Day 3 – (Manali – Darcha) 10th August 09
We had not driven for more than 2-3 Km and it started to rain, we as it is were not carrying many clothes and a heavy raincoat was out of the question, luckily I was carrying my Beeline raincoat ( or rainsheet u might say) and wore it, thanks for the effort we put in to buy covers for the luggage otherwise we would have been in deep shit.
As we continued the views were mesmerizing, we stopped and had tea for others to catch up, it was around 9 and the rain had stopped. We had tea and some bread butter for breakfast and carried on. We wouldn’t have gone far when we got into the heavy traffic jam of Rohtang pass.
The roads were all muddy and slippery, and we had to ride on the side of the cliff where one slip can do its thing, it was testing all our biking skills. We saw Sayarthi fall down in his bike (giggles) but luckily he wasn’t hurt. I got to the edge of the cliff once and my bike stopped, I asked Katti to get down and tried to get the bike out of there, but it wont move and if it slipped a bit I was goner, no matter how gud I ride, I am still a small fella and the bike was big so I tried again, and didn’t work. I took a deep breath relaxed a little and saw that I haven’t put it in a gear :P . that did it katti had chuckle about it and we were off again.
We had Maggie (Maggie is available everywhere, infact it’s the only thing available in many of the places and the 2 minute thing always works) and eggs at Rohtang pass, there was no snow and was the picture was very different to the one I had seen when I cam e here last in 1998.
Soon the roads were clear but the conditions were not rider friendly and Katti wanted to drive but gave it soon back to me, as he was really worried about my back. We saw a gang of about 50 westerners returning from the trip, all of them in their Bullet 500’s, it was a gud site to see.
We hit another roadblock when the cloth for dusting the bike got somehow entangled in the chain and had been stuck inside the cover, it was shredded to pieces and might harm things if it doesn’t come out, myself and GK being having small hands tried our best to retrieve whatever we cud, but there was a lot still stuck inside. And the tyre was rotating with a lot of friction, suddenly an idea came to my mind. I asked Uttaran to put the bike on main, put it in gear and accelerate full throttle, though there was a lot of friction, but it was just cloth and shredded to pieces and flew out when full throttle was applied, the plan had worked. The incident wasted almost an hour and we were ready to head off again.
We stopped at Tandi to refuel as it has a famous board saying last filling station for the next 365 KM. Another funny moment happened when Katti slipped in the dusty road to Keylong and because of the luggage on both sides he was unhurt.
Meanwhile the seal of the engine oil cap in my bike had broken and broken in a funny way, the cap had broken and the rest of it was still stuck inside so there was a very small hole from where the oil was coming out and ruining the jeans I borrowed from my brother :P …. The descent was decent from there on and we stopped at a mechanic shop in Keylong, to fix the engine oil problem as the oil was leaking and low engine oil can cause serious problems.
And the thing we dreaded happened, the spare was not available. On this point another brilliant idea (jugaad) came in Bandar’s mind and he said we can refill the engine oil daily with the use of a syringe, and myself and him headed out to find a hospital or a medical shop to get a syringe, we found a hospital and headed back, on the way back I was talking on the phone and found Ashish loose a bit of balance and fall on the side, I cut the call and immediately ran to help him J . An even more funnier thing happened a moment later, we were coming up on a steep slope and the bike wont pull, we tried every trick in the book and it wont pull up, with the breaks in one hand one leg down on a heavy bike I was like trying to do circus act. Then I asked ashish to get down and help me with maneuver and as soon as he got off, the bike just took off. So it was his little weight (100Kgs) that the bike was unable to bear :P .
We reached Darcha at almost sunset, found there were only a few tents to stay and we didn’t care as it is, had hot paranthas and loved them. Sayrathi found the gurl who owned the tent as cute, which was enough to pull his leg for the rest of the trip. Uttaran was carrying his tripod and we tried to take pictures of the clear sky full of stars I had seen after a long long time but no one succeeded. Time to head to bed.
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