Himalayas 6 - The last village before the border.

Its hard to call it China. That covers too much, like the USA, or Europe.
But this border is still 80 km from the village at the end of the road. All in good time best beloved.

Our tented camp in Sangla was perfect for our needs. Good food, stunning location, peace and quiet, beds and washing facilities. 
Michael and I were very conscientious about taking our Diamox, anti-altitude sickness pills. We split a pill each morning and evening. Michael mixed his morning half with a cocktail of vitamins and minerals and pro-biotics. He's a health conscious kinda guy. 
Mine would have tea when available.
Continuing my slapdash approach to life I'd generally turn up to check the Enfield I was riding (it wasn't mine, you know, I was just allowed to ride it!) was there. Put my tank bag on and helmet somewhere, then hang around jossing.
I think Michael learnt from Paul all about stuff that was and wasn't important, which is probably why he is so much better at riding than I am. If you're going to learn this is a great setting.

The day was long enough at 95 km, because the roads were mostly repaired landslides. This is my first experience of endurance biking and it was a slog.

It started well with a trip up the valley on fairly tarmaced roads, with the inevitable holes, sand, gravel, cows and incoming traffic to keep you on your pegs.


But with the sun shining the scenery was glorious. We joked about all the effort to get out here and this was so similar to the Alps, almost on our doorstep!

At the end of the road I eventually caught up with the group, who had been waiting patiently (again!). 

We stopped for chai at the last village before China, a mere 80 kms away. Seriously there were no roads for the 80 kms to the border!

Exactly what you would expect, a bunch of middle aged Brits, armed with an experienced guide and full support, coming across some heavily laden touring bikes with Israelis who had taken time off after their military service to see a bit of the world. A mildly different 'gap yah' to UK students filling time before Uni starts.

The village was tiny, but it was there and the chai was good.
The lady that ran the chai stop (with basic beds for bikers who've reached the end of the road) was charming. Alex suggested a contribution to help her as she has a child with cerebral palsy. Michael started the whip and it closed immediately, he was so generous.

On the way up it had been a little fun with the occasional small stream in the road, for which I was well prepared and puttered through in first gear at walking pace, feeling very proud of myself.

On the way back the pace picked up. Being the least experienced biker I am often at the very back holding up Abhi who is there to sweep up the laggards. Well that’s been me.

The way back was also mainly downhill. I much prefer uphill.

But we got to Sangla and although it was too early for lunch it was still momo time!

Despite rolling into town last, as usual, I knew exactly what was needed and with Andy headed straight for the shops below our privileged balcony view. We only had to ask one person in halting hand signal English and there we were, below street level in a shabbily constructed concrete shop below the level of the road in a well laid out shop purchasing our

own Kennaur Topis.

Elegant, well made, fun and half the price of a plastic baseball cap at the local market.

Michael immediately went out to join our suave and debonnaire set!  

However none of us could match Keith who fitted in like a native!

But note the labour flexibility from the shop behind which covers electronics and lamination, obviously.

The constant gear changing and grinding and bumping and sliding and fear of certain death if you go off the road, had me on edge. And the scenery although solid and spectacular with massive cliffs ahead above and below, it was almost all rock. Or stone. Or sand. There were no plants.

The advice from Abi has been to relax. But with death to the left and danger to the right the whole relaxation thing has passed me by. 

But every day it has got better.

So we stopped for a while and notched the adrenaline down. Then climbed and climbed and that was fun. 

Feeling good we reached Reckong Peo and the main Kennaur district police headquarters. The groupie photo was with the phone and not good enough quality

to see the sign clearly enough. So the instant Facebook post about "Celebrating our release" fell flat! 

We were here to collect our special permits for the Spiti valley. 

That was a lengthy and presumably for Alex a touchy procedure filled with uncertainty. You can never be certain how much hassle you'll encounter with bureaucracy, even in India! But with Vidhya there to bring the best out in people in several languages the chances are high.

We filled in confusing forms and waited. Then Alex led us to what seemed like a converted cattle pen with ersatz benches made from piles of bricks topped with reinforced concrete. We knew this because artfully some of the reinforcing bars were exposed at intervals presumably in an artistic manner. Brutal art.

Well we were called one by one for our photo. I was last so it was obviously in reverse order of beauty.

Whatever the Nomadic Knights team had done it had smoothed the path of officialdom and we were out pretty quickly.

Since hotels do not serve alcohol, we were in a town and the support team van had space, there was a whip round for booze, which most gave to. Andy and Martin went in search of whisky and I tagged along with the whip for beer. We clambered up steps past bemused schoolkids hanging out on benches to the main street. That had a riot of shops on both sides but nothing resembling a booze shop. We tried asking and got various directions. Some way up, back from the road and unsignposted was an iron sided shop that had a tiny window with prison bars. A hole in the wall, obviously what we were looking for.

They only had Kingfisher, which seems to have too many chemicals in to avoid a hangover, but Andy and Martin got some local whisky, which is very drinkable and we turned back for the bikes. 

Lovely was there with the van and orders to hurry up, so we left him with the money for the beer and precise directions on where we had failed so far to forage for the troops' stable dietary requirements.

Back on the bikes we were soon weaving up the mountains. As we bumped and burbled along the roads got narrower. Suddenly there was a sharp bend in a cliff face with serious injury to the left and solid rock to the right. Its seemed to be always like that, stunning scenery that you can only admire if you stop as the road ahead will smack you in the face with danger.

We descended to the edge of the violent Sutlej river, past hydro electric power stations and along shale and slate covered roads. All of these seemed ready to slide the wheels out from under you. There were long sections of firmer sand studded by rocks that stuck up enough to be tank trap, ready to smash the underside of the bike.

Even more cleverly these rocks are carefully camouflaged to be the same colour as the sand. So in the middle of the day they are even better concealed as the sun is high and there is no tell-tale shadow.

I had to take it slowly, not wishing to rip out the underside of the bike and worried about falling off.

Most of the others seemed to be revelling in this but I hacked my way through this plantless, unforgiving route buzzed by the occasional truck and army vehicle, but luckily very few buses.

Then we climbed, up into pine woods and greenery and for brief stretches you could open the throttle and change up a gear. 

These breaks sometimes lasted for a couple of hundred metres. Take it while you can get it. Then you change down again, for a sharp bend or bad road. In my semi-paranoid state I biking for the road I could see, which was sometimes only a few yards ahead. Knowing that over every rise, round every bend was a pothole waiting for me, with a sleeping cow and an oncoming bus. 

We wended our way up to the wonderful Kinner Villa. Well it was wonderful once I finally got my bike up there.

I keep miscalculating the gear I am in, being in second rather than first. 

On our trip in south India last October, Alex had given me a lesson on the marvels of the Royal Enfield Bullet. I had spent days revving it too high in the belief the machine needed it and it gave me slightly more than zero control. So one hot morning on the edge of the Arabian Sea he put me on the back and was quickly in third gear with no revs and we pottered along quite happily. That was an eye opener. The Bullet will just keep going.

So up here I was changing up as quickly as I could and ended up one gear higher than I thought I was in. There is of course no indicator and the old bikes cannot be relied on to change gear when you press down on the pedal. 

There is not always a solid click to tell you if your gentle press or your raging stomp has worked.

So of course on the steep slope I stalled and had to reverse back to a more level part to finally find Neutral start the process again. In first the slope was easy enough.

One of the fun quirks of the bike is that when you start off you are in Neutral with a nice green light telling you that.

So you press down and the light goes out, slowly release the clutch and slip into neutral. Magic.

On bumpy bits it felt like the bike was also putting itself into neutral. Confidently I explained this to Alex, who patiently explained that was my badly positioned boot was accidentally knocking the gear change pedal. He pretended he did this all the time, to spare my crestfallen feelings about being a novice, yet again.

Paul solved the boot issue by showing me how to put the boot as far forward as possible.

Unintentional neutral still happens occasionally but not nearly so often, which makes the riding a lot more fun.

Kinner Villa is in a magical location at some 3150 metres above a very distant sea level. But there are lots of fruit trees and greenery. And a spectacular view of Shivaling.

We were lucky to arrive when it was about to rain. Because it seems up there it is either raining or about to rain. We got some chai and blustered and clomped around in our biker gear.

The view across the valley was very good but upstream clouds were covering some of the larger mountains. 

Still in the distance there seemed some fun rock formations. In this picture the downslope to the right of the big tree. One was like a hanging rock. So I eagerly used this as an excuse to get out the binoculars. There was a strange rock on a lower peak. In Europe you would assume it was a cross labouriously and arrogantly erected on the orders of a pious overlord.

Luckily Michael has a very powerful camera.

It turns out this is the Shivaling.

It is on Kailash, which is in Tibet. Source of the Indus and Ganges rivers (and they're really, really big). its holy in four religions.
In Hinduism it is the home of Lord Shiva, the destroyer of ignorance and illusion. From where we were it was a tiny, barely visible, upright column. It is apparently 60 metres high and is named after Shiva's willy. He must be a big boy.

Well we had a shower, half a Diamox and the beers opened up. We sat around with Alex's choice of music hitting the mood perfectly. Inspirational female vocals.
Alex and Vidyha were talking to a brahmin who was staying at the Villa. I wanted to see what wonderful music Alex had chosen. Well the iPod was sitting in some speakers and I got the instructions wrong about which button to press so the music just got louder. All my manic efforts just made it worse.

Alex had to run over and rescue the situation, ruining his conversation. Typical children never give the grown-ups a moments peace!

Supper was, as usual delicious, and I ate for England. 
Afterwards in that easy going way we sat around a bonfire on the roof terrace finding stars and solving the worlds main issues.
Apparently these aren't what people think they are, but are far more personal. Well it seemed so at the time and they were for us anyway.
I have no idea if the perfume of unsmoked wild cannabis had pervaded the air, or it was because we were over 3000 metres (which is almost 2 miles) but we were high!

It was a good night, but Michael and I snuck off and were in bed by 10:30. The days are tiring and there is less oxygen up here.

Rest and sleep are even more tempting than bonhomie by the bonfire, plus we have separate beds and magic gel earplugs. On top of the world.