Not all those who wander are lost - J.R.R. Tolkein
And If i may add to that, neither are we searching for anything or try to seek anything, we are just plain simple wandering and soaking in whatever the universe throws at us along the way.
Trust me, the universe only throws at you what you deserve,
not what you want,
not what you wish,
specifically what you deserve :) so go ahead and embrace it, you've earned it!
Sometimes we wander just to lose ourselves instead of finding something...
in the process we stumble upon treasures we never knew existed or wanted...
We wander because we can, from the beginning of time, humans have been habitual wanderers and those who consciously recognize this, this, notorious habit, and nurture it, and harness it, they truly extract the essence of being a traveler...
Travel has a way to stretching your mind, your imagination, the stretching doesn't come from your immediate rewards and gratification but on the contrary form the inevitable myriad of new sights, smells and sounds, from new experiences, from exposure to worlds within worlds which were hidden from us all along.
Travel makes you more tolerant of others, makes you a more confident person, you make new friends, you eat some amazing food, you learn so many new things that you never knew existed!
There are many a different ways to travel but myself and some other idiots like me (you'll meet them soon here...) chose to travel on two wheels as a matter of choice.
yes it takes longer,
yes, it covers you up with dirt
yes it can get exhausting
yes you sometimes no longer have any sensation of your legs
and yes it's dangerous & sometimes you also end up hitting someone and get thrown onto head on traffic!
And yet, we chose to ride our Royal Enfield Motorcycles, through this amazing route that took us through the ever so famous Spiti Valley in the Himalayan mountain range
why? you ask...
you totally missed the earlier reference to us as "idiots" didn't you? :D
here let me open up a window to my view of the ever so pristine Spiti Valley...
Rudyard Kipling described Spiti Valley as a world within world. At first you only see the harshness of the mountains and dry arid terrain all around you, but when you stay longer, you see some amazing things here.
Imagine a river, flowing like a serpent in between ranges of stubborn mountains, the river sometimes gets wide and then suddenly is a narrow stream and also has a few of it's tributaries that flow along side and sometimes they branch off to a new direction completely.
This river, a melting glacier is pure, clean and playful just like a mischievous child who knows not how to stay still for even a moment!!
This river is called Spiti...Spiti wants to jump around and slide down at the first opportunity she gets, and as it flows along, it breeds life along its banks, fruits, vegetables, humans all flourish wherever she flows...
What you will also find along side the banks of Spiti are many small villages that have been around for hundreds of years, and in these villages is where you will find the words
in each and every particle in the valley,,,
there are many monasteries in Spiti Valley that will bring those words to life if you chose to enter any of them, there are a few such humble prayer houses, as old as 1000 years and have been just the same way ever since they were created by Buddhist monks back in those days.
The big rocks and mountains seem like they are made up of granite and dry barren hard soil but then give yourself some time and you will see life sprouting & thriving in these mountains.
these are the same peoples that cultivate apples and apricots on these barren hills
Spitians are a very hard working & content peoples they win your heart with their hospitality and delicious meals when you stay with them.
And then when you get out back on the roads again somehow the harshness of the valley softens up, there is a calmness that follows you around and gives you a whole new perspective of the magnificent mountains and landscapes that just keep coming one after the other & leaving you breathless. Almost every time you pass the kids on these roads, they will stretch their hands out to give yo a ride-5 (it's basically a hi-5 clap between a rider and a walker - a hi-5 clap in motion if you may!) and cheer you on jumping and clapping as you pass by! for them perhaps this is the most entertainment they get receive form the outside world when cool looking bikers like us pass the village and acknowledge them, or stop and take selfies with them (as in my case for the most part, i took too many of those)Four of us, Vinit Rathod, Amit Mehrotra, Nikhil Jani and myself, had been thinking about a trip to the Spiti Valley for a long time. this plan was executed finally in july/August of 2016.
I have known Vinit since we did our first ride together to ROK - "Rann Of Kutch" been a great riding partner ever since on multiple rides together.
Nikhil & I met just before we decided to ride the Himalayas to Ladakh back in 2011, in fact I even remember crossing paths with him on one of my trips to Lonavala, before we had met each other, we both identified our riding gears and we both said - I think I have passed you on Bombay -Pune highway some time ago! - riders memory!
Amit and I met on a trip to Goa - he makes Balti. (hahaha of course there's a lot more to Amit and my friendship than just the Balti, we have done plenty of rides together and were all a lot of fun!!)
So that's for the intro, and now back to my original fillum story - I had crossed some portions of the valley back in 2011 when we did the Himalayan Odyssey trip with Royal Enfield crew and it planted an itch on all of us, we have always wanted to go back to the valley because of the sheer riding treat that this valley offered.
That itch was finally scratched and scratched thoroughly i must say on this trip!
The routes we took on this trip, were through some great twisties, some great canyon roads, some highway riding, and lots and lots of off road motorcycling, we dragged our bikes through dilapidated bridges, through tons of pebbles, sand, through rocks, through land slides, through water crossings and through slush (mix of dirt, ice and water) there was hardly any kind of terrain left that we didn't get the opportunity to ride through, each one presenting it's own kind of challenges and thrills!
Weather for the most part was super summery - bright, sunny and clear until the last day when it rained profusely in Chandigarh and we had to be very careful riding due to the traffic, road construction, rain and riding fatigue all of it at the same time!
The routine would basically be something along these lines (at least for me...) -
Get up around 6 in the morning,
Get your tea/ coffee/ water etc.
& then wait, wait till Vinit wakes up, get his pressure to go potty etc., :D
gear up, get fuel etc and get going on the road
ride through some awesomeness, soak it all in while you can, and stop for breakfast at some hole in the wall "Dhaba"
again, pay the bills, gear up and get going till you are hungry again and want to get some lunch
We always took breaks in between through out the day to make it a fun experience, bio breaks were kinda required as well. then came the dinner break at whichever place we were going to find accommodation and call it a day at. We had a mix of options we tried, there was home stay, there was hotels and even camping!! One thing was decided pretty much after the first night of sleep, that i was never ever sharing a room with Mr. Rathod - the tucker snored like a diesel truck!! (in that, this truck lost it's silencer years ago!!!)
En route, we came across some amazing little villages and settlements, some of the villages where there is no hotel accommodations, the locals offer their own homes to welcome wanderers like ourselves & take us in, feed us, provide shelter, a place to spend the night, we spoke about their history, their life stories, their struggles, some of them have amazing ones!! some are still living their stories of struggle today... those amazing stories their humble attitudes and life spirits touch your soul...make you aware of the fortunate life you have for yourself and be thankful for it right away....
The thing about this entire ride was that there was always something amazing, something nice to capture no matter where you went and how long it too you to pause again.
the pictures taken all along this trip are from my perspective and what i found was intriguing and worth stopping for, and I am sure i was blind to many amazing & miraculous things that i was simply incapable of capturing as I passed by it in plain sight!
this is the difference between traveling in a car v/s a motorcycle. As someone very aptly said, traveling in a car is like watching a movie
traveling on a motorcycle is like staring in one...
there are so many experience that i can list out here but i'm not sure if i will be able to do justice to it, i will try to give out some instances that hopefully gives a close to reality depiction of what was this trip all about...
I remember one of the first stretches very distinctly was the ride uphill to "Chitkul"
It was a morning ride, the night before was perhaps very humid and the whole road was moist. There was dew and condensation everywhere you looked, the clouds were upon the hills and roads were winding & turning so quickly that you really had to look ahead to focus on where the road is now going. There were rumors that the road had been washed away in the past week due to rainfall.
and as soon as i got onto the road, i realized how easy that could happen, the road was basically packed mud and there were flowing streams of water downhill all along the ride up, if these waters decided to have some fun and flow over the road, it can totally wash it all down.
In fact i did pass the section where that had happened and there were workers trying to fix the road, lucky for us, there was a section about 2 feet wide that was already patched/ fixed - plenty for two wheels to zoom through so our bikes made it through no problem!!
Just a few miles short of Chitkul (last village within India, Tibet region begins after this one), is where we stopped to take some pictures, and soak the amazing ambiance you see in the pictures here it was our first "This is exactly what we came all this way for..." moment
We braaappped up the road further to arrive at this lovely village called Chitkul - this was actually the the last Indian village on this road before Indo-Chinese border. However our intention was to go only up to this village and then turn around and go the other direction on to our journey so thats what we did.
The other thing that deserves a mention here is weed.
Yes.
Weed - weed was all along growing in the region like it was weed...it was beautiful well in its own way i suppose to see and smell it, somehow reminded me of home!!(for those who are confused, I am talking about the familiar San Francisco pot smell every public place you goto...)
The visual and the smell just kept lingering for the most part of the trip....don't believe me? check these images out!
Between the magnificent Himalayan mountain range covered by pristine blue skies above, and the rugged terrain beneath along with that rubber on our rides, rolled plenty silliness of 4 of us idiots all along the trip...
Be it Amit's crazy poses(it was something like jayZ meets Beyonce meets Shahrukh khan with a hint of Apache Indian somewhere - perhaps it was his hair cut? we really couldn't figure it anyway, tried to mimic it as much as we could but we failed. Miserably. Amit you need to coach us.)
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| We were not pointing to anything whatsoever in this pic, we just pointed so the pic looks cool! |
On our way back from Tabo monastery, we decided that we will make some good coffee. Let me elaborate.
We have been on the road by now for a few days and this group (by group i mean Amit) had been bitching and moaning like a teenage that he has not gotten good coffee since we started the trip.
Dear friend Amit,
India has been and perhaps always will be a predominantly Tea drinking country (sahab, chai-paani kuch ho jaye! - it's never coffee-pani man!). Please take your complains about not getting good coffee to someone who gives a flying *uck!!! :D suck it up and drink the damn sweet Tea!!!
"coffee isn't strong"
"this coffee is like plain milk"
"kya **daap cofee banake laya hai"
"Beta, please get me some extra coffee (the kid gets him another glass of pale, light coffee!!,
"Abbe yaar!! I asked for extra coffee powder!!! (sad face)"
So anyways, we'd had enough of this BS so decided to get our own coffee powder, milk powder and a kettle along with paper cups and yes, firewood!! (we stole from the fencing, some we picked up from leftover firewood along the way)
I picked us a great spot!!(yes they all agreed; it was a great spot) was a green grass patch, right downhill from the monastery, had a stream of water flowing right besides, some big rocks lying around, had a few dried out cattle crap cakes laying on the ground, we found ourselves ground zero for a perfect Barista, we put our minds, heart and rocks together, some firewood, some crap cakes were added in as fuel and then some petrol and showed fire to this amazing "chullah" we created.and put the Kettle with water and milk powder in it.
the fire burnt for a minute or two and then was gone.
We re-did the entire setup at least 5 times and finally got the wind, wood and balance of the rocks right to get the water + powder mixture to actually start boiling!!! & with everyone's hard labor yeayyy we finally had boiling milk!
while this was on going, Amit was busy beating the coffee in hot water he had by now created enough of that concentrated coffee concoction for 15 cups of coffee, you can tell, he was excited AF about the "strong" coffee!!!
I will admit though once the hot milk was poured into those little paper cups with the beaten coffee mix in it, it did taste pretty dope!! so dope that we all got two/ three cups of really the best coffee i perhaps ever had in a long time....thanks Amit you are a rock star! :)
and food!! all along the way we were treating ourselves with some amazing parathas and maggi + eggs plus the rajmah chawal, who can forget those! yumm! it was somethign else when you could rest your butt after a long hard ride on to a chair and just take a break...
The ride to and camping experience in Chandra Taal was a very unique experience. It was 14 kms of treacherous riding on rocks that deserves a specific mention here, as it was the place where Nikhils bike took a beating on the chassis - got a crack on that. And i almost went downhill on the slope. details below:
So this is the scene - the road to Chandra Taal is a pretty narrow, single lane rocky road and has left edge and a right edge as most roads usually do.
Beyond the left edge is a pretty gnarly steep downhill drop.
I am on the left edge of the road.
up front is a Jeep that decides to keep coming and doesn't value my life for much, however luckily when i yell at him he decides to stall and yet he slowly keeps moving fwd
I stand still, but i too have to slowly move fwd.
I don't look down but i know that my left leg is unable to feel the edge of the road, i.e., there is no ground below my leg, i.e., i am on the farthest edge of the edge...
the level at which my rear view mirrors were was the same as the Jeeps mirrors and it's curious passengers faces and elbows.
As the vehicle brushes my handlebar and my rear view mirror, i slam his mirror with my hand to keep it from hitting mine and jolting me and i also slam a couple of faces and push elbows of the curious Georges inside the passing vehicle!!
the vehicle passes by, i throttle my way back tot he center of the road, look in my left rear view mirror and see rubble from my tire rolling down the drop.
I "phewwed.." and move along...
once we reached Chandra Taal, and put the stuff in out tents, i was all about hiking to the Lake! (Chandra = moon, Taal = Lake, i.e., we had gotten to Moon-Lake!!) this was a lake at 14,100 ft above sea level. And a hike from the camping ground was about 5 miles at least (felt like freaking 15 albeit!) But it was worth the effort.
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| This is Chandra Taal |
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| Valley ahead of Chandra Taal |
As along the way I met some grazing mountain goats, a horses, grazing on the lush green grass!
Me and Nikhil were very cautious about taking pictures around the horses as we didn't want to bother/ excite them and were tip-toeing our way away from the grazing animals.After we took some selfies with them. In about half a mile distance i suddenly heard a pretty loud rumble and then horse gait, as soon as i looked behind me, i saw the entire harass running towards Nikhil who was basically trailing behind me.
I yelled "Doc!!! watch out!!!!" and he turned around to see what was upon him....
Doc, as fast as a Cheetah!, jumped uphill to make way for the galloping steeds...
(now those who have seen Doc's pictures here by now understand that the above statement may be an exaggeration, but it's not. Doc was faster than a cheetah in that moment!!!)
We'd meet these cattle & horses grazing right besides the road and would get amused by the sound of our bikes, and they would look up, I'd slow down and look back at them, and they'd have the "Meh, another gang of motorcyclists" look on their face and they'd return back to their grazing.
But then once in a while there would be a playful Yak, that would be curious to see what is it that it shiny, making these sounds and rolling so close so fast!! and it would be amused, maybe a bit threatened, and a bit curious whereby it doesn't know what to do when bikes approach from behind, they run ahead most of the times, but to see a big beast like that jump around and run like a puppy is an amazing sight, a little scary, but yet amazing.What i am going to say now may sound a bit absurd to the reader, if the reader is not a rider. But just go along, it ends well :)
There is a very unique bond that develops between a rider and his machine on such trips. There is a communication that goes on between two, kinda like the movie Avatar in which the Na'vi people bonded with their Ikrans. When the Ikran is in pain, the rider needs to listen otherwise the ride can turn into a very painful experience!!
My Ikran ie., RE Classic 500, poor thing was not in commission for over a year and then suddenly it was commanded to take on the Himalayas. On the journey there were some mechanical troubles we had to face, between my bikes battery not charging, dropping off silencer pipe due to breaking clamp, Amit's fork seal on the front breaking and leaking, and Doc's cracked engine chassis, dead battery and later the puncture, i think we had our share of breakdowns and holdups.
What is very important to note though, in the moments of such break downs everyone's patience gets tried, no one likes to sit around and wait especially when nothing is wrong with their bikes. But the fact is that true brothers in crime are identified only when the time gets tough! through all breakdowns and issues, we stuck together as a group and well had plenty of coffee, chai, snacks and thumbs-up, all for one & one or all...that's the code of the road...And then there was my accident too (yup, that did happen, and nope nothing's broken, yup i didn't tell you about it 'coz I know you would worry too much! look at the positive side, I'm okay!! :) )
As the group was trying to get out of Manali on the return journey, i tried to pass a tempo-truck form it's right after gauging that the oncoming traffic was still way farther and that i can make the pass safely.
As soon as my handlebar was parallel to the rear of the truck, the driver decided to go wide on me and basically it nudged my handlebar on it's left edge...
at a speed of at least about 60km/hr, this was enough to toss my bikes balance off, it slammed onto the ground and i lost contact with it just before that...
meanwhile the oncoming traffic that i thought was far away, now no longer was as far away and the truck coming in from the front realized that it's coming in too hot and slammed on the brakes....
that vehicle came to a screeching stop in front of my eyes and luckily he had turned his steering to his left,,,,
this definitely helped(as it prevented him from running over me for one...) but it also acted as a barricade for my bike that actually had somehow toppled from the ground and had stood up again and had somehow managed to lean up against the truck that screeched in front of me!!
first instinct was to glance at the bike and as it was in front of me - it was intact, i see no shattered glass, great! the ride won't stop :)
then i felt my hands, head and legs, touched them to feel any sensation of pain - none so far
got up, walked to the side of the road - felt a little discomfort on the left leg - but it was nothing, another positive sign.
i geared down completely, shoes, helmet, jacket gloves - checked my neck, all my joints, every bone etc. for any impact. I was completely fine.
The business owners nearby got me warm milk with turmeric i gulped it down. in the end, i walked away with not even a bruise, must've been your prayers i guess ;)
What doesn't kill ya, makes you stronger ;)
There were many a photo moments on this trip, but if i were to really pick out one picture that sums it all up for me, it will have to be this one below. It was on our way out of Kaza, when we took our bikes off the road (which of course was not paved either) into a stretch of grasslands that led to a point from where you could actually see a really beautiful valley up ahead. we all lined up our motorcycles, and cherished that moment...
and then there were these too....
As i sit here today, reminiscing the whole experience, through the trip, there is much to be cherished much to be remembered...
When you live your life as a wanderer, as a tourist, as a traveler you sign up for a certain level of solitude a certain amount of loneliness (not a negatory implication, but a literal one), you value the moments that give you the sense of togetherness with some of your favorite people.
When the saddest days of your life flash in front of your eyes, when your scars come alive and you feel the pain of the wounds like it'd just happened, when you are able to feel the same level of pain wholeheartedly and you look around, and you see people who have been there for you, who will be there for you, in that moment, you can close your eyes, value the togetherness & feel thankful that you have them around!
And then, just like that, when your sit with your close ones, and happy moments of your life come around, and then suddenly you recognize that this moment right here, right now, is perhaps getting added to you piggy bank of cherished moments of your life! the feeling that you are creating a memory that you will ever so fondly remember, you value that togetherness, you do close your eyes, you do value that bond, and feel great full that you have these idiots around...
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| (From left to right) Amit, Vinit, me, Doc. |
