Ladhak – Heaven on earth. Tour Diaries, Day 1

It was a dream for me to ride to ladhak on a bike as its considered the most beautiful ride ever, but I never thot I could do it after my back problem in 2007. The doctor had strictly told me not to do too much biking and a 3000 Km round trip was certainly out of question.

A week before the journey Uttaran came to Delhi to drop his bike which he got from Banglore and to rent thunderbirds for the others for the trip, this was the first time I felt that I should go realize my dream, but the back pain that put me on bed for almost 2 months had not gone out of my head completely and I knew how bad I had suffered. So I sat down and decided what to do as I really didn’t want to miss it. SO I came up with the idea that no matter what if I start feeling the back pain I would immediately head back home, no straining the back more than its limit, doesn’t sound that simple but believe me I would follow that. So I was the last minute addition to the Gang of 7 now with 5 Bikes: Ankur (chotu), Ashish(Bandar), Uttaran(papa/bhokal), Gaurav (GK), Mohit (Katti), Varun and Sayarthi.

Sayarthi had arrived a day earlier and we had to get the 3 bikes we rented and Vijai Dixit was kinf enough to get the third one for us. Everyone else came late night on 7^th and stayed at Manu’s place, We had to start early morning next day.

Day1 (8^th August 09)

As usual we got up late, infact Ashish and Uttarn came to my house and woke us up :D .. so we started getting ready and since we were already late why not take our own time J .. so everyone got collected at my place and we had breakfast at my place, figured out how to use the Bungee chords to tie up the luggage and were set to go (at around 11 of course) … since I was the last minute entry I really didn’t know the plan for sure but today we planned to reach Chandigarh and the decision was not to ride more than 250-300 Km a day.

My House, Noida

One of the bikes started giving problems as soon as we started which is not really a gud sign, but luckily no major trouble and we were on the way. I am not new to the Delhi traffic and know all to move in the traffic. As we reached the Karnal by pass we gathered together and found that Sayarthis bike is not doing so gud. Oh! I did forget to tell you , Sayarthi had a 1988 Royal Enfield and it was not picking up speed, and 60 was the best it could do, and maybe the reason was that Sayarthi and Ashish were sitting on it. So we moved Ashish to another bike to give Sayarthis bike a breather and trust me the bike would have felt a lot better.

We stopped in at places for water and snacks and it was really really hot, slowly made our way to Ambala. Everyone was quite exhausted specially because of the heat and hungry, but here is where Bandar comes in, he had googled that there is a famous Puran Singh Dhaba in Ambala and we shall eat there only. There were Puran Singh Dhaba’s everywhere, so the fantic search for the right Puran Singh Dhaba started and lasted for almost half an hour on which it was decided that the one we found is the authentic Puran Singh and lets eat there. Trust me I would have eaten anywhere they would have taken me, the food was average and not really that great. Anyways we had a lot and finally moved on.

We took a diversion from Ambala and left behind the Chandigrah road and got onto the way to Rupnagar AKA Ropad. On the way there was a beautiful patch with wheat fileds on both sides of the road and the calm evening weather, I just loved the ride J wished it went on forever. After some time Katti took over and I was in the back seat njoing the view, after half an hour I couldn’t sit anymore the back had started hurting really bad, so I got back to riding the bike and seemed ok in a while. We reached Rupnagar around 6 PM and it was starting to get dark. Now the problem was to find a decent place to stay for the night.

As we stayed Ashish went on to find a Hotel and came back after half an hour to take us to the Hotel which was a bit too far, we had to cross a Railway Gate and when we reached ther we found out that GK is missing, on calling him we found out that the his bike has some problem, so Uttaran went to have a look, when they came back after 1 hr we burst into laughter that after a long time they finally discovered that the power button was off J.

We had a nice dinner in the hotel itself and went to sleep. It was going to be an early morning tomorrow.