Khardung-La, in and around Leh

We spend the first day, puttering around, looking for a place to wash our bikes and a place to eat. The breakfast at the nice little lodge we are at, is simple and filling, but only just. Finally, we get to the Maruti service station and spend the next few hours, watching car after car being washed thoroughly of the white crud that the road to Leh generously deposits everywhere.

Nitin and I swap fairly elaborate cuss words which Darius doesn’t find amusing. It cracks us up even more. Nitin condescends to explain how important swear words are, to understanding the etymology of any language. He quotes the name of a researcher/author and sounds authoritative enough for Darius to go back to day dreaming.

So while at Leh, these things we did, which I will remember, are perhaps a little more prosaic than most people would like. Yes, we did the customary Monastery tours and the Leh Palace tour and pottered around in the old quarter. But you don’t really need to go anywhere when in Leh. It’s always all there in the backdrop.

So what I will remember most from the town of Leh, is drinking beer out of a tea kettle, on a terrace since the Leh View Restaurant does not have a liquor license. Or going back to La Terrasse restaurant 3 nights in a row because we got splendid service and malai koftas. Or having a particularly skilled 10 year old stitch my supposed ‘all-terrain’ army boots when the adhesive on the sole started giving way (I do not promote child labour-this was an emergency).

Khardung-la is about 45 kms from Leh and pretty much a day trip. We start out after breakfast. In about ten minutes, we’ve left civilization behind and the familiar lunar landscape takes over. Just short of a half way point called ‘South Pullu’, I stop to let Nitin and Darius catch up when something, well, weird happens. Darius decides not to go on ahead as apparently his bike’s losing power. Knowing the sort of bike hypochondriac he is, we offer to take a look, but it looks like he’s had it for now and heads back – taking our spares, tools and medical kit with him.

To have come this far through all that we did, it seems rather a travesty to miss this opportunity. This is the Everest of road trips. You don’t turn your back to the summit when it’s within grasp. Anyway, after a quick chai at South Pullu, we head up.

The familiar nip in the air, the silence and the barren, craggy, mountainscape are waiting as we climb. Only, it feels high. Higher than before. I am reminded of every Chinese movie I’ve seen about monks and/or kung-fu masters making their way through perilous mountain paths to reach some shelter from the elements on their journey to some Shangrila-esque dig. However, this ascent is easier than Rohtang or Tang-lang-la.

Just as the road gets narrower and more deeply rutted, we see the bend ahead at the summit. K-Top!

It looks like any other tourist spot. It could well be the slushy road outside the Kufri zoo…families, taxis, cameras everywhere, while the security personnel, who manage affairs at Khardungla, look on. If you blindfolded someone and brought them here, they wouldn’t see anything spectacular, except the view to some extent. What makes it special, is the knowledge that you got here, to this Mecca of road-trippers, the hard way, albeit the fun way. A good, old fashioned motorcycle adventure astride a machine that has basically been unchanged for 60 years, in the time of new-fangled SUVs.

Some proud posing for the camera, next to the signboard announcing that we are here, at 18380 feet. We didn’t have flags, so we bring out, the T-shirts of the only two ‘Clubs’ we care being a part of, for the pictures. The BL@X (Bike Lovers at XLRI – corny, yes) and the Chaustbuoyes (biking buddies from my days in Hyderabad). This one’s for you guys back home.

There were others on bikes here. A honeymoon couple on a rented Enfield Thunderbird, which looked barely held together. Another was riding solo, whose bike refused to start. However, he looked chipper enough and said he’d manage.

I’d forgotten to bring the cigars that were to be smoked at K-Top in celebration, which was just as well, given the thin air here and the time it would have taken. We’re keen to head back now. So, after some souvenir shopping, photos and chai. We head back. We’d accomplished the prime objective now. This called for a break at South Pullu with chai and an omelette.

Here, Nitin helped the now stranded honeymoon couple by cleaning their disgraceful bike’s blackened spark plug so they could get on their way. We also bump into three guys travelling together from Madhya Pradesh. They seemed to think we were downright grand for having biked it all the way here. They were all too happy to let Nitin have some of their Rajnigandha...a hard to get commodity in these parts. They also entertained us with an account of meeting the stars of the movie “Three Idiots” being shot at Pangong Lake. In their own words, Aamir was “bahut sahi” while Saif Khan, accompanying girlfriend Kareena Kapoor, was a “neehayati madarchod kism ka aadmi”.

We were unlikely to bump into either since all our plans to visit the lakes, Nubra Valley etc had been scrapped. We had reached two days behind schedule and intended to head back day earlier in case we got stranded again. In other change in plan, was to head back from the Kargil-Srinagar route which we wanted to avoid initially given the sensitive security climate there. But, we opted for that, instead of the daunting idea of heading back the way we came.

Back at Leh, we finally smoked that cigar at La Terrasse, got drunk and sang in decidedly unmelodious, rather odious tenor all the way back to the guest house in the middle of the night.