Leh-ed, at Last!!! Day 7

Day 7. We wake up to a cold and frosty morning (…and here we go round the mulberry bush..). The temperature had been below freezing at night and the water in the bucket, inside the tent, has frozen. Whatever little grass is there on the camp ground seems to crunch as we walk on it. It takes more than the usual amount of stretching and bending to get the blood flowing.

A nice hot porridge breakfast later, we start saddling up. This last stretch is about 250 kms through breathtaking highland. We have three pass to cross to day. The twin passes of Lachung La and NakeeLa and the daunting Tanglang La at 17500 feet. This is the world’s second highest motorable pass, after Khardongla. But first, I need engine oil.

All hopes are on getting some oil at the neighboring GREF camp. There are a few truckers taking a break here and so we approach them. We start talking. A couple of them are from Punjab and another couple from Srinagar who do this circuit every year in the season. They curse the road and Baralacha and assure us the road from Leh to Srinagar is much better and we’d be well advised to take that route on the way back. Despite the distinct ethnic backgrounds, these men seem united by the road, a common trade, fate and vocabulary of expletives.

They give me a litre and a half of the oil that Dhanno so badly needs, from their reserve and just charge me cost price. No inflation or extortion. I had heard how truckers here exploit stranded tourists for money in exchange for any help. I guess these guys were a decent bunch after all and just helping out. Something not quite so rare in these parts, we had realized. It’s the big cities where even average folk were dodgy.

The mountains around us are mostly granite and mud. No vegetation whatsoever. It’s like a fantasy landscape out of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. You can almost imagine the Gunslinger chasing after the man in black here. This is high altitude desert at its best. I reminisce about iconic westerns like Mackenna’s Gold and can almost imagine Eduardo Ciannelli in the whole Prairie Dog get up, watching us from a crag above as we ride along the valley floor. Of course, in these parts, he probably would be a Himalayan Marmut instead of a Prairie Dog, but you get the picture, I’m sure.

So far, the bikes have held up and there’s a steady thump that’s reassuring. The heavy load means, the shockers feel springier than usual. The bullet does have a stiffer suspension than other bikes. These rickety little bridges over dry streams are the most fun. They’re called ‘Bas’ in the local dialect I guess. So one bridge is called the Whiskey Ba, another Rum Ba and so on. Soon, dear liver, soon.

The BRO (Border Roads Organisation) engineers are known for their sense of humour, especially the project Himank lads. One can almost imagine these guys working with their teams of men in this arid, unforgiving , remote yet beautiful land, with maybe only alcohol and card games for entertainment after a hard day’s work. I guess it helps to develop perspective. It’s not just laying or maintaining any old road. This is one of the world’s toughest environments to build in. And these guys do an invaluable job and liven up the journey with their witticisms.

“Don’t gossip, let him drive” says one sign. “Drive like Hell and you will be there” says another. Then there’s “Feel the curves, don’t test them”, “Drive on Horse power, not rum power”, Make love not war, nothing while driving” etc. Heh heh…right.

As we ride round a bend, we come to a broken down truck that’s parked sideways and almost blocking the road. On the raised ground, nearby, the driver is sitting on his haunches. Completely blank and still. Maybe cursing his fate, maybe shocked, maybe lonely or resigned to the fact that he can do nothing, but wait till someone else who can help him, comes along. There is no way to even send out a distress signal. Fortunately, every few hours, one does come across a blue BRO recovery truck, patrolling the road. I think of the guys back at Sarchu who gave me the oil. In this part of the world, the terrain prevails. It dwarfs everyone and everything. And people help each other out. Out of plain empathy. It has to be the way. Makes you respect the land and each other a bit more.

Soon enough, we’re at the famous Gata Loops. 21 hairpin bends in quick succession as the road climbs toward NakeeLa. The view from the top inspires awe. By now the signs of approaching a mountain pass are all too obvious. The perceptible drop in temperature, the thinning out of air that drains our bikes and us, of energy, the deteriorating road and the patches of snow. And yet, after Baralacha La, this doesn’t seem as daunting any more. It’s almost a fun feeling…like this is the gateway to something exotic. Which it is. We want to see what’s on the other side.

NakeeLa and Lachung La are fairly close to each other and soon we’re done with both. There is a fair descent after Lachung La towards Pang. After the wide red valley we’ve left behind us, we seem to have entered a steep, narrow, yellowish and rocky gorge. The rough, dirt track of a road runs along a clear stream called the Kangla Jal. At one point, we have to wade across this stream. This is one of the more difficult water crossings. The water’s about a foot and a half deep and the bed is made up of fairly large rocks. A jeep seems to be stranded and while some men are pushing another to the other side. Darius is weighed down with his carriers and needs some assistance to get through. The next stop is at Pang and for the next hour and a half or so, there seems to be no one in sight. Maybe it was the time of the day, but this by far seems the remotest stretch we’ve done so far.

By now, we have gotten used to the bad roads and start ripping through the ravine. For what seems like the longest time, we just go on riding. In my early riding days, sometimes on the highway, if I got to a particularly good stretch of smooth tarmac with little traffic, I would get to a ‘zone’ (for lack of a better word), which made the riding experience seem, almost meditative. In a strange way, despite the rough road and all the dust, this part of the ride is where I experience the zone. My guess is, so do Darius and Nitin, because neither of them slows down or stops. I do, at one point, to click a picture. Nitin, in fact, seems possessed. He has disappeared and the only signs that he’s on up ahead is the plume of dust his tyres have left behind. Pretty soon, even that is hard to see.

We get to Pang and decide on a quick lunch. Nitin is pleased at having ‘Paris-Dakar-ed it’ till here. It would be unsettling that he seems to enjoy riding rough at breakneck speeds, except he is not doing this like a kid trying to earn street cred. He is doing this with the quietude of a zen monk. Sitting silently (in the saddle), doing nothing, the road turns…and the handlebars turn by themselves. Totally chaust!

This place is known for another world altitude record. The highest army transit camp at 15640 feet. It’s really in the middle of nowhere and there are some tents where I get some really oily, spicy chow mein and it feels real good. The sun is really harsh and you can feel it burn its way through your skin. Despite the caking of the high SPF sun block and the dust.

We start climbing from Pang. The road’s pretty steep and winding. And then, all of a sudden, it levels up; all at once you’re hit with a spectacular view. It feels like the road has been some sort of spiral stairway that has led to a large flat terrace. A wide rolling plain stretches out ahead of you. These are the famed Moore Plains. There really is no way to quite describe the feeling. It’s the table top of a plateau with a clean edge that seems to have been carved by a gigantic knife.

The plain seems to go on as far as the eye can see. The ground seems to be made of corrugated cardboard and there’s a whole lotta shake, rattle and roll going on. This is probably the most surreal afternoon I’ve ever had. On other holidays I would have kicked back with a nice cold beer in a pub, listening to U2. Today, I am riding a motorcycle at 16000 feet, on a plateau, with only two other guys for company, surrounded by the snow-capped Himalayas. There is no frame of reference for this. This is wholly a new experience. Except, ‘where the streets have no name’ is playing in my head….has been playing in my head. This is exactly the place where I would want to hear this song….“show you a place, high on a desert plain…where the streets have no name…” And that’s why this line is on our trip t-shirt. Bono must have dreamt of this place when he wrote that.

The road starts sloping up again. Tanglang La ahead It zig-zags across the massive sides of pyramid shaped mountains. The climb is more gradual than the other passes, but seems to go on forever. We can also see a couple of Bajaj Pulsars in the distance. This is a group of 4 young Gujarati guys riding pillion who have been ahead or behind us all the way from Keylong. They seem to be traveling on a much tighter budget than us and don’t seem to be carrying anything more than rucksacks and sleeping bags. I can swear they have ingested nothing more nutritional in value than cigarette smoke in the last 65 hours. Darius, who knows Gujarati, apparently had overheard them discussing how they were on the run from the law, at Zingzingbar. This is probably as far from the law and overweight, corrupt cops as anyone can get I’m sure. Though, you’d think they’d have picked a less conspicuous mode of travel.

Finally, we reach the top of Tanglang La. The view is once again mesmerizing. There’s gale force winds at the summit. The air is really thin here. Just parking the bike on the centre stand is enough to get one panting. The descent turns out to be rather a drag. The mountain seems to be made of flour and the road crew seems to be struggling to paste tar over it to create a semblance of road and failing. After an eternity of battling diesel fumes from trucks and the dust we reach the base, covered in the muck. Michelin man meets the Pillsbury dough boy.

As our friend Yeti had informed us, the sudden descent from 17500 feet to about 14000 feet into a comparatively oxygen rich environment infuses life into traveler and machine alike. From here on, the road is largely good. We cross Upshi and halt at Rumste, a small Buddhist village, to have a quick wash and a drink of water.

The rest of the way seems much easier. Soon, we reach the Sindhu darshan, the point where you get a view of the Indus river for the first time. It looks like any other mountain stream, happily gurgling its way down the valley…but the historical significance of the Indus is what makes it so remarkable. A few ceremonial photographs later, we’re on our way. We’re back in civilization now. There are telephones and petrol stations in this world.

It’s a feeling of elation as we enter Leh at about 5:30 in the evening. The town seems inviting and for the first time, a tourism dept sign welcoming tourists like us, seems meaningful. It had taken us 7 days of riding from 700 feet to 17500 ft and then down again, from 43 degrees Celsius of scorching sun to a sub-zero snowstorm and about 1100 kms to reach from Delhi to Leh.

While we still had to get back to Delhi next week, and not before touching Khardongla, it seemed the baptism was now complete. We’d earned our place among the hard ass motorcycling fraternity in this glorious, glorious multifaceted and diverse country. For me, a 12 year old dream had been realized. What remained for today, was a hot shower and the most well deserved drink in a long, long time.