Night in Bharatpur

     As the photos taken at Baralacha will bear witness, it started to rain while we were up there. So we finished the photo shoot quickly and started our descent. The rain got heavier as we descended, so when we came to a little tented teashop we decided to pop in and have some tea and possibly wait the rain out.

     Like most shops in the area, this was also a restaurant-cum-hotel. You could have tea, coffee or snacks there and you could also, if you wanted, rent a bunk for the night. Hilton it was not, but with the rain washing the ground away outside and the warmth of the clean, soft beds inside, it seemed better than Hilton to us.

      

                   [Photo 90 – The shop in Bharatpur, restaurant in front, beds around the periphery of the circular tent.]

                    

     While we were having the tea, the rain turned into a real downpour and this added motivation to stay here for the night even though it meant deviating from the original plan.

     Baralacha top is at a height of 16,500 feet and sticking to our strategy of sleeping slightly higher than the previous night we were planning to descend to Sarchu and sleep there. Sarchu is just about 14000 feet so this would have been perfect for us considering we spent the last night in Keylong at a height of 11,000 feet. It matters to your body at what altitude you sleep each night during the upward journey. Advisable height-difference is 900-1000 feet every night.

     If you climb too high too quickly your body cannot adjust to it and then there is such a thing as High Altitude Sickness. It’s much more serious than just giddiness or nausea and in its severest form may cause the patient to go up to meet his ancestors!

     There were a few factors that forced us to change this plan, one of them being our unwillingness to step back out into the rain and drive further. Another factor was meeting Dennis there who was going to spend the night there and was good company. One more factor, though it seems downright stupid in hindsight, was the price factor. We found out that the price for a bed in Sarchu was 5 times the price of a bed that was available to us there.

     While the difference in the prices compared on percentage basis was 500%, actually the amount was so small even in Indian currency that it was ridiculous and foolish for us to consider that. The cost of a bed for the night in Bharatpur was 20Rs., roughly equal to about 28 pennies of a British pound, roughly equal to about 40 US cents. Five times that would be 100 Rs., about 1 and a half pounds or 2 US dollars.

      

     All in all we decided to spend the night in the tent and that was that. We would have driven through a storm if we knew what it would really cost!

0 - Why I started this blog?

Why I started this blog?

That was a great trip. We challenged ourselves, we took a chance and we came out on top - literally. And we took photos. Lots of photos, hundreds of photos. Then we showed those photos to family members, friends and anybody who would show any curiosity.

What I realized was that while each photo had a story, the collective story was too long even for the most patient of listeners. Another problem was that every time we told that story we got excited, and that made us go back and forth with the story. If you happened to be listening the story from more than one of us, you would be confused out of your mind.

What can I say, it was that kind of a journey and that kind of a story! So, in order to find a solution, I decided to find a platform where I could share both the pictures and the stories behind each picture. And this blog was born.

That is old news!

A blog (whether we bloggers like it or not) is not as far-reaching as a book. So I decided that I would do better by telling the story in the form of a book duly illustrated by the photos from the trip.

Plus, a blog is more or less a casual and pleasure-based activity whereas writing a book, of any kind, is a serious project. Given my self-professed love for laziness I decided that I might just ignore the demands of my blog in favor of Two and a Half Men on TV, but a book-writing project I would take seriously.

Yeah, right!

While this is true that I have been treating the book project in my celebrated lazyass style, it is equally true that I have not given that up. I contribute to it as and when the creative bug bites me.

But that is also old news.

During one such writing sessions, I found myself thinking about this blog and thought I should not give this up either. It would not make practical (and commercial) sense for me to repeat here everything that I have written, I would still post here from time to time, especially the things I am proud of as a biker or as a writer.

And that is the latest news!

Whatever I post here will raw, unedited content so don't bite my head off if you find any spelling mistakes. And don't check back more than once a week, I don't believe in working that hard! :-)

If you are still with me, Welcome to Operation Desert Mountain!

The Beginning

13th August 2004

The problems started even before we did.

“Damn it!” Fazil lifted the bag and dumped everything on the floor in frustration!

I looked at his face and shook my head, “It’s not going to happen.”

The frustration was mutual. I was actually in panic-mode as I realized, we both realized, that the two small bags we had were not going to hold all the stuff we had decided to carry with us.

Fazil had been my best friend since high school. At 5’2” he stood 6 inches shorter than me but in patience and life experience he had me beat.

We were going on a long journey. Since we were going to be travelling on a motorcycle on difficult and deserted roads we had decided to take as many things as possible covering every conceivable situation. There was dry food in case we got trapped in a landslide; there were spares for the motorcycle in case we had a puncture or broke the clutch cable. But we had only two bags for all of this, one we planned to tie on a carrier stand specially attached to the bike for this purpose; the second bag was a backpack, to be carried by the passenger.

I looked at the watch – 3:15 A.M. We started sorting through the stuff, assessing priorities and making decisions as we went. Together we dumped some things and re-classified others.

Then we started packing again –

“Puncture kit?”

“Check!”

“Foot pump?”

“Check!”

“My clothes?”

“Check!”

“Your clothes?”

“Check!”

“Rain suits?”

“Check!”

…and so it went on for medicines, dry food, spare tubes etc. etc. Finally, the clock was striking 6:00 as we closed the zips on the bags.

The target was to reach at least Chandigarh that same day, which was 263kms., and then decide the next step. We made a couple of stops to have breakfast or tea and it was not yet noon as we were entering the beautiful city of Chandigarh. It was too early to call home.

 

I could remember a previous bike trip to Chandigarh with my brother Anil, that was on the YBX. That day the 263 miles from Delhi to Chandigarh had been the target which we had achieved. Today, it looked too short because Chandigarh was just a camping stop, the real target was much farther. How things change in perspective!

 

We stopped at a modest dhaba to have refreshments and wait about an hour or so. Then I could call home. The first thing my dad said was, “Oh, you are already in Chandigarh? Don’t drive too fast!”. That’s why I had not called for the last 1 hour.

 

There were a few other calls to make, to my second best friend, third best friend and so on. That’s always the way. They say it’s your second best friend who comes and puts up the bail for you, because your best friend will be there beside you saying, “Dude! That was awesome!”.

 

My best friend was still with me but I have some really wonderful people in my life who worry about me and think about me and in whose prayers I can easily assume myself to be included!

 

One such person was my “sir”. I had had the honour of meeting Mr. Chauhan when he had replaced our teacher in my computer institute. I can still remember that first meeting when we had argued over the terms “algorithm” and “program” in the PLT class (Programming Language Techniques). Actually, I had argued, he had just been goading me to find out what made me tick. That was always his style. But that was a long, long time back. Now he was more like an elder brother to me than a teacher, though he had taught me a lot and not just in computers.

 

I told him we were in Chandigarh, and we would probably move forward in the afternoon. We talked for a few minutes and just as I was hanging up, he said, “Sunil, if there’s anything, let me know!”, I stopped and ask, “Anything what, sir?” and he said, “If you get into any problem, let me know. I will come up in my car.” That simple statement instantly brought tears to my eyes. I knew sir well enough to know that he did not say anything that he did not mean. He never wasted his breath in useless pleasantries. What he thought, he said. And to think that he’d leave his business, his family, and bring his brand new car on those perilous, dangerous roads just to rescue me from difficulties touched my heart! 

16th August 2004

We started the day kind of early, intending to start before sunrise. 

You can see us wrestling with the luggage ropes in the narrow hotel passageway as we get ready to roll out again.

Today we were going to climb the 4th highest mountain pass in the world - Rohtang Pass. In Tibetan language, Rohtang literally means ‘Pile of dead bodies’! It was not a very nice mental image to start with but well..!

Soon it became apparent that the torturous mountain roads till Manali had been actually a picnic and the real challenge was just starting. As soon as we gained some height, we were driving in a kind soggy, wet and foggy environment which I am convinced were clouds. The road had not been nothing to be happy about even when we started, but as we climbed higher it got worse and worse. Soon we were driving on roads that were a mixture of mud and submerged rocks of various sizes. I am not exaggerating in the least (one doesn’t need to exaggerate about that journey), the road was actually mud, deep enough to embed big stones, stones that should really be called rocks. These were of course, embedded in the mud in a random fashion, with maximum amount of sharp edges visible.

There was one spot where we came to a halt behind a long line of trucks. Traffic jam. Traffic on these roads stops usually for one of the two reasons - accident or landslide. Here it was the second reason that had been holding up the traffic for past several hours. Our bikes being the smallest vehicles on that road, we could progress a bit, slowly, by making our way between the stopped trucks.

There was one place where the space between the truck and the edge of the road was so narrow that it was sufficient only for the bike, no margin for error. On my right was the deep ditch, which was not visible because of the clouds but you can see the edge of the road. I had to tell Fazil to get off for this. The challenge was to keep the handle absolutely straight, and keep going forward at dead-slow pace, swerving to left or right even an inch would have meant going down the narrow, muddy, slippery shoulder down the side of the mountain.

When I passed the stopped truck and joined Fazil, I was breathing heavily and not just because of the height. The first thing I told him was to remind me of this anytime I was scared to take a bold decision in my life! So far he has never had to!

We threaded our way between the trucks like this and got to the front of the stopped traffic. There we saw the reason for the jam. There was a huge pile of rocks on the road. Fortunately for us, there was a bulldozer cleaning the pile and only few more minutes of work was needed. There was nothing but to wait. 

On this route there is a place called Tandi which has a petrol pump. After that the next petrol pump is in Leh, Ladakh 370 kms. away. Considering the petrol tank capacity and fuel economy of most bikes, that’s more than the distance you can go on one full tank. Another interesting tidbit of information was that Tandi has the petrol pump but no shop to sell petrol cans. So you have to plan ahead. We bought the cans from Manali and the petrol much later from Tandi. 

Achieving Rohtang Pass!

It was around noon that we reached our target - Rohtang Pass! To be honest, it was kind of an anti-climax to what I had been imagining. The mental picture of the pass that I had formed involved a long line of cars and bikes, all moving up slowly, carefully and maybe, rejoicing once they got to the top.

This was quite a damper on that image - no drum roll, no flashing lights, no newspaper reporters, just a desolate mountain road with thousands of colourful little flags. We had trouble believing this was it! True, we had had quite an adventurous journey up here, but seriously, this is it?

We got the reward just after we started the descent from Rohtang. We turned a corner and there it was, the most beautiful view we had ever seen in our entire lives! I am putting the photos here but they don’t really do justice to what we saw and felt, they just can’t!

Two mountain ranges, between them this deep, deep valley, if you looked closely you could see a small river way down there like a line on a gigantic map. On the mountain range opposite us we could see some trickles of water which we guessed were from ice melting somewhere high up. Our immediate reaction was to stop the engines, park the bikes on the left and climb down to our right.

And that was silly! Not dangerous, not even stupid, just silly.

If we had kept driving on the same road as we were, after a hairpin bend we would have arrived at the same spot without any heavy walking or climbing down on that high altitude. We were halfway down to the spot where we wanted to reach when we noticed this road. So we had to make a decision – continue down or go back up and drive down?

We decided to send 2 people, the drivers - that’s me and SB - back up to bring the bikes by the long road while the other two would continue climbing down and meet us there.

As a result we were able to take what turned out to be the only pictures of any of us riding the bikes. The first one is SB on the Enfield Bullet, the next two I on my Kinetic Laser. Hey, what can I say, I was driving slow!

17th August 2004

Getting things done!

After breakfast we tackled the task that was becoming a regular activity now - to get our luggage carrier repaired. The add-on carrier was just trouble. But then it’s hardly fair to blame the carrier when we were putting it through the most rigorous tests. Getting it fixed would be a minor task for any fabricator but here we tasted the real flavour of life in a small mountain village.

The previous night had been the finale of the 3-day Independence festival in Keylong and most people were still in a drunken sleep. There was only one shop where we could get our carrier fixed and the owner of that shop was…you guessed it, sleeping off last night’s booze. It befitted a civilised, considerate group of people to let him sleep in peace.

Unfortunately for him, we were not that group of people. We didn’t have the luxury to wait for him to wake up naturally. So, we got his address from his neighbour shopkeeper and went to his house.

We knocked and knocked, but there was no response.

“Are you sure, he is home?”, Vijay asked, unnecessarily.

“That shopkeeper said he drank a lot last night.”, Fazil supplied.

“Well, he’s not going to wake up like this.”, Vijay said.

“We really need him, there’s no other shop in that market who can do this.”, I added some unnecessary information myself.

“There must be a way.” S.B. said running his eyes around the narrow street looking at the one- and two-storey houses.

We found a way!

We went into the adjoining house and climbed to the rooftop adjoining the mechanic’s bedroom window and started shouting! Oh, it took time, what with the booze in his head, our language differences and him interested only in rolling over and going back to sleep…but finally he got it through his head that we were not a hallucination and we were not going to leave him alone until he heard what we wanted. Poor chap!

Then, it took us some time to explain to him what we wanted but he listened. Once things were progressing on a coherent, no-shouting basis, I left my team-mates to parley with him and I went on an errand of my own – to transfer photos from my camera to another media.