Travelouge Part 6

August 2 :: Sonamarg - Mulbek :: ~175KMs

We started out from Sonamarg at about 7:30AM in the morning. Even though we tried our best last evening, we could not get any reliable information about the traffic restrictions on the Zoji la from either the locals or the J&K Tourism guys. One thing everybody including the Indian Army sentry assured us was that bikes would not be subject to the one way traffic restrictions.

I was riding pillion with Jomy for the first part of the day. I was having my camera, Jomy's camera and a video camcorder all strapped around my next and out of their covers ready to shoot and to make up for what ever neglect I had shown over the past few days to this passion of mine. The road for the first few kilometers from Sonamarg deceived us completely and we were all shocked by what we saw once we started our climb onto Zoji la. I will not attempt to describe the road here. Suffice to say that the cameras all went into their bags immediately. Not only me, but no one in our group dared to stop anywhere to take photographs on this stretch of the road. I do not know anything about the scenery on this road, for I was busy making sure that Jomy was able to keep the bike on the road and my legs, which could reach the ground even from the pillion seat was always available to support the bike. The only scenery I did see and I remember vividly, is the steep fall from the edge of the un-embanked road. All you city dwellers, who complain about bad roads, I suggest you take a drive here and your city roads will feel like heaven. Trust me on this one, for I am a city boy myself and I have changed my opinion on Bangalore's roads.

After descending down from the pass, we stopped at the police check post in the valley to get our bike numbers entered in their register. The J&K police were pleasantly surprised to see Indians on bikes. They also cautioned us that some VIP was travelling by road to Drass and Kargil that day and that we should try to Kargil as soon as possible else we might be stopped at Drass itself for security reasons. After thanking him, we proceed towards Drass.

For whatever attrocity was committed to us at Zoiji La, we were more than compensated in the valley on the route to Drass. I will let some photos that I took there talk for itself.

Finally we reached Drass. For me it was a strange feeling. I have heard the name of this place quiet frequently in the evening news … terrorist attack, terrorist this and terrorist that … all associated with the Drass and its surroundings. It was impossible not to be philosophical, when I stood amidst the people who have been through all the tough times. They do live peacefully now. I am confident that the security situation had improved. This was proven by the fact that the VIP who was travelling to Kargil through Drass was some minister from the state cabinet. By straight logic, a minister travelling by road means that the security situation has improved a lot. We made a short stop at Drass for a brunch and continued towards Kargil.

This was exciting part of the journey. I am going to actually see the places where the most recent war that India was involved in was fought, a place of which a billion Indians have heard about, but only very few have seen. Driving through the region, I was a little disappointed. The place was barren … not a blade of grass grew on the slopes of the mountains. Even the color of the mountains was an uninspiring shade of mud-yellow. Save for the lone beautiful view where a muddy yellow river joined with a pristine blue water river there was nothing of significance to write about the scenery. The Indian Army was there … but they left us alone … no stops, no questions, no checking of papers and no registering our bike nos. All along the route to Kargil town, there are small memorials to the soldiers who have lost their life in the region while serving our nation. After a very short time, I lost count of how many such memorials were there. It's either the glum environ of the place or the food that I had eaten at Drass, I still do not know which, but by now I was very sick in the stomach and I wanted to reach Kargil town ASAP for the much needed rest.

Atlast we reached Kargil town. Let me say this, the main road through the market in the town, will put even the best maintained roads in Bangalore to shame. It's clean, well-paved, very wide and traffic is regulated well. Other than that, as with most scenery on the way, the town was not beautiful enough to lift my spirits for the day. We still had day light left, so we just decided to fill up our tanks and leave Kargil. At about 4:00PM in the evening, we left Kargil and decided to drive till daylight permits.

We reached Mulbek, 40KMs from Kargil at about 5:30PM. The strenuous drive through Zoji La and on the way to Kargil has taken its toll on our bodies and all of us decided to stop for the evening at Mulbek. We decided to bunker at restaurant opposite the holy Mitreya temple at Mulbek. There was enough day light left to take some photographs of the place.

An interesting fact about this place :: Electricity is available only for a very short time every day. In the evenings, it is available between 7:00PM and 11:00PM. After that we had to use the candles that our host graciously provided us. It was actually a news to us that there are places in India, that still survives without electricity and running water. The next morning, we discovered another interesting fact. In the toilet, the potty where you do your thing was actually on top of the septic tank. Hmmm…. These guys have optimised the entire system and managed to remove the need for drainage pipes. Good common sense .. But extremely stinky.

I have a bad feeling about the bike I was driving from Kargil to Mulbek. It seemed to have lost it s capability & power to pull up the mountains. At Mulbek, I inisted that Vinod, the resident bike doctor, take a look at this one … Hopefully a night's rest would be sufficient to get it to good shape again. Now that we have gotten grease and oil on our hands, we decided to go all the way and checked all the oils in all the bikes. I still have a bad feeling about this bike …. But that is something to worry about tomorrow … for now, it was a nice dinner and good sleep.

Travelogue Part 5

August 1 :: Ramban - Sonamarg : ~220KMS

I was woken up by blaring music with stereo effect banging into my head. For a moment I thought my friends were playing a prank. I felt over my ears and over my head and could find no head set or ear phones. Besides, it sounded like devotional music. Surely, these guys would not have that kind of music with them. Just so, these guys just earned themselves their life . Still sleepy, I realised it was only 4:30AM in the morning. Slowly, it dawned on me that the music is coming from the two temples in the town. There one opposite to the room, across the road and another one behind my room down by the banks of Chenab river, hence the stereo effect. As if on sync, they had started playing devotional music that early in the morning. How I hated them for waking me up! Don’t these people have anything better to do at this hour … like sleeping, for example. I am sure even the Gods would not like to be woken up at this hour …
Disclaimer :: I do believe in God, but I believe even more strongly in sleeping well.

The rest of the gang did not fare any better … all of us were lying in the bed trying to catch some much needed sleep and making an effort to ignore the sound in the background .. but were not very successful. So we were up and ready to continue our journey by 7:15AM. I was driving and Chandru was to ride pillion with me.

The Ramban to Srinagar route is amazing. The beauty of the scenery on this route cannot be described in words, period. The meandering road, with deep valley next to it, marks of landslides e and the military personnel, all add to the beauty and show you that beauty and danger could co-exist. After hours of climbing, we came to the Nehru tunnel. This ~2.25KM long tunnel is the gateway to Srinagar. Once out of this tunnel, it is down-hill all the way till we reached Anantnag in the Kashmir valley. At Anantnag, we got caught in a traffic jam and our clutch plates started heating up. So we decided to rest our bikes and have lunch. 50KMS from Anatanag, we reached Srinagar. Just outside the city, Vinod, remembered that lack of appropriate tools was hampering his ability to repair our bikes and decided to rectify the situation. He spotted a hardware store and bought a set of spanners, pliers, a hammer, a good length rope and even a chain link. While Vinod was out shopping, the rest of us took out the map and started discussing what the target for the day should be. Soon, a crowd of military personnel, police and locals had surrounded us. Apparently, back packers are a curios there, Indian bikers are of an even more rarer variety.

Once inside Srinagar, we drove straight to the famed Dal Lake. In the afternoon sun, the rows of colorful house boats was a sight to watch. But the green on the lake surface was a big turn-off. Soon Chandru and Shanthi were arguing it out on whether we should spend the rest of the day in Srinagar or move on. The house boat owners and the tour guides were all surrounding us and trying to swing the argument in their favor -- it was just business for them. But in the end, Shanthi won the duel (as if there was any other possible outcome). The J&K tourism police personnel by the lake was very helpful and told us to press on to Sonamarg, about 100KMs from Srinagar. If we reach in good light, we might get to cross ZojiLa that day itself. So we decided to press ahead to Sonamarg.

The route was not very tough … mostly single lane road with almost no traffic. So we were doing a comfortable 50KMPH. It was me and Jomy driving on a bike now. Enroute, in the middle of nowhere, there is a J&K tourism dept's public convenience building with clean toilets and baths. After a short bio and photo break by the Sind river, we all continue towards Sonamarg. Sonamarg is at an altitude of 8950ft, so that place is cold. We reached Sonamarg by 6:00PM and there was enough daylight to attempt to cross Zoji La. But the beauty of the place just took our breadth away and we wanted camp here for the night.

We did try to get an estimate of distances to Zoji La, Drass and Kargil from Sonamarg, from the army Jawans & locals. To our surprise, we did not get a consistent answer. What I found was that the distance quoted is a loose, random function of the age of the person being asked. In the end, we gave up and just decided to call it a day. We also had time to sit down and review our progess so far and how much distance we needed to cover to reach Leh. After making sure that we are doing good, we had nice hot bath and retired for the day.

Sonamarg is a beautiful place. Unfortunately, I do not have photographs of this place. But, I would definitely visit this place again.

[View of Sind River enroute to Sonamarg]

[Island Resort on Sind (L). Evaluvating progress made so far (R)]

[Our pad for the night at Sonamarg. At 300 bucks for two rooms, it was a good place.]

[Two curios on-lookers got themselves shot]

Who's Who of the trip

Just remembered that I have not introduced the stupid seven that went out on this trip. So here is a picture that we took with our rides at Khardung la.

From Left to Right: Vinod: The mechanic. Well, only he knows where to look and what to look for when there is a problem. He was a last minute addition to the trip. Couldn't imagine we compelting the trip without him.

Chandru : Shanthi's friend and collage mate from Coimbatore. Now he lives and works in Chennai.

Srini : Chandru's brother. A very bold driver of the bike. Has a little bit of problem in overtaking lorries, though. Still believes, it is ok to overtake in turns.

Roop : I still have not figured out if he is a cool dude or just slow. You really do not want to mess with this guy or his logical thinking. Slow and steady is his motto. When in a fix, you want to listen to him.

Shanthi : The only girl in the group and Jomy's wife. The entire trip she was driving ... er.. back-seat driving, to be precise. She was Roop's pillion. She was the team's manager and having wholesale fun.

Myself : The cool dude.

Jomy: Another cool dude. Amazing guy this one. He was eating clutch plates for breakfast and lunch, but never gave up driving the bike. Such is his passion.

Note to guys in the photo:

Your short introduction is meant to be only funny. Please do not smother me when you see me next.

Travelogue Part 4

July 31st : Mukerian, Punjab -- Ramban, Doda, Jammu & Kashmir :: ~240KMs.

We surprised ourselves today by leaving our hotel at Mukerian on time, at 7:00AM. We were driving at good speed as this early in the morning there were not many trucks or other vehicles on the road. Before we realised, we crossed over in to Jammu and Kashmir. We drove on till about 10:00AM when we stopped for breakfast at a Dhaba. Our plan was to take a diversion from Samba on NH1A, avoid Jammu and go to Udhampur, where we would join NH1A again and continue our journey to Srinagar.





[We take a break for breakfast (L), On NH1A, 15KMs from Samba(R)]


Once we diverted from NH1A at Samba, the road till Udhampur was a nightmare. There is tarmac on the road but there are also pot-holes, mud and water. There is equal amounts of all this every inch of the road and I was confused whether to slow down or go over these high at speed. But in the end all of us decided to just put the 200 odd Kgs of our bike and its reputation as a very stable bike to test and just went over the holes on the road at a good speed.




I was driving with a pillion on my bike. Just about 20 odd kilometers before Udhampur, the bike suddenly stopped; the engine was running, the revs sounded right, it responded to the throttle, but the wheels were just not moving. It turned out that my pillion had used a brand new Nike jacket to cushion his seat and this jacket has fallen down and found its way into the rear wheel of my bike. Lucky there was no other vehicle comming behind us. There was no way the jacket would come out from where it was entwined between the chain and sporket. The only option was to cut the jacket into small pieces. This was the first jinx for the day.

After a short tea break, we continued on this nasty road and reached Udhampur. Here we joined NH1A and continued to Srinagar. The serious mountain roads start from Udhampur. But just outside Udhampur, I started hearing strange sound from the bike whenever I opened the throttle at low speeds. After quiet some thought, I was convinced that there was something happening in the front wheel assembly. I was not sure if it was a serious enough problem to stop everybody and take a look at this. So I decided to press on atleast until we stopped for a very late luch. But because I was on a mountain road, I was at low speeds and low gear most of the time and opening, closing throttle happened a lot. Whatever the problem was, it was only getting more serious and the noise louder. My bike has started wobbling too.


At about 3:00PM in the evening, we stopped by the roadside to take a break and look at the bike. First, we removed the front wheel, checked everything, added oil to the break shoe assembly to smoothen it and happily put things back together thinking we have solved the problem. A test drive later, we found that the problem was still there. Then all of a sudden we realised that whenever the throttle is opened, the two wheels and the chasis stayed where there were but the bulky 350cc engine alone jerked ahead by a couple of inches. We tipped the bike on its side and discovered that the bolt and nut assembly that kept engine connected to the chasis was missing both the nuts. As the magnitude of problem became apparent, we realised that we could not dirve to Srinagar without fixing this problem.


[After discovering the problem, we discuss what to with the bike]. Luckily, there was a rudimentary lorry spare parts shop nearby. We were told that we could find a mechanic at Batote, some 28KMs away. So we decided to drive the faulty bike at very low speed and reach Batote. At Batote, we did find a mechanic, but he faltly refused to even look at the bike, let alone fix it. So we filled our tanks at a petrol station and decided to reach Ramban to find a mechanic. By the time we reached Ramban, it was about 7:00PM in the evening and shops were closing. Two guys went in search of a mechanic, while the rest of us waited in front of the temple square. As it got late and the sun went down, we started getting a little jittery, all around us, shops were shutting down, people were retiring for the night. Soon it was just us, our bikes on the middle of the road and the army sentry. We discovered that the only mechanic in the village was one Shaukat Aziz. Jomy and Vinod reached his workshop when he was about to shut shop. Initially he refused to help us. So, we just got a few nuts and bolts from him hoping to repair it on our own. But, on his way home, he saw us all in the middle of the road, standing with our bikes and luggages like fish out of water, not knowing what to do. He changed his mind and decided to fix the bike for us. We took the bike to his workshop, which he opened for us again and for the next hour and half, he personally machined a nut-bolt assembly and fixed the problem.

While jomy and Vinod were at the workshop getting the bike fixed, I had the opportunity to talk to an army Major and Seargent. They offered to help us find a mechanic to fix our bike. So myself and Roop walked with them for about a half a kilometer to the town market to talk to locals. All along the way, the army sentry was in full swing. These guys were on one of their night patrol of that stretch of highway. It was quiet scary, walking with the Major, in the middle of the patrol formation, all jawans in battle gear. It was a very strange feeling, seeing the people living in the midst of so much secuirty and uncertainty. It also made me realise, how we take basic things like security, for granted while in the same country, some body else has to constantly worry about it.

Back at the town square, with the bike fixed and in good shape to ride, it was time to find a place to stay. There was the temple, that had a large hall with mat on the floor and common toilets and bath. For Rs. 20/- per head, it came highly recommended by the army Major who vouched for the place's security. The second was a hotel just outside the town, but it charged about 250 - 300/- per room. The thrid was Mr. Sharma, the shop owner's house, just opposite to the temple. Sweet talking, mild-mannered Mr. Sharma has a general store with a few spacious rooms behind his shop that he rents out for travellers. He offered us 3 rooms for 400/-, a good deal.

After bathing in cold water and having a very late dinner, we slept, with the Jhelum in spate roaring in the background.

As for the scenary, there was noting remarkable to write about. I did not see anything different from what I had seen at Ooty or Coorg. May be it is the altitude; As we go higher and deeper into Kashmir, I think the scenary would improve. Also, the Indian Army presence is a permanent fixture in the scenary. I saw more convoys, more army sentry and more security forces partolling the highway. But we (or any other vehicle for that matter), were not stopped, there was no checking of any kind.

Travelogue Part 3

July 30 : Ambala - Mukherian, ~240KMs.


[Loading the bikes and getting ready to leave Ambala]

Late night drive yesterday meant, we did not get out of bed till 8:30AM today. After breakfast at Amar Palace, we were ready to leave only at around 10:30AM. I decided to drive a bike alone and not take any pillion today. All of us were in good spirits and hit the highway pushing the needle past 75KMPH. I even touched 90 KMPH for some time. But there was a persistent metallic clang comming from somewhere in the rear of my bike. I had to stop to investigate. I found I have a broken luggage carrier. The cast iron rod in the carrier had become brittle and just broken. SO I caught up with Jomy and transferred luggage from by bike onto his and together we started driving again. The noise had reduced but still not gone completely.

The sky was clear, the sun was soft and in the distance we could see a large, lonely dark cloud. As we drove towards this patch of cloud, it became colder, wind picked up and a few kilometers later it started raining. I had just enough time to zip up my rain coat before it started pouring. Jomy was already dripping wet and so we decided take shelter in a school building. But we met some very unfriendly people there, who drove us out of the school back into the rain. So, thouroughly pissed off and wet, we started driving in the rain. A few kilometers later, the dark cloud ended and so did the rain. The sun was out and it became very hot inside my rubber rain jacket. In the midst of all this, we had lost track of which bike is ahead of which, so myself and Jomy decided to stop only after reaching Ludhiana. We reached the city and stopped to take a breather and to find out where the others are. Having confirmed that we are the first ones to reach Ludhiana, I decided to make use of the time and buy some plastic sheets to wrap over our luggages. Ask directions to anyone in Luhdiana, you get only one answer ... go straight until you reach Ghanta Ghar and take right. So we went straight in search of Ghanta Ghar, but it was not to be found. But I did manage to find shops to get the plastic sheets in the old market.


More phone calls to the other bikers and we eventually sync up outside Ludhiana, only to get separated again. By now it was late in the afternoon and we had covered more than 100 Kms. So myself and Jomy decided to wait at the next Dhaba. Slowly, one by one the troops marched in. All of us settled down to have our lunch.


At the Dhaba, we met a couple of oldies, cooling off their afternoon in rope cot, discussing and solving world's most pressing problems. They showed us their knowledge on diesel engines, bullet bikes and generally tried to act surprised at our endeavor. But they did ask a very basic question :: Why spend 450/- per day, plus fuel for the bike, and travel all the way to Leh-Ladakh under so much hardship, when we could hire a Qualis from Delhi at similar rates and make the trip in much more comfort? Well, I for one did not know how to answer this question logically.


Speaking of logic, the analytical reasoning capability of the 16 somethings that were cooking at the Dhaba was commendable. They asked us two simple questions :: Where are you from ? -- Bangalore. Where are you driving from ?? :: Delhi.. ... So Bangalore must be a village near Delhi.


Perfectly logical conclusion from the answers we gave them ...


The food at the Dhabha was one of the best I have ever had. The lassi was so good and all of us had so much that they ran out of Dahi. After lunch, I inspected my bike again and found the chain guard had just broken off and making contact with the chain. Luckily for us, there was a welding shop nearby. So I welded both the luggage carrier and the chain guard. Another pit-stop at the nearest filling station and we were on our way to Jalandhar. We did make good speed this time, but still the problem of syncing up dogged us. We were just not ready to learn to bike in a neat formation.


We reached Jalandhar in good time and decided to press forward to Pathankot. After yesterday's experience, we were clear that we will not drive in the night. But outside Jalandhar, the wide, medianed highway gave way to crude, 2 laned, unmarked, undivided "highway". This made our progress slow. As we neared Pathankot, the road started degrading. At places, getting out of tarmac onto the side of the road was like descending into a deep valley. It was getting dark by now and headlights started bothering us. Blinded by lorry headlights, all of us made many trips down the valley on the side of the road and struggled to get up on the tarmac again. After a rather precarious skid-dance on potholed stretch of road very close to an oncomming lorry, we decided to stop for the night at the next town.


We entered a town and found a hotel to crash in for the night. We freshened up and got down to the hotel's resturant for dinner. At the table we found out from the waiter that the place we are staying for the night is called Mukherian and that we are about 40KMS from Pathankot. Not bad.... 240KMs in 8 hours. Good biking guys.


[Rather spacious room at Mukherian for our hard-earned sleep]

After dinner, we all took nice hot bath and slept, agreeing to leave at 7:00AM in the morning.

[Early morning views of Mukherian Town from my hotel room]

Travelogue Part 2

July 29 :: Delhi to Ambala ~200KMs.
Got ready to leave the hotel by around 7:30AM. We picked up the Royal Enfield service booklet and started calling the authorised service centers in Delhi one by one. Inspite of being a sunday, we got lucky on the first call itself. We arranged with the owner of Balaji Motors to meet him with our bikes for a "quick" and "thorough" check-up at a petrol pump a few kilometers from our hotel. From there we followed him to his workshop, all the way to Naraina Industrial area. Soon our five bikes got all the attention. Things were getting done fast. We even thought we would be out of there by 1:00 in the afternoon. But lady luck threw us her nasty smile. Soon we found that the sporkets on two of our bikes is good for just another 200KMs. There was no way we could complete the 2500 KM journey on these sporkets. The team of bikers got into a discussion on whether to buy new sporkets on our own or to call Rajesh and ask him to pay us for these new ones. Atlast, we called Rajesh with the news. TO my surprise, Rajesh was decent enough to send his mechanic with two new sporkets and a chain to put in the bikes. Oil checks, brake shoe replacements, speedometer cables, chain tightening (or loosening), clutch wire tightening .... It took us till 4:00PM to get it all done. Muthu, the chief mechanic at the workshop had relocated from a southern Tamil Nadu district about 10 years ago to work in Delhi. He was called to the workshop specially to take care of our needs for the day. Once he found out where we are going and that we knew nothing about bike repair, he was good enough to give us useful tips about adjusting clutch wires, accelerator cables, brake tightening etc. He also made his mechanics to show us how to remove the wheels and put them back .. we would need it in case of a puncture.

All bikes checked and done, last minute shopping for batteries, scarfs and memory cards done, we were ready to leave Delhi. But first we need to fill up our tanks. Even before we could reach a petrol pump, one bike ran dry and just refused to start. Some delay and back-and-forth to the petrol pump later, we thought we were all set to go, only to realise that finding our way out of Delhi onto NH 1 is quite difficult task. Luckily for us, a guy who introduced himself as a member of local Eagle group ( I think that's what he said), helped us out by leading us out of Delhi's madenning traffic signals onto the highway. Soon we were all cruising at 70 - 80Kmph on NH 1. Our jouney has begun.

After about an hour on the road, I found 3 of the 5 bikes missing from my rear view mirror. We had to stop and a cell phone call later found out that one of the bikes had a puncture. Mr. Murphy is working overtime for us today.

While waiting for the other bikes, a couple of local guys on bajaj bikes stopped by us and informed us that "some similar big bikes" like the ones that I was riding on has stopped due to puncture some 10 KMs back. After chatting with us in Hindi for some time, to find out where we are going, the next question they asked us was "Which country ?". Had a good mind to tell them "Pakistan!!!".

Anyway, back at the puncture site, there was mixed news. The good news was that there was a petrol pump, a Dhabha and two puncture shops all at walkable distances from where the flat tyre occured. The bad news was that, the two puncture fellows just refused to walk to our bikes with their tools to remove the tyre and attend to the puncture, inspite of more money being offered. So, right there, on the highway, under fading light, we started to remove the tyre from the bike and took it to the puncture fellow to fix it. It took us another hour and a half to get it all done.

The day so far was so grueiling that we started appreciating simple good things in life, like the hot glass of milk tea from the Dhabha. We were amazed by how the puncture fellows, flatly refused to get out of their shops to come attend to us inspite of more money being offered. Is it that they do not want to spoil their sunday evening, or is it that they see so many punctures that ours is just one more ... I would never be able to understand .... but this was a first for me ... to see somebody who obviously could do with more money, flatly refusing the work and the money.

Well, by the time we were ready to kick our bikes to life, it had become dark and we decided to drive through the night. We set Ambala as our target for the day. Now that we were on a highway, I decided to try driving the bike. As the needle crossed 50, 60,70 & 80 KMPH marks, so did my sense of elation at this major accomplishment. I had managed to tame the beast and ride it, atlast. Where I grew up, Bullets have a reputation of being a tough man's ride. Now, I could claim to have ridden one and that too at quiet high speeds. But the elation was short lived as the reality of having to drive on highway in the night hit hard on my face, literally. I had to keep my eyes open inspite of loads of dust and insects that were getting into it.

Not being experienced bikers, we clearly lacked the discipline to drive in a group. So invariably we had to stop every half hour or so to sync up with the rest of the bikes and this made our progress slow. But without much incident we reached Ambala at 12:00 in the night. After roaming around the city a little bit and waking up attendents at two hotels we choose Amar Palace to crash in for the night. I took a nice bath to clean the grime of the highway off my body and dug out the load of mud and insects that had gotten into my eyes. After a very late dinner, we all slept, deciding to start at 8:00AM in the morning.

The hot sultry weather in Delhi, the grease from the workshop and grime of the highway meant that I did not take out my camera the whole day. So I do not have any pictures on the events of the day.

Travalouge Part 1

This is a day by day account of my trip to Leh-Ladakh. Being a post-event account of the trip, please excuse me for mixing up the tense/voice in my narration.


July 27th :: I leave for Delhi tomorrow with my group. Seven of us, 4 of whom are my co-workers and two others, who are a colleague's friends will be travelling on motorcycles all the way from Delhi to Leh and back. It's a day of hectic activity, buying stuff for the trip, finishing up last minute work at office and in the midst of all this trying to find if we can get Bajaj Avengers for us in Delhi instead of Bullets. The point is none of us have driven a Bullet before, none of us are avid bikers, none of us have been on long bike trips before, none of us know how to repair a bike, none of us had the time to spend with a mechanic to learn basic bike reparing or even google on this subject before the trip. Except for some blind guts and a can do-can manage attitude, we did not have anything in the form of preparation for this trip.



July 28th: I am on a flight with the 6 other bikers to Delhi. As the flight takes off ( surprisingly for a budget airline, on-time), I cannot help wonder about this trip. I still cannot believe that I am actually doing it. I am not an out-doors person. I do not trek, I do not bike, I do not like to get all sweaty and dirty, the most time I spend in sun on a week-day is about 10min when I take a customary after-lunch walk around the tech park my office is located in. But here I am, on my way to drive a bike that is probably 3 times my weight, in blazing sun, venturing into the unknown zone, for not a day or two but for full 19 days. This is the most adventurous thing I have done in my life.


A good samaritan on this flight had a suggestion for me. Having gone to Leh on bike from Delhi once himself, he suggested that after hiring the bike, we take it to a Enfield authorised service center to get a check-up done before leaving Delhi.


First time in my life, I had the opportunity to take some pictures from inside the flight. Seems like they had relaxed the rules about using cameras inside the flight. Just to be polite ( and to be on the safer side) I had asked the cabin attendent if it is OK to take pictures from inside the flight. She had to to consult her superior and came back with the reply "You may take pictures in the flight but not of the cabin attendants".(??)

Yahoo weather had said that it would be thunderstroms all the time in Delhi and up north. But nothing prepared us for the 36C heat and humidity in Delhi. Soon we were bathing in sweat and heading towards Tony Motors in Karol Bagh, with whom we had arranged to hire bikes.

The owner, Rajesh had arranged 4 Thunderbirds and a classic Bullet, all 350Cc bikes, for us. One look at the bike, I was scared. It was huge ... much bigger than I had anticipated. It looked heavier than the 180Kgs, that Royal Enfield website had quoted for the Thunderbirds. I was so scared of the size and weight of this bike that I decided not to drive the bike until we reach a highway. For the rest of the day, I made myself useful by finding efficient ways to tie our luggage on the two carriers on the sides of the bikes, finishing up the paperwork for bike hire and most importantly, kick-starting Jomy's bike. YOu see, he had trouble kicking the bike to start, but for some reason, I seem to be able to do it.

By the time we are set, it's late in the evening and we need to find a place to settle down for the night. We went in search for a hotel that is cheap, clean and would give us a safe parking lot for the bikes. Finally we stayed in Hotel Volvo near New Delhi Railway station.

Tomorrow we need to start early, find a Enfield service station and check our bikes or if no service station would be open, get out of Delhi and take the risk with the bikes.