The Man Maker: Road Trippers In Ladakh

Pistons crack, brakes fail, water in the bathroom freezes, mobile networks vanish for days and 10 people share the same bottle of rum and the same pack of smoke, but that's the real joy of riding with those who take biking more seriously than their lives… An account of FHM's ride at the 10th Royal Enfield Himalayan Odyssey.

You need to have balls of steel to take a road trip to Leh. The last time, in 2009, I had gone to this place, the altitude sickness fucked me and my friends so hard that most of us in the group had to lock ourselves in the room for a day or two and let the symptoms of altitude sickness subside. So this time we were a bit careful, which made sense because if you are flying from Delhi that is not even a thousand feet above the main sea level to a place located at even more than 11,000ft above sea level, you will obviously need time to acclimatise. 30th May 2013 – the day we landed in Leh, the sun was shining like the bulb inside the microwave and the breeze was complimenting it perfectly making the weather quite comfortable. All this tricked us into believing that the altitude, 11562 ft, wouldn't really test us like it did the last time, but then mother nature unleashed her wrath and by the time we reached our hotel, the headaches started.

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Thankfully, there was no fever, but the headaches were so painful that it felt as if someone was continuously hammering on our head. However, it was still less painful than the month-end nagging by your boss and a conversation with that girlfriend who wouldn't keep the phone down until you don't tell her where you are, with whom your are, what are you doing and by when will you be done. It took an entire day’s sleep, a very heavy dinner (steamed rice, dal and aloo jeera), and a dose of acute mountain sickness medicine, Diamox, to get over the headache. The next day, I was charged to shoot, but the bike that we were supposed to ride on from Leh to New Delhi was still in the service station, and so I decided to walk down the streets to explore the local market, which is not really famous for anything except thupka (the Tibetan noodle soup) and hand-woven tees. However, we had not even walked for 100 meters when all the josh that I felt a few minutes back went down the drain and the lack of oxygen started to rip us apart. We thought it would be wise to get back to the hotel and spend the rest of the day under the quilt because we had to start riding from the next morning of June 2. Towards the end of the day, we got our companion for the next week – the Royal Enfield Thunderbird 500. We had heard such good things about this jazzy cruiser that we were convinced that together we were gonna have a ball, and we did just that. The next morning, we had to ride to the village of Hunder in Nubra Valley, which is surrounded by a cold desert and is home to double-humped camels and sand dunes. The day started with a light breakfast (if you eat heavy, the twists and turns in the route might make you feel nauseated), and then a briefing session by Santhosh Vijay who would tell us how not to crash into fellow riders' bikes, why riding on the right hand side of the road is like inviting trucks to come and run you over and why nothing is more important on the road than being safe without fail each morning. At first I thought he is just being over cautious, but when I slipped thrice in the first few kilometers of riding, caused a fellow rider to fall, struggled with the simplest of water crossings and got scared of the deep falls just a few inches away from my bike, the only person who made sense was Santhosh. He is the guy who with his valuable daily reviews and tips, made sure you reach home safely to your parents, kids, wives, girlfriends, dogs and mistresses.

With time and experiences, both bitter and sweet, everyone realised that the Himalayan Odyssey is not a race where you need to come first, second or third. It's a ride...a simple ride that makes you a better rider, let's you live off the edge (and not just on the edge) and makes you do things that you otherwise wouldn't do in your routine lives. You stay in tents (wherever hotels are not available), share your room with people you don't know, learn to trust them with your belongings, shit in open if there is a long queue in front of the common loo or the taps have run dry, mix rum with black tea because there is no water or soft drinks available and drink it in teacups because the tentwala is short of glasses, spend nights talking about how early the day will start but still not sleep till it's one in the morning, ride across waterfalls, wear the same riding gear for 20 days (it makes you smell like a pig or even worse at times) and then at the end of the week, go back to your normal lives as a better human being. The ride to Hunder was an easy one, some 120 kms, and the next day we came back to Leh in one piece. I know it sounds embarrassing, but I was the last one, from the entire group, to reach Leh. I was so slow that even the support vehicle that is instructed to arrive later than the last rider in the trail was ahead of me, but is that really something to be ashamed of? Yes, it is if you are nut-head, but not if you put your safety ahead of the speedometer. However, I got better the next day when we rode from Leh To TsoKar. The distance this time was a little over 200 kms and it came with its own set of side effects. On that day, we rode on sand for more than 10 kilometers as well as on bad tarmac, and there was nothing enjoyable about it. All those loaded talks about “It's a learning experience and it's part of the game” are complete bullshit because people were cribbing about the road while they were riding on it. But yes, at the end of the day when you reach your destination, get rid of your gear, sip on some tea and run through the entire day, you do feel proud. Seena chauda ho jaata hai.

But do you know what is the best part of riding to Leh and back? Onlookers treat you like a hero. When they see 50-60 bikes passing by, they stand amazed. They take your pictures, ask you a lot of questions about your ride, or just smile coyly, and you get all that lost energy back. What happens to their boyfriends? Well, they can go fuck themselves! Even local kids, who are going to school or coming back or just roaming around the neighbourhood ask for high fives from bikers, and if you are able to pass on a high five to them, they become so happy that all your pain and exhaustion vanishes in a moment.

Staying at TsoKar is not easy because it's freezing cold as well as windy and the tent guys just give you a think blanket to sail through the night. To save yourself, you will have to gulp down a few pegs of rum. While I intended to keep myself away from alcohol for the entire trip, a wise rider suggested that I should go for a combination of 15 ml + 15ml + 30ml and it would do me no wrong. I followed the tip, but after I was done with this combination, a round of beers was forced on me and that ruined me completely. I was not feeling cold, but I knew the next day would be tough because of the hangover. It reminded me of something that one of the instructors had told us during the training session for the Himalayan Odyssey – a fatigued rider is as bad as a rider who got drunk last night. This night, I was both drunk and tired, and to add to that, the winds didn't let me sleep at all. The next morning I woke up tired, so tired that I contemplated not riding at all. I was feeling miserable, but then a fellow rider (Amit Chauhan) who had poured the beer in my glass tried to lift my spirits and said, “Bhai, 2-4 kilometers chalaoge toh sab theek ho jaayega", and I believed what he said. It worked more or less, but I was sure I wouldn't touch alcohol till the time I reached Delhi. On the third day, when we were riding from Tso-Kar to Keylong, my tail bone started to hurt because the distance of 260 kms was quite a lot and even the road conditions were not that favourable. There were bumps, barely-there roads, diversions that would force you into off-roading, water crossings and sand trails. On top of all this, even though the fuel tank of the bike was supposed to store enough petrol for the entire route, it deceived me and the 'empty' indicator started to blink just a few kilometers away from Keylong. From that point, I stopped trusting the fuel indicator and always carried some extra petrol with me. Even the support vehicle of the group carried some petrol that you could take and later pay for, but you would have to wait for really long for the van to arrive, so it was advisable that you carry some petrol in a gallon. Even at Keylong, we stayed in a tent, but the tent here was extremely comfortable with an attached washroom, running hot water, a quilt and a blanket.

The next day when we were starting for Manali, we could make out that it would rain, so we pulled out our raincoats and gumboots. Don't trust your riding gear too much, as it won't save you from the rains and you would need an extra layer of protection. It didn't rain till Rohtang Pass, a distance of 66 kms from Keylong, but then it started to pour down reducing the visibility to not even 10 meters. For more than a kilometer, we rode with mud flowing above knee level. The bike was slipping, both the brakes had gone for a toss, it was getting cold, the riding gear was completely wet and then as we came down the hills, the drivers on the roads start losing their sanity, so even that added to the bad riding conditions. We persevered though. Once you reach Manali, the ride is theoretically on but technically over because from Manali to Delhi (the culmination point of the ride) the ride is easy because the roads are so good that all you have to do is cruise. To our surprise, several people had breakdowns between Manali and Chandigarh because maybe they went too hard on the throttle or the constant rains got to their bikes. The rain followed us from Manali to Chandigarh and then from Chandigarh to Delhi and it was only when we reached home that we found ourselves completely dry in the last three days of the trip. The ride ended on July 8th, but the hangover of the odyssey is still taking us for a ride and the brotherhood is sorely missed.

The road trippers' diary

July 2-3: Leh-Hunder-Leh, 128 kms (one way), 6 hours Altitude: 14,271ft Mobile network: Only BSNL works here Hunder is a small village, which is often described as an oasis nestled in the cold desert of Nubra Valley. The sand dunes here are mind-blowing, but it's the double humped camel that this place is most famous for. The Nubra Valley gives you ample scope to take pictures. For someone who has grown up seeing a filthy Yamuna, the clean river, Shyok, looks magical and the fluorescent blue and pink bushes make the surrounding look like a Bollywood set.

July 4: Leh-TsoKar, 153 kms, 6-7 hours Altitude: 15,280ft Mobile network: Not available TsoKar is famous for its saltwater lake, which is one of the three high altitude saltwater lakes in Ladakh. Not a very long time ago, the Changpa nomads living in this region used to barter the salt for goods like rice and vegetables all over Ladakh and Western Tibet. It gets quite chilly here, so it would be wise to carry a few extra blankets. Also, there are no shops around, so make sure you are stocked up on everything you might need.

July 5: TsoKar to Keylong, 360 kms, 10-12 hours Altitude: 10,100ft Mobile network: Not consistent. Too much disturbance. Keylong is the place from where the ride starts becoming easy, and it gives you the impression of the approaching plains. Just before Keylong, there is a never-ending tunnel of 8.5kms that's shortens the distance by roughly 50kms, and makes for a good ride route. The Rohtang Tunnel is simply majestic.

July 6: Keylong to Manali, 117 kms Altitude: 6,752ft Mobile Network: Seamless According to Google Maps, you should take less than four hours to reach Manali from Keylong, but that's not the case. The roads are bad till Rohtang Pass (13054 ft), it rains on the way and landslides are quite a regular occurrence. Plus, once you start crossing this Pass, the driving conditions become terrible because of the mist, mud and heavy traffic on the road. Roads become better as you close on Manali, but in any case, it will take you atleast six hours to cover this distance.

July 7: Manali to Chandigarh, 292 kms Altitude: 1150ft Mobile Network: Are you really looking for an answer dude? Riding to Chandigarh is a cakewalk, long but easy. We started from Manali and stopped just once at Bilaspur and then from there on, rode directly to Chandigarh. It took us 10-11 hours to reach, but there was not much reason to get fatigued even though it rained throughout.

July 8: Chandigarh to Delhi, 258 kms Altitude: 705ft Mobile Network: What's that? LOL! The moment we left Chandigarh, it started to rain so heavily that even our raincoat got wet. The rain didn't leave us till Gurgaon where the odyssey was supposed to end. We stopped once for lunch, but it suddenly started to rain so heavily that the rainwater completely filled the tandoor of the dhaba that we were supposed to eat at.

Shit scary moments

Just when we started riding from Leh to Hunder, the sight of those deep valleys just a few inches away from the bike reminded us of our forefathers.

We were taking a sharp turn and one of the cars that was supposed to attend to us in case of an emergency almost brushed past us.

We were approaching a makeshift bridge (bloody all the bridges on this route are makeshifts) and the moment our bike was supposed step on this bridge, more than a foot's gap between the brige and the road caught us off guard. That's when we decided that speed thrill, but might kill as well.

Most common mistakes

Riding on the right hand side of the road isn't a good idea because the trucks coming from opposite directions carry a lot of speed and don't honk before turns.

Not honking before overtaking is not a good idea because the rider who is already struggling with the bad roads ahead of you might not be looking into his mirror. Riding too close to another rider should be completely avoided because the other rider would need space to move his bike in case a vehicle approaches from the opposite direction.

Things FHM carried in its backpack

Lip balm, sunscreen, wet tissue paper, a change of clothes, towel, camera (Canon 1000D and Olympus STYLUS VG-190), 2 bungee cords, Buff, rain cover for backpack. What was missing: chocolates to keep us going, travel charger, facemask, a BSNL simcard, gumboots.

From the August 2013 issue of FHM India.