Delhi Bikers

Early morning 'Breakfast Run'. Spangmik to Tangtse. From day into night. We were enthused and refreshed by our miraculous sleep, which felt more like an incredible escape from the jaws of AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness). The last meal Ray had was the previous day’s lunch but he still chose to skip the breakfast. The Ladakhi drivers advised us to return to Leh instead of going to Tso Kar.  Some said it was “Bone shattering!” while others warned, “there is no road”.  We had already taken a huge risk by riding without acclimatizing and to continue further in our shaky state would have been foolish. The wild shades of the mountain could not hide the blizzard brewing behind it. Adventure motorcycling is about calculating your risks so you can keep riding. Plans are made to serve us not the other way around. Trouble starts when we stubbornly stick to an itinerary when wisdom tells us to be flexible and modify. So we headed back to Leh via Changla. I will never fo...

We should have anticipated what lay ahead in the night but maybe we convinced ourselves that sheer stubbornness could keep Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS) at bay. But alas, by 5pm the temperature had dropped enough to make us immobile and stuck under our blankets and our heads were throbbing like bass woofers and no one was dancing. I asked the monk who ran the guesthouse why there were oxygen cylinders outside our rooms. “Precaution” he said. Ray had no appetite so I ate by myself. I returned to find him throwing up even the water he was trying to drink. We laughed the first few times. Then panicked, as he couldn’t stop. Neither the pink walls or the velvet blankets helped. Finally Mr. Concentration was called to the rescue. I ran and called the monk to do something. He sent a man named Dhyan Singh Thakur, the resident waiter/nurse/guide who said he could cure anything with his massage. I wasn’t going to argue and Ray was far too sick to protest as a chunk ...

Like chained elephants they rumbled by. On our way up we had wondered why all those Indian Army trucks had metal chains around their wheels. Now when we were on the other side of Changla Pass, stuck in knee-deep snow, we knew why. Soft snow + road tyres + high altitude = what were we thinking? With fresh snow to fall into and plenty of people to help us up, s lipping and sliding we squeezed past the one truck that had blocked all the traffic. Layer upon layer of Vanilla Ice Cream. The ride down was spectacular! With all the taxi’s held up at the pass, we had the entire road to ourselves all the way to the police check post in Tangtse. By the time I got off my bike I was thoroughly intoxicated by the experience.  Stopped to register at the Tangtse Police Station. Got to pet the dog for free. We hoped the person who rode this is still alive. A wrecked Enfield at the check post put things i...

Morning view from our guesthouse window This year the Zozilla Pass opened very late. Hence when we flew in by May end Leh was just waking up and local ladies could be seen haggling for flowers freshly brought up from Srinagar. Mohan the Enfield Master We spent our first day trying to tune the rented Desert Storm Royal Enfield’s at Mohan the Mechanic. He was from Jammu and for the last two decades he and his brother had been at the outskirts of Leh reviving battered Enfield’s that had survived the ordeal up the land of the high passes. He said business was good but the crowd had dramatically changed. From predominantly foreign bikers his customers were now mainly locals and domestic bikers. Unlike those tourists on shoestring budget, the new clients paid well. We knew it was risky to rent a bike in Leh because rental companies have one agenda, to quickly cash in their bike before its totally trashed. Novice bikers who have never ridden even an automatic scooter bef...