The road to Pang

Continuing from the previous post...One thing I learnt that day was, after Keylong  its "Juley" all the way to leh. Juley is everything, Its Namaskar, Its hello, its thank you, its welcome, its goodbye. People respond immaterial of race or origin when you simply utter the magic word. I can without doubt say, Juley made me a little bit more compassionate.

My goal was to reach Pang the same night, and Leh the next day. From where I was, things were about to change. The land would no longer support the beautiful willows ,shrubs or greenery seen at Jispa. The terrain changes, the roads become bad to worse. I have never seen landscape so massive as the mighty Himalayas. It is also the road you love to hate , if you recognise the early signs of hypoxia and altitude sickness as Pang is almost exactly 4600 mts above sea level. (15280 ft to be precise) which got the better of my fellow riders.

At Barlacha La top

A small and petite water body en-route to Sarchu

The Middle of nowhere

The Sarchu plains

Camp sites

A lovely patch of tarmac before I stopped for lunch that afternoon.

Finally ! houses, tents & people !

I would be wrong to say I found this place. lets just say, this place found me for lunch and the people there decided to feed a poor soul in the mountains.

It was well furnished for 14500 ft. I was impressed.

These people make the best maggi in the world, and even had cheese.

Grandmommy and the little grand daughter..

The kids loved to play with the gear. Especially the helmet and the boots.

 Scrubs and any form of 'green' ends here

The Gata Loops

After crossing Barlacha la the route headed to the Gata Loops, a series of 21 hair-pin bends that further leads to Nakee La at 4,920 m. I expected to see some snow, but I was disappointed. Nevertheless, I was not unhappy. Deep down inside I was screaming "Damn, I am in the Himalayas". The pictures my crappy phone camera captured then was looking almost unreal. I think its the sky up there, Or may be its that  horizon that leads to infinity. You can literally see for miles.

The dryness up there (Zero or No humidity) makes anyone an extremely thirsty traveler . This meant that I had  go through 1 liter of water every 2 hrs. But on the whole, things were rather vivid than delineated now, riding alone through the astonishing terrain towards Mars like Pang.

So long, Keylong...

With 2 days of uncertainty passing by, we were reluctant to stay in keylong any longer. I was already 6 days behind schedule and my leaves were running out. I had to do something.

My friend arrived from the accident spot to where we were, & I should say that he was pretty badly hurt in spite of the riding gear he was wearing. Having said that, if not for the gear, he might not have made it (after examining the damage on the riding jacket , helmet & boots, things could have been pretty bad)

This gave me the jitters, so it was ATGATT (All The Gear, All The Time) , may it be storm, rain or snow. Things suddenly turned positive the third day. I guess, no#3 is the charm. We managed to settle the cops, the relatives of the elderly woman, get our self's out of the "Hotel arrest" and even get the keys of the confiscated motorcycle. The only thing that was pending in our list was to get the 'accident motorcycle' back from  Kokhsar check post. I was lazy that afternoon. So my friends were on the job to get the bike back from the check post. 

Tomorrow we leave to Pang. It was going to be a grueling 185 kms ride ahead crossing 3 high altitude passes. That night I went to sleep earlier than normal after a killer moon-lit dinner of roti, dal, rice and eggs. After a good night's sleep, I was awake as per plans and was going to load my bags on the bike. I am lazy, but these guys take it to another level .  I was riding with 2 people who were as lazy as a "fatass on a couch with a beer". In fact one of them was just that. 

I was shocked to see that one of them had breathing problems and he wanted to go to the hospital (the same fella who had crashed earlier ). It was 6 30 AM. Here's a view of keylong general hospital at 6 45 AM with no people...

While my friend was getting some supplementary oxygen and morphine (just kidding), I had to entertain myself to ensure I dint get bored, So I was reading random things put up in the hospital ..

It was 7 30ish, and I was getting a little uncomfortable dressed up like an astronaut in a government general hospital. While the doc wanted us to stay till 10 am to get a X ray done (just to be sure, if there were no broken ribs ), My friend wanted to head back to the room, thanks to morphine. 

As selfish as this may seem, I told both of them that I had to leave without them, while one of them was still sleeping and the other trippin hard on the pain killers from that early morning dose. 

So this is where we split. I ride alone to leh from here..I am back to being the "lone crusader in a dangerous world" , and nothing could stop me. Not even me...

The beautiful lahul and spiti valley in the morning..

In the Check post at after Jispa

The mountains and I

Lovely tarmac in the middle of nowhere..

Riding a roadless road..

The bike that deserves a round of applause. She made me proud by effortlessly over taking 500s, like it was her birthright... on and off roads. Thanks to her lean diet of royal enfield's for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

End of Post...An out of focus flower. Peace.

More Delays

I was way behind schedule with the 3 night halt in Manali. We had to really start munching miles. We would start our epic ride today on the legendary Leh-Manali highway.

This was our route map..

With my leg fully operational again , we began to ride early in the AM. This to me is the quintessential mecca of all road trips on a motorcycle, which involves crossing five high altitude passes in a span of 2 to 3 days. ("la" means pass)

On our way up top to Rothang, we saw heaps of people in cars doing the same road trip. To do these very roads on a motorcycle, its like a new trip altogether. On the motorcycle its just different. Its more intense since you are completely exposed to the elements. The sheer thrill of pitching man&machine against the elements and riding so high that after day 1, you are often higher than the maximum permissible ceiling for commercial skydiving, which is 15000 ft. I cannot explain that sensation with words. One thing was sure, I was gonna come back .. again and again, because this was never gonna get boring. EVER.

With that said, we rode Manali - Rohtang - Kokhsar. Here we stopped for some quick dal and rice and were on our way to Tandi, the last fuel station to gas up. I remember waiting here forever. The reason was, the fellow dirt bike rider (on the stock impulse) was not within our vicinity.  After talking to a couple of locals we were told that a motorcycle looking identical to ours had met with a road accident and the casualties were taken to the Hospital in Keylong. This was not good. But we weren't sure till one of the passer by mentioned a "red riding jacket & blue water bottle". It was definitely him.

We rushed to Keylong and found out from the local police that he had collided with an elderly woman on the highway little after where we stopped for lunch. We had to stay in Keylong till we could sort this out with the cops and the relatives of the elderly woman.

Here's a glimpse of Keylong from the town, where we had to stay for 3 more days.

The scenery tends to change once the Lahul and Spiti Valley gets engulfed by rain clouds ..

In spite of the awesome scenery, things were not great at the moment. The Cops had us in a "Hotel Arrest" situation and confiscated the keys of one of the two motorcycles. Yep, you can conclude that we were a little bit stuck with the whole situation. Not having cell phone signal was the least of our worries.

But the cool thing about rock bottom is, the only way out is UP.

Parvati

It was a beautiful morning in Manali.

It was warmer than I expected & It was a nice, bright sunny day. This was the good news. The bad news was, we did not get permits to climb Rothang till Wednesday due to scheduled road maintenance. So we decided that we shall ride some trails that day.

more bad news, our trail ended here..

I took a small fall in                                                   ^                                        this place. But nothing that needed me to rush to the hospital. In fact, the footage is on video and should be on YouTube soon.

It felt terrific to ride the dirt bikes without the church & kitchen sink tied to the back. So we decided to take a detour and head to Parvati Valley. From the confluence of the Parvati River with the River Beas, the Parvati Valley runs eastwards, through a steep-sided valley from the town of Bhuntar, which was 40 kms from where we were. Kasol (Our destination) was roughly another 40 kms from there. It was already mid after noon and coming back the same day was unlikely, but that was the plan.

We chilled in this river bed for a while...

We reached Kasol by evening and decided that we would not ride in the night. We stayed at an "Alpine" hotel by the banks of the Great Parvati. We did not need any music that night. The place had its own sound track. I was also very excited about a small trail which a local had showed me which lead to the "old bridge" over the river. I wanted to show the trail to my fellow dirt biker and it was already dark by then. Being what I am, I fell again. This time there was some damage to the leg causing mild / medium inflammation which ensured that I couldn't walk well for the next couple of days.

There was absolutely no damage to the motorcycle whatsoever.

The next day, with a slight limp, I went to explore the extended banks of the river to find this..

The water was flowing so fast, that the little drops hitting the rocks formed another thin layer of 'cloud like' water.

Apparently there was a meadow nearby where Shiva is said to have meditated for 3000 years !  From Kasol, the road passes through the Sikh and Hindu pilgrimage town of Manikaran. There were loads of Hindu and Sikh pilgrims as some believe that these waters have sacred healing properties.

PS: GROW MORE

After breakfast, we headed back to base in Manali. That night we had to pack all the garbage back as we leave tomorrow early in the AM.

         "You need to wake up early in the morning, sometimes even before the sun. Its worth it...because you know what lies beyond the fog is all-ways something that your gonna love...somehow, we wish we thought we were lost, you know like in the stupid movies..and then we found out that behind the mountains there is a desert, and once you cross this desert, there is another mountain ..so on & so on.." - From the Three Kings..