Day 5, October 5 2007: Leh – Khardung La – Leh

Woke up to a clear and lovely morning in Leh at 0830. Decided to leave everything except the spare parts bag at the Hotel and head towards Nubra. Khardung La at 18,380 feet, the highest motorable road was barely 40 kms away. Excitement and a sense of achievement gripped us as we started our climb up towards Khardung La.

As we gained altitude at a rapid pace, the snow was getting closer, the wind had picked up and the temperatures dropped drastically. We had to stop a couple of times betweem kms 28 and 35 (from Leh) to warm up our freezing hands. As we approached the top, we were forced to stop again. The army convoy moving to Siachen had come to a standstill to put on the tire chains.

The roads up had all snow/ ice all the way. We were so close but yet so far. With a sudden rush of adrenaline we moved ahead. Struggling to keep the balance and maintain the grip, we crawled up the next 1 kms or so. Rohon tumbled as on lookers stared at us in disbelief. I was in a precariously balance position right behind Rohon and couldn’t leave my bike. Like an angel, one of the onlookers helped him up and we went about dragging up again. As I looked up the last corner, with shining yellow boards I noticed Rohon who trailed me by 50m had stopped and refused to go any further. He was all but 100 meters away. I started screaming at him “We’re there! We’re there! I can see it…I can see the Highest Pass in the World!!! This is why we came here, we can’t stop now. We’ve dragged up for 40 minutes not to give up on the last turn. We’re there!!!!” With a sudden burst of newfound energy I put the bike in gear, balance my feet and released the clutch. While I parked the bike near the temple, I ran back to see if Rohon was coming or not. And there he was, emerging out of the last corner. I raised my hands to the sky as Rohon stopped at the first of the boards and put the bike on stand.

The contact points with the ground were sinking in the snow as we hugged each other and the army convoy looked on. WE DID IT!!! We had conquered the Highest Motorable Road in the World while it lay buried under snow.

As we looked towards Nubra everything looked white, no trace of clear roads. There was no going further. Enquired about the Wari La route from the cabbies, none of who were encouraging enough for us to dare it.

Aborted! Excursion to the Nubra Valley stood aborted there and then. The weather started turning bad again as strong winds started blowing the feather-lite fresh snow all over the place. Quickly got done with the photo session and started the engines. The climb down from Khardung La wasn’t any better than the climb. Another half hour of dragging through snow filled roads and we were on tarmac again.

Met a group of bikers climbing up (One 2-up TB and 2 Pulsies). A quick chit-chat on the conditions up above and we started off again. Don’t know if they made it to the top or not, but we continued our descent to the town of Leh. Came down with a treat of Butter Chicken at the Leh View Restaurant and a crash-in-bed session. During the evening we split enquiring about the conditions at Chang La and Pangong Tso. Eventually not very encouraging words from all directions and we decided not to try our luck any more…we could run out of it anytime. A revised itinerary was prepared. We had aborted 3 days out of our original itinerary and with no intention of wasting the leaves we decided to hit Jaisalmer in 3 days time. “From Cold to the Hot Desert” was the driving thought here. This was the last night in Leh and we’d head westwards in the morning, 3 days ahead of schedule and follow NH15 right down to Jailsalmer from Pathankot. OMR, Hog, Diamox, snore!!


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