Memoirs of a Wandering Nomad

Ladakh 6. DAY 5 – August 08, 2007 Wed Bharatput City – Killing Sarai (Sarchu Sarai) – Sarchu – {Gata Loops} – Nakeela – Lachlung La – Kangla Jal – Pang – Moray Plains – Tanglang La – Rumtse – Miru – Upshi – Karu – Leh By the time it is 6am and the tent owner comes to wake us up, we are already awake with pounding headaches that the height, the rare oxygen, the cold and disturbed sleep have given us for free. We pack as quickly as possible in our condition (actually in record 20mins) and head towards the river. Thankfully there is truth in the locals’ statement and the flow is very small. It is still an effort, but we manage to drag our bikes through without much incident. The downward climb from here on towards the Sarchu valley is eerie – the landscape resembles that on Mars. There is no sign of civilization except the road we are on, that too is broken in most places. We are glad we did not attempt this last evening – when it was already dusky. We climb down this bumpy and often scar...

Ladakh 5. DAY 4 – August 07, 2007 Tue Marhi – Rohtang La – Koksar – Tandi – Keylong – Stringi – [Udaipur] – Jispa – Darcha – Patsio – Zingzingbar – Baralacha Pass – Bharatpur City By 6am, it is bright and sunny, which is a phenomenon common across all high-altitude mountain areas. The memories of the wet, dark and chilly night is behind us. Baddy has gone back from this place as he has to reach Delhi in a couple of days. We pack and start off. We have miles to go before we sleep today. The climb to Rohtang La looks like cakewalk in the fresh morning Sun. Most of the snow has melted and the road is manageable, albeit curvy and bumpy in parts. We reach Rohtang top in good time, and celebrate our first pass with some cake I have packed from back home. We start climbing down the other side towards Koksar. The road has great surface and is largely downhill. So we switch off the engines and roll down, giving tough competition to the bicycle gang. We see a plaque for Spiti valley towards the ...

Ladakh 4. DAY 3 – August 06, 2007 Mon Manali – Rohtang La – back to Marhi The day opens very late – as late as 9am for us. Must be the trout curry and the exhaustion of the earlier day, but we simply can’t get out of the excellent fluffy beds. Not that we are complaining though. By the time we pack, have a royal breakfast (120 bucks for an English breakfast, complete with fruit juice, omelets and coffee) and leave, it is almost 10:30am. We cross the bridge and go to the other side of Manali, go to the petrol pump on the way, fill petrol and then take the right, which leads to Vashishth. Vashishth, known for hot water springs, is also famous in the biking community because it has Anu’s garage. Anu is arguably the best mechanic in the area – and by area I mean a circle with a radius of at least 500km. Not even in Leh would you have good mechanics, so show your bike to Anu. And that is exactly how you do it. You just show him the bike. He does not repair bikes because that’s his job. He ...

Ladakh 3. DAY 2 – August 05, 2007 Sun Swarghat – Bilaspur - Sundernagar – Mandi – Aut – Bhuntar – Kullu - Manali The second day opens with a warm sunshine and clear skies. It is quite pleasant at Swarghat, and we are all refreshed by a good night’s sleep. We start off for Manali by around 9:30am – a small mistake that I would like to avoid the next time. One should always start early, and this is the learning we have over the next few days too. I am on a thundercloud, fully rejuvenated with the sleep. Saki too gets into good action, and we make excellent progress to Bilaspur. We stop and Bilaspur to get Alok’s bike repaired. Baldev mechanic in the town – a good and helpful fellow. Recommended. After a suitable breakfast of parathas, we move from Bilaspur towards Sundernagar and then to Mandi. The road goes through a green valley – part of Kullu valley – and is exceedingly beautiful. The road has juice bars on sides, river, valley and hills. The weather is quite nice and sunny. We mee...

Ladakh 2. DAY 1 – August 04, 2007 Sat Gurgaon – Delhi [GT Road] – Sonpat – Panipat – Chandigarh – Rupnagar – Kiratpur – Swarghat I wake Alok and Rini up at 4am. The day begins with a downpour, while we are trying to pack the bags on the bike. It is dark and pours heavily for almost 2 hours. By the end of which we are at the end of our patience and wits and decide to pack the bags anyway and move on. We are completely drenched, the luggage is wet and the packing is badly done due to lack of visibility. By the grace of Murphy, once we start, the rain stops almost by design. We meet the rest of the team (3 more bikes) at Dhaula Kuan after some more confusion on the meeting place, and proceed towards GT road – filling petrol, taking cash out of ATMs and generally whiling time away for no apparent good reason. A lot of places are flooded and muddy, through which we waddle our way, especially Azadpur Mandi. Occasional drizzles add to the misery. Finally, by around 8:30am, we are out of Delh...

Leh Ladakh Motorbike Expedition 2007 Statutory Warning: The following series of posts contains material that can cause irreversible damage to your lifestyle. It may also put all your career aspirations of being a lawyer or a stock-market expert or a CEO or or any other serious role that you want to be in, in serious jeopardy. It is therefore recommended only for nomads and dolphins. p.s. For the weak-hearted, beware. It also contains some references to Hridaynath Mangeshkar. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ladakh 1. Day 0 – August 03, 2007 Fri Gurgaon There is almost no comparison to the way I felt about the Ladakh ride even before I began. Most people compare it with Mekka for bikers. Well, this was Mekka for a staunch fakir, who is denied a visa and travel for at least 5 years. Maybe even worse ... Many years ago I bought a bike – a Royal Enfield Bullet 500cc. I bought her with th...

This is a post about posts – a sort of ‘Meta-post’ – about posts to follow. From August 4th till August 17th, I have been in a different realm altogether – Ladakh – ‘the Land of Passes’. Also the land of snow, the land of unpredictable climate and the land of mind-numbing beauty. It is a dream come true, the effect of which has taken over a month to taper down and the memories of which will linger perhaps for eternity. Before I started, I had no clue what lies on my way. Today, I remember every stone turned by the wheels of Saki, every sign board overtaken, every bridge crossed and every moment of this 14-day long expedition. The memories are too many and too vibrant to fit into any format – visual, voice or text. However, I am going to try my best to organize them day wise and present here – which is also incidentally the life’s goal for this blog. There are in all 16 posts that I plan to write – 14 for each day, one preclude and one epilogue. Like the expedition itself, this is a mam...

Concerning Palmistry and NH-2 " ... over the mountain, across the sea who knows what is waiting for me? ..." - Pink Floyd It is not funny that I have such long life-line, I will probably linger around for quite a while, like Hamlet's dear dad. I just hope I have better things to tell my sons and grandsons, than mystery and murder. I hope I have things to tell ... of Adventure. Of beautiful sunsets and sunrises. Of the wonderful people I have met and will meet. Of the crazy trips across this amazing subcontinent we call our Motherland ... And of Life. I already have quite a few stories, some of which have found their way to these posts. Some others are doing the rounds in the biking groups, some in the family ... Like the one where I broke a toll gate on Moradabad Bypass. Or the one when Imran got stung by a bee while returning from Nainital, which poisoned him so much that the next whole day he was 'out of order' ... he slept...

I always thought that the questions were important. Not just questions, and of course not just the answers, ... but the whole journey from the questions till the answers (cliche, I know, can't help it. It's inevitable.) ... The process of going back and forth, back and forth -- like waves on the Hedvi beach that we camped on one night after a long ride. But these days I don't hear the waves, forget about seeing them, or wetting my feet in them. So who is doing it then? Who is thinking about the larger questions? I mean, is it not important that someone, somewhere -- some people, some group or some person -- is thinking about them? ... Evaluating various points, counterpoints, seeing all sides of the crystal, and yet at the same time seeing it as a whole. Who is doing that? I am getting increasingly dragged into lower levels of thought hierarchies. Sustenance. Suffering. Making LHS equal to RHS of all little equations. The jaggaurnaut of consumerism has numbed most of my oth...

The cow is of bovine ilk, one end is moo, the other end milk. - Ogden Nash One of the reasons I write posts about my bike rides is that I have a terrible memory. Not only do I forget the details, sometimes I forget even the broad contexts. My typical explanation for this is that all the upper deck is occupied by a large multi-processor, so there is no place for a data bank on the rack, but you and I know that this is just a lot of horse-s**t -- the Aaj Tak news variety, not even NDTV. This is therefore an attempt also to keep a track of some of the most memorable and yet un-remembered incidents that I hope to narrate to 3G (third generation from now). One such incident is when Alok had a tete-a-tete with a cow, the four-legged variety with bovine ilk. What happened was this - Alok and I have been planning a longish trip to cover Ajanta and Ellora. We call this 'the Dream ride'. Now this is a joke, since all riders know that when you are planning a ride, it is a dream ride. When...

Now that you are all set and ready for going to the passport office ... blah blah blah ... Abandon all hope, ye who enterth! PART II: Step 3: Going through the actual process: ------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. Now that you have got the forms, copies, shaved, taken bath etc. etc., you are all set for the big day. 2. This big day is not a particular day, but any working day for that matter. When you fill the online form, it will give you some date for an appointment. Note that this date is almost entirely utterly useless. You can go any day before, after ... the appointment is a sham. You still need to stand in the queue the whole day, no running away from that. 3. So you reach the regional office, which is near Siddhi Vinayak temple, Dadar. This used to be Bengal Chemicals factory some years ago, and is now converted as the new passport office. The old passport office is in what is called the Manish Buidling, which is further down the road, after the ...

Now this one post has nothing to do with Biking. I am writing this one to share with you some pearls of practical wisdom I collected last week when I went through the process of passport re-issue. Now why this is called re-issue and not renewal etc. are topics that will be covered subsequently. I hope this note is useful to those who will need to brave this new and inhospitable terrain invariably. All the discussion below is for Mumbai Regional Passport Office. I am not sure if the process is exactly the same for other offices, or if there is any process at all. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - A passport normally gets issued for 10 years, which means that at the end of the 10th year, you will need to get it 're-issued'. There is no running away from this. It is like Death and taxes, only g...

Travel date: Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 May 2007 Distance: 250km from Gurgaon Route: Gurgaon - Jaipur Highway (N8) till Dharuheda - Right towards Rewari Rewari to Narnaul - Singhana - Chidawa - Jhunjhunu - Mandawa Leave Gurgaon 3:30pm.Gurgaon to Dharuheda via NH8. Take right after crossing Dharuheda towards Rewari. Cross through Rewari. Little town with weird architecture. Take right from Ambedkar chowk for Narnaul. Rewari - Narnaul about 60km. Good road. Narnaul - a small sleepy hospital town. Well-connected.Just some km before Narnaul, a road goes to Behror (30km) in case you want to open to the highway.Otherwise the roads hereafter lead to deeper and deeper interiors. Cross Narnaul and head to Singhana (35km).Home of all Singhanias. See Singhania school, Singhania college etc. Singhana is on the border of Haryana and Rajasthan.The moment you enter Rajasthan, bad and patchy roads start.Singhana to Chirawa (pronounced Chidawaa - 25km) is bad, patchy, like an old mattress. Chirawa is a ...

The other day Alok called and complained that I have not written anything about our rides together. Now although I explained to him that this is because of a slight technical hitch that he is in Mumbai and I am in Delhi these days and so we have not done rides together lately, I think it is apt that I post some of my earlier published posts for the record and for the sake of the biking partnership we have. This one is about our ride through Tamhini Ghat and was posted on Royal Enfield's site sometime in January 2005 as "Tamhini Ghat -- Absolutely Stunning Rear Gem of Western Ghats". These RE guys try to make a big deal of everything. ;) Cheers, S ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mumbai-Pune via Tamhini Ghat - Shreekant Vijaykar Date: 18 and 19 Dec 2004 Route: Mumbai - Panvel - Pen [NH-17] - Kolad - Vile - Bhagad [SH-60] - Bhira [Tamhini G...