Day 5 - Finally Leh

10th July 2008

I woke up in the morning with a worse condition. Thankfully there was an Army camp so Deepak took me to the doctor there who diagnosed this as an initial case of AMS and gave me 3-4 glasses of water to drink and then gave me oxygen to drink. The doc (i wont name him) then scolded me for failing to drink water the day before which had led me to this state. He warned that we should keep drinking warm water in 30 min intervals so that the effects of altitude are less. He also gave us medicine and asked us to not worry.

The doc was a god-sent man for us who treated us , god forbid if we hadn't found the doc, i shudder what would have happened.

I came to the tent and we started packing and preparing to go ahead to Leh. Then a problem arose. The day before Deepak was riding Amit's Unicorn and had kept the key in the bike but someone had removed it and shut the ignition but the key was lost and to top it Amit didnt have a spare key for the bike...Hell...and in the middle of nowhere.

Amit remembered that there was an army mechanic there and he could help because the 1st day he had repaired Abhijeet's pulsar for an axle problem. So Amit took the bike to that guy and he repaired it in 2 hours time by shorting the battery so that Amit could ride without a key. The only problem being we had to open the petrol lock to fill in petrol which could be done at Leh.

We left Pang at 2pm in the afternoon towards Leh and we had to cross the worlds second highest pass Tanglangla at 17785feet now. We started from Pang and hit Moore Plains a flat level road for 40kms but as the road was being constructed it was all sand and mud and we had difficulty driving there. Once or twice my bike just stuck in the sand and I had a tough time pulling it out but there weren't any problems. The rain started when we were in the middle of the plains and hit us like pins but the rain too died out as soon as it came.

Finally the ascent to Tanglangla started and it was a steep one and the route was round and round. At one point the traffic was stopped in between to level the mud which was there on the road - the mud was due to the excavation of the sides on the roads to create a double laned road on the NH from Manali - Leh as per NH specifications. As I continued ahead the road condition became good and as I realized i was on Tanglangla.

Took photos and went down quickly to not suffer at this altitude as I had a bad experience the previous night.

The road going down Tanglangla was very bad but we made good time and just before Rumtse there was an army post - the guy sitting there took our vehicle numbers and name and bade us on and we stopped at a short distance to have tea and the time reading 4.30pm. We had nice hot tea , biscuits and some photos from Shailesh's cam and we rode on towards Leh. Now the roads were good we ripped like there was no tommorrow. Purvesh and me kept good pace upto Upshi where we stopped on the road waiting for others to catch up and looking at the lovely Indus flowing. The mountains nearby had a shade /sun effect making them look more beautiful. We took some photos and then everyone came in.

Started again towards Leh now not far and ripped on this cool road ahead. We passed by Karu which had a great army station and then the point where the route to Pangong Tso starts amd ahead we went, by this time everyone was far ahead ripping and I was going last at 60-65 and enjoying the nature , stopped in between at Shey to click the Shey palace from outside and continued ahead to Leh and found everyone stopped at a junction in Leh city. We went right and ahead reaching a steep road and stopped there , two people came and asked if we needed a hotel. Amit went with them to see the hotel and the rest of us waited there. Found that Airtel was working in Leh but no outgoing calls only incoming, although messages were going out. Time was 7.45pm and it was dark now with people on the streets gazing at us as to who we were.

Amit came back in a short time but said that the hotel's he had seen werent good and Purvesh told Saurabh and Deepak to go to look at another hotel while Amit and the guy went to some other place. We waited there until 9pm and were getting restless ... damn! Finally Saurabh and Deepak came and told us that they had found a good hotel and we were going there. Finally everyone went ahead. I was last here too :)

I had done some stupidity while we had stopped. I had put the petrol lock key in off position but forgot to remove it and rode the bike like that when we started again. Some distance ahead the bike sputtered because the lock was on OFF and i bent down to see what happened. The key was in the OFF position and when my hand hit it , it fell down because i didnt set it back to the ON position. Damn! and it was dark. Luckily i stopped the bike and went back , took out my mobile and in its light tried searching for the petrol lock key and found it , elated went to the bike put the key in and turned it to ON and went ahead only to realize I had lost the others , just as I was to take a wrong turn saw Purvesh and Saurabh standing for me at the end of the road on the right. Went that side and with them and we stopped at a hotel , Shanti Palace. Looked quite nice from the outside and it had a parking , so we parked our steeds there and went in. The time was around 9.30pm now , so we went to our rooms put our bags and refreshed ourselves and we ordered for dinner and I slept on the bed for sometime.

The "sometime" turned into more time and when I woke up i realized that no one was around. Looks like the other guys tried waking me up and couldnt succeed so they went ahead. I went into the dining room on the lower floor only to see the guys eating , I didnt have anything because I wasnt hungry, so just had a soup and went back to the room to sleep as I was dead tired.

Finally after so many hardships we were in Leh. Yahoo!

Tommorrow we are to visit Khardungla pass (the worlds highest motorable road at 18380ft above sea level) ... till then adieu!