To gods own country and back...

So June 20th, 2011, I start on a voyage that was simply too big to even comprehend initially. the thrills involved, the ups and the downs, the fun and the risks, the long tar stretches, so after a few initial attempts, i simply dropped the idea of even imagining my life for the next few days.

I was going to Leh- Ladakh: the serene country side in the himalayas.....and it was on my Royal Enfield. riding all the way from Mumbai upto New Delhi and then joining there with another 70 odd lot with a single wish - to ride the Himalayas on their royal bullets....(and hopefully to meet God somewhere on the way...)

The three of us me, Vinit and Nikhil started off at like 4:00 AM form Mumbai and the plan was to stretch it out up to Ahmadabad that day or even further as much as we could. We had a decent idea of each ones riding capabilities and we appreciated each others riding patterns enough to give ample space and understanding on long stretches of roads. We knew when to stop, where to stop and this made the journey pretty easy, no unnecessary breaks, no time waste (quite critical for long journeys)...and with gods grace and careful riding, no breakdowns as well!!!

no sooner than we passed fountain hotel, it started to rain and we were soaked, it was dark and rainy and slippery and roads were very unpredictable. the muck was coming up right into our face and were barely able to see the road, we pulled through though....after a while we had to stop for day break as it was gettign pretty risky...neverthless rains were with us only up to 100 odd kms from home and then were were into Gujrat! the land of Osum roads :)

Riding in Gujrat in the heat was takign the toll on us. We had to stop 80 kms short of Ahmadabad for food and "hydration" but after that 2 hr. logn break, we reached Ahmadabad in good time, our rider friend Biren had made arrangements for the nights stay, after doing 580 odd kms, that he was nothing less than God-sent to have made that arrangement for us, after a great dinner and some Osum gujju Joks, we retired and started off the next day

the plan was to reach into the heart of the mewad-state "Rajasthan" and make the 3rd days ride as easy and short as possible. with the heat catching up on us we knew that it wont be an easy ride once the bright star was up above our shiny helmets, so we ripped...we ripped through the tar so very well laid on the ground under the bikes rubber, that the needle was never allowed anything less than 3 figure readings we did 100 kms in abt. an hrs. time and we did two iterations of that...it was fun. but that's something you can only do around those areas as you can see the land as flat as it can get and see as far as you want to see to feel confident of opening the throttle to the most and then some....

we took a stop at Bhilwara, another nice place with amazing Rajasthani food. had a great night sleep here and it was time to ride again. this ride was about 430 odd kms and the best 419 kms done so far. was good fun.


You would imagine that Rajasthan = deserts and only sand. but you will be surprised to see that the conditions of the highways is so nice tht it's more fun to ride than ever!

the last stretch - Bhilwara to New Delhi; now this was another 500 odd kms and most challenging because of the heat and we had only one thing in mind, to enter Delhi before rush hrs. as we needed to find the place and ensure that we don't get stuck in traffic in the delhi heat. we ripped again. the roads co-operated and we were in Delhi around 5 pmish another great ride with no problems of any kind.

Sounds like fun so far isn't it! And this was the prelude to the Odessey. the real Odessey was yet to begin...after clearing the fitness tests and other formalities we all had geared up for the ride of our lifetime. New-delhi to Leh and back.

The trip was for 16 days, the route was long, and terrain was unknown, I knew if anything it was going to be difficult. it involved riding on tar, in rains, uphill, downhill, on gravel, small gravel, medium gravel, big gravel, pot holes, man holes, valleys, mountains, cliffs, hair-pin turns, U-pin turns, S-turns, ghats, rolling Military trucks, rolling Innovas, diesel smoke, slush, 2 feet deep water crossings, 30 feet long water crossings, with cold fingers, with sweaty gear, wet shoes, foggy helmets, dripping wet, boiling HOT weather, you name it and we have done it on this one trip.

the highlight was the opportunity to be eating at Dhabas. The maggi, the omelets and parathas oye balle o balle...some really osome food was all we had on this entire journey be it the breakfast hogging at like 6 AM in the morning or noon lunch breaks with daal-chawal and sabji/ maggi with anda, mok-moks, thupkas. the biggest highlight of food i can clearly say is at Sukhdev's dhaba - some 50 odd kms away frm Delhi, my record was unbeaten -1 lassi, 2 parathas,  2 cups of dahi, 1 dal makhni...BURRRP....

there are so many amazing stretches on this ride, that i cannot even remember now which one was better than the other or which was the best. all i can say is that the Rewards were instantaneous!!! you ride a few kms and you reach yet another beautiful landscape, yet another location that you would want to shoot a complete yash-raj song, natural beauty knows no boundaries here it's upto you as to what perspective you can capture and how much of it.

there are so many scenic places that if we were to start marking them with those blue boards reading "VISTA POINT", it would land up being a blue sidewalk all throughout the stretch.

there came a point in the ride where i simply had to stop takign pictures/ videos. It suddenly struck me that it's a wasted effort to bottle up the magnanimous and ever enchanting beauty of Ladakh into a mere 10.0 MP point and shoot. It needs the greatest camera of all times to really "feel" the beauty this landscape beholds. the camera that has the ability of looking at something and appreciating the beauty even before it really is compiled by it's processor, a camera tht saves images for lifetime....a pair of eyes that can really "see" the beauty all around in these mountains and valleys. and thus i stopped clicking, and started absorbing as much as i could.

The Trip involved a lot of different kind of hardships, a lot of risks. Yet the highlight was that every risk you took, the reward was equally matched. the highest reward to most was reaching and passing "Khardung La - Highest motorable road of the World !!" to me that was surely a trophy for sure. however there were so many locations and passes that were even more beautiful than this one.


And thus i wouldn't call being @ Khardung LA as my highest point in the trip. It was in fact somewhere in Spiti Valley where I got the "this is it" feeling.










Had a chance to ride somethign different, somethign little bit more alive than my bull...a Yak. yes took up a aYak safari which was an experience of it's own kind. Surely very unique and sometimes a little scary also i should say, went up some 7 kms uphill on a Yak Back. with the ony though on my mind - wht if he decides to hell with me...but luckily for me he did not and the yak, took me upto the hill top as promised, without throwing me off. the animal was panting by the time he reached the hill top. his body had been pumping blood through his body. I could feel the hot blood when i held the giant for grip uphill. I decided to let the animal go down w/o me. i couldn't get on the animal again...i was filled with sympathy for it...and ofcourse was shit scared to go downhill atop the poor animal..wht if it slipped!!!


There was a lot of time for me to be thinking on the trip...of course whenever i wasn't concentration on the road in an attempt to not to fall/ drop the bike. Some wise mans words kept coming back to me - "It's not where you go, it's about how you get there".

The roads are always unforgiving and challenges don't ever take a break. what gets you through it - two things your will power and a conscious mind. If you have both these, no road, no deterrent can stall you from getting what you want. so take your own time in choosing the path as each course has it's own set of perks and dips, the one that gets you to your destiny unscratched si the best one for you....


This Trip had another huge benefit, met with some really cool guys. We were about 10 of us from Bombay. We hung out together, we chilled together we, stayed together...we rode together. The code was "we stick together". If 1 rider was down one of us took care of him, if 1 rider was shaky about water crossings, one of us held him through. If 1 rider was stuck in slurry, one of us pulled him through (or at least tried). Some called us the "Bombay boys" it wasn't intentional, however it was pretty obvious, and frankly well we didn't care much untill someone did observe and told us that after half way through the night (and all the way through the booze :) ) of the celebrations. Nevertheless the code was that of sticking together and that's what makes the ride special. on the trip we tried to not be be the Bombay wale, or the Delhi wale or the Poona wale, or the TN wale we all tried to be the RE (Royal Enfield) wale, yet the no. plate gave us away each time :).

And though we were identified by the "MH-02" no. plates or Bombay walas, we were identified for our riding, for our brotherhood, and of that i am proud of....

Ride well, God speed....

for a select handpicked collection of the trip pictures visit:

ROK 4 - HO2011 album