Alright there everyone.

As I promised, here is the write up for my trip to India to ride the (supposed) highest motorable road in the world.

As an introduction I’ll give you the background to the trip and then I’ll try go through a Day by Day. I’ll keep it brief and hopefully let the pictures do the talking!

Alrighty so:

Background
I work offshore with a bunch on international people. I’ve been doing this for about 3 years now with the same lads and when you spend so much time together, we plan things. In particular me and three Indian lads planned a trip to ride the highest motorable road in the world which is located in the North West of India in the Kashmir region. Over time the plan evolved and it’s final version involved flying to a town called Srinigar, renting bikes and riding to another town called Leh and from there tangenting off to do some routes around there. This is apparently a dream route for any Indians into motorbiking and at least one of the guys had been planning this trip since a little boy. Being relatively new to the biking world myself, I hadn’t heard of this trip before, but not being one to shy away from a challenge, I agreed to go along with them.

The Bike
The bikes we rented were Royal Enfield 500cc Bullet. These have become the traditional way to ride this route. Having only ever ridden a Fazer, and Bandit and my own Hornet before this, I wasn’t sure what to expect with this bike. I couldn’t have been more surprised. It’s like an armchair to ride. Comfortable for the long rides but as tough a yoke as I’ve ever seen. We rode over beautiful flat roads in the sun, through virtual rivers along mountain trails in the rain and alongside glaciers in the cold, and she never missed a single beat. She’d stall at altitude, but I have a feeling that was more rider error then anything. All I can say is what a bike, and when you see the photos I think/hope you’ll understand.

It really was the trip of a lifetime and one I’m never going to forget. It was 8 days of riding, 1400km covered in total and climbed to an altitude of 5400m. I brought along miminal equipment having never actually done a biking adventure before. I had my Richa jacket, gloves and boots, some kevlar jeans with an water proof over layer (ski trousers). I had a simple point and click camera and a knock off GoPro as a dash cam. Final bit of equipment was a GPS tracker to map the route. Apart from that is was just a few clothes in hiking bags strapped to the side of the bike.

I’ll leave it there for an introduction and get working on the day by day. I hope you enjoy the post and if anyone wants to know more about anything then please ask!

:bikerie: :bikerie: :bikerie: