Leh - Ladakh Bike Trip - Day 8 & 9 - Return Journey Sarchu - Manali - Delhi

Heavy Rain and fog in Rohtang La (Absolutely zero visibility while descending!)












Daffodils !!

Leh - Ladakh Bike Trip - Day 7 - Return Journey - Leh to Sarchu

Icy Sleeep!



On the Other side - Endless Mountains..



Deep down a unfortunate truck!



Welcome Weather!!



Back to Mori !! :)





Sarchu - Tents

Leh - Ladakh Trip - Day 6

Army Patrol - Pangong Tso



Star Accomodation!!






First View of Pangong Tso (Tso is Lake in ladakhi)



Road to Pangong Tso (Do you see the stripes in the Hill:) )



Cute Kid!

Leh - Ladakh Bike Trip - Day 5

After a relatively relaxed day we started our next ride in early morning (i.e 8 am :) )Our host was kind enough to offer a box of green apples to us! it was really nice of her. I always noticed people living in hills are well behaved and courteous. Our destination is a beautiful lake spread across 140 kms of land at 13900 ft altitude. Two thirds of the length of this lake lies in China. The lake is 5 km (3 mi) wide at its broadest point. In winter, the lake surface freezes completely despite being salt water.You need a special permit to enter this place. The route itself is a welcome change with daffodils and patches of green enroute compared to mostly sandy terrains we travelled so far.







The road from Leh to Pangong Tso crosses the villages of Shey and Gya and then the military installation of Kharu. From Kharu the roads leads up to the another mountain pass called Chang-La (Third Highest Motorable pass). Indian Armed forces maintain the roads in this region and have done commendable job to upkeeping these roads. The climb to Chang-la is tough and upon reaching the top, you are greeted with a Sign that says "You have reached the Mighty ChangLa". The road Down from Chang-La is very good and passes though Tangste and other smaller villages. While descending from Chang La we witnessed a mild sandstorm , the sand started covering most of the road. Well un expected adventures in every turn of this trip!






The final hurdle on this road is called Pagal Naala or "The Crazy Stream". Its known for wiping away truck and other bigger vehicles in its flow. Crossing it is at times difficult. Once your cross the Stream you are welcomed by the first View of Pangong Tso. A Army camp welcomed us at entry. we started looking for our accomodation , there is a small settlement few kms (5 max) from the army camp where you can find bunch of govt run cottages (don't be fooled by its term , these are no luxury accomodation . It is mostly primitive) and private run tents. The cottages were full so we settled down to a basic accomadation near by lake with a great view!



The lake changes its colour during the day , you can see all shades of blue. The beauty is mesmerizing. It was almost dusk , we parked our bikes near by the lake and watched the sun losing himslef in her embrace. It all turned red for a second and slowly dusk started settling in..

We had a fantastic dinner (roti and omlette) and came out of room to watch the night sky. Wow it is rangoli of stars! It is almost like watching stars in space. I never knew so many stars exist in sky! you could see entire milky way and every thing you learned in your school.The lake glittering in moon's light, A eternal silence that we neve experienced! I could see every one of us were lost in this eternal beauty , no one spoke a word for few minutes! bunch of us started tweaking their camera to capture this miracle . I am pretty sure most of us can never remove this night from our memory for very long!

Leh - Ladakh Bike Trip - Day 4

Destination - Khardung La aka K- Top - Claimed as world's Highest motorable pass - is situated 37 km (54 from where we stayed)by road from Leh. The first 24 km, as far as the South Pullu check point, are paved. From there to the North Pullu check point about 15 km beyond the pass the roadway is primarily loose rock, dirt, and occasional rivulets of snow melt. Most of the roads are well maintained and as I said earlier this is much smooth ride compared to tanlang la / Chang La. You need a separate permit to visit this place , same applies to Pangong Tso.
We planned to limit our day 4 ride to K- Top and spend rest of the day exploring Leh. we started around 8 AM and few minutes we reached the army check post. We saw a huge line of Army trucks (these are really large) queued up en route. This route is strategically important to India as it is used to carry essential supplies to the Siachen. That explains the Army traffic!. It looked like an endless line , we managed to queeze in between and started riding slowly overtaking one by one. Soon I was heading first and started riding on the edges to overtake the trucks! vivek following me stopped behind watching me riding crazy! with in a hour or two we reached K - Top! We had Noodles and Tea in the Army canteen and bought few T - Shirts.

see if you are able to locate the Army trucks in this Img?




Honestly this is better road than the other passes ;)


Hotel kaal


After few hours we reached Leh and spent our evening quietly around the Leh palace. vivek and chanderjeet were waiting for the palace to lit up , after almost 4 hours of waiting they learnt it is lighted only during festivals ;).
A nice thing I noticed in Leh is Plastic bags are completely banned here!

Blr - Mysore - Gopalsamy Betta - Ooty - Tanjore - Bangalore

Probably this was one of the best planned and executed family trip I did. Everything turned out to be perfect. It is more than a year since I did this, I am posting here as a reference for me if I need the details later. If you would like to know more please feel free to post in comment.

Trip Route :
Day1: Bangalore - Sri Rangapatna - Bridavan Gardens - St.Philomena's Church - Palace - Hotel
Day2: Mysore - Gopalsamy Betta - Theppakadu - Gudalur - Pykara falls - 9th Mile - Ooty - Kothagiri - Annamar cottage
Day3: Kothagiri - Dodda Betta - OOty Lake - Botanical Garden - Kotha giri
Day4: Kothagiri - Mettu Palayam - Avinasi - tiruppur - kangeyam - trichy - thanjavur
Day5: Halt at Thanjavur - Xmas
Day6: Thanjvaur - Trichy - Namakkal - Salem - Bangalore
Driver : Self
Vehicle : Ford Ikon Flair 1.3 - 2007
Total Kms : 1157
Mileage :14.5
Worst Roads: Gudalur - OOty - Scenic route but roads non existent , Worth taking if you have never travelled in this route
Bad Roads : After travelling Theppakadu - Gudalur -ooty stretch any road looks motorable
Good Roads : Ooty - Kothagiri , Bandipur forest road , Kothagiri - Mettu palayam , Bangalore - Krishnagiri toll gate
Fuel : Shell - Mysore Road , HP - OOty , Reliance - Kattur , Trichy : Fuel quality nothing to complain about but not sure of petrol quantity filled at HP OOTY

Leh - Ladakh Bike Trip - Day 3

Destination - Leh - Route : Sarchu – Leh (255 Kms). through Nakeela & Lachlangla Pass 16,617 ft, Pang, enroute More Plains (Biggest and Highest Plateau on Earth on Stretch of 42 Kms), Tanglang La Pass (2nd Highest Motorable Road in the World at A Height of 17,585ft) & reaching Upshi, from here the road follows the Indus River, passing villages with there terraced Fields and neat-Whitewashed houses. On a way one notice the ruins have an ancient Fort or palace or the distant glimpse of gompa on a hill.

After the sleepless night myslef and ravi decided to start little late, others started off. I saw a thin crust of ice surrounded in my bike. The one thing i forgot to mention in my earlier blog was my bike battery died even before I started for the trip! Due to tight schedule at office I couldn't replace it and kind of managing ever since with the bit energy left with bike after long rides. Meaning mostly I had to manage the dangerous curves with out any horn!. After seeing ice I was really worried wether it will start. Kicking the bike at high altitude is 100 times more tough due to limited oxygen. After bit of cranking it started , thanking almighty I left it run idle for few minutes to warm up. We finally started after good two hours , riding slowly enjoying the mystic beauty of the hills around us. An eternal silence with just our bikes sound! it was like almost medidating in the Bike!








After bit of photo stops and slow riding we stopped at a eatery before Nakeela for breakfast. We met a fellow biker - American who was worst hit by AMS.He was in a bad shape with chopped lips (cold waves) and AMS. We gave him couple of diamox.The eatery owner asked us if we can accompany him till tanglang la. We agreed and asked our new friend to join us. we rode together till lachlang la and had to bid him farewell at the army camp as he was finding it hard to ride with AMS. we asked him to descend and stay for another day to get acclamatize. Since we had to catch up with other riders we soon started riding bit fast (A good 70 - 80 Kms in hills) soon we are in More plains.




More Plains! If you like off road this is Heaven on earth! I do , so I thoroughly enjoyed riding here.It is like riding in desert , no roads ( the one existing is broken and work is going on ). You need to ride in sand with virtually no land mark for direction. This was the best part of my ride! After a fourty minutes or so mind blowing ride we hit the roads to Tang lang La. We learnt we are just 20 mins behind our other riders , myself and ravi decided to ride separately and agreed to meet at a eatery after tanglang la .



BRO Maintains the entire stretch of road from manali to Leh, I saw few patch work going on in the tanlang la route due to recent land slides. I got stuck at one of them , the jawans didn't allowed me to move ahead as large stones were rolling on the roads! if you got hit by one, thats it! I thought i lost Ravi , once the route cleared I sped up and started riding pretty fast! Soon I reached the eatery we decided to meet. No sign of ravi, I was bit confused. I was pretty sure he was ahead of me before the land slide and thought he might have left after waiting for few minutes. Cursing him I started the bike and with out having lunch I moved ahead.
Rushing to catch up with others I missed reporting to the last army check post enroute. (later I learned none of us except ravi reported there). Soon I met other riders in Karu and noticed Ravi was missing. All of them were thinking that we are riding to gether and none of them saw him from morning, all thoughts started sweeping in as it was a pretty narrow road and no diversion in between!

Though I was dead tired borrowed some petrol from others and started my Bike towards tanglang la again to find Ravi. I was n't sure how far I need to ride and what i am going to find!! fortunately with in few kms I saw ravi comming towards me. Relieved to see him alive and kicking we both gave gali each other and realized our mistakes. Apparently he stopped for a photo shoot while descending Tang lang la and I crossed him with out noticing when overtaking a army truck!!. He also got worried when he didn't saw our name in the army post! Well we are all relieved that this ended on a good note.



We had mutton momo's at a eatery in karu and reached Leh around 5 p.m. Nitin found us a Nice Hotel (Kaal). We all had a decent bath after 2 days and with a good dinner we finished our third day Ride.

Leh - Ladakh Bike Trip - Day 2

Our day 2 destination is sarchu - a popular stop over for travellers enroute to Leh. sarchu is famous for the tourist tents situated amidst huge mountains. sarchu itself is at 13953 ft altitude. These tents have everything from bed , attached bath! etc except Hot water. I will come to that soon!

Sarchu is 200+ Kms from Manali , compared to 600 kms we covered on day 1 it may look nothing but let me tell you if I rate the toughest route in entire leh trip probably this will take the cup (second would be chang la enroute to pangong - K- Top is probably third!!). we were planning to start early and have our breakfast on the way. The view outside my room was really mesmerizing with rivers flowing through the valleys which is still partly covered in fog.Breaking from this little beauty was bit painfull but with half mind we started our bikes.

The route looks some thing like this Manali – marhi, cross Rohtang pass (13050 ft), Enter Lahaul Valley, Pass by Koksar, Tandi - Keylong, cross Baralacha Pass (16020 ft), reach Sarchu (13953 ft). Rohtang is a popular tourist spot in manali (53 kms) cabs charge 1000 - 1500 to cover this distance! we were struck in the traffic soon due to a landslide. A Vehicle got struck and people were pushing it from behind , it goes up 2 feet and comes back and it was going like this for more than a half an hour. Soon wearig out our patience we decided to overtake the vehicles by the thin road left on their sides, the other side is deep valley ;). Managed to cross the traffic sooner than expected we started our up hill task i.e reaching rohtang. The road initially appeared to be broken and in few minutes completely disappeared. Soon we reached Rohtang La stopped at a eatery for Noodles / Bread Omlette. I haven't had such yummy omlettes (probably made in Yak ghee! no idea but it is very tasty). We are on the highest peak in manali , green every where and a group of sheeps on the hills. It was a nice scenery to watch. I will let the photos talk!















The roads after Rohtang became increasingly challenging, All I can remember is steep inclines / slush / gravels .. complete off road stuff. Some times it is plain fun to ride them through , some times bit scary and you push through with new found adrenaline rush. Overall It was Amazing if I can put that way. we stopped near a small water fall with streams flowing on the road. we had few hot corns sold by a guy sitting near by (First it was bit strange, with no traffic in near vicinity I was wondering for whom he was preparing these corns!!).









After few hours ride we stopped at tandi , the last petrol pump till Ladakh that is sweet 360 Kms away! Confident with my bike fuel efficiency I did n't stocked any additional petrol , just filled my tank.





Sarchu Tents




We crossed Baralacha Pass (16020 ft) in the evening , we stopped for few photo shoots. soon it was covered with clouds and becomming cold. we started descending my fingers were turning numb with cold waves thanks to my mesh glove (Don't go with out leather glove) I was doing few finger stretches while riding my bike to keep my fingers active. We managed to reach sarchu around 7:30 and spent another half an hour choosing our tent. It was extremely cold , 3 C inside tents and sub zero outside. After noticing the tents with attached bath and buckets filled with water (Guessing Hot!) I went straight to wash my face to feel little warm once i splashed the water in my face oooh ! everything turned numb , the water was biting cold. After looking at my reaction every one got alerted and didn't dare to go near by water. Later I learnt from staff that Hot water is a luxury here ( You get a max of half bucket hot water for two and you can do anything you want , wash your face / clean your a** depending on your priority ;) ) Luxury has a new meaning here. Many of us were hit by AMS due to the high altitude, with night turning cold outside and winds blowing like a haunted horn, It was a sleep less night for all of us!!