM

Navigation links in all posts updated, do lemme know if any links are incorrect!

@Veda: How about a log from your side

**M@n()J** · 10-24-2009, 04:20 PM

Wow is the word Praful,Veda and Pranay! Amazzing pics Praful.

This is sure a trip of your lifetime. Now I can vouch on you guys for planning when my turn comes

@Praful: I remember how sleep deprived you were when you left for this trip

Originally posted by DarthVeda View Post

You disappointed so many jawans from TN in this trip

Am sure you didn't disappoint them man

. You speak tamil well

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