The Bike Riders: Mission: Leh

Aaaand, we're back with more updates! :)

Starting from Hotel Greenland, Kargil.

On 9th September, we started from Kargil at 7:30am. Unfortunately, one of our bike was punctured. We filled the air in the punctured tyre, refilled our fuel tanks and continued towards Leh. But, it was still not okay. We had to stop again enroute to properly repair the puncture.

Ooops! puncture!

Repairing the puncture ourselves - Kargil-Leh road.

The Bike Riders at Mulbek, under the Buddha

35km after Kargil lies Mulbek, famous for the gigantic Maitrya Buddha statue cut out of a hill. The sight of this Buddha is simply so grandiose and majestic, we could do nothing but stare for a very long time. We had our breakfast there and moved on. Our next stop was the Namikala pass. Merely 15 kms from Mulbek, it is a road at the altitude of 12198ft.

The Terrain

Riding through this region is like riding through the marvel of nature herself. A desert at this altitude, we rode through dry mountains and sand dunes of various colours, continuing on curved roads going up and down. 36 kms later, we arrived at Fortula top (13479ft), the highest pass on Shrinagar - Leh road.

The Roads

And the Bike Riders!

Even though we had to break our ride so many times after short distances, all this sight-seeing is totally worth it.

After spending some time admiring the beauty of the region at Fortula Top, we continued ahead to Lamayuru, a Buddhist temple from the 11th century, 15kms from Fortula top. This place provided a very good vegetarian restaurant and we enjoyed our best lunch so far here. Later, we visited the Gompa (a cave-like monastry) where the Buddhist saint Naropa had meditated and which is still preserved as it is before continuing on to Leh.

Lamayuru Gompa

Our Bikes at Lamayuru

There are two roads to Leh from Lamayuru. The lower road is easy, shorter and in good condition, but due to blockage of that road by a landslide, we had to take the upper road. It was here, on this stretch of road that our misery. One of our bikes started giving a lot of problems. As for miles together there is no garage or mechanic, we had to manage all by ourselves. We tried to continue by hook or crook but we had to spend lot of time trying to get the bike to work. We could not visit Alchi Monastery and Pathhar Baba Gurudwara on the way. At last 50 kms before Leh, at Basgo village, we had to leave that bike and finally, at 12:30am we reached Leh, completely shattered with today's adventures. We stayed in Youth Hostel and immediately conked out.

Dr. Pasad delivering an enlightening sermon. ;)

Interacting with local students.

Our motto, on the rock! ;)

Day 6: 10-9-2011:
Today is a rest day, which is going to be spent arranging to obtain permissions for Nubra valley and Tso-mori-ri Lake as well as in conditioning our bikes. Everybody slept well last night. Today morning 7am, Jitendra left for Basgo with the utility vehicle and brought his bike back to Leh. Then, we all went to Mohan Sharma's garage for repairing and tuning all of our bikes. There was no major problem in any of our bikes. It was through sheer bad luck yesterday that some minor problem which we couldn't solve had occurred in the bike. Deepak and Ravindra took up the task of attaining permission for Nubra valley and Tso-mori-ri Lake. We had our breakfast and lunch in a pure vegetarian restaurant in the market named Punjabi Dhaba. It is generally quite difficult to get a pure vegetarian restaurant in Leh. However, we guess with the spread of tourism and the opportunities, it will only become easier in the following years. We enquired for a utility vehicle for hire until Manali but we will decide later whether to keep it or not. Tomorrow we are going to visit Khardungla (World's Highest Motorable road-18360ft) and Nubra Valley - the high altitude desert. Hence, we may not be able to update ourselves tomorrow.