Being alive giving you happiness!! Sounded like the stuff of philosophy and self help books to me. Today morning, though, I was glad I was alive. I made it out of the dark chilling night. In one piece.
Checked on bike. This is what it looked like after a couple of hours of sunshine.
A thought struck my head. I was going to name this bike FROSTY. Well, Frosty. Welcome to the world. Its a cold, deadly place and time to be born in but I guess that is what will give you character.
On my way to Leh, I had nothing to hurry. I had to cover barely 140 kilometers in the day. I had company of a SUV driver whose gearbox was screwed and couldn’t ride in any higher than third gear. So we followed each other. Stopping once in a while to drink water and energy bars. Slowly but steadily we kept going. The first hour or so is spent in negotiating the boringly long Morey Plains. Straight, bumpy roads. Unfortunately for us, the road was almost completely under construction and we had to make over 20 diversions to stay straight.
Finally, we were at Tanglangala. The last pass before Leh. It was bad surface. Broken. Gravel and sand. Water. Ice. Absolutely the worst. We encountered little traffic. On the top, I reached this post which said the final shot to Leh is 111 kilometers. I was going to make it, I thought to myself.
We stopped at Rumtse for tea. And then shot full speed to Leh. It was stark topography. You ride constantly in the shadow of high mountains with loose rock cover. It is cold since there is no sunlight at the bottom.
Soon enough, though, you hit Upshi. There is bright sunlight. And you meet the Indus. The might Indus in its baby form. A rather sobering thought.
Reaching Leh was a rather subdued feeling. There was no immediate sense of accomplishment. No relief. Nothing special. The place I had been waiting for, could it be so understated. I was expecting a bang. I didn’t even get a whimper.
Only after a couple of hours, lying in my bed in the hotel, receiving messages from friends did I realize that this was it. I had laboured and won. One year of waiting and hearing random comments from people. One year of pining and pain. One year of figuring out when will I get there. And one bold decision later, I was here. I was home.
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