The Motorcycle and the Mountains: Chennai to Ladakh and Everything in Between

The whole idea of owning an automobile originated somewhere in November, 2015. If it was ever going to be a motorcycle, it would have to be a Royal Enfield - those machines with the thump and the machismo. Point to be noted here is that I did not know how to ride properly back then. "But motorcycles are not safe" my father told me. "Besides, will you take us around on a motorcycle when we visit you?" added my mother. Buying a car made a lot of sense. And then there was my then love interest. Let's call her ABC and protect her identity here. I asked ABC as well for her opinion and even though there was nothing conclusive, ever hopeful that something will work out, I finally decided to buy a car. A few test drives and new car launches later, I had booked a vehicle for delivery in the next week. I was in the office when a colleague congratulated me on hearing about the booking and asked me, "so have you decided to settle here?" I was taken aback thinking if I had really "settled". The dealer called me the next day saying the car could only be delivered after 2 months of waiting time. That was the final nail in the coffin. Parents had already visited, took them around in Uber and things were not quite looking up with ABC. At this point now, it only mattered what I wanted to do. So I cancelled the car booking, and a booking for a black Royal Enfield Classic 350 was made.

From one of my first late night ride in the city. Chennai. April, 2016

Cut to April 2016, the motorcycle is ready for delivery but I am not. I cannot see myself driving it in the traffic. I call Lakshay and tell him it's ready for delivery. He comes with me to take the delivery and drive it home. Intimidated first by the sheer weight of this machine, I take some time to practice, start driving around on the roads, roam the streets at night, take it for spins on the open East Coast Road and within no time the romance has begun. I call it Mr Tambourine Man but ABC gifts me this leather belt key chain that has the word "Maverick" engraved on it so to honour that, from that day, Mr Tambourine Man was aka Maverick.

To think of it, I actually took to Maverick as that was also my alias for all gaming purposes, inspired obviously from Top Gun. How the name occurred to ABC has always been lost on me.

Riding with the Royal Mavericks, New Delhi.
January, 2017

By late 2016, I had made friends with a couple of other bullet owners and the conversation about a Ladakh ride had begun. And then it was time to move to New Delhi. Closer to the Himalayas? Sure, I will move and take my motorcycle along. I joined the Delhi Royal Mavericks club and in pretty much every conversation Ladakh came up at least once. Now I had heard so much about Ladakh from my father and I had a motorcycle that is made for a ride in that terrain so I was dead sure to make this happen at some point. 

February 2019 is when 20 months of non-stop travel ceased for me and I started having withdrawals. After all this time with the high-paced life, when I actually get the time to look back, I realised I had to forego a lot of things and I wanted to do something meaningful. I looked up my options and pre-booked a slot on a Ladakh Motorcycle Exepdition for June 1st.

It was somewhere around mid-May when my tour organiser called to inform me that 18 out of the 20 who were supposed to go had pulled out. A pause followed and I thought the tour would be cancelled, but to my surprise, I was told the tour would still go on with me, the other guy and the leader they would have appointed for the ride. So there were three motorcycles now but no backup vehicle. To be honest, this is how I had wanted to do it instead of going in a group of 20 so I had nothing to complain about. 

I met Ronald, Salman and Parismita on day 1 of the ride. Ronald, who would later be known as Sir Ronald, was a Goan who had come down from Doha. Salman had been to Ladakh 43 times in the past 9 years, Parismita was pillion with Salman and taking care of the logistics on this trip for the company. I had my orientation the previous day - basically about all the bad things that happen to riders - either when they are unruly or the nature is. To name a few mishaps - hands freezing and not being able to pull the clutch, falling off and hanging by cliffs because you were not patient and tried to overtake that truck from the left, getting washed away due to the current at water crossings etc. On day 1, however, in the sweltering north Indian heat at about 46 degrees Celsius, "cold" problems seemed very far-fetched. Ludhiana was our first stop.

Starting from Qutub Minar for the Ladakh Expedition.
New Delhi. June, 2019

I would not want to go rambling on about each day. It was a 14-days expedition and gave me enough time on the road for thoughts worth content for a book. I mean this piece of writing to be more about my relationship with the motorcycle, the adversities and the shift in perspectives that a trip to the mountains brings with it.

Not like any day was easier than the rest, but it was the ride from Patnitop to Srinagar when the magnitude of the challenge ahead of us "hit" me. The roads were absolutely bad in Jammu and the traffic was crazy. I had this tempo honking from behind and I gave him a pass to overtake. It was carrying some tent equipment with a tarpaulin roll hanging. Before I knew it, the tarpaulin roll unfastened and came flying and hit me in my face. I got dislodged from the bike, fell head first and then on my butt. In what seemed like 5 minutes at that time, some shock and confusion ensued. I opened my eyes to see Salman attending to my bike, my worst fear was a possible injury to my leg and I moved it and it seemed fine, thanks to the gear. So I got up and asked Salman if the bike was fine. He said it was good to go and so I said "let's go" like nothing had happened. They asked me how I was doing, I said that I was fine. And then I ask Parismita if I had an accident and I fell. I also looked at my shoes and said that I didn't remember wearing them. This scared the three of them till I started regaining sense of what was happening. I could feel some pain in my butt but nothing that would prevent me from riding the motorcycle. After I regained memory and these guys were assured, we started out again. On the same day later on, we braved some hailstorm on the way and I realised that my front wheel rim was bent and the handle was wobbly as a result. Due to all that craziness and the traffic, we reached Srinagar later than anticipated and I could not get the wheel fixed.

On the way to Kargil from Srinagar, before Zoji La. June, 2019

Next day was supposed to be the start of our ascent into the mountains. Zoji La was the first mountain pass that we would face. I looked it up the previous night on Google. With a bent wheel and a hurting butt and legs, I was not very sure how I was going to do it but it was not worth backing out. The morning it started drizzling in Srinagar. One would ideally wait for the sun to come out but we had to cross the Zoji La Pass as they might have closed it for vehicles if it rained and there was a landslide. So we started ascending. The visor was getting foggy and the roads underneath had turned to mere gravel and it was slippery because of the water flowing down. There was mud to traverse and for me especially, a wobbly handle to manage on legs that would hurt when the bike went off balance and the legs had to take on the weight of the motorcycle. In all of this, I lost my patience and revved up the motorcycle only to skid a little and pull the brakes just in time when I am about a feet away from the cliff. I opened the fogged visor for better visibility, saw how stupid I just had been and then took it from there - a bit slower from here on. In the distance somewhere were the other two - struggling just like me.

Maverick at the Zoji La Pass.
Zoji La. June, 2019

We go through all of this and reach the ZoJi La where we stopped over under a shade for tea and gathered around fire for heat. It hadn't stopped raining so we decided to make a quick exit except some water had now seeped into my gloves. And here comes the first snowfall I have ever seen! On my motorcycle, snow falling with all the white glaciers around - it would have been a pretty picture if the hands weren't freezing. I felt all the movement from my hands disappearing, almost becoming brittle. But there was no point stopping. I decided to ride till the check post which was about 20 km down. I reached there and took my gloves out to see my hands almost blue - I thought a frost bite had happened. I kicked the check post door open and put my hands near the fire, praying it would come back to life. The heat worked and I managed to get my hands working. We then drove from there to Kargil via Dras - one of the most beautiful stretches with great roads on the trip.

At the mighty Khardung La. June, 2019

Kargil to Leh the next day was a very peaceful ride compared to what had been happening on the expedition so far. Nice winding roads, sun shining, picturesque terrain that shifted every 15-20 odd km. I felt like I was 6 years old and listening to my father describing Ladakh from his time as I rode through that beautiful terrain. We reached Leh and spent a day there acclimatizing. Also in Leh I got my wheel repaired but worse was yet to come. We had to go to Nubra valley via Khardung La. Now, I had seen pictures of people posing at Khardung La - one of the highest motorable roads in the world, so I was not very concerned, especially after having taken on the Zoji La. However, snow had started falling in South Pullu itself - about 20 km from Khardung La. What it meant was when we reached the top, a horde of motorcycles and cars were queued up because there was ice on the road which made it extremely slippery for vehicles to drive and the army asked people to wait till they cleared it out. I saw motorcycles here not just skidding but spinning and crashing, seasoned riders crying and giving up finding ways to return. It was not just how difficult driving was but also the challenge of the altitude that does things to your will and grit. To spare all the dangerous details of what ensued, let me just say that it is advised to not stay for more than 15 minutes at that altitude, and I ended up spending an hour on that fateful day. We rode down to Nubra despite all of that and met a sandstorm on the way. I was not looking forward to coming back again to Khardung La the next day but it turned out to be much easier - perhaps because we had seen it already and were prepared for what it could look like.

In the next couple of days, we went around to visit the Pangong Lake - a landscape so surreal it had me in tears and led to a catharsis. I thought about all that I had endured on this trip, all the conversations, and the people that led me to this and was just thankful for having made it there. I thought about how it took more than just driving skills - perhaps luck or some sort of protection from above that kept me in one piece to be able to witness that spectacle before my eyes. The locus of control which had always been internal had shifted slightly outward.

Motorcycles covered in snow in Kargil.
Kargil, June, 2019.

The original plan that had been to come down to Delhi via Manali had to change. The Rohtang Pass was still not open due to snowing and we decided to come back via the same Kashmir route. Familiarity breeds comfort and I thought it would be easy but mother Nature had other plans. On the Leh to Kargil highway, we met another bout of snowfall and landslides which made it the worst riding day on the trip. With your hands and feet freezing and snow on your eyelids, with the rocks falling, there is very little you can do. At one point, I had to stop my motorcycle and ask an approaching Innova to help me unzip my jacket for me to be able to put my hands in my chest and get some body heat, amidst the falling snow. I then put my hand on the bike silencer for warmth but the silencer also was running cold. In all of that, there was no other option but to just ride to Kargil and find shelter in the hotel. All the gear was wet, and we heard there was 3 ft of snow in Dras which would keep the road closed for another 2 days. That was the end of the expedition. I made arrangements to reach Leh again next day and took a flight back, leaving my bike behind in Kargil, with the assurance from the organiser of a safe delivery of my bike back to Chennai.

I got my bike back only towards the end of July and that's when the trip actually ended for me. The motorcycle had returned with some dents and repair work to be done - and so had I. For about two and a half weeks back into the city life, I had a tough time adjusting to routine. Nightmares of glaciers trying to devour me and waking up to feeling cold because I had known that feeling of having been chilled to the bones. I attended workshops on leadership and decision-making at work, all the time thinking at the back of my mind of those decisions that would have made the difference between life and death or at least would have come at the cost of a limb. I remember having continued walking through the rain while others stopped under the shade, in the first couple of weeks since coming back. Why? Because it was only water and I knew I would be home in 15 min so there was nothing to worry about - not like my hands were freezing and the spirit crushed because I did not know if I would be making it back or not.

So that is the story of my motorcycle and me so far. What keeps you alive?