The Touring Diary

16th July 2010 Day 13 Chandigarh - Delhi I woke up late the next day as I was undecided whether to stay back or head to Delhi. Jai's mom had prepared nice parathas for us and she was insisting that I should stay with them. If I stay back I would be having virtually one day to pack my bike and board the flight for Bangalore on 18th and this might not be sufficient as I wasn't sure how to send the bike whether on train or through some courier service. Also 18th would be Sunday and wasn't sure if the train parcel services are open on sundays or not. I decided I would stay with them till lunch and then I will leave so that I have 17th which is a Saturday and will be able to parcel the bike either way. Finishing breakfast I asked Jai if I can get my bike washed before starting. He took me to a near by service station where I got the bike washed. Bike's chain was REALLY lose by now and the service guy said the links have to be removed since he can't tighten it anymor...

15th July 2010 Day 12 Manali - Chandigarh Next morning we woke up, packed up our things and were ready to start our way back.  But before we started took some pictures of the bike all covered from yesterday's mud adventure :D Jai and Nirman's bike's welding had broken and they wanted to get it fixed. I started before them and they would catch up with me after fixing it. After some confusion and miscommunication between us we got late and it was afternoon and we hadn't left Manali. We were just riding by the river (don't know the name) and we saw a lot of camps for river rafting. Once we thought of going for it but it would need 8 people and also we couldn't have left our bikes and luggage with the camp guys and go for rafting. So we decided to continue further... We saw river bank which was shallow and one could go into the water and may be have a bath :) Both Jai and Nirman wanted to take a dip and so we parked our bikes in shad...

14th July 2010 Day 11 Rohtang Pass - Manali: only 50kms covered and the whole day under the sun... Last night wasn't a good night sleep at all. As I mentioned it was damp, soggy, very cold...I might have slept only for a couple of hours and it was more of wait till the morning. At 5:30/6 am as the sun came up I woke up, collected my things from tent and walked till place where the bikes were parked. The other guys Nirman, Jai had already woken up. As I mentioned I had hit off really well with Jai and Nirman. We three were gelling well and it was nice to be with a good company after being almost on my own from last 10 days. Asked the shop guy to prepare some breakfast and tea.  But first as the last day it was time to "freshen" up :D obviously it was to be done out in the open :D. We had tea and some breakfast and decided to move to the landslide location because we wanted to be the first one to be crossing once the debris is cleared by the army guys and state auth...

13th July 2010 Day 10 Sarchu - Baralacha La - Keylong - Koksar - (Night halt in the middle of no where) I woke up at 6-6:30am and started preparing for the onward journey.  It was very very cold. I came out of the tent and watched the mountains beyond which I needed to go via Baralacha La. I could a lot of clouds, though there was a bright sunshine where I was. The climate didn't look right from a distance. But first you gotta do what you gotta do :D if you know what I am saying. I asked the tent lady about the toilets whether there is any around. She said there isn't any and I will have to find a spot in the mountains or ridges in the mountains :D. So be it. Won't go into those details now but that was another first for me :p One thing that I forgot to tell about the last day was that when I fell down near Kangla Jal, for some reason the bike's speedometer stopped working. It was as if half connected because sometimes it would show some speed reading and somet...