Spiti & Kinnaur: A Motorcycle Diary

Prologue to the Prologue
For the first time in my life, I made an attempt to keep a daily diary of what I was doing in my life. I would refer to this as a journal, but I feel that when taking a motorcycle trip, it's acceptable to call it a diary (a la Che Guevara). Due to some days being incredibly exhausting, I did not actually write everyday. And since I am not a professional writer, transcribing this now from my diary means some parts are written in the present tense, some in the past, and some in a tense I'm not sure of. So please, bear with me.

Prologue
There are 6 of us that embarked on this journey; 4 guys (Benami, Lior, Amir, and myself), each with his own bike, and 2 girls (Keren and Hadasa) who occasionally rotate which motorcycles they're on, often because the more exhausted bikes need less weight on them. We're riding Royal Enfield 500cc Custom motorcycles. The bikes, along with the gear and passengers, weight about 400 kg each. Of the 4 drivers, 3 of us, including myself, learned to ride a motorcycle only a few days before we left on our trip. And despite getting the hang of it very quickly, I was only comfortable with taking this trip because our 4th rider, Benami, was knowledgeable about bikes, and I knew that to handle the terrain we would be riding on an experienced biker was needed. It only took one day of riding around Manali for the group to delegate me as the last rider in our convoy, as I clearly have a tendency to ride faster than the group would like. This reminded me of winter ski trips with my family as a child, when I would race down the mountain as fast as I could, because that’s what was fun to me. And after yelling at me a few times, I was always forced to be the last skier in order to slow down my pace. I guess I’ve just always had a thing for the adrenaline rush that goes along with high speed sports and activities. Additionally, after we all received our bikes, we decided that all expenses of the trip related to our motorcycles would be split amongst the entire group, in order to be fair. It was a Communist system of sorts, which ensured that any problems with a specific bike would be shared, monetarily, between all of us.

The typical route for this trip, stopping at all the most beautiful sites/villages, takes 9 days if done in a jeep. Because my time in India is running out soon, and I still want to reach Ladakh, I will be very happy if we finish it in 9 days. But I am not so hopeful, and expect a lag of a few days, which is still ok. I've met countless people, both tourists and Indians, who have done this trip, in jeeps, local buses, and a few who did it on motorcycles. The latter, of course, claimed their method of transportation to be the best. And when I found this group who were planning to rent bikes for the trip, I knew there was no way I was going to miss out on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And even more encouraging than all of the personal recommendations I heard, I became truly inspired by a quote of Rudyard Kipling's (the author of The Jungle Book) I read in my Lonely Planet guide book. On his first visit to the Spiti Valley, the beautiful sights he saw led him to proclaim, "Surely the gods live here; this is no place for men." And so on the morning of July 5th, 2009, we began our journey, fingers crossed that we would arrive back in Manali safely, despite our, as one of the Indian motorcycle mechanics put it, "lack of experience."

The 2 Days That Aged Me 2 Years
Of the 4 hours I laid in bed, I probably got only 1 full hour of sleep the night before we embarked on our motorcycle journey. My sleep problems were not because I was anxious about the trip (which often happens the night before something exciting), but rather because I was suffering through some stomach cramps from a bad pizza I ate the night before. So at 5am, we woke up, packed our bikes, and by 7 we were on the road. We knew our first day was to be our longest - approx. 8-10 hours, or so we thought - so we wanted to waste no time. And other than 1 flat tire and a few extraneous stops, we had made good headway 5 hours into the ride. Bear in mind; I was riding on 1 hour of sleep, and every stop we made I took the opportunity to lay down, put my head on my bag, and close my eyes, even if only for 2 minutes. Fortunately, my exhaustion was not a problem while riding. The combination of the manual transmission on the bike and the more-often-than-not unpaved dirt road ensured that I remain alert, whether my brain wanted to or not. Plus, most of the ride I had music playing (don't worry, in one ear only), and that also helped me stay focused, as it did on the Annapurna trek in Nepal. And, inaudible to anybody else, I loudly sang along with the music playing, behind my bandana that prevented dust, dirt, and even small pebbles from entering my mouth while riding. About halfway through the day, we approached the opening to a very large tunnel, which at the time we didn’t realize was also very long. We all stopped our bikes before entering, stared into the darkness ahead, looked at each other, and proceeded. But not a single one of us thought to A) remove our sunglasses, or B) turn on our headlights (which we had not done once yet). As we entered the tunnel, it was almost pitch-black. Benami and Amir kept riding, but Lior was completely blinded. Instinctively, he rode up close to the curb, and in the process stalled out. I took my glasses off, holding them in my mouth, and rode my bike behind his to light up his way. We made our way out of the tunnel, and spent the next 5 minutes laughing at our stupidity. Another lesson learned, but at least now we knew how to turn on our headlights.

As the afternoon sun began to heat up, so did our bikes. Every time one of the bikes stalled from exhaustion, we had to take a break to let them rest and cool down. And these breaks became more and more frequent. But stubbornly, we were determined to reach our destination, oblivious to what lay ahead. And what lay ahead of us was an uphill climb to a mountain pass on a dirt/rock/boulder-road. After stalling out (1 of many times), I caught up with the rest of the group a couple of hundred meters uphill. As it turns out, in the middle of the ride, Amir's exhaust pipe simply blew out of place. And by that, I mean it completely disconnected from the engine, and was hanging off the side of the bike. (He actually kept riding like this for a minute before Benami was able to stop him and point it out). We began to jimmy-rig it back into place, and planned to use a thin metal cable (the only thing we had that might've stood a chance against the bike's heat) to hold it in place. Just as we reached the final stage, a truck drove up, and we took the opportunity to load the bike up and send two people to the next village with a mechanic. So now we were 3 bikes and 4 passengers, and we still had quite a way to climb, with bikes that were begging us to call it a night. That was not an option though, since we were in the middle of nowhere, and so we marched on. Within 10 minutes, Lior and I both had our bikes fall over, simultaneously. Lifting them up, and getting them started on the steep incline we were on, was a task we were only able to accomplish because of how desperate we were to find a place to sleep. Not a minute passed before I once again knocked my bike over, this time out of pure exhaustion. 10 minutes later, Lior did the same, only in doing so his front brake pedal broke, along with his mirror. As they replaced the brake pedal, I found myself a nice area to lie down and doze off. I was awoken probably 20 minutes later, by a cow only meters away, slowly walking up the hill in my direction. The bike was fixed, and we continued.

At this point, my bike said "No More!" I wasn't able to ride more than 3 minutes continuously, and I probably stalled out another 7 or 8 times before we reached the top of the pass. It was 7:30 now, and the sun had already set behind the mountains, but there was still some light in the sky. Of the 10 locals who were up at the pass, not 1 of them spoke English. The map we had was with Amir, on the truck, but we were fairly sure that there was a village only a few kilometers downhill. Not wanting to stay the 4 of us in the 1 available double-bed room, and also because of the frigid temperature at that altitude, we decided to ride down, and left quickly while there was still some light out. Sure enough, the village was there, 6km downhill, and we found a nice man who had a room available in his family's house. And by family, I mean him, his wife and their 3 kids, his brother with his 3 kids, and his parents. It was around 8pm when we arrived, 13 hours after we left Manali. I lay in the bed, and within minutes I was asleep. And that was the first day of our Kinnaur/Spiti trip. And even at the typical 10 hours it usually takes, it was supposed to be our longest day of riding. Now that I'm writing this at the end of Day 2, it's funny to look back at how naive and optimistic we were...

Day 2, like Day 1, began without a hitch. We woke up at 6:30am and were on the road by 8, as we still had roughly 40km to ride to meet up with Amir and Hadasa who rode on the truck the night before. Needless to say, but I'll say it anyway for extra emphasis, we were very tired, and I mean both mind and body. But the first leg was almost all downhill, and was quite enjoyable. After 3 hours of riding, we reunited with Amir and Hadasa, ate lunch, and estimated we could ride the remaining 100km to our next destination in 4 hours, including all stops. After 20 minutes, we stopped at a roadside welder, to permanently fix Amir's exhaust. 20 minutes after they finished, we stopped at a mechanic to have him check out some leaking fuel on Amir's bike. And since we were already getting one bike serviced, we also had him check out Lior's faulty clutch. We didn't hit the road again until 5pm, but we were hopeful that we could cover the 70km to our next destination (or so we thought it was 70km) by 7:30, before sunset. The map indicated the road was a National Highway, and for the first hour or so, we were cruising in style. I mean perfectly smooth, paved roads, with 1 lane in each direction. We entered the Kinnaur Valley, riding on the road carved into the sides of the mountains, and all was glorious. But then, all of a sudden, the National Highway we loved so much, turned into a construction zone dirt road, for as far as the eye could see. Our pace slowed down, as the sun continued to inch closer and closer to the mountain peaks above. We reached a small village, where there were once again no guesthouses. So we continued on, to a village that was supposedly 9km away. After 30 minutes of riding, we asked how to get to our destination, which nobody was able to help with. The closest village with guesthouses was 5km back in the direction we came from, and then 18km uphill. The sun, and all traces of its light and warmth, were now gone. We had no choice but to make the climb, although our bikes were once again begging us to call it a night. We let the bikes rest and cool down for 20 minutes, while we mentally prepared ourselves for what we expected to be a 1-hour ride. It was 9:20pm when we started riding. 7km in, Amir's bike stalled out. We waited a few minutes and started again. 4km later, Amir's engine started smoking. This was a sign we needed to wait much longer than a few minutes. We were 6km away from our destination, it was almost 11pm, we didn't have any water, and the fate of Amir's motorcycle was uncertain. We all started thinking about the worst case scenario of sleeping outside for the night. There were 2 things though that were going our way; it wasn't bitterly cold out, and the full moon provided us plenty of light so the occasional passing car could see us and our bikes. We killed time while waiting by taking pictures, telling jokes, and smoking cigarettes. After 45 minutes, we decided to continue. It was a grueling 30-minute 6km climb, and at the first guesthouse we spotted, we parked our bikes, and thanked the heavens that we arrived. The day that began at 8am, ended at 11:30pm. 15.5 hours. And only 24 hours earlier, we were so relieved that we wouldn't have to go through anything close to another 13 hour day. After these 2 brutal days, we are no longer naive, or optimistic. We're now beginning to underestimate ourselves. That way, we can't end up disappointed when we don't reach our planned destination, or worse yet, stranded on the side of the road overnight.

To be continued...