Day 6 - Here we come Khardung La - The highest motorable road in the world

11^th July 2008

Today was a day of achievements. We were to go to Khardungla Pass in the Nubra Valley. Khardungla at 18380 feet above sea level is the highest motorable road in the world. An achievement in itself!

For going to Khardungla and the Nubra Valley you need permission and permit from the District Commissioner Office in Leh. The office opens around 9.30am. Usually the hotel guys arrange for the permits for you - in our case they did , asking our name , father's name and our home address.

We were waiting for the permits to come and then we lazed around in the rooms playing cards and like and doing masti. Then someone said let me enquire whether the permits had come and they had! Weird hotel guys didn’t inform us about that!

We took the permits and go ready for the ride of our life. Asking the road to Khardungla we went ahead to the bike rental shop where Deepak rented a Pulsar 150 for 500/- bucks as he wanted to ride upto the pass himself and not pillion!

We were hungry as we didn’t have breakfast so we went to a hotel which was supposedly recommended by Lonely Planet, but there wasn’t any parking outside and we didn’t want our bikes to be seized by the Road Transport Police so we got packed sandwiches which we could consume ahead.

An incident happened here. Nikhil in his enthu for ordering sandwiches dropped his key after locking his bike on the road and I noticed it by chance so I took it quietly and Saurabh suggested that we don’t tell that to Nikhil for sometime to enjoy the fun. Nikhil came back and started searching for his key frantically and was alarmed. Finally after a long time I gave that key back to Nikhil asking him to promise to look where the key was next time before going anywhere. We already had an incident which involved loss of key in Pang and didn’t want a repeat of that again!

Taking the sandwich we started ahead. We missed a diversion and asked the locals there who pointed us to the correct road. We went ahead and we could see the road ahead curving and going high and high in the mountains. We missed a turn and went ahead to some place. An incident happened here, a small ass was walking on the road when suddenly it heard our bikes and began to run, Deepak was behind it and it ran as he revved the bike behind it, we were all laughing!

We finally reached a dead-end which definitely wasn’t the road to Khardung La! We decided to gobble the sandwiches here itself as everyone was hungry so we had our fill and drank water and backtracked to the turn where the road to Khardungla starts.

We went ahead and got the road. The road was narrow and steep but good, we encountered many army trucks on the way which were coming down and had to stop to let them pass as two vehicles side by side is a no-no there. The road slowly turned bad and was nothing but a dirt track ahead; we came across a Police Post at South Pullu approximately 12km before Khardungla where we had to show our permits to the officer.

Done that we went ahead and as the km became less we were getting excited. With Amit in the lead and me 2nd we reached Khardung La on 11th July 2008 at 3.45pm. It was a moment of elation and a great sense of achievement for both man and bike to have reached the bikers paradise. Amit and I photographed ourselves at the KhardungLa board. The weather being clear here on top made the experience more pleasant and we had the time of our lives at 18380 feet above sea level!

We didn’t try to strain ourselves much at this height as we had already suffered the effects of high altitude. Soon others also came in and then the photo sessions started. We had group photos of us 9 bikers together with the bikes and then individual poses on top. I was feeling a little uncomfortable so I told the other guys that I was leaving. I didn’t realize that some of the guys had kept their jackets in my bike cage and had removed them because the weather was clear, i rode on down after telling them.

While i rode on down the road surface improved after some point but the army trucks were very slow and were raising dust behind them making it difficult to ride so I stopped at a point and waited for the others to come, in the meantime the weather went bad and rain started heavily.
The others whose jackets were in my cage were drenched and shivering but I didn’t know about that, Purvesh came behind and we started towards Leh city and our hotel.

We reached back at the hotel around 5.30pm and got into the rooms and me feeling tired went to sleep. Others soon came in and we had some discussions and card playing. Everyone was excited after our feat today and we patted ourselves on our back.

After the mammoth bike ride today the riders slept with comfort having done a great thing. We were to go to Pangong Tso in a hired Qualis as we were tired of riding all these days so we decided to treat ourselves to some comfort and we were glad we did that!

The day ended with enthusiasm and waiting for the next day!