Getting Leh-ed: Day 2 - Mandi

Started late on account of a flat tyre on Dhanno. Clicked a couple of fotos with the folks to flag off our journey into the mountains. Since we were still pretty much in civilization, decided not to try fixing it ourselves. The foot pump proved to be handy. We rode to a petrol pump in Chandigarh to get it fixed. While it gets fixed, The Darius jazzes off to click fotos of some Chandigarh kudis hired to flag off some Indica Vista rally nearby.

Nitin and I wait. In our riding gear and next to our loaded bikes, we must have made some sort of impression, because soon a young guy, fresh out of college and full of Gen Y attitude comes up to me, using every possible syllable of cool in his speech.

Pretty Boy – so dude, what’s your deal?
Me – (muffling a smirk), uh…we’re headed to Leh
Pretty Boy – cool…man, that’s a sweet ride (gesturing toward the bikes)
Me – thanks. We think so too.
Pretty Boy – its really the king of the road, except one problem…and I am a mechanical engineer (sudden image of Sher, a great biking buddy for some reason) so I know what I am saying…the exhaust tends to get rusted really quickly. Especially where you are going.
Me thinking to myself “hello, its not the coast…its bone dry” and that I have never heard or seen that in all my bullet riding years…but what the hey...Nitin senses this and jumps in…
Nitin – well, that’s why my exhaust is not iron, it’s a special alloy I had specially fabricated
Pretty Boy – oh…cool.

Some inane conversation follows where pretty boy asserts his coolness. Not a bad sort of fella actually. Wishes us luck and goes off, leaving Nitin and me with a wistful smile….aah the enthusiasm and trite compulsions of youth. We were there once.

The rest of the day is hot as hell; many pitstops for nimbu paani, coke, sugarcane juice etc as we take the winding road up from Kiratpur Sahib to Swarghat and then down to Bilaspur. The Himalayan Odyssey guys spread out at random. Nitin discovers a leak in his front fork, so we decide to stop in Mandi to have it fixed.

Now, a school buddy, Rahul Solanki, aka Lanky has a Bajaj agency there close to the Enfield shop. We bump into the Odyssey guys here again. While the bike is getting fixed, we have a long lunch at a nice little veg restaurant at a scenic spot in Mandi. Its 5 pm and raining and we are feeling lazy to go on to Manali, just about 100 kms from here. Nitin says, he doesn’t want to ride in the dark (wait till tomorrow buddy) and Lanky has been waiting since the day before to drink with us. He knows what heathens like us crave. This guy could do a deal with the Devil and be none the worse for it.

So we head to the Mandi circuit house after a few quick calls to get the booking done. We are finally in the hills, it’s raining, lush green, a bit nippy, the view is fantastic, we are alone in this big-ass circuit house, eating hot pakoras, drinking rum and coke and shooting the breeze. Discussing Indian polictics (for some strange reason). All in all, This was begining to feel like the holiday we needed.

Of course, tomorrow was going to be another day...

Getting Leh-ed: Day 1 - Chandigarh

Ah…finally the day’s here. The last day is spent in wrapping up stuff at work, which, despite the best planning and delegation, seems to always be like trying to pack an overstuffed suitcase. You want to get it over with and get on with the journey, but annoyingly and embarrassingly, there’s always a towel or a pair of undies sticking out from somewhere or the slippers that you plain forgot to pack.

So, the other two fellow riders are here too. Darius, from work who’s come in from Jaipur. He will be riding his spanking new 350cc Enfield Electra. And Nitin, old buddy from XLRI on his 350 cc T’bird, aka ‘The Babe’. I have my trusty eleven and a half year old ‘Dhanno’, who has recently been converted from an Enfield 350 to a 500 cc by reboring the engine, replacing the piston & cylinder kit, a new head and a new crank. I still am a couple of hundred kilometers short of the targeted 2000 km run-in.

Nitin, the technophile and knower of things unknown to most, like the wise magi, comes bearing strange gifts…or well, props for the ride at least. For instance, a small GPS unit connected via Bluetooth to his cell phone loaded with the Google maps application. His logic, “even if we get stranded somewhere and freeze our asses off…we will know exactly where.”

There’s a mobile phone charger that gets connected to the bike battery and an emergency mobile phone charger that is a manually wound up wheel. Developed by IIT Mumbai engineers. Piece of art. We also take time to admire the t-shirts that we have gotten made for this trip. Yup, we went the whole hog.

Considering we are likely to get rain on the way, everything has to be stuffed into plastic bags and then into the bags that we will be carrying. This takes a while. This is by no means the final packing and the realization hits that every time we stop for the night, all this crap will have to be unpacked and repacked. Anyway, we’re excited, but also tired and it’s going to be a long day. The first of many. So we sleep.

Nitin kept insisting the night before, that we have to be out by 5 am. I said, ‘thoda easy’ but he was firm, saying that he’d kick my ass. I was kinda looking forward to the said ass-kicking so deliberately made no effort to get up early. However by 6 am I decided it was enough, and so I was the one to wake up Darius and Nitin with chai. Little did we know that pretty much every day, we would be starting late.

We took off by 8:30 am after various trials of loading half of Bangladesh’s GDP onto our bikes. Nitin and I were using cramsters plus other bags strapped on, but Darius had Ladakh carriers…a large metallic frame with metallic boxes. Practical, but very heavy. His bike’s behind looked like that of a Buick. In case you’re not much into automobiles, let me use a Bollywood example. Say, a rear shot of Asha Parekh with a veena and a tanpura slung over her shoulders like guitars…poetry in motion, yes, but not just a few lines, the entire omnifrikkin’bus.

Well, not much excitement the first day except that it was freakishly hot, so had to stop every hour or so to cool off and drink water. Surprise surprise…the Royal Enfield Himalayan Odyssey guys who should have left at 5 am also, were still pottering around on the GT road. Riders from all over the country, especially Maharashtra and the south. Dressed in heavy biking gear (riding jackets, elbow/knee guards, boots…the friggin’ works) in that heat. These guys seemed serious. Plus they are accompanied by a team of mechanics and a vehicle carrying their stuff and spares.

So, once again, you wonder if you’re prepared enough…and then you remember the blog of the 54 year old man who rode solo from Pune to Leh and back…or that maverick Gaurav Jani who even made a friggin’ documentary riding alone all over Ladakh (Riding Solo to the Top of the World) as a one man film crew. We’d be ok.

It was nice to once again be on the road…chugging along, feeling the wanderlust creep back. Nitin and I had not done any serious riding for 4 years. Dunno why that happened, whether we got too busy or lazy, or because we imagined our riding days were over. However, this part of the ride in 40 degree plus heat is still just commute. Wetting your t-shirt and club soda face washes will only help so much. So, by 3:30 pm after nearly getting a heat stroke, we reached my parents’ house in Chandigarh, thankful to be indoors.

Rested for a bit and in the evening went out to get together a puncture kit. This involved going to a blacksmith and getting tyre irons fashioned. Once that is done, we are mostly in splits for the next twenty minutes because they look like the ‘soorang banane ka auzaar’ from ‘Sholay’ that Asrani, acting as the Jailor, discovers. And that’s what they are called for the rest of the trip.

The next day, we were to head out to Manali. Finally, the mountains. It was nice to know we had a fortnight of this ahead of us. The longest bike trip ever in our lives till now, had just begun. A fair bit of levity, anticipation and some trepidation about what the Himalayas had in store for us.

This was big boy territory.

Preliminaries for getting Leh-ed - Part 2

To be quite honest, preparing for a trip like this is as much fun as the ride itself. You play out in your mind, over and over again, what it will be like, being part of a picture postcard perfect landscape. If gifted with a fairly vivid imagination like me, you also introduce a background music score into your day dreams. Usually sublime stuff like U2 & Rolling Stones, but I won’t lie, some bhangra does sneak in once in a while. And I like it, like it, yes I do.
Outfitting your bike, spending weekends buying the accessories & equipment, planning out the route, the stops, talking to those who know the lay of the land and weather patterns, reading blogs, thinking of a fortnight of blasting down the road with the steady pushrod thump of the Enfield engine below you and finally, designing the T-shirt can lift a sagging spirit like nothing else.
It gets you through review meetings that would otherwise make you want to fling the LCD projector, really really hard at the geeky bespectacled head of the next guy who wants to discuss new initiatives, nevermind the bad right shoulder; and breeze through repetitive processes like grocery shopping, bill payments, social outings and the gnawing of existential angst.
Now the first wave of panic hits. All of this put together is the size of a Tata Nano strapped to your saddle. How in God’s name are you going to carry all of this? And what if your bike breaks down right in the middle of Sarchu and Leh? You get a hernia just by thinking about how much gut-busting effort it will take to push your fully laden motorcycle more than 10 paces. And there will be less oxygen. And if you have been a smoker, all your little life, you will question the wisdom of your adopted lifestyle.
There is a fair bit of information available on the net. The sum total of all this, plus my experience says that you finally need the following items to be carried with you to make the most of the trip. However, packing all of this will be quite a different ball game altogether.


1. Here’s a list of things you need to get /get done to make sure your bike keeps running. But make sure, only from authorised Royal Enfield Service Centres or really good mechanics. Use only stock parts and original spares. NO MODIFICATIONS:
Make sure you have disc brakes (very handy)
Pre-ride full service
Change tubes / tyres if needed (recommended)
Wheel / rim balancing
Check shock absorbers & adjust/replace if needed
Check shocker and swing arm bushes
Check Chain & sprocket/replace if needed
Learn to fix punctures
Learn to replace clutch, throttle cables
Learn to manage air/petrol intake at high altitude
The MRF Meteor is a fantastic
2. List of items you should have with you and you can buy most of this stuff at Gopinath Market - Standard Army Store -
A) Clothing / Accessories:
Light Gloves
Waterproof insulated warm gloves
All weather jacket
Full thermals
Thick Jeans /insulated pants
Good, insulated Boots
Gum Boots
Balaclava (Monkey cap)
Shades
Cap
Waterproof wallets
Full body rain suit
Extra shades

B) First Aid / Personal Grooming:
Liquid soap
Toilet paper
Maximum SPF Sunscreen
First Aid kit with AMS medication
Moisturiser
Nail clipper/scissors/personal grooming
Vaseline
Mosquito repellant (optional)
Alcohol based hand sanitiser

C) Personal Equipment:
Saddle bags / Ladakh Carrier (bags are lighter hence preferred)
Flashlight
Bungee Cords
Duct Tape
Nylon Rope
Plastic bags
Waterproof rucksack
Jerry cans
Min 5 function Swiss knife
Matches / Lighter
Insulated Water bottle
Spare bike key
Camera
Spare batteries for camera etc
Phone
Walkie Talkie (optional)
Plastic sheets (cheap pastic dining sheets will do) lashed down with bungees to keep stuff dry
Extra Helmet visor
A really good watch, preferably with Thermometer and Altimeter
A compass if that sort of thing excites you.

D) Spares & Mech:
Tyre Tubes
Puncture kit
Clutch cable
Brake cable
Accelerator cable
Engine oil
Spark plug
Spark plug spanner
Spanners / tool kit
Wrench
Fuse
Bulbs
Foot pump (kill for this if you have to)

E) Camping (in case you want to really rough it out - not recommended for first timers):
Camping Mattress
Sleeping bag
Tent
Cooking stove/container
Fuel cakes
Air pillow
Spoon/Fork
Chocolates/dry fruit/Maggie

All this is likely to burn a bit of a hole in your pocket. Budget about 10 to 15 k. But its a worthwhile investment. You will be riding your beloved motorcycle into the Himalayas with Khardungla as your ultimate destination. At 18380 ft, its 10 ft higher than the Mt Everest Base Camp.

Hmmm...getting all this stuff will give you the kind of satisfaction that material acquisition seldom provides. Oh yeah, this isn't all the stuff you can carry of course. But more on that later.

Preliminaries for getting Leh-ed - Part 1

So its decided. I am going to Leh with a couple of guys. And now comes the crucial part. When exactly, what will be the route, how large should the group be, and most importantly, how do I tell my family that sort of freaks out anytime you mention your holiday plans because they happen to be absurd.

Anytime a totally boss plan like this is proposed to anyone, you can gauge from their reaction what category of Homo Sapiens they belong to:

a) The Flat Earthers: You’re told you are nuts to want to do this on a bike. It’s long, cold, hard (the ride, that is) and not something regular people do. Well, you explain, about a zillion bikers do this every year and it’s no longer viewed as a ride into the valley of death. Then the suggestions: why don’t you fly down…or take a 4-wheel drive? And you say, well…it’s because you like to ride your motorcycle. They look at you like you have finally lost your mind and are some sort of twisted masochist to want to put yourself through this. At this point, the flat Earthers swear to themselves that they will never let you near their women or children. Suggested response - Quit. They will not get it.

b) The Sanchos: You are Don Quixote and the Sanchos want to come with you. They hear of your plan and are so near some sort of pinnacle of sensation usually associated with intense bodily stimulation of the sexual nature, that they will just want to come with (as in accompany) you without thinking through. They decide to forsake their families, jobs and mortgages just for that last chance at regaining lost stud-hood. Now it’s important to know that these folks will not actually ever come along with you. But, their enthusiasm makes you feel good about your plan. Heck, it makes you feel like Christopher Columbus sailing with an unusually cheery crew that would rather devour their own limbs than inconvenience you with a mutiny in case you strand the vessel in the doldrums thanks to your ineptitude, with no hope of getting back. Suggested response - Be nice to them. Involve them in your planning and let them enjoy the ride vicariously.

c) The Vulcans: Usually folks who have done this before or see it as another project that can be consummated with some logical planning and sensible execution. They get down to the details right away. They discuss how many days it will take, what you need to carry and what you should know. Piece it together and the trip is as good as done. Great! Is it that simple? Sure, they say. Just be careful about altitude sickness & the extreme climate. Some people kinda die out there occasionally or have to spend nights in the cold and get their extremities frostbitten. All extremities sometimes. Not to put too fine a point on it, they may even recommend that you freeze your sperm before the trip in case you fancy ever having children once you return, minus a few vital organs. Part of the game. Nervous laughter follows. Suggested response - Seek these people out and get as much info as you can. They will be helpful and know why you want to do this and will coolly tell you what you need to know and what you should know. Thanks to the world-wide web, many of these pioneering folks write useful blogs (unlike this one…no, really).

d) Family: They believe you are an idiot that needs something better to occupy his time like domestic responsibility. You really should be more considerate about how you make your family worry so much and absolutely refuse to grow up. Suggested response - Resort to childish lamenting saying ALL your friends are doing this or that and having a blast. Usually, they react with distaste seeing a grown/groan man sulk like a 5 year old. They will relent and you can beam like you were just made sheriff of toon-town.

Well, there are others like your friends who will help in whatever way they can and a few adventurers who will ride along. The ones to watch out for, are….

e) Satan’s spawn: Mechanics, spare part & accessory dealers, painters and anyone associated with anything to do with outfitting your bike for the trip. Not to be unfair, these guys will actually provide some very useful tips and from experience will make sure you prepare well. But you are also a fat, happy pig to be slaughtered for the feast. They will tempt you. And if you have any sense, you will yield. See, this is the time when apart from the necessary stuff (which you will spend a packet on) you have the opportunity of getting all the upgrades you wanted. So you need the 22 litre petrol tank, but why not get that extra chrome doodah because it’s just so friggin’ pretty. Fix this, but may as well paint that. You need that disc brake, but also that new headlight assembly because it will considerably improve your libido. You are now 6 years old again with a malfunctioning neuro-physiological response system that does not tell your brain when your stomach is full. Consequently, you eat everything on the table, plus 3 helpings of dessert and wake up throwing up all over your bed at 3 am in the morning. Just because you didn’t know when to stop. Soon, you would have spent twice as much as needed to and when you get the bill of charges, you will pass a large misshapen brick out of your rectum. But, in the end, it’s all worth it. She’s your bike and soulmate and you are about to do something very special together. Isn’t life all about investing in relationships after all? Strengthen this one, while you can.

Other preparation involves getting your ass in shape. It’s about 4-5 days of hard riding from Delhi to Leh. Some hard asses, I am told, have done it in less time. The first day and a half is riding in intense heat and after that intense cold. Plus you have to battle bad roads, twisties, dehydration and the everyone’s personal favourite, altitude sickness. The rarified air and reduced oxygen means both the bike and the rider will take a beating. With the bike, there is the option of increasing the air intake in the carb. With the rider, the only option is to take it easy and rest. AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) is a sick bitch and its only after you have been at that altitude for a few hours that you realize she’s suckered you in.

In its mildest form, AMS manifests itself as a headache and breathlessness. The extreme form is cerebral damage and a date with the reaper. Now, muscular fitness is no insurance against AMS, but it will help you to handle the terrain and the weather with some dignity. Your gut needs to be as toned as possible, your lower back and shoulders need to strong and overall, you should be able to take a beating in the saddle. Else, after a couple of days, it’s no longer any fun to ride and you’ll rue the day you thought up this confounded ride. A big beer gut goes well with city riding. But for Leh, get in shape. A month of cardio and strengthening exercise will see you through to the end of this ride. You’ll still be tired at the end of each day, but won’t feel road-kill at least.

How does a plan to ride to Leh emerge?

Been thinking about how you plan a motorcycle trip to Leh. Well at least for some of us, this is how it works. I have pondered the how and why for a while. What is it? Wanderlust? Machismo? Adventure? A liking for that sore sensation in the buttocks, each cheek crying separately and in unison with the other, for release from the saddle after 8 hours of riding, days at a stretch?

All of that, I guess. Then there’s more. Let’s say, you are in your thirties, single, independent, a bit rudderless, but there is parties and drinking binges on weekends with an ever decreasing pool of single friends and perhaps a comfortable existence and a none too shady career.

You’re master of your own life and time, that is not spent in the office. No real worries, or commitments. Vexed only perhaps by questions of life, the universe and everything. You know…purpose of existence…humanity…and why you still pay homage to the Porcelain God every now and then when it’s been one whiskey too many last night. You knew this would happen, yet you chose to have that last one for the road. But you always do that. Is it then free will or determinism? That sort of thing.

And then..one day, quite suddenly, a feeling comes over you. Sure its been fun. But you are getting older. The twenties went by a tad too quickly. You have spent a decade in a sort of staging area wondering what programme to load, only to realize, “It’s been that freakin' long?”

Sure, you have your beloved books, your downloaded music and movies, which are absolutely awesome and a bar full of your favourite single malts. But, to quote Charlton Heston from True Lies, you feel “so far, Gentleman, none of this is blowing any wind up my skirt”.

So on another day, when a colleague, suggests that you ride along on a trip to Leh, even though you feel the idea is a bit far out, you are forced to consider it. And that is partly because in the 11 years you have owned your Royal Enfield motorcycle, you have wanted to do this trip, but it’s always been sometime in the unforeseeable future. A chimera; elusive and unreal. A bit like that long, cool, woman in a black dress, one night at your regular bar, or that bottle of Macallan 50 you hope to own.

You then call up your buddy, your bro, that one last bastion of bachelorhood, your partner in crime and other things bizarre for the last 10 years and ask, “how about a ride this summer to the mountains like we talked about…mmm…a little farther than Manali…like, Leh, for instance?”. Some seconds later, but just a few seconds, he says, “Sure. Why not?”.

And then that syrupy cool feeling paces through your head, that you are not used to having so much these days. A feeling that says, this is the year. It’s going to happen.

Game on.