DAY 1: THURSDAY 26TH JULY 2018
Manali – Chutra // 83 km: 7.5 hours We are now in Chatru – I'm so cold! We left on our (Enfield Himalayan) bike about 11am from Manali after a false start of pouring rain and needing a new battery to start the bike! We also went about another hour further than we needed to as we were trying to reach Chandratal Lake for the night which we'd heard was do-able, however we were stopped on the road by a very nice old Kiwi biker who said there had been two bad landslides and the road ahead was completely impassable, so we turned back. We passed the message on to two very underdressed Israeli guys who decided to join us in our journey back to Chandratal, and we luckily were offered the camp's little outbuilding to sleep in altogether instead of some very soggy tents! We're now absolutely soaked through after torrential rain all day over Rohtang Pass (3978m altitude) and warming our bones with some dal, rice and chai. Luckily we brought a little gin with us from Manali and picked up some local alcohol from a little mud hut earlier in the day en route to warm us too! DAY 2 FRIDAY 27TH JULY Chatru – Kaza // 181km: 12 hours Oh my word what a day! Woke up about 6amish in our little cosy mountain room with our new Israeli friends Tom and Tomer. Re-dressed in our still-wet jeans and trainers and met a group of English schoolboys hiking the same route for 2 weeks while we were tucking into our Paratha breakfast. Today was such a long blur. We drove through rivers, helped a car completely stuck by a rockslide, and went 14 km in the wrong direction in the rain. We assumed we had to go through Chandartal Lake to reach our goal of Kaza for the day, but only when the checkpoint police stopped us for a passport check 3km short of the lake did they tell us it was just a viewpoint with no through road! This brought me almost to the end of my adventurous tether as I was freezing again having walked many times through foot-high gushing glacial water to make sure the bike didn't get stuck. Added to that we felt pretty responsible for the young Israeli's who had attached themselves to us (they were wearing shorts and sandals, lost the bags off the back of their bike without realising, and slipped off their bike twice in the mud)! Anyhow, eventually after a very tough and bumpy steep set of switchbacks, we got to some almost tarmac road past a monastery to Lassor for lunch (Approx 6 hours of riding). As with many roads in Himachal, there was a police checkpoint to continue into the village and on with our journey. For some reason one of the Israeli's had decided to leave his passport in Manali (in my diary I wrote 'the bloody Israeli boy', I was obviously stressed!). There was at least half an hour of discussions and phone calls with Happy as translator, before they were finally let through, with a warning that they were unlikely to be allowed to continue their journey at the next checkpoint (a problem when we were all running low on fuel). Finally had a Thali and felt a little more human again. The Israeli boys were by now predictably slow at getting started again, but luckily we smashed the second part of the day with some beautifully smooth roads. A quick, cold bucket shower and some veg pakoras later and I am tucked up in bed already. DAY 3: SATURDAY 28TH JULY Kaza - No riding! As with most, the Israeli boys were observing Sabbath (Shabat as they call it in Hebrew), and we unintentionally joined them. We went for breakfast at an awesome hostel with small locally made crafts for sale and lots of inspiring quotes on the walls, and a reminder not to let Kaza become 'another tourist Manali', but to travel for reason not just for instagram. The owner there said as a foreigner I needed another permit to pass the next bit of the journey, so we headed to the small photocopying and documents office, filled out the necessary forms and waited 2 hours for traditionally slow Indian bureaucracy. I got my permit, and it was free :). We went to the main market of Kaza to the Himalayan Cafe for pizza, a boardgame of Ludo, and some colouring, meeting lots of school groups, cycling and biking packs in the process (mostly English strangely!). Had a nice chilled afternoon resting my sore bike bum. DAY 4: SUNDAY 29TH JULY Kaza – Rekong Peo // 212km, 9.5 hours Oh, got a bit drunk last night and tried to capture the full blood moon – a little blurry! We got up at 6:30am to try and get an early start (and not have to wait for the slow Israeli's who had also followed us to our guest house). Unfortunately the petrol pump was closed and we hadn't filled up our bike yet, so of course we had some chai. Once the station worker had finally been persuaded to finish his shower (we were told he was too busy showering to open the pumps!), the power then went out for another hour so we had to wait for them to start the generator. Apparently this happens pretty regularly here, as it's a Government job in a pretty undesirable place, so the workers try their hardest to do a bad job and get reported so that they can be transferred back down to a different petrol station in warmer climes before winter! During our wait we got chatting to a lone Delhi rider and ended up spending most of today's ride with him. First we caught up with him at the checkpoint into the China border road near Tebo, then making sure he sped up to avoid a massive rockfall that started literally as we were driving underneath it. An undeniably scary experience that led to me as the passenger being 'rock-watcher' in the cliffs above for the day. Eventually we stopped together at an isolated army base where it never rains, and persuaded the army mess to give us chai. Another checkpoint and strict no photography instructions later we found some delicious tarmac road and beautiful, if pretty daunting, mountain desert scenery. Our Indian pal had some unfortunate bike trouble which meant I ended up walking up some of the switchbacks with his hoards of camping gear to lighten his Enfield while Happy pushed it. Needless to say our bike is bloody great! After a very local Thali on the road near Naka, we rode about 35km further and found a roadside mechanic who changed the other guys bike oil which seemed to do the trick. Although this also included an unintended 45 minute stop and me having to squat behind the wheel of an old truck on the roadside to relieve myself. We got back on our way but lost the smooth roads and instead had daggers bruising my bum for the last few hours (okay maybe they were just rocks but it sure didn't feel like it!). We turned away from the river and took a quick, steep climb to a mountain town called Rekong Peo when I decided I really couldn't manage to co-pilot any longer (I'm making it sound a little too glamorous here hey!). It really wasn't a tourist place, and we lost our Indian pal while searching for hotels but found a bed (albeit no running water). DAY 5: MONDAY 30TH JULY Rekong Peo – Banjar // 203km: 10 hours Woke up to the most beautiful view of snow-capped mountains at the top of the valley. We had an amazing, and pretty sweaty ride through some slightly busier mountain villages and over Jalori Pass (3120m altitude), then down to Sohra where we had planned to stop. We kept going (with a couple of small pauses to let the brakes cool down when they stopped working) and were blessed with the most unbelievable pine forests and clear roads just for us. A lot of the guesthouses were closed as I guess we're a little out of season, so we continued through the very busy town of Banjar and finally found a tourist hotel, with a front row view of the gushing river we'd been following for hours, running water AND a geezer (hot water boiler by the way). Our first hot showers in 5 days – bliss. DAY 6: Tuesday 31st July BANJAR – MANALI // 93km: 6 hours The final stretch back to Manali! We were a bit reluctant to leave what we knew was our little mountain haven but I think we finally got going about 8:30/9amish. It was a pretty smooth ride in terms of the road, but after 5 days my body was seriously hurting just thinking about sitting on the bike which made it a bit of a struggle. The roads were dusty and full of traffic, and we did hit a big road block along the way. The traffic was so bad getting back into Manali (probably another landslide due to their road-widening project), so we drove back an hour in the direction we had come to find the back road. At about 2:30pm we made it back to Vashisht (Manali)! What a crazy, crazy adventure. I'm kind of sad to say goodbye to the trusty bike that has been our home for the last week, but I'm also excited for a hot shower and straightening my knees for a while. Onwards and upwards to the next adventure!
1 Comment
1/12/2022 05:01:50 am
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About meI enjoy writing and have had experience from my degree and through working on news posts. I hope to use this blog as a summary of extraordinary things I've discovered or witnessed in everyday life. Archives
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