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 ...