Himalayas 9 - Falling on top

The morning of a rest day had us up and about at around the normal time. It is hard to break a rhythm.
There were plans to go and see an important monk at the temple. Vidhya and Martin left early to join in the chanting. The rest of us slouched around until they got back mid-morning. Then we made a general move, under the careful shepherding of Alex to go and see the temple and the monk.

The temple was huge for a small town and extremely ornate.
The figures and pictures have an immediate impact with huge quantities of gold and red and bright colours, big windows and light
None of the dim, dour, dark gold and blood red of Christian churches. None of the intricacies of perspective and subtle shades of martyred muscle.
This was carnival style celebration.
But we filed quietly in and sat at the edge of the main room, respectfully, if not contemplatively, quiet.
Years of training in keeping quiet through school services and army dressing-downs gave me a chance for a little mild reflection. And it was a spiritual place, there was just little room left in this scarred soul for anything more complex than getting through the day. So any deeper meaning was a bit lost on me, but it was still a pleasant experience and interesting to see how much it meant to some people.
The monk gave us a red wrist band, filled with blessings, which showed what a good man he was. Everyone treated him with great respect, so I did too, though I knew little about Buddhism and less of him, but when you are with people you respect and they respect something, showing respect is a minimum.
We left some donations and sat outside on the temple steps to put our shoes back on. It was easy to marvel at the scenery in the clean morning air.

Then back to the hotel (the Deyzor, no Sizzle in Drizzle for us bad boys), where we changed for the days ride.
At the daily briefing Alex started off with a warning to Andy who had been wearing an ipod. The road was treacherous and music was very much frowned upon.

Of course the talk of treachery affected my confidence immediately. I was also tired after several days riding.

There was a hoo hah at the petrol station, shuffling inelegantly backwards to the back of a tanker to get filled up. It seemed like getting fuel off the back of a lorry, but this is India so it felt normal enough.
We started off out of town, simply enough, climbing the tarmac sand rock combination loosely construed as a road.

As we ascended my bike lost power. It felt like dirty fuel.

The bike sputtered and struggled and became very frustrating as the only solution seemed to be revving it hard in low gear.
Then came the muddy part. At least it wasn't wet mud, just deceptive and I had little faith in the bike. So the multitude of cross crossed tracks with ruts and bumps were a novel experience. I was not confident.

The altitude also got to me and close to the top we came across Keith who had fallen.

He was getting back on his bike but was on the middle of the path with muddy ruts on either side. Rather than wait I squeezed past, thinking I was very clever. Then I got stuck in a rut that ended in a puddle. Normally that would be OK, but the puddle concealed several layers of slate rocks. Flat and piled on top of each other.

The bike dislodged these, like skimming playing cards off the top of a deck. I could not hold the bike and went down. Into the puddle. At least my leg was under the bike, ensuring minimal damage to the machine.

Andy and Abhi helped the bike off and Doc checked I was OK, again.

I was, but of course pissed off about the inevitable ribbing coming my way.

So I slowly sulked my way to our destination. The worlds highest village and monastery at Komic.
It is a staggering location.

Just high, 4,600 metres, that's over 15,000 ft. high. Surrounded by even higher mountains.

You can understand the mystical undercurrents in this society. The higher you place your prayer flags the more they read their message to the world and the universe.

I arrived last and started off by asking if anyone else had been for a swim, then calling them poofs' in the standard macho aggressive defense manoeuvre.

It may have eased the strength of the attack, but it did not stop the deserved ribbing.

Being late missed out on the trip round the monastery but we had chai and took photos, of the scenery as well as my trousers.

But the place had an ethereal quality and it was just too high up to get energetic about anything.
The monks would not sell chai but we were welcome to whatever they had and were welcome to leave donations. Looked at it one way the chai was more expensive than the standard market price, but it was definitely far too cheap for the experience!

So we were inspired to take photos and be at peace.

The rode down for me was laborious and for Abhi it was probably on the edge of suffering. We saw some condor like birds, which cheered me up, especially since they didn't start circling overhead, waiting for the roadkill.

Still we made it back early enough to shower and change, rinse the trousers and hang them out to dry and pose for a souvenir Indian underpants photo, which of course you note was from the muddy fall, honest.

Then on and out to Kaza village for a late lunch.

Despite the late night stroll of the previous night we were pretty lost as to how to get to the main village, which was across a small stream hidden in a large chasm. At a guess the chasm may be fuller in springtime.
We wandered around in the knowledge that we would not be taking the shortest route, probably because there wasn't one. But we found a sort of main shopping and eating area where we wandered up and down searching for a place with Indian sim cards, the perfect restaurant and somewhere that sold underpants.
Teenager style we ended up as a group back at the first place we saw, a restaurant offering Indian, Israeli and English cuisine. Of course.
Naturally given this choice we proceeded to massively overorder.
A few spots of rain drove us inside where we failed to eat everything we'd asked for, which felt like a crime to me. But that may have been an overreaction on my part. From what we saw, and we saw a lot of materially poor people, we did not see obviously desperate hunger, we did not see starvation.
It makes you wonder if the excess stuff we have, our material wealth, only comes with spiritual poverty.

The rain cleared and we wandered the streets again. Still looking for a sim card for Michael. There was only one company that had service in the mountains and it wasn't Vodaphone, which we'd chosen in Delhi airport. But the Sims were only for locals. Seemingly incredibly we found a huge sign for Adventure Ashram the charity we rode for in South India last November. Fritha does get about!

We ended up splitting up and I found biscuits for nothing ha'penny and trousers for 250 rupees... and perhaps not the best named hotel, though it didn't look that shitty to me.

A wander back for a quiet evening. The hotel prepared a special evening meal for us, which we valiantly tackled without hunger and quickly regained our post lunch bloated demeanor.

The internet remained scrappy and it turned into a night for early bed, along with most of the others. We all just seemed tired and wanting to get ready for the big ride the next day.

The whisky soaked nights of jossing around were beyond our middle aged bodies. As usual when there is something important that requires extra rest and energy I had a fairly sleepless night. Dreading the big day.

This is the one I told Michael I did not expect to finish. And just today I'd had another fall.

At least I got to see the stars again, leaning out from our room, once the late night revellers had quit, the dogs had quietened and the lights were mostly turned off, it was time to stare at the staggering number of stars and galaxies.

Contemplating my infinite smallness, sleep came for a while.

Himalayans 8 - Tabo in Spiti to Kaza

Fresh.

That's the way to start the day. And it certainly was. Being on the western slope the sun did not greet us but at least it wasn't really cold, just fresh.

At breakfast we charged phones at the central charging point in the dining room. That all sounds modern, but the dining room was made of drystone walls and the charging point was a dozen outlets linked to two electrical points.

Luckily nothing caught fire while we were there.

Alex arranged donations for the youth centre from us and they were very grateful. This was not the major charity ride we'd done in south India with Adventure Ashram and the donations differed by a couple of decimal places. But that was helping the victims of human trafficking and had been a very organised charity ride. This was helping deserving local people with their daily hopes rather than countering the human effects of international crime.

What for us was a small amount would make a big difference to them.

I tried to decorate Michael's and my bikes. Luckily he had gaffer tape. I had the flags and a couple of sticks scrounged from the garden. Pawanji the support team driver had the wherewithal to match them all up. So we had prayer flags on sticks at the back and flags across the handlebars.

It got a dash complex making sure the flags on the back didn't get caught in the wheels and the ones on the handlebars didn't slap prayers in my face. 
But Pawanji was up to it (and I think it gave him something fun to do!).

As soon as we'd finished, we were greeted by a group from Delhi who were also leapfrogging with us. They'd stayed in the same camp as us in Sarahan and now wanted photos on the bike.

It was either my good looks, or the fact that I had the most flags, but I kept getting asked to pose, seemingly for both families. Michael was also snapping away, while laughing, hence this souvenir shot.

It was a good day's riding. Well apart from the thumping I got from the repaired landslides. 

We were crossing over to the Spiti Valley. As the road wound up the mountains it would be heavily worn whenever it dipped into one of the slashes on the mountainside where the streams ripped away at the mountain and at any road presumptuously carved into the side.

India wants to be very assertive about its territory up here in the Himalayas so the military presence is high. But the army runs on fuel and hundreds of tankers a day must make the journey up to the northern bases. So the roads get repaired to a passable status as quickly as possible.

There is a huge challenge as some roads are at the bottom of scree covered slopes. So rainfall and snowmelt set the entire mountainside in motion and as fast the debris at the bottom is cleared, the rest of the mountain edges down to take its place. Defying gravity takes a lot of energy.

We didn't defy gravity, merely slowed its effects as we wended our way up and then down the rocky, sandy, stony hairpin bends. 

Luckily there was little traffic and the traffic there was turned out to be courteous.

A century ago Rudyard Kipling in Kim said about the Spiti Valley: 
"At last they entered a world - a valley of leagues where the high hills were fashioned of the mere rubble and refuse from off the knees of the mountains... Surely the Gods live here. Beaten down by the silence and the appalling sweep of dispersal of the cloud-shadows after rain. This place is no place for men."

The Spiti valley really is another world.

Michael had spent the morning buddying up, which was really good for my psychology.

It had been hard just stuck at the back rolling in past. But he kindly pottered along with me and we paused every so often and shared thoughts of the views and the ride. 

We all clustered for half an hour or so as our passes were presented to continue up the valley. Swapping stories and trying to keep in the shade. It was hot.

A couple of guys from Bangalore were also waiting. They had put their bikes on a train and had ridden from Delhi. Bike Stallions they were.

Michael continued buddying. It brought so many thoughts to life, putting them into words and being able to share some of the details during the day made it so much more fun.

Nestled in the valley, where a river ran through it, were fields where someone was carefully cultivating large boulders. They sprouted like uncarved Easter Island statues among the struggling grass.  But there were blotches of straggly trees near the river and an incongruously sited horse breeding centre.

About 20 minutes after I was more than ready for chai break. Alex was waiting at the road as we rolled up with Abi and we rode into one of the few spots for tourists in the area. Tabo. The oldest continuously used monastery in the Himalayas. Founded in 996.

We parked and I immediately started for the closest place with food and chai. A modern seeming hotel restaurant. The restaurant was part of a hotel with modern but simple rooms ready for visitors, small bands of travellers in taxis and on bikes.

But here there will also be the higher echelons of Buddhist monks as the Dalai Lama is apparently considering this as a retirement spot.
What a spot.

Some of the hotels we stop at for chai have stickers from dozens of groups.

Each one has a Nomadic Knights sticker modestly placed within the starburst. But here were a few amusing names.

Goans to get Leh,d, Bike Stallions, Raid de Himalaya, Inglorious Riders

So bikers have as bad a sense of humour as anyone else.
We gratefully ate Ladakh Tai.... a spicy noodle soup, which was delicious. Loaded with chai we had fuel for the afternoon.

A quick post prandial wander to look at the temple and the souvenir shops, but with nothing tempting on offer we saddled up and rode.

The afternoon was another slog along sandy, rocky, slidey, danger-filled roads. I ended up going very slowly, which apparently is not the best or indeed safest way to go.

The little scenery I managed to glimpse was spectacular. Massive steep rocky mountains and a violent river. Patches of green, scattered randomly around the landscape. There was no countryside, just the jarring results of a cataclismic event. India smashing into Asia.

Casual gazing at the landscape was severely limited by tunnel vision. My view of the road was of some 10 or maybe 20 metres ahead. Watching for trouble was all encompassing, all embracing, all consuming. This video was taken on the same road, but going the opposite way. So driving on the left we had the big drop to look at!

So we puttered and slogged and swore our way towards Kaza. With Michael buddying the swearing was a lot more under my breath as I didn't want to be accused of whingeing!
But we stopped to look around this spectacular village, seemingly carved into mega termite mounds!

It was a welcome break and a good chance for everyone to regroup. For some reason even joinging the group in the village I was highly conscious that I may fail to stop in time, even at 5 km per hour and crash into someone, or stop on a slope and not be able to hold the bike. But these fears were not realised, I didn't make a fool of myself, this time.
The buildings were on land that could not be cultivated. Then we clambered up to the building top left, which is a temple, to get this view:

That's the Spiti Valley. Hard farming.

My bike seemed to be particularly violent on the bumpy bits, enough to give me a headache after hours of pounding. I did not want a repeat of the broken forks from the first day, so I asked Abi to check if it was me or the bike. 
Of course it was both, but the shock absorbers were set to hard, presumably Ashram the mechanic thought I was even heavier than I am. Well the next hamlet was the place to wait for the team in the van and get this sorted. Meanwhile a chai was in order. Chai is always in order, especially after an hour on the road.

So I got Abi and I loaded while Michael went ahead to catch up the main group. The team arrived a refreshing few minutes later. Ashraf went to work while we worked the adrenaline off.

I got the team a welcome chai and Lovely told me they had reset the bike to the softest absorbers they could so the rear mudguard might touch the tyre occasionally, so I should tell them if it did. Of course it didn't. Thin as a rake me (well not any more).

Lovely gave me strict instructions about which for in the road to take, 300 metres up the road, take the right hand fork, they were going to finish their chai.
So off I set and five minutes further on, a lot more than 300 metres, all the other riders had stopped to wait for us. In the sun. No chai. Just waiting.

An inner smile was in order. But carefully concealed behind the chin guard of the helmet.

We continued the steady slog to Kaza but I was tired and slow and steadily fell behind the pack. That's fine I'm also here to enjoy it, or at least not to continually suffer! And I was comfortable pottering along.

By the time Abi and I got to Kaza the others were way ahead. He had never stayed here before and the town was strung along the road.
We puttered along for a couple of kilometres and saw the end of town. But before the fields started we stopped to get out the tour plan to check the name of the hotel.

At that moment Alex came up the road ten metres ahead of us, looking for stragglers. So we had arrived.

The hotel advertised wifi, the first since Delhi. Time to check on the outside world.

So we unpacked, failed to find out how the hot water worked, had a fresh water Asian bathe and got ready to chill still further. The hot water was actually an immersion heater and when the electricity was on it worked. It hadn't worked that day.

Wifi was due to come on at 7:30 which seemed unusual. So we eagerly awaited the bewitching hour to get in touch with the world.

Our Indian sim cards had failed to work since the check point three days ago. There was only one carrier that worked in the mountains and it wasn't Vodafone.

The generator fired, the wires hummed and we were off. The owner gave us the password, which was simple, 'himalayan'.
But the wifi did not work with most Apple devices.

One of the first messages I got was about my daughter Steedley. She'd left her passport in Amsterdam and had to fly that night from Frankfurt.
She'd got a singing scholarship to the Ingenium Academy at Winchester, England, he says proudly, and was travelling from Frankfurt to London on a US passport. She's fifteen and very pretty, he says proudly, again. The US passport has no visa because she normally uses her UK passport. The UK passport ran out in April but she turns 16 in August. At 16 you get an adult passport. For the sake of a couple of weeks she was non-EU. So far so simple.

My dear, darling, daughter can consume a lot of resources on her route to happiness as a singer. She had insisted on looking after her passport, then had left it behind on a weekend trip.

My wife Gina had to rebook the flight to the evening, hire a car in Frankfurt, where she works, and drive to Amsterdam to get Steedley's passport. And then back to Frankfurt again. Five hours of driving each way. Better than relaxing on a Sunday.

Steedley would then be late at Heathrow so the Academy were going to charge £150 for a taxi. The message was a couple of hours old and asked if my brother or sister-in-law get her.

I was reluctant to ask my brother whose alarm goes off at 4 something for him to be in the city by half past highly keen.

So I replied asking if the issue had been solved.

I wanted to concentrate on that particular mess and should have retreated to the bedroom but stupidly stayed in the main area.
Being one of the first in the group to get the password, I had to repeat it multiple times to the same people. Especially anyone with an Apple whose device didn't work.

Paul kept laughing as I got the same question for the umpteenth time. Maybe I should have let him inform them.
I ended up being what I thought was direct and what Michael thought was rude when he asked the same question for the third time. I said if anyone needed any more information it would be best to ask the owner.

It is strange how we all react like drowning people when the internet doesn't work, desperately clutching at anyone around to get help and how often we're very upset when they can't or, unforgivably, won't, solve the problem.
Michael is the last person I would want to upset, but I do far to often without meaning to.

Then the wifi went off. It remained intermittent all night affected by both irregular internet and irrational electricity. So I couldn't do much about my darling daughter and her travails.

So we had a couple of shandies and some dinner and went outside for a smoke and a chat. There we learnt that Martin was very knowledgeable about Buddhism. He was really into it and was a worthy teacher to us bunch of agnostics with atheistic tendencies. Somehow the couple of beers, cigars and thin atmosphere of the high altitude made us more receptive.
He was very funny talking about going to see the Dalai Lama 'when he played the O2 stadium'.
Very megastar staff.

We went for a wander in the darkened town but didn't get very far and returned to retire early, exhausted.

Michael read, which I tried to imitate but gave up after about two minutes and was snoring heavily two minutes after that.

The next day was a short ride, an hour or so up to the highest monastery in the world. At some 4600 metres roughly its the sort of height that short haul jets use.
It was supposed to be a rest day but didn't turn out that way.

Himalayans 7 - The downs and ups on top of the world!

.... and you wake up to this. 

because you're on top of the world!

Wonderful to wake up and daydream to while waiting for breakfast.
I love marsala omlettes in the morning. Spicy eggy solid things. But today these have to wait for the local porridge which is a solid, slow burning, fuel. I know how tired I get riding and know I need to bulk up ahead of any biking day. So porridge and marsala omlette and a few glasses of the absolutely delicious local apple juice. They are big on apples in this part of the Himalayas. But this years crop is not quite ripe yet. A few slices of toast and local jam, a few buckets of tea and we're ready.

Back down the mountain, starting along the lovely wooded slopes then steadily descending to the edge of the Styx with a taste of Hades in the roads.

We were stopped by large earth moving equipment and flag wavers while they blasted a new section up ahead. It is definitely a grinding ground war with a violent struggle to establish lines of communication in a fiercely resisting landscape.

Once through that it was another half an hour of jackhammering from the road surface. There were times when it may have been easier to stand on the pegs with bent knees letting the legs absorb the continual impact, but that would be hard on the pegs and make it more difficult to keep control and balance.

I continued to grip the bike too tightly, which was a habit I could not shake, however much it shook me.

Still by the afternoon I was dog tired, needed a break and chai and food. But we had stopped at a bridge with none of those.

I rolled slowly in.

Michael has improved massively and had a thrilling afternoon. He asked how I found it and was surprised when i said tedious!

But it had been, just solid, hard work. Incessant bashing and thumping and bumping and staying on line and getting ready to change up a gear only to find more scree and a blind bend and sand and danger. So you change down and grind on through then comes a straight bit so you accelerate and get ready to change up only to find...its time to change down.

But at the bridge leading from one rocky stony sandy road to another over the roaring waters of the Sutlej the far hills were bathed in afternoon light.

 On a distant cliff face the shadows had formed a face. Like a Roman wearing a laurel crown. But it needed Michael's high powered camera to catch it on film. 

Vidyha then showed me on the far side of the bridge where the white striations in the rock had formed a man climbing out of the water. Like a Poseidon figure. The gods were in these hills and they were trying to get out!

Suitably refreshed with the smiles back on, together with a Mad Max approach we were ready for the impending battle with the trail. 

A biker group arrived behind us. We ended up with some leapfrogging as we all stopped at various points. They were not happy with Paul.

The mechanic in their group had not let Paul past, then complained that he rode too fast. Paul rides fast because he is a good rider, but it gave them an excuse to be upset.

Apparently they were Aussies and asked Abhi to pass on some suitably anti-pommie message, which Abhi did later.

We climbed and hairpinned and scrambled our way upwards stopping at a checkpoint. It is a lot easier biking uphill. And we came to the police checkpoint. A great advantage of going in an organised group is that Vidyha and Lovely could always talk with the police, not only in their language (unlike us ignoramuses) but presumably with the right cultural and diplomatic mix of respect and insistence. Not a job for tired foreigners!

We pulled the bikes to the side of the road and waited for the support team to arrive with paperwork and capability.
Quietly and innocently going for a pee Martin noticed the roadside vegetation had a distinctive leaf pattern.
There was cannabis everywhere, growing wild.
The other biker group pulled up behind us some time later and threateningly kept their distance.

We pretended we were ready for a biker bust up, but the adrenaline from the ride wore off quite quickly and a quiet cigarillo was far more tempting.

Through the check point we were into the restricted Spiti valley area. This deep into the Himalayas and close to the Chinese border there is a definite military sensitivity. There is also some sense in keeping a reasonable track of wandering tourists, just in case something happens.
As Alex said, its not hard to track a stranger up here, all you have to do is ask the local people and someone will have seen something.

At the checkpoint to come in to the restricted Spiti Valley were a couple from an advance party of Biker Stallions, who had come from Mumbai. At Narkanda there was also a group from Bangalore who had shared the campfire and rudimentary bodily emissions. They had shipped their bikes to Chandigarh by train and biked from there on up.

So it is more touristy here. Understandably so. 

Getting through the checkpoint took about half an hour. From there the roads improved as we wended our way through military towns with schoolchildren and soldiers. But these were not the frenetic dusty places we'd seen in the south. Far more organised. Cleaner. More military. 
We steadily climbed and the towns were left behind as we entered the more rugged part of the mountains. Sometimes it was hard to guess where the road was going. But all that mattered was the bit you could see.

We reached Nako with no further major incident. This was going to be our first night at altitude, 3660 metres.

It was easy to get out of breath. I have had altitude sickness. It is horrible and I don't want it again. So i hydrate steadily, drinking at least three litres of water a day, mostly from the Camelbak. This is a hydration pack, a rucksack with a bag for water into which we mixed hydration salts. The bag has a 3 foot straw that comes back up and over the shoulder, far enough to drink while you ride. It is an essential piece of kit.

Michael and I were also still splitting a tablet of Diamox each morning and night, so we both had a chance to remind each other.

Nako is special.

We had tents. Big enough to walk around in, with a zipped off loo and washing area. We washed in cold water before finding out that you could get the solar heated stuff from the various apparatus dotted around.

But between the tents were flowers. The views were stunning and the people helpful and gentle. This is the only example of a Tibetan village in India. 

We took a walk into town, souvenir hunting. 

Further on we saw a big big tent set up for an important visiting monk. He was expected any moment and there would be singing and dancing. 







But it started turning into an Indian half an hour while we hung around taking pictures of each other, local kids and the view. 

We walked through the unpaved village with cows ambling through the streets and a donkey that sprinted away from us down a narrow alley to take a dust bath.

But dotted through the town new buildings were going up all over the place. Cement and protruding steel rods showed how much more was going to be done.

This part of India is gearing up for a tourist boom.

We got some souvenirs which included prayer flags for the bikes. The beauty of prayer flags is that every time they flap they send a prayer into the ether.
That is just so much less effort than remembering words and getting on your knees and all of that stuff. 

Back at camp we enjoyed too much food. It just kept coming and despite some eagerness over the first courses the last ones were not finished, which made me feel guilty.
We had a talk from the owner of the campsite, founder of the youth centre and gentle soul.

He told us about the origins of the name of the town, which started as 'Nago', start of the pilgrimage, as there are several holy places in the area people visit. Also a very famous Guru of the 8th century, Padmasambhava, was also here for a while. 
Most of the year is spent getting enough food to survive the winter. The government gives a wood allowance for winter fuel, which is useful since there are no trees this high up!
But tourism is becoming more important. There is apparently a helipad nearby. That would be a great way to see the area if you had to do a rush tour. But a major reason most of us like biking is that you get to smell the countryside, feel the air and the sun and the wind. Its a lot more than going 'wow look at that' and buying the t-shirt.

We had a smoke and a dram and listened to tales of yesteryear. There was a bonfire where the logs were too big and the wind whipped sparks into a dervish dance endangering the audience. When a big log fell on my foot I managed to kick it back onto the fire but decided it was bed time as I'd been asleep when it hit my foot.

At the lux tents in the valley in Sangla Michael and I had opened all the vents, or windows. Here we closed nearly all of them. It was expected to be a cold night. We'd been wearing fleeces for supper and round the bonfire. We even had woolly hats ready beside the bed.

But it turned out to be warm enough under the covers and the hats went undisturbed.

Around 2 am I was awake enough to think about an old man 'pee'. You get middle aged and often need to get up in the middle of the night for a pee, even without loads of beer during the evening.
I got up as quietly as possible. Instead of going back to bed, trying not to wake Michael, I unzipped the tent door, Ninja style and stepped out to see the stars. They were staggering. A huge panorama, with so many they seemed like wisps of clouds rather than multitudes of stars. A very under-appreciated sight. 
The total lack of light pollution showed how much we miss in 'civilisation'.
There was even a shooting star. 
But then I thought of the local snow leopards and used that as the excuse to go back to bed.
Invigorated, but it was easy to get back to sleep.

Tomorrow was time for Spiti Valley.

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.