Ladakh DAY 3 – August 06, 2007 Mon
Ladakh 4. DAY 3 – August 06, 2007 MonManali – 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 repairs bikes because ‘they are in pain and he helps them’. He sees bikes and if likes yours, he will take special care of it. He treats bikes like you would treat your girlfriend (I cannot claim originality here – an Austrian I met at Anu’s place says so).
Anu is also a special character – the first of this kind on this ride – he has a ‘world view’. When Baddy tells him that he is going back to Delhi from here because his work is pending, Anu simply says - ‘Who do you work for? If you work for yourself, you will be happy. If you work for others, you will be miserable all the time’ … I suspect that that remark made Baddy come with us at least till Rohtang La.
Anu works on my bike and Alok’s bike. It is about 1pm that we leave his workshop and head towards Rohtang La. This is only about 50km and we are sure we will cover it in at least 2 hours. We have no idea how wrong we are.
The first few kms are comfortable. We cross Palchan with its numbered shops, cross Kothi and approach Gulaba. Just near Gulaba, we see a huge – I mean terribly huge – traffic jam. Apparently there are two places where there are landslides, and this has brought the whole road to a standstill. There is a line of trucks almost 3km long on either side. We try to waddle our way through the mayhem, do some daredevil stunts of going very close to the edge of the road / cliff in the process too. However we get stuck at the main landslide area.
We can see the part of the road that is completely washed away. Alok tries his hand at taking his bike across with great difficulty. By the time he is on the other side, it starts pouring like crazy – thanks to Prof. Murphy. Now it becomes even more difficult for my bike to cross, with freshly added slush and water. Also, since my bike has Alok’s big heavy bag, I have trouble in balancing and pushing it. Thankfully Alok climbs down by foot from the other side, and helps me push the bike across.
By the time the two bikes are out, we get a call from Shrenik. His clutch plates are burnt, since he tried to rave the bike in the slush. There is not much we can do. He keeps saying that his engine is seized, which we know isn’t, but there is no point in arguing with non-logic especially in this terrain. He finds a truck that can take his bike as a cargo back to Manali. He would take the bike to Anu, and maybe start again the next day. We wish him good luck.
We find our way out of the traffic jam on the other side, and emerge on the top of all the confusion. This whole exercise has taken us almost 3 hours, and it is about 4:30pm now. We find a small shack on one side of the road overlooking the road and the valley beyond, which provides us a life-saving chai – the first of the many to follow.
We move on towards Marhi. We are about 20km from Rohtang La top. Marhi has quite a few shops where you can get food, and gumboots, warm overcoats, caps etc. on hire.
At Marhi, we meet Tim and Baddy, the remaining members. They have already been to the top, and have come back since it has started snowing at the top. Their verdict: It is too risky to cross the pass now. We should do that in the morning. It is getting really dark. It has rained badly some time ago, and so the weather is windy and chilling.
We decide to call it a day. Where do we stay though? Tim and Alok have tents, and we all do have sleeping bags. But I am not too fond of camping, especially when done by force. So I look around, and find a bunglow-like structure about 500m earlier to the Marhi establishment. On closer look, I find out that it is a PWD guesthouse. I find a group of 20 British people – this group is planning to cover the Manali-Leh route on BICYCLES. And this is when I thought we are crazy! (I also hear that there are people who do this route by FOOT. I suppose such characters dwell in a different parallel universe.)
I find the caretaker-cum-watchman Joban watching a Hindi movie in one of the shacks. I persuade him to let us stay in the guesthouse, which has 2 rooms. He has a serious problem. The PWD guesthouse is already booked by the British group. It is just that this group is in such a camping (read crazy) mood that even when they have the guesthouse to themselves, they have chosen to put up tents and stay in them. So the two rooms are available, however they are technically booked for the Britishers. A couple of rounds of rhetoric (and exchange of some green papers) solve this quandary and we are allowed to stay in the rooms.
We are 14km before Rohtang La. The feeling of failure on the first day of the big ride adds to the melancholy of the sour weather. We are only glad that we are safe, dry and inside an enclosure. It is windy and chilly. In front of us, there is a wall of darkness, which some truckies are scaling in spite of the adverse climate. Brave, or stupid, or forced by the nature of job – we shrug in bewilderment, and get behind our cozy bed-sheets.
The visual of the mad trucks scaling the wall of Rohtang in the middle of night, with their dim headlights trying to pierce through the great veil of darkness is one of the first stunning visuals of the ride, that will probably stay with me for years to come.
- Shreekant
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 repairs bikes because ‘they are in pain and he helps them’. He sees bikes and if likes yours, he will take special care of it. He treats bikes like you would treat your girlfriend (I cannot claim originality here – an Austrian I met at Anu’s place says so).
Anu is also a special character – the first of this kind on this ride – he has a ‘world view’. When Baddy tells him that he is going back to Delhi from here because his work is pending, Anu simply says - ‘Who do you work for? If you work for yourself, you will be happy. If you work for others, you will be miserable all the time’ … I suspect that that remark made Baddy come with us at least till Rohtang La.
Anu works on my bike and Alok’s bike. It is about 1pm that we leave his workshop and head towards Rohtang La. This is only about 50km and we are sure we will cover it in at least 2 hours. We have no idea how wrong we are.
The first few kms are comfortable. We cross Palchan with its numbered shops, cross Kothi and approach Gulaba. Just near Gulaba, we see a huge – I mean terribly huge – traffic jam. Apparently there are two places where there are landslides, and this has brought the whole road to a standstill. There is a line of trucks almost 3km long on either side. We try to waddle our way through the mayhem, do some daredevil stunts of going very close to the edge of the road / cliff in the process too. However we get stuck at the main landslide area.
We can see the part of the road that is completely washed away. Alok tries his hand at taking his bike across with great difficulty. By the time he is on the other side, it starts pouring like crazy – thanks to Prof. Murphy. Now it becomes even more difficult for my bike to cross, with freshly added slush and water. Also, since my bike has Alok’s big heavy bag, I have trouble in balancing and pushing it. Thankfully Alok climbs down by foot from the other side, and helps me push the bike across.
By the time the two bikes are out, we get a call from Shrenik. His clutch plates are burnt, since he tried to rave the bike in the slush. There is not much we can do. He keeps saying that his engine is seized, which we know isn’t, but there is no point in arguing with non-logic especially in this terrain. He finds a truck that can take his bike as a cargo back to Manali. He would take the bike to Anu, and maybe start again the next day. We wish him good luck.
We find our way out of the traffic jam on the other side, and emerge on the top of all the confusion. This whole exercise has taken us almost 3 hours, and it is about 4:30pm now. We find a small shack on one side of the road overlooking the road and the valley beyond, which provides us a life-saving chai – the first of the many to follow.
We move on towards Marhi. We are about 20km from Rohtang La top. Marhi has quite a few shops where you can get food, and gumboots, warm overcoats, caps etc. on hire.
At Marhi, we meet Tim and Baddy, the remaining members. They have already been to the top, and have come back since it has started snowing at the top. Their verdict: It is too risky to cross the pass now. We should do that in the morning. It is getting really dark. It has rained badly some time ago, and so the weather is windy and chilling.
We decide to call it a day. Where do we stay though? Tim and Alok have tents, and we all do have sleeping bags. But I am not too fond of camping, especially when done by force. So I look around, and find a bunglow-like structure about 500m earlier to the Marhi establishment. On closer look, I find out that it is a PWD guesthouse. I find a group of 20 British people – this group is planning to cover the Manali-Leh route on BICYCLES. And this is when I thought we are crazy! (I also hear that there are people who do this route by FOOT. I suppose such characters dwell in a different parallel universe.)
I find the caretaker-cum-watchman Joban watching a Hindi movie in one of the shacks. I persuade him to let us stay in the guesthouse, which has 2 rooms. He has a serious problem. The PWD guesthouse is already booked by the British group. It is just that this group is in such a camping (read crazy) mood that even when they have the guesthouse to themselves, they have chosen to put up tents and stay in them. So the two rooms are available, however they are technically booked for the Britishers. A couple of rounds of rhetoric (and exchange of some green papers) solve this quandary and we are allowed to stay in the rooms.
We are 14km before Rohtang La. The feeling of failure on the first day of the big ride adds to the melancholy of the sour weather. We are only glad that we are safe, dry and inside an enclosure. It is windy and chilly. In front of us, there is a wall of darkness, which some truckies are scaling in spite of the adverse climate. Brave, or stupid, or forced by the nature of job – we shrug in bewilderment, and get behind our cozy bed-sheets.
The visual of the mad trucks scaling the wall of Rohtang in the middle of night, with their dim headlights trying to pierce through the great veil of darkness is one of the first stunning visuals of the ride, that will probably stay with me for years to come.
- Shreekant
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