Farewell India (for now)

With only about 12 days before I was planning to fly to Bangkok, I found myself pressed for time in India considering what I still wanted to do and see before I left. After taking only 1 day to rest after the motorcycle journey, we left Manali the next evening on a 22-hour minibus ride to Leh. Although I was in awe, staring at the breathtaking scenery, and our shadows falling on the desert sand beside us as we rode along, 22 hours is still way too long for a minibus ride, and I was already starting to dread the thought of taking the same route back. But I had time to worry about that later. For the moment I had only about a weeks worth of time in Leh, so there was no time to waste.

Our first real activity in Leh was taking a jeep up to the Khardung La Pass, which claims to be the highest motorable road in the world at 5,359 meters, and then riding (decrepit) bicycles 40 km downhill. Not considering the extreme change of altitude, I arrived in shorts, only to be greeted by hail and snow as the jeep climbed the mountain. After riding down for a half hour or so, back into normal temperatures, I decided that I wanted this experience documented on video. Holding my Flip video camera in 1 hand, I continued riding, filming the road ahead, and the beautiful views of the epic-sized Himalayan mountain range spanning across the entire horizon. This left only one hand steering, and controlling the front brake. As my friends were stopped up ahead, I decided to attempt a skidding stop. Unfortunately, it was on a patch of sand, with only the front brake, and I flipped over the handlebars. As my friends watched astonished, I lay on the ground laughing hysterically, and immediately yelled "I got it on video!" (To my dismay, the video didn't capture the fall as my camera shut off earlier in the ride while I rode over some bumps) After washing off my cuts and scrapes, and covering my half-broken fingernail, we continued the fun looping journey back down to Leh, with no further mishaps other than Amir flying off his bike when attempting to go off-road. He suffered no injuries though, and within another hour we were back in Leh, discussing what was next.

2 days later, I embarked on what was referred to as the "Baby trek" with some friends from the beginning of my trip that I ran into in Leh. Now don't let the name "Baby trek" mislead you, as it did to me. "Baby" refers to the number of days the trek should last, and not to its difficulty level, or lack thereof. Starting a trek at 3,500 meters does not give your body time to adjust to climbing at that altitude, as we did in Nepal starting at 700 meters. Additionally, we were dealing with cloudless skies, a scorching sun, and temperatures in the 90s. I was happy to conclude the trek after 3 days, and return to Leh. My last two days before flying to Delhi (I decided there was no way that I was going to do the 3-day return trip via bus(es)), we headed to Tso Moriri Lake, where an annual nomad festival was being held. The lake was stunning, reflecting the surrounding mountain views on its surface. My friends ran into the frigid waters for a dip, as I took pictures and videos. With our crew splitting off, after nearly a month of traveling together, including the bonding motorcycle trip, we celebrated with a bottle of whiskey, music, and laughs late into the night.

Returning to Delhi after over 3 months in India allowed me to see the city in a different light, and I found new things to appreciate in this big city, particularly outside of the Main Bazaar. The daytime heat and humidity was a bit restricting, and for the first time on my travels it was absolutely essential to get a room with AC. In Delhi I reunited with a few friends and really enjoyed my time there. But for weeks I already had Thailand constantly on my mind (beaches, hammocks, fruity drinks with pink umbrellas, etc.), and I knew I'd be meeting up with friends from India there, friends from home, and my cousin and brother, which was more than enough cause for excitement.

And more than that, I was just ready for the newest chapter of my journey...

As it was in the beginning,

so shall it be in the end. After 9 days of our trip, we had learned to expect the unexpected, and anticipated our last two days to be even more difficult than what was indicated on the map, though I think we were all secretly hoping we were just exaggerating the level of difficulty. With over 200km of rough-and-tumble roads to cover in 2 days, including 2 mountain passes, and no more gas stations before our final destination, we set off from Kibber Village at 7am, hoping to reach Chandra Tal Lake by late afternoon. To get on the road quickly, we skipped breakfast at the village, which also meant starting our riding in the morning fog, and cold. Within 20 minutes we stopped to add extra layers of clothing, as even traveling at 30 km/h made it substantially colder while riding. Throughout the day, rarely were we able to exceed these speeds, as we did not encounter any paved roads. In fact, the road only changed between one of fist and skull-sized rocks to streams of flowing water where we had to weigh the risk of lifting our feet to keep them dry but also having less control and balance to navigate over the unseen, uneven ground below the water.

In the afternoon, Lior's bike entered a ditch and fell over, fortunately only at 5 km/h. We fixed his broken brake handle within a few minutes, but both Lior and Hadassah were a bit shaken up, and so we decided to start riding slower and more cautiously. And after climbing up to the next mountain pass, Hadassah switched over to ride on the back of my bike. We reached Tal around 3pm, where there were 2 dhabas, some tents, and an above-ground hatch of sorts, which we decided would be our resting place for the night. With a few hours before sunset, Benami, Amir and myself decided we would make the 30km climb to the lake and return. This was a site we didn't want to miss. After 10 minutes of riding up the very difficult path, we reached what could only be described as a pool, with water filling it up one one side and falling over the edge of a cliff on the other. The water was flowing rapidly, towards the cliff. The pool was long, some parts where the depth was easily visible, some parts being unknown. Amir threw some rocks into the deep end, hoping to determine the depth somehow. They tried to figure out an ideal path to cross, unwilling to admit that this road was unpassable for motorcycles. I rested my bike on its kickstand, leaning it up on a small rock. As I approached the stream for a closer inspection, one of the bikers also stuck there yelled out. I turned, and instantly knew the sight I was about to see. My bike had fallen over on its side, on the edge of the 15 foot cliff, and was slowly sliding down. I can't imagine there ever being a time I ran faster in my life. While running, I screamed for help to pull it up, as I got on the cliff-side of the bike to keep it from falling to its doom. I can not think of words other than 'luckily' and 'fortunately,' but I do not think they properly emphasize the gratefulness I felt for that bike not being lost forever, another 120 km from our destination. Either way, the bike was saved. And after waiting for my hands to stop shaking, we determined that the stream was unpassable, and returned down to Tal.

We spent the next 5 hours in the dhaba (a very simple hut that serves very simple food), trying to stay warm, waiting for an appropriate time to go to bed. And our beds that night were just extra blankets on the floor. I froze that night, and got little more than a few winks of sleep.

We woke up early the next morning, ready to take on our last day, and the dreaded Rohtang La mountain pass. Within 30 minutes of increasingly worsening uphill road conditions, my brake handle snapped in half simply from me gripping it tightly. I was left with only the back brake, foot-operated, which is cewrtainly not ideal for uneven, uphill roads. And for this reason, I needed to ride solo, and so Hadassah got off of my bike. Keren was still with Benami, and Amir's bike was still on the verge of collapsing at any moment, so Hadassah got back on the bike with Lior. We continued riding, and continued getting treated to new surprises. Now, instead of streams of water flowing across the road, they flowed down the road, over and in between the rocks. It wasn't long before my shoes were soaked. Next, we got our first taste of mud. They were long, flat paths of mud, very runny from the past two days of rain. We rode slowly and carefully though, and nobody slipped and fell.

We stopped around noon, and replaced the brake handle on my bike. We still had over an hour to ride before reaching the top of the pass, 50km from Manali. We began our climb, and were making good time when we were 6km from the top. At this point, Amir's bike gave up. We replaced and re-replaced the spark plug, detached and re-attached every wire, filled more gas, attempted to start it in 2nd gear while rolling downhill. Nothing worked. The bike was done. After hailing down a few cars which didn't help, we finally got a big Tata truck to stop after over an hour. It took 7 men to lift that bike 5 feet up into the back of the truck. Like our first day, we waved goodbye to Amir and Hadassah, and hoped to see them in the evening. As it was in the beginning, so shall it be in the end.

It was now around 3pm, and we had a lot of ground to cover. Little did we know just what that ground included. Quickly, Benami and Keren, Lior, and I zoomed up the mountain. We passed trucks on the curvy roads, and made it to the top of the pass in good time. The view from the top was extraordinary, but unfortunately we didn't have time to stop and appreciate it fully. The first bit of the windy road down lifted our fears, as the roads were decent rocky roads, and the little traffic that there was we were able to maneuver around with ease. But before long, we hit the traffic jam. And I do mean THE traffic jam. With our bikes, we were able to enter some of the muddy paths between the cars and on the sides of the road. But the mud was thick and deep, and traversing through it was certainly putting more strain on our already-tired bikes. Regardless, we took every opportunity we could to bypass stopped cars. At a certain point, we saw that the vehicles heading uphill were stopped with their engines turned off, and the traffic officers were attempting to ease the congestion by getting all the cars down the mountain first. So all of the cars going uphill were shut off, as were the ones going downhill, only being turned on intermittently to move another 5 meters forward and then being shut off again. My bike was exhausted after less than 30 minutes of this riding, and kept shutting down. A nice Indian fellow noticed my troubles and told me he had a friend in the next town down the hill who could maybe help me, because he's an engineer. Not sure what help he would've given, but it was nice of him to offer. I knew I just needed to let the bike cool down, so I found a nice area to park the bike, and decided to give it 10 minutes of rest. The other guys were ahead of me, and I figured I would meet them at the first rest area. When I arrived there 30 minutes later, a ride where I couldn't afford to stop as I knew my bike would shut down again, they were taking a break and letting their bikes cool down.

We only stopped long enough for our bikes to cool, and actually the one benefit of the rain that we entered in that altitude was that it helped cool our bikes down faster. We had over 30 km to go, and were hoping we had passed the worst of it. We hadn't. Riding in the rain, we encountered the second wave of the traffic jam. Only big Tata trucks, all stopped, with no intentions of moving anytime soon. A few times one of us would have to get off the bike for a recon mission, checking to see if there was a clear and driveable path around or in between the trucks. Oftentimes it wasn't possible. In those situations, the very kind truck drivers got back into their trucks and moved them a few feet back, clearing the path for us. Regardless, the paths were ankle-high mud tracks that we had to ride with our feet hanging off the side, in case our bikes slipped and fell over. None of the bikes fell over, but we were all completely covered in mud halfway up our shins. In time, we cleared this area, and only had about 20km of downhill, winding, paved roads to cover before Manali. The first bit was done in a steady rain, but eventually that subsided, and we felt that we were close to home. We arrived in Manali around 7pm, and felt sweet, sweet relief of being back. I immediately went to return my bike, as I didn't want to pay for an extra day of the bike since I knew I wouldn't be using it anymore.

The walk back to my guesthouse, alone, was a strange one, as it was my first time in almost 2 weeks that I wasn't using the bike to get from place to place. I also was able to reflect on the overall motorcycle journey. Despite all of the challenges and breakdowns, the trip easily joined the short list of the highlights of my overall year-long trip, alongside the Annapurna trek in Nepal. I also developed a new love for riding motorcycles, which I'm sure will carry over into the rest of the trip, and will result in me getting my license as soon as I do return home. But my return home is a long time away, and before then there will be many more countries whose sites are best-seen from the seat of a motorcycle. And that's exactly how I intend to see them...