Complete links for Getting High, And How?!
7
Day 5 – 20 June
2012 | Part 1
I woke up to
another cold morning, when my alarm went off at 0600. Having pitched our tents in
the woods, there was (fairly) enough privacy for everyone to go about their
morning business today!
The two Frenchmen
whom we had earlier run into at Marhi
had camped not too far from us. One of them came by asked me something in
French. At first, I could not decipher what he said, but when he showed me a
little piece of paper – a square of about two and half inches each side; I
figured he was looking for the toilet! As I asked him to go find a spot
somewhere in the woods, I could not help but wonder if he could not have carried a
little more paper! I guess he had taken this saving paper thing to an entire different
level altogether!
Anyhow, the rest of
the guys were up and the place was all abuzz with activity. A very healthy breakfast
was served at the dining tent, just as we just finished cleaning up. Meanwhile,
Virender attended to our bikes, making small adjustments to the shifters and
brakes. Once done with breakfast, we headed back to our sleeping tents to change
into our riding gear. Soon, we packed our luggage and were ready to go.
It was just past
0800 when we hopped on our bikes. Just about one hundred metres into our ride,
the drive chain Chandramouly’s bike snapped. Crap! It was decided that we guys
would ride at a moderate pace without Chandramouly, while the crew would fix
the snapped chain link on his bike. We all were certain that
Chandramouly would catch up with us in no time!
With that, we
continued (rather, started) our ride. The sun was shining bright by now and the
weather was quite pleasant – all of which was drastically different compared to
the previous time I was here. As I covered some distance, I could hardly
recognise any thing around. The only memory I had of this stretch from last
year was a dark grey sky, endless rain and the pitter-patter as the rain belted
us! This time though, the valley below was lush
green and the hills on the other side changed colour as the shadow of the
clouds slowly moved across them.
The gradient was a quite
forgiving today, which meant that we were taking far fewer breaks than we did
yesterday, and the day before. This also meant that we were doing very good time. Having
missed the ride yesterday, Akshay was determined to bike for at least half an
hour between breaks. I decided to just tag along with him. I was still unsure
of how my knee would hold, so had been apprehensive about pushing it hard.
Thankfully, my knee, so far, was holding well.
Less than two hours
into the ride, I noticed the rear tyre on my bike was severely deflated. It was
the second puncture in two days for me now. I guess I was making up for not
having a single one in my previous trip to the Himalayas. While we lost a little time fixing that, it also gave Chandramouly
time to catch up with us. With Chandramouly having a delayed start, it was
Mizan who lead the pack today. And after a couple hours of riding, we realised
that Mizan was missing! Well, we knew for certain that he was ahead of us, but
we wondered why he did not wait up!
The ride all
morning was a lot of fun – perhaps because we were not doing any serious hill climbing. The up slopes were all too gentle and in a distance, we could see
that the road ahead was all downhill. It was time to get off the saddle and
grip the handlebar tighter as we plummeted down the hill. It was time for some
serious mountain biking! In just a bit, I figured the shock absorbers on my
bike were stuck. I had no option but to reduce my speed to prevent something
from shattering!
Our descent was short-lived
as we ran into a roadblock ahead. A construction truck parked on the road,
transferring water into a storage tank left no space even for a bicycle to get
through. So, we had to wait amongst the other vehicles that were queued up
there. Thankfully, I found a rather large dog sleeping in the shade there, and I kept
myself entertained trying to converse with him! Anyhow, once the truck went by,
it was time to roll down the hill once again. The road deteriorated as we kept
getting downhill and the turns were getting a lot tighter. It was getting a lot
more fun though, as we all tried to brake as late as possible getting into the
turn, so that we could carry that much more speed to the next. In all this
excitement, we had barely noticed that the green started fading away into
brown.
The landscape now
was a lot drier, though we could still see some greenery and snow-capped
mountains in the distance. The last stretch as we approached Tandi was scary – a narrow, dusty gravel
patch serpentined on one side of a hill, while a dirty brown river flowed
steadily beside on the valley below. For our safety, we decided to ride in a
single file.
Some three hours
into our ride, we finally ran into Mizan! Yes, we got to Tandi too, but finding Mizan seemed more important than getting
there! He was standing under the cover of a tree, waiting for us. I guess he
finally figured he had ridden far too ahead! Anyhow, once regrouped, we clicked a few
pictures at the fuel station there – the only one you would find until Karu, some 360 kilometres away. We were
all quite hungry, but decided to ride up to Tandi
Bridge, just about a kilometre ahead and stop at a restaurant there.
Lunch was quite
light, in the interest of us being able to get back on our bikes quickly! Well,
we were back on the road in less than an hour, and headed towards Keylong. It would be the last big town
we would pass through for a very long time. The road from Tandi to Keylong was not
particularly good. Small rocks strewn across loose gravel made it quite
difficult to keep a steady pace. It also made it difficult to remain seated in
the saddle. To add to that, the sun was right overhead and it was a tad too
warm to be comfortable. The entire place around was brown and arid.
We took a break
just as we got across a creaky old bridge, which I recognised from my last ride
here. Back then, it had rained from this spot all the way till Rohtang La, a distance exceeding one
hundred kilometres! Ha, that also meant that we had covered over one hundred
kilometres! Keylong was just about a
couple more kilometres from here.
After getting a few
pictures and hydrating, we got back on our bikes and started our slow ascent to
Keylong. As we got closer to the
town, we rode past the workshop where I had gotten the wobbling handlebar fixed
on my motorbike. We stopped a little ahead at a restaurant and called for some
soup. While there, we realised that we now had network coverage on our cell
phones, so we made a few calls back home. I, though, updated my Facebook status
message before I called home!
We spent quite some
time at the restaurant. In fact, we were a little reluctant to get back on our
bikes and leave. The temperature had gone up considerably and it was uncomfortably
hot now. We still had another 23 odd kilometres to get to Jispa. After briefly waiting to let a large herd of sheep pass, we pedalled
along - lazily.
Complete links for Getting High, And How?!
No comments:
Post a Comment