1. It’s not about the Bike – my journey back to life by Lance Armstrong (non-fiction): fucking awesome – I loved the way Lance wrote and while reading this one, I got a lot senti a lot of times – may be because I realized Lance was kinda like I am – may be
2. The Story of my Assassins by Tarun Tezpal (Fiction): this was one of those stories that highlight how things work in India – the government, the goons, the poor, the lawyers, the journalists, the businessmen – the English seemed forced and the humor not so natural for the first 200 pages but later I got used to the style
3. Short Stories of Himachal Pradesh by Meenakshi (fiction): in the first page itself the writer had mentioned that those who know how to read Hindi should read the story in the original language than in English – well, that pretty much killed the fun but I read the book anyway – ten local folk tales from Himachal Pradesh – I read it before leaving for Himachal and as I am writing this post, I can recall only one story – so well either my memory is bad or the stories weren’t all that grasping – I leave that on you to decide
   
4. Recent Research of Ladakh 2009 (collection of recent essays): need I write any more?
   
5. Ladakh Adventures – the snow leopard by Deepak Dalal (fiction): this was like an English version of an extended crappy story from Suman Saurabh (don’t tell me you never read it in school) – so yeah, I could have liked this book ten years back – I had loads of time in Leh and I didn’t mind reading some local story, however crappy it could be
6. Into Thin Air by John Krakaeur (non-Fiction): this book talked about an Everest expedition that went horribly and tragically wrong – the author was one of the lucky few survivors – after reading it I realized how much I want to do the Everest (will insh-allah do it some day) – I loved the way this book was written, kept me hooked till the book was done
   
7. Many Lives Many Masters by Dr. Brian L. Weiss (non-fiction): if this was non-fiction, this was scary – this doc who wrote the book was a psychiatrist who found a patient who could talk about past-lives when hypnotized – this book made me go crazy and I still wonder if what the doc wrote really happened, because if it did, then shit man, shit!
8. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon (fiction): I liked it because the entire book was so cutely narrated in first person by an eight year old kid – the kid was a stud in maths and logic but had some wiring problem in his brain because of which his emotions were all screwed up
   
9. Phantoms in the Brain by V.S. Ramachandran (non-fiction): I can safely proclaim that this book is a must read – one of those few non-fictions that really fascinate and educate you at the same time – read it to know how neurologists are trying to figure out how exactly does the brain work
10. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts (fiction): have read only 1/3rd of this 900+ pages bestseller written in first person and have so far, loved both the style of writing, and the story – and omg, this book has just so many quotable quotes – I have collected 34 quotes already, so you can imagine

And now here’s a request – please be nice and recommend books to me. Please please please.

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Complete links for Diary#1-13: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]

When I had told about my biking plans to Subbu, he had the following advice for me: “leh mein jo screw gira hai dhoond len[a] iss baar“. I was going to Leh for the third time and he was very sure I was nuts.

On 4th October 2009 – a Sunday, I returned from Leh to Bhubaneswar. I was sitting on the guest-house couch when Pratap brought a steaming mug of coffee for me. I switched on the TV as I took the first sip. It was the NatGeo channel. An American dude was driving a car over the highest motorable road in the world, over the Khardung La! He went all the way to the Nubra Valley and then he returned to Leh. When the show ended, I looked at Pratap, grinned and declared – I was here today morning. He looked at me, offered a wry smile which told me he still didn’t understand how I had managed to burn my entire face merely with sun-rays. He took away the empty mug from me and disappeared in the kitchen. I closed my eyes and ran the last few days inside my head.

Last Monday, in Rumtse, God sent two friends to give me company. The same day, the three of us managed to reach Leh. The next day – Tuesday, happened to be the first day after the start of my biking trip when I did not have to touch my bike. We roamed around in the small town, checked out the Leh Palace, ate and drank. The day went perfect until finally, in the evening, a bad news ruined it. I realized in the evening that my plan for the next four days had been fucked.

The next day – Wednesday, I was to leave for the Nubra Valley (while House and Kapoor were to leave for Kashmir). Nubra Valley was 150 Kms north of Leh and to reach there one needed to cross the highest motorable road in the world – the Khardung La. I had been to Nubra Valley on a bus back in 2006, during my first visit to Ladakh with family. Back then, sitting inside that two by two J&K state transport bus, I had seen two middle aged firang cyclists, one man and one woman, riding their red coloured beasts over a killing climb on their conquest of Khardung La. I had never seen mountain-bikers before. When I saw them, I knew I had to do mountain-biking some day. Over the years, that desire got lost somewhere. The depressions of IIT, the confusions of life, the problems with girls, the limited time to travel and less limited money – all of these made me forget about the bikes and the mountains. But suddenly, two years of IIT and one year of job later, one fine day things fell in place just like that. Suddenly I had everything I needed to fulfill the long lost desire: physical strength, time and money. Thus began the amazing journey from Manali to Leh (with of course a warming up session in Indore ) and with my successful arrival in Leh, without one single accident – not even a single flat tire, there wasn’t anything more left to be accomplished. But the thing was, there was no way I could have spent time alone in Leh for the next four days, that too without my only two friends. This is exactly why, even after having cycled so much, I had come up with a plan. A plan for the next four days. The plan was simple: reach Nubra in the first two days and return to Leh in the next two. Of course, this also meant doing the Khardung La twice but who the fuck was afraid, haan?

So yeah, the plan was simple and yet it got fucked up simply because this travel agent who was supposed to get me the permit that was needed for visiting Nubra, failed to do so by Tuesday. He told this to me in the evening and I cursed him because I had given him ample time! He promised he would get the permit to me the next day.

When I got up the next day, I found that it wasn’t just my plan that gotten fucked up. House had suddenly fallen sick in the stomach. So Kapoor decided to postpone their trip by a day. Though I felt sorry was House I was happy that I had company again. Once again, we roamed around in the small town, ate and drank. Later that day, I got my permit finally. By evening, even House was feeling better.

Finally on Thursday, I left for Khardung La (and as I found out later, House and Kapoor managed to leave for Kashmir after as well – a few hours after me). I had an altered plan this time: do the Khardung La, and roll down the other side to reach whatever village came first, stay in the village the next day, and on the third day, cycle back to Leh. Once again, the plan was simple. Once again, it got fucked. You would get to know how.

Khardung La was a full forty kilometers from Leh and 100% of it was uphill taking one up from an altitude of 3.6k (11,800 ft) to 5.6k (18, 400 ft). I don’t know if they were the beer sessions of the past three days that I felt a little weak that day, but weak I did feel. I  kind of also missed House and Kapoor. But then life ain’t about missing people or things that aren’t around you. Life is about enjoying the presence of people and things that are around you.

Many a times I felt like turning back. At one point, I felt so weak that I slept atop a rock for like half an hour. Reaching the top took away every ounce of energy from my body and almost all of day. It was five in the evening when I was finally at the top.

It was only when I reached the top that I finally noted that Khaltse was the nearest village where I could find accommodation on the other side of Khardung La and the road all the way to Khaltse was a complete downhill. There was just one problem – Khaltse was 55 fucking kilometers away. This also meant that, if I rolled down and stayed there, then to be able to return to Leh, I needed to climb up 55k uphill in a single day. Suddenly it looked like a bad idea. I had already cycled over one of the most amazing roads in this world, self-supported. I had already cycled all the way to the highest-motorable road in this world. It was absolutely pointless to roll down 55k to reach some random village when I couldn’t even go all the way to Nubra valley. It made little sense. And thus I decided to head back towards Leh. The first and the last accident during the entire trip happened before I could make it to Leh.

It was seven in the evening. The sun had set but the moon shone. The moon was even brighter than what it had been during the Pang-Rumtse struggle. Besides the light of the moon, and that of the stars, there was no other light. The road was going down and down. I was rolling down at a not-so-slow speed. I could not spot a not-so-small pebble lying in the centre of an otherwise perfect tarmac. The front wheel hit the pebble. The bike jolted. I lost balance. I was hurled off the bike. My chin banged hard the cold asphalt. The bike fell all over my legs. I went cold. I felt blood trickling from around the chin and flowing over the neck. I went so cold that I couldn’t move for at least a minute. It was quite an effort to crawl out from under the bike but finally I did. I didn’t want any truck to run me down. I pulled the bike to the road-side. Once secured from the risk of being run down, I sat down next to my bike, looking up the sky. It hurt if I tried to bend my neck. It hurt if I moved my jaw. The blood was still dripping off the chin. The temperature felt like dropping every second and I found myself shivering inside my clothes. I kept sitting and waited to feel strong again.

Finally I got up, took out some cotton from my bag and pressed it against my skin to stop the blood-flow. I sat down again and started contemplating on my next move.

I knew I wasn’t cycling till the sun rose over the horizon. Leh was good 20k away and if I continued rolling down in the dark, an accident like this could happen again. I recalled the power of love between the moon and the werewolf that had carried the werewolf safely to Rumtse. I wondered what went wrong tonight. And then I realized that nothing really had gone wrong. True love has always made people bleed. The werewolf was bleeding, the moons’ love was true.

As I sat down that night, holding pieces of cotton against my chin, shivering in the cold, I saw a bottle of Mountain Dew lying on the road. The bottle had fallen off from one of my bags when the bike had fallen down. Earlier that day, while climbing up, I had to pick up MD from the only stall between Leh and Khardung La simply because I had run out of the water that I had, and MD was the best substitute that the guy at the stall could offer. The right hand busy, trying to stop blood from flowing, I picked up the MD bottle lying on the road with my left hand and emptied it. It tasted good and finally I stopped feeling cold.

An open flat area was soon found, where I spread my sleeping bag and slept inside it for the rest of the night. The air remained cold, but as the night grew older, I started to like the chill. It was a crazy cold night that I spent empty stomach and wounded. And yet, I liked everything about the night.

It was only when I had checked in a hotel in Leh the next day that I got to inspect myself in a mirror. A small chunk of flesh and skin had disappeared from right below the chin and it looked ugly and gross, especially with several wavering white strands of cotton that had permanently mingled with the mess of the wound. This time my I imagined myself to be Akshay Kumar from the latest Thumbs Up commercial where he gets himself and is car burnt and all that “kar liya boss, kar liya – Khardung La kar liya“.

I had checked into a new hotel this time – one which had an apple tree inside. The room came cheap for 200 bucks a day. For the rest of the two days in Leh, I kept reading books purchased from local book stores and kept meeting and speaking to random strangers. I met Jai, an American who had been a Sadhu in India for many years. He must have been over 50 years old. His hair and beard were long and flowing like that of most Sadhus except that they were curly white and golden. He wore a Rudraksh and a saffron Kurta and loved throwing away crisp biscuits to local street dogs. Jay and I talked about religion and Durga and Sadhus and Swamis and Paramhansa and the Kumbha Mela. Then there was this old French guy called Bruno. He was a devout disciple of Maharaji. He told me his Guru’s greatest teaching: God lies inside you – peace lies inside you. Everything that really matters is inside you.

One evening, on my last day in Leh, when the owner uncle of the apple tree house saw me reading ‘Into Thin Air’, sitting in his courtyard, he said to me “what is this beta? Go out, roam around. See more of Leh. You can read the book even when you are gone. Hai ki nahi“? I closed the book, roamed around and then later in the night, sat in a roof top bar, all alone and sipped Kingfisher. I wished House and Kapoor were there and I didn’t have to sit alone on my last night in Leh. And then I thought how it is so important sometimes to lose friends to realize how important they are.

The flight to Bhubaneswar the next day was via Delhi. An old (Indian) man at the Delhi airport, who was behind me in the boarding-pass issuing counter, had a look at my t-shirt. I was wearing a dark blue t-shirt that read ‘Manali to Leh’ near the chest and www.vatsap.com near the tummy, with a picture of a mountain bike in the centre. I had ordered this t-shirt in a shop in Leh, where they could produce any design you asked them, using threads and sewing machine. So this old man saw my t-shirt and then had a look at my packed bike and asked me if I was coming from a Manali to Leh cycling trip. I smiled at him and nodded. It was my moment of glory. I could see everyone in the queue, staring at my burnt out and scarred face in that kind of awe that touches you at the very core of your heart.

Throughout the first week after the trip, every day while I sat in office, I felt like a soldier who loves fighting at the front-line but has been called back to the head-quarters to sit inside a safe shelter and do intellectual paper-work. I had managed to put myself in such a different world – a surreal world – a world that had an aim, a purpose, an overflowing smile of strangers and sweet memories of the loved ones who weren’t there with me but whom I remembered one after another, every day. It was a good trip. And like all good things in life it ended. I didn’t bike or run for a week after coming back. Then I tried running and it hurt so much that I could not walk for two days. And then I ran and ran till the legs gave up and I was back on track.

When I don’t run, I read books. When I don’t read books, I read porn and masturbate. When I am not jerking off, I login to Facebook and share videos, “like” other’s updates and update my own status messages once in a while even when the updates don’t mean a thing. When I get bored of all this, I close my eyes and go back to the Himalayas and every time I do that, I feel good about life and everything else. One day, I am climbing the Mount Everest.

PS: This is how I looked when I returned to Bhubaneswar finally

Complete links for Diary#1-13: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]

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Complete links for Diary#1-13: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]

After getting a chance to get connected after more than a week, it was time for me to boast a little. Following was my Facebook status on the evening of 28 September 2009. It was a Monday and I was finally in Leh.

Let me go back to the day before – a Sunday, when I was still cycling in the dark and when Rumtse was still an unknown distance away. There is something that I forgot to write about in the last post.

Somewhere around eight in the night, I spotted a tent on the side of the road. A yellow bulb glowed inside. There was just one guy in there – the operator of that way side amenity. I asked him if he had any bed to offer for the night. Yes, he had. I asked him if he had food. Yes, he had Maggie. I asked him if I was in Rumtse. No, Rumtse was further 5k down. And then I left that place.

When I look back, I wonder why I did that – why I didn’t eat there and sleep there. I mean, I had been willing to sleep empty stomach under the sky some time back and now that I had finally found a tented shelter and hot food, I simply moved on! Logic cannot explain this. I was following my instincts.

Something was odd about staying there. I was the only customer. The guy smelled of booze. And from whatever little conversation I had with him, I didn’t feel like spending the rest of the night away from the main village. May be if I reach Rumtse, I can get something better to eat for dinner at least. This was a very vague logic. But then, I had been running on instincts and hunches. Surprisingly, as I would discover later, the decision to move on happened to be a good decision.

I kept cycling till I finally made it to Rumtse. No, I didn’t get to eat anything better than Maggie even there. But something nice happened the next day.

(the room where I stayed in Rumtse)

I was having an early morning stroll in the small village – a real village after so many days. I saw real houses, not make-shift tents. I saw local horses grazing over the yellow and green and golden fields. I saw ladies collecting heaps of dry hay in wooden baskets and depositing them over the roofs of their houses. And then I saw two firangs. One was tall and in a quaint sort of way looked like Dr. House. The other was much short and in another quaint sort of way reminded me of Shashi Kapoor (from that time when the actor wasn’t an over inflated balloon).

House and Kapoor told me they worked in London. This was their first visit to India. House was originally from South Africa while Kapoor’s dad was an Indian who had moved to UK before Kapoor was born. And then they told me, they were on bicycles as well. Fuck! I finally had company! This is when I was happy I had followed my instincts and had decided against spending the last night either under the sky or in that first tent that I had reached.

Soon we realized that all of us had started in Manali the very same day – the last Monday! The reason we never met each other till then was that, I – on account of having arrived in Manali on Monday itself – had absolutely failed to reach Marhi by evening (and had to spend an entire night along the road side), while they, having arrived in Manali on Sunday had been able to leave on Monday morning and had thus made it to Marhi by evening.

We would never have met if like me, they had done the Pang-Rumtse stretch in a single day. They had been carrying a tent and stove and had camped in the Morey Plains for a night before they took the mighty Tang Lang La.

As we started to get to know each other over the coffee and breakfast that we had in Rumtse, I was convinced they were God’s gift to me. All these days that I had been on the road, I had never needed much company. I had been cycling, struggling, talking to nature, listening to nature. But what was to happen on reaching Leh? What was I to do there, all alone for full five days? Suddenly, I had none of this to think about.  Suddenly, I didn’t have to worry about company.

We left for Leh together we stayed in Leh together, till of course, it was time for them to leave for Kashmir and for me to leave for Khardung La – more on that in the last post in this bicycle diary series.

So that Monday, with House and Kapoor to give me company, I left for Leh. I was so happy and excited that I cruised like crazy. The road was awesomely smooth throughout and 80% of it was a solid downhill. After days of barren mountains all around, there finally were trees – mostly Poplar. There finally was greenery. A different kind of verdant natural beauty had suddenly taken over the surroundings. Every few seconds, these two dudes would exclaim – ‘this is epic, man’. I couldn’t have agreed more.

(the first noticeable Chorten – between Rumtse and Leh)

(Dr. House and Shashi Kapoor)

(this is epic man!)

(cruising with excitement)

The only stretch that slightly killed us was the last 10k to Leh. But then, the mere fact that Leh was merely 10k away, made sure that all three of us pushed real hard. By three in the afternoon, we had already made ourselves comfortable in our respective rooms in a good hotel in Leh. Once they were gone to their room and I sat in mine and I had a look at the double bed in my room, I missed Neelabh. One reason, why I hadn’t checked in the same hotel where I had stayed earlier in May (when I had flown to Leh with Neelabh) was because I knew that if I did that, I was only going to miss him more.

When I saw my face in the mirror, I shrieked with disgust. I was staring at a dusty block of charcoal. Once the initial shock of recognition subsided, I noticed my blackened image giving me a smile. I smiled back. We – my reflection in the mirror and I felt like the two Akshay Kumars from a recent Thumbs Up ad. Akshay Kumar needed to take a bath. Akshay Kumar hadn’t had a bath since the last five days.

When the three of us were having beer later in the night in an open air bar, it was hard to imagine that I had met them only in the morning. We chit-chatted and guffawed like we had been langotia cycling phrands.

These two dudes happened to be full time cycling enthusiasts. They were about 35 years old but absolutely fit. Besides UK, they had biked in several other countries in Europe. Kapoor had even done Tibet. And once he had taken one year off from work and cycled from the north of America to its south. Yes, for one full year. And then he asked me this.

“So, Eimwrit, have you ever been to America”? I told him I hadn’t.

“Well, then let me tell you something. In the last seven days, I saw more colours, sniffed more smell and felt more warmth here in India than I had done during one full year of cycling in America”.

You only needed to look into his eyes to realize that he really meant it. Suddenly, I felt proud to be an Indian. As we continued sipping our beers, I wondered if Kapoor felt a little sad at the fact that his dad had taken away from him, the chance of being born an Indian and the chance of growing up in a country that was so full of colours and smell and warmth. I refilled my mug, raised it in the air and exclaimed “ and this one for getting Leh’d finally. They raised their mugs of beer in response, and together we had our last sips of satisfaction for the night.

Complete links for Diary#1-13: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]

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He looked a lot like her. He was her dad. I shouldn’t say he looked like her. I should say she looked like her dad. I wondered when I had last seen LOLy. In May this year. And I wonder if I would get to see her again any time this year.

Uncle was in Bhubaneswar for delivering some seminar. Before we met in his hotel room day before yesterday, we had only heard about each other. And yet when we met, it never felt like it was the first time. At least, not to me. May be because I saw LOLy in him. We raised our glasses of Signature to each other and as we took the first sips, I felt I was back with LOLy.

We talked about lot of things. Chetan Bhagat. IIT. My work. His work. LOLy. Gujarat. Orissa. Ports. Ships. For a long time uncle had served as a captain in various ships. I asked him about his worst experience in sea so far.

‘I usually don’t talk about this to anyone but I would answer you. We were on this ship – your aunty and me. LOLy wasn’t born then. But we had an elder son. He was a li’l over two years old. And then he fell down from five stories and died. The next shore was nine days away and we didn’t have the heart to do a sea-burial. So we spent nine days on the ship with our dead child. This has been the worst experience in sea so far’.

My daadi had once told me that she had a son elder to dad. She lost him when he was still a kid. I had not known how to react then. I had always thought my dad had been the eldest and suddenly I was being told that he had an elder brother who had died even before dad was born. I had always though LOLy was the eldest and suddenly I was being told that she had an elder brother who had died even before she was born.

Suddenly my biggest loss so far looked so puny in front of such grave losses that I felt God has been to0 good to me so far. Life. Such a weird phenomena. Live on!

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Pang was freezing cold when I got up. I opened the tap of a steel water container kept outside the tent where I had crashed in the night. I wanted to brush my teeth. Nothing came out of the container. I opened the cover to see if it had water. It didn’t. It had ice inside. That’s when I realized it actually was freezing cold – literally. I didn’t want to brush my teeth anymore.

It was a Monday when I had left Manali and by Saturday I had reached Pang. It had been six continuous days of cycling. And yet when I got up in Pang on the early Sunday morning I did not feel like taking a break. I had felt the same in Keylong. I had felt the same in Sarchu. There was absolutely no way I could have spent one full day in any of these places, doing nothing. I regretted not carrying any book with me because if I had, I probably could have managed to pass my time by reading something, letting my body rest. Between the choice of dying of boredom and dying of exhaustion I chose the latter. I checked up my notes before leaving Pang to recall what the manager in Keylong had told me about this route: from Pang the road would go up for like four kilometers after which Morey Plains start and stretch for the next 47 kilometers ending with a small climb taking one over the second highest motorable road in the world – Tanglang La. Few kilometers down this pass is the village of Rumtse – the only village after Pang.

As I was riding the initial 4k uphill (which ended to be 5k by the way), I felt like masterbating under the sky. Like most guys, I have always had this fetish to jerk off in all kinds of weird places. There is nothing more weird than doing it in the open. The most exotic venue till then had been an under sea-water act. So yeah, it had been more than ten days of abstinence and suddenly I felt like masterbating under the sky and then I went ahead and did it. I had my first open air high altitude orgasm. Of course it felt good. Had the direction been right my underdeveloped offspring could have as well landed in China.

Soon the Morey Plain began. Though it looked like one, it wasn’t all plain plain you know. Someone travelling on a motorized vehicle would probably not notice the mild positive slopes and the mild negative slopes of the Morrey planes, but I did. This stretch presented a great optical illusion as well. I could see barren brown hills on all sides and at any point of time, it always looked like in the next fifteen minutes I was going to reach the hill right in front of me and then the plain would end. But the plains never ended and the hills always remained as far away as they appeared. This went on and on. For hours. For 47 kilometers. And then I saw a white coloured tent. I decided then and there that I wanted to take a break there. I could see the road going up ahead of me. I could also see a milestone that said Tanglang La was 16k away. Believe me, you will never feel like taking on a pass which would take you 2000 ft high up in merely 16k, if by the time you have approached the ascent, you have already cycled like 50 kilometers.

So I stopped, entered the tent and demanded a tea.

‘We are shutting off. We have nothing’. I couldn’t react for a while. The reality took some time to sink in but it finally did. The guys there at the tent were busy loading stuff on two trucks. They were packing off. The season had ended. I felt hollow from inside. I took out few rotis from my bag that I had been carrying from Pang. They had hardened by now and I ate them without feeling much.

Alright, Tanglang La, here I come.

The word that I would use for the Tanglang La ascent is: bone-chilling. This one was the hardest so far. I wondered if I should have restrained my carnal desires to save every bit of energy for this pass. The ascent was merciless. The last 5k before the pass was so un-doable that I almost felt like taking a lift from some passing by truck. And yet, something inside me was dead against this lift idea. I had checked out several blogs and biking forums but had so far, not found a single person who had tried doing Pang to Rumtse in a single day and without a lift or without the privilege of some support-vehicle carrying your luggage. I wished I could throw away my bags. I wished someone could offer me fresh juice. I wished the earth opened up and swallowed me in.

It took me full five hours and half a dabba of Glucose to climb that earth shattering 16k of the uphill and when I finally reached the top, I was a full-dead dog. I had picked up a consistent cough and now found it difficult to breathe. And of course I was hungry and was totally fed up of eating Glucose and biscuits. I wanted real food. And yet, none of these physical discomforts prevented me from feeling extremely victorious and joyful. Even when the pass was totally extremely secluded and empty. I had made it to the second highest motorable road in the world at 5.325 Km above sea level – and I had made it all on my own.

It was 5:30 in the evening when I had finally reached the top and Rumtse was like 25 kilometers away. Ah – so the manager at Keylong had totally forgotten to inform me about this bit! The downhill that began was over pathetic roads – the same old pebbles and stones and stuff. It started to get dark and I just couldn’t speed up, thanks to the fucked up road. I literally pleaded to God to turn the surface smooth so that I could reach Rumtse before the sun could set. And then the sun set. Rumtse was still kilometers away. The road was still pathetic. This was when I stopped pleading. If God wanted to kill me, I was not going to beg for mercy – I decided. That’s exactly when the surface finally turned smooth.

The road turned so smooth that had it been day time, I would have once again sung Kishore Kumar songs as I rolled down. But there was no sun this time. A blink of an eye, and I could fall off into some valley down below. The moon shone up above in the sky, and under its faint light, I kept rolling down, as slow as possible, as cautiously as possible. I felt like werewolf. This was a psychedelic experience. As time passed, it started getting cooler and cooler and soon I was on the verge of shivering. When even by 7:30 PM I saw no trace of any village I decided to stop cycling in the dark. An accident could happen any second, I was sure. I stopped. I felt like stretching my sleeping bag somewhere along the road-side and wait for the sun to come out again. And then I looked up in the sky. I saw the moon. She was beautiful and she winked at me. I felt I was in love after a long long time. And when you are in love, you never do the logical things.

I got up, hit the saddle and continued riding in the dark – I was going to trust my moon, and her radiance was going to guide my path. The werewolf’s path. The radiance of the heavenly lover guided the werewolf all the way to Rumtse. The werewolf had his chaai and Maggie and slept like he had never slept before.

Complete links for Diary#1-13: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]

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Complete links for Diary#1-13: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]

When I got up in Sarchu the next day, I knew that Pang was 75 kilometers away. What I didn’t know was, what lay ahead in the route.

‘There are no passes in this route, right’? I asked the owner of the stall where I had put up for the night. He was making the morning tea for me and the other customers.

‘There are two passes in this route’, he replied with a grin as he handed me my cup of tea.

‘Shit, is there any place I can halt at before Pang’?

‘No. By the way, the first pass is at 16,200 ft and the next at 16,600′.

Stop scaring me you asshole.

‘I see. Would I find food somewhere in between’?

‘No. But common, if you have done Rohtang La and Baralacha La and have reached all the way to Sarchu, you can easily do these two. Here, have your bread-omlette’.

I realized it was going to be a tough day. When you are mountain-biking, a ‘pass’ means a lot – it means that you have to climb up some crazy mountain. You can never appreciate the struggle that mountain-climbing on a bike involves till you have tried it yourself. I am not complaining because after all it is this very struggle that makes mountain-biking what it is – you torture yourself while ascending, reach the top and then roll down. That’s pretty much the pattern and every time you do it, you feel good about life and everything else. Every time you do it, you feel like a winner. But then two passes in one day? This was like squeezing two day’s of struggle into one. The very idea was frightening. And yet there was nothing I could do about it. So I quietly finished my breakfast.

Since I had done Rohtang La and Baralacha La and had reached all the way to Sarchu, I could easily do these passes. Yeah right!

A sculptor from Delhi who had arrived in Sarchu the last night on his Safari with his wife, a daughter and a dog, wished me all the best. He had come from Leh and was headed towards Manali. He left for Manali. I left for Pang. Biscuits and two rotis were all I had to eat till I could reach Pang. I had no idea how long I was going to take to reach there, if at all. Two bloody passes!!

The fantastically well paved downhill straight roads that had brought me to Sarchu continued for like twenty kilometers once I left Sarchu. I almost forgot about the passes that lay ahead. I was once again enjoying a zero strain ride; hands off the handle – stretched in the air imitating the wings of a flying bird, toes resting lazily on the peddles, eyes devouring the picturesque landscape. Many a times, I stopped and clicked pictures. Everything was like a dream. I didn’t want it to end. And then it ended. The dream ended when I saw a yellow sign-board.

(The fantastically well paved downhill straight roads that had brought me to Sarchu continued for like twenty kilometers once I left Sarchu)

The signboard declared the start of Gata loops – a set of 21 hair-pin bends, each loop taking you higher up on the mountain that lay in front. When I began the ascent, I thought I would keep a count of each loop. Somewhere during the ride, I forgot the count.

I guess only five more loops are left. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Eh, more uphill? Ok, I guess only two more loops now. Two, one. Eh, still more? Alright, I am not counting them. Fuck.

(caught somewhere in the loop)

When I finally spotted yet another yellow signboard which said ‘Gata loops end’, I was so fucking relieved. I was so fucking happy. And then I realized that something was wrong. Something was horribly wrong.

The loops had ended but the road was still going up. When I saw no trace of any pass even after a kilometer, I felt like banging my head on the tarmac till I could bleed to death. It’s difficult to keep cycling on uphills but it’s mother-fuckingly insane when you don’t even know how long the agony is going to continue! One kilometer. Then one more. Then another. And then I was crying. I wished I were carrying the details of the route with me. And then I stopped wishing and kept pushing. Before I could collapse, I finally made it to the first pass of the day – Nakeela, at 4.9 K above sea-level. Phew!

The downhill after Nakeela ended so soon that the very prospect of taking yet another pass left me shocked. The place from where the ascent for this pass number two started was called Whisky Nallah. Pang was 30k away from Whisky Nallah. I had no fucking clue as to what percentage of this 30k distance was uphill. This was bad. This was so bad that for quite some time, I simply kept sitting at Whisky Nallah, munching biscuits and sipping water.

I had to gather myself. I wondered why they had named this place Whisky Nallah. Before the Gata Loops had begun, I had crossed a bridge that had been named Brandy bridge. I wondered what was this thing about naming bridges and valleys on liquors? And when I couldn’t come up with any answer, I decided to take on the second pass.

I don’t much remember how I climbed up. I cannot recall anything – what I saw, how I felt. Nothing. The physical pain had become irrelevant. The eyes were not registering any image. My entire consciousness was focused on just one thing – reach the top. It worked. The resoluteness of the mind drove me to the top after a mammoth effort of two hours. The Lachulung La top. The second pass of the day. Over 5k above sea level.

From then on, I didn’t have to peddle much but the roads that had been good so far, turned into an annoying bed of boulders and pebbles and shit. The road passed through narrow gorges which shone in various shades as the sun kept getting lower over the horizon. I was happy I was finally in a state where I could at least admire my scenic surroundings. When I finally reached Pang after being on road for eleven hours that day, I was very sure I didn’t want to ride my bike the next day.

Inside the tent that I chose to stay in, a BRO labour was having Maggie. He was delighted to find out that I was from Bihar. Like most labours out there, he was from Jharkhand. He left after finishing his Maggie.

A guy who had brought some firangs from Manali to Pang on horses, came later to have tea in the same stall. He had been a guide on a fourteen day trek. The firangs had left on a jeep and he had to take back the horses. But the horses were too weak to move for at least a day. So he needed to stay in Pang.

The labour from Jharkhand, when returned to buy some booze from the stall, confused the horse dude with me.

‘So how did you come to Pang’? the labour asked the horse dude.

‘I walked all the way’, the horse dude replied.

‘How could you have walked all the way from Bihar’?

I had a nice laugh and then I went to sleep. I think I saw horses in my dream.

I was five and he was six
We rode on horses made of sticks
He wore black and I wore white
He would always win the fight
Pang Pang

He shot me down, Pang Pang
I hit the ground , Pang Pang
That awful sound, Pang Pang
My baby shot me down

Complete links for Diary#1-13: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]

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