Disclaimer: This is not a biker's review because I am not a biker, I am a traveller. For excellent biker reviews click here and here. When Mani writes one, I will link to his.
A moving earth
It was on the Delhi-Manali-Leh highway that I saw the limbs and bones of earth. Green muscular calves flared in mid-leap, brown knobby elbows holding up books nobodys read ('how to quake elegantly'), bare bony backs bending over a secret, perimeterless paunches pinched with snow, hollowed clavicles (my most favorite body part) collecting sun-knead melt. The earth moves with unknowable purpose in the Great Himalayas, and for the 3 days it took us to get from Manali to Leh we moved with her – soul-stirred and cradle protected. To say she is beautiful is a redundant declaration, ofcourse she is but there is much more to be said about her. Those 3 days she will have you foraging for oxygen, dreaming of tar and numbing in her glacial melt.
Fringes of sense
40 kms out of Delhi and we have a rear flat. I, at that point, in keeping with good gender training, know nothing of bike internals. Mani, also in keeping with good gender training, does know. So I follow my instructions intently, and keep my eyes blinklessly open. I am fascinated, the Enfield Thunderbird is a beautiful creature. Over the next few days I will have seen her many layers disrobed, I will have massaged her joints and understood her sounds. At this point, I learn how to extract a wheel, change the tube, check the tyre for objects of heed (a silvery blade thingey this time, which, with my little hand I successfully dislodge), pump the new tube with air with our handy blue foot pump (it was so useful I was ready to kiss it by the end of our trip) and properly screw the tyre back on. We had some help but we did most of it ourselves. I am beaming, my first flat, painlessly renewed. We chat about the ill augurence of such an occurrence so early on in the trip but we press on cheerfully. Night halt at Chandigarh has us rushing to see the Rock Garden just before it closed. The contents of one man's imagination shaped out of rock, concrete, ceramic plates, toiletware, saucers, fuse boxes, it houses gnomes, pixies, goblins, two-headed smiley triangles and even bettered strangeness. I like places like these that reside on the fringes of sense. What, however, made serious sense in Chandigarh were the cycle lanes. Those I wanted to take home.
Manali teeth
Next day onward to Mandi, an ordinary town full of ordinary hotels. We stay in a room overlooking the river Beas, which followed us all the way. We are now in the Himalayas, dapper in its best monsoon green. Upbeat, de-grimed and river-fed, we decide to go down to rev the engine for the next days drive. And the engine refuses to wake. We sleep tense, and the next day, in a Sunday-shut town we ferret out a mechanic. Some more bike anatomy gleaned from the procedure– the bike tapit and spark plug assembly this time. We leave at noon, and thankfully Manali is 3.5 hours away. We are relaxed now and stop at Kullu for lunch when, quite dramatically, an upper-side crown in my mouth slips off its golden screw. I am a tooth short and a screw loose.
In Manali, there is a furious hunt for a dentist, which effort, like in Mandi, is Sunday-impaired. I was told quite conclusively that no person in Manali will drill teeth on Sundays. So I live with the exposed screw, careful not to commission my left side into any manner of chewing. It is difficult, I feel wounded, all smiled out. In addition, the bike shuts down again. It is looking dim, our prospects of steep ascent the next day. We are both despondent. Manali, with its beguiling snow-soft beauty and wool-covered markets, does mend us a few smiles, but we are once again tense. We spent 2 hours in the dying light at a mechanic's adda, watching leather and silver give way to dull steel and winding wire traffic. The carburetor is cleaned, wiring is checked, nuts are fastened, tapit adjusted. Sonu the mechanic and Raj the garage owner each stock us up with travel tips, route difficulties and words of encouragement. We are bolstered, and treat my recoiling mouth to some creamy spaghetti.
The next morning, I find my dentist, he fits the crown back on, with warnings of temporariness which I ignore. The bike does not start until a hardy sardar gives it a brutal kick. Poor Mani has, by now, worn out his right leg due to incessant futile kicking. So on we proceed trepidatiously to the highest point on the earth that either of us have been on.
Creepers to the skies
Rohtang Pass is your first creeper to the skies. The road winds, tapers and steepens until you are literally clinging to it, foot and wheel, inching upwards cautiously. On this one the earth tries to drown us in 1.5-2 feet of her wet refuse. Several times during that 10 kms stretch I got down and walked while Mani valiantly rode though all those metres of chee chee keechad. So challenging was it supposed to be that people in Manali are prone to saying 'Rohtang pass pohonch gaye toh samjho ke leh pohonch gaye'. Well, they exaggerate.
The second day sees us crossing a knee deep rampaging stream, spiny cold, right after Darcha. And day three has the earth spilling into our shoes and shirts as we almost fall, bike and baggage, into 3-4 feet of loose playful sand to be found in the More Plains in Jammu and Kashmir. We steer off the road once and spend an hour trying to get back on, go 20 kms downslope with the engine off because the bike wouldn't start, overcome countless streams and rolling-rock, ribbed and landslide ruined roads. A chain link breaks, another tyre gives, my skin burns. But the beauty, the beauty counsels every worry.
Platypus skin
As one departs Manali, all that thick green gives way to brown - chocolate cake brown, cocoa powder brown, cocoa powder stirring into flour brown, toasted bread brown, aloo tikki brown, Mani brown and Pooja brown. The earth is dessicated, scraggly, wrinkled skinned and smooth, oily platypused skinned. She is crumbly in places, spilling on to the road. She is studded with green buttons in places. She is striped tiger in places. She is infuriated in places, flaring like fire. She is snow shrouded in places. Colour, light, texture and shape mingle unfettered to form several Ganesha trunks, several Buddha eyes, several noses of my mother, three hippopotamus, soda cans, screaming faces, piano playing hands and whatever else the windings of my subconscious and idlings of my imagination muster. We stop several times, take pictures to capture in vain rock stream sky cattle road mind-reeling.
For me, it is beauty retold and by far the best part of the trip. If you're going to Ladakh, go by road through Manali. That is all.
Beet rock, jewelled Buddhas
In Ladakh the rock turns beet colored. The Leh markets are, like in Manali, typically foreign-tourist-tuned with german bakeries, hebrew signs, italian fare and aggressive hawking. Needle like trees frustrate the desert-barren in patches. Prayer wheels squeak at every street corner, white chortens spot the scapes, monasteries fling to the sky. We sit opposite several Buddha statues, large and less than three storey large, gold skinned, bronze fleshed, mellow-eyed. The Thiksey Monastery, where the Maitreya Buddha(future coming Buddha) resides is ofcourse lovely but, to see a Buddha jewelled so, swathed in silk actually upset me a bit. For me, Budhha is renunciation defined. He is an ideal to be striven for. A jewelled Buddha I do not understand.
The blues
Pangong lake really is as blue as it was when I first saw it a year or so ago on a movie screen in Bangalore (3 idiots). I was sure it was engineered but even still, in that cinema hall, I made a silent promise to myself that I would, one day, see this blue. Actually, one needs a complete day, rise to set, to really see the repertoire of blue. We decide to ride to, but maybe a taxi would have been better, considering we had just ridden 1100 kms to get to Leh and the lake does not reach easy at 150 kms. On the way we drink free army-offered hot tea at Chang La, incorrectly stated as the second highest motorable road but our highest point on land thus far, and arrive at the lake just before twilight. We stay in a tent camp like thing by the lake and come morning just sit and watch the lake negotiate colour. Early morning it is rusty blue, at 8am it holds the mountains, at 11am it is a no-expense-spared concentrated blue. It turns green too, Aishwarya eye green, and sometimes it is lined with very light blue ribbon. And thus this writer has a new simile, 'to be as blue as Pangong Tso'.
Awake at Kargil, breakfast at Drass, lunch at Sonmarg and dine at Srinagar
The way back is much less breathtaking but more interesting for its political and military histories. Kargil is a let-down given how famous its become. Crabby roads, common-stocked markets, very ordinary bustle. We rush on to Drass after a night's stay at the worst Rs.1200 room I have stayed at. We breakfast at the Tiger Hill Cafetaria in Drass, flanked by the hills that Pakistan had advanced towards in 1999. The war memorial there sparks quite an argument between Mani and I as we differ on the appropriateness of the celebratory tone with which killing 'le enemy' is described. Both Sonmarg and Srinagar are as scenic as pictures and films had had me expect. The Dal lake stuns, the house boats intrigue but Mani is against lake pollution so we skip it. Srinagar is also as militarised as the news had had me expect. Guns growing fingers right at the trigger, pointing at whoknowswho. Both Mani and I are startled at sighting so many but for the people who live there it is common-sight. When a gun loses its power to shock, that is a frightening place and indeed it is unsettling. The Kashmir Times is full of news of militant shooting and protest-muting. We see the lake once again, in her morning colors, before we drive off to Jammu. I regret being so close to Vaisnodevi and not being able to go but that is perhaps another visit. From there on Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Ambala do not compel too much out of us and we ride on to Delhi, exhausted, dirty and quite happy.
The numbers read 2965 kms in 16 days across 1 NCR, 1 UT, 4 states and atleast 4 rivers for company.
To have done it on the bike is to have the road run through you instead of beneath you. It can be painful at times with the roads one will encounter but you also get to lick the breeze, parcel the air in your hair, stick your arms out all maniacally, have glacier-soaked shoes, greased hands and a higher esteem for your body that survived it all and quite well too. To have done it with someone I love is the biggest gift of all, to have someone to pass spanners to, helmet kiss with (yes, this too people do), fascinate in Pangong's blue with, peel noses with, find the missing glove with, plan stream crossings with, shiver in Sarchu with, argue about patriotism with, watch a documentary about Ladakh's increasing commercialisation with, get my shoulders massaged from after a 400 kms gruelling stretch.
Peep, peep, don't sleep
Border Roads Organisation is the national road jester. Among the superlative signs we saw, the writer was moved by these,
Things we learnt
Day 1: Halt at Delhi, after retrieving the bike from the station, it was too late to leave
Day 2: Halt at Chandigarh
Day 3: Halt at Mandi
Day 4: Halt at Manali
Day 5: Halt at Keylong
Day 6: Halt at Sarchu
Day 7-Day 11: Leh
Day 12: Halt at Kargil
Day 13: Halt at Srinagar
Day 14: Halt at Jammu
Day 15: Halt at Ambala
Day 16: Depart from Delhi
Photos here
A moving earth
It was on the Delhi-Manali-Leh highway that I saw the limbs and bones of earth. Green muscular calves flared in mid-leap, brown knobby elbows holding up books nobodys read ('how to quake elegantly'), bare bony backs bending over a secret, perimeterless paunches pinched with snow, hollowed clavicles (my most favorite body part) collecting sun-knead melt. The earth moves with unknowable purpose in the Great Himalayas, and for the 3 days it took us to get from Manali to Leh we moved with her – soul-stirred and cradle protected. To say she is beautiful is a redundant declaration, ofcourse she is but there is much more to be said about her. Those 3 days she will have you foraging for oxygen, dreaming of tar and numbing in her glacial melt.
Fringes of sense
40 kms out of Delhi and we have a rear flat. I, at that point, in keeping with good gender training, know nothing of bike internals. Mani, also in keeping with good gender training, does know. So I follow my instructions intently, and keep my eyes blinklessly open. I am fascinated, the Enfield Thunderbird is a beautiful creature. Over the next few days I will have seen her many layers disrobed, I will have massaged her joints and understood her sounds. At this point, I learn how to extract a wheel, change the tube, check the tyre for objects of heed (a silvery blade thingey this time, which, with my little hand I successfully dislodge), pump the new tube with air with our handy blue foot pump (it was so useful I was ready to kiss it by the end of our trip) and properly screw the tyre back on. We had some help but we did most of it ourselves. I am beaming, my first flat, painlessly renewed. We chat about the ill augurence of such an occurrence so early on in the trip but we press on cheerfully. Night halt at Chandigarh has us rushing to see the Rock Garden just before it closed. The contents of one man's imagination shaped out of rock, concrete, ceramic plates, toiletware, saucers, fuse boxes, it houses gnomes, pixies, goblins, two-headed smiley triangles and even bettered strangeness. I like places like these that reside on the fringes of sense. What, however, made serious sense in Chandigarh were the cycle lanes. Those I wanted to take home.
Manali teeth
Next day onward to Mandi, an ordinary town full of ordinary hotels. We stay in a room overlooking the river Beas, which followed us all the way. We are now in the Himalayas, dapper in its best monsoon green. Upbeat, de-grimed and river-fed, we decide to go down to rev the engine for the next days drive. And the engine refuses to wake. We sleep tense, and the next day, in a Sunday-shut town we ferret out a mechanic. Some more bike anatomy gleaned from the procedure– the bike tapit and spark plug assembly this time. We leave at noon, and thankfully Manali is 3.5 hours away. We are relaxed now and stop at Kullu for lunch when, quite dramatically, an upper-side crown in my mouth slips off its golden screw. I am a tooth short and a screw loose.
In Manali, there is a furious hunt for a dentist, which effort, like in Mandi, is Sunday-impaired. I was told quite conclusively that no person in Manali will drill teeth on Sundays. So I live with the exposed screw, careful not to commission my left side into any manner of chewing. It is difficult, I feel wounded, all smiled out. In addition, the bike shuts down again. It is looking dim, our prospects of steep ascent the next day. We are both despondent. Manali, with its beguiling snow-soft beauty and wool-covered markets, does mend us a few smiles, but we are once again tense. We spent 2 hours in the dying light at a mechanic's adda, watching leather and silver give way to dull steel and winding wire traffic. The carburetor is cleaned, wiring is checked, nuts are fastened, tapit adjusted. Sonu the mechanic and Raj the garage owner each stock us up with travel tips, route difficulties and words of encouragement. We are bolstered, and treat my recoiling mouth to some creamy spaghetti.
The next morning, I find my dentist, he fits the crown back on, with warnings of temporariness which I ignore. The bike does not start until a hardy sardar gives it a brutal kick. Poor Mani has, by now, worn out his right leg due to incessant futile kicking. So on we proceed trepidatiously to the highest point on the earth that either of us have been on.
Creepers to the skies
Rohtang Pass is your first creeper to the skies. The road winds, tapers and steepens until you are literally clinging to it, foot and wheel, inching upwards cautiously. On this one the earth tries to drown us in 1.5-2 feet of her wet refuse. Several times during that 10 kms stretch I got down and walked while Mani valiantly rode though all those metres of chee chee keechad. So challenging was it supposed to be that people in Manali are prone to saying 'Rohtang pass pohonch gaye toh samjho ke leh pohonch gaye'. Well, they exaggerate.
The second day sees us crossing a knee deep rampaging stream, spiny cold, right after Darcha. And day three has the earth spilling into our shoes and shirts as we almost fall, bike and baggage, into 3-4 feet of loose playful sand to be found in the More Plains in Jammu and Kashmir. We steer off the road once and spend an hour trying to get back on, go 20 kms downslope with the engine off because the bike wouldn't start, overcome countless streams and rolling-rock, ribbed and landslide ruined roads. A chain link breaks, another tyre gives, my skin burns. But the beauty, the beauty counsels every worry.
Platypus skin
As one departs Manali, all that thick green gives way to brown - chocolate cake brown, cocoa powder brown, cocoa powder stirring into flour brown, toasted bread brown, aloo tikki brown, Mani brown and Pooja brown. The earth is dessicated, scraggly, wrinkled skinned and smooth, oily platypused skinned. She is crumbly in places, spilling on to the road. She is studded with green buttons in places. She is striped tiger in places. She is infuriated in places, flaring like fire. She is snow shrouded in places. Colour, light, texture and shape mingle unfettered to form several Ganesha trunks, several Buddha eyes, several noses of my mother, three hippopotamus, soda cans, screaming faces, piano playing hands and whatever else the windings of my subconscious and idlings of my imagination muster. We stop several times, take pictures to capture in vain rock stream sky cattle road mind-reeling.
For me, it is beauty retold and by far the best part of the trip. If you're going to Ladakh, go by road through Manali. That is all.
Beet rock, jewelled Buddhas
In Ladakh the rock turns beet colored. The Leh markets are, like in Manali, typically foreign-tourist-tuned with german bakeries, hebrew signs, italian fare and aggressive hawking. Needle like trees frustrate the desert-barren in patches. Prayer wheels squeak at every street corner, white chortens spot the scapes, monasteries fling to the sky. We sit opposite several Buddha statues, large and less than three storey large, gold skinned, bronze fleshed, mellow-eyed. The Thiksey Monastery, where the Maitreya Buddha(future coming Buddha) resides is ofcourse lovely but, to see a Buddha jewelled so, swathed in silk actually upset me a bit. For me, Budhha is renunciation defined. He is an ideal to be striven for. A jewelled Buddha I do not understand.
The blues
Pangong lake really is as blue as it was when I first saw it a year or so ago on a movie screen in Bangalore (3 idiots). I was sure it was engineered but even still, in that cinema hall, I made a silent promise to myself that I would, one day, see this blue. Actually, one needs a complete day, rise to set, to really see the repertoire of blue. We decide to ride to, but maybe a taxi would have been better, considering we had just ridden 1100 kms to get to Leh and the lake does not reach easy at 150 kms. On the way we drink free army-offered hot tea at Chang La, incorrectly stated as the second highest motorable road but our highest point on land thus far, and arrive at the lake just before twilight. We stay in a tent camp like thing by the lake and come morning just sit and watch the lake negotiate colour. Early morning it is rusty blue, at 8am it holds the mountains, at 11am it is a no-expense-spared concentrated blue. It turns green too, Aishwarya eye green, and sometimes it is lined with very light blue ribbon. And thus this writer has a new simile, 'to be as blue as Pangong Tso'.
Awake at Kargil, breakfast at Drass, lunch at Sonmarg and dine at Srinagar
The way back is much less breathtaking but more interesting for its political and military histories. Kargil is a let-down given how famous its become. Crabby roads, common-stocked markets, very ordinary bustle. We rush on to Drass after a night's stay at the worst Rs.1200 room I have stayed at. We breakfast at the Tiger Hill Cafetaria in Drass, flanked by the hills that Pakistan had advanced towards in 1999. The war memorial there sparks quite an argument between Mani and I as we differ on the appropriateness of the celebratory tone with which killing 'le enemy' is described. Both Sonmarg and Srinagar are as scenic as pictures and films had had me expect. The Dal lake stuns, the house boats intrigue but Mani is against lake pollution so we skip it. Srinagar is also as militarised as the news had had me expect. Guns growing fingers right at the trigger, pointing at whoknowswho. Both Mani and I are startled at sighting so many but for the people who live there it is common-sight. When a gun loses its power to shock, that is a frightening place and indeed it is unsettling. The Kashmir Times is full of news of militant shooting and protest-muting. We see the lake once again, in her morning colors, before we drive off to Jammu. I regret being so close to Vaisnodevi and not being able to go but that is perhaps another visit. From there on Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Ambala do not compel too much out of us and we ride on to Delhi, exhausted, dirty and quite happy.
The numbers read 2965 kms in 16 days across 1 NCR, 1 UT, 4 states and atleast 4 rivers for company.
To have done it on the bike is to have the road run through you instead of beneath you. It can be painful at times with the roads one will encounter but you also get to lick the breeze, parcel the air in your hair, stick your arms out all maniacally, have glacier-soaked shoes, greased hands and a higher esteem for your body that survived it all and quite well too. To have done it with someone I love is the biggest gift of all, to have someone to pass spanners to, helmet kiss with (yes, this too people do), fascinate in Pangong's blue with, peel noses with, find the missing glove with, plan stream crossings with, shiver in Sarchu with, argue about patriotism with, watch a documentary about Ladakh's increasing commercialisation with, get my shoulders massaged from after a 400 kms gruelling stretch.
Peep, peep, don't sleep
Border Roads Organisation is the national road jester. Among the superlative signs we saw, the writer was moved by these,
- This is a highway, not a runway
- Know Aids No Aids (ya we both paused to understand this one)
- Drive on horsepower, not rumpower
- Be a Mr. late not a late Mr. (we stopped to laugh at this)
- If you are married divorce speed
- Darling I like you but not so fast (double meaning and all)
- Safety on road is 'safe tea' at home
- After whisky driving is risky
- Don't gossip, let him drive (at this, I was both offended and amused)
- BRO cuts the mountains but connects hearts
- Are you going for a party? Then why drive so dirty (this is my favorite)
Things we learnt
- There is no such thing as too many pairs of socks or tools or spares
- Cramster biking gear rocks
- Know thy bike
- There is polyandry in Ladakh
- Always have your dentist's number on you
- Spark plugs accumulate carbon pretty quickly when ascending
- Prepaid phone connections from other states do not work in J&K
- Waterproof your clothes in the bags
- Free and very cheap maps are available at the local government tourist reception centres
- Prayer wheels must be turned clock-wise
- Use sunscreen
Day 1: Halt at Delhi, after retrieving the bike from the station, it was too late to leave
Day 2: Halt at Chandigarh
Day 3: Halt at Mandi
Day 4: Halt at Manali
Day 5: Halt at Keylong
Day 6: Halt at Sarchu
Day 7-Day 11: Leh
Day 12: Halt at Kargil
Day 13: Halt at Srinagar
Day 14: Halt at Jammu
Day 15: Halt at Ambala
Day 16: Depart from Delhi
Photos here
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