After which we continued on a cold, drizzly but nonetheless beautiful descent into a small village in the valley called Koksar. Upon reaching the village we get a call on Poddy’s BSNL Mobile from Sushil asking for help as his front tyre had punctured. We reached the site in no time, after taking a small wash in and a few pictures of the river.
Once we met up, and Poddy showed his skills with the tools by fixing the tyre, we left for as far as we could’ve made that day. Which we realised was not much as we reached this point called Tandi. This was to be our halt for the night and our fuel refilling point as a hoarding at the petrol pump smugly exclaimed “The next fuel station is 365 km’s from here.” And obviously the underlying words meant, ‘Tank Up’. Another thing that I suddenly realised was that we’d covered only 80 kms so far of the total 475 km’s of Manali-Leh highway. Man, we sure had opted for a hell lot of riding.After filling the bike tanks to the brim and also the empty fuel cans that we were carrying from Manali we went scouting for a place to camp. Excited, as this was going to be our first camp, we managed to set them up after much ado. A little fire which did not remain little for long was started by collecting twigs and breaking a few branches. Ah! Did the fire feel good in the cold or what. After which we confined ourselves to the cosiness of the tents and slept like logs till the morning.
Day 2: When we woke up in the morning we realised that it had got awfully cold but the site that we had chosen to rest the night was the prettiest place we’d seen in ages. It took us about an hour to wrap everything up and ready the bikes, whereas Sushil (of Nainital) had already become infamous for taking the longest to pack up and leave.
Our first stop was Keylong which was just a few kilometers away, where we managed to find clean toilets to relieve ourselves and some nice fresh aloo parathas to fill us up again. After a fulfilling breakfast we left for Jispa where we knew a rural museum was located. But alas, we’d reached too early and it was closed.
Upon moving further we learned of one of the more dangerous hindrances of this kind of a terrain, the river streams. After faltering and almost toppling over a couple of times we learned the golden rule of crossing streams – Never raise your legs to protect your shoes from getting wet. Instead the best thing to do is to just stay as close to the bike and stay as one unit and ride as straight and steady as possible.
We reached Baralachala after some really serious riding through gravel. Whenever the gravel was a thin layer we moved normally and wherever it became more than a single layer, the bikes seemed as if they were floating aside on the road. A crazy feeling.
Coming back to Baralacha La, situated on 16500 feet above mean sea level, we were greatly tempted to stay on and enjoy the beautiful views but heeded the advice of experienced bikers and left after a small rest and some fantastic pictures.
Though we’d started the day expecting to reach Pang and stay the night, which meant that we would’ve done not much riding on the next day to reach Leh, we had to halt at Sarchu. Most guys were already feeling the effects of AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) caused due to the high altitude and ‘aspirins’ were being freely popped to contain that. Though we’d been taking ‘Diamox’ to counter that effect for the past 3 days, nobody wanted to take a chance and we stayed put with the others in a parachute tent.
Sarchu was probably the coldest place we encountered, in the course of the ride, that was not a mountain pass. A night at the tent, lots of Maggi for dinner and the company of amazing like-minded travelers and the greatest view on earth cost us Rs. 150, all in all. Life doesn’t get better.
Day 3: We were refreshed after a night at Sarchu and there was a hugely optimistic vibe in the air that the terrain ahead will be much more bike-friendly. Enjoyed the ride till Pang and what came next was unexpected by any of us and if we would’ve known probably more of us would’ve chickened out. The monster was called More Plains, it was a huge tract of land which was flat for miles and miles and more miles. At first upon reaching, we were thrilled to find such a huge tract of flat land, and slowly and steadily as the miles kept adding up and the track became more and more sandy, we were praying to God that it ended soon. It did end but not before a long ride through the most barren, broken and dry land that I’d ever seen in my life. After crossing which we all sat down and heaved a huge sigh of relief that it was over. Here we made another mistake, we consoled each other saying that the worst was behind us.
And the terrain that followed only helped us think that we were right. The road that led to Upshi, our next stop, was lined with quite a bit of greenery, which was soothing to the eyes after riding through the glare of the desert for the past few days. We also happened to add a feather to our cap by riding through Tanglang La which was not modest about mentioning that it was the 2nd highest motorable road in the world at 17500 feet. And the BRO had added a cute, “Unbelievable is not it”, below.
Here we were thinking that Leh was only a few kilomteres away and expecting to cover it within a couple of hours at best and there our buddy Ashwin was standing with a big problem – tyre puncture.
This was the second and thankfully the last puncture of the trip and if there had been one more we probably would’ve happily thrown each other over the cliffs.
By the time we sorted it out, with half tools and half ‘jugaad’ it was already 8pm and we had planned to rush to Leh and dump ourselves on the bed. But only a few kilometers ahead was Ashwin waiting with the same problem aggravated, which meant that we hadn’t been successful in changing the tube. Now this was the killer part of the whole thing as it was not before 12 midnight that we reached Leh after ensuring that the bike was safely parked to be retrieved the next day.
Upon reaching Leh, we found the most fantastic Chicken Butter Masala in the world and also the best hotel room (Nezer View Guest House) that Rs. 600 could buy. Sleep was unsound as their was a lack of oxygen and everybody kept struggling to breathe. But then for what we’d seen all through the day we had no option but to sleep – like logs.
Day 4: We were told to acclimatise ourselves upon reaching Leh, which meant that for a day or two we must do nothing but relax. And boy, were we glad to comply. But still after a sound sleep we went out to see the market, check some emails and just laze around all day. Though we’d thought we won’t do anything, we did end up getting a massage, visiting the Leh palace and shopping around the market. Which was all very relaxing after what we’d been through.
The Leh palace was a really unique architectural style, something you don’t see in the plains at all. But it had like a thousand rooms and a small gompa, or temple, and a museum showcasing several restored heritage sites of Jammu and Kashmir. The view of the entire Leh city, especially the Polo grounds and the few mosques and gompas, was simply breathtaking. This is the kind of vantage point that every ruler in the world must have over his land. Back from the sky-touching palace we wandered around the market looking at the German bakeries and the Tibetan curios.
Day 5: The next day, though we initially thought we’d rest, we left for Pangong Tso, tso meaning lake. And this one was said to be the world’s highest salt-water lake and when we saw it it also was perhaps the largest.
We had to take a turn from Karu, so everyone met to have breakfast at Karu itself. The roads initially were really good and later on as we got nearer the destination deteriorated. Here we came across something that taught us the golden rules of driving in the mountains, “Start early and drive slowly to reach safely”.
We then reached a point that exemplified the concept of starting early by ensuring that we park the bikes and walk the next 3 km’s to reach the lake. It was a stream of water, known as Pagla Naala, the strength of which kept increasing as the day progressed and the sun melted the snow.
Creating a human chain of sorts we parked our bikes and crossed the stream on foot and tried our best to not fall with the strong current that flowed through us. Once over, we trekked an amazing desertscape, while sidestepping some quicksand along the way, to reach our destination, the beautiful lake.
We rented a tent for the princely sum of Rs. 150 per person, dumped our luggage there, took a huge flask full of coffee and sat by the crystal clear waters staring at the setting sun.
In the entire trip, there were moments when I thought, life couldn’t be better and in the next moment, it only got better.
As the sun set and people rushed to their tents to escape from the ice cold wind, we took more coffee, put some groovy music on and sat staring at the sky. Where in the city you see half a dozen stars scattered in the sky, this place was full of a billion stars and more. And there was absolute action going on in the sky – you could see the sudden movement of a shooting star every few seconds or follow the movement of a sattelite halfway across the globe. Some people have mentioned spotting a few planets, but I was too mesmerised by the action to actually find the still objects. After much staring at the sky and an overdose of reggae music we decided to call it a night.
Day 6: Though the others were too knocked out by the previous day, I managed to get up and see the most beautiful sunrise in the world. Took some one million shots just like all the other days.
While we had breakfast and were contented that we’d experienced one of the best places in the world Sushil came with a fantastic piece of good news. He managed to throw a few names to the Army guys and get a boat ride on the lake. It was simply WOW! We saw a few Chinese ducks and also found the spots where the lake water was sweet while the rest of it was salty. Though we pleaded and begged for the jawan to take us to the China/Tibet side of the lake, he just refused to. I wonder why! 🙂
We hitched a ride back on an army supplies truck till the stream, which actually was a really small brook that we could just jump over by this part of the day. Took our bikes and headed back to Leh, but only after stopping at a monastery, Thiksey, and a palace, Shey, along the way.
Once we got back, took a shower and were fresh. We were in the mood to party and went to this hippie joint called K C Garden, where there went lots of smoking, great food, movie on a large screen, glassfulls of drinks and more smoking. We had a ball, fixed the plan for the next day with some people we met, returned back to the hotel by 2 am, and slept like logs.
Day 7: Though it dawned on us in the morning but we’d signed up for a bicycle trip to the highest motorable road in the world. Without knowing what we were in for we clothed ourselves the closest we could to bikers and left in a Tata Sumo with the bikes on top. Kahrdung La, as the pass was called, was actually the world’s highest motorable road and we felt quite a sense of achievement on having travelled there. Upon reaching the top though, it was extremely cold, and we immediately started to roll down on the bikes. Like I mentioned earlier, every day on the trip it felt as if you’ve had the best experience until u had the next. And now cruising on these bicycles, admiring the amazing scenery, occasionally stopping to click snaps, all came together to be an amazing feeling.
It took us a couple of hours to get back to Leh, and this excursion was a welcome change from the bass thud of the bullet to the super silent cruising of the Firefox.
After which, we spent another night looking for some yummy food, and that was not difficult to find in the Leh market. Some great pizzas marked the end of another fulfilling day.
Day 8: Do you think its possible to be absolutely mesmerised by a place and still yearn for home? Well, such was our state. Sushil’s had contracted an eye infection which kept getting worse by the day. Pritish was worried about all the work that he was missing. Poddy was disappointed because he hadn’t got any good hash. And I kept missing my wife wherever I went. We thought maybe all this was because we’d stayed in Leh too long. So this day we decided to leave for Srinagar, vis the Leh-Srinagar highway which was supposed to be much better maintained than the Manali-Leh one. This was an entirely different length of a highway but much better maintained and lots more greenery, which was a welcome change. The first interesting thing that we came across on this route was the Magnetic Hill, which was an eerie thing which was said pulls up a car when left idling on its slopes, though we completely missed it in our hurry to get to Kargil. The other interesting thing was the conjunction of the Indus and the Zanskar rivers that made for a lovely view. We then moved to this place called Lamayuru. Now, Lamayuru is famous for two things, one for its centuries old monastery with its mask dance festivals and the other for its terrain which is said would be exactly the terrain on the moon. With huge craters, undulating land and a beautifully serpentine highway cut through them it was quite a sight.
Though we’d aimed for Kargil, we could not really reach there as there was a bit of miscommunication around Lamayuru and we spent a better half of the evening looking for each other. We stayed the night at this plave called Bodhkarbu, which had another beautiful Gompa.
Day 9: From the start we were moving full speed towards Srinagar, so did not do much of stopping and sightseeing. Our first major stop though was Kargil, which almost entirely consisted of a Muslim population, and was made famous because of the war. We’d also stopped at the Dras War Memorial which was quite an experience and the guard present there showed us the hills where the Pakistani’s had climbed and were shooting at the Indian soldiers from. The guard told us that they chased the Pakistanis away and now they were stationed 8 kilometers from where we were. Which also meant that half the Kashmir that we’d seen in the map as India’s was actually Pakistan-occupied.
We moved on to reach this place called Dras, which proudly claimed to be the Second Coldest Inhabited Place on Earth where the temp had touched -60 degrees., and that added another feather in our cap.
The next major town that came was called Sonmarg and it really was the golden path, as the name suggests. Sonmarg was green, clean and absolutely gorgeous. After seeing desertscape in abundance for the past few days we felt as if some really cool soothing balm was rubbed on our eyes while looking at this hill town. There was a beautiful river flowing by, horses grazed in the fields, really pretty J & K Tourism signboards showed names of the different places. It was all heaven and no earth.
The only time reality strikes real hard is when you see another soldier at the next crossing standing guard with an AK.
This here was paradise destroyed.
Much as we wanted we couldn’t stop there for long as we had to reach Srinagar before dark. Which we reached and booked ourselves into a houseboat. Something all of us had always wanted to do. This was the costliest and the grandest accomodation of the trip for us at Rs. 850 per room and another Rs. 200 for dinner and breakfast. Dirt cheap by any standard but ours. Though with the beauty of the Dal Lake, which we discovered on a long shikara ride, the place was worth its weight in gold. Srinagar was very different from Leh in more ways than one. There was too much commercialism here, and why not also, being the former tourism capital of the country it was painfully starved for business. We realised that all prices were negotiable and everything up for a bargain. It was almost painful to get the things at whatever ridiculous prices you quoted, for they had to make a sale literally at any cost.
We did the regular shopping and sightseeing to the Mughal Gardens, the Chashm-e-shahi and the Hazrat Bal and before the end of the day left for a nearby town called Pehelgam. By the way, now it was only 2 bikes, as Sushil had to catch a flight as his eye infection left him immobile.
When we reached Pehelgam it was midnight and we were very coolly escorted by the CRPF jawans into a fairly decent accomodation where we rested the night but only after a long chat and chai session with the jawans.
Day 10: We woke up in Pehelgam to see hoardes of Amarnath Yatra pilgrims, and discovered that close to Pehelgam was the ascending point for the pilgrimage. We went on a horse ride to this place called the Switzerland of India, which was nothing more than sprawling lush green meadows, very pretty. Upon return we rode to the Betab valley on our bikes, where the movie of the same name was shot and that made for a spectacular site. Ulysses that we were, we left Pehelgam by the evening for another place called Patnitop.
We reached Patnitop again by around midnight, when all the hotel managers were in deep sleep and the place, filled with fog, looked as haunted as haunted can be. Upon much banging of doors, we found one hotel keeper who took us in for the night and put us up in this room which had snails crawling all over it. But when you’ve been riding for days, all you care about is a bed to plonk yourself on and the rest can be worried over the next morning.
Day 11: We left Patnitop as we had a long way to go to reach Chandigarhh, return the bikes, get to Delhi on a bus and return back home. All of it in that one day.
We rode and rode and rode. This was the longest ride of all our lives. A 24 hour ride, interspersed with lunch, tea, dinner, lots of soft drinks, chips, couple of hours of sleep at a midway Dhaba, lots of bike-riding, withdrawing of money at an ATM, buying real cheap and yummy fruits at Jammu and what not.
Day 12: This was the last day of the bking till around 8 am, when we crossed the J & K and Punjab border at Lakhanpur and rode into Chandigarh, the bautifully planned and organised city. A rarity in our country.
In this entire stretch we had seen terrain changes every few kilometres but I believe the most stark changes came when we moved from Himachal Pradesh into Ladakh, then onto the Kashmir valley and finally into Punjab.
We all came back with our own impressions of the trip, which were all really different but all inspired.
Poddy, says that he’d want to go there again and again, and will definitely do so with his Swiss friend next year.
Pritish, deeply mired in his philosophy of not seeing the same place twice, says, “What next?”.
Sushil, still recovering from the eye infection, says that if he heard the words ‘La’ or ‘Tso’ again, he’d die.
As for me,
well after the many falls and the resultant bruises that my buddies had,
after giving hi-fives to little children who come running all along the way,
after being invited for meals and chat sessions by various Ladakhis and Kashmiris,
after buying ground collected delicious apricots in tins from kids and,
after this amazing Bullet ride through the most beautiful place in the world,
I say, “We’ve only just begun.”
hey guys… nice article and u all must have enjoyed too. i also went to ladakh this month around mid aug and we drove from manali to leh in a tata safari..but bikes have a different charm..
on bikes you can feel the wind changing colour every few minutes….what more can i say
How is the climate during August? I and my friends from Mumbai are planning for a bullet trip to Leh-ladakh via Manali. Does it rain? Any tips
hey guys
it was a very intresting read. u hv mentioned tht u rented the bullet @ 750/-per day . m keen to plan a bullet ride in july. cud u give me some idea where to rent it frm? any dos and donts? if u hv contact nos..all the more better. tks n rgds – ajay singh
Great article man ……… we are about to begin our ride all the way from Bombay to Leh coming this 31st of July.
mandeep_dhaliwal12@yahoo.com
Howdy! I could have sworn I’ve been to this blog before but after browsing
through some of the post I realized it’s new to me.
Nonetheless, I’m definitely happy I found it and I’ll be book-marking and checking
back often!