Day 9: August 16, 2010, Monday

Kaza-Kibber-Key-Kaza

We woke up to a beautiful morning and since we had already decided to stay on another day at Kaza- for repairs and visiting the monasteries- we decided to take it easy. We first went for breakfast at the German Bakery and had some scrumptious "exotic" stuff- croissants, pies, strudle an a rather interesting sandwich with yak cheese, tomatoes and onions! After a rather lengthy breakfast, while Beni went to the interwebs, Dev and Bijoor san went to look for mechs and I went to the circuit house. Seeing running water, I was tempted to wash all the dirty stinking and wet clothes in my bag and wash them. The really bright sun was specially encouraging. Taking my lead, everyone decided to follow suit and soon the lawns of the circuit house started to resemble a "dhobi-ghaat"!! 

It was little wonder that the caretaker asked us to move out when he found out that we were not checking out today and that we would be staying one more night! Actually, he was expecting to have more legit guests tonight because there was some fair in the village from tomorrow onwards. When I say "legit", I mean government officials or the sort, for whom these circuit houses have been built all over the state- people who don't have to pay more often than not! So anyway, we found refuge in the hotel right across the road and just walked with our stuff till there. We even transferred our load of drying clothes - thankfully, most of them were dry- mainly because we made sure they were!

Distances from the circuit house

Anyway, around 1 we decided that we should head towards the monasteries and get back before dark. The Enfield people took off before us Pegu boys. Suku found himself leading us and very soon we found ourselves on the way going back to Tabo!  We even saw the Mumbai bikers still packing up at the new Circuit House to go to Lossar.

Asking for directions, we turned back to the right direction and continued to follow Suku. This time Suku started to climb up the road to Key monastery though we all had planned to meet and lunch at Kibber! While Beni decided to take some photos, I went after Suku, right to the top to fetch him! We now headed back to Kibber but not before Suku picked up a monk (who had  changed into civilian clothes midway somewhere!) as pillion. After climbing up the mountains non stop and crossing some bad stretches of roads, we reached Kibber where we found the other three waiting for us. Instead of going up to the monastery, we decided to go back near the entrance of the village and get some lunch. The view was, to repeat a cliche, astounding! The sky was gorgeous and it was what sky blue is really meant to look like! As we waited for our modest lunch of guess what, rice and aloo matar (!!), we all took pictures and tried to escape the burning sun- Dev's iphone version of NFS Shift helped pass boredom for a few minutes.

The women who were preparing lunch for us were actually teachers but it was summer break at the moment in the valley so they had taken this occupation in a guest house as an experiment. When they found out that we were headed towards Lossar and beyond, they said they would have loved to go there with us- I think the comment was probably directed for Suku? ;) Meanwhile, I only managed to break one of their tube-emergency lights but reimbursed them instantly.

Kibber village

As we headed back on the road, we stopped for many pictures till we reached the road that went up to Key. Bijoor san  was having problems with his bike in climbing inclines, so he decided to park his bike at the foothill and ride pillion behind Suku. We were behind these two and when we got there, we learnt that Bijoor san's helmet had rolled down the hill when he had parked his bike on the centre-stand and some mountain kid ran down and fetched it for him in a matter of minutes. That slope was not mild by any sense! The helmet lost the cheek pads somewhere and was scratched up. The visor also took some beating but in essence, it was still okay!

Entrance to Kibber

Azure skies!

Another Bajaj Ad!

We got a guided tour of the monastery by one of the monks. I couldnt help think the irony of the Buddhist religion- Buddha never wanted his teachings to be a religion in the first place! And yet we believe what we have been told and been a student of history, I am aware that everything from history is generally conjectural and can be debated on end. We were offered tea and it was soon prayer time at 7pm, when a lot of women got off a mini bus and walked towards the monastery- Suku started making his own scandalous speculations on the spot!

The entrance at the foothills of the Key Monastery

Beni tries to get Golden Buddha in blinding sun!

Only clockwise...

The beautiful can in which our tea came!

The eight symbols of the gate have their own significance.

As we headed back, we saw these two white kids hitch-hiking- I and Suku picked up a pillion each and rode towards Kaza. These kids, Phil an David, were third year geography students in the UK- and were going to go to Ladakh eventually. My bike's headlight (it was the choice of the bulb I guess) woes from many months ago was showing up again- I could only hope for the best esp by trying to avoid night riding! We dropped them off in the middle of the town before we started to look for dinner. Bijoor san was worried about his bike not being able to climb so he started to make phone calls to find a truck to carry the bike on- and as a improvisation, a cab to pull the bike in times of need! Meanwhile, I tried to check mail and make some calls.

The internet and the ISD phone service continued to suck big time. The lights went out in the town so after weighing our options and after asking around, we landed up in Dragon Bar where we saw the same kids! We also met a guy who had rode from Gujarat via Manali to Kaza. He's with an NGO called Ecowater or something and he made the comment "Bullets makes mechanics out of bikers" on hearing Bijoor san's bike. It was a very polite comment steeped in denial about the truth which most Bullet riders probably believe in! To each, his own! The food at this place wasn't great- trying to go for exotic, we ended up with mediocre pasta and pizzas while Beni's chowmein was definitely the worst!

Beni's knee was hurting a lot by late evening. Suku diagnosed it as lower back pain so he made Beni do some standard lower back exercises which apparently increased Beni's pain, now migrated to the lower back! Beni was not sure any more if he could carry on like this any further. He was actually thinking of putting his bike on the back of the truck if Bijoor san managed to find one! Was his trip really over?

Total distance covered= 40 kms approx.

Total cost= Rs. 640

[Breakfast= 100 + Lunch= 100 +  Damage = 100 + Dinner=190 + Stay=150 ]

Day 12 August 19, 2010, Thursday

Sissu to Kullu

The day began badly and kept getting worse!

We woke up to a cold morning, cloudy skies and the weather did not seem too promising. In the morning rush to get out of the village of Sissu, I bumped my head yet again on yet another tiny bathroom door! I and Beni were packed up the first and in our quest to find phones to call overseas, we left first. 

We went through the same good sweeping roads but this time around, one of the few bad patches of small water crossings came up at the top of a slight climb. Braking hard, Beni locked up his wheels and slid, almost in slow motion right in front of me! He didnt really fall- the bike did- the first time the Avenger seemed out of its elements. However, all was well and we carried on. We hadn't moved 100 metres when rains came down on us- we had our rain gear on so we did not have to stop but the rain did slow us down a bit and the curves were still left. In search of the phone, we reached Khoksar but the phone was not working. Giving up, we finally decided to have breakfast while we waited for the others to catch up. The aloo paranthas that we had were deep fried in oil/ghee- reminded me of Chandni Chowk's Parantha Waali gali back home in delhi- this was delicious! The rain was not letting up and everybody came by only after 30 or 40 minutes. and they had the same breakfast.

Suku got gooebumps in the cold wet morning

The rain was not slowing down- if anything, it was getting worse and the restaurant guys urged us to go now before Rohtang pass became a bigger mess in this rain. Having heard slushy stories of Rohtang earlier, we decided to move on, even in the rain, The good part was that the rain soon died into a slight drizzle and completely stopped as we started our climb to Rohtang pass. And as we were about 12 kms to the top, we see slush- all across the road! However, we did a good job of going through it- a truck was slowing our progress so we had to overtake it, cutting through the thick mud. The slush here was probably only about 10 to 12 inches deep. A small stretch of good road came by which took us to the top where we congratulated each other- Bijoor san had  carried on by himself. As we went down, we met these bunch of frazzled kids from Mumbai (or was it B'lore?) who looked like they had seen a ghost. They asked us how the conditions were on the other side of the Rohtang etc- it had apparently taken them 10am to 8 pm to come up till there the day before from Manali and were waiting for some mech to fix one of their bikes!!!!! I almost felt sorry for them because, ahead of them lay the hardest rides of their lives!

A rare view from Rohtang

Celebrating at Rohtang

We did not know what to expect but very soon, we came upon the deepest slush we had ever seen in our lives- at some points the slush  came nearly knee-high! And what was making matters really bad was that we had to follow a traffic jam in this muck! Had we started even earlier, we would have probably met less traffic and it would be a smoother crossing for us. When I tried to bypass the traffic ahead of me from the left (the cliff side), I found deeper mud that nearly trapped me! A valuable lesson I had taught Suku in one of the water crossings came to my rescue- I just turned the handlebars across the road of mud and I was out in an instant and found a faster way to cut through the deep muddy mess. And we were all out except Dev- he was stuck and was not being able to move- just like in a few previous water crossings. He held up the line of vehicles behind him which held up vehicles coming from the other side! Truck drivers who managed to squeeze past him were reprimanding us for him trying to move the bike in fourth gear (or what sounded like fourth gear to them)! After washing up our mud covered shoes, we decided to go back and see what Dev was upto. We saw a man pushing him all the way out of the mud and the traffic finally moving from both sides almost immediately after!

Parked after the slush area where the truck drivers cursed us for Dev!

FInally Dev comes out-notice no vehicle behind him!

Happy to be out of the slush- even as Dev was stuck!

The "beautiful" clouds that blinded us later on!

The moment we started off, Dev and Kjo decided to rush downhill. At just around the bend from where we had stopped, Suku locked his bike's front and slammed into the road on his right side. The bike's crash guard was bent and all his protective gear saved him- right from his knee pads (which cracked!), jacket (back and shoulder) and helmet- the laces of his shoes, however though but thankfully nothing like what had happened to Alok earlier in Chhitkul. After making sure that he wasnt having a concussion and that his motor functions were normal we decided to descend, Tsering the driver right behind us. We saw more stretches with slush but it was really very little slush so it wasnt much of an issue and we thought that the worse was over. But thing became even more interesting.

What we thought was a beautiful cloud cover from the top was what we rode straight into. The more downhill we went, the thicker this mist/cloud was getting- Tsering had earlier remarked that we were lucky to even see a view from Rohtang and that the clouds are very normal there! Very soon visibility was reduced to near zero! I was following Beni who was in lead and we barely touched 20kmph in certain sections! After a point, it was getting to be too much and we let Tsering lead us till we got to more visible parts of the mountain road. For entertainment we had interesting musical truck horns all around us and we even found more deep slush but I think we got used to them like the water crossings and did not bat an eyelid as we crossed it even as a SUV was stuck in it! After crossing Kothi, we knew that we were on good roads finally. And the scenery was the same beautiful one that we had seen many days ago before Shimla- green and lush. Near Solang, we decided to lunch and have as much meat as we had been deprived off- we had chicken in our soup, the rice, the noodles and basically everything we could see in the menu! 

Suku incapable of making a gang sign!

Blinded!

Suku's roll in the mud when he ha fallen earlier

As the mist disappeared...

...it became beautiful once again

Green, green everywhere!

After our pigging out we carried our descent to Manali and meet Mr. Bhuvnesh- he is the guy who was arranging the permits and cab for us if we had gone to Leh. He said he would rendezvous with us at a place called Bikers Point- a small local garage. Bijoor san and Dev got their bikes checked there while me, Beni and Suku just had our bikes washed- the first proper wash in days! Beni was doubtful of his bike for some reason and wanted only Bajaj mechanics to check the Avenger and Suku wanted to replace that left footrest panel so we decided to go ahead to Kullu for that- I thought that I should just get the headlight. We even bid goodbye to our soft spoken driver Tsering- he must have thought that he was on some kind of a joyride with us but maybe doing this wasnt new to him.

Bike wash!

We  crossed Manali and even Kullu to go to a place called Bhuntar where a Bajaj workshop was located. Beni got his chain tightened and got the right brake shoe for the rear tire. Suku got the new left footrest panel and got some of his electricals checked. I got a new headlight bulb! We headed back and it was dark already- we even encountered a slight drizzle but it wasnt much of a bother. We caught up with the rest-Bijoor san was still getting something fixed in Kullu and all the hotels that they had looked in the town were really not worth the price that they were asking. We were definitely back to the civilization and its exorbitant prices.

Staying true to our motto even in Kullu, we kept looking and found a hotel on the highway called Garden guest house by the Potdars- the owners were Marathis and were happy to find three people who spoke marathi in our group- I wish they had given some discount on that account but oh well. We got some sort of a suite with three rooms and two bathrooms. We had to walk back a bit to get dinner in a place called City Choice, a vegetarian joint much to our chagrin! We all ordered their "Special Thali in Ghee" but it took forever- everyone except me and Kjo fell asleep on the table. The food was okay but nothing extraordinary- by which I mean that there was no meat! 

We walked back through a slight drizzle and retired to bed soon enough- not before I got another bump on my head with yet another low doorway of the bathroom! As  I had expected, Beni had been feeling that tingling in his leg again today and went to bed trying to kill the pain. We expected good roads tomorrow onwards all the way to Chandigarh where we wanted to meet Mr Singh and give our regards. The trip, for the most part, was over but we still were a long way from home.

Total distance covered= 119 kms approx.

Total cost=Rs. 815

[Breakfast= 55 + Lunch= 240 + Dinner=245 + Stay= 275]