We lift up a bullet to load it in a truck at 16000ft above sea level!
First of all, I promise I would try to keep this blog as short as possible. Please note: This ‘try’doesn’t guarantee that this would be short… Apologies!
After about 10 hrs of the biking on the day 5, we all slept like wooden logs. After getting fresh (in fresh air) in the morning, we had breakfast at the guest house and left from there. Anticipating that the snow on the mountains would be still in one piece and we wont have to face water like the day before, we had decided to leave early.
The way back was nothing different than the previous day, brilliant display of colours! Camera was with my pillion rider, and I was enjoying the ride. Then there was the previous day’s water patch, where everyone had to keep the foot down. Well, same spot but as we had anticipated the water was pretty less. After the spot, there was a mountain hike which would take us to the highest point in the journey-Chang La (17000ft above sea level) In the hike, at a place there was lot of loose pebbles, and flowing water. This sent off the alarm in my mind to be cautious. After covering about ¾ of that patch we noticed there was something wrong with our companion going ahead of us. Both of them had got down from the bike and pushing it! Well, nothing wrong with the scenario, if it was on the flat surface. In this place, even if we walked about 200m uphill, we would gasp for breath. But these two had to push the bike uphill. By the time this all went through my head, my bullet hit an unstable pebble and went haywire. Me and my pillion both went flat on our tummies, kissing mother earth. I remembered the guy back at our Leh guest house, telling us not to keep foot in water. And here we were, not keeping the foot in water. ‘Only’ the foot!
We got up, picked up our bike, which felt suddenly like a metal sponge soaked in water; kicked the engine On and went on till our companion to see what was wrong with their bike. They had flat tire. When enquired about the repair shop to a passer-by, we got to know that there are two shops. One ahead in the journey, and other back in the village we came from. We had a discussion there, and finally came up with 3 point plan.
1) Try to get the tire off the bike. Two of us would go back, get is repaired. This one got dismissed and we couldn’t get the tire off, due to insufficiency of the tools.
2) Leave the bike at that place, hike a vehicle. Go to Leh, give the key to bike guy and tell him that it’s punctured- Can be possible…
3) Put the bike in a truck, take it forward to the repair shop. Get it repaired and travel to Leh. Yup we save craziest for the last…
We saw a truck coming our way, we waved it down to stop. To our surprise it was already loaded with a car, which had refused to start. There were two military guys also in the truck. We asked them what should we do, they said, lets load the bullet in the truck. Yeah the craziest one got a go ahead…finally, after spending about 15 mins and few hundred calories of us 6 people, we were successful in loading the bike and two travellers in truck. After they left, we stopped for a while to get our second air and started tailing them.
The journey ahead was peaceful, means without many incidences… Suddenly I got to see a bird, which I was trying to capture since day 1, at roadside. Immediately I turned off the roaring engine of the bullet (thanks to the manufacturer for providing with the engine off switch). It was a stroke of my luck that the bird didn’t get offended and fly off, and got to take a pic. When I tried clicking second pic, another bike passed by and the bird took off. But I got at least one pic of it…
Through the same turning and twisting road, we reached back to place called Karu, where we had aloo paranthas for breakfast the previous day. We got the bike down from truck, and took it to the bike shop. This shop seemed like having symbiotic relationship with puncture shop few paces away. This shop takes out the tire, then you have to take the tire to the puncture repair shop, bring it back and this guy fixes it back in the bike. Anyway, after we got the bike and ourselves fixed, we left for yet another monastery nearby. This was just like every other monastery, with one difference. This one had a museum. We visited the museum and left from there discussing about the monastery, museum, our day so far and so on.
By this time, the bike journey started taking its toll on me. I started having a bit headache and started feeling tired. Journey back from Karu to Leh felt a lot longer than it had on previous day. A question which comes to my mind almost every time riding the bike, started surfacing again, have I lost the way? But then thanks to my pillion, my head kept on thinking on good lines and soon (1-1.5 hrs) we reached back in Leh. In between we had taken a stop to confirm we weren’t the first, because we didn’t have the guest house keys with us. When we reached the guest house, we saw two of us six already in the porch of the guest house. They had been ahead of us by about 20 mins, and funny part was they didn’t have keys with them. As we were back in Leh, mobile networks started working and so our news relay to the relatives, that we were back in city.
After getting into the guest house, 4 of us told no to continue hiring bike for next day, and it got decided that we would return the bikes. We all freshened up, had some rest and left for returning the bikes. Our pillions decided that they would rather walk a little, seeing the shops and places. So we three riders left with bikes. There is no memorable trip without incidences and coincidences… Again, there was one more such ‘incidence’. Two of us reached the shop, but third one was nowhere in view. I called him up to check where is he, and to my surprise he said he doesnt remember the route. So I tried to guide him, but he couldn’t reach the place. Suddenly I got a call from him, saying the bike wouldn’t start. His voice-Full of panic! That’s coz he was the same guy, whose ride got punctured. I told him not to panic, and told him to tell me exactly where he is. I almost ran to him and saw he was completely tired using the kick over and over again. I tried the kick once or twice and then told him, it wouldn’t start this way. So we put it on a slope – Old trick, works almost always! We took the bike to the shop, returned it and left for the hotel to have dinner.
At the dinner table we got to know the plan of the next day. We had hired a cab to roam around for next two days. After the dinner, we roamed in the market place for some time, visited some street-side vendors, had a brief walk and returned to room. We had planned to play cards, but as soon as we got into room, everyone started stretching their legs and spreading on the mattresses. We cancelled the plan saying we need to save energy for next day and dozed off…
