Manali > Leh
I grew up with the negatives of my Dads Olmypus 100 crammed into a wooden cabinet behind the dinner table. Any extended pause in meal time conversation was often greeted with the drawers being opened and stories of the 80s hippie trail being recounted in geographical detail. My parents had lived in India for over half a year, walking through a Himalayan winter between Srinagar, Kashmir, Ladakh and Nepal. The slides showed an array of mountain scenery with my parents gaunt faces smiling out from faded down jackets after a few months lean lentil based living at altitude. The trip defined them and clearly left its mark on me.
After a fair few years living in Asia intensely fuelling an obsession with the world of two-wheeled adventure and adrenaline as part of Shanghais booming bike scene, thoughts about doing their trip by bike began to gain momentum. After trading adventure stories for morning after morning of post ride caffeinated excitement with a deeply inspiring crowd the window of opportunity presented itself. A large cardboard box was fished out of a skip and kit was laid out with instagram precision.
The trip didn’t get of to a good start. A cancelled flight turned a would-be 1 hour luxury transit into a 10 hour car and bus stomach jerker. Late night bike assembly brought further grim realisation and after trying a number of duct tape and zip tie based solutions a trip to the hardware market was on the cards for the following morning. Dark clouds rumbled over far off ridge lines as quickly diminishing optimism for the trip ran dry. Still they say where there is a will there is a way and in nowhere is it more true than in India. A generous bounty was offered up to the growing crowd of interested hawkers, pipe sellers and power tool owners and so began the chaotic design process of making a 23.6x40mm stem shim from standard issue plastic piping.
Six hours later and now a good day and a half behind schedule I rolled out of Manali under darkening skies keen to get ticking off the kms on the itinerary. It didn’t take long for the road to start winding upwards and after a hectic 48 hours I was very relieved to fall into that familiar meditative rhythm of turning the pedals.
The buzz of beginning the adventure and putting all the google searching, strava trawling and kit checking into action slowly subsided into the fatigue that comes with pushing a 25kilo rig up a 5000m pass. A bed was paid for, chai was ordered, lights out before 8.
The next few days followed a similar pattern of 40km intervals interspersed with daal, chappatti or both. The altimeter clocked forever upwards as lactic built and the heart rate became more difficult to reign in. The route from Manali to Leh seemed to run perpendicular to the geography of the Himalayan foothills, rather than cruising through the valleys it intersected the Zanskar, Ladakhi + Morey Plains in varying degrees of weather conditions and road quality. After every pass the landscape seemed to shift completely, changing between alpine scenery to barren desert-scapes to sci-fi lunar filmsets. The colours changed with the kilometres as the green of the tree-line was replaced with the pale yellows of scorched grass and dark reds of iron rich striations, snow fields and glacial lakes refracted cloudless skies recreating those same postcard views I’d grown up with.
On the third day the obnoxious horn of a large truck shattered my pensive soul-searching and in the ensuing panic I came perilously close to a 50 ft drop. As the truck hauled onwards, blowing a big puff of noxious fumes into my face for good measure, I felt lucky to have escaped unscathed. When the dust settled however I noticed my phone crushed dramatically into the gravel track i’d been grinding along. After a short 21st century hissy fit about the prospect of not being able to log my ride to an international audience that evening I began to relish the feeling of being completely off-grid at the mercy of the hills and the swirling weather patterns above. For in the end, behind the pomp and fashion of bike packing these days, behind the marketing slogans of expensive apparel manufacturers and modern day tyre choices this was really what it was all about. Leaving all that behind, choosing a road and just dealing with the day to day. Climbing hills and racing down them, enjoying gravel descents smashing my arms to pieces, feeling the thrill of accomplishment after cresting a 5 hour slog, balancing bikes through glacial run-off and watching the sun re-colour the landscape as it sets. This was what i’d set out to feel and it made me want more.
Here’s some pics i’ll hopefully stuff into a dining room chest of drawers one day, ready to bore my kids with stories at any opportunity.
