Category: Motorcycle

We were going to cross three high altitude passes today and stop for the night at a place called Pang. Pang, at a height of approx 15600 ft, has the world’s highest Transit camp, according to the Indian Army. Most people who travel to Leh prefer to stay at one of the campsites at Sarchu which is at a lower altitude and helps people acclimatize better. Ashok wasn’t very happy with this decision as he wasn’t if staying at such a high altitude was a good idea. Well, Ashok was right in a way and we did have problems because of the height, but it was all well worth it 🙂

More on that later.We got up late (again by Joshi’s standards) this morning and had a leisurely breakfast, tied our luggage to the bikes and took off by around 9AM. The road was supposed to be nice from now on, right ? Well almost ! While not as bad as what we’d been through, there were long sections of the road which were under repair and so the ride wasn’t as smooth as we’d been hoping. We still had a nice time but only because we’d seen worse. We stopped at the base of the Baralacha la pass to register ourselves at the police check post, had tea and refreshments and continued on. The climb to the pass was quite easy with excellent tarred roads and nice weather. We crossed Suraj Tal on the way, which, is the source of the bhaga river.

Thanks to the good roads, we would have missed Baralacha la if we hadn’t noticed the board. After all the stories we had heard about the pass being dangerous, this seemed too easy and actually disappointing, but hats off to the BRO for maintaining the roads in such inhospitable conditions.

The pass was quite windy and after a small photo stop we all moved on. We climbed down the pass pretty fast and reached bharatpur which is just another collection of tents. A lot of people prefer staying here instead of going further to Sarchu cause its cheaper. We didn’t spend much time here and moved on since we had to reach Pang which is another 70 kms ahead of Sarchu and time wasn’t really on our side.

Sarchu is basicallly a cluster of tents and campsites run by various travel agencies and locals. Its a decent place to stay for the night and the facilities, though basic, are good enough. Sarchu is situated in a valley of sorts and the road, which is quite nice, runs absolutely straight for a couple of kilometers. After hours of slow speeds we decided to let lose here and started racing with each other. From Sandhu’s own account, he smoked Pandey’s pulsar 🙂

The road was nice and inviting but quite bumpy and I, after a couple of bad bounces, took things easy and carried on at my own sweet pace. The bumps, I’m told, are because of the himalayan mermots that dig holes below the road’s surface and so the surface of the road sinks because of that.

We had lunch a little after Sarchu at a place I can’t remember the name of. Lunch was pretty uneventful … couple of us had maggi and the rest daal chaawal towards the next challenge of the day, ghata loops. The loops are a series of 21 hairpin bends over a distance of approx 13 kms which would take us from a height of approx 13776 ft to 15302 ft. The loops can be quite a strain on the bike and the biker since after this the chances of hitting AMS are quite high. The idea is not too exert yourself too much after reaching the highest point and do what we did … take a couple of pics and move.

By this time Pandey was down with a pretty bad case of AMS, even though he wouldn’t admit 😉 We crossed two more passes today and all he would do wherever we stopped was lie down. It was quite a sight 🙂 This is at Nakeela.

The passes themselves weren’t too hard. We crossed Nakeela (15547 ft) and Lachulungla (16616 ft). Didn’t spend much time on the passes. Pandey had AMS and Ashok also wasn’t feeling too well. The roads were quite bad and we weren’t in a very good shape and quite desperate by now to reach Pang. So, we took the obligatory pics and moved on. Btw, in the pic below, if you see closely, you can see Pandey lying on the ground with his back against the board marking the pass.

The scenery was pretty awesome and it would have been a waste not to stop for some photos. We were close to Pang now and were sure we’d reach in time, so we took easy from here on, taking quite a few breaks and clicking through our quota of pics for the day.

Pang (15640 ft) is another small settlement which is basically a collection of tents with basic food and lodging facilities. Even though, accommodation is available at Pang and it is closer to Leh, I’d still suggest one to stay at Sarchu since Pang is a lot higher than Sarchu and unless you’re acclimatised, its probably not a good idea to spend the night at this height. Pang, like I said earlier, has the world’s highest transit camp and this is where we were to spend the night.

Pandey’s AMS was getting pretty bad and he went to sleep in his room as soon as we reached the transit camp. The rest of us unloaded our bikes and Amar and Ashok went to sleep and Joshi, Sandhu and I went for a walk around the camp and to make some calls from the STD booth. Felt nice walking on our feet after a whole day of riding. Its quite amazing that the Army has STD facility through a satellite for the troops at this isolated place.

Pandey’s luggage was still on the bike when we came back, so we untied it and kept it in his room and decided to take Pandey to the Medical room at the camp, which as usual, he refused. But we persisted and he finally relented. The doctor gave him a 10 minute dose of pure oxygen and he was absolutely fine after that. He was back to his running, jumping self and looking at him, we all were in half a mind to get a couple of minutes of dose ourselves 🙂 Anyway, we went to the mess for dinner, saw news on TV after 10 days, had an awesome dinner and went back to our rooms.

The rooms were nice and cosy and warm enough. It was freezing outside and we were tired so we went to sleep pretty soon after dinner. The sky outside was amazing. This sounds like a cliche, but I don’t think I’ve seen so many stars in my life ever ! Too bad, we didn’t have the energy to go to our rooms and get the cameras out. We had a nice sleep thanks to the sleeping bags in the room and didn’t really feel the cold.

I disagree with people who say that motorcycling is all about riding. A motorcycle trip is so much more than just riding the bike. It is about taking in all that nature has to offer. It is about being one with the bike, with nature and getting the hidden explorer in you out. The freedom of riding a bike cannot be had for all the money in the world on a four wheeler. This was the reason why we chose to reach Leh via the Spiti route instead of the more popular Manali-Leh route.

We’d read a lot about the wonders of the Chandertal lake, or the moon lake and were desperate to catch a glimpse. Our plan for the day was to start early from Tabo and reach Kazaa in time for breakfast and tank up at the highest mechanically operated petrol pump in the world. After that we planned to visit the Kye monastery and Kibber village, which is considered the highest village in Asia connected by a motorable road.

Joshi got up early (again) and woke us all up (This, by the way, would be a regular feature throughout the ride. The dude won’t let us sleep !) Anyway, we were on the road by about 6:30. It was quite chilly and the thump from the 5 bullets was enough to wake up the whole village. I was a little behind and as soon as we crossed the village, I saw a huge stream.

There was a bridge over it and all seemed well, or so I thought. Reached a little closer and saw that the bridge was broken, washed away ! And I wondered where did the rest of the people go ? Till I saw a small trail to the right which went about 50 mtrs upstream and to a small temporary bridge, to my delight. I was in no mood to cross a stream that big that early in the morning.

The rest of the journey to Kazaa was pretty uneventful and except for the cold, we reached kazaa well in time and even managed a couple of photo breaks on the way.

Kazaa is the administrative headquarter of the Spiti region and is a big town compared to spiti standards. A lot of people make Kazaa their base to travel around this region. The petrol pump at Kazaa is the highest in the world.

We reached kazaa in time according to the plan. In fact, we reached a bit too early for the people of Kazaa as the petrol pump was not even open at that hour. And it didn’t look like the dhabas had any food ready. So, we asked the dhaba owner to start making paranthas for us and till then we searched around for the petrol pump attendant. We managed to get his phone number from a local and called him to the pump, and he came … in about an hour. Till then, we all had breakfast, called home from the STD booths, went shopping and roamed around aimlessly around the town.

With the bikes and our tummies full on fuel we left for Kye monastery, a majestic structure built on a hilltop. The monastery is about 12 kms from Kazaa and the road is in a good condition. Or atleast it was when we were there, and we reached the monastery in no time at all.

It was already quite late and we decided to skip riding to Kibber since that would have meant having to cross Kunzum la late in the afternoon, which is a bad time to be at high mountain pass. The high winds start picking up in the afternoon and there is every chance of the weather getting bad and since this was the first pass that we were crossing, we wanted to play it safe (Also, Ashok had really scared us 😉 ).

Losar is the last village before Chandertal and the last chance for us to buy any essentials for the night. We wanted to camp at Chandertal and none of us had any idea what was in store for us. The road to losar was absolutely beautiful with a lot of small villages and the mountains for company. It was quite inviting and we all decided to have a little high altitude race of our own. But what we didn’t realise was that the bike, like us, was oxygen deprived and it refused to go beyond 60-70 kmph, and of course we must have burned a lot of fuel on that stretch … but it was all worth it 🙂

The whole stretch that we were driving at was 3500 to 4000 mtr above sea level and the lack of oxygen was beginning to show its effects. Joshi was the first to be down with symptoms of AMS, nausea and headache. I had a slight headache while I was walking but I was fine as soon as I got on the bike. Joshi, on the other hand was struggling.

We reached Losar around 1 in the afternoon, got ourselves registered at the Police traffic control post, had a forgettable lunch of maggi noodles, took a couple of packets of instant noodles, bread, boiled eggs and moved on towards Kunzum La.

The Policemen at Losar did warn us about the condition of the road ahead but, trust me, we had no idea what we were getting into. Well, take a shot, how bad do you think can bad be ? FYI, the following pic is of a portion of the road we were driving on and the fact that one of us managed to stop, park the bike and took a picture means that this was not the worst stretch. On the worst stretches we didn’t even have the energy to stop, we just drove on.

The scenery around us was beautiful which was the only motivation we had to be at that place anyway. If only the roads were better, we could have actually stopped and enjoyed it. We still managed a couple of pics.

The ride up the pass was pretty uneventful for all of us, except Ashok and Sandhu who in their eagerness to reach the top (and fed up of the bad roads) took a short cut which didn’t turn out to be a good idea. The shortcut they took was pretty steep and the bike was anyway not performing well at that height. As a result, Sandhu’s bike stalled halfway up the shortcut and wouldn’t budge however hard he revved. So, he did what any self respecting sardaar bulleteer would do … got off the bike, put it in the first gear and pushed and revved it to the top 🙂

Ashok, on the other hand, was not so lucky. You see, he had a house full of luggage loaded on his bike and that wasn’t helping a bit. He fell, rolled and let the bike go. He tried picking the bike up but couldn’t. In the end, both Sandhu and Ashok with a lot of effort managed to pick up the bike and Ashok decided to take the longer route to the top. Smart … right ! Before I forget, I might as well let the world know, I was ahead of both of them and also tried taking this shortcut, but failed miserably about 20 mtrs down, rather up, the route and bowed and came back gracefully to take the longer route.

To keep things short we all reached Kunzum la as safe as we could have and boy, what a feeling it was ! We had conquered the first high altitude pass in our journey and were totally blown away by the view.

It was cold, windy, we were absolutely exhausted and the rarefied air was not helping the cause. We waited for Sandhu and Ashok, took a few more pics and proceeded towards our halt for the day, Chandertal. Btw, the view of the Bara Shigri glacier from the pass was mind bogling. Bara shigri is the second biggest glacier in the world (after the polar regions. Siachen is the biggest). None of us had seen anything like it ever before.

The road to Chandertal till a couple of years back was just a trek and was made into what we’d heard was a *jeepable* road some time back. Well, jeepable it was, but was it good enough for motorcycles ? Well, lets just say, we learnt it the hard way.

The road could be called anything but a road. There were rocks the size of baseballs on the way and the track was just about enough for a jeep to cross through. One slip on the rocks and you would go crashing down the valley, which ofcourse is a very scary thought now 🙂 Amar and Pandey were usually ahead of the rest of us and crossed all the streams before we did, so the rest of us had someone to tell us the route to take, if the stream was particularly deep or something, like this one:

We crossed two such streams on the way and the second one hit me hard. Hit the bike harder though. Sandhu and I were the last ones to cross the stream and for some unpardonable reason, the rest of them did not wait for us. Well, Sandhu crossed the stream first and then I braced myself for it. Engaged the first gear lightly and moved forward. Or maybe I didn’t, a couple of metres into the stream and I realised that the bike was not moving forward. I revved and revved and it wouldn’t budge. I thought it was stuck in some rock and Sandhu fearing the worst rushed towards me and came to pull the bike. The water, btw, was freezing cold and we were not wearing shoes. And guess what question he had for me the moment he reached ? “Gear lagaaya kya ?” (Have you engaged the gear ?) Man, that was the single most embarrassing moment of the trip for me. I put the bike in the first gear and moved on and crossed the stream quite easily 🙂

Easy for me, that is. Not for the bike. Somewhere while crossing the stream, the bike must have hit a stone or something and the silencer clip broke. Little further down the road, Sandhu yelled at me to stop since he could see the silencer hanging from the bike. It hadn’t fallen off completely and would have taken the whole assembly with it if I’d continued to ride in that condition. So, we took off the silencer and put it with the luggage and moved on. The bike wasn’t sounding that bad without it, btw, and the sound helped to keep the wild animals away 😉

Anyway, with all the trouble behind us we reached chandertal and were, frankly speaking, unimpressed with the lake. Maybe because we were tired and exhausted but all this just didn’t seem worth it. There were a couple of Japanese tourists camping at the lake that day and, to our delight, a dhaba, which also had arrangements for sleeping for people like us. But, we were going to camp, right ? Well, after all that we had gone through, none of us was in the mood to put up the tent, except Sandhu (who btw had this brilliant idea in the first place 😉 ). We had a small arguement over there and unanimously decided to the dhaba owners generous offer of food and cheap accommodation and stay there for the night, instead of dying in the cold. Sandhu and Pandey, hats off to them, still wanted to rough it out and started pitching the smaller of the two tents that we were carrying. Only after the tent was setup and they were ready to go to sleep in their sleeping bags did they realise that they couldn’t close the zipper of the tent. Sanity prevailed and Sandhu came running to our tent while Pandey, who was going through a bad case of AMS, thought this was just migraine and stayed put. Joshi had to use all his persuasive powers to get Pandey to come and sleep in our tent. It was practically freezing in his tent and he wouldn’t listen !

This had been the toughest day of riding till now and we were all tired. We had reached the famed Chandertal lake but, ironically, we were so tired that none of us went out to see the Moon lake in all its glory in the moon light. We sat in our tent, ate the forgettable food (egg curry and rice) and slept like kittens.

Travelogue on the way.

The trip is finally happening. This is the tentative schedule:

29th June:           Reach Chandigarh, get bikes checked and fill petrol.
30th June:           Leave early morning, reach Karcham by evening. Night halt at Karcham.
1st July:               Karcham to Kaza. Visit monestary at Tabo. Kaza has the highest petrol pump in the world.

2nd July:             Kaza to Chandertal. Visit Kye monestary and Kibber village enroute. Cross kunzum la.
3rd July:             Chandertal to Keylong. Get fuel topped up at Tandi, the last pump till Leh. Get bike checked at Keylong. Halt at Keylong.
4th July:             Keylong to Pang. Halt at the Pang transit camp, the highest in the world. Cross Baralacha la, climb up Gata loops.
5th July:             Pang to Karu. Halt at Karu. Cross More plains.
6th July:             Karu to Pangong Tso. Night stay at Tangtse. Cross Changla.
7th July:             Tangtse to Leh. Cross Changla.
8th July:             Local Leh sightseeing. Visit Thiksey, hemis, leh palace, shanti stupa. Roam around in the market. German Bakery 😉
9th July:            Leh to Khardung la and back. The highest motorable pass in the world.
10th July:          Leh to Kargil. Cross Fotu La.
11th July:           Kargil to Srinagar. Cross Zoji la, Dras, second coldest inhabited place in the world.
12th July:           Srinagar to Pathankot. Cross Jawahar tunnel, 2.8 kms long.
13th July:           Pathankot to Chandigarh.