I am not an advocate of late-night rides and to those who ask me, I'd suggest avoiding any such plans from their itineraries as far as possible. But not everything is supposed to go as per the plans right? Especially in the preplanned trips. But I don't think any plans are perfect and these unexpected deviations are often the ones that get etched into our memories. Read on for one such terrific, thrilling, off the plan experience.
"If I were you, I'd camp here for the night and resume the ride tomorrow. You still need to cross 3 more high altitude passes. There is no way you are reaching your destination before midnight!"
Day 7 on the roads of the Himalayas. Just two more days and we'd be winding up our long pending dream journey to scale the Himalayas on a bike. We were at our resort in Shey enjoying our much-needed rest before starting our descend towards Manali. Set in a very remote area, amidst a small shrub forest and at a hearing distance away from the famous River Indus, the resort was in every way perfect to sit back and gaze at the barren planes that extend till the mighty mountains at the edge of the horizon. Imagine endless cold desert in-sight and you get to see the rain pouring down at a distance, from cloud till it touches the earth. Thanks to all these breathtaking visuals, our final shopping run and the bike rental regulations here, we were behind our schedule. By almost 6hrs. Yep! By the time we should have covered half the distance, we hadn't even started! And from our performance from the previous days, since our guides felt it'd be better if we stayed further down at Jispa, rather than our actual spot at Sarchu (Notorious for its low oxygen levels at night and related problems), we now have to cover more than 100km, a huge deviation from the actual plan.
"If I were you, I'd camp here for the night and resume the ride tomorrow. You still need to cross 3 more high altitude passes. There is no way you are reaching your destination before midnight", the guide to a Canadian rider gang suggested! Time is close to 6 PM, and we have covered almost 160kms now to get our much-needed refreshment break at Pang. Well, in these mountains, sometimes a cup of hot tea and a steaming plate of Maggi is all you need! The Canadian group were on their journey to Leh and had called it a day at Pang. A wise choice! Because crossing Tanglangla post 6 PM is no small thing (let's say we had a taste of that too). We had already left the chilling Tanglangla and the hypnotic Moore plains behind by now and we decided to stick to the plan. In IT terms, we decided to stick with the too optimistic estimation of ours which is going to give us a ride not to be forgotten any time soon. And so we waved goodbye at the Canadian gang and continued our journey towards Jispa. Towards Lachung La, our next high altitude pass.
The ride was smooth and uneventful mostly. We were on our full throttle possible in these roads with only one thing in mind. Sarchu! What should have been our night stay that day, is going to be our next rest stop. Sarchu was two passes away from us, Lachung La and Nakeela at altitudes of 5067m and 4739m respectively. As expected we were still on the roads at around 10 PM towards Sarchu. After crossing both the passes we reached the top of the famous Gata Loops. The 21 Serpent bents that take the adventure Seekers form the valleys of Sarchu to Nakeela.
I wish I could pen down the feeling on witnessing those amazingly gigantic mountain complexes that scream out how small a human being is, in front of these mighty mountains, and the road that stretches in between them, and the Tsrap river tracing the valley, on the way from Sarchu to Gata Loops. If you can't keep it together, you might very well get hypnotized. But that's the case in plain daylight. It's a different thing in the night. Especially on a full moon's day. And coincidently all these came together that day.
I'd say the horror stories of the Himalayas that had come up during our campfire discussions happened over the previous days were playing their part. Above that the moonlight was able to give an eerily vibes to these giants. At one point of time when I and a fellow rider were a bit too harsh on our throttles and found us a bit too ahead of the rest at the Gata loops, a part of our minds was telling us to stop and wait somewhere, while the other part which had an upper hand was shouting at us to shut up and ride on. The beam of lights from the top of the mountains calmed us down and we slowed ourselves down to be back in line. Time was somewhere between 10 and 11 when we stopped to get our dose of caffeine from chai and some snacks. The day is not over yet, and so is our ride. Maybe the rest of the journey can be a story for another post.
The trip was completed with lots of unexpected events and we were back to our daily lives. Months later, When I was researching about Gata loops for my vlog, the first thing that showed up was this link! Yep! It talks about the famous story of hauntings in the Gata loops and how people give tributes to the "Ghost" by offering mineral water and cigarettes at the 19th bent. I paused for a moment, to bring back the events of our journey on this mysterious road. I wonder how would that night experience be if we knew the story before the journey. How much ever I tried, I couldn't bring back any memories of seeing such a memorial anywhere in our trip. Thinking how we missed such a famous ritual, I turned back to my monitor, hit play to resume from the Gata loops section of my video. And, there I saw it! A small temple on the roadside with mineral water bottles spread all over!
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