Ladakh 2009 – Day 4 – Manali to Keylong – The real fun begins now
Day 4
August 20, 2009
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The day the real climb starts. Till now we were in the mountains where even a school kid can ride on his bike and come. Today was the day when the real toughie climbs start. Tough not cos of the height but cos of the conditions of the roads.
We were told by Anu, the motorbike workshop guy, to get out early to avoid any traffic. He said it will be the best if we can get out at 4, but the problem was the only petrol pump on the way opens only at 5am. So thats what we did, woke up at 4 and got out of the hotel at exactly 5am. This is how the sky looked like that early in the morning
©Shyam
Even in that dark the drive was quite good, cos there was almost no traffic, and we were driving on a nice speed. The road till marhi was quite ok, except for some bad patches the road was still quite smooth. You do see things like this
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but still this was one off incident, last year i had seen much worse roads on this strech. So i was quite happy that the roads were in such a good state. We reached Marhi, our first stop for breakfast, at arnd 6:30am. Not bad considering we covered some 35 kms in the one hour.
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We had aaloo paranthas and tea. And we then took are first dose of Diamox. Its a precautionary dose that i would suggest that you take if you plan to do this trip, even if you think you are quite strong and nothing will happen to you:P. This half tablet help you a lot in getting acclimatise to the high altitude.
And then we were off again, as soon as we finished our breakfast, as we didnt want to get stuck in the traffic at all. But that wont make the roads cleaner, right ?. As this is where we faced the first real bad roads of the trip. almost 14kms of roads like this
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| From Ladakh 2009 - Day 4 - Manali To Keylong |
I dont know why cant this road be fixed, and why i'm saying this is cos i've seen Baralachala, which is much higher than Rohtang.
But we did it, slowly and easy does it best is the rule on these roads. It took us more time to reach rohtang from marhi, than it took us to reach marhi from manali !
But we did reach Rohtang, finally arnd 8:30am. And this was the first thing shyam did after getting off his car, looked for any damage !
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With all things in good shapes, we were all relived and it was time for some photos. you can see how happy we were in this photo :)
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This is where we had our first hiccup. After having another cup of tea at Rohtang top, Salils bike, refused to start. After abt 10 mins of kicking and pushing his bike, it suddenly started. It seemed all fine at that time and we were off again, thinking that it was a small problem.
As you can see from the photos, Rohtang was quite cloudy. And just abt 2-3 kms from rohtang top, the sky was all clear ! which again gave us another opportunity to click some more nice photos, but we also didnt knew what was in store for us later on :). So we stopped there, took out our cameras and started clicking all around.
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| shyam even went up the hill ! |
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| The view was quite gorgeous there |
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| Sallu loves getting his photos clicked |
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| theres my beautiful bike :) |
And then the real problem stuck, Sallus bike just refused to start at all ! we tried kicking/pushing it for abt half an hour and then we gave up. Stuck at rohtang top we couldnt do much. A biker couple who were coming from keylong even tried to help us, and that is where we found out that the Battery of Sallus bike was dead !. So we did what was best in that situation, stopped a mini truck and loaded Sallus bike and Sallu in it. The mini was going till kokhsar, 19kms from where we were standing. Something is good than nothing , right
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| Trying to load the bike on the truck |
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| heres poor sallu, riding in the truck with his dear bike |
On reaching khoksar, we were searching for our next ride which will take sallus bike to keylong where we were going to find a bullet mechanic. The mini-truck driver suggested us that we should tow/pull the bike all the way to keylong, and as it would be really hard to tow it using the swift, i tried pulling it. I cant explain how hard was it was, but i did tried. And in that i failed miserably. After towing for abt 100m, i slipped myself cos of the sudden jerk that comes when you tow something! Thankfully it wasnt a big fall, nothing serious happened.
And then we were told by a local that there is an army camp down the road and we can find some help there. They say Army is the lifeline of the mountains, and that is what we found out. Those helpful guys somehow arranged the cables and helped us "jump start" sallus bike.
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| Thanks a lot Sirs ! |
Once the bike started, the mechanic Halawadar Naik, told us to take the cable along. We were so happy that the bike started , that after saying a lot of thank yous we FORGOT to take the cable ! and we realised that when sallu's bike stopped again after some 10kms. I actually was driving at the front, so i didnt realise this until i noticed that noone was coming behind me. i went back and saw this scene
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| Shyam busy tweeting abt another breakdown |
And since we had so conveniently forgot the cables back at the army camp, we couldnt do anything. So i went ahead again in search of some cables, going back was not an option as we had alredy covered some 10-15kms. Sallu and shyam waited there while i was gone. I did found the cables some 6-7kms later, but by the time i came back a Qualis driver was already working on the bike. Thanks to him we were again on the road. We only wasted an hour or so at that turn because of our own foolishness :)
And thankfully for the rest of the journey nothing happened. Sallu was told not to stop anywere before keylong. We were supposed to take petrol at Tandi, but even that was skipped!
So sallu went off at a good pace. Me and shyam came at our on pace. We finally reached manali at around 4, some 11 hours after we started !! We were so tired that we stopped at the first hotel we saw, it wasnt that nice. but we were too tired to look arnd. We dumped our stuff in the room. and while shyam and i took our showers and ate lunch, Sallu went looking for a mechanic to get his bullet fixed. Till then we had no clue about our next day, but thanks to a brilliant bullet mechanic sallus bullet was finally ready for the trip by 10pm !.
But, just think about it 115 kms in 11 hours ! one of the longest journey in a day for me :)
Ladakh 2009 – Day 3 – In Manali
August 20, 2009: Well this was the rest + get your stuff fixed day. Nothing much happened. Woke up late cos of the heavy fluid intake the night before.
And this is how the room looked in the morning ©Shyam
So agenda for the day was to get bike+car fixed as Shyam was thinking that he will go ahead with us till Keylong and then decide what to do. With not too much to be done we had a leisurely breakfast and some more photos taken in the morning.
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After the breakfast we moved out for get two things done, our bikes serviced and find out how to tow shyams car in case of an emergency. We actually tried the night before to get that "fixed" in his car, cos according to us there was no was to tow that car !
We first went to the bike workshop. This workshop in manali is one of the best, Anu Motor works. I say this cos for the last 2 times i've been going to this same workshop and got some excellent work done. The owner organizes ladakh trip and he is quite famous with the foreigners there. And i've never met him. When we reached the workshop the workers were quite busy with other bikes and they told us to come after 2pm.
So we moved to manali market then to spend the next few hours. Bought jerry cans for petrol, got a duplicate key made for sallus bike, bought new gloves for 600 each (supposedly they were better than the older ones !) and ate somethings at a German dhaba, where nothing was german ! and just roamed around the market doing some "window shopping"
And by 2 we were back at the workshop, where on the way we saw the workers going towards a hotel and they told us that they will be back in 15 mins. So at the workshop we were waiting for them and we saw another guy. We asked that guy when should we expect the workers to come back, and he told they should be back soon. Then he asked us, " agar aapko problem na ho to main aapki bike par kam kar loon" and we said " agar aapko humse zyada pata hai, to zaroor kar lo". And then when he started working on sallus bike, i asked him " Anu abhi bhi trip par hai kya ?" and then that guy said " main hi Anu hoon ! "
and we were like :O , hello ! That simple, thin guy working on our bike is the Owner of the workshop ! and he asked for our permission to work on our bikes !!
He turned out to be an excellent person. Heres a photo of him with sallu
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In the next hour or so our bikes were ready. Anu told us that if we have to cross rohtang, we should start early, very early , 5am to be precise. As 5am is when the petrol pump on the way to Rohtang opens :). Anu also told us the location of maruti service station.
So shyam went back to the hotel, got his car, and we were off to the service center to get his car cleaned/serviced. We also wanted to get our problem solved, we couldnt find the hook which is used in case his car needed to be towed. All of us tried to find it, but couldnt. And we reached the service center where the mechanic told us where is the hook, which turned out to be pretty silly of us to not notice that. In case you also have a swift and are now wondering where it is, then look at this image
http://www.motorbeam.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/modified_maruti_swift.jpg
and see that angled rectangular box above the left fog light. Thats it, that comes out and your tow hook goes inside !
With all things done, it was just 4-5pm, and we did the best thing possible then. Went back to the hotel, went to the restaurant at the upper floor of the restuarant and did nothing much after that, just drank some more fluids and ate lots of junk. The restaurant of the hotel is like that, you can just sit down order a drink and spend your time watching movies on the big screen.
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And thats how we ended the day, waiting for the real trip to start tomm, when we were going to conquer the first big pass, Rotang La !
There are not many pics of that day cos i have already clicked a lot of manali pics on my last trip, so i added those 2008 pics too in the album here.
Ladakh 2009 – Day 2 – Bilaspur to Manali
August 19, 2009: After covering 420Kms on the first day, this day was going to be much easier, only about 170-180 kms to cover. So we took it easy and decided to start a bit late.
I noticed something, that whenever i'm in those hills i wake up quite early, which is quite strange in my case as i'm not at all a early riser. But this early rising thing gives me opportunity to click photos like these
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Yes it was a bit cloudy, but after last day we were quite ready for the rains. So by 8:30 our stuff was packed and loaded on the bike ( you'll see the "packed bike" soon ) again and we were ready to leave bilaspur. We didnt eat anything for breakfast as we decided that we will do that we will reach mandi and then stop for our breakfast.
I had already talked to Shyam the night before and we were going to meet at Aut. Shyam was already out on his trip to shringi/ghiyagi and he decided to join us till manali ( that was his plan till that point ).
So, we started keeping in mind that the rains will come to haunt our drive again but we were hoping that it will kind enough to keep away from our path for some time. and it did, for the first 10kms ! and then it came back in its full strength. Within the first 20 mins of our journey we made our first stop. and since it was raining so hard we thought that we will just eat our breakfast there. So here we were at another roadside dhaba, eating our breakfast. i had tea and chips !
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In about half hour the rains stopped and we were on our way again. After that the ride was actually beautiful, no sun, and clear roads. And there were no more interruptions for the next 80 kms. Thats when we stopped , right after the "pandoh dam", for some Tea and a "fan".
And after about 20Kms of more driving, we finally met Shyam. Right after we crossed to Aut Tunnel, which again is another 3 km long wonder that should be seen.
Here i'm right outside that tunnel. and right behind me is my "packed bike" © Shyam
This meeting turned out to be quite good for of us. First Shyam got some aaloo pranthas packed for lunch when he started from his guest house. And second he knew about a bypass, which skips all the messy roads of Kullu city! Wonderful, i say :D
We had our lunch at that bypass then, with a view of the Beas river and Kullu city. One of the best lunch of the trip i must say.
The bikes parked at the side while we were eating our lunch. © Shyam
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| From Ladakh 2009 - Photos from my mobile |
And then after that fullfilling lunch, all that left was to finish the remaining 60-70kms to reach manali. But the rains had something more in mind. About 30kms before manali, it started raining again. But this time the rains were not going to stop us now. We wanted to finish the days travelling now. So we drove the last 30 odd kms with light rain going on. It wasnt difficult to drive in that rain, but was actually quite fun getting wet and driving on those narrow roads. All one needs to do is to be a bit more careful and not drive too fast. Thats all we did, and by 4 pm we were in our hotel room.
One thing i have learned is to never stay at Manali. What we do is we stay at a place called Vashisht, which is 5 kms after your cross manali mall road. The advantage of staying there is that the place is much quieter and cleaner and cheaper than Manali city and its give the best view of the manali valley.
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| From Ladakh 2009 - Day 2 - Bilaspur to Manali |
By the time we reached our hotel, which is the best in Vashisht and all you pay is Rs 400 for a double room, we were quite tired.
But shyam and i still walked down to the city, after some rest and food at the restaurant. 12kms of walk ! Should i include that into the total kms covered in the trip ;-)
And Here is the map for the whole trip of the day
Ladakh 2009 – Day 1 – Delhi to Bilaspur
As i wrote in the earlier post things usually not go according to the plan. The plan was to start on the 17th of Aug and cover a lot of places.
It rained for 3 days continuously 15th, 16th and 17th. Only on 17th evening we saw some hope of finally starting our trip. But by then we got the news that the roads in the Spiti Valley were washed out and more rains are expected.
Thats when we decided to scrap our original plan and take the other "safer" route of Delhi-Manali-Leh. And now the first stop of our little adventure will be Bilaspur and not Shimla as originally planned.
So at 4am, on the 18th of August, i got up and got ready to finally move out. i dont have any pics for that moment cos everything was packed in Waterproof bags, as it was still a bit cloudy. At 4:45am Sallu turned up at my house and at 5am we finally started.
The clouds actually turned out to be good for us as they made the drive that much cooler. The sun didnt came out for till Karnal i think. And thats when we made out first stop at the, now quite famous, "Zilmil Dhaba", where we had Aaloo prantha and Tea for our breakfast.
We reached there around 8:30am, which was quite good considering we had covered almost 150kms of the planned 420kms in the first 3-4 hours. I guess i should thank the NHAI for this, the road was excellent all the way. There were minor bad patches, but most of them were there cos there are again expanding the road !
So after the really good breakfast, we were on our way and were planning to do a good long strech when the rains caught up with us ! Actually i should say, we caught rains. It was so amazing to drive to the clouds. And it rained pretty heavily for about 15-20 mins. We stopped at a roadside "general store" as soon as it started raining. We had our raincoats, but we thought we should take some rest while it rains and hope its doesnt rain too long. Which it did, and off we went again. But it was interesting, we were not chasing the clouds again ! The clouds were moving towards bilaspur, just like we were.
The good thing about this phase of the drive was that we were finally hitting the mountains after driving some 350Kms in the plains. And its so much fun once you enter the hill. The drive suddenly takes a 180 degree turn. Much cleaner, less traffic, no more "seepdy overtaking" ( you wait for the truck in front of you to give you the sign to go ahead and overtake him ! ), and you have to be very careful too.
20 kms in the hills and we caught up with the rains again. Call it luck or coincidence but the moment it started raining we were 100meters away from a closed shop with a nice shed in front of it. And that shop was right next to a small dhaba. We parked our bullets under the shed and had our lunch at that small dhaba. The food was quite ok, simple black daal and tawa roti. and the cost of that for 2 was Rs 75, including the bottle of Sprite !
This time it didnt looked like the rain will stop so easily, so we took our raincoats out finally. And off we went again, once the rains calmed down a bit. There was some 30 odd kms left and it was quite fun to drive in the rain and that too in the hills !
Around 4:30-5pm we finally reached Bliaspur. Below is the map for the whole trip of the day
We decided to stay at Hotel Lake View, an HP tourism hotel. Nice rooms and not too costly, 880 for an AC double bed and it was the first good hotel that we saw just before Bilaspur. I know its too high for some of the "budget travelers", but we wanted some good rest after the long journey and thats what we got, a nice room, an excellent balcony with a grand view of the lake. AND it was sunset time !
And here is the result of that, some nice sunset photos !
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| From Ladakh 2009 - Day 1 - Delhi To Bilaspur |
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| From Ladakh 2009 - Day 1 - Delhi To Bilaspur |
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| From Ladakh 2009 - Day 1 - Delhi To Bilaspur |
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| From Ladakh 2009 - Day 1 - Delhi To Bilaspur |
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| From Ladakh 2009 - Day 1 - Delhi To Bilaspur |
And the whole album is here.
Ladakh 2009
Here we go again. I tried to write the blog about my last two ladakh trips, but i never managed to write about the whole trip ever. Yes i'm that lazy.
But now that i have this new domain and a new place to write. And i have over 2000 pics to show ( ofcourse you'll not all the pics :P ). But still its all there and this time i'm going to try my best to finish this.
First, how did it all started. Well ever since i've returned from my last trip i've been bombarded by questions about the trip and a lot of guys seemed interested in doing a trip on their own. And cos my last trip was a bit short, i had decided to go on a longer holiday next time to cover up the things that i have not seen.
And that came out to be the trouble for a lot of people, nobody was ready to take over 12 days of leave from their office. And i was the only one who wanted at least three weeks off ! ( how i got that holiday is another story, lets leave that there ).
In comes my friend from dubai, Salil Kumar aka Sallu. He and i used to work for a now defunct portal "estart.com" in 2001. And he is the guy who did Bombay to Ladakh on the bullet in 2002. I think i april we had our first chat about the trip and at that time he wasnt sure about the dates but was eager to do the trip.
In delhi, me and shyam were talking about ladakh and he was also planning to do a trip sometime on his Maruti Swift. So we did plan to go on the trip together, 3 of us, 2 bullets and one car.
And here was the grand plan that i made. I worked quite a bit on this plan as i wanted to cover a lot of things on this trip. We wanted to cover most of north india's mountain areas in this one long trip. Shimla, sangla, Tabo, kaza, Leh then to Srinagar and then come back covering punjab.
But then as i wrote on one of the tweets "Life takes so many twists and turns that making any plans for it is just a waste of time."
:)