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MG · 09-26-2008, 11:15 PM

Day 2 pictures

Start of the trip and a pretty big waterfall on way

Traffic at Rohtang

A truck broke down soon after Rohtang

After squeezing through the traffic I(Ravi) found myself alone so thought its better to wait for others

The best way to kill time is to take some snaps

Finally they come after 15 minutes.Look for the two dot in both the pictures.

Finally we regroup again and decided to take a small break

View from "Zing Zang Bar"-The road side dhaba

One of the thousand bends on way to Sarchu

How could we miss this opportunity to click a snap

How about some posing

?

It's getting pretty difficult to concentrate on road when you are in such surrounding

Another small break

Time to fly

Night stay at Sarchu

Signing off with this final image

**isacM** · 09-26-2008, 11:53 PM

pics

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After 2 hrs struggle i managed to upload 3 photos !, my net connection....Grr

. I am staring off to kodachadri 2morrow morning (all depends on when I wake up

) so signing off - will post pics and log soon , I promise

**anvancy** · 09-26-2008, 11:58 PM

superb landscape pics...serene!!

**isacM** · 09-27-2008, 12:31 AM

haan that is why it is taking so much time to upload! , guys please excuse the high resolution did n't noticed while uploading. will correct it later till than enjoy the big pictures

**caravikiran** · 09-27-2008, 12:48 AM

Day 3 Log

Day : 3 - 25th August 08
All of us got up very early today. Sorry, how can we get up ? We didn’t sleep through out the night..thanks to the super cool tents and the uncomfortable night dress , riding gear J. Needed some warm water (hot water? Can’t even imagine). Got a mug full of it…just enough to brush. I was missing that hot shower in our cozy homes. We had to park our bikes outside the tents (obviously !) in freezing temperatures last night. We came out of our tents and saw frozen ice on our bikes seat !. testimony of the freezing temperatures. I was feeling okay, no more headache. Bu was still not normal. He left early to make a call on using the satellite phone in one of the military camps. Manali was the last point we found n/w for our mobile phones. Bu removed air filter cover of his ZMA to help it breath properly. All of us had starting issues. My bike would start and remain started till I keep it revving a bit (3k-4k), the moment I left the throttle, it would switch off. After some minutes of heating, it was normal. Ch left after Bu. Ch started going back towards Manali, we(Vi, Ni, Is & me) were like (icon)..then after sometime we saw him cruise past the tents in the right direction. Though I left last, I had Is for my company. Vi & Ni had left. Me and Is were atleast an hour and half behind Bu when we left. We started our day 3 journey. Roads were good. We could see the river flow next to the road. This river path was very huge but there was very little water, I was wondering how the river would look in its full glory. We first encountered the famous Ghatta loops..For bikers like me how haven’t heard about it – this is a set of 21 hairpin curves which help you climb a height of around 2000 feet (13700 feet to 15500 feet). Awesome isn’t it ?? we tried to take pics covering the max number of loops. Then we stopped at a place for breakfast. It was around 10 AM I think. Need I say the menu ??? We met a guy from America on a bullet. He was on a one month trip in the Himalayas on a bullet (wow !). He had spend the night in the eat –out tent since he was not feeling well. AMS had hit him badly and he was alone. He was also going to Leh. We decided that he could come with us since we headed to same destination. All three of us started. Roads were good in this section. Here we had to stop at an army check post and enter our details. (name, vehicle number, destination). The guy told to me & Is that he could not keep up with us and we move on. We said okay since he was riding pretty slow and we would make our fellow bikers wait if we are slow. We then encountered Moore Plains..this was one the most memorable moment of day 3. We met a bullet 500 guy and I had a very good performance test with of my bike with his J The roads were partly good and majority was offroading stuff. He would zoom ahead of me in the offroad stuff and I would do the same to him on partly laid roads. While riding with him I realized Is was behind, so I kept a watch on him and made sure I didn’t loose track of him. It really helpful to have some company in this part of the world with such dangerous terrain. We reached Tanglang-la. The second highest motorable road, officially. Is soon joined us. I then said bye to the bullet guy as he left. I started with Is behind me. We decided we will stop at next eat out point for lunch (bread omelet that is !!)I soon stopped at a place where I found ice on the road side which I could touch. I stopped for some snaps. I pulled over to the right side of the road towards the cliff where the ice was. I wanted each other to take each others snap. Is came, he was overtaking a car (so he was also on the cliff side of the road – same as I was). I waved my hands indicating him to stop, but he zoomed past me at just couple of feet distance from me !!. I was like …then I took snaps of my bike and made a move, we were not supposed to stay at that height for more than 30 mins to prevent AMS. I then saw Is riding at a distance and just 2 kms later he disappeared, I was terrified. The fact that I was looking for any signs of some bike on the valley side of the road, indicates the extent to which I was worried. I was descending down the mighty Tanglang-la, I started to feel dizzy.. I took it slow since I was also worried about Is. Road was bad in patches due to land slides. I was doing about 10-15 kmph, I braked, I fell !! it was pretty tough to lift the bike up with all that luggage at that altitude. I started again and after couple of kms, I realized, my front tire pressure was down again. I took out the foot pump and filled air till the pressure gauge on the foot pump showed 40 psi !! uffff…that was one hell of a task… I started my journey. Leh was still good 130 kms away. I was looking for Is at every eat out point…but this guy was never there. I was nearing Upshi. Roads got better. There was high rise mountains on either side. There was river flowing in between them and next to the river was the road. Awesome experience. It resembled like tracks in NFS – Outback in Australia, one !! very similar to it. I stopped in between and had something since I could not wait any longer to find Is and it was already 4 PM. I had plum cake and choclate biscuits which I was carrying with me. At 4:30, I started towards Leh. Around 50 kms before Leh, I saw Is coming from the opposite side. I was relieved to see him there. He told the reason for going ahead, the most unlikely to me – “He didn’t see me”. All others were waiting for us just 5 kms from there and we proceeded towards Leh together and reached by 7 PM, I think. We were all wishing for a good stay and our wishes came true. Ni bhai had arranged for a hotel – The Kaal. It was amazing. Everything about the hotel was good. We finally had good hot water shower also J. Had dinner and off to bed we went for a well deserved rest. By day 3, we had stopped counting days and accepted that this is how it is going to be till we complete the trip. So we stared to enjoy the endurance test we were going through.

Kms coverd on day 3 : around 200 Kms.
Total Kms for the trip : 1030 Kms.
Departure Time from Sarchu : 8:30 AM.
Arrival time at Leh : Around 7 PM.

MG · 09-27-2008, 12:58 AM

Superb log.You are getting better with each passing day

.

**prabhubravo** · 09-27-2008, 01:02 AM

That was a very nicely written log !!
Ya missing a partner that too who was riding in the front makes us go mad!

**onlinesatish** · 09-27-2008, 01:02 AM

Originally posted by MG_Biker1806 View Post

Superb log.You are getting better with each passing day

.

+1

So it was more of a torture is'nt it?

**caravikiran** · 09-27-2008, 01:27 AM

Day 3 Snaps

Thanks for the compliment Guys.
I am glad that you could take time out to read the lengthy logs..

Here are a few snaps from my side of day 3.
Need to sleep now. Have to take bike for servicing tomo. she is crying for attention. its been 4k kms since last service which includes the endurance test of HX 5.

All set to feel like god

Amazing natural sand formation in the huge river bed

A close up look at the sand formations

Can't explain the reason for that color of water, don't know if it was frozen.

Gata Loops

Moore Plains

Tanglang La

Ishaq about to reach Tanglang La

Over to Ishaq to explain how he didn't see me here

Just after Upshi..the NFS track type of roads.

Indus river just before Leh

**HydBiker** · 09-27-2008, 01:29 AM

good log. good pics but I expected to see better pics Ravi.... Show me the road/no-road the R15 cannot make it

PS: ah! u posted those photos while I was typing the above message. Good ones. Thanks :-)

**caravikiran** · 09-27-2008, 01:35 AM

My camera wasn't the very best there.
We were very busy trying hard not to fall on such kind of roads, photo was the last thing on our minds.
But still some of us must have managed to click a few, lets see when they are planning to post.

**onlinesatish** · 09-27-2008, 02:03 AM

Originally posted by HydBiker View Post

good log. good pics but I expected to see better pics Ravi.... Show me the road/no-road the R15 cannot make it

PS: ah! u posted those photos while I was typing the above message. Good ones. Thanks :-)

Originally posted by caravikiran View Post

My camera wasn't the very best there.
We were very busy trying hard not to fall on such kind of roads, photo was the last thing on our minds.
But still some of us must have managed to click a few, lets see when they are planning to post.

Ravi....looks like KP is not going to leave his R15 for the HX6

So......r u ready to take the torture test once again next year?

**ravi@17bhp** · 09-27-2008, 02:04 AM

Superb pics ravi. Loving them all. Me too waiting for the "R-15-cannot-go" road pics.

**chetanpulsar** · 09-27-2008, 10:25 AM

Amazing Log and pics.... enjoyed reading and drooling over the landscape pics....
The feeling at that point would be huge.....am just imagining... too good. And missing your partner is like a tension at the core of ur brains.....

Waiting for more logs n pics .......

**dcs** · 09-27-2008, 12:44 PM

R15?????

Originally posted by ravi@17bhp View Post

Superb pics ravi. Loving them all. Me too waiting for the "R-15-cannot-go" road pics.

R-15 CANT GO ??????
nothing too biased for R15 but I went to Leh on my stock pulsar 150 dtsi (with just a K&N without upjetting...how DUMB of me!!!!)with a load of aprox 28 kgs.
thou I wud not say tht I was zip-zap-zooming every round and all, but the bike managed ok.
so R15, wth close to 17 bhp and fuel injections...guess tht wont be a pain ...but guess u r talking about R15 as a delicate DARLING!!!!

lets see when one does this LEH trip on an R15.
waiting...but all in all....good photographs....cant resist myself from going to Leh again....

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