Two Idiots and Bikes

With high aspirations of visiting tawang and reaching shilong for a concert of Mr. Big in arunachal pradesh we packed up our bags and ended up totaly in a land quit opposite.
The title "Two idiots on bikes" is flawlessly perfect and in due course of this blog ill prove it to you ( and no the title has not been inspired by some hindi movie) . By the way the second idiot here is Mr. Ghosh, he a successful entrepreneur and a rockstar whose band goes by the name of outro, he runs a very successful music and dance school with branches all over delhi, alongside he has got his recording studio and has an appetite to manage a event company. After this trip ghosh was filled up with a notion of becoming a adventure tour operator. Over all he is a great guy with electrifying temperament.

Usually i love to write short blogs but a 15 day trip that to full of abruptness. We were to leave for guwahati from delhi on train with our bikes and after guwahati we were to thump all around arunachal, assam, mizoram and nagaland. The story here is deep and starts with our excellent decisions from day one, .. we applied for tickets, our tickets got booked but since the server of indian railways crahed at night and we never cared to go to the station and check, we thought oh chuck it! We contacted a bookie at night who promised us the moon but when the sun rose up he drank his last patiala and went down ..with our moon.
But no! we can never be defeated we are invincible.. idiots. Our brainstorming sessions began from 10 in the morning till 12, one of the few ideas suggested to thump our bikes all the way to guwahati but the deal was to beat the rajdhani somewhere in midway. One of the brilliant suggestion was to go back to my office get drunk place India's map in front of us and throw a dart. wherever the dart lands we go there ( However we decided to preserve this for our next trip. ). After two hours the decision was unanimously taken which was to reach at an altitude of 6500 m where lies two of the most remote valleys full of natural scenery exorting us to explore and imbibe its hidden grandeur, Lahaul and Spiti.
After lurking here and there within the city we started off and reached shimla next morning after a non stop drive of 360 km. There we found out that due to festive season and special festive holidays in the state of bengal almost every bengali has come to the so called shangrila of hill stations in india and booked each and every room. (i cant uderstand what kind of a person goes to shimla for vacation, leisure, peace or even honey moon). After doing some ups and downs within shimla we found one room and we dived onto the beds and time passed. We started late in the noon and reached narkanda around 7pm in the evening, it was damm chilly and by 7 in the evening everyone in narkanda had burried himself beneath the heavy cotton stuffed blankets. History was repeating itself as we were unable to find a room which would not burn our pockets. And there was this gentleman who came out from within a crowd of of 8-7 drunkards to help us as he arranged a fine room at PWD guesthouse. He said "aap to sabhya log lagte ho"but before that he asked our sunames. Allah talah ke fazl se hamein raat kaatne ke liyeee chat mil gayee and that to provided to us by a true chatt-riya... this guy was a bit of a physco He kept shouting a famous dialog from some early 80's hindi flick " hum sar kata saktein hein .. jhooka nahin saktein ". He would have taken his bickering to some hindu genocide of the last century at the hands of mohd ghazni and what must be done now to take its revenge but we never encouraged him. Apart from that he seemed to be a decent guy, worried about his sons entry into indian cricket team. His son had clean bowled Yuvraaj Singh thrice in 2 overs, describing which Mr. Verma's chest came out 4 inch outwards. He also explained us how to exploit the already corrupt hearts of poor gaurds of PWD guesthouses accross india and we were thankful to him for his lesson. We bid goodnight to Mr.Verma and as it was cold we torched up few shots and went to chirping on topics which i dont remember. Next day we were busy beating the rally people (Raid de Himalayas) in there own game from narkanda to ramnagar and were filled to the brim with bliss. The insanity of such blissfulness drives men crazy and i was one of those idiots.


Bullets are heavy bikes they dont get out of control that easily, even if something hits you from side and even if you are on the edge of a cliff at a speed of 80kmph. After all this the mountainous road never came in my way and i was rambling the engine at 70 - 80kmph.

We bikers believe in going our own way no matter which way the rest of the world is going
we believe in freedom, dust, mountain passes, and riding of to sunsets
We believe in finding out whats over the next hill
We believe in motorcycle trips which last weeks
We believe that the world is going soft and we dont care to understand why
We believe in thumping engines with short bottle free flow silencers
We believe in chrome, wide tyres and custom paint jobs
we believe life is what you make it and we make it one hell of a ride.

On this day we also went to Narkanda devi temple i would highly recommend this to every chap visiting this region. The temple is situated on the top of a mountain which is the highest peak of this area and from where one can see the kailash kinner range on one side, china on one and badrinath on the other. One can see the whole valley in all the four sides. Bhan (ghosh) reccomends that if any day the enemy tries to enter india from this side, indian army should place their snipers on this hill. Apart from our war mongering plans i would say this place is for shalom lovers.

The next day was tight as we went to sangla. We went through a major hydro electric project in the kinnaur valley, Jayprakash infrastructure had fucked the nature like anything.
People around the area tell us that before the construction, apples use to grow in the valley. They charge J.P of robbing them off apple plantations and of snow which would fall every year.
At Sangla the gaurd of the guesthouse was quit a prick he refused to rent us the room seeking more money. We hovered around the guesthouse while the gaurd went to do some shopping for nights dinner. The gate of the outer wall was closed and a vehicle was honking for some one to open it up. Ghosh went up and opened the gate. The owner turned out to be the head engineer of PWD in that region. He came out and shook hands and was quiet amused to see two of us from delhi on bikes. He also said "aap to sabhya log lagte ho" but didnt cared for our surnames and with full warmth opened up the guesthouse for us as if we were his personal guests. As it was cold we torched up few shots and went to chirping on topics which i dont remember.
Next morning the guard was quiet friendly he told us how the guest upstairs got drunk and created quiet a ruckus all over the guesthouse and how he slapped him to make him calm down. Seeing his act of bravery the wife of the drunkard invited the guard to his room late night but noooooo.... he said " madam.. yeh achee baat nahin hai, my wife is waiting downstairs.
we wnt to kalpa no doubt its a amazing place but much better than that is a village 5 km above by the name of Roghee with apple plantation, the ppl at the village with a non motarable road were quiet welcoming, none of them objected to ghosh's stream side potty adventures.They gave us apples as ghosh from our side provided them with free organic fertilizer we bid them farewell and wished them good harvest. Around 4 in the evening the guys at a bar in kalpa told us that there has been a major landslide at Maling.
We with adventure in our hearts, do or die attitude saw thundering clouds approaching and we said oh lord we will pass in your test (as i said ill proove it that the blogs title is apt). We drenched ourselves allthrough the 50 km ride in an underconstruction mountain road till Spello where it was finally confirmed that yes the road at maling is shut and chances are pretty dim that it will re-open in near future.

Next day we set our selves to Maling. The landslide was a big one and there was no chance of getting the road to open up by next day so we decided to stay at nako. Here we met a dutch couple and 3 others, one from newsland and other two from australia. The dutch gentleman was quiet a dramatic personality, i think living six months out of a year and that too from past 10 years in india has its own effects on one's personality. There was no place in India where he hadnt gone to, but he didnt carried a very positive picture of india and was always comparing india and his home country, we had a slight brawl over India during that evening while ghosh did his chit-chat with the lady. I think its very hard for a person from a european decent to really understand what india is, one cant pin point what india is in a sentence, she is so diverse. european people with there materielistic and too much practical mindset cannot gulp certain things. Joining few yoga classes or throwing some extra bucks here wont open up one's kundalini just like that. Its true some people do change their hearts here when shown some money. We at the same time are far more welcoming and adjusting race than anyone in the world, see how the isrealies or even the bangladeshis are welcomed here, and thats the reason they love coming to india. One of them told me that its almost a cult going to india in isreal. European travellers tell me that they dont entertain isrealis in their country because of there aggressive and unruly behaviour as they come from a very disturbed country. It was sub zero we had to torch up with some really big shots and we did a lot of chit chat which i dont seem to remember now.
Next day as it was quiet clear that there was no chances of the road getting cleared. We again sat for a brainstorming session, both of us didnt wanted to go back to delhi so we undertook another advennturouse mission. We decided to go back to Rampur.We reached rampur around 7 in the evening. The adventure was bout to start as we pulled up our laces to reach kullu by next morning we left the the national highway and started on a state highway which probably was built when indira gandhi had come to visit the state after that no one had cared whether there was a need for that highwayor not, but the highwas was to cut our journey short. Around 9 the cold began to set in and at Ani ghosh started having double thoughts, i dont know whether it was required to take that unnecessary risk but we kept the engine running we were alone on some mountain top around 12 with no roads and under extreme cold and zero visibility we didnt knew whether we were on the right path or not as there was absolutely no road and from last 1 hour we havent scene any village or any vehicle on that path. Around 1 am we saw a innova coming our way we stopped them and the guys were astound " what the hell are they mad ", however they were considerate enough to tell us that after jhalori pass we will reach the kulluu valley and we might get some shelter there, ohhh! jhalori gave us the jitters which i will never forget in my life after a steep height and reaching the pass it was steep down with pebles and dense fog allover. Bertha slipped skidded but never went out of control. Around three the ever prevailing feeling of adventure died down as the bums went numb and at kullu we went from door to door to give us some shelter but non opened up on the contrary we were chased out by a gang of ferrociouse dogs. Finally after lot of head banging a old couple of a small guest house opened up. While we got a decent scolding from the old lady we kept quiet said thanks and dug deep in the beds

Next morning we did a chit chat with an indo- chinese couple, kicked our bikes and rushed towards manali
Manali was quiet chilled out place we got our bikes repaired and ready for the things to come and had a excellent lunch, i sat with the mechanic while ghosh went around looking for a massage walee but after a quick and an unsuccessfu search came back. Mech was quiet amazed to know that we passed sarchu pass around 2 am in the night. He said he didnt knew any biker who had done that, however i dont consider it to be impossible, its just that one must avoid travelling in the night on a bike in such regions. Well, after few words of appreciation the spirit of adventure within us again got filled up to the brim and we around 5 pm in the evening again started off to kaza from manali. The road of rohtang pass is baad very baad. Roads from both ends were iced and we were dressed for delhi's winter and i was wearing gloves which were meant for summers, they have vents in them. In no time the fingers went numb and i kept pressing my hands while wearing the globes over to the engine block which was quiet hot and did provide some respite. One thing i have realized in this whole trip is that one should never trust what the locals tell you about the kilometers left and the kind of road otherwise the people here are good. When we reached rohtang pass it was complete night and the cold had penetrated inside, we stoped for a cup of tea there and a bowl of maggie. The owner told us different stories on how people had nearly got themselves killed while travelling in such wintery nights. We listened to all of stories which he might have been reciting over and over again to all the tourist coming this way but he said one thing that he has seen few biker doing it in these mountains during the night. He told " sir the road is flat and newly built after 1 km". Overjoyed by this we started of again and began rolling down the rohtang. The road was still worse and because the sun had gone down the streams of water which flow down the mountain had frozen at every turned we were faced with iced surface which was as slippery as a lubricant can be, the tyres roled over it while the bike remained still. With each and every bone crushed and mashed up we some how managed to reach Koksar where we got a pwd rest house after a chit chat with highly drunk gaurd.
Next morning we took it slow coz the body was aching a lot, we took a bath and had an excellent breakfast. With the high mountains and deep valley, all snow claded, ahead of us. We chilled out a bit in the sun and then took off. After a while we were in the midst of totally different landscape which i was experiencing for the first time, we were surrounded by snow claded mountains and there was no road we soon found that we wre driving over a dried up river. We also experienced the fact that from past one hour we were the only ones who were driving in that valley coz we never saw any one coming or going, initialy we were totaly enthralled by the beauty of the place but later it started becoming spooky and then something happened which we havent imagined in our worst nightmares, Goshe's tank dried up. With few litres from my bertha we rolled over again and came accross a hut but soon came to know that in this area only deisel was available. We finaly came to a halt were both the bikes gave up, this place was called Chota dara. Luckily i dont know how someone somewhere within the himachal governtment had thought of building a resthouse there in the middle of nowhere, we were blessed and in those sub zero condition we thanked the almighty for providing us with a roof. We waited for some truck or some car to arrive at that place from twelve in the afternoon to 6 in the evening. It was a complete silence, initialy it was good as i kept myself busy with the camera but later on the silence seeps inside you and the whole environment becomes dark and creepy. The sun went down and down went our hopes of seeing someone. Around 8 pm in the night when we were making some arrangements to survive the night came a scorpio. Some senior pwd engineer showed some pitty and gave us the lift. We left our bikes there and got inside his car. He seemed to be a decent fellow who boasted of knowing delhi at the back of his hand. He told us last year the army had to airlift 20 tourist from chota dara, he seemed quiet convinced that driving on a bike in these regions that too at this time of the year when snow is bout to set in, was damm right suicidal. We stopped at a hut. which actually was a kind of a dhabba which was bout to close. We ate our food and also met a truck driver who was carrying cement bags to kaza. The engineer suggested that we should go with the truck driver as he will transport us and our bikes to kaza where we will get petrol and at the same time will save us a lot of time too. Oh yeah thats good and thats sweat too .. we thought. The engineer bid us goodbye as we thanked him for saving us from one place. Now as we turned towards the truck, we found the driver drunk as hell his red protuding eyes clearly suggested that we will have to walk his way. The dhabba owner by then had rapped up and gone with the engineer and we were left with a highly drunk asshole who had told us that he would rest till 4 am in the morning and then start the journey. With hands deep inside our pockets, shivering with cold, in the middle of now where we knew we were screwed. In such occasions brain usually is not able to render the bestest of service. So where do we sleep.. god dammed!, 6 hours to go, sub zero, snow all over no shelter .. WTF. The truck driver showed us a rickety tempo at the backside where we could take our sorry asses for next few hours. What to say bout those 6 hours which we spent in that tempo.. it felt as if someone had placed dry ice to the warmest part of your body.

Dot at 4 am the truck roared and we began our jouney.. all troughout the night we thought that the driver might turn up, take our money, worst kill us. Such random thoughts are a by product of the kind of environment we are brought up in, we from a metropolitan city like delhi read all the shit which happens in our society everyday and develop a common perception of generaly how people specialy strangers might behave. At one end we were strategising if the driver do come to us with a knife, how we should fuck his happiness and at the other end the driver got the planks ready inside his truck so that it becomes easy for all of us to load the bikes. Phew ! .. we are dammed souls to come up in such dammed times. The driver did demanded a hefty amount for his service and in accordance to this rightly put up by the dutch guy as he said said in india people change their hearts when shown the money, so if youve got the money you can do anything in this country. The truck ride was quiet a experience, the driver boasted of all sorts of stories bout his bravery and of his big heart. He turned out to be a god fearing person who played bajjans over his stereo. Ghosh slept through out while i kept clicking pictures. The terrain through which the truck went was one of its kind. As an when you cross the seemingly never ending kunzum la pass you see a desert and thats the beauty of lahaul and spiti that you experience each an every kind of terrain. We got desperate to get back on the bikes. We paid the driver thanked him and got the tanks filled up at kaza. The beauty of this place is that its entirely different in the entire himalayan range. Flat surface at this hieght with high peaks in the vicinity. Its amazing!.We got ourselves a room, called back at home and pestered around the whole bazzar to get the feel of the place, We met this kick as guy who went by the name of prashant, he was a program manager at worldspace, who had taken a 3 month sabatical and was in himachal from last 1month.... what balls man, i havnt met any indian who would do such a thing, the silence which we usually are not used can drive people like us crazy after a week spent in these mountains and that too alone. Indian yodees however do it all the time and they have been doing it from decades. We found prashant to be decent chap as he invited us to his room for some shots and we chirped for a while which i hardly remember. Next day we went to Dhankar, worlds oldest monastry which is situted over a mountain peak and the view is staggering. One can see the whole valley from the top. The monastry houses ancient buddhist scriptures with the temple of lord buddha. Its damm peaceful out there. We also touched base with pin valley. With locals closing shops in kaza because of winter setting in we found it bit difficult to find a resturnant, with handful of tourists left rumours were prevlant of chances of heavy snow in coming days which would close down the highway. On that evening we bought some firecrackers from the market and late in the night fired few rockets up in the sky, we didnt dance as it was tooo cold. In the morning the guy at the petrol pump told us that the highway at maling where the landslide had occured has been restore so we jumped back in that direction as the road was much better their.

No one likes to return back to a place like delhi from kaza or nako we will miss the clear sky and hundreds of stars which we saw during the nights, we will miss many things. We tried to make the return trip as exciting as possible and to do so we never stopped apart for our neccesacity for food and gas we kept on advancing towards delhi from kaza. We did stopped at narkanda around 3am, we fired few fire crakers on the eve of chotti diwali and later joined the forests gaurds for a hour or so. Delhi... we came back .. with our busy lifestyles i dont know when but someday i will leave other things and go back for a bit of peace, sence of adventure and for that infinite silence.