Operation Desert Mountain

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.