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...