Naggar is a small silent town, I have loved my stay here. It's a little off the map for Indian tourists and one finds mostly foreigners here. Thankfully there are no honeymoon couples, no mall road, no fast food joints, no beggers, no roadside stalls selling shiny trinkets, no glass boxes marked STD-ISD-PCO, no raunchy posters of third grade movies.
It has been raining non stop for last 24 hours, Harish, our local friend says it has never rained so much here, I blame it on the global warming.
It's about 4 in the morning and we have to leave now to reach the desired destination by sunset.
We are now 5 people on 3 bikes.
With sleep deprived and rum rich red eyes we start our bikes and start riding through rain, fog, slush and wind and to add to the irony, Bryan Adams is singing in my ears ''the summer of 69''. There are apple trees like weed here, Almost every 30 seconds I see an apple fallen on the road and want to pick it but nobody else stops.
We plan to reach Sarchu today.
Driving at this time is a pain and like 'cream on my cappuchino', I have 'water inside my jacket'. I have only heard from people about the road to rohtang pass and it sure sounds scary, I will experience it first hand today.
Riding through rain and fog and bad roads we reach a little before Rohtang pass and see trafic piled up. Guess what!!!! There is a land slide and we see a whole hill slowly sliding down in parts on the road ahead. naaahh...if you thought we would stop here.... You are wrong. Like idea out of emptied bottle of whisky, 2 of us decide to stand on either side of the landslide and signal the bike riders to cross in a jiffy to avoid falling rocks. This done, we start again but the road is pure hell now. Imagine this, get one truck load each of water, loose gravel, mud, large rocks, cow dung and some sharp stones and you are asked to ride through this and not just this, on one side you have a deep gorge waiting for you. This was the sort of road we got.
Abhishek has had some 4 falls in just 3 hours of riding. The road is bad and the bikes are taking a toll because of the altitude and the roads or better say 'no roads'.
Ruchir had no idea before starting from Delhi that the trip will be like this and he is extremly unhappy but haa to stick-on with us now. He says .... ''kamino, tumney merey holiday ka adventure banwa diya'' he doesn't know this is just the tip of iceberg.
The exuberant melodious thumping of a royal enfield bullet trudging up the steep roads is the best sound you can hear in the hills.
Slowly but continously and agonizingly riding we reach Keylong and decide to get the bikes fixed upon knowing there is a mechanic here. As we park our bikes, a group of people standing on a corner of the hill facing the road to Leh scream out ...''beh gaya...oye beh gaya'' ...washed away oye washed away ..we ask them ...''what???'' and are told, the bridge has been washed away by a landslide. Awestruck, we look at each other's face not knowing what to say ... We would have been crossing that bridge had we not decided to stop at the mechanic. What did we just do??? Escaped death once again.
Now that the road is closed we stay at night at Keylong in a hotel. This is when we realise we are short of cash because nobody remembered to withdraw cash at Manali. We beg money from fellow riders and promise them to pay at Leh.
Escaped danger at rohtang pass landslide, keylong bridge collapse, begged money from passing by motorcyclists and sweetheart, this is just the begining.
Oh man....what a day!!! I am off to bed like a dead body and later have a dream of being hit by a truck and thrown off the hill into the river ...the whole night I see eagles and vultures hovering over my head.
